joi, 5 ianuarie 2012

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics


Cats Illustrating Most Common New Year's Resolutions

Posted: 05 Jan 2012 05:41 PM PST

Check out a full countdown of the most common New Year's resolutions as illustrated by cats below, and let us know what your resolutions for 2012 are in the comments!




















Via: pleated-jeans


Social Network Shower Curtain

Posted: 05 Jan 2012 05:22 PM PST

The Social Shower Curtain brings Facebook to the bathroom in a more sanitary way than dragging your smartphone to the toilet. For only $23 you can purchase Spinning Hat's Social Shower Curtain and transform your bathroom into an outdated Facebook profile page with lame jokes.


As seen at Craziest Gadgets.


The Life and Times of Steve Jobs [Infographic]

Posted: 05 Jan 2012 05:10 PM PST



There is no doubt that Steve Jobs achieved extraordinary heights during his life. He has made history for helping popularize the personal computer and so much more than that. Jobs's final years at Apple were as notable as his early ones. Even his long break from the company should provide inspiration for business people that think their careers are over. The below infographic, from Infographic World displays Steve Jobs life and accomplishments.

More Infographics.

Click on Image to Enlarge.


Fishing Under Ice

Posted: 04 Jan 2012 10:43 PM PST



"Fishing under ice" is a clever short film shot under the ice of lake Saarijärvi in Vaala, Finland. Have you figured out yet what's weird about this video? Everything is upside down! The fishermen are standing on the underside of the ice, "weighed down" by buoyant suits that have air in them. Notice how their air bubbles "sink."


The 25 Funniest AutoCorrects Of 2011

Posted: 04 Jan 2012 09:18 PM PST

You ever look at one of these auto-correct screen caps, and ask yourself how anybody could be so ridiculously careless? iPhone users, ladies and gentlemen!

To celebrate Damn You Autocorrect's 1-year anniversary online, they compiled the top 25 Fan Favorite DYAC entries (as determined by Facebook shares, tweets, comments, and pageviews).


















































As seen at Buzzfeed


Comiket 2011

Posted: 04 Jan 2012 04:47 PM PST

Comiket, stands for "Comic Market". Comiket is so well known that it needs no explanation. It is a festival for manga creators, collectors, cosplayers, and fans to get together in a huge area. It is the world's largest self-published comic book fair.

Comiket takes place twice a year in Tokyo, once in August and again in December.

Related Post:
Hot Cosplay Girls From Comiket
























































































































































Building Links & Driving Traffic with How To Posts Graywolf's SEO Blog

Building Links & Driving Traffic with How To Posts Graywolf's SEO Blog


Building Links & Driving Traffic with How To Posts

Posted: 05 Jan 2012 10:47 AM PST

Post image for Building Links & Driving Traffic with How To Posts

When you are looking to build links and drive traffic, one of the time tested methods that continues to work is creating “how to” style posts. In this article, we’ll look at some examples and discuss how to get the most out of the tactic, how to take advantage of seasonal search/traffic volume, and some potential trouble spots to watch out for.

From the earliest days of the internet, people have turned to search engines to find information and to solve problems. When you create “how to” posts, you fill this “information vacuum.” If your posts are good, interesting, funny, informative or otherwise noteworthy, you will be rewarded with links and/or Facebook likes, Twitter mentions or other social signals. While you will have to do a little promotion to “prime the pump” and start the sharing and exposure, people will share it on their own if your piece is good enough.

But enough theory. Let’s look at some “how to” examples.  First up is from the Huffington Post: “How to Tell When Chocolate Goes Bad

How to tell When Chocolate Goes Bad

We’ve all picked up the old Valentine’s, Halloween, or Christmas chocolate and wondered if it was safe to eat. This post answers that questions and lets you know what that white stuff on an old piece of chocolate really is. This post could have been improved with some picture examples, but it’s fine as it stands. This kind of post would work in a food-related website, gift-related website, or mom/family website.

