Please join us at our next free WEBINAR: ”Latest Web Trends in 1 Hour” on Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 10am.  Signup and details here.

At the April 2012 Web Trends Webinar, Miriam Schwab, the Friendly CEO of illuminea, spoke about:

Love the Sociabell graphic!

Google:

• Google Webmaster tools keeping data for 90 days
• Keep a close on your Google account with activity reports
• Need more space in your inbox? Sort emails by size with a Google Spreadsheet script
• How Google Penguin updates affecting sites
• Google Drive finally launching but not with iPhone access
• Google+ gets a new design, as if that’ll make more people join…

Facebook:

Fancy graphs to show user's engagement with the Facebook timeline

• You can now email people’s message box based on their profile URL. Good for stalkers…
• Download IP addresses to see who’s been logged into your account
• Timeline Checklist – a list with useful tools for optimizing your timeline
• Fancy graphs for Facebook engagement since the launch of timelines
• Facebook ads that link to internal Facebook pages perform better, and are cheaper.

Linkedin:

LinkedIn's People You May Know feature

• People You May Know feature
• Targeted updates
• Follower stats
• iPad app which represents a general trend of people moving away from apps and more toward specialized mobile and tablet sites

YouTube:

• Overview of ad options and prices
• Partner program allows you to put ads on your videos and do revenue share with YouTube

We also discussed: Pinterest, WordPress stats – over 72.4 million sites built on WP, Klout, Wajam, Sociabell,  joliprint, and secure.me.

We invite you to join us in-person at illuminea Headquarters in Jerusalem or online via live straming for our next 1-hour Webinar on Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 10am. Signup and details here.

Watch the April 2012 web trends lecture video
We apologize for the quality of the video. To see the accompanying presentation, go here

April 2012 Slideshow on Slideshare.

Related posts:

1. illuminea launches event to share trends about facebook, Pinterest, Google, and more Do you ever feel like you’re gonna burst with useful...
2. Watch illuminea’s Web Trends Roundup for March 2012 Recently, we launched a new monthly lecture series to present...
3. Why Google’s personalized search means social marketing is more important than ever A few days ago Google announced that it will be...

Please join us at our next free WEBINAR ”Latest Web Trends in 1 Hour” on Monday, April 30, 2012 at 10am.  Signup and details here.

At the March 2012 Web Trends Webinar, Miriam Schwab, the Friendly CEO of illuminea, spoke about:

Google: Changes to the Google algorithm and semantic search, over-optimizing penalties, new rules for Google Places, new Google Analyics social reports, and that Firefox will use Google’s Secure Search which means even less keyword information in Analytics

Facebook: Facebook timelines for Pages – no more default landing tab…. unless you pay for an ad, Facebook timeline best practices, facebook admin panel changes, facebook Insights now include Mobile referrals, and a new facebook demo tool for ads

and more!

We invite you to join us in-person at illuminea Headquarters in Jerusalem or online via live straming for our next 1-hour Webinar on Monday, April 30, 2012 at 10am. Signup and details here.

Watch the March 2012 web trends lecture video

or view the March 2012 Slideshow on Slideshare.

If you want to find out about future events, sign up to our newsletter (from the sidebar).

No related posts.

So, we decided to launch a monthly event where Miriam presents all the knowledge she’s gained in the last few weeks to a small group of marketing professionals at our illuminea headquarters in Jerusalem and online via live streaming.

If you want to join us for the next hour-long, information-packed “Latest Web Trends for Marketing Professionals” lecture on March 26, 2012 at 10am via live streaming, register here and we’ll send you the link.

If you want to find out about future events, sign up to our newsletter (from the sidebar).

At our first Web Trends event in February, Miriam talked about Pinterest, facebook ad revenues, facebook e-Commerce, facebook featured stories, facebook timeline, YouTube’s new features, DuckDuckGo, Bing, Google video schema, and more!

Watch the February 2012 Web Trends lecture.

And here is the slideshow. Enjoy!
Web trends monthly lecture by Miriam Schwab, February 27, 2012
View more presentations from illuminea : web presence agency.

No related posts.

Of course, ranking in the search engines is not just about quantity; the content has to be relevant to the keywords being searched for, and there are certain quality checks that Google can do on pages to determine whether it contains spam or is stuffed with keywords. But a newish phenomenon is rising on the web that has been getting quite a lot of coverage from major blogs like ReadWriteWeb and TechCrunch, and that is the “content farm.” Many of you may be familiar with the term “link farms,” which are sites that link out to hundreds or thousands of other sites, giving them the inbound links that many sites desire in order to rank higher in the search engines. This type of strategy worked for a while, but Google altered its algorithm so that not just any inbound link would contribute to a site’s ranking; in order for a link to be worth anything now it has to be from a quality and relevant source, among other factors.

“Content farms” are a new way of gaming Google. These types of sites pump out hundreds or thousands of new pages of content per day. The quality of this content is medium to low since the goal of the content is not to teach or inspire, but to create content for content’s sake, increase traffic and reap the rewards from ad revenues. Some examples of these types of sites are Demand Media and Answers.com. ReadWriteWeb reported that Demand Media produces 4000 pieces of content per day, and Answers.com (which has origins in Israel) has nearly 38 million pieces of web content. Both sites are in the top 20 web properties in the US.

