Front-End Book

I have added three new features to this blog in order to give people who comment a little extra back whenever they take some time and add a comment to my postings.

1. Remove nofollow on comments

We are using the plugin NoFollow Free by  Michele Marcucci. That plugin removes the nofollow from author links in comments when a user has submitted x number of approved comments. On Front-End Book you must have 5 approved comments before the nofollow attribute is removed from author links.

2. Automagically add back link to commentors blog

CommentLuv by Andy Bailey lets you automagically add a link to posters last blog post if a feed is found on the site the athor of the comment has in its author link. We use CommentLuv on Front-End Book and when you comment and use an url where your blog is, CommentLuv will show last blog post.

3. Top list of commenters

To the right we are from today starting to list our best commenters with their name linked to their website and with the number of comments next to them.
Keep up the commenting!

Google Adsense Data in Google Analytics

Darren Rowse, ProBlogger.net, reports that Google Analytics will integrate Google Adsense data into the number one web stat tool. Interesting to see where you have your biggest earnings, and potentially it will be a lot easier to tweak and tune your Adsense ads.

Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld Episode 02

Another episode of the (in)famous ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates is out. I like it, some people complain that there is no product advertising, but I believe it is good brand building. See the commercial on YouTube or at Microsoft.com

SEO Black Hole

SEOBook.com has an interesting article about anomalies in the ratio between links in and links out on websites, saying that over optimized pages where link building has been good, but linking out, creates SEO black holes. I believe they are right, when they analyze and believe that in the future linking out will be more important in order to rank higher. Linking out is an altruistic way of showing other count as well, and I believe it suits well with how the web is evolving.

Long term, Science and Evaluation

As I wrote yesterday about how long term dedication will pay off, seomoz.org has a good article on the importance of evaluation, testing and long term stratgies when it comes to SEO work.

Amazon offers Video on Demand

Amazon has started to offer american customers video on demand. “With Amazon Video On Demand, customers can now instantly watch movies and television shows commercial-free on Macs or PCs.  With this new service, you can offer your customers the ability to enjoy instant playback of hit Hollywood movies and the latest TV shows. ”

Right now I am reading two books on the benefits of collective intelligence, and have just finished two others with focus on optimizing your website technically, in conversion rates, through usability and performance.

All these books are of interest to people who takes a scientific approach to developing and tuning the website he/she is running.

High Performance Web Sites by Steve Souders

Steve Souders covers all the different sections from YSlow on how to speed up your website. He shows that you will get most effect from putting your efforts into perfomance tune the frontend before working on backend tuning. I found this book really worth reading as it is spot on on every issue, and very focused on describing gains and implementation details for each and every single section of performance tuning on the frontend. I really recommend this book because I feel that for a serious website owner this book will pay itself in a couple of weeks with more generated sales and less used bandwidth.

Buy this book on Amazon.com

Website Optimization by Andrew B. King

Andrew B. King also focus on optimization and tuning of your website, but the focus is on SEO, PPC-campaigns and Conversion Rate Optimization. He also tries to write some chapters on performance tuning, but when it comes to frontend performance tuning I recommend Steve Souders book instead. This book is really good for people who would like to learn more about optimizing PPC-campaigns and start tracking and incread conversion rates. I recommend this book for those chapters, which are really good and have help me increase incomes on the websites I have PPC-campaigns for.

Buy this book on Amazon.com

Programming Collective Intelligence by Toby Segaran

Toby Segaran guides us in building smarter web applications based on Collective Intelligence. The book mixes theory and practice and shows how “easy” it is to actually create applications with community based product recommendation system and other intelligent solutions. I found this book interesting as a starting point on how to technically implement some of the web 2.0 features users have become used to use online.

Buy this book on Amazon.com

Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

Wikinomics is the book I have just started reading and it focus on how the community trend will change the enterprises. The focus is on how the masses create something of big value through collaboration. An interesting thing of course is the fact that a lot of people interact in larger communities building a greater value (Wikipedia, Youtube, Linux etc, etc) without getting paid, still the quality of the outcome often exceeds the alternatives built traditionally with labour and investment banks.

