How does this affect web architects and copywriters who look to optimize the site for SEO? The relevance of site speed is negligible for SEO rankings, according to Google.  Fewer than 1% of web pages are affected by site speed in their implementation. Google also is only measuring queries written in English on Google.com.  A page’s relevancy is important, meaning that web site content remains the last word for a good web site. That content must be filled with relevant keywords, pertinent copy, and an integrated design palette. I could ask web analytics if it is the chicken or the egg?

The consumer wants a website that will load up smoothly with crisp, vivid design and some flash.  Nothing more or less.  In New York, a fair number of people pay for good ISP (internet service protocol). When making a decision about purchasing goods online, a website that does not load properly is a death knell. Customer service never has an opportunity to engage with potential customers.  Conversions and sales do not happen. The bottom line lies unnourished. To conclude, speed kills. Again.

The true function of search engine optimization parallels an old adage, that the cream will always rise to the top. If your brand equity is solid, then you will naturally be among the top of index results. In the world of interactive marketing, that starts will delivering a fresh website that mixes creative design and flash applications. You must also have quality copywriting. Good copywriting not only tags at your emotions. Ingenuity is also established by clearly highlighting your corporate accomplishments with a bundle of images. Your site architecture must be linear and make navigable sense to the user, who always can move on to another option.

It could be from their smartphone, tablet, or game console. You could have a memorable logo and sound commentary, but a potential customer must be able to solve their problem regardless of channel. If not, then that picture told to friends is worth more than a thousand words. In lost earnings.

Good brand images that search engines love take time to cultivate before they can be impenetrable. Think of any leading sneaker company, such as Adidas. They could survive a website that ranks poorly on the search index because of their long history of providing quality goods in the athletic apparel marketplace.  Adidas are recognized on every continent in every town.  If they tried, however, to pitch Adidas as a brand with two stripes, you get crickets.

In conclusion, search engine optimization is only as good as the value your firm provides to visitors. The keywords help to paint the picture strokes for a website. Advertisers need to keep this in mind for 2011.

1.  WikiLeaks Keep Dripping

Many of you have seen the headlines this week about the aforementioned subject.  The website is currently trying to stay online, as the domain moves to Switzerland. After humiliating political leaders worldwide with the release of classified information, they are fighting back with censorship.  It will be fascinating to monitor in the upcoming days.  An editorial piece in FT argued that the revealings will force countries to engage at a higher level. We’ll see.

2.    eBay beats Amazon in Product Search

In the battle for e-commerce, the eyes have eBay on the brain.  According to this piece from TechCrunch.com,  eBay had over 2 billion product searches, which is down 3% from last year’s pace.  The auctioneer has been on a roll lately.  It’s application purchases notwithstanding, eBay had a strong sales uptick for Cyber Monday on its mobile site.  Amazon has been buying up shops left and right to put under the tree, but the auctioneer deals with platinum right now.

3.  Google Buys Chelsea Building for $1.9 Billion to go with their Groupon

The search giant is also pulling out the stops.  They bought Chicago dealer Groupon this week for $6 Billion. They already had offices located in the facility that spans an entire block on Eighth Avenue between 15th and 16th street. Telx, a strategic data center, runs operations in the building as well.  According to the Journal, it’s the largest deal made in the United States this year.  The Caffeine stimulates, it does.

4.  The Sophistication of China Continues

China’s middle class, as we know, is booming. They want their luxury goods, and with a click.  The burgeoning e-commerce sector could bode well for international brands that have strong appeal.  Fashion labels, as mentioned, are hedging their bets on strong returns.  The iron fist of Chinese governing boards looms when it comes to international commerce, but until that point, Christmas is in the air.  An interesting subarticle relates to the local designer community. Will they have greater flexibility in terms of employment? Or will they be forced to relocate with various global creatives?

5.  Virgin Releases Project; an interactive magazine for iPad

Richard Branson has snuck another gift in the iPad App Store. His new magazine called Project was released this week to fanfare from the publishing world.  Rupert Murdoch plans to counter with his own interactive newspaper called The Daily in early 2011. Both media magnates seem to feel that written content on tablets will regain some of the depth lost to traditional browsing through the internet.  The marketplace needs to develop for certain price points for that to blossom.  Branson also claims that future branding partnerships will follow the iAd model of kinetic participation e.g. Nissan Leaf, which will be a boon for interactive designers.

That’s the Blue News. Enjoy the weekend.

As a writer with SEO methodology in mind, it has trained me to zone in on a concept for a piece.  Highly ranked keywords are an outline for that process, and arguably allow the writer greater creative latitude when discussing market strategy amongst other internet strategies. Some have declared that SEO is dead and gone with the rise of social search.  Others like myself scoff at this idea. The truth is a mystery.  

