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Google says website page loading speed will be key to rankings in the future!
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Google, Search Engine News
We’re all constantly trying to climb to the top of a Google search results page! Well here is a great hint that may help you climb search results a little faster.
Recently Google rep Matt Cutts suggested that page load times / speed of your website will affect your site position in Google. This hint is in line with other news the Google plan to “speed up the internet”. Previously Google has not factored page load time into the algorithm, although it does make a great deal of sense considering Google’s all about the end user experience. Who wants to be sent to a slow loading website, the quicker the better!
Matt suggested that we should all start paying attention to the tools and other resources found on http://code.google.com/speed a variety of plug-ins and external tools aimed to help optimize your web pages for speed.
At the end of the day what does this mean for your web pages?
It means start optimizing images, cleaning your code, compressing java script etc..
Although this can be seen as just adding to the work load of SEO’rs.. quicker page load for your visitors means a much happier consumer which will have a knock on effect for sales, consumer engagement and enjoyment.
Join the Google Speed Web Revolution, and let’s speed things up!
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
25
Official: Facebook is just not cool anymore
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Social Media, Twitter
It happens with every fashion trend and it seems that social media is no exception, the young have deemed it no longer ‘cool’.
According to research from Ofcom, the media regulator, the percentage of 15-to 25-year-olds who have a profile on a social networking site has dropped from 55% to 50% and the blame has been placed firmly on the laurels of those between the ages of 25- to 34, in which 46% of them are now regularly checking their profile up from 40% last year. It has commonly be known for a while that the majority of users on Twitter are over 25.
Paul Lee, director of technology research at Deloitte, added: “Young people are saying, ‘Now that Mum and Dad are on Facebook, do I really want to be there?’
This does not mean however that the younger generation are abandoning the Internet; Peter Phillips, Ofcom’s Head of Strategy has said “There is nothing to suggest overall usage of the Internet among 15-to 24-year-olds is going down, data suggests they are spending less time on social networking sites.”
Which begs the question, what have they found that we don’t know about?…yet.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
25
Facebook Goes Lite to Challenge Twitter
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Social Media, Twitter
didn’t take long did it? No sooner had Facebook snapped up FriendFeed than they incorporated their live feed style in a ‘Lite’ version.
This stripped down Facebook is only currently available to a selection of Beta testers, of which I am not one, and is offering a service not too dissimilar to Twitter or FriendFeed. The rolling feed of news from contacts isn’t interrupted with irritating applications and endless tabs; just a stripped down communication portal.
The similarity that this new platform has with FriendFeed further suggests that Facebook have either been in cahoots with them for some time or have been developing their own systems that closely mirrors the former rival’s site; necessitating the need for a purchase to avoid blatant patent infringement.
Suspicions aside, this certainly looks like an extremely interesting development and one that the rest of the social networking world will be watching with interest. Of course, the ones who will be sweating over this most have to be Twitter. With a near identical infrastructure coupled with Facebook’s added facilities (photos and videos onsite as an example), extra characters and of course its worldwide appeal (forth biggest site remember), this has to be seen as a direct challenge to Twitter.
Bebo too won’t be best pleased that this is hogging the limelight once more. Having pioneered the social media aggregator earlier on this year, this comes along. Bebo Lifestream is a clever package that effectively channels all of your social media activities through this single hub. Unfortunately, Bebo is very much a younger persons social networking platform, thus catering for a whole different audience to Facebook – which is far more universal.
Facebook almost have the Google-factor in social media at the moment. Whatever changes they make, however they choose to develop their product, it all seems to work. It has continually grown over the past couple of years and is now the runaway leader in the social field. This means that they have the numbers in place to dominate smaller – but also highly successful in their own right – sites like Twitter and Bebo.