Buy this book on Amazon.com

What is the Long Tail? How can it help you? The term “long tail” was created in 2003 by author Chris Anderson in his book The Long Tail - Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. For online stores such as Amazon a big part of their income is from hard-to-find items. Because of the size of their inventory they are going to attract a huge number of customers searching for such items. The long tail turns out to be as important as the sales of best-sellers and other items that are of interest to bigger audience. So Long Tail refers to targeting smaller niche markets often. When a lot of smaller niche markets gets targeted, as in Amazons case, this tends to create a big impact on sales.

In Search Engine Optimization the Long Tail can be translated to content creation or targeting on uncompetitive keywords. When targeting a market where competition is fierce, I would suggest that you create a lot of content (user generated preferrably) that touch the subjects and keywords you would like to compete for. Lets say you would like to try to hit the number one spot for a keyword such as “mortgage”. This is not possible without one of three options:

- You have infinite resources of time to put into link building
- You have infinite resources of money for paying for link building
- You do a lot of white-hat SEO combined with some black-hat SEO

So in order to ever rank high for high competitive keywords you must start targeting the long tail. Maybe you will find that while climbing the SERP for your targeted keywords, you actually are doing well with your long tail rankings and this is where you should put your focus. Generating traffic to these types of items will benefit your rankings for more competitive keywords organically as you will get links to your long tail content, and if that content relates to your targeted keywords, you will climb the SERP for those as well. It is a win-win situation. And the key is content that is a niche of your main target. This type of content can be:

- Databases with content that relates to your premium keywords
- User generated content in forums, blogs and social networks
- Products

Using Long Tail keywords has many benefits. There is less competition involved with Long Tail keywords. It is a lot easier to warrant good page rank with the major search engines. I firmly believe that using Long Tail keywords is the way to go because chances are you are reaching the audience that you intended to reach. If you have a new blog, using Long Tail keywords should generate nice traffic for you.

SEO and Online Marketing are entities you have to catalyze using the correct front end architecture. When the different parts building up your front end architecture is built and utilized to its fullest extent, your SEO and Online Marketing will prosper.

What is conversion rate? Conversion rate is a measure of how well users converts from one state to another action. For example, if your website has 100 visitors and of those 100 visitors, 20 of them take some form of action, the action can be anything from generating a lead to making a sale. If 20 of the 100 visitors take action then you have a 20% conversion rate. Conversion rate marketing is basically the practice of trying to improve your marketing effectiveness. Conversion rates often are used as a measuring tool, these rates should let you know how well your site is doing. It also lets you know what is working and what is not working.

In order to widen the analysis, it is often necessary to see how different types of traffic rates when it comes to the specified conversion rates you are tracking. Typically you would at least identify and track these types of traffic:

• Organic (SEO-targeted keywords)
• Organic (Long Tail)
• Referring (Link Building)
• Referring (Affiliate Links)
• Direct traffic
• Campaigns

This will give you a good measure on what traffic converts the best and where you need to put effort into your conversions.

There are several online tools for measuring Conversion Rates. Google Analytics lets you specify Goals where you can easily, both graphically and by numbers, track your conversions on a very detailed level. I would suggest using Google Analytics for this kind of analysis.

Create Good Content

The best way to increase traffic to your website, is to offer good content or service. If people like what you are offering, they will come back to you and they will link to you. There is no single technique better than this one for generating traffic to your website. How many links do you think wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter or Firefox has? What they have all in common are great content, in different forms.

Search Engine Optimization

If the Search Engines cant find you, you dont exist. If you cant compete with wikipedia, facebook, twitter or firefox for good content, you have to use all the white-hat SEO-techniques you can find in order to optimize your website for search engines. This can be done both on-site and off-site.

Link Exchange

Contact people who run websites or blogs similiar to yours and offer them a link to their site in exchange for a link back to you. This is a good way to start building links organically to your website. When your website is getting more and more popular, more people will contact you with similar offers. Only link to sites that actually has something to do with what you are offering. In order to maximise the search engine optimization, make sure the links you get corresponds to the keywords you are targeting.

