Leeds v Liverpool Live Stream

Looks like I was able to score some tickets to the Leeds v. Liverpool game.

The match has stirn a bit of  controversy though; To those whose allegiances lie in West Yorkshire, it could be United clinching their first title with a goalless draw at Anfield in 1969 or the night Tony Yeboah thundered an unstoppable right-foot volley past David James in front of the Gelderd End.

For Liverpool fans of a certain vintage, meanwhile, the 1965 FA Cup final victory may feature in any strolls down Memory Lane along with the sight of Billy Bremner and Kevin Keegan trudging disconsolately off the Wembley turf after being sent off in a particularly stormy Charity Shield nine years later.

Here’s a live stream of the match.

Here’s also a live stream for the

Racing Santander - Barcelona Live Stream

garythescubaguy

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Mobile SEO
I remember back in September of 2006 when they first released the .mobi domain extension (referred to as a TLD or top level domain). I even went and bought dozens of them after listening to the industry experts about how big it was going to be by 2008. So here we are almost half way through 2009 and it’s still low on most radars, and non-existent on regular search results. Although mobile searches and multimedia search engines report a triple growth year in 2007, and have penned 2009 as “the year of mobile search”, I still haven’t seen anything of significance. Neither have my clients…even the big ones that you would think would see an influx of new traffic to their mobile web compliant version like Bingo.com. After all, there are three types of mobile users;
The Need-It-Now Shopper – Whether pizza, ring tones or concert tickets these users need it so bad they can’t possibly wait to get to a PC or they may not even have one. These types epitomise the 21st century shopper.

The Researcher – Taxi’s, restaurants, post boxes, weather, stocks, or the latest news, the Researcher looks at their mobile phone more than their own family. They use a mobile like most of us use a normal PC; to feed their information hunger.

The Killing-Time User – Twitter, Facebook, online radios and music downloads, the hottest new topics, YouTube, television programs and other media are the strongest growth area in mobile phone usage. These types of users are on a train, at lunch or waiting for something to happen.
Figuring out where you stand amongst these user-types could be your key to being very successful in the mobile world of online marketing. The fact is, the most recent figures cannot be ignored.

According to the experts (in this case emarketer.com), there will be 844.9 worldwide mobile-search users in 2011, up from 219.2 million 2006. Mobile search ad revenue is projected to grow to 2.4 billion in 2008, up from 6.8 million in 2006.

On the reverse side of the argument another factor to consider is that with the release of iPhone, G-Phone and 200+ other web-ready phones that do not require anything other than a normal website, do you actually need a mobile version of your site?

My feeling is that with that kind of potential revenue, or even half that, as Affiliates we need to resource the limited time and money that it takes to become mobile web present and compliant.

Mobile Search Optimisation?
As there are ways to integrate various elements into your normal website that can increase your search engine ranking position, injecting SEO into your mobile site are available as well. The thing about mobile search and SEO is that optimisation is taken back to the late 90’s, when simple things like titles and meta tags worked like gold, and when there wasn’t much competition that knew what they were doing. Just following the basics can prove to be successful for many markets that have yet to embrace this new marketing opportunity.

Unlike a normal website, the list of SEO techniques is short for the mobile landscape, so I’m going to break this into two sections; Technical and SEO elements of mobile websites.

Technical
TLD – Don’t worry about using a .mobi, any TLD will do fine. (.com, .net, .de, .nl, etc.)
Coding – It must be W3C compliant and must be 100% valid XHTML 1.0 code. (www.validator.w3.org). This works with Google’s interface that delivers 6 results rather than 2 or 3 you would normally see displayed, but will also function on a cheap mobile phone interface. If you were ambitious you could make the site in valid XHTML (compatibility test at W3C), cHTML, WML (compatibility test at shadowplay.net) and normal mark-up (for fully functional web phones. Depending on your market you could show up multiple times in the same query. (There is no duplicate content penalty)

There are 3 Primary language types;

• WML (often called WAP 1.0) - based on XML - a content formatting standard.
• xHTML Mobile Profile (often called WAP 2.0) - derived from xHTML 1.1 Basic but with additional modules.
• cHTML or Compact HTML (often called iMode) - uses a subset of the standard HTML 2.0, 3.2 or 4.0 specifications.
• Site Size - Keep the site down to as few pages as possible, like 3-6, of which one needs to be an engineered landing page for future endeavours like PPC or conversion testing

Content – Unfortunately, the content needs to be 63 characters (give-or-take). Create linked snippets on each page if you need to get more that this into one page.

