I’m a big fan of Michael Martinez’s SEO Blog - SEO-Theory.com and just read a recent post: Architecting of Web Sites - Designing from a SEO Perspective. He included a time line detailing the history of Page Rank and I thought it would be a good idea to use Bee Documents Time Line program to make Mike’s time line a little bit easier to visualize. So here it is . . . it is a little big, so there is some scrolling involved:
Click Here to Download Full Page Rank History Timeline
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With the price of a barrel of oil reaching $143 as I write this post, I’m reminded of the constant whining and moaning the mass media and general population are doing about having to spend so much on gas! I’m not gonna lie, I bitched and moaned about it all weekend as I drove a total of 350 some-odd miles, but then I realized that it’s really not that bad at all. It could be a true “blessing in disguise!”
So, these are my 5 Reasons why $5 Gas doesn’t suck as bad as we think!
1) $5 Gas is Environmentally Friendly - All those tree-huggers must love what’s going on as their wishes of less cars, more carpooling and an overall smaller carbon footprint per person is coming true. By the way, find out your carbon footprint here with this widget I found!
2) $5 Gas Helps Us Lose Weight - It looks like $5 gas is starting to make people realize that walking a few blocks to the market isn’t really that bad. More and more people are either walking or riding their bike to help them get around. We haven’t seen this much calorie burning since the caveman days when we had to hunt and gather our own food!!!
3) $5 Gas Makes Us More Social - More and more cars are being left in the garage in favor of carpooling, trains and subways. It’s a great opportunity for you to meet new people and helps us realize that “hey, people aren’t as crazy and senile as I see on the news!”
4) $5 Gas Makes for Less Traffic Jams - With less people wanting to drive, there are going to be less cars on the road. Less cars means less traffic. I hope to gain at least ONE day back from the 2 weeks I lose sitting in traffic every day!
5) $5 Gas Improves Local Economy - I’m assuming most of us live in neighborhoods where we can walk down to the local farmer’s market or local restaurant for a night of entertainment. We can probably discover new neighborhood events going on like outdoor movies in the park. Bottom line, we’re not going to be venturing too far away from home anymore, so why not enjoy where we live?
Anything else you can think of? Feel free to comment below and let us know!
Also, don’t forget to check out this great LA Times article “Envisioning a World of $200 a Barrel Oil“
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So i’m surfing around on a hot as hell day in Southern California and I come across this featured article on LATimes.com - “Anne Hathaway vs. Jessica Alba” - and the first thought that comes to my head is “Damn! Jessica’s looking good!” . . . then my second thought is “Damn! Anne must be pissed cuz this is such an unfair competition!” . . . . then the third thought is “I’d hate to be Anne’s boyfriend right now!” because the dreaded “What do you think?” question is coming FOR SURE!
This is the Dark Angel vs. the Princess Diary!
Maxim’s Sexiest Woman Alive vs. World’s Biggest Smile!
Don’t get me wrong though! I think Anne Hathaway is a total hottie. Starting from Devil Wears Prada (Yes, I saw it . . . so what?) to the 150 “Get Smart” commercials and billboards i see every day, she’s really racing up MrGaryLee’s list of “Hot Girls who I actually think have a brain, too” list.
You can even look at the picture the Times decided to use. Anne looks like she got off a helicopter and Jessica looks like . . well . . Jessica friggin Alba! I know the Times is trying to increase their page views per visitor count, but damn, at least pick a better match up. Let me offer some suggestions:
Halle vs. Jada
Eva vs. J.Lo
Hu vs. Q
I could do this all day. Anyone want to help?
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For Wendy Piersall’s Crowd Sourcing post, I want to go over how to set up a simple landing page and email autoresponder program. I’m talking about properly setting up a landing page for your site to convert visitors to subscribers and then setting up your newsletter service to convert your subscribers into buyers much like this:
I’m going to show you what it takes to create the most basic of landing pages that have one of the highest conversion rates across the board for all products in this industry. These are the 3 main items you will need to create:
- Tagline - The Main Header Title that your visitor will read first
- Description - Additional information that helps support your Header Copy
- Email Subscription Field - Where your visitor will enter their email address
The Tagline is the most important part of this landing page as it is usually placed in the middle of the page and is the first thing that visitors see when they arrive at the site. For our Auction Tips site, here are the Header Taglines I’m considering to use:
- We’ll teach you how to conduct the right type of Research on eBay, instead of just wandering aimlessly around the internet
- Understand how the eBay Feedback system works and how to take advantage of the feedback system
- There’s nothing like word of mouth advertising and we’ll show you how Great Customer Service is one of the best Marketing Techniques out there.
The Description is located underneath the Tagline and should offer more detail on how the potential subscriber will benefit from subscribing to this newsletter.
As for the autoresponder service you should use for your email newsletter subscription, I recommend the only that I has worked for me:
- AWeber - Aweber has one of the best click through rates in the business as it protects subscribers from getting spammed. For example, you can’t just dump a list of emails you have into Aweber and then start sending email. They will ask the recipient first to verify that they have subscribed, then allow that person to receive any of your emails.
Aweber is extremely easy to use and has a wizard to help you generate the proper html code to place onto your landing page.
*To let you know, I am using affiliate links for aweber, but want you to know that I recommend this program because I use them for my work and if I can make a few bucks, then why not, right?*
There is an ongoing debate on how much content you should post on your landing page to achieve the highest conversion rates. From what I’ve seen, as long as you have a subscription field located in every “fold view,” the conversion rate will not be affected dramatically. What I mean by “fold view,” is that when your user is scrolling down your page, as one subscription field is being scrolled away, another subscription field will appear.
Once you have set up these 3 main items on your web site landing page, one of the most important things I recommend you set up is your Google Analytics and Google Web Optimzer accounts. They both come in the Google Adwords Account which is absolutely free.
If you do not know already, Google Analytics is a web analysis program that keeps track of key metrics of your website like conversion rates, traffic sources and number of clicks your site receives, just to name a few. Google Web Optimizer is used to test different parts of your website like the tagline and description by displaying each variation equally to avoid the troublesome task of weighing the effects of testing during peak and offpeak hours.
If you’d like to take a look at the completed product, please take a look at the site Auction 411.
Don’t worry about the graphics and all that extra stuff. If you’d like to add more things to the landing page, feel free, but just make sure to use the Google Optimizer to make sure that you know what kind of effect the image will have on your conversion rate.
Hope this helps. If you have any questions, please feel free to comment and I will reply to them as soon as possible.
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