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Improving Social & Subscription Calls to Action - Whiteboard Friday |
Improving Social & Subscription Calls to Action - Whiteboard Friday Posted: 19 Jul 2012 07:56 PM PDT Posted by Kenny Martin In this week's Whiteboard Friday, we'll be discussing ways that you can improve your social and email calls to action to make them more effective. Often times, when wandering the web, you'll find web pages that are filled from head to toe with all the possible calls to action that are available. By limiting your usage of these calls to action and by placing them purposefully, you will a significant increase in your conversions. As always, don't forget to leave your tips, tricks, and pieces of wisdom in the comments below. Happy Friday everyone. Video Transcription
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PHP Errors as a Means of Getting Links Posted: 19 Jul 2012 05:43 AM PDT Posted by Eugene Krall 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. 1. Using a Search Engine for Finding Faulty SitesI was reading the article about “Broken Link Building” the other day when I realized that there might be a possible extension to the idea of helping webmasters with keeping theirs sites together. Since there is a lot of stuff that can go wrong with a website, I started probing possibilities. Here is what I came up with. Definitely, there might be other problems with an internet site that might be noticed by an ordinary user. And in order to take a well-structured and organized approach, I had to find sites with a certain clear and present problem, and be able to find these sites in bulk. While thinking about this, I was doing my usual everyday routine when suddenly a php error popped out on the site I was browsing at the time. You are no doubt have encountered something like that lots of times.
I knew for sure that I had seen such type of error A LOT. Only all of those times I was in an absolutely different frame of mind and had no idea how I could use it to my benefit. The site was related to my own (that’s why I was browsing it in the first place), and of pretty decent quality and value, so it made perfect sense for me to ask a responsible person for a link from it. Only all of us know that you do not simply contact a person and ask them to link to you right away. You wouldn’t, would you? From experience we all know that all our requests that generate little or no value to the requestee should better be based on relationships, even if they are established by one simple sentence which says “Hi man, it seems your PHP is getting out of control, you had better do something about it: <link to the page with a PHP problem>”. OK, let me explain everything step by step.
Try more subtle approach, show them that you sent the message only because you felt that it would be appropriate to let them know about the problem, not because you wanted to use it to your benefit. “By the way, I was thinking if there is any chance that you can link to my site. It seems your visitors might be interested in this sort of thing. Anyway, size it up for yourself and if you of the same opinion, kindly add the link and let me know” But let me explain everything step by step. 2. PHP Notification ExplainedA lot of you probably have quite perfunctory understanding of PHP. So do I. The beauty of it is that you do not have to be a programmer to help webmasters with their PHP problems. I will try to explain in short what you should know in order to be ready to write a PHP error message. Let's assume that you already know that PHP is a server-side scripting language. If something goes wrong and a php command/function can not be executed properly on a page loading in a browser, PHP engine throws up a notification on the page (like the one displayed on the picture above). Sometimes they are not displayed, though, if the webmaster has chosen the "not display notifications in browser" option in the PHP settings. There are several major types of notifications, but all of them are uniform, which makes it possible for us to find them on Google. Let's take a look at a couple of examples: Warning: include(../inc_header.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/actualad/public_html/hotel_soaltee_crowne_plaza.php on line 21 Notice: Uninitialized string offset: 0 in /var/www/odkryjpolske.pl/op3/functions/functions.php on line 1952 Fatal error: Call to undefined function tweetmeme() in /home/content/40/8396940/html/blog/wp-content/themes/magilas/single.php on line 54 Deprecated: Function ereg_replace() is deprecated in /var/www/virtual/sleepingparis.com/htdocs/admin/filemappa.php on line 18 Strict Standards: Non-static method DB::connect() should not be called statically in C:\wwwAmauta\php\dosmanosperu\connection\gateway.inc.php on line 28 I was able to spot five types of error notifications and then made an attempt to figure out a way to find them on Google so that the results were as relevant as possible. After taking a closer look I figured out that the part "php on line" was present in all the types of notifications. The only other part that seemingly remained the same were the words "Warning/Notice/Fatal Error/Deprecated/Strict Standards" 3. Seek...So, in order to get results containing pages with PHP error notifications, you should form queries:
But that might not be enough. Instead of getting search results with actual error notifications on faulty pages, you might stumble on a discussion of that error on some forum, or even the official PHP site. The solution is as follows: add some relevant keywords to your query (defining the type of site you want to deal with). Let's assume I have an online hotel reservation site and I want to get in touch with tour and hotel sites all over the world. I do the following:
