‘website owners’

The Internet has become the focus of tremendous clamp down actions from governments worldwide. It is almost as if the inability to control the information highway has caused panic amongst policy makers. The newest clamp down action is in the form of a bill proposed in the USA where The Stop Online Piracy Act is under discussion.

Purpose of the Act

The Act has as purpose to stop the widespread copyright infringement that takes place on the Internet. Although certainly a plus for authors struggling to keep others from copying their work and for musicians attempting to make a living without seeing all their music copied and distributed for free, it is seen by many as too much control.

Balance the Measures

The ideal will be to get a middle ground rather than putting into place an act that will give authors far too much power without any control mechanisms. If an author finds infringing content at another website the author will have the right to have the site banned from the search results and even online payment houses such as PayPal must comply in cutting off the site.

The problem is not in taking action against copyright infringing sites, but the lack of control over the process. Someone can simply decide to get rid of a competitor and then allege copyright infringement. Without so much as a warning the site can under the proposed Piracy Act be banned and totally blacklisted. It will surely be an easy means to get rid of a competitor. Google and other ad providers will not be allowed to send visitors to the site and the alleged copyright infringing site will basically have pariah status until proven not-guilty.

Guilty Until Proven Not-Guilty

The onus will be on the alleged copyright infringing site owner to proof the plaintiff wrong and in the mean time the site’s reputation will be destroyed. In addition the owner will have no income from the site. For many website owners it could mean bankruptcy.

Current Situation
Up to now, site owners would get a letter about copyright infringement and the opportunity to remove such before the service provider was informed. If the site owner did not respond further action could be taken, but with the new proposed stop online piracy legislation, the above steps are removed leading to an immediate ban on the site.

Internet service providers will, if the act on online piracy is accepted be forced to act as policing agents regarding copyright infringement. If they don’t act against the so-called perpetrator then they face penalties. It does seem like big brother techniques and almost reminds of dictatorship where the service providers are burdened with additional tasks and blackmailed to report and ban sites.

Alternative Methods for Dealing with Culprits

If a site is indeed guilty of ongoing online piracy or copyright infringement, such should be removed from the Internet with no further avail, but allowing anyone to simply point a finger with the service provider in the middle to take action against a site, is unfair.

There should at least be standards and guidelines as to how much information must have been copied without proper citation or music made available when making a judgement regarding whether online piracy has taken place or not. Innocent sites can easily fall prey to the system.

For a country where freedom of speech is promoted and open source programming is promoted such an act seems grossly out of place. There are those who feel that it would severely hinder the growth of the Internet. With the Internet not belonging to anyone, governments should not be allowed to exert so much control over websites.

The mere fear of possible online piracy or copyright infringement can leave websites empty. Not only has Google recently made it more difficult for websites to perform well, but now with the proposed online piracy act there is the risk that large companies can misuse the rights to get rid of competitors. The Internet consists not only of large websites, but also smaller ones, blogs, forums and more where one can expect some extent of infringement.

Give Users The Right To Choose

The three strikes law should be more appropriate and will be less draconic than the proposed online piracy act. The short name for the act will be E-PARASITE. Although piracy is a huge problem world-wide the control of information platforms should be limited. Users must have the rights to propose measures to counter piracy and should not be forced to accept draconic laws that will lead to the slowing down of information growth.

Internet Service Providers will have to use additional resources to monitor the websites hosted on their servers. It almost becomes a new state of control where there is one party watching another who in turn must watch that another party complies.

Proper Referencing

A solution may be to force website owners to reference the sites from where they obtained information. If such references are lacking, a warning can be given and then can one request removal of the specific site until the site commits to non-infringement.

It does seem as if the openness of the Internet will be something of the past. You will not know that there was a site since it will be completely removed from ads, search results and the DNS servers.

One can even be so bold as to state that such action will be the same as censorship and thus deciding on behalf of individuals instead of users managing the Internet and information sources. The large players on the Internet will be fine, but users can expect to see a diminished information highway should everyone be allowed to have sites removed. The choice should be with the consumer and not a government body.

