Specialized Computing Blog

The use of Smartphones is on the rise. And unfortunately a lot of businesses are paying no attention to this increase.

Recently, a leading research company stated that in 3-4 years, mobile users will be greater in number than laptops or computers. While mobile users obviously encompass more than just Smartphones, this outlines the importance of making your site mobile ready.

The reality is, you can’t target Smartphone browsers like regular internet users. Since the screens are smaller than laptops, you have to make your website smaller to accommodate them. If you don’t, the smaller screen will force the mobile users to constantly scroll up or down to view anything.

Most people will not be willing to do this, and will simply click away. Therefore, not having a smaller version of your site can cost you sales.

Should you have two different pages for this? You could do this option, but then you would have to get two separate pages ranking in the search engines. This is almost impossible, so is not really an option.

Another method is to have a clickable link on your main page that goes to your mobile page. However, this is going to reduce conversions because a certain percentage of people are not going to click through.

Therefore, the best strategy is to utilize user agent detection. This is a system that finds out what browser the visitor is using, and adjusts the webpage accordingly.

This means the site will automatically change the dimensions of the webpage based on the browser of the visitor. This is when your ability to target Smartphone users will really take off.

What about your page content?

Now that you know how to change your dimensions, you have to have quality content. The main thing needed is simplicity. This is how to target mobile users successfully. Here are three ways to make it more simple:

#1) Have the same navigation on every page

This is important, because if there is different navigation the user will become frustrated and leave.

#2) Put the navigation lower on the page

When it’s at the top, it often forces Smartphone users to have to toggle down to view the page. This is very annoying and a guaranteed way to lower your sales.

#3) Limit the use of graphics

This is another way to improve the simplicity. You probably want to avoid one of those annoying introductory flash pages that pops up before the main page.

So the most important things to keep Smartphone users in mind is to have different dimensions for mobile devices and keep your pages simple. Catering to this growing market is a smart move.

Social sites have become the latest craze on the Internet. Social Marketing can also be seen as the next wave of internet marketing. Most of us have heard about social sites and the potential benefit, but not everyone is sure how to put that to the best use.

Social sites provide a lot of freedom and interactivity to the user. But how exactly do these sites help your business, your website and its rankings? By sending huge amounts of traffic and getting you a good ranking on search engines.

There are two types of social sites. One is social networking and the other type is social bookmarking. Social networking sites provide you an easy way to connect with people who share similar interests like you. Sites like MySpace, Orkut, Bebo, Facebook, Hi5, Friendster are popular among users. These sites have a huge user base and provide an excellent opportunity for advertising your site. There are also specialized social networking sites like 43Things, MomJunction, Mothersclick which cater to specific interests.

Some social networking sites group people with common interests, but some sites are “traditional networking sites” and allow you to search for friends based on your interests. In any case you will always have a larger audience for showcasing your site. Sites like Facebook and MySpace allow you to post your advertisements and promote your products, provided you are not spamming. If you have a really good site, you will likely find a large visitor base just by showcasing your site on your profile.

Social bookmarking sites provide you easy way to store, organize and manage your bookmarks as well as share them with your friends. You can bookmark any URL or page you liked and even mark them for public or private viewing. Social bookmarking sites also provide you with the option of tagging your bookmarks. Some of the bookmarking sites link directly to your URL’s thus helping your site in getting valuable back links and quick indexing. Sites like Stumbleupon, Digg, Delicious are known to send huge traffic to your site. If you manage to get on the front page of these sites, you should be prepared to handle a huge number of visitors to your site.

Search engines spiders love social sites and usually follow links on these sites. This means if you have your site link on social networking and bookmarking sites, your site will be indexed quickly.

If you happen to be using WordPress for your blog, you should use some good plugins like Socialmarker, Socializer and Addthis. These plugins provide your site visitors a quick option to bookmark your site. Getting bookmarked from different users and different bookmarking sites will definitely help your site rank better on search engines. Some plugins like Onlywire automatically bookmark your post to 20 different bookmarking sites as soon as you publish your post.

