Google Instant: What It Means To Website Owners

Yesterday Google unveiled what is considered by many the biggest game changer the search industry has seen in years. It’s called Google Instant, and it basically shows search results in real time, as you type letter by letter. Here is a quote from the official Google Instant page:

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.
The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way.

Google is gradually rolling the change around the world, and most people should already be able to experience this feature on the Google.com (English version) page.
The question that has been on my mind is how will this new feature impact website owners. Many other people are discussing this too, so I decided to make a roundup of the views and opinions I saw around the web, with my own take about them.
1. Google Instant will kill SEO (I don’t agree.)
Some people started linkbaiting suggesting that Google Instant will kill SEO or make it irrelevant. I disagree with this view. It sure will change how SEO is done, but if anything this will open new opportunities for the skillful and clever SEOs out there.
Companies will also keep needing help with their SEO and PPC management, so I don’t think much will change in this segment either.
2. There will be less traffic to long tail keywords (I partially agree)
Now that search results are displayed in real time, the keyword suggestions people will see on their search boxes will be much more effective. This means that people will be less inclined to type long and detailed keywords (i.e., long tail ones), so the traffic you’ll get from these keywords will be reduced. I agree with that.
But there is another side to this coin. Google tests revealed that real time results encourage people to make more searches, so this could off-set the previous effect, increasing the amount of traffic you’ll get even for long tail keywords.
3. Popular keywords will become even more popular (My own theory)
Another effect of the keyword suggestions is that popular keywords should become even more popular (as long as they are one of the Google suggestions). Someone who was about to search for “make money online with a website”, for example, will see a suggestion for “make money online” right after typing some letters, and there are good chances he’ll just click there to save time.
4. Title tags will become a lot more important (My own theory)
As you probably know Google uses the title tag of a page as its headline in the search results page. For this reason title tags were already important, but with Google Instant they become even more.
Why? Because your pages will appear in many more searches now, and if you have a catchy title tag you might convince the user to click on your link even if he was searching for something else.
Over to the readers: What do you guys think about Google Instant, and how do you think it will affect website owners?

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5 Things Magicians Can Teach You About Blogging

At some level, blogging is really just a stage show. We, as bloggers, are up on a virtual stage giving a performance that goes on for as long as we run our sites. Whether it is a stand-up comedy routine or a serious academic lecture, we’re talking to the world and hope that our audience, no matter how large or small, will listen.
On that front magicians are masters of the stage show. Using nothing but a few tricks, which can range from very simple to unbelievably complex, their charisma and whatever effects they have at their disposal, they have to keep a difficult audience entertained and enthralled through their entire act.
So maybe magicians can teach us bloggers a few things about showmanship and how to keep our audience glued to the screen, no matter what type of site we are trying to run.
On that front, here are five tips virtually any magician can tell you that can help make your blog a little bit better.

1. Have a Catchy Name

Good marketing starts with a good name and magicians understand this. You can tell a great deal about a magic act based on just the name it goes by and magicians are constantly honing and improving their brand by seeking publicity and getting their well-chosen name out there by any means necessary.
Application: Spend some time coming up with a good name that is easy to spell and pronounce but is also unique and describes what you are trying to do. Then, promote that brand vigorously and stand by it unless you have some urgent need to change.

2. Dress 1 Step Above Your Audience

Magicians have a general rule that one should dress one step above their audience. If you are performing in front of a completely casual audience, they will wear business casual, if the audience is business casual, they will dress in a suit, if the audience is wearing suits, they’ll wear a tux. The reason is that this gives the performer a sense of authority while making them approachable and relatable.
Application: Your dress is your writing and your language. Try writing your content one small step above what your audience would write, making it more authoritative than casual writing but still easily understood and approachable.

3. If You Mess Up, Be Honest, Break the Tension and Move On

Mistakes happen and when a Magician goofs they do so in a very public way. However, magicians rarely try to hide their mistakes, especially if they know their audience has caught on. Instead, they’ll admit to the mistake, go for a joke to break the tension and then move on quickly and confidently.
Application: Going for the joke may not always be appropriate but when you goof on your site you need to acknowledge the error, end the tension quickly (either with an apology, a joke or whatever is appropriate) and then move on. Don’t linger on your mistakes once you’ve dealt with them.