The USA proposed act to stop online piracy will place the country in the same category as China that already controls what their citizens can see and do on the Internet.

Google changes AdWords algorithms to improve the user experience and in the process even the innocent can get caught up, just to find their campaigns suspended without any warning. It is essential to get and stay informed about search and sponsorship algorithms if you don’t want to find the door closed even if you have paid for the ads already.

What is the Idea Behind the Changes in Algorithms?

It has happened to a few publishers making use of AdWords to drive traffic to their sites. According to Google the idea is to get a balance between the ads, content at the landing pages and the relevancy of the keywords in the sponsored ads. All three the above will be considered when ranking a landing page for relevancy and quality. Google wants to improve the user experience and that may mean a few suspended AdWords accounts along the way.

Responses of Campaign Owners

AdWord campaign owners whose accounts have been suspended complain about the lack of communication channels and getting back into the game. For some every day lost can mean hundreds to thousands of hits lost.

Positive Points

On the positive side landing pages showing good quality content, relevant to the keywords selected for bidding and the wording of the ads, can get a boost up in the rankings. Do it right, and you will be a jackpot winner, do it wrong and you can find your website out on the cold.

 Prior Testing

The Google AdWords algorithm changes have not come without any prior testing. Latin America was the test base and but the gloves are off. Website owners, web marketers and AdWords campaign managers should immediately take note of changes and respond quickly to ensure that they will not lose valuable traffic and of course, sales which go along with such.

Variation in Quality Scoring

One can expect variation in the quality scoring, but with a few bumps and bruises to be expected, mostly on the part of AdWords campaign managers, Google has indicated that users will within a few weeks be able to get more relevant, better structured and high quality landing pages when they hit the sponsored ad buttons.

If your AdWords campaign has been run the right way without over optimization, selection of relevant keywords, and you have given the user a quality landing page, you should not expect a lot of change during the next few weeks. After that you may see more hits and maybe even more sales because of the new algorithm.

Tweak for Incentives

The better the pay-per-click ads are in answering the user query the higher the score. With such also will come improvement in the PPC Ad Ranking. Your landing pages will be higher in results page positioning and you may also see a drop in the cost per advert. At the end of the day, not only the user, but supposedly also the AdWords and landing page owner will benefit.

Contrary to what one may feel such as that it is just another penalisation method, the changing of the AdWords algorithm is indeed based on an incentive scheme. Keep in line and you will be rewarded for playing according to Google’s rules. Come to think of it, the idea is not too far off. As the company that enables website owners to generate traffic and sales through sponsored ads, Google certainly has the right to change the algorithm for improved overall results and user experiences.

Quality Score

It is simply a way for Google to measure the relevancy of the keyword and the landing page as well as the quality of content on the site. Several factors are considered such as the matching of the user query with the keyword and the text at your landing page. It is thus a relevancy score.

Every time a user enters a keyword and it is matched with your keywords, you have the opportunity to deliver an ad. If the ad works out to be relevant based on the text at the landing page, you score.  The whole system is updated on a regular bases and your AdWords quality score can thus fluctuate accordingly.

Factors Taken Into Consideration When Calculating the Quality Score

If you want to know whether your campaign will benefit from Google’s alteration of AdWords algorithms you must look at the click-through rate, relevancy of the keywords and the landing page quality together.

Click-Through Rates

Google assesses whether the click-through rates (CTR) of the selected keyword matches the sponsored ad and also assesses the history of such. The next consideration is the click through rates of the display addresses in the specific ad group and then finally, also the account history. If there are sudden changes, expect alarm bells to go off at Google as well.

Relevancy

This is where it becomes important to ensure that the keyword is relevant to the adverts in the group and that the keyword matches the search queries. In addition, the account performance for the region where the ad is delivered is also taken into consideration.