At the moment, Google can generally identify, and penalize, very bad content. However, it cannot tell the difference between ho-hum content and great content. Ho-hum content is content that meets the rules of language syntax, and says something that can be understood by humans, but does not contribute to our store of knowledge. This type of content would be relatively harmless if it wasn’t being created on such massive scales, and if it wasn’t having such success in the search engines. The scale of this content’s production means that we may find a lot of ho-hum content taking over search results, and it will become increasingly difficult to find the really useful and thought-provoking content.

What this means for SEO, social media and the web

SEO professionals will increasingly face competing sites whose only redeeming factor is the number of pages they have published. In order to compete with those sites, they will have to create the same amount of content, or more. This is a matter resources (money), and very few web properties will have the budget to support this type of activity.

Unless Google figures out a way to determine whether content is quality or ho-hum, users will become more and more frustrated by the results and start to depend on their peers and social media to refer them to quality content. Highly retweeted posts on twitter, for example, may start to take on more value than the first result on Google.

And finally, if ranking well on the search engines is about who can produce the most content, which is theoretically infinite and linked to one thing only: money, this means that the winners on the web will not be those with brains, but those with brawn. Demand Media has $355 million in funding to put towards creating tons of mediocre content. If the winners are those with millions, this will destroy the much trumpeted democratic web.

But isn’t this just survival of the fittest?

The traditional news sites have been complaining about the hit they’ve taken by blogs and other forms of new media that, according to them, produce content that is not on the same level as that of news sites. Bloggers were quick to tell the news sites that they must adapt to the new realities or suffer the consequences. Now it seems that the bloggers are getting a taste of their own medicine as they face this new threat from low-level mass-produced content. Shouldn’t they just accept that things evolve, especially on the web, and that this new reality is par for the course?

I don’t think so (obviously I’m a bit biased). In my opinion, blogs add value to the web. High traffic blogs get so much traffic because they are written by authority figures who offer useful insights and breaking news that weren’t previously available on conventional news sites. Also, readers find the personal, casual style of blogs to be refreshing, and appreciate the opportunity to contribute to the conversation in the comments.

Content farms do not add anything refreshing or useful to the world of publication. Writers of content farm content are, on the most part, not writing with the goal of inspiring and educating. Instead, their goal is “produce 10 articles of 350 words by 5 pm.” This content is not ranking thanks to its value, but due to the sheer volume being created. Therefore, unless something changes we may find our web increasingly clogged by useless information.

Let’s just hope that it’s in Google and Co.’s interest to serve us useful content rather than increase their revenues from AdSense ads placed on content farms.

Related posts:

1. Sphinncon Israel: overview and my presentation on WordPress as social media and SEO hub Yesterday was the second time Sphinncon took place in Israel....
2. illuminea presents: Social Media Workshop and SEO Seminar starting July 20, 2011 in the Tel Aviv area illuminea is excited to announce a 3-part Hands-On Social Media...
3. A quick-start guide to social media marketing Have you ever wanted to follow what’s being said about...

Personalized results are based on your previous activity, mainly what results you clicked on in the search results. Google gives the example of someone who searches for the term “recipes,” and clicks on the fourth result rather than the first, which is for epicurious.com. Next time this user searches for recipes, epicurious.com may appear higher in the results for them, but not necessarily for anyone else.

What this means is that we may all start seeing completely different search results. Watch the following video from Google for a short overview:

Personalized results are the default setting for all users, but users can choose to disable personalized results. However, considering that most people don’t even know what a browser is, I’m doubtful that people will be aware that their search results are personalized, let alone that they can opt out of these types of results or how to do so.

But why would people opt out of personalized results? They probably won’t want to. We have yet to see the quality of these results, but I’m assuming that results will be based on sites that Google has ranked as having adequate quality, combined with the personal preferences of the user. What this means is that users will still be choosing between sites ranked highly by Google, which isn’t so bad. I think we can assume that most people will continue to like the Google search experience.

What this means for SEO

I’m guessing here, but it is possible that if a user really likes a particular site, it will start to take up more spots in the search results, which means that other results will be pushed down and off the first page. You may have noticed that sometimes when you conduct a search, some sites have expanded results that also display further internal links and navigation to the user, like this:

Or a site gets two spots like this:

Maybe sites preferred by users will start to get expanded results, or multiple results.

But in any case, since most clicks happen on the first page of results anyways, chances are that most users will see some kind of varying order of the global top ten results, i.e. for John Site A is the first result and Site B is in third place, but for Jane it’s the opposite. In both cases, Site A and Site B stay on the first page of results. So in that scenario, site owners will still have to work on the usual things that help their sites rank (on-site factors like Title tags, off-site factors like inbound links, etc.) in order to ensure that their sites are exposed to searchers. As Danny Sullivan says:

SEO remains important to ensure that you’ve got that first shot at being considered.