Markup – Sorry no iFrames, no Flash, no redirects, no auto-refresh, no popups, no spacing graphics, no tables, no scrollbars (or minimum 1 if you must), no embedded objects or scripts. Use external css and if possible have your programmer load your mobile content from a database on the fly with device recognition. (Like a normal webpage delivering browser-compatible content to whatever phone the end-user is using) And lastly, provide caching information in HTTP responses.

Metatxt – The new standard in mobile SEO that helps search engines find your site and classify it. This is similar to the description and keyword tags on a normal website.

Mobi Testing - There are some pretty good sites that will turn your site into a mobile site; http://site.mobi, http://mobilizer.volantis.net, http://zinaddo.com, http://ready.mobi, and mtld.mobi/emulator.php will perform a browser compatibility test.

SEO
OnPage – This works the same as regular sites. Title tags that represent a specific keyword or keywords, H1 Tags that mirror those keywords, and content that includes the keywords are heavily weighed attributes. Be sure to match them up with the metatxt content.
Local Search – Use locations in your metatxt and title if possible. Most mobile apps have a “Search Nearby”, especially the iPhone with 100’s of apps that utilise GPS location.

Universal Search – Yes Universal Search is a big part of Google’s mobile algorithm. One of the most common uses for mobile is news, YouTube, Google Reader, Wikipedia and many others. These dominate the top spots on mobile search. In most cases they show up before web results as well. Optimise for content only available on mobile search; RSS feeds, images, video and news feeds (press releases) are the hot target right now.

Local Search – If you are a brick-and-mortar business, get on Google Local, Yahoo! Local, Ask City, Live Search Maps, Yelp, Yellow, White Pages and any other directory, location or mapping service. These are already widely used on G-Phone, I-Phone and are sure to become a standard feature in the next-gen line of phones.
Sitemaps – Create and submit separate xml sitemaps to Google and Yahoo just as you do for your normal website. Break them into sections; images, videos, PDF’s, etc.
Internal Link Building – This works the same as a regular site. You can PR sculpt the important pages and emphasise keywords with internal anchor text (the linked words) that link to the important pages within your site, and that are optimised for those keywords.

External Inbound Links – Think global or international when building links to your website. When optimising a normal website, SEO’s build links from similar domain extensions. So if you had website.es, you would build links from other .es domains and Spanish language websites. In the mobile world any link is significant and can rapidly earn you top spots. Back links in mobile SEO help regardless of the domain extension.

Optimising for iPhone
iPhone’s only account for 1% of the overall sales in the mobile market, reporting just under 10 million units sold in 2008. Although this is a minute figure, I think that the compatibility standards set by Apple will soon become the norm, as they are cross-compatible with standard mobile phone as well as NextGen mobile phones. With that in mind here are a few tips for iPhones;

• Max. 10MB html size
• Limit Javascript to 5 seconds
• Limit Javascript allocations to 10MB
• Max. 8 documents due to page view limitations
• QuickTime is the preferred app for video and audio

PPC – Pay Per Click
PPC is probably one of the best tools the mobile marketer has, especially if you can participate in the Pay Per Call strategy offered by Google.
This not only gets you to the top of Google’s mobile results page, (provided you have setup a mobile-only campaign in Google Adwords)it enables the end-user one-click access to call you and (with iPhone, G-phone and many others), get immediate directions to your business via Google Maps or a GPS enable app.
Key factors;
• Be sure you have reduced your page terms down. Don’t use buffer terms like you would on normal web pages. Mispellings are more apparent in mobile because of tiny keyboards, big fingers and laziness than anywhere. Imagine typing on a tiny keyboard whilst on a train or walking. Reduce your titles and possible even build subpages for misspellings.

• Place CTA (call to action) pages one step from your landing page, or better yet make it the landing page. Navigation hurts when you’re mobile so the page that you want to show them should be the first page and no more than 1 extra click.
• Choose the right keywords. The more related they are to people on the move the better (e.g. casinos near [variable], hotels in [variable]). More importantly, the shorter the better. (casino [variable] and hotel [variable].
• USE IT! – If you spend the resources on building a mobile website, you need to spend a few quid/bucks/Euros on PPC. The cost is very minimal in most markets and you don’t need to be a whiz-kid. This will get you ranking high in many secondary mobile search engines as well and provide the traffic to determine if it’s worth investing additional resources.

Although the mobile market hasn’t taken off, there are plenty of success stories out there that make you stop and wonder if this is something you should target more heavily. Just take a look at some of the hundreds of applications on iPhone. There are apps that locate and call the nearest cab, list the nearest restaurants or even give reviews on local hotels –all are based off of GPS location – now that’s cool!

Twitter and other social networks (which are absolutely huge) have apps that show you who’s Twittering that has your interest and is located near you.
With online dating becoming more acceptable every day, I can see a whole new method of 5-minute dating type sites springing up soon that are based on your location.