Lite hasn’t yet gone fully live, although the search features already seem to be changing to incorporate friend’s discussions as well as the standard people search. Social aggregation is certainly an interesting area though at the moment, so there is hope for Bebo yet; but with the all-consuming might of Facebook as it stands, they appear better placed to dominate that market soon too.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
25
Is Twitter in Danger of Losing Relevance?
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Social Media, Twitter
Twitter’s rise up through the social media rankings has been nothing short of phenomenal. Backed by a plethora of tech savvy celebrities, the take-up of the micro-blogging service has touched every corner of the globe. But is it an empire built on sand?
From the outside everything seems to be ticking over quite nicely. The site continues to earn new users and is now ranked the 19th largest on the Internet (according to Alexa), so on the face of it everything is going swimmingly. But there are undoubtedly issues, some that could ultimately undermine the service into obscurity.
The first of these is spam. Anyone that has used Twitter will know that ‘spambots’ make up a large proportion of the social networking site’s community. Whilst we all have the choice of who we follow and who we block, the frequency with which a spambot will latch on to your profile is tiresome.
In fact a recent study found that 4 out of every 10 Twitter Tweets were complete and utter nonsense. That’s 40% of all messages being circulated offering absolutely no value. 3.75% of messages are purely attributed to spam too, which doesn’t offer much in the way of an incentive to most online users.
All of these negative statistics paint a very different picture of Twitter. It also raises questions about the validity of site statistics and how they are measured; after all, how do you determine what visits have come from genuine community contributors and what have come from faceless bots?
But the spread of these automated tweeting services is far from ceasing. As highlighted in an article on Econsultancy, there are sites springing up right left and centre helping to profligate these spamming services. This of course is hugely damaging in a number of ways, not least because it is affecting the day-to-day Twitter users’ enjoyment; which could ultimately lead to an exodus.
This potential exodus has long been mooted but has so far remained only a hypothetical theory. However, the emergence of Facebook Lite appears to provide a very real threat to the Twitter model. FriendFeed followed a similar model to that of Twitter initially, but never had the same level of publicity or userbase. Now it has been swallowed up by Facebook, changes are already afoot to strip down the top social media site and optimise its real-time capabilities – thus providing a direct challenge to Twitter.
Twitter have never faced this kind of direct competition, or at least not from a site that is already significantly larger. Facebook is still undergoing one of the most prolonged and impressive popularity explosions the Internet has seen. It’s now the fourth most accessed site in the world and is growing by millions of users each month.
Statistics Comparing Facebook (Red) and Twitter (Blue)
Social media aficionados will, in all likelihood, have a number of different subscriptions. If Facebook Lite takes off, which we can only assume it will, does that make Twitter effectively redundant? Of course there will always be situation where some friends remain dedicated to one site, making it essential for users to maintain Twitter accounts along with any others. Plus Twitter will always remain popular with advertisers, as it is a quick and easy way to gain instant traffic and generate a real buzz.
The saving grace could very well be the celebrity endorsement that Twitter continues to gain. From politicians to Hollywood stars, Twitter has become a forum for discussion between people from all walks of life and of any standing. As long as the big hitters, Ashton Kutcher, Oprah et al. keep with the service, they will have a guaranteed fan base. Lose these though and you may well see popularity going the same way.
But is that enough? Does Twitter now have to start thinking about ways to provide something new and original? Or is does its beauty lie in its simplicity? There’s no doubting its widespread popularity, but the social media crowd can be fickle. The relative demise of previous forerunners such as Friends Reunited, Friendster and MySpace (the latter two still command healthy top 100 positions it should be noted) should serve as ample warning.
MySpace Page View Two Year Statistics Twitter doesn’t appear to be in any immediate danger, but with the data pointing towards a plateauing of popularity, a new impetus could well be needed. Whether that will come in the form of significant investment from another site, perhaps in the mould of previous interested party Google. Real-time is the future of online communication, Twitter just need to make sure they’re still relevant when it finally reaches its peak.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
Just when the world of social networking seemed to be channelling towards Facebook and Twitter, the old guard have taken new steps toward regaining prominence. Swiped from under the noses of Facebook, MySpace are on the verge of purchasing iLike.
