Central Perk

joi, 25 august 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Posted: 24 Aug 2011 08:02 PM PDT

Julian Sunmi Park and Benjamin Jinsuk Lee got married and opted to take some of the coolest, dorkiest wedding photos possible. I like this because it's a fun way to assert your nerdiness at your wedding without dressing up like a Klingon. It's a perfect compromise!

The album, shot by Amanda Rynda, shows the couple having a simple picnic that goes terribly wrong. The idea came when Ben said he wanted a more masculine take on the wedding photo.

20 Prettiest Princesses in the World

Posted: 24 Aug 2011 02:38 PM PDT

These are some of the loveliest princesses from all over the world. There is no one winner in this bunch, they are all royally beautiful.

Kate Middleton

When lovely Kate Middleton weds Prince William on April 29, she likely will become England's newest princess, according to reports. But she won't be the world's only pretty princess. Whether they hold any actual power or not, attractive real-life princesses can be found all over the globe, giving 4-year-old girls everywhere hope that they, too, could one day wear a crown.

Princess Letizia

Future Queen of Spain, the wife of the heir apparent to the Spanish throne is a former TV anchor.

Charlene Wittstock

Future Princess of Monaco, The South African Olympic swimmer married Albert II, Prince of Monaco, the ruler of the tiny principality, in 2011. She is now Her Serene Highness, the Princess of Monaco, just like Albert's mother, Grace Kelly.

Charlene Wittstock and Albert II

Beatrice Borromeo

Future Princess of Monaco. The Italian model (and daughter of a count), Borromeo is generally acknowledged as the girlfriend of Pierre Casiraghi, the nephew of Prince Albert II, and third in line to the throne of Monaco. If she were to marry Pierre and he ascended the throne, she'd be the new princess of Monaco. Of course, that's a big if.

As a model, Borromeo leads a pretty charmed life anyway.

Charlotte Casiraghi

Potential Princess of Monaco. Charlotte Casiraghi, Pierre's sister and daughter of Princess Caroline, is fourth in the line to the throne of Monaco, but she's not technically a princess right now.

Though she's a private citizen, Casiraghi is honorary head of Monaco's horse-jumping organization, so she's got that going for her.

Princess Martha Louise Of Norway

Princess Martha Louisa of Norway signs her book Discover Your Guardian Angel at a book signing.

Princess Clotilde Courau

French actress Clotilde Courau, wife of Italian Prince of Venice and Piedmont Emmanuel Philiberto de Savoie, was an acclaimed actress before she wed the prince in 2003.

Princess Máxima

Future Queen of the Netherlands. Princess Maxima is married to Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, heir apparent to the Dutch throne.

Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein

The daughter of Jordan's king, here watching the races at Ascot, England, is also the wife of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of the emirate of Dubai.

Princess Mathilde

Belgium's Future Queen. Princess Mathilde of Belgium, wife of Prince Philippe, the heir apparent to the Belgian throne, is also a descendant of Polish nobility.

Princess Tamara Czartoryski-Borbon

The daughter of Prince Adam Czartoryski Borbón and cousin to King Juan Carlos I of Spain, Czartoryski-Borbon is an athlete and model, and once hosted a Thai kickboxing show.

Princess Sirivannavari Nariratana

The only daughter of Thailand's Crown Prince Maha Vajralongkorn is a competitive badminton player and has started her own fashion line.

Crown Princess Victoria

Future Queen of Sweden. Princess Victoria is the heiress apparent to the Swedish throne. In August 2011, the palace confirmed that she was expecting her first child -- the future king or queen of Sweden.

Princess Madeleine of Sweden

The second daughter of King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden, Princess Madeline is renowned for her love of horseriding.

Princess Tunku Myra Madihah

Royal Daughter of Malaysia.

Princess Mary of Denmark

The Australian-born wife of Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark, Princess Mary (here with daughter Princess Isabella) met her husband, the Danish heir apparent, in a pub during the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Princess Beatrice of York

Princess Beatrice also happens to be fifth in line to the throne.

