Archive for the ‘concern’ tag
With Mobile Commerce, We Are All Retailers Now
The early days of eCommerce were a hard slog. The technology was cumbersome and unreliable, the gateways were expensive and the business community was sceptical. And the shoppers … well even the early adopters were hesitant – concerned about credit card numbers, identity theft and having to pay for goods in advance that may never arrive.
But over time most of those issues have been overcome. And even those that still concern us – like identity theft, security and so on – are traded for convenience. After all, we are generally happy to share our credit card information when a deal is ready to be done.
Mobile commerce – or mCommerce – however, has been able to ride the shirt tails of eCommerce. In many ways, the success of sites like Apple’s iTunes and Amazon have not only changed our sense of trust – they have changed our consumer behaviour. Just think, for example … when was the last time you bought a DVD or a music CD from a shop? For many of us, digital experience is at the core of our understanding and acceptance of so many brands.
And as we follow the bridge of convenience through our mobile devices, we will find ourselves using what businesses call mComerce (though we will just view it as convenience). And this makes me think again – that for the future of our brands, we need to think mobile first but with a social heart.
But our businesses challenges do not stop at the mobile gateway. In fact, they are just the start of a business trend that is going to transform our industries. A couple of years ago, well respected content marketing evangelist, Joe Pulizzi urged us to think about EVERY business as a “publishing business” – but now in the same way – we have no choice but to consider ourselves RETAILERS too. We are always on, always connected and always SELLING as the infographic from BigCommerce, below, shows. The question is … are you ready?
Google: Title Tags Can Change Based Off Of Language/Country
This might be an obvious point to many SEOs but Pierre Far from Google clarified that if you have specific landing pages for the same product but targeting different languages/countries, you can change the title tag of the page without concern.
Pierre Far from Google posted this on Google+ saying:
In my last webmaster office hours hangout I got an interesting question: When a webmaster uses rel-alternate-hreflang annotations to mark up a cluster of equivalent pages that target different language-country combinations, can the titles be different for each country?The answer is yes, use a title that makes sense for your users and your site.
I go more into detail about how to handle these specialized annotations over here.
Pierre Far then gives some more examples of how this applies on Google+.
Forum discussion at Google+.
Google: Title Tags Can Change Based Off Of Language/Country
This might be an obvious point to many SEOs but Pierre Far from Google clarified that if you have specific landing pages for the same product but targeting different languages/countries, you can change the title tag of the page without concern.
Pierre Far from Google posted this on Google+ saying:
In my last webmaster office hours hangout I got an interesting question: When a webmaster uses rel-alternate-hreflang annotations to mark up a cluster of equivalent pages that target different language-country combinations, can the titles be different for each country?The answer is yes, use a title that makes sense for your users and your site.
I go more into detail about how to handle these specialized annotations over here.
Pierre Far then gives some more examples of how this applies on Google+.
Forum discussion at Google+.
Texting and Walking
I commute to, and work in, New York City.
It’s not the densest city in the world, but more than eight million people sure make it feel like that way.
And when that many pedestrians navigate crowded streets, train stations, subways, sidewalks, retail stores, restaurants, elevators, parks and paths, it’s important that they pay attention.
Paying attention is foremost a safety concern. A distracted pedestrian is a risk in the presence of aggressive, raging and sleep-deprived drivers and motorcycling messengers — and they are on every block. Distracted pedestrians also are a risk in the presence of construction-site scaffolding, open sidewalk basement doors, water fountains and train platform edges.
I’m not sure there are any nationwide or global studies on the dangers of texting while walking, but regional and anecdotal evidence is mounting. The volume of news reports and legal posturing is growing as well, as reflected, for example, in a trend story this week by the AP’s transportation reporter, Joan Lowy.
I’m highly against overbearing and frivolous legislation. But if the safety of innocent victims is at stake, and it involves countering distracting and addictive behaviors like texting, I’m in support of legal intervention. I’ve seen little kids get hit by texting walkers, and babies in strollers get pushed into unsafe intersections by texting moms and babysitters. It’s a real problem.
Yet texting while walking is more than just a safety concern. It can be highly annoying for fellow pedestrians. These days, it seems like half the pedestrians on any sidewalk have their heads down on their screens instead of watching where they’re going. If you’re not focused on texting, you have to allocate your focus to monitoring those who are.