To most that probably doesn’t mean a great deal; however iLike is one of the most popular apps currently featured on Facebook. It allows users to share their favourite songs with friends and give an insight into their musical taste. MySpace is already very much the social networking site of choice for many music and video aficionados; by being able to provide exclusive access to iLike, they could well corner this market and subdue Facebook momentarily.
Evidently MySpace needs to do something to halt the continued slump in its market reach, and this certainly signals their intentions. By pinching an application from right under the noses of the dominant figure in the industry, MySpace are showing that they’re no pushovers. It’s a start, but will it be enough to peg back Facebook or even prevent being overtaken by the marauding Twitter?
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25
Are Google & Facebook Evil?
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Google, Search Engine News, Slipstream News, Social Media
Google and Facebook both represent the dominant leaders in their respective fields. So complete is their dominance in fact, that people have begun audibly questioning whether they are in fact a force for good, or evil.
The prime fear where both are concerned is with regards to data. Google has indexed billions of website pages, making it privy to a lot of information; all of which could, in theory at least, be used for dangerous profiling purposes. Google Earth has also caused uproar with claims that it is helping criminals pick targets and is another major invasion of privacy.
Facebook, of course, thrives on information. Users are encouraged to share their most personal of details, thoughts and – shamefully – pictures. It harvests your email address to find potential friends and can be accessed by anyone. With all this at one company’s disposal, could Facebook one day abuse its power and expose its users to the world.
Some may see the theories as fanciful, others as a very real Orwellian nightmare made possible by governments and corporations around the world. The fundamental truth in all this though is that both companies do wield a great deal of power and both have access to private elements of many peoples’ lives.
From a search marketing point of view, Google’s omnipotent near monopolisation of the search market, ensures that theirs is the drum that we all march to. Whilst Bing and Yahoo are still hugely popular, it is the guidelines passed down by Google – often by way of Webspam team leader Matt Cutts – that needs to be heeded with the greatest urgency.
There have been numerous tales of woe from those who have been stricken from Google’s pages and suffered a steep drop in visitors as a result. There are cases where this is inexplicable and can’t be explained; however, most are usually as the result of long-outlawed blackhat techniques like buying links or creating numerous domains to push traffic towards a single main site.
A good example of a company falling foul of Google is the case of Foundem. The UK based price comparison site had its ‘plight’, highlighted last month after they kicked up a fuss over their exclusion from the Google rankings for the past three years. They even produced a secondary site called ‘The Google Delusion’, to tell their side of the story and show how they have been persecuted by the search giant over the preceding years.
But is this exclusion as a result of Google using its power to punish or simply down to a lack of content and originality on the site? It would be churlish of me to suggest that Google haven’t played their part, but the simple truth is that Foundem are in a competitive industry and just don’t abide by the clearly defined rules of Google – thus they were forced to pay the penalty. For those in any doubt, the comments on both their own blog and the Econsultancy story offers some interesting reading, particularly with regard to where it may be failing.
The passing of information is dangerous. But whether you’re a victim of Facebook or a clumsy junior civil servant leaving a USB full of personal details, the more we open up, the more open we are to intrusion. Google and Facebook have gained their power through providing a service that the public wants. The reason that they are the first and fourth most popular websites in the world is purely down to their success at being the best (at least, the perceived best) at what they do.
Could our information be passed on and misused, yes. Is this the sole intention of Google or Facebook, most probably not. Thieves will steal lead from church roofs regardless of Google Earth. Industrious hackers can obtain personal information about you through any site that you’ve entered details, not just Facebook.