Princess Eugenie

Eugenie is sixth in line to the British throne.

Manohara Odelia Pinot

An American-Indonesian model, Manohara Odelia Pinot is in the process of divorcing her husband, Prince Tengku Muhammad Fakhry, whom she accuses of abusing her. The prince won a defamation suit against his estranged wife (whom he married when she was 16), but the controversy continues.

Source: life

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

6 Keyword Research Mistakes You Might be Making

Posted: 24 Aug 2011 02:13 PM PDT

Posted by jamesagate

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Keyword research is an all too often under-appreciated aspect of SEO.

I've written a few keyword research posts here on SEOmoz and that's because I believe it to be the blueprint of any successful SEO campaign.

Here are some of the more common mistakes that I see people make with their keyword research.

#1 – You're being Unrealistic

"It is better to have a bigger slice of a few smaller pies rather than not getting even a slither of a much bigger pie."

Keyword research appears to be a very straightforward task. You fire up your keyword research tool of choice and find the keywords that relate to your industry with the highest search volumes. Sadly, that's not the way to do it if you want to see real results.

To many businesses, high-competition keywords are simply out of reach – at least in the short and medium term. Part of good keyword research is about being realistic and selecting appropriate keywords for targeting that take into account the site's age, current authority and any future optimisation that will take place.

Targeting one word keywords is quite often unrealistic but it may also prove unprofitable – someone searching for 'Toshiba l670 laptop' is likely to be much further along in the purchasing process that someone who searches for 'laptops' – think about which searcher is likely to have their credit card out already.

There's nothing wrong with targeting generic keywords, I'm simply saying that if your campaign has limited budget and you need results in the short to medium term then targeting less trafficked, less competitive keywords is a much better way to utilise resources.

Lower traffic but lower competition keywords might not seem as exciting to target but if your website can dominate these areas fairly quickly then you are going to see far more traffic from the search engines than failing to effectively target a much more competitive term.

#2 – You're looking at broad match instead of exact match

A seemingly simple mistake but one which many people continue to make...

Search volume is of course a very important metric when it comes to keyword research but all too often people make the mistake of looking at broad search volumes rather than the exact match figure when using tools like Google's Keyword Tool.

There can be a huge difference between broad match and exact match search traffic for example:

There are 135,000 broad match searches each month in the UK for 'dog kennels' but only 14,800 exact match searches for the same keyword. Still, this wouldn't prove particularly problematic as this is obviously still a keyword worth targeting – it would knock traffic and ROI projections way off kilter if you do these kinds of things though.

The real problem comes when you choose to target a keyword like 'ladies leather handbags' which has a broad match search volume of 2,400 but an exact match search volume of only 260 – failing to base your research on exact match data might mean you think you are targeting a reasonably well-trafficked keyword when in actual fact, once you've factored in data inaccuracies, you could be looking at a very low search volume keyword indeed.

It is widely accepted that Google's Keyword Tool isn't entirely accurate when it comes to search volumes but using exact match gives you the best data available when assessing how viable a keyword is to target.

#3 – You're targeting plural instead of singular

It is very common to see a website targeting the plural version of a keyword but in most cases, it is the singular version of a keyword that people are searching for.

I see this most often on eCommerce websites where the site owner optimises category pages and because they sell more than one product, they naturally focus on the pluralised keywords for example "tablet PCs" which actually gets 91% less searches than "tablet PC".

I will readily admit that Google is much better at determining that a singular and plural version of a keyword are one and the same, but in many cases there are still differences in the search results. Failing to target the singular keyword can be the difference between your search listing being highlighted in the SERPs (=higher clickthrough) and it can also mean your website appears lower (even slightly) than marginally better targeted pages – that could be the difference between making a sale and not.

#4 – You're ignoring conversion

This one could easily turn into a rant for me because so often I come up against clients who want to rank for [insert trophy keyword] when in actual fact they'd do better (financially) targeting a different keyword or set of keywords. I try to explain that a keyword that brings in traffic is wasted bandwidth if that traffic doesn't convert. You don't hire my company to get traffic for traffic's sake...you presumably hire us to help you ultimately make more sales.