Some busy passageways — like Grand Central Station at 7:30 a.m .on a weekday — require you to walk with your arms extended, both to warn texting walkers and to physically deflect them. The worst are cigarette smokers who text while walking.
Finally, when extraterrestrial life forms observe us from outer space, you’ve got to wonder what they think about our species. Is it normal for half of us to walk with our heads angled down, gazing into ittle glowing screens? Is that evolution?
With smartphone adoption continuing to ubiquity, you can’t help but question texting’s impact to pedestrian safety and quality of life. The problem is getting worse, not better.
So until behavior changes or smartphone technologies solve the challenge for us, I’m in support of legislation to ban texting while walking.
Mayor Bloomberg: After you win your war on supersized sugary drinks, would you please shift your focus to texting while walking?
I decided to write this article after witnessing a vacationer trample a kid’s sandcastle on the beech. He was texting and walking.
This article also ran in MediaPost.
(Photo: -Ben Thompson)
Google’s Unnatural Links Warnings May Not Be Cause for Concern
Posted by RuthBurr
At SEOmoz we do virtually nothing in the way of active link solicitation. We're living what I would call an SEO's dream: we've already put a great deal of effort into building a community of passionate, engaged, thoughtful people who care about the industry (that's you guys!), and we devote a ton of time and resources to creating awesome content and sharing it with you guys. The result? We've got the best kind of links: the kind that build themselves.
Imagine the sinking feeling I got in the pit of my stomach, then, when a Google Webmaster Tools check on Thursday revealed that we'd incurred an unnatural link warning:
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Challenge Accepted
When I saw this, I was pretty sure I knew what had happened. A few months ago, just as I was coming to work at SEOmoz, there was a discussion in the Traffic Planet forums about negative SEO and whether pointing a bunch of spammy links at another site (like, say, a competitor's or rival's site) could actually harm them, SEO-wise. The guys who started the thread claimed they had successfully performed negative SEO on Dan Thies' website, he disagreed that their tactics had been effective, and the debate raged.
Post-Penguin, there's been a lot of concern about links that are beyond one's control doing irreparable damage to one's site. But surely Google will put in place some algorithmic defenses against this sort of underhanded webspam attack! Rand felt so confident in this being the case that he hopped into the forum discussion and challenged the spam community to point black hat links at SEOmoz.org in the name of science:
(Personal anecdote time: This was happening after I had accepted the offer at SEOmoz, but before I'd started working here. I was sitting at my old job getting emails from Mozzers being like "just so you know, this is happening." Never a dull moment!)
Rand also discussed these efforts in a Whiteboard Friday video, Negative SEO: Myths, Realities and Precautions.
Needless to say, the spam community was like:
We did see an increase in the number of spammy and black-hat type links, including links from sites with "black hat" in the name – but we also continued the regular link growth through our usual content sharing and community outreach that we love so much.
We didn't see any traffic or ranking impact.
To be honest, I wasn't too worried about it – until we saw the unnatural link warning.
It turns out that we needn't have worried – the warning came from an update to how Google is surfacing unnatural link warnings in Google Webmaster Tools. Matt Cutts has the scoop, over on Google Plus:
"If you received a message yesterday about unnatural links to your site, don’t panic. In the past, these messages were sent when we took action on a site as a whole. Yesterday, we took another step towards more transparency and began sending messages when we distrust some individual links to a site. While it’s possible for this to indicate potential spammy activity by the site, it can also have innocent reasons. For example, we may take this kind of targeted action to distrust hacked links pointing to an innocent site. The innocent site will get the message as we move towards more transparency, but it’s not necessarily something that you automatically need to worry about.
If we've taken more severe action on your site, you’ll likely notice a drop in search traffic, which you can see in the “Search queries” feature Webmaster Tools for example. As always, if you believe you have been affected by a manual spam action and your site no longer violates the Webmaster Guidelines, go ahead and file a reconsideration request. It’ll take some time for us to process the request, but you will receive a followup message confirming when we’ve processed it."
TL;DR: You may see an unnatural links warning if Google detects unnatural links, but it's more of an FYI – as long as you don't see a concurrent drop in traffic, you should be just fine. Phew!