You can’t assume security, just as you can’t assume that you’ll get to the top of the search engine rankings. Understanding the dangers rather than fearing the consequences is by far the most important aspect of any online usage. So are Google and Facebook really evil? In short, no; but even if they are, we are the ones who have given them the power and the information, so can we really pass blame? There are alternative sites, plenty of them, but we have actively decided to follow the well-trodden path regardless of the dangers that may lurk down the other end.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
25
A President, A Senator and the Dangers of Social Media
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Social Media, Twitter
It appears that America’s politicians are having a few communication issues this week. Following hot on the heels of warning teenagers about the dangers of sharing too much information on website’s such as Facebook; it is now Barack Obama who has fallen foul of a random outburst.
Mr Obama had talked to students on a number of issues, one of which centred on what it takes to be a President. In response he said:
“Well, let me give you some very practical tips. First of all, I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook, because in the YouTube age, whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life.”
It’s a sentiment that’s hard to argue with, particularly with the almost daily tales of woe emanating from various corners of the globe. Undoubtedly, whether it’s on your website or through social media channels you need to be careful what you say.
Prospective employers are just like prospective clients, in so far as you don’t want to provide them with an excuse not to hire/use your services. Whatever you say and whenever it may have been said, the Internet has ensured that it will last long after the even itself.
Whilst you may not have anything to hide, one small slip can now be recorded for years to come. No doubt South Carolina Senator Joe Wilson will be more inclined to take President Obama’s advice after an unprecedented outburst in congress. During a speech on healthcare reform, the now suitably apologetic Senator Wilson shouted “You Lie!” at Mr Obama, leaving everybody present suitably stunned.
And as if to provide a very nice circularity to the story, it has now become the top trending topic on Twitter; one of the site’s Barrack Obama was warning teenagers not to share too much on. In turn this has cemented it as a global story and has no doubt condemned the overzealous senator to mocking ‘…and finally’ news stories throughout the world.
Perhaps the President needs to give some ‘very practical tips’ on communication to congress in future.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
25
Facebook Now Cash Positive and Profits Are in Sight
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Social Media, Twitter
One major issue facing social media platforms is how exactly to monetise their services. Subsisting on investor funding isn’t sustainable, so turning the corner and making a site profitable is a significant priority, but one which many struggle to achieve.
For many years YouTube was a cash cow for Google. Whilst it was widely used and hugely popular, the video sharing site just couldn’t find a way to turn that into hard currency. In fact two months ago to the day, in a strange piece of social media circularity, it was announced that Facebook had 250 million users whilst YouTube were on the verge of making profit. Today, Facebook has reached 300 million users and is itself the one who is ready to start funding itself.
Whilst the word ‘profit’ has been noticeably excluded from most statements, it has instead been exchanged for the far less committal phrase of ‘cash positive, it seems Facebook have now finally reached a point where business income (investments aside) is able to outstrip outgoings. But why has it taken this long to achieve this landmark?
Turning Promise into Profit
As Facebook is now the third most visited website in the world*, why can’t it match the success of those above or, for that matter, below them? In the last quarterly financial statement (reported, oddly enough on July 17th as well , in our post Recession Proof Google Continue to Post Tidy Profits), Google made $1.48bn. That’s 15% of the entire value (at least when Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies splashed the cash back in May) of Facebook in three months of trading. Whilst Google may be leagues ahead in terms of traffic, the blueprint for making money is not all that dissimilar – paid advertising.
Microsoft’s participation with Facebook has gone far deeper than simply providing capital. The software giant also manages the social media giant’s sponsored links, which is where, predominantly at least, the opportunity for profitability has arisen. But Facebook is an intuitive company, it hasn’t and won’t simply restrict its income on this one stream.
Twitter offers a distinctly oppositional model. They are one of the few social media sites to turn their back on advertising as a revenue stream (see Twitter Say No To Advertising) and whilst not turning any kind of profit, they are still looking at ways to pump money into the service. Premium options for tweets from most popular members in the Twitterverse, as well as commercial accounts seem like the most viable way to go cash positive with their increasingly popular service.
