83.3 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in February 2013

ComScore Video Metrix reported that 178 million Americans watched 33 billion online content videos in February, while the number of video ad views reached 9.9 billion. Is this up, down or sidewise from previous reports?

Because comScore introduced three important methodological changes to its estimates with the release of the August 2012 U.S. Video Metrix data, it’s not possible to do a year-over-year comparison of data.

But, in August 2012, all-time high of 188 million U.S. Internet users watched 37.7 billion online content videos, while video ad views totaled 9.5 billion. So, it appears that 5.6 percent fewer Americans are now watching 14.2 percent fewer online content videos, but 4.2 percent more video ads than they were seven months ago.

Does this make sense?

For starters, there are 31 days in August and only 28 days in February. And Americans may watch more video during the summer than they do during the winter.

Nevertheless, 83.3 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in February 2013, compared to 87.3 percent of the U.S. Internet audience who viewed online video in August 2012. And the duration of the average online content video was 5.6 minutes and the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes in February 2013, while the duration of the average online content video was 6.7 minutes and the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.

So, marketers will want to watch closely to see what happens when comparable data becomes available for August 2013. Then, and only then, will we know if online video viewing has hit a wall, or if we’ve merely entered a new era where the market moves sideways.

Either way, it’s clear that a rising tide is no longer lifting all the old boats. There are winners and losers in the latest data.

In February 2013, Google sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube, ranked as the top online video content property with 150.7 million unique viewers, followed by Facebook with 61.2 million, VEVO with 49.5 million, NDN with 46.3 million, Yahoo sites with 43.6 million, Viacom Digital with 39.1 million, Microsoft sites with 36.7 million, and AOL with 35.3 million.

More than 33 billion video content views occurred during the month, with Google sites generating the highest number at 11.3 billion and Facebook reaching its all-time high of 558 million.

Back in August 2012, Google/YouTube ranked as the top online video content property with 150.2 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo sites with 55 million, Microsoft sites with 53.7 million, VEVO with 49.3 million, Facebook with 47.7 million, AOL with 45.7 million, Viacom Digital with 38.7 million, and NDN 37.5 million. Nearly 37.7 billion video content views occurred during the month, with Google sites generating the highest number at 13.8 billion, followed by AOL, Inc. with 725 million.

In other words, Facebook is up 13.5 million, NDN is up 8.8 million, Google sites are up 0.5 million, Viacom Digital is up 0.4 million, and VEVO is up 0.2 million – despite the shorter month and different season – while Microsoft sites are down 17.0 million, Yahoo sites are down 11.4 million, and AOL is down 10.4 million. So, the obvious winners are Facebook and NDN, and the clear losers are Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL.

In February 2013, Americans viewed 9.9 billion video ads, with Google sites ranking first with its all-time high of 2.2 billion ads. BrightRoll Video Network came in second with 1.6 billion, followed by Hulu with 1.4 billion, and Adap.tv with 1.4 billion. Time spent watching video ads totaled 3.8 billion minutes, with BrightRoll Video Network delivering the highest duration of video ads at 859 million minutes.

In August 2012, Americans viewed 9.5 billion video ads, with each of the top 4 video ad properties delivering more than 1-billion video ads. Google sites ranked first with more than 1.7 billion ads, followed by BrightRoll Video Network with 1.4 billion, Adap.tv with 1.2 billion, and Hulu with 1.1 billion. Time spent watching video ads totaled 3.5 billion minutes, with BrightRoll Video Network delivering the highest duration of video ads at 717 million minutes.

So, Google Sites is up by 0.5 billion ads, Hulu is up 0.3 billion, BrightRoll Video Network is up 0.2 billion, and Adap.tv is up 0.2 billion. But comScore defines “video ads” as streaming-video advertising only and do not include other types of video monetization, such as overlays, branded players, or matching banner ads.

So, the overall market for online video is up for some content properties and down for others. It’s also moving sideways. It is worth noting that comScore’s doesn’t include Twitter’s Vine app, which lets marketers create and share short looping videos that are six seconds long.

Here’s what Mashable was able to do with Vine to celebrate Pi Day.

So, don’t get lulled into thinking that the online video market has plateaued. It may just be moving sideways.

Owner

SEO-PR

•Articles•Contact•Subscribe•@gregjarboe•LinkedIn

Greg Jarboe is president of SEO-PR, which provides search engine optimization, public relations, video marketing, and social media marketing services. He's the author of "YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day," a faculty member at Rutgers University and Market Motive, as well as a frequent speaker at SES conferences.

 

Web Design Workshop #33: Les Remparts | Webdesigntuts

Web Design Workshop #33: Les Remparts | Webdesigntuts

Web Design Workshop #33: Les Remparts

Ian Yates on Mar 2nd 2013 with 42 Comments

Web Design Workshop is our regular community project where we ask readers to submit their work for your friendly, constructive criticism. It’s the perfect way to learn, offer opinions and have your own work critiqued! This week, a bit of self-interest on my part..

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Rules of Engagement

Play nice! We deliberately select work which will benefit from advice and pointers. If you can’t be constructive in your comments, don’t. Other than that, offer any advice you can give. Feel free to link to examples and images which back up your points.

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The Design

Big screen..

..little screen

I launched this hotel website today so there’s a very good chance you’ll find mistakes! But who better to test it out and give feedback on the design than the global army of designers I deal with on a daily basis?!