The result is more than satisfactory one. There are 1,380,000 results for the query "warning:" [function." "php on line" intitle:tours and even the last hundred results out of 1000 displayed on Google are at least 50% relevant to what I was searching for. I mean the pages displayed indeed have a php error notification on them and offer tour services. But if you somehow feel that the results aren't relevant enough, you can always expand your search query by adding additional keywords. There is also a more thorough way to go. You may further brake down the types of PHP errors by the contents of a notification. Let's assume you have stumbled upon the warning notification which looks like: Warning: include_once(language/mn.php) [function.include-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /hermes/waloraweb061/b490/pow.sndmn/htdocs/destination/index.php on line 34 It is the easiest one to solve since it clearly states that the file or directory are missing. So all you have to write to the webmaster is "check your files and their names carefully" Let's find the constant value of the message and delete all the information which changes (like the names of the files and folders, paths to them, etc.). And do not forget to attach your keywords! That's what we get after some tweaking. "Warning:" "[function.include-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in" "php on line" intitle:tours The query produces 132 results, which is quite something to start with since you already have the solution to the problem in your pocket. Now all you have to do is send your message to the respective parties in the results and wait for them to reply! 4. ... and destroy!Usually, if you direct the attention of webmaster to the problem with their site, they should know what to do about it since they have probably earned being called "webmasters". Still there are a considerable percentage of people who take care of their site to some extent without deep understanding of its mechanics. The site might have been created by a company for a client who does not know much in this sort of stuff. In this case, your ability to search for information on the Internet will enable you to warm up the hearts of mighty number of people who can add your link on their sites. What I am talking about here is trying to get to the bottom of the problem before contacting the webmaster so that not only could you state the presence of it, but also could help with figuring things out. It's nice if you are into PHP and can crack any related problem without referring to World Wide Web. If, however, you are not that sort of person, you might want to read some specialized PHP forums: PHP Freaks If the search comes up with a page which contains a following notification: Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/zungahto/public_html/includes/joomla.php:836) in /home/zungahto/public_html/includes/joomla.php on line 697 you have enough information to be able to find a solution. Let's try to perform the following search: site:forums.phpfreaks.com "Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by" Google comes up with as many as 4,350 and 4,700 results for forums.phpfreaks.com and sitepoint.com respectively, which is one damn mighty pile to browse through. You might want to look through the top 10 and send the links to the discussions you deem appropriate in your message. Another way to go is just simply send the url of the forum so that the recipient could start a new thread for themselves to address their problem exclusively. Of course it's not an exhaustive solution, but it will give the webmaster something to lean on. If you want to go hardcore though, you can plug in one of your company's programmers to give advice to the recipient (only I think it should be one hell of a good site to go into such extremities for a link). Finally, check out this list of common PHP error messages. If you want to proceed with the idea of searching for a specific sort of error, you might want to read this one and then continue on with the search. Let's assume I have chosen to proceed with the "use of undefined constant" error. I have some sort of solution already, poor as it is. (It’s in the document provided above). So all you need to do is search for this sort of messages: "Notice:" "Use of undefined constant" "php on line" intitle:tours And heeeere we go! 59 results. 5. Checking the Activities of the WebsiteFurther on, the fact that an error notification has been around long enough for a search engine to index it means that the site is getting seriously out of hand and might have been completely abandoned by the crew, so before sending a message insure in some way that the site is still in business. I do it by performing these steps:
Remember, this is far from precise and I would be glad to hear of any other ideas about how one can discover whether a site has been abandoned or not. 6. Taking a Deeper Look into the Problems of a WebsiteYou may also want to check whether there are any other php errors of one sort or another by performing a respective search query modified by the “site” search operator: site:phperrorsite.com "warning:" [function." "php on line" The higher the number of the documents found, the higher the likelihood that the site owners/editors just do not give a rat’s ass about their website and won’t probably respond to your message of good intention. Now you have ensured that the site is still kept a close watch on by finding out that there is only one document with a php error, which, in its turn, happens to be in some secluded corner of the site and might simply have been missed by the webmaster. There is no excuse for a php error notification right above the header on the main page of a site. I think twice before contacting sites of that sort. Like, how could they have missed that and even gave time for a search engine to index it!? 7. Composing a PHP error notification emailWell, I guess I have fed you all I had on the subject. Now for the pivotal point - email composing. I guess it's one of the most popular subjects among SEOmoz blog writers, so I do not want to write something that has been written thousands of times before me. Try to check out the most recent article on the subject (at the time of this writing). Nevertheless, here is my way of doing business. I hope this example might be of use to someone. Subject: <recipient's name>, I have spotted a problem with your site. HI, <recipient's name> I was browsing through your site phperrorsite.com out of professional curiosity (I maintain an online hotel reservation site myself) and came upon a page that was obviously getting