LinkedIn Bumper Sticker-Keywords

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Optimize LinkedIn Profile for SEO

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Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Smartphone

Mobile Updates

The Xperia™ X10 is a revelation to anyone who would benefit from communication, entertainment and information brought together in one powerful, stylish device.

Starting with the popular Android operating system, the Xperia™ X10 has a wealth of features that make it a can’t-live-without gadget once you get it out of the box: 8.1-megapixel camera with face and smile detection, a lustrous 4” touchscreen, Timescape™ for displaying your communications and social networking, Mediascape’s intelligent media player, GPS, Wi-Fi, and an Android market with thousands of apps to make your X10 truly personal.

Altucher -- BlackBerry

iPod-Touch

iPod Touch

Two cameras, two views.

You can never have, or see, too much fun. That’s why iPod touch has two cameras: One on the front, which focuses on you. And one on the back, which focuses on what’s in front of you. FaceTime lets you switch between them at any time during a video call. Just tap a button. So if you’re people-watching at a coffee shop and you spot someone entertaining (or famous), your friend gets to see, too.

FaceTime on iPod touch lets you hang out, catch up and goof off with friends in an entirely new way. With just a tap, you can see what your friends are up to — literally. Witness a prank in action. Or watch your friend on the other side of the country crack up at your stories from last night — new iPod touch to new iPod touch or iPhone 4 over Wi-Fi. And all you need to get started is an Apple ID and an email account. You can choose an email account you already have or, if you prefer, set up a new one. You’ll never see fun the same way again.

URL-Should-Be-Short

Recently, the following happened to me: I wrote my regular weekly newsletter and posted it on my site. Since this was a longer Wordpress URL, like millions of other webmasters, I used a URL shortening service to make this link more usable and manageable.

I posted this shortened URL to Twitter and placed it in my weekly email posting... immediately I started getting emails from my subscribers and followers... the link doesn't work, you must have made a mistake.

Which can be easily done, but when I checked the link, I found that the shortening service was not working properly and giving the dreaded "Page Not Found" response. To compound the problem, I was using the Google URL shortener Goo.gl and since it was Google everyone assumed the mistake was on my part. I mean Google is Google.

In the past, I had been using bit.ly but had switched to Goo.gl, well - because it's Google. And everything works better with Google; this was the first time something I used with Google had not worked as planned. And it just wasn't my links, none of the links with Goo.gl were working. No big loss, unless you were linking your Black Friday & Cyber Monday traffic thru these shorteners. Ouch.

But this brings up the whole question of whether or not you should use a link shortener?

A URL link shortener works by redirecting your shorter link to the longer one you have entered into their database. If this is a permanent 301 redirect, then your SEO benefits should pass through to your longer link. No harm done. But if the shortening service uses a 302 temporary link then SEO is not passed thru to your longer link since the search engines only read this link as temporary.

All the top URL shorteners such as tinyurl, bit.ly and goo.gl use 301 redirects so they are SEO friendly, if they're working!

From this SEO perspective, there is no reason not to use these shortening services, besides they are great for sharing links and getting your links out there.

I only started using those link shorteners because of Twitter which only gives you 140 characters to make your point. These shorteners are also good for sharing and spreading your links around the web. However, in one way using a URL shortener is not a smart marketing move because you are giving up control of your link, putting it in someone else's hands, in this case Google's.

If it goes down, or they decide not to link to your content for some reason, you're in trouble. Same goes for bit.ly, they are in control of your links. Maybe it doesn't count so much if it is a general link, but if you a have an affiliate link in there, you can't change or alter it. Or just imagine, you have 10's, even 100's of thousands of these shortened links spread all around the web, bringing valuable SEO PR back to your site. Suddenly the service or company goes under and all your links disappear from the web overnight.

Web services and sites go bankrupt or change directions all the time, so the above scenario is not out of the question. If you're using and depending on these shortening services to deliver both traffic and SEO to your site, then you should ask yourself.

Is this really a wise move?

One of the unwritten rules of Internet Marketing, always control your links and route them through your own domain which you control. Especially if you place these links into viral ebooks, articles, videos... make sure you are linking through a URL on your site. This way you can easily alter the link if anything changes.

By using these URL shorteners, even one run by Google, you really are giving up control of your links. Granted, Google and Goo.gl will probably be around for the foreseeable future and until last week I didn't hesitate to use their shortening service. Now I am not so sure about using their service and question my usage of any of these shortening services in general, despite all the great benefits they give your online marketing.

If you do use one of these URL shorteners, make sure you completely check out the service and its history before you start using it. Actually, if you're going to use these shorteners, it would probably be a good idea to use three or four of them so that all your eggs/links won't all be in the one basket. Better safe than sorry.