4. Make People Look Where You Want

Half of magic is about diversion and drawing attention where the magician wants it. A majority of magic tricks wouldn’t work at all if the audience was not looking at the right spot while the trick part takes place out of view. Magicians achieve this by using motion, colors, lighting and anything else at their disposal to distract and direct the audience to their will.
Application: Tell the readers what you want to look at, use subheads, lists, tables, images and other things that draw the eye to make them look at the information you deem most important. Use such tools sparingly, otherwise the eye doesn’t know where to go, but don’t force your readers to figure out what’s important on their own.

5. Know Which Secrets to Keep

Magic thrives on secrets. As the TV character Jonathan Creek was fond of saying, once explained what was once magic becomes mundane. Magicians keep their secrets closely guarded to keep the illusion of their tricks being actual magic. Though the illusion is fleeting, most people realize magic is just an illusion, the ability to deceive oneself for a moment is an important part of enjoying the show.
Application: Blogging isn’t nearly as secretive as magic but you do have to think long and hard about what information you want to give away and what you don’t. You need to ask yourself what information will help your readers better enjoy or learn from your site and what will confuse and complicate things needlessly. Keep the secrets that you need to in order to stay on target and be effective, don’t try to throw everything out.

Bottom Line

Though magic and blogging have many differences, blogging involves significantly fewer rabbits for one, there are definitely enough similarities so that we bloggers can pick up a few pointers, especially when it comes to keeping our audience entertained and informed.
It might be easy to not think of blogging as a public performance but, in reality, that’s exactly what it is, the most public kind of performance possible and the fact that it merely writing, audio or video doesn’t mean that many of the same rules don’t apply.
So let’s listen to the magicians, they might have a lesson or two for us.

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5 Skills Every Blogger Needs to Excel

On the surface, writing a blog and maintaining it may not seem like that hard of a job. You set up an account, pick a theme, write some posts and hit “publish”. Pretty much anyone can do it so long as they know how to use a computer and understand the basics of the Internet.However, there is a difference between just blogging and blogging well. If you want to do the latter, you’re going to have to learn a few additional skills to help you excel.
The good news is that the skills you need are not great and, even if you don’t have them at all, you can probably pick them up quickly with a few books and some practice.
Still, if you’re looking to move beyond merely hitting the send button and hoping for the best, here are a few skills you might want to pick up or improve on.

1. Writing Skills

This one seems fundamental but it is still often overlooked. Even if you’re a podcaster, a photographer or running a video blog, you’re going to have to write something, even if it is just descriptions.
You don’t need to be a poet in order to write a blog but you need to be able to write clearly, concisely and in a manner that doesn’t sound awkward or forced. Search engines strongly favor well-written content (because people spend more time on pages with it) and the easier your content is to read, the more people will enjoy and the more visitors you’ll have. It’s that simple.
If you struggle with this, it might be worth your time to pick up a few books on writing or even taking a short writing course. A little bit of time invested here can go a long way to helping your blog.

2. HTML & CSS Skills

Sure, every major blogging platform comes with themes that you can just click to install and use, but what happens if you want to make it unique or fix something that’s broken? If you don’t know at least a little bit of HTML, you may be in big trouble.
Knowing the basics of HTML and CSS is the difference between having a site that looks like everyone else’s and having something that is truly unique. You don’t need to change much code to make a very big difference but you do have to know what to change.
If you’re weak in this area, pick up a few basic HTML books and practice with them. Also, you may want to learn the basics of PHP if you’re using a platform that’s based on it, such as WordPress, so you can fix minor problems with plugins and themes.

3. People Skills

Blogging may seem to be a solitary activity but you have to deal with other people all day long. Though the interactions may not be face to face, instead being via email, comments and social media, the rules for how to treat others doesn’t really change.
If you treat people good and trust those who are trustworthy, you’ll probably have no trouble with you people skills, However, if you are struggling in this area, it is really about practice more than anything. Though being shy is understandable, getting out there and talking to people is crucial.
Besides, if you can comfortably talk with and work with strangers face-to-face, working with them online should be easy.

4. Image Editing Skills

For most bloggers, the primary medium is text, but, at some point, you are going to want or need to work with an image as well. Whether it’s a logo you’re adding to your site, images you are inserting into your posts or just a new avatar for Twitter, you will likely find yourself manipulating images.
As such, it’s important to understand the basics of image editing including how to crop, resize, correct, reformat and do other simple changes to an image. It doesn’t require a Photoshop wizard to be able to run a blog, but if you can do the basic changes yourself, life does get a lot easier.
If you’re weak on your photo editing skills, the easiest way to learn is usually to just download a photo editing program, such as Paint.net, and practice or read through the provided tutorials. For the most part, this is something best learned by doing though there are great books available as well.