out of hand: <the url of the page with a PHP error> I understand how tiresome it might be to keep everything in line, so I have attached a document with possible solution to this <type of problem as specified in the error notification, "use of undefined variable", etc> problem. There are also quite a few discussion on the internet pertaining to this problem, check them out if you will: <the link to a thread on PHP Freaks forum on the subject> <the link to a thread on SitePoint PHP forum on the subject> However, I would recommend you to start a new thread on one of the forums laying down all the details. Please drop me a line at your convenience; I would like to know how things worked out for you. Best of luck with your work! <your name> You could omit some of the stuff like specifying the urls of forum threads. To keep it simple, you could just mention the page with the error and ask them to get back to you. After the reply, you can move on to asking for a little favor. Hopefully, you will be granted one! Hi again, <recipient's name> I am glad my message was of use to you. I guess we, webmasters, should back each other up when we can. We could learn a lot from each other. By the way, I got this idea that maybe my hotel reservation services might be of use to some of your visitors. Hotel reservation and tour services go along quite well, don't you think so? Please check out my site yoursite.com and if you of the same opinion, kindly add a link to it where you think it would be most appropriate. I hope I do not impose you. It's just that it's so hard to stay on surface these days, if you get my meaning. Hope to have a word from you soon. Rock On, <your name> Well, I guess that's about it. It might not be the best message ever conceived, but it worked fine for me. A thing to remember: I guess it's not a good idea to ask for a link in the very first message - wait for a little while in order to establish some sort of connection with the webmaster, and when you feel that you get along quite well - make your pitch. Remember, if you do not get link - you still get yourself a grateful person who might do you a favor of one sort or another later on. So, not time wasted. I would be glad to hear any suggestions for improving my messages! A Little Extra: Contacting sites with enabled directory browsing in ApacheI have been trying to make the point that you should be creative and try different approaches based on something that has been done before. Helping webmasters to keep their site neat and clean is the core here. So let's take a look at another method you could use as a reason for contacting webmasters: Looks familiar, doesn't it? If you spend eight hours a day on the Internet (as most of us do), it's something you have seen a lot of times. And you probably know that there is something wrong with the site when you stumble upon something like that. And "that" can be called "directory indexing/browsing enabled in Apache server". There is a whole movement of hackers excited about finding sites webmaster of which were reckless enough not to disable this default feature of Apache server. Having this enabled constitutes a great security risk to your website since there are a lot of ways in which the sensitive data could be manipulated. It can be even a lot easier for someone to breach your site if you are one of those guys who has a document with password for all of your accounts. Believe me, there is a lot more of those than you can think. Besides, it simply looks untidy to find such page in Google results. How to find sites with enabled directory browsingThere is a system and structure to everything. If you look at a couple of pages like the one on the picture, you will realise that there are constant values which never change. Here is what I use for finding such pages: intitle:index intitle:of port apache server The query comes back with 100% relevant results. (OK, let's say 95% relevant results just to be on the safe side) But we do not want to contact random sites, do we? Almost all of us involved in a specific kind of business and we want to find sites relevant to it. Assuming that my own site is dedicated to online hotel reservation, I modify the query as specified below: intitle:tours intitle:index intitle:of port apache server I come up with lots of tour sites around the world who have some security issues. Here is what you want to do further onYou contact the webmaster (or anybody else involved with the site) and tell them to disable building of directory index by opening the apache config file "httpd.conf" and removing the word "indexes" found in it. After that you can gradually shift to the "quid pro quo" part of the conversation. Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! |
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When I was growing up, there was intense competition for news dominance among the local networks. All evening long, our favorite TV shows would be interrupted by Irv Weinstein, practically shouting about a fire across town. Film at 11!
Friends in Toronto asked us whether there were any buildings at all left standing.
Today's mass media competition makes that battle look quaint. In the relentless search for clicks, profit-focused media companies are racing to the bottom as fast as they can get there.
Can we do anything about this? Should we care?
I think the answer to both questions is yes. We should care about an influential industry that creates and amplifies fear, on deadline, distracts us and festers, like a fast-growing tumor, diminishing the healthy tissue around it.
We get what we click on.
Alas, we also get what others click on. And society does a poor job of marketing productive media to itself. We're consuming more media than ever before, but I'm not sure the mass media is making us much smarter, braver or more willing to take action.
When one million committed people start engaging with a media channel, that channel gains in profit and influence. That's all it takes. The power to change what gets broadcast is in our hands, which might be a good thing. I'm sure that the junk is going to get ever worse. The question is: will people who care click often enough for the good stuff to get even better?
