July 2009 - Posts

• Adding a Share Button to Your Shozam Gallery

  Here’s a nifty tool on the web that lets you add a Share button to your Shozam website by using the HTML tab in Step 5: Manage Gallery. This tab is available in the Business and BusinessPlus Editions. Why would you want to add a Share button? It makes it easy to promote your site and get more traffic. With the click of the Share button, your viewers can send a web page link via email, post it on social network sites, or even bookmark the page in a Favorites list. The website, www.addthis.com, lets you generate the button code easily, it’s free and there’s no registration. Here’s a one-minute short video on how to create and use your Share button. Simply go to www.addthis.com and select the “Website” radio button. Select the button style you want, and then click on the big orange “Get Your Button.” Copy the resulting code. This button code is pasted in the HTML tab in Step 5, Manage Gallery. Choose whether you want to add the Share button to the top or bottom (we suggest the bottom) of your gallery pages, and enter the button code into that HTML field. Shozam will place the Share button directly against the gallery frame. If you want to give the button a bit of breathing room, add a line break before the button code that you paste into the HTML field (add the break after the code if you are placing the button at the top of your pages). The code for a line break is simply: </br> Here’s how the Share button looks on a Shozam Gallery, placed below the gallery window, with a line break included: Add a Share button and promote your Shozam gallery to the world! Posted Jul 30 2009, 01:43 PM by Shozam Guru with no comments Filed under: adding a share button

• The Info Page: How Shozam Optimizes Your Gallery for Search Engines

  Shozam was designed with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind, using standard HTML that is fully searchable for easy indexing. Additionally, pages are cross-linked, so search engines are led from page to page. SEO considerations were also important for limiting Flash animation (not parse-able by search engines). The Flash Intro animation adds just enough “sizzle” to your gallery without impeding search engines. In addition to parsing a website’s content for indexing, search engines also crawl your website’s HTML code looking for metatags that also tell them about your site. Shozam optimizes your gallery for this search engine operation as well. Shozam takes your gallery title, captions and descriptions, and uses them as metatags in your Shozam site’s HTML code. Additionally, the Shozam Business and BusinessPlus Editions include a “Tag” tab in Step 5, Manage Gallery, which lets you enter additional keyword and description metatags directly into your website code (more about this is an upcoming post). Adding keywords to the content of your Info Page, as discussed in previous posts,  provides even more information for search engine indexing. This wraps up our blog series on the Info page; I hope you found it helpful. For your convenience, here’s a list of links to all the Info page posts. The Most Important Page on Your Website: The Info Page Creating Content that's Right for You How to Create Your Info Page, Step-by-Step Finding the Right Content and Tone Providing Your Email Address the Safe Way Creating Lists Including External Links Customizing the Look of Text Using an Online HTML Editor Mapping Your Business Location Enhancing with Video Build Traffic by Telling Search Engines All about You Researching Keywords Using Keyword Research Tools Finalizing and Incorporating Your Keyword List Posted Jul 28 2009, 04:07 PM by Shozam Guru with no comments Filed under: search engine optimization, SEO, keywords

• The Info Page: Finalizing and Incorporating Your Keyword List

  After brainstorming and using online tools to generate a comprehensive keyword list, now it’s time to narrow your list and incorporate the selected terms into your Info Page. The first step is to go through your list and pare it down to those terms that most closely match the “subject” and “theme” of your site. Get rid of all the words that are not relevant, or that you don’t have content to support. Create a mix of a few broad terms along with targeted keywords. Broad terms won’t do much for ranking or help drive qualified traffic to your site, but they help describe your site to a search engine. Targeted terms are typically easier to rank higher, and they strengthen the context of broad terms. Your final list should include 5-7 highly targeted keywords. Keep your list short. Too many keywords dilute the theme of your Info Page. Weave these keywords throughout your Info Page content. Make sure you include: Your name: include your Company name several times if you’re a business or organization, or the name of your website if it is a personal site. Your location: if you’re a business, use your physical address, or at least a geographic location. This is critical for local search ranking. Consider including a reference to your location in your body copy as well. Your industry or interests: your keywords should already include a variety of terms related to your industry. If this is a personal website, your terms should include your site’s theme. Misspellings: include misspellings common to your industry or name. How do you do this without including misspellings or grammatical errors in your content? At the bottom of your Info Page, create a list of such words and terms, under a heading called, “Filed under,” “Keywords,” “Tags,” or something similar. That way, keywords are included on your page, but not in your content. Synonyms: some similar terms may be part of your keyword list, but if they don’t make sense in your content, you can include them at the bottom of your page, similar to “Misspellings” above.  Also, try using expressions like, “…not to be confused with…,” or “…also known as…” for synonyms. Just remember, your website exists for your audience – your content is for them. Don’t include irrelevant keywords just because you think they might draw traffic, or repeat keywords over and over (called “keyword stuffing,” highly frowned upon by search engines). Just add your relevant keywords strategically to your Info Page content. This is not “set it and forget it.” Hopefully you will keep your site fresh, with new content as your site and your audience change over time. Keep an eye out for new, possibly more relevant keywords as you move forward. And finally, did you know Shozam automatically helps you with search engine optimization as well? Find out more in the next blog post. Posted Jul 23 2009, 04:48 PM by Shozam Guru with no comments Filed under: keyword research, keywords