5. Social Networking Skills

Though I am loathe to agree with the army of social media and social networking “experts” who add me on Twitter every day, they are right that a blogger, or any business for that matter, needs some basic social networking skills. To be clear, this shouldn’t be an obsession but learning how to use Twitter and Facebook as well as other relevant services can be a major help to your site.
Part of social networking is the aforementioned people skills but it also plays a role in promotion and encouraging others to spread around your site as well.
Once again, the quickest way to learn if you need some help is to simply dive in but, with a simple search, you’ll find that there are literally thousands of tutorials and guides on this topic. There is no shortage of information out there.

Bottom Line

You’ll note one of the skills I didn’t mention is computer skills. The reason is that it should be assumed. If you’re on the Internet and running a blog, you have a certain amount of computer knowledge already and the additional skills you need are more specialized (and mostly listed above). You don’t need to know how to work on a computer of replace a hard drive to be a good blogger, but knowing how to use one well helps, obviously.
In the end, the skills you need to be a good blogger are not that great or numerous. Though there are some not on this list, these are some of the big ones you definitely will need or want. If you don’t have them, it may be time to brush up on them and, if you do, there is always room to improve.
After all, one should never stop learning, especially when it comes to the skills at the core of something they love. You can always take things to the next level through practice and education and there is almost never any harm in doing it.

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Why You Need to Know HTML/CSS

Last week I posted an article entitled “5 Skills Every Bloggers Needs to Excel” spelling out five skills that I consider essential for every blogger to either have or be willing to obtain if they want to truly excel.Overall, the article was well-received but several commenters took issue with the second item on my list: HTML/CSS Skills.

Several felt that the power of WordPress/Blogger and other blogging platforms made the need to know HTML obsolete. Others pointed out, correctly, that you can outsource much of this work if you’re willing to pay.
That being said, there’s still no substitute for having at least some basic HTML skills in your mental toolbox. You don’t have to be a virtuoso, but you need to be able to customize your blog and fix any mistakes or you will find yourself at a severe disadvantage.
If you don’t see the need, consider the problems not knowing HTML/CSS raises, especially down the road.

Theme Are Not Enough

The official WordPress Theme Directory currently lists just over 1,200 free themes and there are probably many times that on other sites not in the official repository. Without paying a dime or changing one line of code any blogger can have one of thousands of looks for their site.
In fact, with recent upgrades to WordPress, you can even change the header image, the background and a few other elements without editing the code, instead just altering theme options.
The problem is that, of the available themes, very few are actually good and only a fraction of those are relevant. Most themes available are mediocre or worse and there tends to be a group of a few dozen themes that get used over and over again. Even with the basic customizations any site using one of these themes, unmodified, will look like dozens of other blogs out there, including many that are more popular and more strongly associated with that look.
A big part of being a successful blogger is branding and it is almost impossible to build a good brand when your site reminds many of your visitors of another blog. This isn’t to say that you can’t use themes, I certainly do, by that you have to customize them and make them your own.
However, this is the part you can easily outsource, including getting a completely custom theme. This takes much of the edge off of not having any HTML/CSS skills but it can be very expensive, especially for a blogger not looking to make a profit, and, even worse, it only fixes part of the problem.

Maintenance

If you outsource your theme development or decide that you’re comfortable using a relatively stock theme, you’re still going to have to make small changes to it as you go. Whether it’s Twitter buttons, new sidebar elements, font changes, etc. you’re going to want tweak your site at some point.
This tweaking is crucial to respond to visitor’s wishes, fix minor problems and add new features. Virtually every site or blog is under near-constant construction, even if the changes aren’t readily visible.
However, if HTML scares you and you received outside help in building your theme, you can’t make these changes on the fly. Instead, you have to farm them out and this means spending more time and more money on making relatively simple changes. This really slows down the evolution of your site, hurts your ability to adopt new tools and puts you at the mercy of others, who may have other clients and bigger projects, to make any changes on your site.
The other effect is that this actually adds more work to your blogging workload, especially for simple changes. Rather than altering a few lines of code, you have to hammer out an email to your friend or designer, explain what you want done, go back and forth to make sure it’s done right and then, at long last, follow up on completion. A simple change in HTML only takes a few minutes but having someone else make the change can take hours to get it done right and involve waiting weeks.