It is a known fact that the video and photo sharing sites like Youtube and Flickr are visited by millions of people everyday. If you think out of the box and use your creativity, your published video will get your site the traffic you’ve always wanted. Some video sharing sites like Metacafe also pay you a part of their revenue just for publishing your video.

Like it or not, social sites have become an integral part of the internet. You have the choice to use this opportunity to your advantage.

In case you haven’t noticed that our blog has changed a bit in the list month, I’ll tell you why. We have switched our blog over to WordPress, an OpenSource blogging tool. It looks great, doesn’t it?

WordPress is an excellent way for a person to create a blog or a blog-style website on the Internet quickly and easily.  A person does not need to have considerable experience at website building to be able to use WordPress successfully. WordPress has numerous features that make it a great choice for anyone who wants to post content about their favorite subject.

First of all, WordPress is an open source software, which means that it can be used for free. WordPress can be used in a stand alone version or it can be incorporated into an existing website through the website’s hosting company (which is what we have done here). For the stand alone version simply go to WordPress.com, sign up for a free account and begin building the site.

WordPress is user friendly and provides excellent support. They offer tutorials to help you learn how best to use all of their features. And there are many forums where WordPress experts and users answer questions of anyone needing help with their site.

You can customize the look and feel of the site by selecting from among more than 60 different themes. Plus, many developers on the Internet offer an even wider range of WordPress themes to choose from, though many of the custom themes are not free of charge. With many of the themes you can create and upload your own images to the header bar, which is a great way to give the site your own identity. Themes can be changed easily at the click of a button and the sidebars of the themes can be customized with various features called widgets. You can make your site look professional or fun or crazy, as you wish.

Further, you can write articles for your WordPress site of any length or style. Your posts can be made more valuable by adding photos or embedding YouTube or Google videos. You can publish the articles instantly or save them as drafts to be published to the site on a later date. And you don’t have to worry about saving your good writing because WordPress constantly saves the work as you write.

In addition to regular, ongoing posts of articles you can also create static pages that readers will be interested in reading. The article pages, as well as your ongoing blog articles, are search engine friendly, meaning that they can be easily indexed by all of the search engines and found by those who are searching the Internet for information.

Further, you can congregate your articles into categories. You can designate one or more categories that your article fits into so that readers can easily find multiple articles of yours on specific topics.

Lastly, WordPress provides useful statistics about your site. WordPress stats will give you current information about how many people are visiting your articles, how they got to your site, and which articles are the most popular, among other statistics.

Another advantage is that most web designers these days are familiar with WordPress and so you can start the site yourself and eventually hand it over to a web designer to complete. Take a look at the WordPress platform if you are looking for an easy, inexpensive, feature-laden way to create a great looking site.

Despite its spectacular rise, many people give you strange looks when you tell them that you Twitter. So what exactly is twitter? The owners of Twitter suggests that it is a way to communicate with others by providing quick and frequent answers to the simple question – What are you doing?

Basically, Twitter is a social networking service that allows users to send and receive user updates. These updates are known as ‘tweets’ and have a maximum length of 140 characters. Because of this, Twitter has also been termed a micro-blogging service. Of course, many tweets are extremely mundane and many question why this service should be so popular. For example, you may not be all that interested in what your friend had for breakfast.

However, you can use Twitter as a productivity tool. For example, you can use it to maintain a to-do list or send yourself a reminder. Because you can also send messages via SMS (that’s text messages sent from your cell phone), this can be really useful when you don’t have access to your computer.

You can also establish groups by ‘following’ your friends and having them follow you. In this way, you can update all of them at once. If you can’t make a night out you can simply send ‘ Sorry, can’t make it tonight’. This can also work in a business setting such as times when you are going to be late for a meeting. It can also be used for person to person messaging because there is a command that allows you to send a message directly to another user.

