New and improved Google Talk has everything we need, and then some
Last night was a treat - Google Talk upgraded itself. Again.
Google is really taking a broad swipe at the other voice service providers by
tacking on the ability to send voicemail messages, even to people without the Google Talk client. They're taking a slow and cautious approach to adding features to Google Talk, but the developers are adding functionality where it counts and the program's getting better and better.
I've discussed the
vagaries of communication elsewhere, but Google seems to be careful in that sense that they're not overdoing it. In addition to voicemail, the upgraded version has two new features: file transfer, and music status.
File transfer was long overdue and now makes the Google Talk client truly useful - no more waiting to attach files in Gmail - and forget FTP or other options - if you want an instant transfer to a buddy, there's nothing better than a nice direct connection.
The music option is a bit more problematic. If your friends don't like seeing your status message change every 3 or 4 minutes, they're going to hate it if you enable it. If you're not familiar, Google Talk will find out what either WinAmp, Media Player, or iTunes are playing, and make that your status message (if you choose the "show current track" status message option from the normal status message list).
I thought it was kind of cool at first, but it's ultimate utility may be questionable unless you feel like being an exhibitionist about your
tastes in music.
So far, though, it looks like Google Talk is safe from getting anywhere near the feature creep that bloated ICQ to death.
Now you have a real reason to be jealous of Googlers
They have their own
ice cream.
It's described as "a scoop of ice cream between two old-fashioned oatmeal cookies dipped in chocolate". All from a place called
It's It. On the upside, it's not actual
gelato which would be enough to drive a person mad with envy.
There's an especially good new place open in Toronto which even puts Google's gourmet ice cream sandwhich to shame, called
Dolce Gelato.
As with most
new places, they haven't had time to put up their own site yet, but who cares? The product is stellar.
While it's not exactly a typical Google Fact topic, share your favourites in the comments or in our
forums.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is a brief post outlining some techniques that can be used to help increase your websites visibility on search engines.
Paid Advertising
Paid advertisements are
commonly found at the top and sides of search engine listings and are typically
the quickest way to increase exposure to a website with a low search
ranking. The most commonly used search
engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN, and ASK listed from most popular used to least
popular. Of these for advertising
purposes Google is the primary choice, not only because of its popularity but
also because of its superior Cost-Per-Click (CPC) advertising model.
If sufficient funding is
available for Internet marketing, advertising with all search engines is
recommended in order to reach the broadest possible target user base. If however, there are limited funds
available, I would recommend advertising exclusively with Google’s Adwords
program where you will receive the most return on investment (ROI).
What is Google Adwords and
how does it work? Adwords is a Google
service that allows website owners to purchase highly targeted CPC
advertising. Ads can be displayed on
both Google search result pages as well as on partner network sites, but
because network sites can be unreliable and are the predominate cause of the
highly publicized click fraud debate; my recommendation is to restrict
advertising to Google search results.
Ads are purchased in an auction format where
the advertiser specifies the maximum amount they are willing to pay for each
click. The prices range in cost from
$.01 to $100.00 depending on the keyword(s) or keyword phrases that an
advertiser wishes to target. The more an
advertiser is willing to pay the higher ad placement the advertiser will
receive. Google provides a keyword tool
that can be used to estimate how much it will cost to place in ad in the top
slots for arbitrary keywords. That tool can be found at the following link: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Additionally, advertisers can
limit the amount of money that they wish to spend using Adwords daily budget
feature. The daily budget can be
configured as low as $1.00 per day. To
determine a daily budget it is necessary to first estimate the cost-per-click
for the keyword phrases that will be used.
The monthly advertising budget is then divided by the number of days in
the month multiplied by the cost-per-click for the keyword.
Since Adwords displays links
at the top of search results, it is a highly effective way of increasing
traffic to a website, but does not guarantee any conversion results.
Search Engine
Submission
Some search engines allow you
to manually submit your site to their web crawler. Submitting a site to a web crawler does not
guarantee placement but simply makes the search engine “aware” of your
site. This is particularly helpful with
new sites and but is not significant to sites which are already indexed by a
particular search engine. The following is a list of links where a webmaster
can submit a website to each of the commonly used search engines. It is worth noting that Ask does not allow
this type of submission and only uses link references to increase its index.
Google also provides a
special tool that can be used to help you increase your websites page rank
called sitemaps. Sitemaps gives you an
idea of how well your pages rank in its index as well as many other useful
reports and statistics related to Google’s search engine. Sitemaps is a valuable tool for those
particularly interested in SEO. The
website for sitemaps can be found at http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/
Online Marketplaces
Ebay and Froogle are two
popular online marketplaces. Online
marketplaces increase exposure to products and company websites. Ebay is a less professional venue compared to
other online stores due to its auction style listings, but has a considerably
larger potential customer base. Froogle
is particularly interesting because of its integration into the Google search
engine, which can increase exposure to a corporate website significantly.
Listing products in online
catalogs can be a time consuming endeavor, but can also reap great
rewards. It would be beneficial for any
company wishing to increase exposure to their products or online store, to list
at least several popular items, at low prices, in an online marketplace. This will help to increase product
recognition, website traffic, and search engine ranking all of which are
necessary to build a successful online store.
Online Directories
Online directories are yet
another way to increase your ranking in search engines. Many search engines scan the most popular open
directories to retrieve updated information on websites. DMOZ and Yahoo’s directory services are
currently the most commonly accessed services.
Submitting a site to one of these directories is very quick and simple,
but the actual process of becoming listed to the directory can often take
weeks. The following links can be used
to submit websites to the open directories.
In addition to open
directories submitting to company directories is also an integral part to
increasing search ranking. One example
of this type of directory can be found at the Network Solutions (http://www.nsconline.com/members/southeast.html). Companies that are listed on the Network Solutions
member’s page will not only get referrals from nsconline.com, they are also
receiving a potential boost in page ranking value. Without getting into unnecessary details,
this boost is experienced because a link in to a website is much like a vote.
With more votes (links) for your website, search engines will perceive you as
more valuable to searchers and rank you higher in their results.
Corporate Blogging
Corporate blogging is a
relatively new concept but has quickly gained popularity for a variety of
reasons including SEO. Blogs have
quickly risen to the top of many search engines because they are constantly
being updated with new relevant information.
There are also search engines specifically for blogs that generate a
substantial amount of traffic to corporate sites. One company who recently started offering a
corporate blog is Dell. Dell’s new blog
can be found at http://www.dellone2one.com/
. Dell’s reasoning for creating their
blog is not SEO, but is still closely related to general marketing
principles. There are many other
companies creating corporate blogs, but the fact that a company as big as Dell
has moved in this direction is proof enough that blogging is a valuable
marketing tool.