Next up: “How to Tile a Bathroom

How to Tile a Bathroom

Tiling a bathroom is project that requires some skill, but it is within the reach of most DIY weekend warriors with some technical abilities. It’s also something that’s highly bookmark-able and shareable if it’s easy to understand. This type of content would work on DIY sites, home repair websites, building material websites, or tile stores. That article had good picture use. Adding a video or two could help, but it’s something that could be done down the road.

The previous two “how to” articles are examples of evergreen content (ie content that doesn’t need to change or be updated often). Next, I’d like to take a look at “how to” posts that will change over time.  Take a look at “[How to setup a wireless network]“.

If you look at the SERP you’ll see three of the results don’t have a date and one post that does–and it’s an old date, in this case 2003. If I’m looking to solve a computer problem, I probably don’t want information from 2003; I want something from within the last 12-18 months (for more information on how Google determines page dates, see How Google is Reverse Engineering Page Dates). If you are writing a “how to” post and it has a limited shelf life, having a dated post isn’t a bad thing (ie how to format a Windows XP hard drive). However, in most cases, you will want your “how to” posts to rank for longer periods of time, so either don’t show the date on the page or update the information and update the publication date. If you choose to update the post, use a living URL implementation to preserve your existing links and social proof.

Unless you are running a news website, it’s very likely that there are plenty of opportunities to take advantage of “how to” posts. If you run an eCommerce website, you should start with your most popular products and create “how to” guides for each of them. If you think you are going to have a large library of “how to” posts, you may want to put them in specific directory. I’d also suggest using a slightly less commercial template: people tend to link and share posts that don’t look overly commercial more often. I’d also avoid numbers in your URLs to avoid the problem of search engines mis-interpreting dates. Doing so also doesn’t box you into an editorial mismatch if you change numbers/steps in the future. I’d also look for ways to maximize seasonal search volume by updating your seasonal content. For example, a “how to” post on carving a turkey will get more traction, links, and traffic if you publish it in the beginning of November instead of the middle of March. Lastly, try to phrase your “how to” posts to match the queries users are actually typing into a search engine. For example “How to Save Some Sheckels When Getting Hitched” is not going to drive the same amount of traffic as “How to Save Money When You Are Planning a Wedding.”

So what are the takeaways from this post:

  • Look to create “how to” posts for your most popular products or search terms
  • Use natural language that matches what consumers will use
  • Be careful of dates on evergreen posts
  • Decide if archiving old information or updating them with living URLs is better for your situation
  • Avoid using numbers and dates in URLs
  • Time your posts/updates to tie in with peak search volume or interest
  • Have a separate template for informational posts to increase linking and sharing

photo credit: Shutterstock/Dmitry Suzdalev

tla starter kit

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Building Links & Driving Traffic with How To Posts

How Google+ Uses SEO to Steal Search from Facebook and Twitter

How Google+ Uses SEO to Steal Search from Facebook and Twitter


How Google+ Uses SEO to Steal Search from Facebook and Twitter

Posted: 04 Jan 2012 12:49 PM PST

Posted by Cyrus Shepard

Google's Superior SEO Strategy

Notice anything odd about your Google+ profile? Does it rank incredibly well in Google’s search results for your own name?

Colleagues note that their G+ profile now outranks other online identities that they’ve worked for years on. My own Google+ profile, just 5 months old, ranks #2 for my name. It now ranks higher than both my Twitter and Facebook profiles, even though I use those services far more often.

Profiles aren’t the only thing ranking. Individual Google+ posts frequently appear in search results as well.

Google+ Domination

Ranking for people’s names is one of the Holy Grails of search, like Amazon ranking for every book in print. With 7 billion people in the world, ranking on the first page for even a small portion of these is lucrative territory.

As search and social focus more on the individual, the war over names has begun.

How has Google won so much real estate on their own search pages in such a short period of time? Do they cheat? No, not really - more on this later. Google wins by employing really smart Search Engine Optimization techniques – the same SEO practices available to any online business.

