Web Site Design Stats Debunk the Myth About Keeping Content Above the Fold

There is an excellent study posted on the ClickTale blog titled "Unfolding the Fold" that provides some hard stats about the fold and scrolling in general. These statistics demonstrate that the vast majority of web designers are designing pages with scrolling, that the majority of users do scroll and that a significant portion of them scroll all the way to the page bottom. Their conclusion is that there really is no reason to squeeze all of your content above the fold.

• 91% of the page-views had a scroll-bar
• 76% of the page-views with a scroll-bar, were scrolled to some extent
• 22% of the page-views with a scroll-bar, were scrolled all the way to the bottom

How to make a brand work online

"and here is our style guide"... thump! A huge tome lands on the desk in front of you. When it is written entirely for print, how do you begin to turn it into something that will work on the web?

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Increase traffic to your web site with these tips

I've posted the following blog article written by Ted Demopoulos, author of Blogging for Business. Simple tips that serve as a nice reminder that the Internet requires constant attention for you to achieve and maintain positive results.

Three Ways to Increase Traffic TODAY!

Traffic, readers, raving fans -- we all want more. Sure, traffic isn't everything. Small focused traffic is often better than large random traffic. Many successful businessful blogs don't have big traffic, but in general more traffic is much better than less traffic.

Here's three tips you can use to get more traffic today:

1) Leave five (or ten) intelligent comments on blogs in your niche today. Both smaller blogs and more popular blogs. I'll bet you get some visitors from the comments!

2) Fix your blogroll. Remove blogs that don't really belong there, and more importantly, add blogs to your blogroll. I'm sure there are lots of great SMALLER blogs in your niche you don't have on your blogroll. You've probably read them before, maybe read them regularly, and might even do some looking around using Technorati.com or by reading other people's blogrolls. Smaller bloggers, not the A-lister most popular bloggers, will notice. They'll visit. They might blogroll you too.

(Note: see my comments about Link Baiting and Link Building)

3) Write a post (or two or three) linking to another blogger's post you like, especially when you can add some information and value. Again, you'll probably see some traffic in return.

Notice some similarities between the three? They all involve being social. Interacting with other bloggers. You shouldn't be surprised!

Reach out to bloggers who are writing about your company

Yesterday I published a story about paying bloggers to write about your company. But how to you manage all the others who are already writing about your products and services? The short answer is you can't. You can however, learn from what they have to say. You don't need a lot of software or equipment, just free tools that are there on the web.

Set up Google Alerts and Technorati Watchlists for your company, your products and your executives. These will notify you of any new online chatter about these subjects.

Become familiar with del.icio.us, the shared bookmarking site owned by Yahoo. Read teh tages and comments members are applying to your company's name. You may find the terms they use to describe you aren't what you expected. You'll also find fans and critics there.

Reach out to bloggers who are writing positively and negatively about your company. Ask what you can do better. Deputize them as an extension of your R&D operation.

Once you get comfortable listening to unvarnished feedback, leverage social media tools to ask for help. Set up a wiki, post your marketing collateral and invite business partners to comment. Offer a prize for the best ideas.

Engage a service like Communispace to create private communities where you can engage with partners and customers in an honest, ongooing dialogue. If your product ahs a computer component, consider opening up the code so customers can "hack" their own new ideas.

Search for Google Maps Mania to see incredible examples of how customers have extended Google's brand - adn its advertising business - by building hundreds of web services on top of its map service.

Your best product and marketing consultants may be out there right now, for free, waiting to help you. All you need to do is let them.

Get Paid to Blog and Write Product Reviews

At my firm, J. Livingston Marketing Group, we recommend companies use blogging as a way to connect with your customers. It allows advertisers to monetize their web site traffic, generate viral marketing, link building, and get some much-needed feedback on how their products are faring in the marketplace.


Companies are seeing the value and are willing to pay for it. Companies like ReviewMe.com and PayPerPost are two examples paying anywhere from $5 to $1000 per review. Advertisers like Anthony Arrigo, president of Starry Night Lights has paid between $40 and $100 each for four separate reviews. They were generally favorable, but not 100%. "A couple of them had some good comments and all of them recommended some things on how I can enhance my business" After each review was posted, Arrigo said he noticed a "big spike" in his web site traffic.

These sites are not without their critics - namely other bloggers who question the sites' credibility. "In the current incarnation, they won't work for marketers - and can put bloggers in a difficult position and make them feel like they're selling out," said Scott Kirsner, a blogger and technology journalist.

Free Online Marketing Small Business Software

Business IT Online, announced last week, MarketingOnline, a free online application that allows you to promote your products and services to thousands of our members and site visitors.