The website needed to be simple, clear, responsive, atmospheric and free from nonsense. I don’t have many photos available at the moment, but they’ll be uploaded and refined once the weather here in Europe gets better. The site itself runs on WordPress, with WPML providing the localization (great for synchronizing content in multiple languages). Further down the line, I might well include more functionality such as actual room availability and online payment, plus I’d like to sort out some proper branding when I have time. Come on then – give it to me straight… Ian Yates

Looking for constructive criticism on your own work? Submit it for a workshop – most but not all submissions are published. Be patient though, there could be a queue..

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Security Awareness Training

The need for security awareness training is more important than ever. Every company that plans to stay competitive must make this type of training mandatory for every employee. The reason for a stringent and complete training program and the need for every employee to be aware of security is the surprising direction from which security threats may come. The security threat that companies face comes as much from within as it does from outside corporate spying.

Definition of the Direction of Threats

The threat from outside is usually better understood by company management than the threat from within. The internal threat is not just from unhappy employees. The employee who is unaware and untrained is the biggest threat. Employees who have not undergone security awareness training hurt the company by visiting Internet sites that have active malware. They often respond to emails that are phishing attacks and often keep their login and password information stored in an unprotected manner. Some uninformed employees may never think of the damage they do when discussing company projects in social gatherings, both on company time and outside the confines of the company facilities.

Why the Level of Training Intensity Must Be High

The only way to ensure that employees are not damaging the company, inadvertently or knowingly, is to set up company mandatory security training awareness programs. Every existing employee must be required to take this training when the program is started. New employees should be required to undergo security awareness training before starting their new job. This training should also require successful completion of a test to ensure a working knowledge of this vital topic has been received and understood. Update training should be required on a recurring basis as well.

Training should be much more than an hour or two of classroom training. The company needs its own website that is dedicated to the security awareness of the company. Each employee should receive random hints and reminders by email, and posters on security should be posted in prominent places throughout the company facilities.

In this manner every company can have an increased level of confidence that each employee is knowledgeable of company policies, procedures on the matter of security for any information relating to the personnel, and products or projects of the company. This type of security awareness training is the only way that employees will know, understand and put to use best practices expected by company management.

Getting Started with Security Awareness Training

At the beginning, if the company does not have personnel trained in the curriculum for this training, it may be desirable for select employees to attend outside training in order to learn what is needed. By having the company's own personnel return to oversee this type of training sets the tone about the seriousness of this type of training.

Fireworks in the Real World: Wireframing | Webdesigntuts

Fireworks in the Real World: Wireframing | Webdesigntuts: Fireworks isn’t a dedicated wireframing application, but its familiar interface, templates and extensions make it the perfect contender for being your wireframing tool of choice.

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For Dealers, Facebook should be about what's Happening in the Real World

For Dealers, Facebook should be about what's Happening in the Real World:

One of the most important lessons you can learn in Facebook marketing for your business is that you can have a much greater impact on your performance online through Facebook by focusing on what’s happening in the real world. Facebook is virtual, but that doesn’t mean it has to focus on the virtual world. Make it real.
If your business is out there doing things in the real world, you have plenty of potential Facebook content to post on your page (as well as you other social media pages and profiles). Do you participate in charities and local events? Do you sponsor a little league team? Do you have a monthly meeting at a local restaurant?
What about your employees? Do they go on trips or do amazing things like skydiving? Does your team have a bowling league? Does your service manager sing in a country western band on Saturdays?

There are plenty of things that we do in the world that aren’t necessarily associated with business. Finding the business posts is an easy task if you’re keeping your eyes, ears, imagination, and smartphone open. When you really get into it, humanizing the business by sharing things that are happening in and out of the store through your activities and employee activities is crucial. You’re business is made of people. On social media, people love other people. That’s what we really want to see on social. Take advantage of this by getting your content through your people.
This is where the people themselves can get involved. They don’t just have to be the content creators with their actions. They can be the content finders. They can brainstorm, make lists, and come up with things that they’re doing in the real world that make sense to get on social media. The content is out there. You just have to focus on people.

Why You May Be Losing Followers

An often regurgitated, un-credited tweet states that ‘Twitter makes me want to have a drink with people I’ve never met and Facebook makes me want to throw drinks over people I know’. A great analogy, I’m sure you’ll agree. Wouldn’t it be great if we could keep it true?

Type ‘how to use Twitter’ into your favourite search engine and you will be bombarded with low quality articles written by self-proclaimed ‘social media gurus’ that claim to know the secret to limitless followers, earning potential for your business or some other golden-egg-laying goose for ‘winning’ Twitter.

If you ask me, it’s all snake oil, as often these so-called experts appear to work with a ‘do what I say, not what I do’ attitude, offering advice that warns you not to do things like over share the same link, but if you follow them, you end up with your timeline bombarded with exactly the automated, impersonal, spammy tweets they were down-talking and steering you away from.

So forget social media ‘gurus’ and their SEO pieces, here are the common Twitter behaviours that repel actual, genuine, non-bot, got-the-app-on-their-phone-and-check-it-regularly users that may explain why your unfollow-rate is irritatingly high.

Bio

Is yours empty? Not follow for you then. Do you have #teamfollowback or any variation of it in your bio section, there is no chance I (or any self-respecting grown tweeter) will be going anywhere near that follow button. ANYWHERE NEAR IT. It’s follow-poison. Most people on Twitter need a reason to follow someone- witty updates, useful links, conversation. A hashtag demanding a follow? Nah.