Affiliate programs

If you are selling something online. Start an affiliate program and track referrals and give some of your profit to the one who referred the customer to you. If your offer is ok, people will start talking about your affiliate program and start generating traffic to your site, hoping to convert a user and earn a dollar or two. I think more and more people will start using this as a way to drive traffic to their sites. As it is today affiliate programs are mostly used by big players.

Pay Per Click Search Advertising

There are a couple of big solutions today for PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising. The biggest name in the industry is of course Google Adwords. Yahoo and Microsoft also offers solutions for PPC-advertising. With PPC you either target a number of keywords and buy advertising space next to search result, or you buy advertising space on other sites that fits your targeted keywords and website content.

Banner Advertising

A lot of big blogs offers advertising possibilities for banners. Today the most commonly used format for banners on blogs are the square ones you often see above the fold on the right on blogs such as Problogger.net and alikes. The CPM for these type of banners differ a lot but I am sure you can find a good deal for such banner advertising if you look around the blogosphere. You can also post on webmaster forums such as forums.digitalpoint.com where you will find a big and alive community.

Social Networks

Use your contacts to drive traffic to your website. Use both your offline contacts and your online contacts. Typical examples on driving traffic to your site could be the following:

- Mail all your contacts (if they are part of the intended audience) about your website
- Create a Facebook Group that focus on your new website
- Sign up for MyBlogLog.com and promote your website as a commmunity
- Promote your website on MySpace
- Create a short (fun) movie and post it to YouTube.com
- Change your signature on all forums you are active on to include your new website
- Print a t-shirt with your websites url on and wear it to work and when shopping

Competitions and give-aways

Create a simple competition where you hand out a prize or two. The typical prize could be an ipod and a lifetime VIP-membership on your website. If you really want to build traffic, create a competition that acts as a link bait, making the contestants create natural links in forums and such. This is one of the most effective way to get links and traffic. But you have to have somewhere to announce the competition. I would suggest using competitions when you have started to gain an audience.

Link Baits

Link baits are powerful, but sometimes difficult to come up with. It is important to understand the concept. Link baits are content that gets people to link in numbers. A typical example could be someone naming their child Google, a woman throwing up on live TV, a funny letter, a mugshot or just something stupid. You get the picture? Link baits are important but also a question of timing and luck. Typical content that can be considered link baits is:

- Top 10 lists
- Articles with authority that helps people on a matter where there are a lot of interest
- A funny picture, story or movie
- Unique Content such as screenshots from new software or screencaps from upcoming movies
- Something cool or astounding

Link Building

Link building incorporates a lot of different techniques and approaches. This is long-time job and something that builds traffic long-term. But done right it is going to make a huge difference for your traffic. Link building can contain these approaches:

- Article submissions
- Directory submissions
- Social Network submissions
- Commenting on blogs
- Add link to footer in forums you are active in

Buy Traffic

There are a lot of different solutions available out there for buying traffic, from targeted traffic from adwords to people redirecting to your site from domains no longer in use. As you can see the quality of the traffic may differ a lot and you have to take this into account when thinking of buying traffic. But watch out, dont let good offers fool you, a lot of scams exists out there, if someone is selling 10000 unique visitors for $10 it is probably too good to be true.

In order to maximise the profits from the increased traffic, it is important that you know your front end architecture. Front-end architecture covers a vast range of topics within web development, seo and other areas.

There are several online tools you can use for SEO. SEO tools are provided to help increase to visibility and popularity of your website as well as increase the PageRank. Be sure to browse around the internet for free tools before spending any cash. Let’s take a look at a few of these freebies:

Google PageRank Checker

People working in SEO are interested in PageRank, because they can use PageRank as a measure to the results of their optimization for a client. The typical way to measure it is to use he Google Toolbar that shows a page current PageRank. If you are not able to install such tools, online tools are available, one example is the Google PageRank Checker from prchecker.info

Wordtracker.com - provides search results

Free Keyword Suggestion Tool from Wordtracker. Primarily Wordtracker offers subscription plans to their online tools. Monthly subscriptions starts at $59. They offer a Full Money Back Guarantee.