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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
Tech Sector Layoffs Surge to Three-Year High Posted: 19 Jul 2012 04:59 PM PDT I am starting to think the next jobs report is going to be downright miserable. New orders have plunged and mass layoffs are on the rise. Please consider Tech sector layoffs surge to three-year high During the first half of the year, 51,529 planned job cuts were announced across the tech sector, representing a 260 percent increase over the 14,308 layoffs planned during the first half of 2011. Things are so bad so far this year that the figure is 39 percent higher than all the job cuts recorded in the tech sector last year.Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
Job Losses and Unemployment Skyrocketing in China; Thinner, Taller iPhone 5 Posted: 19 Jul 2012 11:39 AM PDT In the video below Jefferies Managing Director Peter Misek discusses the coming iPhone 5 with Emily Chang on Bloomberg TV. Misek reports the iPhone will be significantly thinner and taller because of new technology he did not expect to be available for at least another year. What really caught my eye, however, was a segment in the middle of the video regarding grim statistics on sales and employment in China starting at about the 2:26 mark. Link if video does not play: Details on iPhone 5 Emerge Partial Transcript Emily Chang: Another thing you say is smart-phone and PC demand in China is dropping off significantly. What exactly is going on there? Peter Misek: We came back from China really depressed, I have to say. It appears that mainland China is correcting significantly. The statistics the government publishes, frankly we think are largely fabricated. So you have to rely on other statistics such as retail sales, electricity usage, mall traffic, etc. And what we saw, and what we heard was pretty grim. We think consumer electronic sales could be falling double-digits year-over-year in June and thus far in July. And we think the catalyst frankly is job losses. The premier of China was on this morning basically saying the labor situation is severe, meaning job losses are accelerating and unemployment is skyrocketing. That is causing the Chinese consumer who naturally saves more than we do, to save even more. Plunging New Orders Everywhere The rise in Chinese unemployment ties in perfectly with my July 6 report Plunging New Orders Suggest Global Recession Has Arrived. The grim data also fits in with the email yesterday from Michael Pettis yesterday: "China Rebalancing Has Begun"; What are the Global Implications? Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
U.S. Treasuries a Buy or a Short? Posted: 19 Jul 2012 01:27 AM PDT I had a nice conversation the other day with Lacy Hunt at Hoisington Investments. We agree on many aspects of the global economy and I have a few excerpts of Hoisington's latest forecast below. First, let me state that if you are looking for someone who has called the US treasury market correct this past decade, look no further than Hunt. While I have been US treasury bullish (on-and-off ) for years (more on than off), and I can also claim to have never advocated shorting them (in contrast to inflationistas running rampant nearly everywhere), Lacy has correctly been a steadfast unwavering treasury bull throughout. Will Hoisington catch the turn? That I cannot answer. However, one look at Japan suggests the actual turn may be a lot further away than people think. For a viewpoint remarkably different than you will find anywhere else, please consider a few snips from the Hoisington Quarterly Review and Outlook, for the Second Quarter 2012 (not yet publicly posted but may be at any time). Abysmal Times Confirm the ResearchThose were the ending paragraph of Hoisington's four-page 2nd quarter review. I added paragraph breaks for ease in reading. Are US Treasuries "Undervalued"? I will respond to my own question with another question: Undervalued compared to what? Certainly I would not advocate blindly buying 30-year year US treasuries with the intention of holding on to them for 30 years. Nor would Lacy Hunt. Likewise, I see no real value in holding 10-year US treasuries for the next 10-years either. Then again, I have stated the US may go in and out of deflation for as long as a decade. If that does happen, treasuries may easily outperform for that entire period. One look at the Japanese stock market shows what might happen. Three Lost Decades click on chart for sharper image I do not believe that is the path for US equities. However, I may very well be wrong. It is always important to consider what happens if you are wrong. Few bother to do just that. If I am wrong (and that is certainly a decent chance), then what does that say about the potential for US treasuries? Rather than advocating buying or shorting treasuries here, I am advising people to do something different: Think! Please consider all aspects of a trade, and in this case, what might easily happen to the widely espoused notion "US Treasuries are a Short". Also think about who is on the other side of the trade and why. Short-term, US treasuries are overbought. Otherwise, they are hugely unloved. People have been saying Japanese treasuries are a short for at least two decades. They will eventually be correct, and in my opinion much sooner than US treasury shorts (ignoring short-term US volatility). Think about this: Bull markets do not end with the asset class being universally despised except by dedicated funds and foreign governments (the latter primarily for balance-of-trade purposes only). Rather, bull markets end with nearly everyone becoming a believer. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
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