Innovative Monetising
Facebook have seemingly bi-passed this predicament. With 300 million users now on board – a 20 per cent rise from this time in July – the potential for future growth, new monetising initiatives and mammoth profit margins have never seemed more plausible. However, this doesn’t mean that they can’t explore similar avenues. For example, if the storefronts, pioneered by companies like 1-800 Flowers and featured in our blog post ‘Setting up Shop on Facebook‘, take off, this could provide a whole new affiliate style revenue stream for the company. This in turn may spawn new initiatives too in the future.
As a website and a business, Facebook has been continually written off. Despite criticisms over leaked figures showing losses in 2007 and 2008 and questions over valuation and the continued rebuffing of offers from the likes of Yahoo! ($1bn) and Viacom ($750m), they have remained largely independent – Russian and Microsoft investment aside.
As a pre-cursor to this week’s financial revelations, we have the million dollar (more likely billion dollar) question as posed to Mark Zuckerberg – founder and owner of Facebook – by Time magazine in an interview back in July 2007 (yes, the 17th again as well for good measure):
TIME: Beyond Facebook’s exclusive advertising deal with Microsoft, which gives the software giant the right to sell ads on the site, what are some of your ideas about monetizing your 30 million users?
Zuckerberg: Advertising works most effectively when it’s in line with what people are already trying to do. And people are trying to communicate in a certain way on Facebook – they share information with their friends, they learn about what their friends are doing -so there’s really a whole new opportunity for a new type of advertising model within that. And I think we’ll see more in the next couple months or years on that.
Essentially this is exactly what has happened. More people are using Facebook, spending more hours and sharing more information all the time. This has given Facebook a unique insight into the lives and interest of people and is now allowing them to provide highly targeted advertising, not just the very general demographically based ads of yesteryear. This in turn has lead to the company becoming cash positive.
Just as YouTube have finally cracked that seemingly impossible social media solvency nut, so Facebook have followed suit. With more money at their disposal, they can now look to develop the services they offer and ensure that Facebook remains as relevant in the future as it is today. With storefront’s now opening and a new Facebook Lite in the offing, clearly the benefits of their explosive income growth are already being felt by businesses and users everywhere.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
24
Has Social Media Become Too PR Orientated?
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Social Media, Twitter
From the outset social media was created to link people together. Whilst Friends Reunited touted the idea of finding long lost classmates, Facebook was connecting students in Harvard. But somewhere along the line, boundaries between harmless conversations and prolific publicising have become blurred.
Nobody can argue that there are fantastic opportunities to be gained for businesses using social media and that their influence can be a positive one – providing discounts, useful information and a right of reply – but is there a danger web 2.0 overkill will eventually be its downfall?
To begin with I think it’s only fair to promote the positive impact of social media in business. For starters the sharing of valuable information has become remarkably straightforward. Online oracles, the likes of Brian Clark (Copyblogger) and Chris Brogan along with any number of journalists and bloggers, are sharing advice and informative resources across Twitter daily. You don’t need to buy a book, have a meeting or even a conversation, the information is freely available for anybody to use, share and respond to. This can be as inspiring as it can be practical, and is only possible(on such a scale at least) because of social media.
Then there are companies that use it as an additional customer service centre. This is what I would consider positive reinforcement of social media as a PR tool. The real-time interactivity afforded by these platforms makes Twitter or Facebook a fantastic opportunity for businesses to become more open and interact with their customer base. Often online businesses will provide polls to improve services, hold exclusive competitions and supply unique coupons; all of which benefits the consumer just as much as the company itself.
But herein also lies the dark side of social media promotion. The line between providing a useful service and irritating bombardment can be surprisingly thin. Last month I asked the question, Is the Internet too Noisy? The conclusion was that some elements had become so populated and overflowing with valueless information that they were in danger of undermining the positive aspects of the Internet. Social media now appears to have become yet another platform that has fallen foul of unscrupulous souls, using it to promote their illicit wares (and malwares).