Quality

Have you ever clicked on a sponsored ad and then wondered how the landing page is relevant to your query? If so, you will understand why Google is going through the AdWords fine-tuning motion. The user experience must be improved and as such good quality, relevant content to the keywords, region where keywords are displayed and the transparency of the page will be important. This means that the user should not have to think whether the right page has been delivered, but must immediately know that the page is relevant and of high standing quality.

The transparency factor should not be ignored. If your page has any form where the user will enter data, there should be enough information regarding for what purpose the information provided will be used.

Minimize Navigation Difficulty

The focus is user experience improvement and to do so Google has to change the AdWords algorithms to also consider how quickly a site or page loads and how many irritating pop-ups there are. The best way ensure ongoing campaign success is to adapt. If you don’t know how, get in expert SEO and PPC management help.

Mobile sites and their usage grow by the day. Also known as mobi sites or as some write it mobisites, are fast overtaking normal desktop based websites. According to a DotMobi study the growth of new mobisites is enormous showing that from over 149 000 in 2008 to more than 3 million such sites have been registered in 2010. In addition, the social media networks such as Facebook have large numbers of users which login to the social applications by means of their phones. According to Facebook the figures suggest more than 199 million users which login to their site via their mobile phones.

With every new technology there is resistance and there is embracement. The resistance normally comes from those who have already invested a lot into an existing technology and don’t want to re-invest in the new technology, but a business owner that wants to survive changes must adapt. The pc website market is shrinking and mobile market growing.

One may argue that there is no reason to create a mobile website if the users can login from their phones in any case, but there are several differences between mobi sites and the conventional websites which should be noted. In short, the mobile user doesn’t find the conventional website mobile friendly. With loads of heavy graphics, Java scripts, Flash and other bandwidth intensive design tools, the mobile user gets a slow loading page which isn’t easy to navigate.

More and more mobile users migrates to the mobisites specifically designed to fit well on their mobile screens, load faster, browse easier and take up less bandwidth as well as memory. Of course mobi sites are not as visually stimulating as the conventional websites and don’t show the same versatility, but users on the move want sites which can be used on their mobile phones with ease.

One can continue to design only the conventional website and have the mobile users struggle to use the site, but if they find something more user friendly, they will leave the site immediately, never to return. The younger generation of Internet users are also experts on mobile usage and if you don’t want to see your market dying a slow and agonizing death, you will need to create a mobisite and a conventional website.

Don’t think of the mobi site as portable site only. It is far more than that. It is an innovative and advanced way of interaction with the visitor. Modern consumers carry powerful computers in their hands and pockets; used as phones as well. They want to get value for their money and with more mobility offered rather browse from their phones and tablets than from desktops. Studies have shown that desktop usage is still huge during the day, but mobile usage surpasses that during the evenings. The users browsing during the day do so from their offices at work where desktops are connected via the network, but once they leave office they migrate to mobile usage. As such website owners need to take notice and adapt their interaction with users.

Some important considerations for creation of mobi sites are:

• Create a site that can use the mobile device capabilities.
• Mobisites must be created with loading time in mind. The site should load in two clicks and thus under ten or twelve seconds.
• Browsing should be easy without the need to zoom in.
• The mobile site must provide enough incentive for interaction through means of competitions, discount coupons and prize draws.
• People on the move love sharing and the mobile site must make it possible as well as be so addictive as to ensure return and viral marketing.
• Convenience is another reason for using mobile websites. People want to interact where they are and as such you need to ensure that the mobisite can be used on the spot and in-store for specials.
• Mobile users want to find information rather quickly and as such they don’t want to wait for pages to load or have to go through several menu steps to get the information.
• Don’t just re-design a desktop website to fit on a smaller screen, but run two distinct sites which can ensure that both desktop user and mobile user requirements are met.

Smart Phones are Taking Over

Bandwidth changes to 4G and the lower lag enables mobile users to surf fast. With that then, more users migrate to mobisites in South Africa because of our slow connectivity via desktop. The majority of new handsets can connect to the Internet. With four times more mobile users than desktop users in the world including South Africa, there is thus a big untapped market available for the innovative thinker, willing to create a stunning mobisite. Studies furthermore indicate that about a third of mobile browsing is done for local content. This means that the mobile user is on the lookout for businesses in their immediate environment and thus more geographically targeted.

