Internet Retailing Summit 2011

Hello readers, It's my last post before the weekend, but I would like to share one of our most successful events with you, The Internet Retailer Conference at Chartered Accountants House; Ireland on the 29th September

eCeltic Pvt Ltd has taken a part of that event with a Advanced SEO Techniques.

Here I have shared few snap shorts of that event.

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"Brian Martin" ,(Business Development Manager)has given the presentation on behalf of eCeltic

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Learning from Failure

Hey.. Today i have learnt a good lesson!! Our all PC's are suddenly taken holiday leave, because they have meet with their stranger friend "VIRUS". ....:)

Guys, i have prepared my figures to write something for you but after a whole day pressure i have just ruined.I will be back within next 2 days with new sizzling topics of Conversion planning.

Happy Weekends..Bye

Whiteboard Interview - Google's Matt Cutts on Redirects, Trust + More

We've got a very special bonus video for you today. Our buddy-and the Googliest spam cop to ever walk the webz - Matt Cutts stopped by to do a quick interview in front of ye olde whiteboard. Watch in wonder and amazement as Rand and Matt discuss headers, status codes, how much of the web is worth indexing, porn, redirect chains, URL structures, geo targeting, leaking link juice, and amateur beekeeping!

Before you get all cynical on me and assume all you'll hear in this interview is, "design content for users, not for engines," give it a chance. Matt only brings up his trademark catchphrase once in the whole ~20 minute interview, and he is exceedingly candid and forthcoming throughout. I promise you're gonna walk away from this knowing some things about Google you didn't know before. If you don't, I'll stand on my head. Maybe. Not really. BUT I won't have to because you're going to be all super-smart and educated by the end of the video. So put on your learning pants and hit play, you uppity whipper-snapper, or, if you're like Steve Jobs and are incompatible with Flash video, read the recap below...

If you need a refresher or you're scared of moving images and prefer the company of fluffy, harmless typing, here's a little recap of what Matt and Rand discussed.

Should Webmasters Use the 'If Modified Since' Header?

The 'If Modified Since' header can be used to manually indicate to Google whether or not you've made changes to content on the page. According to Matt, they started supporting it in 2003 when bandwidth was a big issue, but nowadays, it's not very important. That said, he still advises it as a good standard practice, but also notes that it won't necessarily help you get crawled faster.

Should Webmasters Use 503 Status Codes for Downtime?

503s can help avoid getting a page that's under construction or experiencing problems crawled and indexed, which can be a big problem especially for large, popular sites (watch the video for Rand's example of Disney running into this issue). Matt advocates using 503s in this case. You can't specify when you'd like Google to re-crawl, but they will come back and won't index the maintenance content of the page.

Does the Number of Outbound Links from a Page Affect PageRank?

For instance, to conserve "link juice" and/or funnel it more discretely, does it matter whether I have three outbound links versus two? In the original PageRank formula, yes, juice flowed out in a simple formula of Passable PR divided by number of outbound links. But nowadays, Matt says it is a much more cyclical, iterative analysis and, "it really doesn't make as much difference as people suspect." There's no need to hoarde all of your link juice on your page and, in fact, there may be benefit to generously linking out (not the least of which is the link-building power of good will).

If Google's seen a Trillion URLs, How Many Do They Pay Attention To?

Since Google crawls in PageRank order, they see the "best" stuff first and avoid a lot of the serious crap. The biggest issue is discovering duplicate or previously banned content. Matt said that about 28% of what they see is duplicate. He also made the careful distinction between "quality" content and "popular" content, further illustrating that traffic isn't a significant ranking factor: "PR does not reflect popularity in the sense that porn is very popular, but nobody links to porn...(those sites) don't have the PageRank you'd expect if you went by usage."

Is a Trailing / Important in URL Structure?

Seems like a minor thing right? Do you use url.com/folder of url.com/folder/ in your URL structure? Matt says he would slightly advocate for using a trailing slash simply because it clearly indicates that a URL is a folder and not a document. That said, Google is quite good at differentiating so it's not a huge deal.

Does Google Crawl from Multiple Geopgraphic Locations?

Should I be displaying geo-specific content based on user IP? It's a very popular question among SEOs dealing with international sites and users; but how does it affect what Google sees and what shows up in the SERPs?

Matt confirmed that, "Google basically crawls from one IP address range worldwide because (they) have one index worldwide. (They) don't build different indices, one for each country."