For Facebook especially, this is a sensitive issue. Facebook actively prevents Google from crawling most of its content, allowing big G to access “Fan” pages, but limiting information from regular profiles. Now that Google+ has entered the social game, this policy puts Facebook results at risk of dropping in rankings and losing search real estate.

I often work with websites and startups wanting to build SEO features into their platform. If I were to build a social media service for SEO domination from scratch, I would build it exactly like Google+.

Here's the takeaway: Use SEO to your competitive advantage, no matter your niche.

1. Incentivize Inbound Links

Not long ago, Google started displaying author photos in its search results. In order to display a photo, Google asks authors to add links from their webpages to their Google+ profile. This creates potentially millions of high quality links from the world’s most influential online publishers, all pointing to multiple Google+ profiles.

Google+ Linking

Twitter and Facebook both benefit from similar links, but never before has a social media service offered such an incentive.

Google's SEO Tactic: Require Authors to Link to their Google+ Profile

2. Internal Linking

One thing noted about Google+ when it was released was just how easy it was to be in lots of circles, or add lots of people to your own. People who struggled on Twitter for years to build up 1000 followers, suddenly found themselves in 2000 or 3000 Google+ circles, seemingly overnight.

Circle Count

Google’s strategy to connect everyone on the planet also makes for good internal linking. Following more than 1000 people may not create a practical social experience, but it creates a great SEO opportunity. The more your content is shared in other people’s streams and profiles, then the more your content is crawled, indexed, and deemed important by search engines.

Google's SEO Tactic: Encourage Large Circles Counts

3. Lots of Indexable Content

My public Google+ profile contains a wealth of information, all visible to search engines, including:

  • Biographical Information
  • Full Text of Public Posts
  • Photos
  • Links to people who have added me to their circles
  • Everything I have ever +1’d

Compare that to my Twitter account – limited to 160 characters of biographical information, or my Facebook profile, which reads like an auto-generated pamphlet.

Consider how a search engine sees these pages. Take a look at the source code of any Google+ profile or use a tool SEO-browser (a search robot simulator) to see how many words appear on each profile.

  • Facebook – 275 Words

  • Twitter – 491 Words

  • Google+ – 2621 Words

Google structures content to provide a wealth of information for search engines, to index and serve in search results.

Google's SEO Tactic: Search Engine Friendly Profiles

4. On-Page Optimization

Google+ makes it easy to share posts from others – a feature much like retweeting on Twitter or reblogging on Tumblr. These Google+ posts frequently show up in search results as their own entries.

As the title tag is one of the most important aspects of on-page optimization, Google wisely choose longer, more descriptive title tags. Compare these to the shorter title tags offered by Facebook and Twitter, which often run no longer than three unique words.

Here’s the title tag to 3 different posts, all by Rand Fishkin. Each of these posts is indexed by Google.

  • FacebookYesterday, I…
  • TwitterTwitter / @randfish: Running test of Google+’s …
  • Google+Rand Fishkin – Google+ – Shocking how many of the folks featured in this post form…

Which do you think ranks better for a query with “Rand Fishkin” in the search?

Rand Fishkin

Google's SEO Tactic: Descriptive Title Tags

5. User Generated Content

Every post I’ve ever written on Google+ has been public. As a result, every post has been crawled and indexed by Google search. The privacy settings on the profiles are simple, intuitive and encourage openness.

The big green button screams, “Pick me! Pick me!”

Share Google+

Most Twitter posts are public by default, although unless a tweet becomes famous the 140 character limit prevents most tweets from reaching the definition of “rich” content. Facebook, in contrast, only shares posts from fan pages with Google, and not posts from regular profiles.

Google's SEO Tactic: Encourage Public Sharing

6. Show Google+ Author Profiles in Search Results

The first 5 items on this list represent SEO tactics that anyone can use, but in a way #6 belongs to Google alone. By linking to Google+ profiles in search results, they create an advantage that no other social media service can duplicate.