What this means for social media…and SEO

At the same time, it means that site owners will have to work harder on the user-experience side of things to get people to click on their results in the SERPs. Sexier titles and meta descriptions will be necessary since these help the user decide whether to click through or not. And once a user clicks through, they’d better find themselves somewhere interesting and attractive, because if they click back right away to the search results, that’s a sign that the site was no good, and may affect that site’s ranking in future personalized search results.

It also means that social marketing should be taken more seriously by SEOs. Many site owners and search engine optimization professionals (not the great ones, I admit, but still there are lots of them) see SEO as all about getting their sites to the top positions in the SERPs – and that’s it. But Google’s goal is to provide the best user experience, and therefore is experimenting with, and adding, many social features to their search service, like:

• “universal”, or mixed media search results – these results include non-traditional sources like video (most often from YouTube) and blogs
• search results based on your social circle (Google doesn’t call it a social graph) – these results identify your social networks through your Google Profile and serve you links that they have shared or created. Learn more about Google’s Social Search.
• real time search results – this is a search results page that is constantly updating with results from various social networks including twitter, facebook, FriendFeed and general news sites.

The reason for these new features are assumedly because Google figures that people will be most interested in, and most appreciate, results that are linked to trusted sources and connections. So site owners and SEOs will have to start taking user experience on their sites (content, navigation, and even design) much more seriously. Jill sums up the new SEO reality nicely on the High Rankings forum: “Good news…for moving people further and further away from traditional rank checking as a measure of success”; i.e. SEO can’t just be about ranking in first place anymore, it’s about results, conversions, and maybe even relationships.

It also means that with features like universal and real time search results, site owners should be optimizing social media activity for search engines as well. This means creating useful videos and uploading them to YouTube, creating fresh blog content, and using keywords in your tweets and facebook status updates.

And finally, long tail search rankings will play a more important role. Search engine ranking may become about diversity rather than laser focusing on particular keywords or search engines. The reason for this is that if you can’t know where your site is appearing in people’s search results, better to appear in more places where you have the chance of getting clicked on (pick me! pick me!). Creating new content for your blog on a regular basis that is related to a particular theme will help you rank for terms you would never have thought of.

In addition, social sites are becoming serious addresses for search. A recent Comscore Search Engine Rankings report showed that three of the top search engines in the Expanded Search Rankings category were social media sites: YouTube, MySpace and Facebook. Lee Odden at TopRank sums up what this means as follows:

Companies that focus their optimization efforts solely on Google.com will miss the continued trend towards social search or search within social networks.

So where do we go from here?

SEO professionals have had to evolve to meet new realities since the dawn of the search engine. What worked five years ago to get a site to the top certainly does not work today, and what works today won’t work five years from now. Barry Schwartz says he’s not worried (from Search Engine Roundtable):

Honestly, if this makes Google more relevant for their searchers – all power to them. I am not going to say I know what is better for the average searcher. They can quickly figure this out after days and decide to keep it, turn it down, or off completely. SEOs will adapt, like they always do – we are a strong and smart bunch – I am not worried.

SEO professionals will evolve to meet this new challenge. But it is possible that we are at a turning point regarding what SEO means. The goals will probably stay the same: increasing traffic and conversions. However, the ways that these goals are achieved may change drastically over the coming months to include social activity and improved online relationship building. All in all, I think that we’re talking about a better web experience for the end user.

Some questions

But there are still a lot of unknowns about the new personalized search feature, and here are some questions I have:

• Ethics: Google is basically forcing all users to accept a new cookie and allow Google to track their search activity. Opt-out is only for the web savvy since most users won’t even know that Personalized Search exists. Shouldn’t people be given the choice whether they want to participate in personalized search or not by opting-in? Is this a sign that it’s time to move to Bing?
• Will my personal preferences affect your personal results? If lots of people click on Site A in results, does that mean that Joe will start to see Site A rank high in his own results?
• Are personalized results only affected when someone conducts the same exact search over and over (i.e. “recipes”), or will it affect related searches as well (i.e. “cooking,” “chocolate cake recipe,” even “buying new dishes”)?

Related posts:

1. SphinnCon search marketing conference coming back to Israel SphinnCon is coming back to Israel on January 9, 2011,...
2. A quick-start guide to social media marketing Have you ever wanted to follow what’s being said about...
3. The impact of content farms on social media and SEO Those involved in search engine optimization (SEO) know that one...

Here are the seven tips. For more info about the Tel Aviv Writer’s Cafe, please scroll to the end of this post.

1. Brand yourself as if you were a brand name

If you are trying to market yourself as a freelance writer, or freelance anything, it’s important to start to look at yourself as the product that you, the business owner, is trying to sell. Yeah, that’s a lot of hats to wear, and that doesn’t include the fact that you, the freelancer, are also the accountant, administrator, and coffee-fetcher. Anyways, in order to accomplish this, you need to create “Brand You.”

Why should I brand myself?