Same if you fill it with symbols rather than words. You may think those hearts and squiggles are ‘cute’ but they’re not. Honest. Unless you’re thirteen. In which case- haven’t you got some homework to be doing?

Use your bio to tell us a little about you- what you do, your interests, ANYTHING- that’s what it’s there for.

Tweets

I love me some football (that’s soccer, not the one where only one player on each side is allowed to kick the ball… Crystal Palace, thanks for asking) but a little while ago, I had to unfollow every footballer whose account I kept track of. The reason? People begging for retweets. I follow zero ‘celebrities’ for the same reason. Seriously, people- when your favourite singer/actor/athlete does retweet your message, their followers just see your cloying, sycophantic plea… Yay? I must be missing something...

Do you find yourself writing loads of updates that stretch across multiple tweets in order to tell a long story or express a strong opinion? How about writing a blog post and sharing it in a single tweet? After all, that’s what blogs are for.

I’ve also noticed, over the last year or so, that it has become popular to finish every tweet with two or more hashtags. But not regularly used hashtags, like #amwriting or #smallbiz, just something random. Want an example? Here’s one: I could eat a hamburger right now #feelinghungry #ilikeburgers

WHY? Just because you can use hashtags, doesn’t mean you have to every time. Combine these with inane updates about food, being bored or reality television and you have my cursor heading for that unfollow button. I know I’m not the only one.

Automated Tweets and DMs

If I follow you and I receive an automated DM (direct message) mechanically welcoming me but aggressively directing me to your website at the same time, I’m not sure our e-relationship will ever get off the ground.

Maybe you have connected your account to an RSS feed that automatically tweets news stories featuring a few carefully selected key words. A tweet every few hours is great, I may even click a few and have me a read, but one every few minutes and the only clicking I’ll be doing will be to remove your presence from my timeline. You know the phrase ‘everything in moderation’? It still stands.

Follow-to-follower ratio

When I get a new follower, the first thing I do is click on their profile and have a good ol’ snoop… Read the bio, have a look at some recent tweets- the usual. But what’s that? You follow in excess of 95678 accounts and have a suspiciously similar number of followers? Hmmm.

I’m no detective, but something tells me you’re not following me for my witty observations and obscure YouTube finds…

So there you have it. No promises, no boasts; just a few suggestions for retaining followers that want to engage, rather than just get their follower numbers up. Each to their own and all that, but wasn’t social interaction the reason sites like Twitter were created in the first place?

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8 bookmarklets no blogger should be without

8 BOOKMARKLETS 

I’m all for shortcuts. Especially on the internet. And this is why I love bookmarklets: they’re like little pieces of internet magic that sit on your tool bar. You can be browsing a site, thinking, “I like that/I want that/I need to save that for later” and voila! In one click, it’s done (and you’ve got more time for blogging).

To use them, simply visits the site below, and drag and drop the text link or image into your browser’s toolbar and you’re halfway there!

 1. Src Image

What it is: Src Image is a bookmarklet that works with Google’s image search to help you find the original source of a picture so that you can credit it correctly before publishing it on your blog. Great when you want to track down a picture to seek the owner’s permission to use it first! Added bonus: It’ll also find very similar-looking images if they’re available.

2. Pinterest

What is it: Ahh, Pinterest. You (good) time-wasting, brain-exploding with creativity, drool-worthy website.  Seriously, can you remember what life was like before Pinterest? I can’t. Hence, the Pinterest bookmarklet makes adding images to the site as easy as it can get. Just so long as you have the copyright holder’s permission (of course!). Find iFabbo on Pinterest here.

3. Wirify

What is it: If you’re into checking out other blog and website designs, and using them to inspire your own blog’s layout, Wirify will help you make a wire frame (which is basically an outline of where all the elements on the page sit) so you can see it in a bare-bones kind-of way. Good for communicating to designers how and where you’d like things on your blog to sit! Get the Wirify bookmarklet here.

4. Whishin

What is it:  Whishin is a free-to-use bookmarking website to help create your ultimate shopping lists. They can be public or private lists and friends can contribute to them if you, ahem, whish! And yes, the Whishin bookmarklet helps you easily add to these lists as you surf your fave sites!

Bonus: iFabbo will be conducting a LIVE Whishin workshop on May 3. (USA at 11.30am PDT / 2.30pm EDT, UK at 7.30pm GMT). Click here for more details.

5. Instapaper

What is it:  Intsapaper has been a love of mine for quite a while. It’s a website that basically lets you save articles for later, in very minimal fashion, and its iPad and iPhone app means you’ve always got a collection of articles to read on the go. Use the Instapaper “Read later” bookmarklet to add to the list – it only takes a second and that really interesting post you found can be instantly saved for later.

6. Spreeder

What is it: Spreeder is time-saving gold on those occasions when you have to read something long and boring (e.g: terms of use, conditions) or lengthy emails that you keep putting off. You simply highlight the text you need to read, click the Spreed! bookmarklet and hit play (or “p”). Before you know it, you’re reading the copy at 600 words (or whatever rate you set) per minute!

7. Link Ninja

What is it: Have you heard of rewardStyle? It’s a monetization platform for fashion, beauty and lifestyle bloggers. Applications are needed to take part in this clever venture (created by a fashion blogger – so she really knows her stuff!) but once you’re signed on, you’ll discover how easy it is to be rewarded for sharing style products you love with your readers. The site includes the Link Ninja – a bookmarklet that does, well, I won’t give it away… you’ll have to apply and try it for yourself!

