By mia, on August 27th, 2012%
by Sherwood Stranieri
 In the last few months, there’s increasing evidence that mobile search activity for restaurants is growing by leaps and bounds. Consider the following:
- Yelp recently shared that mobile usage now accounts for 40% of their activity, up from 27% in 2010.
- According Groupon’s CEO, 30% of all transactions on Groupon’s platform are now attributed to mobile device use, and those usage levels have tripled in just one year.
With mobile search rising in importance, you want to make sure you spend the next few months aligning your online activities with mobile, to get in front of this audience as they switch over to phone-based searches. A few ideas for restaurant owners:
- The next time you redesign your website, think seriously about a website design that is “mobile-first” – a phone-friendly website that also will work fine for desktop PCs. Most websites do the opposite (at best) but in the restaurant category, he market favors mobile, so your site design should, too.
- If you’re not ready to redesign yet, be sure that your homepage has a clickable phone number, with driving directions one click away. This is good common sense for all customers, phone-based or not.
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By mia, on August 24th, 2012%
For today’s assortment, we have chosen the topic of mobile photography in which we are showcasing some exceptionally beautiful and visually alluring examples of photographs that have been taken from smartphones. The best camera is the one that you have with you at the time so that you can capture breathtaking moments and save them for your memories.
Pretty amazing. See all…
By mia, on August 23rd, 2012%
by Christian Vasile
 What’s Instagram
You’ve probably heard about Facebook buying Instagram for a billion dollars some months ago, news that was a hit in the stands for many weeks. With more than 15 million users signing up in the past year and more than 400 million photos uploaded, Instagram might have been able to put a dent in Facebook’s hopes of internet domination. So Zuckerberg decided to buy the small company with only 13 employees. It was not the features of the app, but the database of people Facebook bought that defends this astounding price. Instagram might have become more than just a photo sharing app with a reported number of 26 new pictures uploaded every second and with a new user signing up every second.
Basically what Instagram does is simple: it allows you to take photos with your smartphone, apply filters and share them on Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and other networks. Basically it does nothing more than you could do with other apps – so again, its power is translated by the number of registered users.
What’s Pinterest?
The concept behind Pinterest might be a bit more complicated than Instagram’s. The basic idea is that you have a digital bulletin board and post everything you find interesting there . You basically have the option of creating and managing theme-based image collections (events, hobbies, interests and others) and you can like or re-pin other user’s content. The idea behind Pinterest is to connect everyone through the things they are interested in using the tool.
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By mia, on August 22nd, 2012%
by Yasmin Bendror
 Many small business owners ask me for a plan before starting up on social media marketing. They wonder if I have a “cheat sheet” that I use.
The answer is yes. I use a cheat sheet of sorts. This article describes what I do before I start any social media marketing presence with a client.
Before you launch a social media program, consider your time and resources. Social media marketing is a hungry animal; it needs to be continually fed. It demands substantial time in planning and everyday engagement to gain traction and momentum. As a small business owner, time is a valuable resource and if you cannot take this on, you will likely have to hire someone (full or part time), or outsource this. Spending 10 minutes a day will likely not cut it, no matter what anybody tells you.
1. Determine Your Ideal Customer
2. Identify Your Competitors
3. Find the Best Social Media Channel for your Business
4. Choose Appropriate Keywords
5. Use Compelling Content
6. Listen Carefully
7. Establish Social Media Profiles
8. Track Results
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By mia, on August 21st, 2012%
by Cristian Mezei
Nice list of marketing ideas. Please check it out. Following are a few examples I found especially interesting:
- Use the title and meta description tags as wise as possible. They are your best choice of avoiding supplemental pages. Try to make each page with it’s own unique title and description, and never repeat more than 20-25% of the title and description tags content on different pages. Use a limited number of characters (8-10) in the title tag, and put the most important of them, relevant to each page, at the beginning.
- Use a pen and paper. Always have an agenda and a pen around. Note down every crazy idea you think of … Most of us have truly great subjects to write about, but during the day we forget, busy with other issues. I always note my ideas. At the end of a day, I am amazed to see a 20 subjects list to write about, versus 1 or two that I can come up with at writing time.