The brilliant Gary Vaynerchuk has the answer for you (bonus: guess who’s apparently a MOT (Member of the Tribe)…note how he says Alav Hashalom about Paul Newman passing away!):

Another reason you want to do this is because Google has a long memory, and you need to control what prospective employers and others see about you on the web. You have a chance at doing this if you have a personal site built on your own domain. To see what I’m talking about, read this post from Lifehacker: Geek to Live: Have a say in what Google says about you.

So how do I do this?

At the very least, buy your name domain name now (we recommend using www.name.com – and we have no affiliation with them, they just don’t suck like some other registrars we won’t name). If you’re name is Joe Shmoe, buy www.joeshmoe.com. If that domain name is taken, add your middle initial and buy www.joezshmoe.com. If you don’t have a middle name, pretend you do and choose a middle initial to use from this point forwards in all your professional correspondence so that people will Google your name that way and actually find you. If you think it’s weird to add a fake middle initial, ask Michael J. Fox, if he regrets it. (To see why he didn’t just use “A,” the initial of his real middle name, read about his Early Life in Wikipedia. Hint – it may have to do with the fact that he’s Canadian, eh?)

If you’re not up to it, you don’t have to actually do anything with your shiny new domain name right now. So why are you buying your domain name now if you’re not going to use it? Because it can get snatched up between now and when you do want to use it by someone else, which would suck for you.

If you are up to it, I strongly recommend starting a blog that appears under your name-domain name.

But I don’t have thousands to spend on that kind of thing right now!

That’s alright, I say. Here are instructions on starting a personalized blog on a shoestring. The reason this method is good is because if your blog becomes a real success and needs to grow, you can relatively easily move over to your own self-hosted WordPress blog, like all the pros.

Starting a Personalized Blog on a Shoestring:

1. Sign up for a blog on WordPress.com. Try to choose a  name that represents you, but remember that you will be putting your new name-domain on your blog in a few steps.
2. Choose a WordPress theme that best suits your needs. You can find them under Appearance > Themes in the sidebar of your new blog’s admin section. I recommend choosing a pretty plain theme with a header area that allows you to upload your own personalized image. My sister Deena has done a good job with that on her blog, which runs on WordPress.com and you can see here: http://deenascreations.com.
3. You should go through all the other settings and choose what best suits you. To do this, go to Settings, and go through the sub-pages and modify as you see fit.
4. Map your domain name onto your new blog. First, you need to change your DNS settings for your domain name. DNS tells your domain where it should be point to, i.e. where the site that will be using this domain is sitting. First, log into your account on your domain registrar. Try to find where the DNS info is managed. It may be under Manage Domains or Manage DNS, depending on your registrar. When you do find where you manage the DNS, remove any existing nameservers and add the following:
   • NS1.WORDPRESS.COM
   • NS2.WORDPRESS.COM
   • NS3.WORDPRESS.COM
5. Now, go back to your site and click on Upgrades, and then click on the Domains tab.
   
6. Then, enter your domain name in the Add a Domain field:
   
7. At that point it should ask you to buy 10 credits in order to use your own custom domain on WordPress.com. This costs $10 per year.
8. Once it’s set up, create an About and Contact page (crucial), and start blogging your head off.

Here are some examples of people who have really succeeded in creating a brand around themselves:

Chris Brogan

Seth Godin – yes, I know his domain name isn’t www.sethgodin.com, but he’s Seth Godin for goodness sake! He can get away with it. When you reach his stature, you can too.

Suze Orman

Gary Vaynerchuk

Here are some resources on creating a personal brand:

By Dan Schawbel – who has succeeded in branding himself as a personal branding expert

Gain a Competitive Edge by Establishing a Personal Brand

10 Ways Personal Branding Can Save You From Getting Fired

By Brian Solis

Facebook is the Hub for Your Personal Brand

Oh, and more Gary Vaynerchuk just cuz he’s so awesome, inspiring and in your face (and did I mention he’s an MOT? What naches.)

2. Don’t forget about social media

Since blogs run on RSS feeds, it means you can promote your blog content elsewhere. This is good because it increases the likelihood that people will come across your content, which is the most important thing here. You can set up your facebook and twitter profiles to automatically pull in your blog content, and post it for all your network friends to see.

In order to do any of this automatic republishing, you need to know where your feed is. On WordPress.com, it’s at http://myblog.wordpress.com/feed, where myblog is your WordPress.com blog name, or at http://myblog.com/feed, if you’ve mapped your own domain on to your WordPress.com blog.

To learn how to automatically post your blog posts on facebook, read Publish your Blog’s Feed to Facebook.

To automatically post to twitter, first create a user account on twitter. Then, go to EasyTweets, sign up, and add your twitter account to your profile. Then, click on the RSS icon at the right-hand side of your dashboard:

Enter the feed URL (see above for info on how to find it), entry frequency that EasyTweets will check for new posts (every hour is fine), any text to add before each tweet (I don’t recommend adding any text because then it looks automated), and whether you want to post the current new item in your feed, or only start updating from new items. Press Add RSS Feed, and you’re done.