• The Info Page: Using Keyword Research Tools

  Now that you have your initial brainstormed list of keyworks, the next step in keyword research is to employ a tool designed to help you generate additional keywords and determine which terms are likely to bring qualified traffic to your site. Here are some of my favorite keyword research tools available online, for anyone. Google AdWords Keyword Tool This free tool from Google is great. You don’t have to be an AdWords customer to use it. Just go to the site and enter your keywords into the field provided. Click “Get keyword ideas.” Google will list keywords related to your terms, including helpful information like competition and search volume. Keep in mind, this is AdWords data (paid search), but you can extend the information to search activity in general. This tool gives you great keyword suggestions and relevant information on the popularity of those keywords. Google Search-based Keyword Tool Currently in Beta, this free Google tool generates keywords matched to a website URL that you enter. Google will parse the site and return a list of keywords from the site’s content, along with user search data for each keyword.  This will tell you what terms your competitors are using on their websites and how popular those terms are with searchers.  You are looking for terms not in your keyword list that have a high monthly search volume. Again this information is geared toward AdWords advertisers, but is relevant for anyone doing keyword research. MSN Keyword Research Tool A free tool from Microsoft AdCenter Labs, just enter your keyword into the input field, and MSN will return a list of similar terms. Wordtracker A well known subscription-based tool, Wordtracker offers a free 7-day trial. Google offers such great free tools, that I don’t think it’s worth it to spend money on a paid tool. But, you might want to use the free trial for your initial keyword research. SEO Tool Set Traffic Checker Also free, this tool lets you enter a keyword, and it will return estimated daily search activity across the major search engines. These tools make it easy (and addictive) to do your own keyword research. Experiment to see which ones work best for you. We will wrap up this keyword discussion with additional tips and tricks in the next blog post. Posted Jul 21 2009, 04:12 PM by Shozam Guru with no comments Filed under: keyword research tools

• The Info Page: Researching Keywords

  One of the biggest mistakes you can make is assuming you already know which terms, or keywords, your visitors would search on to find your website. It is all too easy for website owners to use jargon or familiar terms that visitors may not know or use, when searching for a site. If your gallery is for your business, most likely your customer doesn’t work in your industry, so when writing content for your Info Page, step outside of your “sandbox” and think like your customer. Hopefully, the previous blog post helped in that regard. If your gallery is for personal use, use keywords that make it easy for family and friends to find you, in case they don’t remember your URL.   Another error is thinking that you need to rank high for broad terms (one- or two-word terms). Ranking is how high a search engine lists you in search results it returns for a specific term. If you’re a photographer, it’s going to be difficult (if not impossible) to rank highly for the broad term “photography.” You are much better off using very targeted keywords. You want to choose combinations of words that are very specific and super relevant that you will incorporate into the content of your website’s Info Page.   Brainstorm: The first step in keyword research is to brainstorm. Create a list of all potential keywords related to you and what you offer. List all the words you think a visitor would use to find you. This includes all phrases: broad (one- and two-word terms) and targeted (multi-word terms). Keep in mind the search intent listed in the previous blog (navigational, informational, and transactional). You want to come out of this process with a list of keywords that cover everything you want to communicate with your website.  For more brainstorming ideas, ask friends, colleagues and customers what search terms they would use to find you.   Competitors: For business websites, check out what your competitors are doing. Go to the website of a competitor and take a look at their meta keyword tag. Go to their homepage and click on “View” in your browser’s navigation bar. Select “Source” or “Page Source” (wording may differ slightly depending on which browser you use). This will show you the HTML code for that webpage.  Near the top of the page, look for a code string that begins:  <meta name="keywords"   If they have done any search engine optimization, you will see a list of keywords that follows that string. Are there keywords that you can use? How can you expand on their list?   Thesaurus: Try an online thesaurus to help you identify related keywords you may have missed.   Now that you have an initial list of keywords, it’s time to enlist the help of a keyword research tool: the subject of the next post.   Posted Jul 16 2009, 05:46 PM by Shozam Guru with 1 comment(s) Filed under: researching keywords