This means it's very important to avoid showing significantly different content to users from different countries. As Matt says, "The problem is if you're showing different content-like French content to French IPs-Googlebot may not see that."

Thus, you want to be sure to send everyone to the same content initially and allow them to navigate to geo-specific areas of your site. While Google has gotten better at submitting dropdowns, working with JavaScript, etc., it is still strongly advised that you provide this geo-targeted navigation via static links.

Is It a Bad Idea to Chain Redirects (e.g. 301-->301-->301)?

"It is, yeah."

Matt was very clear that Google can and usually will deal with one or two redirects in a series, but three is pushing it and anything beyond that probably won't be followed. He also reiterated that 302s should only be used for temporary redirects...but you already knew that, right?

What's with the Bees?

It's true, there are bees in Mountain view. A rash of amateur apiculture has sprung up on the Google campus and a few members of the Web Spam Team have caught stinger fever (though not Matt, he prefers cats). Apparently they've ven gone so far as to color all of the hives in the apiary in Google's traditional primary colors...what a bunch of geeks :P

Well, that was a whole pile of great stuff we were able to get out of Mr. Cutts (and we didn't even have to ply him with booze)! Now, go venture forth and use your new nuggets of searchy goodness to clobber your competitors.

Another huge thanks to Matt for taking the time to answer our questions so thoughtfully!

Source:seomoz

Rand Fishkin Dishes on Google

Today's article from seo.com

Rand Fishkin, CEO of Seattle-based SEOmoz.org, was in Salt Lake City on this summer’s Family MozCation tour. In between sipping Corona, signing autographs and posing in pictures with Utah fans, Fishkin spoke with SEO.com about, among other things, his relationship with Google Spam Czar Matt Cutts.

Fishkin’s company is a leading provider of search engine optimization software and his efforts to get websites to rank in Google have compelled Fishkin to delve deeply into why some sites show up No. 1 as others don’t even make it into the top 100 search results.

Shown on the right, Rand Fishkin spoke with SEO.com this week in a one-on-one interview at MozCation in Salt Lake City. Fishkin talked about his relationship with Google Spam Czar Matt Cutts, left.

Utah is the only spot in North America that SEOmoz will visit during MozCation. Next Fishkin is off to Brazil, Peru and Spain.

SEO.com: Do you and Cutts have a pretty interesting relationship?

Fishkin: “Interesting” is a very good adjective to describe it. He is a good guy, but … I want to be very transparent and open.”

SEO.com: Will you characterize your interaction with Google since starting your career in SEO?

Fishkin: Early in my career I struggled for a long time to figure out how Google ranked pages and why some things ranked and some things didn’t … It’s frustrating to those in the (SEO) industry and it’s frustrating to me too.

The reason that I am frustrated with them is that I don’t feel there is a conflict. We’re on the same team as Google. I’ll use a football analogy; Google is a quarterback refusing to use us — all its great receivers. Throw the ball and let people like us move it forward for you.

SEO.com: How does Google view SEO companies?

Fishkin: My bias would be that I think Google views the situation more risky than it really is … So they operate from a perspective of fear.

SEO.com: What’s your major beef with the search giant?

Fishkin: They’re not transparent. We’re very open, and if Google would go that one step to be much more transparent they would earn a lot of people’s trust and they would earn a lot of forgiveness when they screw up.

SEO.com: When has Google “screwed up” in the past?

Fishkin: Google spam is a huge problem.

SEO.com: How is SEOmoz more open with information than Google?

Fishkin: There is not very much that we would not make public. Clearly, transparency has been really good for us. I’ll tell you our revenue, the number of users who have a pro account. I’ll tell you the sources I am pursuing for venture capital financing.

And that’s exactly what I would do with all the results I care about.

Amazing Facebook Scam :)

As I have written about before, scams are proliferati

There is now a scam going around that has landed as a status update post on the Facebook pages of many Kennedy School students and actually caught a number of them. It invites you to link to a site that will take your picture and show you, by computer transformation, what you will look like when you are old. The post shows a picture of a gnarled old guy.ng on Facebook, and it is scary that a number of them are really well done -- not like the opportunities to work with Nigerian "government officials" that everyone deletes in a nanosecond, or even the obvious ones with status updates from Facebook friends that ask you to click on a picture of an attractive woman stripping or something.