One thing that came up during our session, and often comes up, is people’s confusion as to what usefulness twitter provides. Here are some links that may help you better understand why all these people get to excited about twitter:

7 Habits of Highly Effective Twitterers: Kris Colvin

How to Attract and Influence People on Twitter — The Ultimate Twitter Resource – this is like a how-to book for twitter

Twitter Enlightenment for Business Owners

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

The Big Juicy Twitter Guide

3. Get people to stay in touch with you via RSS feeds and email subscriptions

If someone comes to your site, you want to get them to subscribe in some way to stay in touch before they leave. If you do, you can start to create a long-term connection where they consistently receive content you create, and trust grows between you. If you don’t, chances are they’ll leave, forget that you exist, and never come back.

So, make sure to prominently display the options for subscribing. Here’s a screenshot from Natan Sharansky’s new site for an example on how to do this – note how the subscription info appears very close to the top of every page:

4. Focus – so that people know what they’re getting

People subscribe to certain content because they are interested in the general topic being covered. Imagine if you were an avid car fan, and you bought Cars magazine only to find a spread about the latest hairstyles (or whatever they write about in fashion magazines). And imagine if you were an avid fashion fan and you opened the latest edition of Elle only to find a spread about axel grease (or whatever they write about in car magazines). You’d be pretty disappointed because you are paying to read those magazines because of their focus.

Same with your blog: people subscribe to it because you are writing about something they are interested in, whether it be politics, celebrities, iPhones, or cats. So stick to that 99% of the time, and your readers will stick with you.

5. Optimize for search engines

Yes, even you can optimize your blog for search engines. SEO may be perceived as a magical talent only bestowed upon special fairy beings, but there are some basic things you can do to help your blog rank better in the search engines. Here is a quick rundown:

1. Make a quick list of keywords you think people are using to find people like you. You can use all sorts of fancy keyword tools if you want, but you can also just use your brain since you know your industry. Take this list, and write it down on a piece of paper. Make a note of which terms are the most targeted, and which are less focused. You have more of a chance of ranking high for “Jerusalem car fans” than for “car fans.” You see what I mean? So while you’d probably like to rank high for car fans, it’s best to aim for Jerusalem car fans. But even so, don’t lose sight of the big vision of ranking for “car fans” because you may get there.
2. Once you’ve got your keywords, make sure to use them whenever possible in your blog titles, and in your first paragraph. However, when in doubt, make sure you are ultimately writing for humans. What I mean is, don’t stuff your title and paragraph with keywords that don’t make sense, because while you may make Google happy, you won’t make people happy, and that’s not good.
3. Tag your posts with tags related to your keywords, but also to other stuff you mention so that you may rank for those words as well.
4. Pay attention to meta keywords and particularly to your meta description, because that’s what appears under the title of your post in the Google search results.
5. Link internally. When you mention an event, term or phrase that you’ve mentioned before, link to that other post, or category if it exists on your blog.

6. Promote offsite

Aside from trying to get traffic via the web, make sure to promote your blog in other places as well, like in your email signature and on your business cards. And tell people about it whenever relevant, without being annoying.

7. Track your success

Like anything in life, if you are trying to achieve something in life, you need to track if you are getting there. As the saying goes “if you can measure it, you can manage it.” So track your site stats and feed stats. Don’t worry about seeing huge leaps in growth, but you do want to make sure there is a steady incline at the very least. You don’t want to plateau or start to shrink – that’s bad news, and if you see that you need to work to reverse it, generally by creating more content, and commenting on more blogs.

8. Bonus – accessing the awesomeness that is called humanity

“But you said 7 tips,” you say.

That’s right, I say, but I added a bonus. The bonus is about all the people you get to connect with via your blog and online activity, particularly when those people are…extraordinary (in every sense of the word).

Recently I got the following comment on this blog, and it makes it all worth it. Note the author’s name:

Author : moshe rabeynu
Comment:
I am a former male exotic dancer and am interested in establishing a “Chippendales” type establishment in Israel. What type of assistance and tax benefits does the Israeli government provide to new businesses of olim chadashim? Are there many such entertainment facilities in Israel?  I would like some idea as to how stiff the competition would be.  Do Israeli women, as a rule, like to look at males dancing in skimpy G-strings?  Are they generous tippers?  Would they put a shekel to the shmeckel?  If I hire other olim chadashim as dancers, would they have to pay any taxes on their tips?   Can I employ dancers who have not had a briss ?  I might want to hire one or two to add variety to the show lineup. Is a liquor license hard to obtain in Israel.  Do I have to bribe any officials to receive one?  To whom is it customary to pay proteksia money to start a business and keep it going and approximately how much to they ask for?  Thank you for your help.

If there were commenting Olympics, this one would bag a super-gold.

That’s all!

That’s it – 7 tips + 1 on how to market yourself using blogs and social media. Thanks to those who came to my session – it was great meeting you!

