Optimize Your Web

77% of all Internet users read blogs

Optimize Your Web — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:13:43 +0000

According to the blog search engine Technorati, around 77% of active Internet users read blogs; ComScore claims this figure to be around 346 million people. However, if Internet World Stats makes any sense this figure should be close to 1.3 billion and the percentage of active users should be closer to 20% rather than 77% if ComScore is correct.

Either way it’s a big number! The bottom line is that everything is being talked about and companies deciding not to take part in the talk need to at least listen and react.

Twitter to start an advertising program this spring

Optimize Your Web — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:09:44 +0000

Twitter social networking and blogging messages are known as tweets messages. These tweets posts are text based statements consisting of up to 140 characters, displaying related searches on Twitter.

Twitter users are twitting on news, education, political campaigns and simple daily things one wants to share with others. Twitter usage is on the rise with around 74.000.000 users in January 2010 worldwide; a sharp 8% rise from December 2009.

Internet Marketing Conference, Reykjavik Iceland

Optimize Your Web — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:14:46 +0000

Reykjavik Internet Marketing conference is just around the corner with speakers from Ericsson, Bing/Microsoft, Anomaly, CCP games and Icelandair to mention few. In its 6th year the conference is going to be bigger than ever, attracting a wider audience on an international basis. The conference is accompanied by an Expo that lasts all weekend, Netið 2010 (roughly translates Internet 2010). Some 40 – 50 companies are expected to show their Internet related products and services.

You can get more information about RIMC 2010 at www.rimc.is

We say yes to free hotel Internet

Optimize Your Web — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:22:53 +0000

John Park is our man in the UK; he is a Scottish MSP and believes that hotel broadband should be free. As frequent travelers to the UK we agree, it should be a part of the cost. John has asked the Scottish tourist board and the British Hossbitality Association to include internet access in ratings. As business travelers to the UK we support this activity.

Nielsen Company announce top U.S Search Providers

Optimize Your Web — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:47:49 +0000

The American marketing and advertising research company, Nielsen, provides an up-to-date understanding of consumers and markets worldwide with the Top U.S. Search Providers report for January 2010.

The total number of web searches conducted during January 2010 was 10,272,099. Nielsen Online estimated a total of 8.1 billion web searches in comparison to November last year, which also indicated a 9.6% increase in overall web searches during the same month in 2008.According to Nielsen’s reports, Google searches accounted for 66.3% of all web based searches, making it a number one provider. In comparison to last year’s report, Google searches have increased from 5,177,158 searches in November 2008, up to 6,805,424 searches in January 2010.

Yahoo!Search is in second place after Google, accounting for 14.5 % and total of 1,488,476 searches. MSN, AOL, and Ask.com were also listed in the top five.

For more information on the top 10 searches providers for January 2010 please follow this link: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/u-s-web-searches-top-10-2-billion-in-january/

Yahoo! and Microsoft announce their Search Alliance

Optimize Your Web — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:37:53 +0000

As Microsoft and Yahoo! have now received regulatory clearance to form the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance in the USA and the European Union they can now offer more reach to potential customers offering a search ad inventory from both the Yahoo! and Microsoft networks.

The combined audience of Yahoo and Microsoft is over 150 million searchers in the U.S and some 577 million searchers worldwide so there is much to be gained through this joined venture.

NetApplications says Google Chrome now as around 4.4% marketshare

Optimize Your Web — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:32:25 +0000

Last December NetApplications reported that Google Chrome had around 4.4% marketshare, according to the data I can see throug the web analytics on my sites this sounds about right, for International sites it is around that figure but for my home country it’s little less, or around 4%

SES New York the mother of the mother of all conferences RIMC

Optimize Your Web — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:23:00 +0000

Reykjavik Internet Marketing Conference (RIMC) was actually born out of me not having the budget to go to SES New York in 2000 or 2001. Now some ten years later hundreds of guests from over ten countries have attended RIMC and the next event looks very promishing with around 200 attendees, some 15 speaker from companies like Ericsson, Microsoft, Anomaly, Icelandair and CCP games to mention few.

I am myself speaking at Search engine strategjes in NY on two sessions and it looks like it’s going to be a great event

Just saw Paulo Maranhao from Microsoft do a great presentation on the MSN PPC tool

Optimize Your Web — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:58:03 +0000

Just saw Paulo from Microsoft do a great presentation on the MSN PPC tool, the tool as before intergrades beutifully into Excel 2007 (not 2010 beta) and in minutes he gathered over 1000 very valuable keywords regarding flowers. Fantastic tool that can be found at letsearchmakeyousmarter.com (Microsoft Advertising Intelligence). Speaking at this session beside me are:

Thomas Bindl, SES Advisory Board & Founder & CEO, Refined Labs GmbH
Constance “Connie” Stack, VP, Sales & Marketing, WordStream
Paulo Maranhao, Search Media Strategist, Microsoft

The session was firmly moderated by Andrew Goodman, SES Advisory Board & Principal, Page Zero Media.

for more information on SES London goto their page

Next stop Search Engine Strategies New York

Is the speed of your web page an important ranking factor for Google?

Optimize Your Web — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:59:23 +0000

A few weeks ago, Google announced its new focus on fast loading pages as part of quality involved in the searching experience. This means that Google´s ranking algorithm may take into consideration the speed of a web page.

Since Google’s ranking algorithm isn’t 100% clear, the points below are rather a theory that may improve your website ranking in Google. Experiment if you can and share your results, here are some easy to make changes:

Make sure your web host is fast and you have a good connection to the Internet. Your web server should be easy to reach without any down time.
Join together external JavaScript code files into one file. The fewer files the server has to request, the better the web page’s speed. Then make these files smaller by compressing them.
Put external CSS files into one and compress them also.
Enable gZip compression if possible. Your webhost may do it for you.
If you use images, compress them and try to use as few as possible.
Tracking codes and other JavaScript snippets should be placed at the end of your web page.

However, keep in mind that page loading time in the ranking algorithm can be problematic. This is in respect to the cost of using a high quality web host and also competing against bigger corporations and other websites across the World Wide Web.