8. BO.LT

What is it:  If Pinterest, Instapaper and Visibli were morphed into one, they’d form Bo.lt. Bo.lt is like a bookmaring site (like Pinterest) that saves a list of pages or articles you like (like Instapaper) and provides you with a branded panel when sharing links (like Visibli). Of course, it’s got a bookmarklet that means you can do all three of these things with the click of one mouse. Try it and see!

A reminder about selling links that pass PageRank

A reminder about selling links that pass PageRank: Webmaster level: all



Google has said for years that selling links that pass PageRank violates GOOGLE quality guidelines. We continue to reiterate that guidance periodically to help remind site owners and webmasters of that policy.



Please be wary if someone approaches you and wants to pay you for links or "advertorial" pages on your site that pass PageRank. Selling links (or entire advertorial pages with embedded links) that pass PageRank violates our quality guidelines, and Google does take action on such violations. The consequences for a linkselling site start with losing trust in Google's search results, as well as reduction of the site's visible PageRank in the Google Toolbar. The consequences can also include lower rankings for that site in Google's search results.



If you receive a warning for selling links that pass PageRank in Google's Webmaster Tools, you'll see a notification message to look for "possibly artificial or unnatural links on your site pointing to other sites that could be intended to manipulate PageRank." That's an indication that your site has lost trust in Google's index.



To address the issue, make sure that any paid links on your site don't pass PageRank. You can remove any paid links or advertorial pages, or make sure that any paid hyperlinks have the rel="nofollow" attribute. After ensuring that no paid links on your site pass PageRank, you can submit a reconsideration request and if you had a manual webspam action on your site, someone at Google will review the request. After the request has been reviewed, you'll get a notification back about whether the reconsideration request was granted or not.



We do take this issue very seriously, so we recommend you avoid selling (and buying) links that pass PageRank in order to prevent loss of trust, lower PageRank in the Google Toolbar, lower rankings, or in an extreme case, removal from Google's search results.

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The Definitive Guide to Google Analytics for SEO Professionals

The Definitive Guide to Google Analytics for SEO Professionals:
by Jayson DeMers

Google Analytics makes it possible to track SEO efforts, and has been used by businesses the world over to track ROI on internet marketing. The new Google Analytics platform has been a steep learning curve for some SEO professionals, especially those who were accustomed to the classic layout. However, the "new" analytics comes with more than just a confusing layout. It also has additional features that make it easier than ever to track ROI from internet marketing and SEO efforts.

New Layout and Features

The new Google Analytics layout has an orange bar with these main tabs running inside it: Home, Account Selection Drop-Down, Reporting, Customization, Admin, and Help. The drop-down shows the current account/site that is being displayed. The default report shown in the main screen is the Audience Overview, which gives overall visits, bounce rate, pageviews, etc. for the past 30 days. 

The best
thing about the new Google Analytics is how
much it can be customized.
For SEO professionals, the audience overview metrics are certainly important,
but it's possible to create a custom dashboard that includes these metrics, as
well as top keyword phrases and traffic referrals. This would give a good
"at-a-glance" view of the top metrics that gauge the influence of SEO
efforts.

The default
dashboard metrics include new visits, unique visitors, visits (by location),
visits by browser, avg. visit duration & pages per visit, goal completions,
bounce rate, and revenue. These can be moved, deleted, or edited by hovering
over the title of each section. To add a new section, select "Add
Widget" at the top of page. This customized dashboard can also be emailed
on a scheduled basis (weekly, monthly, etc) or exported via PDF.

It's also
important to note that the dashboard and report customizations are only saved
for the current account (as shown in the drop-down menu). When a new or
different account is selected, the options are reverted back to default unless
they have been customized as well.

When editing
a widget on the dashboard via a pop-up window, you can choose how they are
displayed: timeline, table, bar, pie, or metric. Each type has a variety of
different options.

New Reporting Metrics

Some of
customizations available on the widgets and dashboard can also be seen on the
new reports via the Advanced Segments section. This allows the user to add
additional reporting segments, such as new visitors or search traffic, to the
current report.

The new
reports also offer additional, more specific segments that weren't available in
previous versions of Google Analytics. These advanced metrics give SEOs a
better overall view of the actions people take on a website or blog.

For instance,
the improved Visitors Flow chart under Audience Reports gives an easy, overall
view of enter and exit pages (designated as Drop Offs), as well as what users
do in between. 

Monitoring
this chart can help identify key pages where users are dropping off as a hint
that the page needs to be re-worked, either through content, call to action, or
other marketing strategies. For example, if many users drop off after a package
description page, then the package copy may be too confusing or the packages
themselves may not be what users are looking for. Experimenting with different
outcomes can help identify the issue. 
Another new feature of Google Analytics that will help SEO professionals is Cost Data Import, where users can see performance data for paid marketing channels, including non-Google paid search. Users can compare channels, keywords, and campaigns.

Social Media Reporting
The worlds of social media and search engine marketing continue to collide, especially because Bing and Google display social links in their search results. Google's new section on social media metrics makes it possible to see which social networks (which also include commenting systems like Disqus) are resulting in the most site referrals. Users can also set up a cost analysis by configuring conversion goals that determine social value.