"We are very excited about building a thriving network of small businesses that will help our users to promote their business online in a way that has never been possible until now," says David Cruickshank, Director of Farrellsoft, the software company behind Business IT Online. "It is very difficult for small businesses to drive targeted traffic to their website and our new marketing module addresses this challenge," states Cruickshank.

The new marketing module offers many benefits for small businesses. Not least is the benefit of improving search engine visibility for one's own small business to enable businesses to be discovered more readily. In addition, businesses can also easily add their own distributable business profile to their blog or website.

Brand management begins with positive employee morale

I ran across an article posted in BtoB magazine that I felt was worthy of exploring: Effective brand communications starts with a positive workplace. This means a company with individuals who believe in your mission and can communicate your brand effectively.

It may not be as easy as it sounds though. The article suggests the following. First, identify your core values. Then develop a vision/mission statement. Third, work to build the right team. Fourth, rely on experience and learning from the pas to mold the future. Then, communicate to educate: Every time you interact, you have an opportunity to reinforce your brand communications which may include your positive culture, compassionate work environment, respect, values and mission. Lastly evaluate to improve performance and incorporate specific dates and measures that allow you to review the state of your workforce culture.

One client I worked with on an internal cultural shift included using communication methods such as large wall art throughout both office locations, monthly greeting cards, email communications and the messages were even embedded in the corporate quarterly meetings and new hire process.

With a company's commitment, you'll begin to notice change. You'll soon be noticing the difference in your employee's customer interactions!

Extreme (Photoshop) Makeover

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.. or the holder of Photoshop CS...

Google loses largest keyword ad buyer, eBay

One of the search engine’s biggest advertising customers, eBay has announced they are cancelling their ad spend with Google. I was very interested when I heard the news and am still curious to see what will follow. The decision came after Google’s blatant plan to lure customers away from eBay by hosting a lavish Google Checkout promotional party coinciding with the annual eBay Live convention. Google Checkout competes with eBay’s Paypal service and is banned from eBay Web sites. Below are the specifics, taken from Financialtimes.com:

The stage for the confrontation was set at the start of this week when Google Checkout, an online pay service that rivals Ebay’s Paypal, advertised plans to hold a party in Boston on Wednesday night aimed at attracting Ebay’s customers. The party was scheduled to coincide with Ebay Live, an annual conference that has become its biggest customer event.

Addressed directly to Ebay’s sellers, the Google party invitation asked them to come to “a celebration of user choice” at the “same spot where revolutionaries launched the Boston tea party to celebrate freedom”.

By late on Wednesday, however, Ebay’s apparent implied threat to punish Google by pulling advertising had forced Google to change its stance. In a posting on one of the company’s blogs, Tom Oliveri, a Google product marketing manager, wrote: “We at Google agreed that it was better for us not to feature this event during the Ebay Live conference.”

Tips on How to Avoid Getting Penalized for Link Exchanges

After posting my last story on link baiting Friday, I thought I would follow up by reprinting the following story posted on Unofficialseoblog.com.

Permanent Link to Google Discounting Reciprocal Link Exchanges

A website owner is often nagged by a confusion about how to most effectively increase the link-based popularity of their website. Google, on their official blog has clarified how search engines treat link spamming to increase a site´s popularity. This confusion is mainly caused by the common belief that there are two ways for optimizing the link-based popularity of your website. Firstly through the meritocratic and long-term option of developing natural links. Secondly through the risky and short-term option of non-earned backlinks via link spamming tactics such as buying links.

In recent times Google has tremendously refined its link-weighting algorithms. According to Google, nowadays, undermining the PageRank algorithm is likely to result in the loss of the ability of link-selling sites to pass on reputation via links to other sites. Discounting non-earned links by search engines opened a new and wide field of tactics to build link-based popularity. This conventionally involves optimizing your content so that thematically-related or trusted websites link to you by choice. A more recent method is link baiting, which typically takes advantage of Web 2.0 social content websites.
Google blog gives examples of new method of generating links. By submitting a handcrafted article to a service such as Digg. Another example is, to earn a reputation in a certain field by building an authority through services such as Y! Answers.
The focus of every website builder should be on the users and not on the search engines. The aim should be to create value for the users. One can direct natural backlinks by investing in sophistication of the content. This in turn will benefit the users and earn traffic for your site.

“To sum up, even though improved algorithms have promoted a transition away from paid or exchanged links towards earned organic links, there still seems to be some confusion within the market about what the most effective link strategy is" says Google. Google further asserts, “When taking advice from your SEO consultant, keep in mind that nowadays search engines reward sweat-of-the-brow work on content that bait natural links given by choice.”