And now, a bit about the Tel Aviv Writer’s Cafe:

It was started 3 years ago by Stephanie Freid, a freelance writer and journalist, as a way of grouping Tel Aviv area writers together for networking and topical discussions on everything from how and where to look for jobs to tips on approaching editors to discussing what makes good journalism to deciding on filing taxes in Israel and abroad. Attendees come from a variety of writing backgrounds including technical, journalism, marketing, book writing & blogging.
Writer Forum guests have included NBC New bureau chief/author Martin Fletcher who spoke about his experiences covering world conflict and his acclaimed first book “Breaking News”, successful book author Matt Beynon Rees on taking a journalism career to the realm of fiction novel writing, NY Times writer Dina Kraft on covering conflict in Israel and why it seems to hit a nerve among so many, Pajamas Media editor Alison Kaplan Sommer on how to slot into the new era of blog writing, Israel Project Executive Director Marcus Sheff on keeping the foreign media informed and celeb blogger Lisa Goldman on how her blog propelled her into the limelight.

For more info, please contact Stephanie at [stefanella.stef at gmail.com].

Related posts:

1. illuminea presents: Social Media Workshop and SEO Seminar starting July 20, 2011 in the Tel Aviv area illuminea is excited to announce a 3-part Hands-On Social Media...
2. What social media marketing is NOT – my presentation at Affilicon 2009 For the second year running I had the opportunity to...
3. New! Course on Social Media Marketing for businesses After a long break I’ll be giving a course on...

So I made my own VAT calculator in Google Spreadsheet. It’s really simple, yet useful, so I decided to share it with you. All you have to do is change the value in the Gross row, and the VAT row if relevant, and it will recalculate the Net amount automatically.

Here’s how it looks:

You can download the spreadsheet here.

Related posts:

1. Round-up non-profit expands micro-donation options to salaries Ever since Barak Obama managed to raise $6.9 million out...
2. Free tools for marketing and managing your biz in tough economic times Yesterday I was privileged to give a presentation at the...
3. WordCamp over, now on to next thing: free workshop on blogging and business WordCamp Israel is over. It was fun and interesting, and...

I know this is way overdue, but I actually have to work sometimes. So apologies.I already wrote a general overview of SphinnCon Israel. The next four posts will cover the sessions, and the information that I thought was most interesting and useful.

Barry Schwartz from Rusty Brick and Search Engine Roundtable kicked off the event with an introductory presentation. He explained that he was here for his nephew’s bar mitzvah, and the event was planned around that. So a big thanks to his nephew for being born 13 years ago. Also, as I mentioned in my previous post on SphinnCon Israel, he is hoping to hold a much bigger event, on the scale of SMX, in Tel Aviv.

Here is a summary of Barry’s introduction. Scroll down to see it in video:

Google’s secret for good SEO: good content

As I mentioned in my previous post, an Israeli Google representative in Dublin sent a little video to us to wish us luck at the conference. He gave us the official Google “secret” for getting good search engine results

• Good content
• Use Google Webmaster Tools to make sure your site is running properly.

The people on the panels seemed to think there’s a bit more one can do to rank better in the SERPs.

Paid Text Links

Matt Cutts went on record for the first time in September 2005 saying that he doesn’t like text links. In October 2006, he warned about a possible penalty for text links. The penalty came in Oct. 2007, when many bloggers and sites saw their PageRank drop.

Google PageRank

Barry said that the Google toolbar shows a different page rank than Google actually uses in their algorithms. So it’s possible that you see a public PageRank of 4, but in fact your value according to Google may be higher or lower. So in fact, we could just ignore PageRank, and go along doing our best to build up our sites with good content.

PPC and Adwords

PPC is seeing steady inflation. The cost per keyword increased 25% over the past six months. Why?

• Click fraud, which is increasing. Click fraud in content networks is higher.
• More competition, which means more people don’t know what they’re doing and are bidding too high.
• General economic factors – things cost more.
• New PPC algorithms

Virality

Barry spoke a bit about things going viral, and said that the first ever viral success was the The Hamster Dance, a little video of dancing hamsters that was sent around via email. This brought to mind the most watched video on YouTube: The Evolution of Dance, which currently has been viewed over 74 million times. I think these two examples of what humans are attracted to is an interesting (worrying?) commentary on human nature.

That’s all for now. I hope I’ll get the next part up next week. Here are the videos:

Part 1

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ed0HmdHUMo[/youtube]

Part 2

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XokOe8qS2Yw[/youtube]

And…The Evolution of Dance (I couldn’t resist)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg[/youtube]

Related posts:

1. SphinnCon Israel summary…more to come later As I wrote a few days ago, SphinnCon came to...
2. SphinnCon Israel coming up…and not a woman to be seen (on a panel) SphinnCon Israel is sold out! SphinnCon Israel is a SphinnCon...
3. Sphinncon Israel: overview and my presentation on WordPress as social media and SEO hub Yesterday was the second time Sphinncon took place in Israel....

As I wrote a few days ago, SphinnCon came to Israel this week on February 5 in the form of SphinnCon Israel. It turns out that this wasn’t only the first SphinnCon in Israel, but it was the first SphinnCon ever! So, this is yet another example of a first for Israel, kind of like how the first WordPress conference, WordCamp, to take place outside of the US took place in Israel.

