January
18, 2006
In This Issue:
1. Fast First Impressions
2. In the News - Google radio, Jux2, How Google
works
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - What is RSS?
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Fast First Impressions
Man, if this doesn't hit you upside the head....
We all know the importance of first impressions
-- "you only get one chance to make a first
impression!" And that's perhaps even more
important on the web than anywhere else, because
if your visitor's first impression is a bad one,
it's just a click to your competition's site.
Well, the science web site nature.com is reporting
the results of a recent study that show web site
visitors can judge a web site in ... get this
... 50 milliseconds. That's 1/20th of a second.
You can read the article below to see how they
conducted this study and came up with that number,
but the ultimate point to be made is this: You've
got but one chance to state your case to new web
site visitors, and you don't have a lot of time
to do it. So ask yourself:
- Do we really need that "gee-whiz"
Flash animation?
- Do we really need our logo to spin, or that
animated GIF to move across the screen?
- Does our site look as professional as it
possibly can?
- Did we really trust the secretary's brother-in-law
to build our business site?
Here's the article.
Nature.com: Web
users judge sites in the blink of an eye
(Note: There's a related article on Internet Retailer's
web site which mentions that 68% of web users
distrust sites that don't look professional. Here's
that link.)
_________________
In The News
Google gets into radio
Google this week purchased dMarc Broadcast, a
radio advertising company. In their official release,
Google says they plan "to integrate dMarc
technology into the Google AdWords platform, creating
a new radio ad distribution channel for Google
advertisers." Google has also recently been
helping its advertisers buy space in newspapers
and magazines. Certainly, TV is next - their reach
is obviously just limited to putting AdWords on
the SERPs.
Jux2 expands
Longtime readers may recall old mentions of Jux2,
which is about the only "meta" search
engine that does anything for me. It allows you
to compare the overlap of SERPs from different
search engines -- used to be just for Google and
Yahoo, but it's not expanded to include Ask.com
and MSN Search, as well. Do your search, then
look for the tabs at top that say "Compare
Google Results" or "Compare MSN's Results",
and when you click each tab, Jux2 tells you which
pages appear only in that search engine, and which
pages that search engine is missing (when compared
to the other SEs). Hard to describe, maybe, but
makes sense when you use it.
Jux2
How Google works
If you've ever wondered how Google decides which
pages to show when you do a search, check out
the December 2005 "Google Newsletter for
Librarians." You won't get any SEO or WebDev
help, but it does give a very easy-to-understand
view of the web page storage, retrieval, and display
system -- how the crawler works, how pages are
stored, etc. I know it sounds terribly geeky,
but don't let my description fool you -- it's
good information, and not difficult to comprehend.
Google
Newsletter for Librarians
_________________
More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time
to read. These are just some of the headlines
we've posted to OWTweb.com in recent days.
SEM's
welcome shorter Yahoo ads
January 17, 2006 - ClickZ.com
Marketers have a variety of strategies for dealing
with the truncation of ads on Yahoo! Search Marketing.
Is
Google's tech heading downhill?
January 11, 2006 - PC Magazine
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Hello Matt,
I've emailed before and you were a big help, so
thank you. And I hope you can help again. Maybe
we're behind the times, but this is bugging me
and I can't seem to find an answer on the web.
I keep seeing those little orange buttons that
say RSS or XML. What on earth is that, and is
it something that web sites do to help with search
engine rankings? Is it something we should be
doing on our company site?
Chris
Hi Chris --
I'll spare you the really techie/geek description
(which is probably what you found and ignored
online), and go with this: RSS is a way to distribute
your web site content outside of your own web
site. It's best used with regularly updated web
site content, such as a news page, or press releases,
or even a blog.
By creating an RSS/XML feed for this content,
you allow people to subscribe to the feed and
be notified when there's new content -- it saves
them the hassle of having to revisit your web
site every day, only to find nothing new. "But
wait," I hear you say, "we want them
to come to our web site every day!" Well,
yes ... but if it becomes an inconvenience, if
they keep coming to your web site and find no
new content, they'll eventually stop altogether.
At least with an RSS feed you make it more convenient
-- you create a relationship where the person
signs up for your feed. You make their surfing
more enjoyable because they don't have to waste
time checking every day. They like that, and they
like you.
Plus, what happens is this: When you do add new
content, they get notified via the feed, and from
there they click through to your site to read
the full content -- they get value, not inconvenience,
from visiting your site. And that's what you want.
Should you do it on your company site? I don't
see much content there that gets updated regularly,
so probably not. If you decide to start posting
news on a regular basis, or weekly articles, or
something like that - then, yes, you should offer
an RSS feed.
Does it help with search engine rankings? No,
the RSS feed itself doesn't help you rank better.
What helps you rank better (among many other things)
is writing regular news items, creating great
content that other sites/bloggers want to link
to, etc. RSS is just a good way of delivering
that content, but not something that helps you
rank better.
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
That's all for this week. Hope business is treating
you well.
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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