Based on Facebook chats I've seen since these phony status updates began proliferating a few days ago, a number of students have actually clicked through to the scam site. Many people who

had their accounts hijacked to send out the phony update have posted warnings on Facebook urging friends not to click through. A number of students who fell for the scam or came close wrote that, for a lot of young people, the idea of seeing a computer image of yourself as an old person is very intriguing. This is what makes this scam so dangerous -- it displays good knowledge of human psychology.

I also saw a post from an Israeli student at the Kennedy School who is interested in cybersecurity, noting that anybody who clicked through might end up with their computer used as a botnet to engage in an attack to bring down the Ukrainian banking system -- and urging classmates to "like" the Kennedy School Cyber Security Caucus page on Facebook, which she promised would provide useful information on avoiding cyber problems.

One additional troubling feature of this scam is that I only saw it on status updates from students on Facebook. People like me don't need to see a computer image of what we will look like when we get older -- we only need to look in the mirror. This suggests at least that the scammer can screen the Facebook account by birth year, which many people make available on their Facebook pages -- implying that the scammers have massive access to Facebook account information.

Anybody else see this scam? Any older Facebook members have their accounts hijacked with this scam, or only younger ones?

Miracle in Social Media Psychology

Why user psychology?

• Social media are user-centric and facilitate social practices
• It is not what the social media site or platform does, bu
• t what the user sees, feels, thinks, and anticipates, that matters most
• User experience is effectively the social media company’s brand, identity, product, and service
• A social media site’s ability to captivate, keep, and sustain user attention, and so serve its business needs, hangs on the user’s own sense of his or her participation.
  

Social Media Realities

Users are people

• People perceive
• People think
• People feel
• People act
• People react
• People expect and anticipate
• People communicate
• People relate
• People desire
• People acknowledge

Social Media Realities

• Non - interactive media do not involve the user in their production
• Movies “suspend disbelief” and create a reality through sense-perceptions, out of moving pictures and sound (immersion, action, surprise, suspense, replacing thought with immediacy)
• Books captivate the reader’s imagination and allow him or her to build a reality through mental experience (fantasy, projection, logic, reasons and abstractions, distance)
• Music holds the listener’s attention in time, unfolding in the foreground or background, and has special impact when it is recognizable and familiar (recognition, memory, and recollection, “being there again”)

Production of Social Objects

Successful Social Media

• Leverage common media narratives and forms, to make content available to users for their own references and purposes
• These forms are social: they communicate and can be used to communicate, represent, identify, signify and so on
• Users bring media to life, media bring users to life
• Social media construct realities their users help to produce
• Users can believe in the reality of these social objects, and their significance to other usersand can become interested in the objects or in their owners and creators
• Because social media depend on users to provide content as a byproduct of acting, doing, talking, sharing, asking, answering, and navigating, how they structure the user experience = user engagement
• Engaged users will participate, and their participation creates value: content, communication, profiles, connections, preferences and tastes, and so on
• Engaged users participate because they want to, are compelled to, interested to, in short, motivated to participate
• Users will put into a site, and expect from it, according to how it structures social interactions, objects, information: its World

Social Media Experiences

• Social media are the productions of their users
• Social media engage the mental, emotional, psychological, and relational interests of their users.
• Users see, feel, and act:
• User Perceptions: create a visible and believable world
• User Affects: engage the feelings and motivations of users
• User Engagement: provide a means to relate feelings to acts and action
• User Satisfaction: satisfy complex user interests through social experience

User Perceptions

• Social media create or construct a social reality
• Users:
• see themselves in it
• see others in it
• see what they and others do in it, the results of their actions
• see what their activities are about
• see social scenes, and themselves as participants
• see themselves being seen

User Affects

• Users have affects, or feelings, moods, dispositions, attitudes, which are experienced “alone.” Because we are social beings, we experience affects even when interactions are mediated.
• Users experience affects:
• such as inclinations, tendencies, interests, desires
• curiosities, surprise, excitement, humor, comedy
• trepidation, anxiety, hesitation, doubt
• concern, caring, touch, recognition

Capturing Interest

• Social media realities engage user interests, to varying degrees, and in various modes, according to the activity and social practice they facilitate
• This means not just making something interesting, but captivating the user’s own interests
• Furthermore, users come to a social media site or service with their own interests already
• A well-structured social media brand permits the user to see into it, to involve him or herself, to become interested in others, and to take pleasure in their own involvement
• A social media site succeeds when its users invest in it as they would in any social practice, which means that its technology, features, functionality, and design become transparent
• The user’s interests are his or her motivation
• User has interests:
• in him or herself
• in his or her appearance to others
• in others
• in their actual or potential relationship to him/her

Psychology of Website Design

Designers often don’t take the time they should to learn about how basic psychological principles can effect the experience their visitors have on the sites they build.