• The Info Page: Build Traffic by Telling Search Engines All about You

  Another important benefit of creating an Info Page: search engine optimization (SEO).  Search engines match website content with a user’s search intent. SEO is the art of crafting your website pages so that search engines match your website content to users who are searching for what you offer. Here’s how it works, in a nut shell. Search engines, like Google and Yahoo, send out software programs, called spiders or bots, to parse the text on web pages so they can be properly indexed, or categorized.  Search engines then decide which sites are relevant to certain terms, called keywords.  So, when someone searches for a particular keyword or phrase, the search engine can return relevant answers to the search query. Creating a content-rich Info Page with the right keywords is the best opportunity for you to describe and promote your Shozam website to search engines. The flexibility of this page lets you add meaningful text and keywords about you, your industry, business, products and services, and why you’re unique. Why is this important? Because the more a search engine knows about your site, the better it can match searchers to your site, and the more visitors you’ll get. How do you know which keywords and phrases to incorporate into your Info Page? First, there are three things you need to identify: your audience; their needs, and; what questions your audience is most likely to pose to find what they’re looking for. Once you’ve answered these three questions, you can structure your Info Page content to address your audience’s search intent. One way to think about intent is to determine how a visitor’s queries might be structured: Navigational: Are searchers looking for your website in particular? It is estimated that nearly one quarter of all searches are from people who want to get to a website they already have in mind. This is why it’s so important to make sure your name is memorable and included throughout your Info Page. Informational: Are they looking for information that your site provides? Transactional: Are they looking to buy something? Use the language your audience uses. For example, if your goal is to sell products or services through your website, then you should focus on using transactional language: words like “buy,” “services,” etc.  If you have a service business that might require some research on the part of your customers, you might want to focus on providing information and use phrases like, “learn about…” “find out more about…” etc. Once you have a good handle on your audience’s intent,  you’re ready to do your keyword research, covered in the next post.   Posted Jul 14 2009, 05:48 PM by Shozam Guru with no comments Filed under: search intent, search engine optimization, SEO

• The Info Page: Enhancing with Video

  Nothing says “personal” like video – particularly if you’re doing the talking. Create your own video introduction to welcome people to your site, tell your story in your own words or demonstrate your product. Get creative and have fun with it! Here’s an example of an Info Page with video used to highlight a recent photography trip to Yellowstone National Park. Adding video to your Info Page follows the same process as adding other HTML code discussed in earlier blogs: just add the video code to the Step 2, Image tab, Long description. Remember, because the video will show in lieu of a text description, you will need to have an image associated with the video. In the above example, I’ve used a photo of Yellowstone Falls to support the video content. So where do you get the video code? Record your video, save the file and then upload it to YouTube which automatically converts the file into a web-ready format and spits out an embed code. You will need to make a minor modification to the YouTube embed code to adjust the size of the video to fit nicely into your Info Page.  Here’s an example of the YouTube embed code, and here’s what you’ll need to do to adjust the video dimensions: <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FSISYLFhLZE&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FSISYLFhLZE&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> Change the object width to “525” and the height to “425” where they appear at both the beginning and the end of the code. So, now your code will look like this (changes highlighted in yellow): <object width="525" height="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FSISYLFhLZE&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FSISYLFhLZE&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="525" height="425"></embed></object> Copy and paste the code into the Info Page, Long description and that’s it!   If you view your Shozam gallery locally, you may get a pop-up warning from Adobe Flash Player Security citing a “potentially unsafe operation” on your computer. This warning will go away once your gallery is uploaded to the web. Once you've done it a time or two, you’ll be an expert! Posted Jul 09 2009, 07:46 PM by Shozam Guru with no comments Filed under: adding video, info page video