Unfortunately the amount of spam that floats around the pages of social media is being added to by an equally unhelpful and continuous murmur of valid promotional activity. Of course people want to promote their products, services, websites and blogs, but as more do so, the harder it becomes to decipher the disingenuous from the useful. Twitter particularly is swamped with vacuous messages, underpinned by the latest trending topics, which has seriously damaged the quality of service the site is able to offer.
The PR dream is therefore quickly becoming a communication nightmare. Few would argue that the promoting of businesses and services can be a positive thing, but marketers surely need to become more innovative or risk the platform that they use becoming sterile. Social media for business should be about adding value to the services that you offer, not generating traffic at any cost.
The failings of social media help to ensure that SEO remains the pivotal force in determining the success of websites. Whilst tweeting updates can bring in traffic, there’s no inherent sustainability or guarantees in doing so. You need to work at creating a profile on social media, becoming a source that people can trust and will find relevant to their requirements, whether now or in the future.
With SEO relevance is assured. You target the keywords that best suit your services and will attract relevant traffic as a result. Social media can help raise your profile, again, this is another reason why it is still such a fantastic PR tool, but it is unlikely to provide the same levels of targeted visitors than a well designer, fully optimised website.
So will PR ultimately destroy social media as we know it? Probably not. However, there is a tendency to believe that it is a magic ticket to success, which prompts many to overuse and ultimately abuse its potential. In the media-rich world, advertising is impossible to escape; seemingly the likes of Facebook and Twitter are far from exempt and are in danger of becoming just another digital billboard.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
24
How Will Twitter Monetise Following $100million Cash Injection?
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Social Media, Twitter
The $100million Twitter raised last week in venture capital appears to highlight two important things. Firstly, Twitter is still regarded as a growing business worthy of heavy investment. And secondly, it is still unable to monetise itself effectively enough to create its own revenue.
The social media site’s stance against integrating advertising is a bold one, but is it ultimately going to doom Twitter to financial failure?
We reported last month that Facebook has turned cash positive; however, the bulk of their income had come through their highly targeted sponsored advertising, powered by Microsoft. Twitter, whilst extremely popular, lacks the sheer volume of membership that Facebook enjoys, with latest figures showing the latter to have 300million active users. So what can they do? Charge for corporate accounts? Create a subscription service for the most popular celebrities in the Twitterverse? There are options, but what they need is a solution.
Whilst the $100million may come as welcome investment, how much longer will venture capitalists consider pouring their money into a financial black hole? Twitter is at a very important stage of its development. It has grown at an unprecedented pace over the last 12 months and has had its fair share of problems dealing with those swelling numbers. Whilst the concept is good and the platform is popular, investors can’t take a company seriously if they can’t turn a profit.
The light at the end of the tunnel may come in the form of YouTube. For years it was considered a financial joke; the $1.65billion that Google threw at it (which is still far too much, just as Twitter’s $1billion valuation currently) was deemed to have been lost in a vortex of hefty expenses and limited income. Like Twitter, YouTube was hugely popular but couldn’t find a way of converting visitors into hard cash. That was until they introduced targeted sponsored advertising, and now have begun posting profits (as documented in our July 17th post Facebook Reaches 250 Million Users Whilst YouTube on Verge of Making a Profit).
The bosses at Twitter will be fully aware of the predicament they find themselves. On the one hand they need to find a way to monetise the service, with sponsored advertising being the most obvious solutions; on the other, they’ve promised not to make money through advertising. This leaves them in quite a quandary.
Expect some news though in the coming months from Twitter HQ regarding finances, or the generation thereof. Investors don’t tend to be frivolous with their cash and will have almost certainly required assurances as to the future monetising of the service. How soon any announcement will be is anybody’s guess, but surely Twitter need more than just capital, they need ready revenue and soon.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