Besides the
referring social network, Google also gives information, when possible, on the
user who posted the message and link, as well as trackbacks, which are links to
pages on a website. This can be especially useful for referrals from external publishers as a result of guest blogging efforts. The social reporting section also includes reports on
plugins and an additional Visitors Flow chart with the originating social
network listed as the first step. By finding out which pages and content are
attracted to social networking users, SEOs should better craft their content
strategy for pages that social users visit most. This may include seasonal
campaigns and giveaway pages.

Real-Time Statistics

One of the new
reporting features that's exciting for SEO professionals is real-time
analytics, which tracks live traffic, top active pages, and top keywords. It
also shows top locations and pageviews per minute. This type of data is insightful
for company executives who want to understand the real-time impact of a marketing
campaign, and for SEOs who want an instant view of traffic based on new
content, events, or campaigns. 

Search Phrases & Traffic Sources

The "real-time
top keywords" is a great metric to track for SEOs, as well as the overall
search phrases from a set time period, such as the last month or week. This is
a classic feature of Google Analytics that continues to be especially valuable
for SEOs.

Utilizing the
Search Engine Optimization report under Traffic Sources in the Standard Reports
sidebar, users can see the top sections of queries for a set time period.
Checking this regularly can help authors come up with blog post or content
ideas, as well as better optimization of paid search campaigns. For instance, if
there are repeated queries for a service that a company website doesn't have a
content page for (but currently offers), this should be added. Comparing the
current date range to the one previous (e.g. the last 30 days with the 30 days
before it) also gives SEO professionals a good idea of the demand of queries
for specific keywords.

The Traffic
Sources Overview and Referral reports are also a classic feature of Google
Analytics that continues to be crucial. SEOs can see what percentage of their
website traffic is from organic search traffic, paid campaigns, direct traffic,
or referral traffic (e.g. other websites). Drilling down in the referral
sources can also display the specific page that users came from.

Incorporating
a strategy that includes the new features of Google Analytics, such as social
networking, real-time data, and cost analytics, as well as the features SEO
professionals know and love, such as traffic sources and keyword queries, those
in the search industry can find a wealth of information about its websites
users and their behavior. Tracking these patterns and implementing trends into existing
SEO strategy and practices will lead to better customized on-page and social
SEO that is more effective and yields higher ROI.

Demystifying Dynamic Search Ads: Set-Up & Targeting

Demystifying Dynamic Search Ads: Set-Up & Targeting:

In Part 1 of the Demystifying Dynamic Search Ads series, we discussed the pros & cons of incorportating DSAs into your paid search strategy.  Now that you’ve decided that Dynamic Search is something you would like to put to use, we can discuss the actual campaign set up and creating what Google refers to as auto-targets.  We’ll also cover exclusions and run through a few examples of common ways DSAs are being put to use.

Dynamic Search Campaign Set-Up:

To create a Dynamic Search campaign simply begin by building a new search network campaign as you normally would, but when you reach the “Type” settings, select the Dynamic Search Ads setting to enable targeting based on your website content:

Continue selecting your campaign settings – device, location, language, and bidding and budgeting options - as you normally would until you reach the Ad extensions portion.  In the Ad extensions section you will select your website.  This tells Google AdWords which of your web properties you would like to use for targeting:

The AdWords system will then prompt you to create your first ad.  Remember, you only specify the first and second description lines, and AdWords will take  care of the rest (that’s the primary benefit of using DSAs after all):

After you’ve written ad copy and clicked “Save” you’re campaign is set-up and ready to go live. Campaign creation is very simple and straightforward. There is very little difference from a typical campaign set up.

Dynamic Search Auto-Targets & Exclusions

Now that we have a live campaign, we are ready to move on to the good stuff – creating auto-targets.  An auto-target represents a subset of pages on your website.  By default, Google AdWords automatically opts ALL of your website’s indexed pages into serving in your Dynamic Search campaign (remember: only indexed pages are eligible for ad serving).  As a best practice it is suggested that you create tightly-themed auto-targets, as well as exclusions, to build a targeted campaign structure.
To create an auto-target you will select any combination of up to three attributes to define an auto-target.  The attributes include: your website’s category classification, page URL, page title, and page content.  Visit the auto-targets tab within your campaign to select your criteria:

Google AdWords will attempt to automatically assign your website or pages with a category, but like the other three attributes you can have full control of these values from a web design standpoint within your pages’ HTML.  Google suggests using breadcrumbs to manually control how categories are assigned.

To create a dynamic search exclusion, click “+Exclusions” to expand the section.  You will then build the DSA exclusion in the exact same manner that you would with an auto-target.  Exclusions will represent a group of page that you DO NOT want the AdWords system to serve Dynamic Search Ads for:

Plus, don’t forget about PPC’s lifelong friend, the negative keyword.  We can still use negative keywords just like we would in any other search campaign to block specific queries from serving your DSAs.  This gives you even more control over how your ads are being served!

Common Dynamic Search Ad Uses

To cap off the discussion, let’s briefly go over a few common reasons that you might want to use DSAs in your account.  There is plenty of reason to incorporate DSAs in your paid search strategy, but these are by far among the most popular uses:

• If you have a very niche product that doesn’t see a lot of interest or traffic
• If you have products or services that are frequently discounted or put on sale
• If you have a huge inventory of products
• If you just want to see what types of searches Google will match your pages to
• If your pages or products undergo frequent changes that are difficult to keep up with

There are also a number of pages that you might want to exclude from DSAs serving depending on your particular needs:

• Exclude pages featuring products that are no longer in stock or have limited stock
• Exclude pages from your blog
• Exclude pages from your help pages, privacy policy, etc.
• Exclude your home page or top level pages

I hope that this blog series will help ease your mind as you consider including Dynamic Search Ads in your paid search accounts.  They aren’t a perfect fit for every web property in need of advertising, but I would certainly give them a shot.  As with most PPC tools, they are worth testing, and when used properly, can be a powerful marketing tool.