The online world is competitive and it's only going to get more competitive, therefore making the most of every penny being invested is vital.

This makes conversion and language analysis a vital part of keyword research. The human mind is the only software capable of performing a good quality 'conversion audit' of a keyword list because whilst there are programmes out there that can filter and sort keywords to make your life easier, there's no real substitute for industry experience and SEO knowledge.

There are some very basic indicators for example prefixes such as 'buy' might be a clear indicator that the traffic from this keyword is going to convert.

A keyword conversion audit is more complex than that however since each situation and market is individual. I find existing data to be a very useful way to determine which keywords are likely to convert well. If you have goal tracking setup with Google Analytics, you can easily determine the highest converting keywords your site currently gets traffic from, try to identify patterns in your highest converting keywords and then translate and apply this knowledge to other areas of keyword research.

#5 – You're selecting keywords that are out of context

This is yet more rationale to further humanise the keyword research process because most keyword tools struggle to compute words and their meaning in the way a human would.

For example, a searcher looking for 'storage' could be looking for a self-storage centre, boxes and other storage furniture for the home or even professional storage solutions for a warehouse or office.

Opportunities for confused targeting are abundant which is why it is essential the keywords you decide to target are highly-relevant and laser-focused towards what your business offers.

A good way to do this is to search manually for the keywords in Google and see the kinds of results that come up, you will likely be able to get a feel for whether the keyword is applicable to the product or service you intended to target.

#6 – You're failing to conduct keyword reviews

It is accepted that SEO is an on-going process but rarely are target keywords reviewed and audited. If a marketplace is shifting over time then you would also expect customer search behaviour to develop and evolve over time too – this makes regular keyword reviews essential.

In most markets, I find an annual review is perfectly adequate. Any time period shorter than this and there is a risk that targeting becomes a bit chaotic with efforts focused on new keywords before results on old keywords have been achieved or evaluated.

That being said, in some competitive and very fast moving markets a more regular keyword review may be required.

The aim of a keyword review is to:

Weed out poor performing keywords
Identify opportunities and areas for growth
Shape your SEO strategy for the future

To do a strategic and actionable keyword review you can use this adapted version of the Boston Matrix that I like to use.

Large brands use the Boston Matrix to assess the health of their product portfolio and to identify where to concentrate their resources.

You can do the same thing for your keyword portfolio.

Sort your keywords into four categories in order to better shape your search strategy for the future.

Question marks – these are keywords in areas where growth is likely but at present you're not getting the performance you'd expect. These are very often untapped keyword opportunities and you should plan how you are going to improve performance on these kinds of keywords.
Stars – high-performance keywords and loads of room for growth – find ways to capitalise on growth. My advice is to focus your resources of gaining results in these areas for maximum ROI in a short period of time.
Dogs – the poor performing keywords with little or no chance of growth – bin these in favour of other keywords, reallocate any resources to other areas.
Cash cows – the high performing keywords that show little opportunity for growth – look for ways to enhance and maintain performance whilst identifying patterns and translating this learning to other areas or verticals.

What mistakes do you see happening in the keyword research process? Please share them in the comments section below...

By James Agate, founder of Skyrocket SEO and a regular SEO contributor to leading blogs and publications across the web.

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Seth's Blog : September 13 session in my office

September 13 session in my office

By request, I'm offering a small group session in my office on the 13th of September. Call it group coaching for lack of a better term... bring your marketing, business model, web or other challenges and we'll try to work through them. A few big ideas are likely to come of it for each attendee.

Apologies in advance if you can't get a ticket, but if it goes well, I'll probably do it again. Details and tickets.