Another great facet is that it is RSS feed enabled. If you don’t have the time to maintain a blog about your product or service you can still keep clients updated if they subscribe to your feed. For example, a video store owner could send a message about the latest video release. Twitter is being used by some as a valuable marketing tool. 

There are all kinds of new technologies out there that are maturing to the point that they can be used for promotion and expansion of your business too. We try to keep you in the loop. So go have fun with your new knowledge. Oh, and keep your tweets interesting!

If you consider yourself Internet savvy, then you probably already have a pretty good idea what social networking is. Whether you are that savvy or just getting introduced to the Internet, social networking web sites are increasing and doing quite well for the network creators as well as those who join them.

So what exactly is social networking and what’s it all about? Read on as we explore this phenomenon.

A basic definition of social networking is paramount to understand what it’s all about. A broad definition is the gathering of people in an online community for the purpose of sharing interests and activities together. This leaves a world of possibilities.

SOCIALIZING
This may speak for itself on the surface but actually socializing (ie; chit-chatting, shooting the breeze, small talk, etc) is one of the primary ways that we get to know each other and build trust and relationships. And thanks to the Internet, it is now possible to socialize on virtually whatever level you desire with people from all walks of life. Networks exist for every interest; from the simply frivolous to the absolute essentials.

NETWORKING
This normally brings to mind the idea of people gathering together to create a group of people with a common goal such as finding  jobs or raising funds for a charity. Today the Internet connects people from around the world into social networks for sharing pictures, discussing theologies, building business partnerships and virtually any other social idea you can come up with.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Many website owners are turning to social networks to gain added traffic and web visitors by posting information about a particular subject. These articles can be placed as blog comments or stand alone pieces that must be placed in the applicable forums. With the proper use of certain key words placed as back links in the articles, an article or strategically placed blog comment can create a wonderful search engine placement benefits for those working to generate new customers and increase profits.

FUN
It may be overstated but with so many pressing situations being broadcast in the media, the opportunity to connect with others in a social setting such as the ones that social networks provide is fun. After a hard day at work or searching for work, there is plenty of pleasure to be derived from sitting down in front of the computer and finding several messages from friends in your social network. Whether it is games such as role playing or sharing silly photos of friends and adding even sillier comments to them, the fun aspect of social networking can relieve stress and provide hours of enjoyable time online.

So if you have not joined a social network yet, go to your favorite search engine, and search for some social networks related to your interest. Whether your main interest is in growing your business or getting advice or just getting some laughs it, there is something for everyone. Find one that you are comfortable with, one that looks active, and join the crowd.

Perhaps you’ve heard about blogs – the hottest communication story of last year. Commentators from Newsweek to the Wall Street Journal, from CNN to PBS have devoted time to the phenomenon. Blogs are just one of the new technologies that are changing the way politicians communicate with voters and businesses communicate with customers.

For marketers, these changes mean more direct interaction with customers and potential customers. By speaking and listening directly with the customer marketers are able to reduce the expense for public relations and advertising. Of course, these developments are worrying some in the pr and advertising industries, as well as the news media.

Many things about marketing communication won’t change, of course: you still need to have something to say. And the best way to apply all these technologies is still within a business niche. With that said, here are some of the other ways communication is changing:

1. Podcasting is the hottest idea on the internet. Starting in 2004, people began downloading homebrewed radio shows to their iPods. So instead of “broadcasts” they’re “podcasts”. Unlike streaming audio, podcasts require the file to be downloaded. The advantage of podcasts versus streaming is that you can take it with you when you’re not on the net. The disadvantage is that streaming audio is much easier for a customer to play at his or her computer. The solution is to do both – create an audio file for streaming, and an mp3 for podcasting. The same recording can be used for both.