I took extensive notes at each session, which I had planned to live-blog but couldn’t due to a minor technical difficulty: no wireless internet. I will post the summaries over the next few days, but in the meantime, here is a summary of the entire event, and some related links:

Sphinn is pronounced Spin

One of the most important lessons from this conference was that Sphinn is actually not pronounced Sfin, but Spin. Go figure.

Google sent greeting video from Dublin

After Barry Schwartz’s introductions, we got to see a video sent specially to us from Google in Dublin. Alon, the Google rep in the video, tells us how excited he is that SphinnCon has come to Israel, and he gave us an SEO tip straight from the Google guidebook: write good content. I can see how that tip is in Google’s interest, since they would love the web to be a big database of useful information that users are searching for, but after this conference it seems that there are a few other things you can do to promote your site too.

Anyways, here’s the video (Hebrew):

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=-vw3Q2XOGFg[/youtube]

The food was delicious

I don’t know who the caterer was, but the food was great and plentiful. Did I hear you scoff? Food is important, excuse me.

This was a test event for something bigger next year

SphinnCon Israel was an attempt to test the waters to get an idea of the potential interest in a bigger SEO conference on the scale of SMX next year in Tel Aviv. From what I could see and from what the organizers told me, SphinnCon Israel was a huge success. The registration for the 165 spots quickly filled up, and they added another 15 seats, and were still getting requests from people to join! They barely advertised, and yet word-of-mouth spread the news quite quickly and widely.

In addition, the event succeeded despite the fact that it took place in Jerusalem. Don’t get me wrong – I love Jerusalem. But most technology-related events take place in Tel Aviv, which is the heart of Israel’s hi-tech sector. Tel Avivians aren’t big fans of coming to Jerusalem, and yet they came in droves, and more would have come if there had been room.

So hopefully this all means that we can look forward to a really great event next year!

The panels were excellent

There were three panels:

1. SEO Panel: Paid Links & Penalties
2. PPC Panel: Will the PPC Model Hold Up as Click Prices Rise?
3. Social Panel: Should You Social?

I thought that the panels were done really well. Each panel began with a short presentation by one panelist, and then the rest of the session was made up of Q&A. This was a great format since it kept people’s attention, and ensured that the audience learned about issues that really interested them. I learned a lot, and the panels helped me take my jumble of knowledge on SEO and make some order of it, which I appreciated.

I didn’t go to the After Hours Party in Tel Aviv, but I’m sure it was nice too.

We got free t-shirts that said “The First SphinnCon Evar”

Yes, “Evar.” I think someone forgot to do a spell-check.

There were women in the audience…

Yes, the “no women on the panels” issue again. The organizers explained to me that they really tried to get women on the panels. I really don’t blame them for this. It seems to be a global problem: Jeremiah Owyang wrote about it recently on his blog, and the comments reflect the depth of the problem. See, for example, Lena West who says:

I simply DO NOT BUY the story that conference organizers give when they say there are no women available. I know how the game works. These ‘organizers’ ask the other speakers for recommendations and men refer other men. That’s the deal. I just spoke at an event in Miami and I recommended three of the speakers. Heck, it makes a very busy job easier to just go on recommendations…why wouldn’t they?

Ok, nuf about that.

Related Links and Resources:

These links will help you get a picture of what the conference was like:

Panel Presentations (available for download in PDF format on the SphinnCon Israel page)

SphinnCon Israel 2008 Recap – this post has links to most of the blogs that wrote about the conference, and most of the flickr photos.

Photos:

British Yosef’s photos (really professional)

SMO.co.il’s photos

RustyBrick’s photos

Sponsors:

Compucall

eToro

Jerusalem College of Technology

K.co.il

Play65

The event organizers:

Nekuda.co.il

RankAbove

Rusty Brick

Tens Technology

Third Door Media

Videos (from YBO Interactive):

(Top photo from British Yosef’s photos.)

Related posts:

1. SphinnCon Israel coming up…and not a woman to be seen (on a panel) SphinnCon Israel is sold out! SphinnCon Israel is a SphinnCon...
2. SphinnCon Israel review part 1: Barry Schwartz’s introduction I know this is way overdue, but I actually have...
3. SphinnCon search marketing conference coming back to Israel SphinnCon is coming back to Israel on January 9, 2011,...

SphinnCon Israel is sold out! SphinnCon Israel is a SphinnCon networking event focused on search and internet marketing, and is taking place this coming Tuesday, February 5 at the Jerusalem College of Technology (also known as Machon Lev). This event is exciting thanks to the incredible lineup, with representatives from well-known international companies like Google, TechCrunch, Kenshoo and Yedda (see my previous interview with Yedda’s Lior Haner, who will be speaking at the conference), and thanks to the location: Jerusalem! For once I don’t have to schlep to Tel Aviv for a great event, and I am thrilled.

There are also some really interesting reps from lesser-known but really professional Israeli companies: Tzvika Avnery will be there from Tagadam; Tzvika is a pro in the social media sphere and his company develops apps for social networks, among other things. Eli Feldblum from RankAbove will be there too; Eli is actually pretty well-known in the SEO world for his expertise, and his company services clients from all over the world. I’m mentioning these guys because I know them, but I hope I’ll get to meet the others on the panels too.

