Okay, you marketing fans. Did you know that you can embed links in your YouTube Videos? Follow the link to find out how!

Congratulations to http://michigantrails.us for exceeding the bandwidth on my highest hosting package. The first and only website to do this. An upgraded hosting plan was created just for this site.

Go to http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=10150094800659724&oid=102043889851435&comments to check it out!

It disappeared as fast as it appeared. I did a Google search result that displayed a site at #1, but at the #2 position was a scrolling window showing up to date results of social media such as twitter. Some showing results that appeared only seconds ago. Then the rankings after that were just site listings again.

It appears that Google is doing some testing on a new SERPS (search engine result pages) and I like the idea of up to the second news and social media results to be included in the search results. I hope to see it again.

Signing off,
Michael Rock

Matt Cutt gives advice on Link Building

Hi, just received notification from Site Pro News on this video. This video is very helpful for those who try to generate traffic and links to their web site.

Click to view movie in another window.

Hello Everyone,

If you find yourself adding pages to a website that hasn’t been updated for a long time you will find out that Google will not index it right away. Why? Google starts to index the page right away, then it will return in a few days to see if any changes have been made. If none has been made it may return in a week, and if still no changes were made it may return in a month to see if changes were made and so on.

So, you may have added some articles to your website that you want Google to index on your site first before publishing them so that if someone were to do a search and your article pops up you would like it to be your website at the top of the list instead of the article directory that it was found on. So for sound SEO practice it is generally a good idea to have your article indexed on your web site before submitting it to article directories.

Okay, so you figure that you will just create a sitemap and resubmit it to webmaster central through your Google control panel, right? Google may still take a little time before indexing your site and if you would like to get it indexed sooner you can do so by applying links from an outside website source that gets indexed frequently that point to the new pages on your website.

For example I would like to get a web site of Attorneys in Upper Michigan new pages indexed by Google and this site has not been updated in a LONG time so the Google ‘spider’ does not visit it very frequent.

This blog which is indexed and visited by Google’s ‘spider’ more often can be used to link to Upper Michigan Law’s website. Once google’s spider visits my blog they will follow the links on this page to the new pages on their website and start indexing them for a quicker index.

Here are the links I want Google’s spider to follow.
10 Things You Need to Know About No Fault Insurance
10 Things You Need to Know About Social Security Disability
10 Things You Need to Know Workers’ Compensation Cases

These are the articles I want Google to visit and index before I start publishing them on the internet so once I read the webs stats and see they were successfully indexed by Google I can start promoting them. You can also type in site:http://uppermichiganlaw.com to see what pages were indexed by Google as well.

So there you have it, if you have any questions on website promotion or any other details just let me know.
Michael Rock
Internet Presence, LLC

An interview with Matt Cutts shows that web sites that load up fast will probably be a factor in web site rankings. You can view the interview at Search Engine Land.

Michael

There is a new update to Google’s algorithm that will display the latest most up to date news on the search engine results pages (SERPS). For the sake of giving people what they want in searches Google will be placing social media at the top of the lists which means blogs, tweets, news, etc.

For example if their is a natural disaster recently and you Google for info on it you will more than likely get blogs, latest news, peoples opinions, etc on it. Even though the top ratings may be short lived it is important for your site.

So what can you do?

Keep your blog up to date and keep current events that relate to your website in mind, use Google trends to give you ideas on what people are currently searching for. I also recommend using Google trends to help with your keyword research as well. Add a ‘add to social network’ button to your site to help promote your site in the eyes of social media, display an RSS feed on your website that automatically updates itself with the latest news specific to your field, etc.

Google is already using this from evidence of an earthquake that struck in California just before new years. People did a search for the earthquake on Google and Google promptly returned the latest news, tweets, and blog comments on the event.

Michael

I just found out about this today. If you wanted the simplicity of using PayPal on your website, but was concerned about the image it would give your website using a 3rd party merchant account or if you disliked having your e-customers being routed to a PayPal page then you will want to look into this one!

It seems that PayPal has just started something called PayPal Website Pro that does the processing of the credit/debit card in the background so that your customer never leaves your site and your web developer can set it up so that it doesn’t look like that you use PayPal.

This version of PayPal is not free however and has a monthly fee. I’m willing to bet that compared to a regular merchant account that its fees are very competitive.

One thing that comes to mind is when the customer receives the receipt does it show it was processed by PayPal? Since the transaction is done and over with does it really matter? I will enter PayPal live chat to find out now.

. . . . . . . . .

Oops, they are unavailable. If anyone has used this and knows the answer please let us know. I know a lot of customers do not choose PayPal because they feel it devalues the site, but are hesitant of the cost of their own merchant account. This may be the answer that they are looking for.

Hello Everyone,

I noticed a lot more people following me on the Webs That Rock twitter account so thank you! If you see this post go ahead and follow me on twitter since most of my posts are sent to twitter as well. It comes in handy when you want to check updates through your phone.

When designing a new site I have to take into consideration what type of people would be visiting the site. Also, what type of browsers would they be using? This is important from an SEO standpoint as well for the conversion rate and how the web site appears to the customer marketing wise. According to Fogg, B.J., Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility in November of 2003 75% of web users admit making judgments about the credibility of an organization based on the design of its web site. Are your users tech savvy and using Firefox or are they of an older generation using an outdated Internet Explorer?

When trying to get an average of browsers used for specific genres I had a tough time finding it on the internet so I complied some data on my own for 2008 and next month I will bring you the results for 2009. Here is the information below.

2008
Totals of top 3:
Internet Explorer 74.66%
Firefox: 21.83%
Safari: 3.55%

Medical Sites Top 3:
Internet Explorer: 93.63%
Safari: 4.6%
Opera: 1.24%
Internet Explorer 7 was 63.89%
Internet Explorer 6 was 35.54% (maybe in 2009 it will finally die)
Internet Explorer 8 was 0.19%

Commercial-Retail Web Sites Top 3
Internet Explorer: 65.65%
Firefox: 31.61%
Safari: 4.47%
Internet Explorer 7 was 71.67%
Internet Explorer 6 was 20.87%
Internet Explorer 8 was 7.32%

Entertainment-Games Web Sites Top 3
Internet Explorer: 83.16%
Firefox: 13.07%
Safari: 3.14%
Internet Explorer 7 was 50.64%
Internet Explorer 6 was 48.74%
Internet Explorer 5.5 was 0.28% (What people are still using this in 2008???)

Vacation-Lodging Sites Top 3
Internet Explorer: 73.44%
Firefox: 20.15%
Safari: 4.13%
Internet Explorer 7 was 62.71%
Internet Explorer 6 was 36.84%
Internet Explorer 8 was 0.18%

Commercial-Business to Business Web sites Top 3
Internet Explorer: 70.32%
Firefox: 23.4%
Safari: 2.4%
Internet Explorer 7 was 74.5%
Internet Explorer 6 was 25.39%
Internet Explorer 8 was 0.31%