We'll be continuing to test the effects of spammy links on SEOmoz, and we'll keep you guys updated as we learn more. In the meantime, if you see an unnatural links warning, don't panic. Many sites have attracted lots of black hat links without intent to manipulate Google's rankings. If you're in that group and still receive the warning, you should watch your traffic and rankings, but unlike the past, when these warnings were more directly impactful, it may simply be a "heads up, you've got some spammy links," message.
If you've received the warning or have insights, we'd love your feedback and opinions, too!
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!
Uitstel van betaling dreigt voor Neckermann
Neckermann vraagt mogelijk nog voor het einde van de week uitstel van betaling aan. De leiding van het Duitse concern en de werknemers komen niet tot overeenstemming over de voorwaarden van een massaontslag. De grootaandeelhouder wil dan niet bijstorten.
#Blogchat Topic This Sunday – How to Drive Sales With Your Blog
This Sunday’s #Blogchat will discuss how blogging companies can drive more sales from their blog! This is a big concern for many blogging companies, as they are struggling to get sales or leads or donors or whatever from their blog. Companies want to see that their blogging efforts are creating value for their business and although there are many ways to do this, cash is still king 
So as we are discussing this topic on Sunday, one thing I want us to do is put our customer’s hat on, and think about the things that are keeping us from buying from most blogging companies. What could a company change about its blog that would make you more interested in buying from them?
Better product information? Better contact information? More valuable and relevant content? Maybe if the blog did a better job of asking for the sale? Be thinking about some of the areas where most blogging companies could do a better job of earning your business, and we’ll talk about that on Sunday! BTW for those of you that are looking for advice on how to monetize your blog, this will be the perfect topic for you to pick up some pointers!
Also keep in mind that Club Med is sponsoring #Blogchat all month, and they are giving away a trip for 4 at the end of the month! In order to be eligible to win the trip, you must follow @ClubMedOfficial on Twitter, plus participate in #Blogchat each week. That’s it! Looking forward to seeing everyone on Sunday!
Daily Search Forum Recap: June 29, 2012
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: June 29, 2012
This is my last video recap in this office, after ten years, I am moving to a new larger space. This week I cover the Google Panda update… - Bing Launches Disavow Links Tool Before Google
A couple weeks ago, Google won the praise of most of the SEO community by announcing they will build a disavow link tool into Google Webmaster Tools.
So when I heard a disavow link tool was built for Webmaster Tools I was excited but then a bit taken back and shocked to hear it was Bing… - Official: Google Ignores Links From Updowner.com
Recently there has been a lot of concern in the SEO space about a site named Updowner.com. Scan through some of these threads and you will see the concern… - Google Ad Referrer Changes In August
Google announced they are making changes to the ad click referrer to help speed up the click and make it more consistent from property to property that ads run on… - Owner Responses On Google Maps Broken Again
Jade from the Google Maps team posted in the Google Business Help thread saying that owner responses are not working again.This would be the fifth or so time that this feature has stopped working since it launched about two years ago.
We had issues at least a few times that we…
- Google’s Brin Intrigued By Neon Fur Man
Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin was spotted at the Google I/O event talking to this mysterious man with a neon pink, yellow and green fur all over his body. Is this the next Google body suit? Neon Fu
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
- Google Recognizing Synonyms In Title Tags, HighRankings Forums
- New policy not allowing guns, ammo, or accesories in Google Shopping? Hello Bing, Google Web Search Help
Official: Google Ignores Links From Updowner.com
Recently there has been a lot of concern in the SEO space about a site named Updowner.com. Scan through some of these threads and you will see the concern…
Official: Google Ignores Links From Updowner.com
Recently there has been a lot of concern in the SEO space about a site named Updowner.com. Scan through some of these threads and you will see the concern.
In short, SEOs and webmasters are noticing tons of links to their sites from this site and it concerns these webmasters mostly due to the unnatural link warnings being sent out to webmasters.
Google’s John Mueller went on record saying Google doesn’t penalize sites for being linked to by Updowner.com, but rather Google simply ignores any of the links from Updowner.com.
John said in a Google Webmaster Help thread:
Just to follow up here — for what it’s worth, we do ignore the links from updowner.com.
I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a Googler publicly say they ignore links from a site. They might have but I don’t remember. I know they do ignore many links from many sites but not sure if they’ve ever specifically called out a site.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.