Psychological principles are either looked upon as unnecessary, or too complicated. But the truth is that they’re neither.

There aren’t that many concepts associated with basic design psychology, and most are relatively straight-forward and easy to learn.

Read on to learn more and please leave your feedback and comments at the end of this post.They’re also mainly easy to implement, though some take a bit more care and planning than others.

The Purpose of Psychology-Based Design

Considering psychology in your design process can have a few positive effects on your end result. If you take the time to think about what your visitors want and how they want to get it, then you’re already on the right track to creating a site that will tap into the

psychological drives of your target audience.

By considering visitor psychology, you’ll likely end up with happier visitors who are

This is the main reason for taking psychology into account in your designs. You want to make it more likely your visitors will do what you want.more likely to perform the actions you want them to, whether that’s getting in touch with you, buying your product, or referring their friends.

Building Trust

In order for your visitors to do what you want them to do, they have to trust you. Trust doesn’t come easily, especially in this age of scams, schemes, and unsavory characters almost everywhere we look online.

To someone who knows little of how the Internet really works, they’re suspicious of anyone who asks them for any personal information, no matter how necessary it is or how highly-recommended the website is.

As designers, we often overlook this as we’re so used to conducting business online. But for our clients, and for their clients, the Internet can still be a big, scary black hole their information goes into.

With this in mind, you can use design psychology to make your website look more trust-worthy to the average visitor. Creating a website that puts visitors at ease means they’re more likely to sign up for an account, buy a product, or otherwise do business with you. This can be done through a combination of design and the language used on the site.

Familiarity and Recognizable Patterns

When someone lands on a page within a website, there are certain things they expect to see right away, pretty much regardless of the kind of site they’re on.

If they don’t see these things, they often feel as if they’ve ended up in some strange wasteland that doesn’t make sense to them (and therefore, isn’t trustworthy). The two big things people expect are the purpose of the site (which could be anything from providing information on a certain topic to selling a product to looking pretty) and some form of navigation.

While tag lines can help with discerning the purpose, the design can complement and reinforce that message. Let’s say, for example, that you’re designing an environmental blog. If your design is all dark and brooding and has a city skyline at sunset in the header, it’s not going to give us even the slightest hint about what the site’s purpose is.

On the other hand, if it’s a clean, modern-looking site with lots of green and natural-looking accents, that’s going to reinforce the fact that this is an environmental blog.

Beyond the elements everyone expects to find on every website, there are additional things people may expect on certain kinds of sites or within certain industries. People expect blog posts on the front page of a blog. They expect products on the front page of an ecommerce site. They expect a search function on any site that’s more than a few pages deep. And in most cases, they expect some kind of “about” information and a contact page.

Branding Consistency

In addition to the general elements most visitors expect to see on a site, there are often things visitors may associate with your company in particular. While this might not be a concern for a new business, or a very small business, it is a concern for many others.

Think about the colors you use in your offline promotional materials. Those colors should be incorporated into your website in some way, even if it’s just in the header image or as accent colors.

The same goes for your logo. If you use a logo in your printed marketing materials, you need to include it on your website, too. These are very basic things, but it’s surprising how many businesses overlook maintaining consistency between their online and offline marketing efforts.

Psychological Triggers

Psychological and emotional triggers are a valuable tool in influencing visitors to take the actions you want them to take. Triggers include things like guilt and fear, but also a sense of belonging and appealing to people’s values.

Incorporating emotional triggers into your designs is most commonly done through the language on the site itself, with graphic elements serving as a support system for those triggers. Use image and graphics that reinforce the trigger being used.

Images to Reinforce Concepts

The images you use on your sites can either help or confuse visitors. A well-chosen image can put your visitor at ease, making your intent clear. A poorly-chosen one can leave them scratching their heads and feeling like they’re falling into that black hole again.

Abstract images can sometimes work well, but be wary of using them if their meaning is vital. Sometimes an abstract image will have different meanings to different people, or the meaning will be missed altogether.

Color Psychology

The psychology of color is one of the more complex subjects in design psychology, and not something we’ll go in depth on here. But the colors you use can have a heavy impact on how your visitors perceive your site. Make sure the colors you’ve selected reinforce your message and the image you want to portray.