Bad Things Happens

But while the waiting can be annoying and discouraging when dealing with routine maintenance and updates, it can be murder when something goes wrong with your site.
And things do go wrong. Though not editing your HTML reduces one of the major sources of trouble, human error, there are still plugins that can update and go askew, malicious hacks and other sources of headaches that you may need to jump on immediately.
What happens when your image host goes down or that company with that great new tool you loved closes up shop? What happens when a spammer attacks your site and inserts a bunch of garbage links into the template? If you don’t know HTML the answer is you’re going to be waiting for some time while you seek out someone else to clean up the mess for you or you need to learn quickly.
Things go wrong all the time with Web sites. Services die, hosts make changes on their end, hacks happen and you need to be prepared. If you can’t edit code and perform basic triage, you’ll find yourself with a lot of late nights waiting for someone else to step in or, even worse, losing data as you’re forced to restore from backups when it could have been repaired.

Bottom Line

Do you absolutely 100% need to have HTML/CSS skills to be a successful blogger? Probably not. But do you have a reasonable chance at being successful without those skills? No.
You can certainly get a lot farther without HTML/CSS than you once could but just because one can set up a site without looking at code doesn’t mean one can build a successful one without doing it.
Not knowing HTML/CSS is a huge handicap and it is almost impossible to overcome. The vast majority of bloggers definitely need at least some basic level of HTML knowledge and will eventually struggle if they don’t have it.
Your energy is best spent on running your site, not waiting on others to help you out or finding workarounds for easy-to-solve problems. The time and energy it takes to get the level of HTML knowledge you need is less than what you’d likely spend trying to work around or get help on on just one situation.
You don’t need to be a maestro of code, but you need to be able to look at your HTML without being scared and understand how to format CSS.
After all, you might be able to get by for a while without the knowledge, especially if you’re willing to pay a price, but a day will eventually come you’ll regret not knowing it and that regret will be in a very big way.

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What To Twitter And Include For Google Searches

I came across an interesting article the other day about Twitter and seo in general and I know there’s a constant stream of information about what works and what doesn’t in seo and social media, but this information came about as a result of a seminar hosted by SEOmoz in Seattle recently.
In the ever changing world where people involved with search engine marketing are continually chasing Google’s tail to find out what the search engine is looking for, there have been several new twists including using more images and other techniques to promote localized searches. The news is Google’s new search results display a blend of images you can use to your advantage when you’re a local business.

Not All Images Though

You can’t go overboard and expect to get the best results, however. One suggestion that came out of the seminar was to take full advantage of “How to” and tutorial type content to compliment whatever images or videos you’re using.  That’s good news for content writers and bloggers. Like I’ve been saying for years now, try as they may, there’s no getting rid of good content.
Here’s a note of caution about using images. It seems that some less reputable websites can even analyze and steal some of your seo thunder by stealing some of your images. The remedy here is, as you might have guessed, more text and content on your site to give Google something concrete to latch on to.
One other great way to get good seo is to place your site in the directories that the search engines are building. It’s important to keep in mind and take a good look at Google Places in particular. The idea here is to be able to get your results in what’s called the Google 7 pack which is the preferred listing rank.

Phone Numbers For Good Rankings

If you’re going to look into this method, you need to be sure to fill out all the categories to get the maximum exposure. Some of the key information used here is the phone number and address of the business.

Tips For Tweets

Now on to what was said about Twitter at the seminar. One of the other speakers  reported that getting the most responses on Twitter is easier than you might think—all you really need to do is wait unit later in the day before you start. Another tip is to fill out the 160-character biography field. It seems people who do get six times more followers.
Don’t be shy in other areas either. Other areas of advice include adding a picture of yourself on the account and a link to your website. Finally, the conclusions drawn in the seminar noted that click-through rates were affected by the number of tweets and the lower the number of click-throughs, the higher the number of tweets. That’s good information for the marketers out there.

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Get Your Favorite News Topics by Email Each Day with Skeedy

Skeedy is a new service that caught my eye because it lets you “follow subjects you are interested in and be notified as they surface”. There’s nothing public about it; only you will see what topics you’ve selected and the headlines to go with them. It’s a very simple service with one aim, delivering the headlines that interest you most by email. To get started, you can login via Facebook, Twitter or simply create an account.