Facebook Unveils News Feed Overhaul

Two years ago, everyone's love-hate relationship with Facebook got a little more passionate when Mark Zuckerburg changed things up and introduced us to Facebook Timeline.  Love it or hate it, it's all about to change again.

Facebook introduced a whole new news feed design at a press conference on March 7th. It should come as no surprise that the new version of the news feed is very image heavy and was designed to help give people the ability to digest more information with greater ease.



News Feeds Based on User Activity

One of the biggest motivators for the new design was Facebook's desire to give users a better ability to customize their news feeds. "We want to give the world the best personalized newspaper that we can," said Zuckerberg during the event.

Chris Struhar, the tech lead of Facebook's News Feed explained several of the new options during today's press conference. Among them is the introduction of specialized feeds that provide users with quick access to the areas they like best.

•    Friends Feed - The chance to actually get ALL the updates from your friends. (finally!)
•    Music Feed - Not just audio files...also images, events and updates from musical artists.
•    Photos Feed - Images shared by friends via Facebook and Instagram
•    Games Feed - Who is playing what, what invites are waiting and what milestones have been reached.
•    Following Feed - Updates and information from the Facebook Pages a user has liked

Struhar also explained that news feeds will list updates chronologically and will adjust over time to focus on the content a user most interacts with. In other words, if you click over to check the music and photo feeds every time you log into the site, Facebook will begin to adjust your newsfeed to favor content from those specific feeds.

More Photos, Bigger Photos and Did I Mention MORE Photos?

One of the things we all love about Facebook is the photos. Whether it's photos our friends and family take to reflect their lives,  or shared images that capture the thoughts, humor and frustrations of the day...Facebook's new feed design puts a heavy emphasis on larger images in the news feed.


The plus side of the new design is how much easier it might be to digest great photo content right on the news feed without having to click in to view an image bigger than a thumbnail. The potential down side to the new design is the sheer amount of space each update seems to take up on the page. There's going to be a LOT more scrolling required to see the same amount of content.

Consolidated Sharing Presentation

Another big change going into effect with the new news feed is the consolidation of social sharing presentation. On the old news feed, you might see an update featuring a news story or image that had been shared by friends paired with multiple posts underneath detailing the description used by each friend to post it. You might also simply see the same image show up multiple times in your feed as it was shared by different sources. The entire display option was a bit of a crap shoot.

Under the new news feed design, these types of updates will show up as a single post with a consolidated listing of each friend who has chosen to share it.



This should make it easier for users to tell which pieces of content have really caught on with their friends and family.

This new shared stories update will also have an impact on the types of content that shows up in your feed. Apparently, Facebook will be doing some analysis of the types of stories you tend to comment on or like and will be using that data to try to recommend stories you might not otherwise see. (It remains to be seen if that's going to end up being a good feature or an obnoxious one.)

Platform Consistency

The new design will look and work the same way no matter what platform users choose to access it from. The web version will mirror the mobile version which will mirror the tablet version and so on. This will help create a level of consistency in user interaction that has not yet existed up to this point.

Theoretically, it should also mean Facebook's various paid and promoted ad options will display consistently across all platforms, making it easier to test the impact of different campaigns.

What Does it All Mean?

On some fronts, the update should come as a surprise to no one. After all, the shift toward image content based marketing on social media networks has been well covered for the past year or two. People LOVE images. Larger images increases the potential for engagement which increases EdgeRank which increases the ability to connect with your audience on Facebook. Few people are going to complain about that.

That said, it DOES make it more important than ever that your brand figures out how best to integrate more image based updates into your Facebook strategy.

Finally, the segmentation of news feeds into topical areas will also likely open the door to new forms of targeted Facebook advertising. (And let's be honest here...that's what this is all about...isn't it? Figuring out how to drive more advertising while still keeping users happy.) I fully expect we'll gain the ability to target photo feeds or music feeds or game feeds down the road.

Want to try the new News Feed now? Facebook has a page where you can sign up to gain early access, but there's no current estimate on how long the wait will be.

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A Web Designer’s Site Launch Checklist (Including Portable Formats)

This won’t cover everything, but should give you a quick overview of what you could be doing or adding to your own checklist.

To make your task even easier, we’ve created a number of versions of this checklist, including an HTML version, Markdown, PDF and Evernote. Download them all from the Tuts+ GitHub account.

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Successful Launch

After having invested a lot of time in a project, launch day will be in sight. Before you get there you’ll still have important issues that need addressing to achieve a successful launch, get these right and both you and your client will be happy.
Remember, before you show anything to a client make sure the site matches the original spec, is pixel perfect to the designs you presented and fulfils their original brief.

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Content

Get a small team together and go over the content of the site with a fine tooth comb – make sure you get this right. Good content is the cornerstone of a great site.