The main guy behind the whole thing is Barry Schwartz, the Executive Editor at Search Engine Roundtable, and President of RustyBrick, “a Web services firm specializing in customized online technology that helps companies decrease costs and increase sales.”

Here is the speaker list as from Barry’s latest post on the event at Search Engine Roundtable:

SEO Panel

• Branko Rihtman, SEO Specialist at Tens Technology (Presenter)
• Ophir Cohen, CEO of Compucall
• Sam Michelson, CEO of Five Blocks
• Gilad Sasson, Search Marketing Analyst at Nekuda.co.il

PPC Panel

• Avi Wilensky, CEO of Promedia Corp (Presenter)
• Itai Levitan, Managing Partner at EasyNet
• Alon Sheafer, Founder of Kenshoo
• Tal Cohen, Finance and Technology Industry Manager at Google Israel
• Michael G. Samet, Ph.D., CEO, Referral Technology, Inc.

Social Panel

• Eli Feldblum, CEO of RankAbove (Presenter)
• Tzvika Avnery, Partner at Tagadam
• Roi Carthy, TechCrunch
• Lior Haner, Yedda

Cool, eh?

Here’s what’s not cool: not a woman in sight on the speaker list. Not one. It’s a celebration of testosterone. I’m not against testosterone, but it would be nice if it was toned down a bit by at least one representative from the other 51% of the human race. And it’s not like there aren’t impressive women in the industry: how about Tamar Weinberg, who works at Rusty Brick and writes the amazing Techipedia blog? Or Tzvika Avnery’s partner at Tagadam, Orly Izhaki, who has a really impressive background in web-related ventures, and writes at smo.co.il (Hebrew)? Don’t tell me they were unavailable as an excuse. I’m sure there’s at least one woman in the web industry who could have been available.

Anyways, I’m really looking forward to this event, and I’ll hopefully fill you all in on how it goes. If they have internet access, I may even Twitter and live-blog the event like a good lil’ social media geek should.

Related posts:

1. SphinnCon search marketing conference coming back to Israel SphinnCon is coming back to Israel on January 9, 2011,...
2. SphinnCon Israel summary…more to come later As I wrote a few days ago, SphinnCon came to...
3. SphinnCon Israel review part 1: Barry Schwartz’s introduction I know this is way overdue, but I actually have...

Social media is hot. It’s what VCs are investing in, and bright entrepreneurs are looking for investment in.

It seems to me like there are three groups involved in this brave new world of media:

1. The new New Media companies that are popping up every minute, each hoping to be the next MySpace or the latest hottie, Facebook.
2. The people who use existing platforms to create and lead a community: the bloggers, the Ning community builders, the forum managers, etc.
3. The audience: those who join the communities, forums, etc. and enjoy the ease with which they can publish online.

Group 1 wants to make money. Group 2 also wants to make money, although there are many out there who create communities around blogs or other media for casual purposes. Group 3 wants to have fun.

So how are Group 1 and Group 2 planning on making money? 99% of them are betting on ad revenues. I am continuously exposed to business plans as well as existing sites that, once they finish telling you all the brilliant ways they will create a community, break the news that they are depending on ads for their revenue.

I don’t know why this doesn’t make more people nervous. Here are my concerns:

1. With more and more people building communities, the potential for ad revenue is decreasing. Even with the growing numbers of web users in developing countries like China and India, if you consider the ridiculous number of new blogs being launched every day, and the fact that people in China probably prefer Chinese sites, you’ve got too many sites for too few visitors (unless your site is in Chinese, I guess). In short, most new communities will not build up a large enough user-base to generate significant ad revenues.
2. Why can’t these companies come up with a more creative way to make money? Why is everybody going for the community building-ad revenue model? If they’re so creative with the way they build their community, why does their creativity stop there? Can’t they actually sell something? It just seems so…”me too.”
3. Has anyone taken a look at whether any rising stars are reaching stellar levels lately? Today’s big guys got into the business five/ten years ago: Google, FeedBurner, Facebook, MySpace, TechCrunch, Technorati, Read/Write Web, Boing Boing.
   Update: Mark from TechCrunch stopped by to comment that TechCrunch is 2+ years old, and Facebook is less than five. He says: “these established players may not be all that old – which is probably why others think they can achieve glory quickly as well.” So perhaps there is hope for a new star…I’d better get to work.
   

New media is fun – group 3 has got it right. But while I am no expert investor, this has all the signs of a bubble to me. A lot of excitement over a quickly shrinking space with diminishing potential.

One thing’s for sure: with everyone betting on ad revenues, it’s clear who’s going to emerge a sure winner in this social media trend…

Google Adwords and Adsense! Google is king of the world.

Related posts:

1. Social media saturation point – part II On July 30 I wrote a post asking whether we...
2. Starting a facebook group is not a social media strategy First, a story: Almost a year ago, I met with...
3. Getting started with blogging and social media People are always asking for background information on why and...