Google Android and South Africa

The Google Android platform is already widely used worldwide and although still not the most popular platform in South Africa, it is making inroads in the mobile operating market. Google Android is growing rapidly with more than 17% of the market already belonging to the platform as evident in the sales figures of more than 190 000 Android mobile handsets sold daily. Android is currently just behind the Symbian and closing in on the gab. The secret to a successful mobisite is adaptability for various platforms. As such it is extremely important to cater to Android, Windows, Symbian and Apple to name, but a few of the big players.
The implications are important for any business owner. Whether you are a publisher of content or a seller of products you need to also cater to the mobisite user. Many website owners still only think of mobile platforms such as iPhone or Blackberry, but with Android mobile handsets becoming more popular the web browsing is fast moving from desktop to on the go mobile browsing via mobile handsets. New entrants to the market will also mean more platforms to cater for and as with any new trend, businesses that want to capture a large share of the market, need to move fast to get a foothold in the new browsing environment.

You can make your current website mobile friendly or you can create a custom mobisite to ensure targeted design for various platforms. Google has indicated that mobile browsing has grown even more than expected. The news headlines have shown that mobisites have grown with more than 2000 percent, not something that can be ignored if you are a serious marketer. The top performing websites also offer mobi sites to their users. Even if your site doesn’t count under the top 10 000 or so, you can easily ensure a user friendly mobisite experience.

Google Androids are so successful because Google has ensured variations. There are various types ensuring more choices for the consumer. Androids are well priced and personalisation is not compromised. Full integration with various Google applications is possible including vital applications such as Google Maps, YouTube, Chrome and Gmail. With Androids running on open source Linux, new developments are possible while the consumer is not expected to pay additional license fees for such.

It has been said that Android products can easily outperform Blackberry products in South Africa. Although South Africans are slow to catch on to Android when compared to the US, the Google Android mobile market is growing steadily. The mobile networks in South Africa need more development to ensure that unlimited data offerings can become a reality. The networks need upgrading to be able carry larger number of mobisite users. With the expectation being that South Africa will also receive more bandwidth over time because of the cable which has been laid under the sea, business owners have a lot to look forward to.

Hackers are far more dangerous than website owners realise. Apart from the normal phishing attacks and identity theft, email hacking has also become rather popular. The impact of hacking on website rankings can be small or devastating depending on the type of hack the duration thereof before the webmaster takes action. A website that has been hacked in one way or another is likely to experience a drop in ranking and traffic.

If a site is directly hacked and a message displays at the homepage URL citing that a hacking has occurred, the site owner will become aware of the problem sooner than when a tag is inserted that redirects visitors to another URL or where the Meta tags are changed to display keywords other than the ones originally added. Hacking can thus be done in such a way that the site owner doesn’t pick it up until it is too late. The bottom line is that no site is safe from hacking and the impact it could have on website rankings.

Hacking For Rank

Unscrupulous spammers who have less than desirable websites often hack reputable websites with high traffic numbers with a re=canonical tag ensuring that all the pages in the hacked site point to the spammer site. It is called siphoning and it is devastating for website ranking.

What Is The Rel=Canonical Tag?

It is a piece of code which is often overlooked. The hacker inserts a rel=canonical tag which then points to the desired site. If your website sales drop, you find that your site doesn’t come up in search results for your main keywords anymore and upon searching for your domain, you find that it comes up under weird keywords, it may be hacked. The rel=canonical tag is not the culprit, but rather the redirecting of traffic to another site which then builds higher rank at the expense of the hacked site that loses its rankings.