Keyword list combinator

Sometimes you want to cover a lot of different keyword combinations, in example when buying adwords. There are plenty of online tools for combining keywords to get a long list, so you dont have to do it manually. One example is SEOPartner.com who offers a tool for combining keywords. Another one is found at related-pages.com

Broken Links Checker

Broken links (both internal and external) is bad for your search- and user-centered quality. Make sure you use some tool for this. W3C has a link checker for this. W3C Broken Link Checker

Page Optimization Scales and Domain Stats

A lot of SEO-tools find online is measurements on how you rank in comparision to your competition. This is one of the most interesting scales you will use. Webconfs has a tool to use for Domain Stats.

Google Webmaster Tools

Add your site to Google Webmaster Tool and track your position on Google, all links to and from your page. This is a must-have-online-seo-tool.

Site Comparision and Analysis Tools

Use Alexa.com or Compete.com to get a measure on how well your site is compared to the competition when it comes to traffic. This is a good tool to see the effects of your marketing or SEO-campaign efforts.

Google XML Sitemaps Tools

Google, Yahoo and MSN supports sitemap xml structures, which is one way to tell the bots about all your pages in your site, and with what frequency you are updating those pages. This is very good to have in order to help the bots to index your whole page without having to wait for the bots to crawl your site. XML-Sitemaps.com offers a solution for generating such xml-files online.

Add to this, hundreds of different tools online for Search Engine Optimization, just look at this listing of SEO-tools over att SEOChat.com. Now you know the tools! Start optimizing.

Also, be sure to use free links there are many ways to get free relevant links back to your site, they just take time and perseverance. Whether you contact site owners directly, create affiliations with relevant industry groups, or create and post articles on other sites - they’re all valuable additions to your SEO plan.

Please contact me with more free online tools for SEO that you use on a professional basis, and I will update this list with your links. Or make a comment below.

Happy optimizing!

What is viral marketing?

Viral marketing is another outlet for advertising. It is highly effective. It has somewhat of an domino affect. Most viral marketers target individuals who have outstanding networking potential, in hopes that the product or message will be passed along.

Here is a brief example of viral marketing:

Let’s say I am marketing my new video. I am going to give out 3 free copies. I am giving my video to those who I feel have excellent marketing skills. I am generally hoping that those 3 individuals will praise my video enough to pass along the word to a few of their friends. In other words, viral marketing encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily.

Link building can be very time consuming, frustrating and even confusing. However, I feel as though that there is no way around it. Ultimately, it is still the number 1 source to earn high rankings.

Below I am going to provide 5 good ways to build links:

1. Build a top 10 list for a certain niche or category.
2. Create a tip list. These are very easy to link to.
3. Provide comprehensive content so that your message is easy to spread
4. Submit articles to article directories. Write original content that does not appear anywhere on the internet, then submit to multiple directories. Repeat this until you see results.
5. Trade articles with other webmasters

Yahoo has gone into release-mode after the Microsoft-bid. Maybe they are trying to convince the shareholders that they have gained momentum and do not need Microsoft. I do not know, but they have released some interesting news the latest weeks including Yahoo Buzz, Yahoo Video, Yahoo UI 2.5 and now the Open Search Platform is announced.

The Open Search Platform will open up for site owners to enhance the search result experience.

[The Platform] will consist of a set of APIs that allow third parties to modify search results on Yahoo by adding images, structured data and additional deep links

The possibility to add dynamic data to an item is appealing to a publisher, and if used wisely this feature may actually increase the user experience. In contrast to Google Subscribed Links, Open Search features will be turned on by default for users, with extra features available opt-in.

google

SEO, search marketing and online marketing is one part of the front end architecture and we focus on giving you more articles within that area on The Frontend.