• Spelling: Check and check again. Run a spell check. Better still, get others involved. You can never have enough people making sure copy is correct. Look out for grammatical errors as well as checking for widows or orphaned words in important paragraphs.
• Copy: Make sure real copy is in place and all placeholder text is removed. There is nothing worse than seeing lorem ipsum in a mission statement.
• Contact Details: It seems obvious but make sure these are correct. Without them how do you expect people to get in touch? Check phone numbers, check email addresses and test that these are working, make a call or send an email and check they are received.
• Copyright: If you plan on using a date in the copyright info make sure it is set to automatically refresh from the time stamp on the server, and that the copyright owner is correct.
• Terms: If you are providing a service or are involved in promotions then you will need terms available for visitors to read. If you are unsure as to how these should be written then consult a lawyer for best advice. Remember: make these as clear as possible. There is nothing worse than being baffled by legal jargon.
• Privacy: If you use cookies, capture data, or distribute data, then you need a privacy policy. Keep these simple and be clear on what data you collect and provide details of how you can be contacted for further information.

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Functionality

Does it work? This might seem an obvious question to ask, but above all else this is the most important part of a project. You might have everything else in place but if the site doesn't work correctly what’s the point in launching it?
Minor bugs may appear when visitors use the site for the first time but making sure it works at near 100% will ensure a successful launch.

• Compatability: Check the site works across all browsers and platforms. Specify at the beginning of a project to the client what platforms you will build and test to and stick to these. Use platforms such as Responsivator and BrowserStack to test sites quickly as well as on physical browsers and devices.
• Favicon: Obvious, but this can be missed. Look at creating an iOS home screen icon too.
• Logo: Does the logo link to the index page?
• 404 Pages: Check you have these in place, make sure they signpost ways for a user to get back into the site or direct them to pages of interest with relevant links.
• Redirects: If you are redirecting pages use suitable 301 re-directs over 302.
• Forms: Make sure they aren’t sending to spam mail boxes, or returning an error once submitted and include a thank you state once a form is submitted so a visitor knows it is sent. Above all else make sure the clients email address is specified when the site goes live.
• Links: Do internal page links work? Do all external links work and do they open in a new tab if so intended?
• RSS Feeds: Feeds can be useful. You don’t have to limit these to articles, you can have feeds for most pages for example new work or case studies added to a site.

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Standards & Validation

These two things should be considered throughout the design and build to make every users experience on your site as good as it can be. Points to consider:

• Accessibility: It's easy to forget how inaccessible a webpage is for some users. Have you considered how assistive technologies such as screenreaders will navigate your site? Have you implemented WIA-ARIA roles and states, or at least considered the tab order of form controls?
• Contrast: This follows on from our point about accessibility. Using the very latest monitors it’s easy to see subtle differences in color, be sure to test your site on multiple devices and laptops to make sure the design has clarity and text can be read with ease.
• Text Size: Make text clear and easy to read, adjust line spacing and allow plenty of white space. Bigger, can mean better, when it comes to text on the web.
• Alt Tags: Make sure all images have clear descriptive ALT tags for the visually impaired. Not only that but without them they can’t be found in search engines.
• Consistency: Make sure common elements across the site are consistent to avoid confusing your users. Make buttons look like buttons, links look like links, and titles and text should be the consistent in size and color.
• Device Compatibility: Consider how the website will be used across multiple devices, responsive or not your website should work for desktop and mobile web users.
• Validation: Always aim for 100% validity. If your site fails to validate fully don’t get too upset, but be sure to understand any errors in order to to eliminate any unwanted issues.
• JavaScript: Many people browsing the web have JavaScript turned off for security reasons. Make sure your site is fully functional and forms still perform server-side validation checks without it.
• Flash: Yeah, we know, nobody uses Flash anymore right? If Flash has to be used, be sure to include an alternative backup image should Flash Player not be installed.

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Sitemaps

Make sure you include sitemaps. These help search engines correctly index your website during the crawling process.

• HTML Sitemaps: Although not as common practice as they were, this form of sitemap can have its benefits in helping visitors see a complete overview of the sites pages. Links for these are normally found in the footer of a site.
• XML Sitemaps: These are only ever used by search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Create an XML Sitemap easily and submit it via Webmaster Tools. These will then be used to inform search engines about the pages you have published.

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Performance

A faster site is a better ranking site. You’ll also lower bounce rates on pages if you can reduce load times – who wants to wait for pages to load?

Check site speed: You can use services such as Google Page Speed or Blame Stella to check the load times of your site's pages.

Image sizes: Keep your images as small as possible. Although network speeds are better than ever, no one wants to wait for a 10Mb page to load. Compressing images will only improve page load times.

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SEO

Great SEO will mean your site will work harder and achieve greater success than a site that uses little or bad techniques. Get your research right and the rest will fall into place.
This list is by no means extensive and if you want to learn more then we recommend reading more from these recent articles Search Engine Optimization FAQ and A Web Designer’s SEO Checklist.

• Keyword Research: Make sure you are targeting the right demographic and market. It’s important to get this right in order to attract relevant traffic to your site. Carry out some research with Google AdWords and see which keyword (or search term) has the highest traffic potential and the least amount of competition and balance these two factors.
• Page Titles & Descriptions: Do all the templates have the necessary page titles and meta data based on your keyword research? When focusing on a particular keyword try and get these to the front of descriptions and look at using both singular and plural forms.
• Image Alt-tags: Do the main images of the site contain relevant and descriptive alt-tags? Using short descriptions will help. And remember try and choose a descriptive file name instead of random words and numbers for these images.
• Keywords: Embed these in titles, descriptions and copy.
• Content: If the content is good it will work to optimize and compliment the SEO. Good keyword density within the copy works well so use both singular and plural forms of keywords in your text. Don’t overload the content or over think this, make it natural and only add when and if it is relevant. Search engines also prefer longer pages of content so look at getting the content to +300 words but focus more on the quality than quantity.
• URLs: Make sure the site's URLs are clean. Using a descriptive URL instead of ones that are made up of random numbers or words will help with SEO and visitors finding a page they may want to return to, and look at getting a keyword into the URL if relevant.