- Effectively lead your readers to your MDA (Most Desired Action). That may be a newsletter box, a banner, an Adsense etc. Place your MDA right below comments, or in the left/right sidebars, or in the header. Experiment. Analyze. React.
- Try to associate your name or your website’s name/brand with the big boys on your niche. Regularly comment their articles (don’t spam) and from time to time make reviews of their post on your blog/website.
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By mia, on August 20th, 2012%
by Josh McCoy
 One of the many important on-page SEO elements is having a keyword-relevant URL for a given site page. I was going to say the widely used term “keyword-rich” but that is often misunderstood and usually results in the spamming of site URLs.
Here is an example of the very ugly URL for the Huffy Dual Suspension Mountain Bike my fictitious site is selling:
www.mccoysbikeshop.com/Products.aspx?Categoryid=94&Productid=72
This helps me to decipher that the URL structure should be:
www.mccoysbikeshop.com/bikes/mountain-bikes/name-of-page
I would hope that you would agree the latter URL is much easier to understand what the page will contain rather than my first URL example.
You also have to mind the time honored SEO commandments of page naming:
- All characters in lower-case.
- Hyphens (not underscores), and never, ever, ever separate by an empty space producing the “%20”.
- Stay away from any dynamic generation or session ID usage.
- Alleviate the usage of file extensions. If you move to a different scripting language down the road this will help to not have to 301 site URLs again.
- Page name changes require 301 permanent redirection from old URL to new URL. There is no such word as “delete” in the world of SEO. Pages don’t get trashed, they get redirected.
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By mia, on August 16th, 2012%
by Jakob Nielsen
This article presents the highlights: the very worst mistakes of Web design.
 1. Bad Search
2. PDF Files for Online Reading
3. Not Changing the Color of Visited Links
4. Non-Scannable Text
5. Fixed Font Size
6. Page Titles With Low Search Engine Visibility
7. Anything That Looks Like an Advertisement
8. Violating Design Conventions
9. Opening New Browser Windows
10. Not Answering Users’ Questions
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By mia, on August 16th, 2012%
by Anna Papadopoulos
Our customers are relying on our expertise. It’s our job to ask the right questions, understand what their short- and long-term goals are, and direct them appropriately. We should definitely be prepared to give them what they ask for, but we need to go beyond that. They don’t know what they don’t know. And what we don’t tell them may make all the difference in the long run. Remember, anyone can do the job, but few people will win their trust.
Furthermore, we should also focus on the details of customer service that make a huge impact: arrive and end on time, return calls, set expectations, and make sure your client feels valued. You should be doing the hard work, not the other way around.
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By mia, on August 13th, 2012%
by Santosh Mishra
Improving security of your WordPress blog is important if blogging is the main source of your earning. Hackers often target websites based on WordPress and attacks are generally carried out autonomously by malicious software bots.
1. Make Your Computer Malware Free
2. Have Trusted Hosting for Your Website
3. Use Your Email Id and Strong Passwords
4. Don’t Let Know Others ‘Version’ of Your WordPress Blog
5. Changing File Permissions is Important
6. Secure Your WordPress Database and WP-Admin
7. Secure WP-Includes
Some WordPress Security Plugins for Monitoring Your Blog
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By mia, on August 13th, 2012%
Today’s web-driven world makes it possible for companies large and small to create news simply by writing and publishing their own newsworthy content. The way to get started is by writing and sharing powerful press releases online. Thanks to the power of today’s social web, the elitism of public relations is gone. Nowadays, many organizations do their own PR. This article will explain how to write online press releases that build credibility, visibility and salability.
Press releases have a format that helps keep news pithy and powerful. Thanks to search engines, press releases are not just read by the media. Current and prospective customers, who want to be educated and empowered, also read them. Think of a press release as a way to spoon-feed news that is easily consumed. Here are the necessary components to writing an effective online press release.
Pick a Topic
7 Points to Address
Title
Quote
Body
Boilerplate
Links
Release Date and Press Contact
Distribution
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