• Email to a friend •

How Long Should Page Titles Be – The Social Media Factor Graywolf's SEO Blog

How Long Should Page Titles Be – The Social Media Factor

Posted: 25 Aug 2011 10:32 AM PDT

Ever since the early days of SEO, the ideal title length has been the subject of much debate. Back then, it was important to use keywords that search engines would use to rank your pages near the top of the SERPS. Then you made the title as click enticing as possible so, when it appeared in the SERPS, people would be more likely to click it before they clicked the other listings. Lastly you had to strive to be concise enough that search engines wouldn’t truncate your titles. However, there’s a new factor to consider when looking at your title length: the social media factor.

Anything you can do to make less work for the person who is sharing your content, decrease their ability to screw it up, and increase its chance of spreading is a good thing…

When someone reads your page and likes it enough to share on social bookmarking services like Reddit, Facebook, or Twitter, it’s important for those services to be able to parse your code and render your titles properly. The titles also should be enticing or interesting enough to make other people want to click and read them. They shouldn’t be stuffed with keywords or boring branding elements like your company name.

Since Twitter is the most restrictive of all the services as far as length, if it works there, it will work on most other services. There are a couple factors to keep in mind. If you are using your own URL shortener and have coded it properly, your URL will show (see How To Easily Create Your Own URL Shortener With WordPress). However, there isn’t a 100% guarantee that will persist. In some cases, people will be using clients like tweetdeck, hootsuite, bufferapp, zite or another service that will rewrite the URL. While tinyurl used to be the default shortener, it has been replaced by others like bit.ly or goog.gl. If you want to be absolutely sure and play it safe, use tiny URL or or your own shortener, whichever is longer.

You want to leave room for retweets as well so, if possible, leave another 12-20 characters free. I know that sounds like a lot. We’re planning for the worst case scenario. While it may not happen often, it’s not an entirely unlikely possibility. So, at the very least, take it into consideration instead of discounting it completely.

In the past, there has been a lot of debate about putting the website name in the title. Some favor putting it at the front (I personally recommend against that). Most people favor putting it on the end after the page title, which is what I recommend in most cases. However, if you have a site title that is especially long or a post that was written for social media sharing or is highly likely to be shared, think about leaving the site name off completely. Having the site name auto populate on a site like reddit or in a tweet is a dangerous situation. If the submitter doesn’t edit it out, it can work against you and hinder your success. If it comes up in a tweet and isn’t edited out, it can look pretentious. Anything you can do to make less work for the person who is sharing your content, decrease their ability to screw it up, and increase its chance of spreading is a good thing

Lastly, I’d like to bring up the subject of bad characters in the title that make it not look like English. I mentioned this to them on Twitter months ago and, to be honest, it would only take 5 minutes of programming time to fix, so I don’t feel bad calling them out in public at this point. GotSaga, you have great content that I want to share, bookmark and retweet. But the hyphens and plus characters between words make my tweets look stupid if I don’t edit them out manually. I’m lazy. Stop making it a harder than it has to be to share your stuff

Avoid using strange characters in your page titles

So what are the takeaways from this post:

Consider title length. Make sure you are under the length of search truncation.
Consider URL shorteners. Find the worst case scenario of shorteners popular with your users.
Consider the retweet–give 12-20 characters to be completely safe.
Consider omitting the site name on pieces with a high probability of being shared socially.
Eliminate special characters or funny characters from your titles.
Make it as simple as possible for people to submit an optimal title if they share your piece on any social network. Make it harder for them to screw it up as well.
Choosing between click enticing and keyword focus is more art than science. It’s a balancing act. Don’t kill your chances for social success by focusing on keywords, and don’t sacrifice your keywords by being overly sensational or witty.

photo credit: Navin75

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How Long Should Page Titles Be – The Social Media Factor

Photo Gallery: Snapshots in Presidential History

Your Daily Snapshot for
Thursday, August 25, 2011

Photo Gallery: Snapshots in Presidential History

One of the highlights for visitors taking the official tour of the White House is looking at the panels of photos that line the halls of the East Wing. Check out this gallery featuring Presidents going about some of their more noteworthy official duties, from honoring a future President with a Distinguished Service Medal to sending a telegraph to open the first ever World's Fair.