• The Info Page: Mapping Your Business Location

  Add an interactive map to your Info Page in minutes. Here's an example (scroll down the page) of how the embedded location map will look. To get your location map, just go to Google Maps. Type in your business address and click on the "Search Maps" button. Once your location map appears, click on "Link" in the upper right-hand corner of the map. Then click on "Customize and preview embedded map." The following pop-up window will appear: Click on the "Customize" radio button and type in 535 for the width and 425 for the height as shown above. This will ensure your map view fits nicely into the Info Page format. You can also adjust the Preview window to get the view you want. Copy the resulting HTML code that appears in field #3. The map code that you will paste into your Info Page is being used instead of a text description for an image, so you will need to associate the map with an image. You can use a photo of your building or your logo. Once you've imported the image, click on it to highlight and paste your HTML map code into the Step 2, Image tab, Long description. Have more than one location? Just add another photo with an associated map for each of your locations. Congratulations! You've just put your business on the map! Posted Jul 07 2009, 03:48 PM by Shozam Guru with no comments Filed under: adding a business map, Google Maps, adding a location

• The Info Page: Using an Online HTML Editor

  The previous post talked about hand-coding simple HTML commands to alter text. If you're planning to customize larger blocks of text, try using an online "WYSIWYG" (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor. This type of HTML editor provides an editing interface similar to text editors, like Microsoft Word, so it works well for users who don't know HTML. After doing our own experimentation with online HTML Editors, we like FCKEditor. It's free and runs online so there is nothing to download. The "FCK" is the developer's initials, in case you were wondering. This editor provides an intuitive user interface with lots of editing controls that make it easy to achieve the final results you want. Here's how to use FCKEditor. Go to www.fckeditor.net/demo. Type in the text you want to customize in the Demo window provided. Apply the characteristics you want (font, size, color, etc.) and click on the "Source" icon in the upper left corner of the Demo navigation bar. The application will convert your customized text into HTML. (Clicking the "Submit" button will do the same thing, but open your HTML code in a new window.) Copy the HTML code and paste it into the Long description text field in Shozam. Using an HTML editor allows you to get correctly formatted HTML code, easily. More so, looking at the code generated will help you understand better how to use HTML syntax so you can create more, on your own. Posted Jul 03 2009, 08:20 PM by Shozam Guru with no comments Filed under: HTML editor

• The Info Page: Customizing the Look of Text

  Let’s say you want to customize your name when it appears in text on the Info Page, and your name is John Smith. Here’s how to add color, bold or italics to any text (in this case, John Smith) when it appears in your Info Page text using simple HTML command syntax. Color syntax Colors are presented as a six digit color “hex” code preceded by the # symbol. For this example, we are using a common shade of red, #ff0000: <span style="color: #ff0000">John Smith</span> Choose another color by entering the code for that color from this chart: http://html-color-codes.info/ Bold syntax <strong>John Smith</strong> Italics syntax <em>John Smith</em> Altogether now… So now let’s say you want “John Smith” to appear in red, bold, italics. Here’s how the syntax looks: <em><strong><span style="color: #ff0000">John Smith</span></strong></em> Entering customized text into the Long description field in Shozam Assuming that you’ve read the blog post “How to create an Info Page” you know that you enter text for your Info Page in the Long description field in the Step 2, Image tab. If you just want to highlight a few words or sentences in a paragraph, you can just enter text normally into the field and add in your syntax for those words you want to highlight, as presented above. For example, say you want to bold John Smith in a paragraph, here’s how you would type it into the field: Hi, my name is <strong>John Smith</strong>, and I am the owner of JS Photography. I specialize in pet photography that captures your best friend’s personality and joie de vivre. Now let’s say you want to keep John Smith bolded, but you want the entire paragraph in italics. Here’s the syntax: <p><em>Hi, my name is <strong>John Smith</strong>, and I am the owner of JS Photography. I specialize in pet photography that captures your best friend’s personality and joie de vivre.</em></p> The next post will provide an alternative to hand-coding – using an HTML Editor. This tool is helpful if you have larger blocks of text, or want more in-depth customization options. Posted Jul 01 2009, 06:22 PM by Shozam Guru with no comments