Is Google “cheating” by favoring it’s own property? Some say yes, but on the other hand, is there a more relevant result? To me, it makes more sense to connect my author profile with the website that actually hosts the content, such as my profile on SEOmoz.

Rich Google Snippets

This demonstrates the power of rich snippets. Since Google introduced author photos in search results, webmasters have scrambled to get their mug included – the idea being that rich snippets of all kinds increase click-through rates. The question is, are we increasing the CTR of our own website, or Google+?

Google's SEO Tactic: Creative Rich Snippets

What Can You Do?

Except for #6 above, most of these techniques are available to any online business. Google has found a way to create large amounts of search engine friendly content, and do it at scale.

The lack of diversity this creates in Google's search results is troubling to some. Google risks turning into McGoogle, where every result and every page looks the same. With any luck, more companies will adopt strong SEO strategies to raise themselves in search.

Now that the adoption of Google+ has hit 62 million users and growing, expect to see far more Google+ in your search results soon.


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Photo: Baby, It's Cold Outside

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Thursday, January 5, 2012
 

Photo: Baby, It's Cold Outside

President Barack Obama greets neighbors outside the home of William and Endia Eason in Cleveland, Ohio, Jan. 4, 2012. The President visited the Easons, who almost lost their home after falling victim to a predatory lender, to discuss the need for a strong Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

In Case You Missed It

Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog:

State and Local Officials, Colleagues Support Cordray Appointment
State and local officials across the country, including many of Richard Cordray’s former Attorneys General colleagues, spoke out about President Obama's decision to appoint Cordray as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

From the Archives: Holly Petraeus Joins the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
A look back at the work Holly Petraeus has done to help protect servicemembers and their families from predatory financial practices since joining the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Office of Servicemember Affairs one year ago.

President Obama Discusses Richard Cordray in Shaker Heights
In Shaker Heights, Ohio, President Obama talks about the fight to help secure a better future for the middle class -- and his decision to appoint Richard Cordray to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Standard Time (EST).

10:00 AM: The President receives the Presidential Daily Briefing

10:50 AM: The President delivers remarks on the Defense Strategic Review WhiteHouse.gov/live

11:45 AM: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney

3:30 PM: The President and the Vice President meet with Secretary Geithner

WhiteHouse.gov/live Indicates that the event will be live-streamed on WhiteHouse.gov/Live

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Seth's Blog : "How much are you going to tip?"

"How much are you going to tip?"

Have you ever been asked that question when splitting the check?

There are two couples at the table, the waiter has brought separate checks and the credit card holder turns to the other credit card holder and tries to find out how to coordinate the tip.

Why?

I mean, if they were out just the two of them, would they ask what people at the other table were going to tip? (Probably, hence the need to invent the 15% standard). Why does it matter if one couple tips 14% and the other 18%?

Don't underestimate just how badly many people want to fit in. (Not with everyone, just with their tribe and their peers).

What does it mean to be popular?

Some things (and people) are popular because a chord is struck, because there's a right place/right time alignment of interest and solution. But more often, an idea is popular because something had to be. Tribes demand winners, the flavor of the month, the safe choice.

That's why being the "presumed front-runner" is so vitally important. People want to hire the person or vote for the person or work with the organization that most people in their circle would have picked. They are then blameless.

We say we want to root for the underdog, but actually, we want to be seen as rooting for whomever everyone else is rooting for.

A significant part of marketing to strangers is the work of appearing to be the dominant choice, the safe choice, the one that's going to get picked by everyone else soon. Get in sync, the thinking goes, if you're the kind of person that wants to be in sync.

One example: a restaurant that highlights its most popular dishes virtually guarantees that those dishes will become the most popular.

There are a huge range of tools and signals available to marketers willing to invest in the position of most popular. But the signals are expensive. Because the presumed frontrunner can afford it. Hence the circular nature of marketing investment--acting like you can afford it often means you will soon be able to.

And the best plan for the insurgent brand? To find a smaller tribe, become the presumed winner there, and scale it up across tribes.

 

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