Some retail stores have apps that allow you to input the bar code numbers to obtain prices, while grocery stores compile a running ‘tally’ while you shop so you can watch what you are spending (Watch out ladies!). Others are launching coupon schemes that allow you to display the coupon on-screen and effectively remit the coupon in store from your mobile (Watch out men!).

If you are in real estate, think of the things that can be done with GPS and online apps; A potential buyer drives in a neighbourhood looking for homes and finds a few that look good from the outside. They go to your website from the information on the for sale sign, look at pictures or even a walk-through video and Shazam! - You have a prospect that was house shopping that Sunday you were off at the big game.

I must admit, I am a gadget guy and the fact that mobile web didn’t take off was disappointing to say the least. But mark my words; it’s a hidden tiger getting ready to pounce.

The current climate of the economy hasn’t done anything to help out our industry. In fact these days you have to work hard just to stand still. Taking advantage of every opportunity is important to remain successful.

Take it from me; the researching-need-it-now SEO guy that’s killing time – on my iPhone.

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3. Video and Podcast Marketing, Presentation and Optimisation

I am developing SEO podcasts, and I have clients that are developing different content for video such as gambling tips, tweaking motorbikes and walk-through tours. This is fixin’ to be huge folks…like cell/mobile phone huge.

Mobile video is the new television, and will continue to grow quickly. Yahoo and YouTube average visits were between 13 to 15 minutes per visitor. Imagine getting people to watch an ad on television that long. Or what you would have to pay for that audience.

If you mess around with YouTube or any video resource you will find ‘share with a friend’ and ’add to favorites’ on both sites. You will also find many social bookmarking tools. (Pay attention now, I’ll show you how to syndicate these podcasts and get a serious boost a little later!)The important point here is that you need to get into mobile web applications, whether it is podcasts, web browser compliance, or your own personal usage of mobile web. This is the way things will transition in just the next 12-24 months.

All it takes is a video camera or good webcam, some basic editing software, and you’re ready to go. Be sure to keep the video short, something that people want to learn about or that will keep them watching, and place your URL somewhere in the video. At the end of the video include a “call to action”. If you are creating streaming video for your website try this tool. It will automated the process and makes it quick and easy. You can even add a YouTube or MySpace type script to your site to drive viral marketing and promote backlinks.

Submit your instructional video (or whatever you choose to do) to free video publishing sites such as YouTube, Shorkle, Veoh, Furl, Bolt, MovieMasher, Zango, Badongo, MyUseNet and many others.

Continue to work on this and master your editing skills. Be sure to name the file with your keywords. You would be surprised how many of these video ads are showing up on the first page in normal Google searches. This will give you a great advantage over your competition if videos (or what I like to call free advertising) can be applied to your niche market.

Plus with Google’s new Universal Search, this optimisation technique could very well put you into the top 10.

For those of you on the Agency or Freelance side of things, here is a great template to work off of when trying to motivate your prospect to invest in Podcasting.

A Podcast is like a radio show or webcast with a difference; they can be syndicated and listened to whenever the listener wants. Podcast’s have become increasingly popular since their creation around 2004 with the BBC now running most of their radio and some TV programming as podcasts. Other traditional media such as newspapers and other TV channels such as The Sun, The Independent, ITV and Channel4 all have a collection of Podcasts.

My Company has in-depth knowledge of all forms of podcast creation, with vast experience in creating, running and promoting highly popular Podcasts. A Podcast brings several advantages to a website or brand

o New Way of reaching customers – A Podcast is another way of reaching out to Your Website customers, using sound and/or video to give communication a new dimension.

o Enjoy the Podcast at their own leisure – A Podcast produces a message that can be heard/seen at the customers’ leisure, meaning Your Website’s message can be heard/seen while walking, running or driving, in addition to when customers are at home or in a bingo club, also giving Your Website increased brand exposure

o Distribution – A Podcast can be distributed instantly (pinged) to hundreds of directories and submission services (depending on the software).

o Viral Effect – A Podcast can become a viral message passed between friends, co-workers and relatives, depending on the contents. An example includes the BlendTec Will It Blend videos (Will It Blend iPods - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8H29jU8Wrs - 4,051,828 views)

Initial Podcast Implementation

The implementation of the Podcast within the Your Website website should be based on Wordpress due to its flexibility and integration with RSS aggregators and automatic feed creation. This will both reduce implementation time and give us advanced features such as download statistics and directory pings which would take time to produce in-house. A Wordpress installation can easily be integrated into the theme of the Your Website site.

Due to previous issues with Wordpress installation, if direct implementation is not possible, an alternative route is to use iframes, showing Wordpress from My Company servers, but having all Podcasts and content on your servers. This is a way of getting around issues with the multi-tier server environment and should not compromise SEO.