Read more: http://www.site-reference.com/articles/General/Should-You-Use-URL-Shorteners.html#ixzz189EUMGv3

How to optimize images for SEO

SEO

Optimizing website images is critical for businesses in highly visual industries. But optimizing images for SEO can help with overall site performance for the rest of us, too. And who doesn’t want a boost in the search engines AND in web site usability?

If you’re an SEO specialist, you know all about the challenges of working with image-laden websites—you’ve seen the photographers and designers with Flash-only sites, artists and art galleries with almost no text on their pages, and so on.

Well, West Palm Beach photographer Amber Bishop has taken it upon herself to convert her Flash portfolio into an optimized image gallery, rebuilding her site in WordPress. (It’s still underway behind the scenes right now, but I recommend checking back later. She’s also working on a killer social media presence. Pretty impressive considering she’s doing it all herself.)

Talking with Amber about the challenges of image optimization inspired me to pull this post together, hoping it would be helpful to others—not just photographers—looking to get an edge online.

A few of the benefits of optimizing images for SEO:

Your images can show in image search as well as universal search. This can be just as great for product images and infographics as it is for an image-based portfolio (i.e., retailers’ products, restaurants showcasing culinary creations, hotels can show off rooms and views, camps can promote their activities, etc.)

Your website content can expand in the eyes of the search engines, as they’ll be able to “see” the pictures after optimization.

Users can expect a better experience on your site. (Faster loading times, support for different browsers, help for those using screen readers, etc.)

And, without further ado, here are the primary elements you need to tackle when you optimize your images for the search engines:

Optimizing the image itself

There seems to no consensus as to whether or not the actual file name helps with SEO. But all things equal, it may help, so rename it if it’s not meaningful to begin with. (If nothing else, it’ll help you recognize your files better.) Some advocate using the word “image” in the file name, since it’s more descriptive, and those who are searching for an image are likely to use that word in their search string. Hyphens instead of underscores are recommended between words (e.g. lakefront-view-image.jpg)

Be sure to use common image file types such as JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP. Some SEO experts suggest jpg is preferred. However Shari Thurow of Grantastic Designs recommends using JPEG file type for photos and GIF for all other graphic images due to how search engines interpret the different file types. Google suggests that you should place your images in one folder on your site, mydomain.com/images, for example.

Reduce the file size to help ensure your website pages load quickly. This helps with site performance and may also contribute to a well-optimized page for SEO, too. (Some SEO are noticing the search engines take page load time into consideration.) A couple services that let you do this are Yahoo’s Smush It and punypng.com.

SEO Smarty brings up image freshness, too. (In fact, SEW suggests re-uploading your images to keep them fresh).

Optimize the tags and content around the image

Title tag. The title tag is essentially the title for the image. It can also show as a tool tip when someone mouses over the image. Use keywords in a natural manner to give the image a title. (As with all other elements listed here, do not stuff with keywords!)

Alt attribute. The alt attribute is an alternative text description, which explains what the image is. Assistive technologies will read the alt attribute aloud to help vision impaired site users “see” the page. If a site user has images turned off, this text will appear in place of the image, and it also appears before the image loads if it’s taking some time. e-Consultancy postulates that Google seems to prefer descriptive text in sentence form for the alt attribute. I expect a user might prefer that, too.

If an image links to another page, be sure to use alt text that’s meaningful to the content of the page linked. (But this shouldn’t be a problem, as hopefully the image itself is relevant to the page linked, right? And, by the way, linking from images when possible is a great idea, since users naturally tend to click on them.)

Here’s a nifty image SEO checker tool that can help you take a look at how well the images on your site fit with Google’s recommendations for image optimization.

Captions. When I wrote about how to make your website more powerful by making it personal, I suggested using captions under your photos. In addition to helping support your message and drawing the reader’s eye, captions can also help with SEO. It seems that the search engines look at captions and other text surrounding a photo or image to help determine the subject.

Be sure to use a descriptive caption that will help the reader make sense of the image quickly. Keep in mind that captions may also show with the image in search results, helping draw the click.

Surrounding text. Place the image near the most relevant text on the page. The text surrounding the image may play a role in helping the search engines figure out what an image is about, so be sure your carefully optimized image is actually placed next to the paragraph it most closely relates to. (You’d be surprised how many times the images copywriters suggest to support specific points on a page wind up next to an irrelevant part of the page after the designer is through.)

Number of images on the page. The same as with written topics, you don’t want to dilute your page with a lot of different, unrelated images.

Some SEOs even suggest giving each picture its own page.

Promote your images. Use Flikr and other social media platforms to get additional exposure for your photos and graphics. Be sure to take advantage of all the extra content and labeling options available. Many let you input location, tag people, and so on.