2. A vlog is a video blog. Unlike podcasting, vlogging can refer to either streaming video or downloadable shows. Combined with the rapid development of internet video delivery, vlogging seems poised to take off. As with audio, you can prepare your video file in both streaming and downloadable formats. Also like audio, you can begin with very low-cost tools and work your way up to full blown professional equipment. Remember that people like good production quality, but they like watching something interesting even more.

3. Wikis are websites that are editable by the site users. Content becomes part of a dialogue among the users, instead of something fixed. This interaction can build strong communities, and produce large sites with enormous information. Up until recently, wikis have been difficult to use, and limited to techs. New approaches to wikis are making them easier to use, and reinforcing the next trend:

4. Social software. Community sites that encourage sharing and conversation are springing up in many areas. Photography and music have been drivers of this trend, in addition to political activism. Interaction builds community, and community is where the market is.

5. Almost all of these tools involve RSS, a technology for feeding information to people who want it. Unlike email, which is “pushed” by the sender, rss feeds have to be “pulled” by the user. While still not completely mainstream, rss is a rapidly growing delivery system.

For the small marketer, the price of reaching customers directly has dropped. Large corporations, though, are picking up on these technologies rapidly. To truly gain an edge, the small business person needs to develop a strategy for these channels before the big companies figure them out.

Web 2.0 is all the rave. What is it? How did it come about? Where is it going? It sounds like a software program or some highly technological aspect that is getting ready to make its debut does it not? Well, in actuality it is neither of these. Web 2.0 is nothing more than some tools and ideas working together to make the internet a more user friendly and easier world to maneuver. Think about all of the new ideas to come to the internet in the last few years.

This whole concept may include AJAX, social bookmarking, RSS feeds, tags, and blogs. Of course, this does not even begin to encompass the whole concept of web 2.0, but it does give you a relatively good idea. Each and every day, we use Web 2.0 as a whole. With all of the media, graphic intensive websites, and the ease of use, you are experiencing the technology with everything you do, without even knowing it.

There was a web 1.0, a long time ago in “internet years” that is. Really, think about the “old” internet and the “new” internet, which is known as web 2.0. What could you really do? With 1.0, websites were static, they were not attractive in terms of the latest in interactive and animated websites with 2.0. With Web 2.0, updates are as regular and necessary as the sun coming up each day, with 1.0 updates were extremely rare for websites of any nature. Now, let us compare some of the differences, to give you a better picture.

Comparing Web 1.0 with Web 2.0

With Web 1.0 if you really wanted to look something up, you had something similar to an online dictionary. You could look up a definition, but that was about the extent of it. With Web 2.0, you have the concept of Wikipedia, which provides you deep and intuitive information submitted directly by other users. This is so much more than just a simple definition, this is an entire history or background of virtually any topic.

With Web 1.0, you essentially had personal websites. They were not updated all that frequently and they essentially did not do a whole lot. With Web 2.0, blogging is the latest and greatest. Blogging is used as both a personal journal and for business purposes at the same time. Gaining more traffic and more interest than ever before.

With Web 1.0, many webmasters relied upon page views to determine traffic. Now with Web 2.0, cost per click or pay per click are doing the traffic work. Page views are no longer essential in understanding the amount of traffic your website receives. The amount you pay per click is now the best indicator.

Before, if you wanted the news, you had to go looking for it. RSS feeds now do that for you automatically and delivers it directly to you. Many websites have automatic RSS feeds that you can choose to receive and there are one stop type of shops that allow you to sign up for many different feeds at the same time, so you can avoid having to search for the news and headlines.

Tagging is also a Web 2.0 technology. Tags allow users to search for specific items and information that they are looking for. It really simplifies the internet for users everywhere. When a person makes a post on a blog or social bookmarking websites, they can identify tags. When a user searches for these tags, they will find the posts that relate to their search terms.

Essentially, Web 2.0 just makes the internet a more user friendly and easier place to work, play, shop, and research. Now that you know how Web 1.0 has evolved to Web 2.0, where is it going from here?

