Apr 27

Why HTML5? Where Did It Come From?

 

There is a W3C presentation that helps frame the historical reasons for HTML5. The slides are available in plain text [1] and Technicolor.[2] At the risk of confusing the facts,* I’ll try to explain why this is important and what is important about it.

For over a decade, XHTML1/1.1, a successor to HTML4, has been the most current version of HTML. XHTML1/1.1 leveraged the strengths of XML to create well-formed Web pages. These pages could be validated against a schema to test for compliance to a standard. Perhaps most importantly, it helped fix the issue of cross-browser incompatibility.

XHTML2 was going to be the successor to XHTML1/1.1; as the name suggests. However, this ended up not being the case. HTML5 is. Here’s why: XHTML2 was actually a different language; a new abstract approach to HTML. In at least the immediate future, making Web pages would’ve been made more difficult. It was a departure from the trajectory of many HTML traditions:

  • IMG elements were being phased out in favor of OBJECT elements.[3]
  • The anchors, A elments, were being phased out because, “all elements may now play the role of a hyperlink.“ [4]

Continue Reading

Apr 25

Google Over-Optimization Penalty (Penguin Update) Is your Website at Risk?

We’ve been hearing about it for weeks. It’s sparked debate in many SEO Inc. meetings and now it is finally here. Google has launched an update targeting webspam in search results. It has been interesting to read the buzz online about this update. First, we’ll tell you what the update entails according to Google. Next, we will get into some winners and losers. Then we will end this post with a little SEO insight and some reactions.

What is the Update Targeting?

In this portion I would like to list a few choice quotes from Google and then we can talk about them. These quotes are pulled from Google’s Post on Another step to reward high-quality sites.

In the post Google mentions, “Earlier this year we launched a page layout algorithm that reduces rankings for sites that don’t make much content available “above the fold.”

I thought this was pretty interesting. I think a lot of people missed this update. If you did, get that content higher up on the page.

Google goes on to say the following. “In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.”

Here we see that Google wants you to create high quality websites. So let’s find out more concerning what they view as a high quality site. Google starts off with an example of a website that is keyword stuffing. Continue Reading

Apr 20

How Google Classifies You

Google AdWords has a very useful targeting feature for delivering ads to users within its display network called interest categories. Interest categories are buckets of users who have been classified as interested in a category based on their browsing behavior. There are over a thousand of these categories and some 500 million users classified. If you browse the Web, you’ve been classified.

From an advertiser perspective interest categories are awesome. We use them here at SEO Inc to deliver outstanding results both for client branding and direct response initiatives. We like interest categories because they expand the targeted audience available to an advertiser and provide a layer of control when combined with other display targeting options such as contextual or remarketing.

On the other side of the coin are the internet users who are being classified. Their perspective is not always so rosy because for some it seems like a violation of privacy. Personally I think that behavioral targeting is a great thing. I want to be shown ads that are highly relevant to my interests. I don’t want to see ads for senior living or baby toys – I want to see ads for solutions to my particular wants and needs. If an advertiser can figure out what I need based on my browsing history they have saved me time and made my life more efficient. Continue Reading

Apr 19

Klout Brand Squads Reveal top Influencers

Klout, a website dedicated to scoring the authority of social media influencers, has launched their own set of Klout brand pages. The pages show the top influencers online for each brand. I am sure your head is spinning think of the social media marketing implications of this new tool, but before we get into that let’s take a close look at the new pages.

According to Klout, Brand Squads are currently in beta and they are meant to be a place where influencers can have a direct impact on the brands they care about. With Brand Squads, you will see a dynamic list of top influencers for each brand, watch conversations flow across social media, monitor information about a brand’s recent developments, and earn access to special Perks.

Now that we know a little more about the pages, let’s take a closer look.

Top Influencers
Towards the top of the page we see the top influencers. These are the people who have the highest Klout score that interact with the brand.

Klout Perks
In the middle of the page we see perks. Perks are rewards for the top 10 Klout users for that brand. The perks are provided by the brands as incentive to their top influencers.

Top Klout Content
At the bottom of the page we see the top content for that brand. This is a nice feature, as it allows influencers and other users to see what is trending for that particular company.

Continue Reading

Apr 16

Google Analytics Social Media Reporting Launched

Google Analytics has been working on social media reporting for a long time. They started off with the Social tab under the Audience drop down. But this was limited, and it only relies on Google + Engagement, Actions or Pages +1ed by default. This wasn’t enough for Google and now they have launched an entirely new social media report that takes steps to prove how social contributes to conversions.

How to Access Social Media Reporting

To access the new Google Analytics social media reporting tab follow these steps.

  1. Login to Google Analytics
  2. Select your account
  3. Select Traffic Sources
  4. Select Social

Under social you will see: Continue Reading

Apr 11

Facebook Wages War Against Spam Schemes

The Facebook is doing really well. For example, Facebook post engagement rose 176% in the first quarter of 2012 when compared to the same time last year. This is no doubt largely due to the new Facebook timeline success. Furthermore, ad spend on Facebook is up 93%.

Many things are looking bright for the soon to-be public company, but there are still some troubles.

Facebook Fights Paid Comment Spammers

According to Allfacebook.com, there has been an email circulating that offers the following proposition.

“The email offers the bait of $25 an hour for commenting on walls, then links to a website — the link’s toward the bottom of this post — that buries the switch at the bottom of the homepage: Before you can see any of the opportunities, you need to pay $4.95 for a three-day training program. And if you don’t cancel after that initial period, you’re automatically billed $49.95 a month for membership in a site promising listings of social media jobs.” – AllFacebook Continue Reading

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