Below is a basic list of colors and their meanings. Of course, the combinations of colors you use along with their exact shade, hue, or tone will also have an impact on their meaning.

Red

Fiery and passionate, can represent both love and anger.

Orange

Shares attributes of both red and yellow. Associated with energy and warmth. It’s calmer than red and more cheerful.

Yellow

A warm, happy color. It can represent either joy or cowardice.

Green

Signifies nature, growth, and renewal. Along the same lines, green can sometimes represent inexperience. On the flip side, green is sometimes associated with envy or jealousy.

Blue

Calming and cool, but too much can be depressing. Often associated with corporate images.

Purple/Violet

Long associated with royalty and wealth. It’s also a spiritual color, and is thought to be creative.

Black

A bit of a chameleon, it can be conservative or edgy, traditional or modern. It can be mysterious and sexy or conventional and safe, depending on how it’s used.

White

Associated with purity and innocence. It goes well with any other color.

Gray

Neutral and balanced. Gray is conservative and sophisticated, but can be seen as moody, too.

Brown

A wholesome and down-to-earth color that denotes stability and reliability.

Reading Patterns

People tend to read in a “Z” pattern on a website, starting across the top from the left and ending in the bottom right corner of their screen.

As a designer, you should strive to place the most important content within this reading pattern area. This is why many sites include the logo in the upper left-hand corner of the header.

Incorporating non-essential information within this reading zone means your visitors may leave the site before they find what they’re looking for, as they may think it isn’t present on your site.

Focus of Each Page

Every page on your site should have a focus. There should be a purpose to every page, whether that purpose is to showcase a product, tell about your company, or serve up recent news.

Your design needs to put the emphasis on the focal element of every page. The focus of each page should also be immediately apparent, so that visitors know what they’re doing there. This can be accomplished through cues in the navigation or through a header, in addition to the page’s content.

One of the biggest marks of an amateur site is trying to put too much information on each page. Don’t be afraid of white space on your pages, and don’t be afraid of having a defined purpose for each and every page on your site.

Breathing Room

That brings us to the concept of white space and breathing room. If a visitor arrives on a cluttered page filled with every possible thing imaginable, they’re going to feel overwhelmed and claustrophobic.

It’s likely the page will feel haphazzard and chaotic. This leaves visitors feeling like they don’t know where to start, which means they might just skip your site entirely and move on to one where they have some breathing room.

Allow the negative space on your site to direct your visitors to the areas you want them to focus on. By combining empty space and properly styled and proportioned elements, you can encourage your visitors to look at a certain thing and take a desired action.

Steps for Incorporating Design Psychology

Now that you’re familiar with what design psychology is and what it means to web design, you may be wondering how, exactly, you should go about incorporating it into your own design process. Here are a few techniques you can use:

Figure Out Who Your Visitors Are

Knowing who your visitors are is a hugely important first step in designing a site that will appeal to them. If your visitors are tech-savvy Internet veterans they’re going to have a different set of priorities than someone who only goes online to look at photos of their grand-kids. Figure out who your target user is and then figure out which emotional triggers will work for them.

Interview Your Users

If you’re not sure what your users or visitors want, try interviewing some of them. Find current or former customers and see if they’d be willing to answer a few questions about your site. Then create meaningful questions based on your own site’s specific goals. Most importantly, act on the advice they give you. Too often, companies do interviews or surveys but never make changes based on what they’re told.

Create a Sitemap for Your Site

You need to create a map of every page of your site so that you can ensure each page only has one focus. Make a list of everything that needs to be on your site, first, and then map out which page each item should go on (ideally, it should be one page per item unless things are very, very closely related).

Assemble Your Branding Elements

Make a list or create a file of the common elements used to represent your brand. Most likely, this would include a logo, a color scheme, and possibly a particular typeface. Then figure out where to incorporate these into your site design.

Do A/B Testing

Even if you do it on a limited basis, it’s important to figure out which site elements work best. If you’re unsure of what your visitors would be more comfortable with on a certain page, test it with two versions to see which one gets better results.

Design psychology is something every designer should strive to learn more about and to incorporate into their workflow. It can be the single biggest factor in how effective your designs are, and how happy your clients are as a result. It doesn’t take much time and isn’t particularly difficult, so there’s really no excuse not to take at least some of these principles and put them in practice.