Seeking Web 3.0

No one can really predict the future of the internet. It is too impossible to tell, however, there are some standards and paths that can lead us in the right direction for predictions. There are so many possibilities for the future of the internet that it is extremely hard to predict. Many people are leaning towards artificial intelligence for the internet. They are also suggesting that computer graphics will become more advanced, web applications will become modular, and internet speeds will increase with web 3.0.

People expect that Web 3.0 will bring innovative ways to build applications. They will be smaller and have the ability to run on multiple devices. Then there is always those who believe that the entire internet will become three dimensional.

There are many different ideas on how Web 3.0 will develop from Web 2.0. It is anyone’s guess and as the internet continues to evolve, the Web of any “version” will become smarter, more interactive, and easier to use with each passing year. The growth of the internet since its birth has been enormous and there is still a lot of room for more growth and potential.

How will your visitor know the contents of your website once he comes to it? Your home page may set the topic, but what if your visitor wants to know what specific information will he find? This is where a sitemap is useful. Acting like a book’s table of contents, your sitemap will let your visitor know if you have the information he needs.

So, what is a sitemap? Strictly speaking, it is a graphical representation of the structure of your website. It shows how the pages are linked to one another. But such a representation may be difficult to implement, and if there are many pages, it may even be difficult for a visitor to find useful. So, a sitemap is created by listing links to all the documents and files found in a website. These links are typically organized in a hierarchical manner (i.e.: an outline), thus improving readability.

Sitemaps not only serve your “human” visitors, but search engines as well. The search engines’ robots, or spiders, crawl the Internet, gathering data on web pages. They crawl by following links, hence, a good sitemap may be used for search engine optimization.

Benefits of a SiteMap

Creating sitemaps may take time and effort, so why have one? The following lists some of the benefits for creating a sitemap for your website.

1. You can use a sitemap as a planing tool for web design.

Even if you have a website with very few pages, it is good to have some structure for your website. This way, if you add more pages later on, you will know where to put them. Your site will not become a mish-mash of pages without any relation to one another.

2. No page will be left unvisited.

The search engine spiders will be able to visit all the pages in your website if you have a sitemap. Your pages will then be included in the search engines’ databases, increasing your ranking.

3. Visitors will have an easier time navigating your site.

One reason that visitors stay on a site is the ease of navigating through the site. With a sitemap, visitors can easily access all pages within your site from one central location, and can quickly view all the content you have available to see if you have what they need. Without a sitemap, your visitors may give up and leave your site, going back to the search engine page, to look elsewhere for information that they could have found in your website, if you only had a site map.

4. A sitemap may encourage more traffic.

As your web site grows, you must update your sitemap. This way, visitors will know that content is being added to your website, encouraging them to return. This is also true if you are selling products or offering services. Potential buyers will immediately know your latest products or services by visiting your sitemap.

5. There is potential advertising value when using a sitemap.

With a sitemap, potential advertisers will find it easy to best position themselves in the different pages of your website where they can advertise. This will mean additional income for you.

The benefits of having sitemaps make it worth the time and effort to create them. Not only will they help you in designing your web site, they will also ease the navigation for your visitors and may help your web site in search engine rankings, increase traffic to your site, and provide you with income from advertisements.

A sitemap is to a website as the table of contents is to a book. The sitemap lists all the pages in the site, helping visitors and search engine robots find pages in that website. This not only encourages live visitors to return to the site, but also helps in the optimization of the site for search engines.

There are three major types of sitemaps:

1. indexed – The sitemap appears as an alphabetical listing or directory. The relationship among the pages is not indicated.

2. full categorical – The map displays all links which are classified in categories. This type was found to be the most preferred type by users as it makes it easier for them to search for certain topics in the site, and it eases comparison between and among categories.