As far as timescales are concerned with implementation, installation and configuration of the podcasting system these are broken down into the following estimations (Please note this is highly dependent on technical restraints with the installation time varying greatly);

· 3 hours – Initial installation and configuration of Wordpress.

· 8 hours – Your Website theme implementation.

· 3 hours – feed configuration and submission.

Writing of Podcast Script

With Your Website supplying the content for the podcast, My Company will refine this and produce a script for a show lasting around half an hour. This will not be a script in the usual sense but rather an overview of the topics and the main points to discuss.

This section of the podcast creation should take around 3 hours for the initial episodes but once a routine has been established, productivity should increase. After creation, the script will then be sent to you for recording. If needed, My Company can also do the recording.

Podcast Submission & Syndication

After receiving the audio, My Company will then produce show notes which are optimised for SEO and link back to specific parts of the Your Website website. The show notes should also include a promotional code specific to the podcast which will allow for tracking.

The audio file and show notes will be uploaded to the wordpress installation and automatically syndicated on many websites. Manual submission and link building on a per episode basis should here also be included.

· 1 ½ hours – Show note production and SEO optimisation

· 1 hour – Audio upload and syndication

· 5 hours – Episode link building on social media, bingo forums and other bingo related sites.

Podcast Content Plan

The purpose of this content plan is to provide a framework from which to build the content on the new Your Website Podcast.

The tables below denote the required steps to complete the individual features of the Your Website Podcast. Responsibilities of My Company are denoted in blue, Your Website in orange.

Menu Pricing

As this is an initial test, costs will be lower than usual in order to prove the worth of the concept.

Next Steps

We are confident the Podcast is a good next step for Your Website in order to stay ahead of the competition. My Company can start the implementation as soon as scope for the Podcast test has been agreed.

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1. Use Unique Long Tail Titles + Content on Every Page (drop the site title!)

In highly competitive markets, generic title tags just don’t get it done anymore. Title tags are the most important element that the Search Engines look at to identify and categorize your page, thereby determining your competition and your position in the search engines.

Get rid of these types of titles: “My Company – Buy Blue Widgets at My Company Cheap”

There are several problems with this;

1. Using ‘My Company’ over and over again on every page may have been what someone told you was the best way, or best practices, but when it comes to search engines it looks like duplicate content. In these days when search engines are not really putting much weight on Meta tags and descriptions, the title is the first thing that they look at and is critically important to ranking.

2. Second, the title is loaded with too many words. It washes down the primary keywords.

3. Lastly, it targets too many keywords, unless you have built enough pages on the website to also create a single page for ‘cheap blue widgets’. (Which, on a side note, I highly recommend) But in your initial SEO rework of your site and its structure, start small and build your way forward. Later I’ll tell you about keyword research and its importance in this technique, and you will have a roadmap to follow using both. Too many keywords will dilute the benefits of the important ones.

The way this title should be structured is like this; Buy Blue Widgets

Add a ‘buffer-word’ before your keyword set.

Now let’s talk about the reasoning behind why this is the preferred method for search engines.

End-users are becoming more and more educated about how search engines work; the more descriptive words they use, the more likely they are to get the results that they are looking for. What this means is that last year the key phrase for My Company was Debt Help. This year their top key phrase is Get Debt Free. I don’t know why, maybe there is a major company out there doing massive debt consolidation ad campaigns that have “coined” this phrase to make it more memorable than debt help. Who knows? The point is that they are using a completely different search phrase, and the phrase is 3 words rather than 2 words in length. This makes the need to build individual pages for your primary keywords, then your niche keyword phrases, and then finally for your long-tail phrases. Generally speaking, the lower number of words the better, has been the overall suggested recommendation to target because human nature is the path of least resistance. To a point it still is, but the people using longer phrases (based on extensive analytics), know what they are looking for, because they convert at a significantly higher rate.

Once I have identified these phrases I start building additional pages, or even microsites (for purposes of A/B, funnel, and conversion testing) and I target the 3, 4, 5 or even 6 word long-tail phrases.

Use these longer keyword phrases within your content as well. If possible, replace enough of the current keywords on good ranking pages with the niche and longtail version of the keyword string. So if you are ranking well for ‘blue widgets’, add ‘cheap’ to each instance of ‘blue widgets’, both on-page and in the code. This method can be used on several plains. Use it to transfer page rank or boost a niche phrase, while the original rank for blue widgets remains. (You may see a temporary slip in your rankings, but this is only temporary)

If you are in a highly competitive market, this could be the answer that you are looking for to attract the middle 40-80% target audience, plus get great conversion rates.

Tomorrow - #2 Learn and Utilise Advanced Keyword Selection

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