Identify Hacking To Limit The Impact It Could Have On Website Rankings

Early identification of the re=canonical hack is imperative to limit the damage. Years of hard work and a lot of money can be lost within only a few days if the re=canonical hack goes unnoticed. Daily inspection of the HTML code in the browser is recommended. If any rel=canonical tag directs to a domain not selected by you, it means the page is hacked. Check every page of your site. Look closer to the head section as it is the most common place for insertion.

To be double sure also check how Google sees your web page by making use of the Google Webmaster Tool and doing a search for your main keywords for which you know how your page is supposed to rank. Any changes in the rankings should be a warning sign. The solution is thus a regular website security audit.

Myths About Hacking And The Impact It Could Have On Website Rankings

Some website owners believe that their sites are secure enough and that bad things do not happen to them. It is the age old story of being safe and that false security is exactly what prevents webmasters from doing regular security audits. Simply have a look at the thousands of searches done monthly on key phrases such as how to hack or hacking a site and you will know that there are many hackers out there wanting to get a piece of the traffic pie. There are website security checker programs, special hacker codes and even help forums. If you believe your site is safe review the number of 404 results in your web stats. If the total is too high then a hacker is stealing your traffic, income and website ranking. Probing is the first step in their hacking attacks. They are looking for backdoors into your site and if they find one, they will be quick to use such.

Amateur Hackers Show Their Hand

Be sure to know that the hackers who are in it for fun are not the scary ones. They will normally replace code and leave their hacker signature. They love showing off. The problem lies with the hackers who do it quietly. They don’t care about recognition simply because they don’t want to get caught. The longer their hacking goes undetected, the more they steal traffic from you and thus the greater the impact it could have on your website rankings.

Worst Case Scenario

Although website ranking is all important and you most probably have already invested a lot in online marketing to get solid rankings, the worst is still too come. Apart from being blocked in search results, your site can get a warning tag from Google. It can state that your site can harm someone’s computer or may be compromised. Google adds the tags when they suspect that a site may have been hacked. They warn users for their own safety and this could severely affect not only your website’s rankings, but also credibility with users. Go to the Google Webmaster Help section and follow the instructions to remove the hack and request removal of the warning tags.

Hacking and the impact it could have on website rankings should not be ignored. Webmail and mail servers are often hacked in addition to scripts being loaded into the site code. Imagine sending out newsletters to have them all blocked because your email address comes up as spam. This could happen if a spammer hacks your email and uses it to send out thousands of spam mails. It won’t be long before the receivers block the email address. If you need to legitimately communicate with the users, you may find that your emails are never received.

Redirects To Blacklisted Sites

A hack that redirects to a blacklisted site can be particularly harmful for website rankings. Google will see such as bad links and with too many of those on your site; it may mean the sandbox for your entire website and thus severe loss of income.

Some Steps To Be Taken To Correct The Hacked Situation

Prevent Google and other engine bots from further crawling the site until you have fixed the problem by means of the 503 HTTP code. Go to the Google Webmaster Tool and use it to check your site ranking for strange keywords. Also be sure to order removal of the URL redirect. Check files in your website directory and remove any strange ones. Assess the total damage by checking the server logs for user accounts created apart from the ones that you have already created. Do a thorough cleanup and then request re-crawling and indexing from Google.

The topic of hacking and the impact it could have on a website’s rankings is extremely complex. It goes rather deep and it is best to get SEO and online marketing experts to inspect your site and ensure complete removal of any hacking redirects and codes. iLead Online do regular site security audits on client sites to help keep the sites safe from hack attacks. Contact us for professional assistance today.

The Google +1 button has been rolled out and received with mixed enthusiasm by website owners and AdWords advertisers. Many of the webmasters have already added the +1 button to their sites. No doubt, Google changes their search and indexing algorithms on a regular basis and keeping up with all the changes can be hard work. Google Buzz may very well disappear completely or if the company strategizes correctly, they may just combine the two ensuring more interactivity amongst searches.

If you haven’t placed the Google +1 button on your website yet, you will benefit from the tips and pieces of information about the new roll-out from Google.