3. restricted categorical – The sitemap displays all links in a chosen category at a time; you will not see all the links of a website, as compared to the full categorical type. The sitemap confines the list of links under a selected category. This makes viewing easier and less eye-straining.

With any of these types are techniques you can use to set up a superior sitemap. Here are six tips that you can use:

1. Link the sitemap only to your homepage. This will ensure that the search engine robot starts searching from your homepage down to all the pages listed in your sitemap. In this way, no page will be left unvisited by the robot.

2. Limit your sitemap to 30 pages. If you have more than this, the search engines might think that your sitemap is a link farm, and you will be penalized for that. Limiting the number of pages of your sitemap also prevents overcrowding of links. This will make viewing less tiring.

3. Check all the links in your sitemap. It can be discouraging for your visitors if they click on a link only to get a 404 error message or the page requested is not found. Or your visitors click on a link only to be shown a page that has a different topic to that of the link. You should, therefore, test your sitemap, clicking on all the links in every page, to ensure that there are no unbroken links, and that all links are indeed linked to the right page.

4. Give keyword-rich titles to your sitemaps. This helps in the optimization of your website. Search engine robots will search your website properly under the right category.

5. Provide a short description for the links. This will help your visitors to know what to expect to find in a link. This can save your visitors time surfing your website.

6. Be consistent in designing your sitemap with that of the other pages in your website. Use the same HTML template for all pages in your site, including the sitemap. This will establish identity and build character to your website.

By following the above tips, not only will you create a sitemap that is pleasing to the eye, but will also encourage your visitors to return to your site, have the search engine robots crawl through all the pages in your site, and increase your ranking in the search engines.

After making your Website human friendly, you have to make it search engine friendly so that human searchers can easily find your site in the search engine result pages. By following the steps described below, you can optimize your Website for search engines.

1. Use a keyword research tool for mining keywords related to your site’s offerings. One of the most effective and free keyword research tool is Google Adwords Keyword tool. Do a Google search for the URL of the site.

You start with some broad keywords like “golf ball” and the tool lists all the related keywords people use in their search queries related to “golf ball”. The tool also displays the monthly volumes of those search queries.

2. Get a domain name that is not too long and has relevancy to the products or services your site is offering. Using the keyword research tool, pick a few keywords related to your site. Pick a domain name based on one of these keywords.

All the domains based on broad keywords are already sold out. So you cannot get a domain based on a broad keyword, like golf ball. If you find one, grab it without any delay. However, most domain registrars, like Godaddy, have domain finding tools that suggest available domains based on broad keywords.

3. Your Website title that is located in the HTML TITLE tag should be meaningful and at the same time it should contain related keywords. Limit the title tag to 50 characters so that is is not truncated in the search result page.

4. The most important meta tag in a web page for a search engine crawler is the description meta tag that has two attributes: NAME=”description” and CONTENT=”your site’s content”. Describe your site’s contents using a few sentences in the content attribute of the META tag. Your site description should contain related keywords.

5. Create quality contents using texts and graphics. Use short paragraphs for text and separate texts using headings or H1 tag, and sub headings or H2 tags. Use one H1 tag per page. Don’t forget to use keywords in your paragraphs, H1, and H2 tags.

Use plenty of white spaces and bulleted items so that visitors can scan your page easily. Most people don’t read web pages but they scan to find texts that are of particular interest to them.

6. If you are using images, use keywords in the ALT and TITLE attributes of the IMG tag. Use keywords for image file names. Most people use meaningless image file names like image1, image2, etc. Search engine crawlers have no way to understand what image1 and image2 are all about.

7. Cross links your web pages using keywords in the anchor texts. For example, if your web site is about golf ball, you can use anchor text “callaway golf ball” on your home page to direct visitors to a page dedicated to “callaway golf ball”.

Search engine optimization is the art of creating contents for human readers using keywords. Don’t create contents for search engines. Create contents for human and use keywords strategically placed in your contents for the consumption of search engine crawlers.