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Analytics

No matter how small a site is, having web analytics running will gather you valuable information on how to improve your website going forward..

• Monitoring: With good SEO in place use tracking codes to measure this. Tools such as Google Analytics (free) or services such as Hubspot, GoSquared or KISSmetrics (paid) will give valuable feedback.

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Security

You may have a lot of things you do not want the world to know about. For example; user-uploaded media, or shoppers' Credit Card details.

• Protect Sensitive Pages: Protect any sensitive pages or folders from being indexed on search engines by putting in place robots.txt files and by excluding them from within Webmaster Tools. Also consider whether you need to use an .htaccess file to disable folder view within directories.
• Security Certificates: When developing an eCommerce website, or a site that handles sensitive visitor information, the level of security will be paramount. Make sure to use protocols such as SSL encryption to protect against unwanted information theft. It has also been proven that displaying seals such as TRUSTe, can increase the credibility of a site.

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Hosting & Backups

Finding a web hosting provider can be hard and knowing what you need can be even harder to understand. There are many options and pricing plans to choose from but make sure to choose a provider that meets your needs, not one that offers more than you need to pay for.

• Types: Shared Hosting, Reseller Hosting, Cloud Hosting, VPS Hosting and Dedicated Servers. Not sure what these mean? Then read these quick tips.
• Backups: Make sure you use a provider who can provide daily and weekly backups of your server and make sure to take local backups as well.
• Monitoring: Setup services such as Pingdom or other server monitoring tools to monitor the health of your server.

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Legal

Before you start any project a signed contract should be in place. The contract should clearly outline the project deliverables and processes so both parties are 100% clear on what will be achieved as an end result. As part of that contract make sure the following has been agreed to cover any unforeseen circumstances.

• Image/Content Rights: Clearly state that any supplied content or imagery that is handled by you remains the clients responsibility. Make clear that you will not be held liable for publishing content and images that they do not have the rights to use. Also educate the client that they should be using images or content that are either paid for or they have the rights to use.
• Payment Terms: Set fair and staged payment terms at clearly defined milestones of a project (at the end of the design phase – before any development starts for example), never move on to the next phase of a project until the agreed payment is in.
• Timelines: Set reasonable timelines that are fair to your client as well as manageable for you and your team. Clearly state that you will not be held responsible for any loss or damages as a result of a delay in the schedule caused by the client. It is a good idea to use something like Basecamp to manage your projects so all work and conversations are recorded should you need them to fall back on in the future.
• Intellectual Property Rights: This will be different depending on who you are, what you’re offering, or the project in question. Clearly state what is owned by you and the client once the project is complete and payment has been made in full. Consider the rights to any software or code written by you that you wouldn’t want sold on, or anything similar that you feel you need to retain the rights to.

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Deliverables

In the project contract clearly explain what the client will physically receive once a project is complete. The following is what we’d recommend.

• Live Website: This is the bare minimum. Make sure their website is up and live and fully functioning as intended.
• Style Guide: A simple style guide is extremely beneficial for any website owner, points to consider include:
  • Font Styles
  • Image Sizes
  • Tone of Voice
  • Colors
  • Imagery Style
  • Colors
• Assets & Icons: Any icons, illustrations, or infographics design and created for the website may be helpful to your client going forward. Supply them the files in different formats so they can use them in presentations or future design work.
• Offline Copy: If requested by the client provide a copy of the site. Remember websites are a living document that should be continually updated and improved, so unless the site is static you will have to be making regular offline backups for the client.

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When to Launch?

Remember: never hand over a project or files without sign off and any outstanding payments settled. You will have no come back at this point if you do without either of these. Handing over a project without payment is the equivalent of a shop owner letting a customer walk out of a shop with a trolley full of goods on the promise that they will ‘pay you later’.
Now everything is in place you are ready to launch. But when should you? We try our very best to never launch a site within two days of a weekend. Sometimes this practice has to go out the window on occasions but we always try and aim for a Monday to Wednesday launch slot. This will give you the opportunity to iron out any live bugs that surface during a working week. Trying to fix these during a weekend when either you or your developers are not around will only cause you headaches when you have a client who needs their site to be fully functional. Trust us, you will only learn the hard way if you don’t adopt this approach.

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Ongoing Maintenance

So you’ve launched the site, it’s working great and the client is happy, now what? You need to make sure that it continues to run without a hitch. Things can go wrong or get missed, server security compromised, or it could fall over. Make sure you’re ready for every eventuality.

• Backups: Always, always, make sure backups are in place. Run at least two backups daily – one in the morning and one 12 hours later, limiting the amount of data that can go missing.
• Version Control: Try running a project through Git, it’s a great version control system for teams of developers working in collaboration. Source code history is saved meaning that you can refer or revert back to previous versions if and when needed. For an introduction to Git read this in-depth article Easy Version Control with Git.
• Analytics: In order to suggest improvements going forwards ask to be set up on the client's analytics, this way you can monitor traffic and site stats for the client and suggest improvements over the following month and year after launch.

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Any More?

If you have any additional points you think should be added to the list, let’s hear them in the comments!

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