After you sign up or login, you’ll need to tell Skeedy what type of user you are — geek, fan or calm. As you can see from the image below, this will let them know just how much news you’d like to receive each day — a little bit, an average amount or a whole lot.


All that’s next is to tell Skeedy what interests you. When you first see the home page (before you “follow” any topics) you will see the most recent top topics and headlines for the day. You can follow topics from here by clicking the “follow it” button. After that, items from topics you are following will show on the homepage.

To add more interests, you must use the search bar at the top of the page. If there are results for the topic you type in, you’ll see a few headlines related to it. Once you choose to follow it, Skeedy will ask you to categorize it. The topics you can choose from are pictured below. They ask you this because the actual category links appear along the top of the site. So, when you click on a category, everything that you’ve put under it will show on that specific page. So clicking on “Technology” will show you all of the topics that you’ve put into that category and so on.


The only downside that I could find so far is that, when you click a headline from a category it opens in a new tab and you get an annoying frame (with an ad) above the content. You can, however, click on the “remove this frame” link to get rid of it. I haven’t received an email yet from Skeedy so I can’t tell you how they look but, I’m hoping they’re as clean and organized as the website itself.

I feel that Skeedy is great for those who are overwhelmed with RSS feeds and newsreaders. Here you can pick and choose what you want to read about and even tell them how much of it to send you each day. What more could you ask for?

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IE Toolbar Restrictions

To create restriction on the ability to edit the toolbar

Start Regedit

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Create a DWORD key of SpecifyDefaultButtons and give it a value of 1

To remove a button from the toolbar,

create additional DWORD keys with a value noted below

Key	Value	Effect
Btn_Back	2	Back button and menu item.
Btn_Forward	2	Forward button and menu item.
Btn_Stop	2	Stop button and menu item.
Btn_Refresh	2	Refresh button and menu item.
Btn_Home	2	Home button and menu item.
Btn_Search	2	Search button and menu item.
Btn_History	2	History button and menu item.
Btn_Favorites	2	Favorites button and menu item.
Btn_Media	2	Media button and menu item. [Only available with IE 6]
NoBandCustomize	1	No adding or removing menu or toolbars.
NoToolbarCustomize	1	Customizing the toolbar.

---

IE Restrictions

1. Start Regedit
2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software \ Policies \ Microsoft \ Internet Explorer \ Restrictions
3. Add a DWORD with a name of:

NoBrowserBars	Disable changes to browsers bars.
NoBrowserClose	Disable the option of closing Internet Explorer.
NoBrowserContextMenu	Disable right-click context menu.
NoBrowserOptions	Disable the Tools / Internet Options menu.
NoBrowserSaveAs	Disable the ability to Save As
NoFavorites	Disable the Favorites.
NoFileNew	Disable the File / New
NoFileOpen	Disable the File /  Open
NoFindFiles	Disable the Find Files
NoSelectDownloadDir	Disable the option to change download directory
NoTheaterMode	Disable the Full Screen view
NoOpeninNewWnd	Disable Open in New Window
NoViewSource	Disable the ability to view the page source HTML.
NoNavButtons	Disables the Forward and Back buttons
NoPrinting	Remove Print and Print Preview from the File menu.
AlwaysPromptWhenDownload	Always prompt user when downloading files.

4. Give it a value of 1 to turn on the restriction
5. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Policies \ Microsoft \ Internet Explorer \ Toolbars \ Restrictions
6. Create a DWORD with a name of :

NoToolbarOptions       Disables adding, removing, or moving toolbars. 

Give it a value of 1 to enable this restriction

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Create a shortcut key for Internet web pages

Create a PC shortcut key  to a favorite web page by following the below steps.

Internet Explorer users

Users using Internet Explorer can quickly do this by right-clicking on an empty spot of a web page and click 'Create Shortcut'.

Other Internet browser users

If your browser window is maximized make it a window. Once done click and drag the icon next to the URL and drag it to your desktop or other location you wish to create the shortcut.

Once the shortcut has been created locate the shortcut and right-click it and click Properties. In the shortcut properties assign a new shortcut key and click OK. Now when the shortcut key is pressed the web page will be automatically loaded. Additional information about creating a shortcut for an icon can also be found on document CH001130.

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