Google +1 Button Will Influence Rankings

Google announced that the +1 feature will definitely be used in determining a web page relevance to a search string and thus also its ranking. Website owners will thus have to carefully consider the content of their sites and the keywords optimized for. Quality will count since the user will have the power to click on the button for liking the content. The button can almost be compared to the Facebook Like button, just with a bit more power.

How Does The User See The Google +1 Button?

When a searcher comes across a web page related to a specific search, they can simply click on the Google +1 button to recommend it as relevant to the search. The users must be logged in with their Google account to use the button and can set the public display in their profiles. The button and likes of a person will by default be publicly displayed unless set otherwise in the profile settings.

Users will see recommendations from contacts below their search results, helping them to get more relevant search results. The moment the user clicks the button, the content will appear in the user’s profile at Google under the Google +1 button tab. It can be seen in 44 languages, but the annotations will only be visible in English.

Is The Google +1 Button The Same As Google Buzz?

The +1 feature is not intended as a conversation tool whereas the Google Buzz feature has been created to promote conversation about interesting topics or web content found by searchers. Up to now, it has not been used widely and many website owners have already replaced it with the +1 feature, seen as more relevant to searches.

How Will The +1 Button Feature On A Website?

Google provides the website owner or AdWords advertiser with several styles and sizes to select from. If a site owner has a bit of technical knowledge, more customisation can be done to the button. One can add several +1 buttons to a single web page at various places. If a user clicks one, it will mean a recommendation for the whole page. Google has suggested placement of the +1 button near the page title and the links to be shared. In addition, you can place the button at the end of the page as well.

Google has given recommendations regarding faster loading speed such as placement of the script tag at the end of the page before the closing of the page body tag. It is worth keeping in mind since loading time of a page is also considered regarding page ranking. When it comes to AdWords, the +1 annotations will appear next to the headlines.

Where Will The Button Also Be Visible?

The Google +1 button will be visible under the Share at YouTube, and will also be visible at the Blogger, Android Market and the Google Product Search facility. It is not available for mobile search at the moment, but Google most probably will add the feature to the mobile search in the near future.

How To Add The Button At A Blogger Site

Simply click on the Page Elements under Design on the blog dashboard and once you have located the blog posting area, you can edit by selecting the share buttons option where the +1 button can also be found.

Why Place The Google +1 Button At Your Web Pages, Blog Posts And Search Ads?

According to Google, adding the button to your pages, AdWords and blog posts, you ensure that your pages and ads will be immediately visible. By giving your visitors more opportunities to plus one your content, you increase the chances of more relevant traffic to your site. This is so because the plus one annotations will be visible in the search results. The idea is that people are more likely to click on search results with plus one annotations than those not reviewed and recommended.

Terms Of Usage

Google by now has learned that SEO marketers and web publishers don’t take long before they get shortcuts regarding Google features. As such the company has created strict rules and regulations for the usage of the Google +1 button. One for instance, may not entice a visitor in any way to click on the +1 button. Publishers may also not try to discover who used the button unless the user has allowed sharing of such information with the publishers. Publishers cannot give awards in return for clicking on the + 1 buttons.

Analytics For The Feature Are Not Yet Available

Although you will not be able to use Google Analytics for the +1 button yet, Google is working on such to ensure that website owners will be able to get information on the demographics and content clicked for. In future then, webmasters will be able to use information derived from Google +1 button clicks to improve their web content and marketing strategies.

Should You Ignore Or Use?

The Google +1 button is a social sharing feature, something at which Google has not been able to succeed thus far. Considering that web pages are now almost cluttered with all the social sharing buttons, one may be sceptical regarding usage of the +1 by users.

Although people use the Like feature for Facebook, they tend to be less concerned about what their friends search for and will want to search for regarding organic searches. On the other hand, a +1 annotation or more can certainly help to improve visibility in the search results and as such we recommend that you add the button to your pages and ads sooner rather than later.

Let us handle the process should you struggle to add the new Google +1 feature to all your web pages.