One must be careful to not allow the necessity of climbing an index to get in the way of a written concept.  SEO writing is a technical process.  Ideas may not link immediately to your noted keywords, which frustrates many traditional writers of journalism and literature.  If your concept is lacking a unified insight that differentiates itself from the blogosphere, then the goal is not achieved. Your company not only loses the visibility in search indexes, but also in your industry. It’s difficult to close a transaction if you don’t exist.

The value of SEO is promoting your services online at a uniformed scale in the highest level.  Web browsers have an endless array of options to find content that fits their personal tastes and preferences. Blog content must contain a wicked stew of insight, knowledge, and searchable phrases that siphon into the nerves of a search engine.  Social media‘s rise as an online universe demands this level of fluency to share and debate until the wee hours.  I am still learning how to execute the concept flawlessly.  Nevertheless, I am writing under the influence and focused daily.  Copyblogger draws even greater insight into the science of web copywriting.  Click here to see their take.

This week, EMI and Apple finally reached an agreement on distribution of the seminal rock band’s catalog.  The debate on an appropriate method lasted over a decade, but it’s somewhat doubtful that the heavy promotion will make a large impact on the paid digital music scale.  EMI is looking to reap liquidity on the deal to pay back massive debt, and had an opportunity to set a pay standard for the music industry earlier in the past decade.  Now that music downloading is a free zone, younger consumers will not use their purchasing power in this case.  Older generations have already shelled out for years of repackaged collections on various formats. It’s questionable if they will shell out more for unreleased materials again after purchasing the mono box set last autumn. A hard decades’ night, indeed.

2.  Microsoft Kinect Gets Scoped By Cyberspace

I found this review online from Tech Crunch about Microsoft Kinect.  The sales have been brisk since it’s release, but yet again, Microsoft is a day late and two dollars short.

3.  Fewer Businesses, With Fewer Jobs

The Labor Department has to report the truth, and it isn’t pretty.  According to this piece in today’s Journal, newly formed companies created 2.6 million jobs, a 15% decrease from the last recovery earlier in the past decade.  I bring this up because with the lack of available credit, entrepreneurs cannot push product development.  The domestic corporate tax is also a deterrent. Venture capitalists are unable to invest in these companies like before since they are using capital to pay off debt.  The digital industry is setting the bar for innovation in several sectors, but those with ideas cannot manifest them into a shrinking labor force.  Millennials are willing, but will they have a chance to be able?

4.  Tweet Analytics

I tackle this headline in a broader context here, but it is another step in their methodical business development to gain a model for corporate entities.  Web analytics are gaining respect as a tool to measure consumer activity online.  Now, let the creativity flow.

5. A Real Offer From Time Warner Cable

In this report, a test is coming where Time Warner is offering cable packages to consumers with lower incomes.  The promotion will begin next week in New York and then in the Cleveland metropolitan area on December 15th. The pitch has a couple of caveats. One of them is that it excludes ESPN, TNT, Comedy Central, Fox regional sports networks, and MSG.  These channels carry a higher content fee that has driven up the bundled subscription rates over time.

Online media distribution is growing as an entity, but customers are still dependent on digital cable corporations for network connections, and with Comcast setting to take over NBC, the options for reasonable pricing shrink.  TV executives have fought against a la carte pricing for years and will do with more intensity today.  By offering a package that does not contain HD technology or free on-demand services, cable wants to keep that cord at any cost.

That’s the Blue news. Enjoy the weekend.

We know that the days of clipping images onto a cork board and rubber cement are over.  Nowadays, you have programs like Adobe and Avid to brush up images.  Web analytics help corporations become more accountable with their account strategies.  You can gain an understanding through pay per click advertisements, unique page visits, the percentage of time spent on a site, and conversion rates (linked sale transactions).  These are just a few metric categories.  Carl Warner wrote a reflective piece on AdWeek discussing the nature of today’s advertising philosophy.  He warns that “metrics can illuminate things we couldn’t dream of being able to see 25 years ago, but the science should complement the ‘art’ in a decision, not supersede it”.  This is the danger of viewing metrics too closely. Numbers can fill in a space, but they don’t tell the story.  Hastiness can also hurt your business twice as much.  Be careful when pulling the plug.

At Blueliner, we are using analytics to improve client campaigns and website performance, but a report will never tell you everything. It takes a person analyzing the numbers to determine what they really mean and what the implication is. This is our mission, and we carry it outside of the box daily.

It will be interesting to see if Blekko can usher in a new philosophy of SEO relying on what it calls ‘slashtag’ search.  Slashtags are appended to search queries and limit search results to only the curated sets of sites, reminiscent of Twitter’s hashtag.  On Twitter, when posting a status update, you can create a hashtag by typing the number sign in front of a keyword. (ex. #bluelinermarketing).  When that hashtag is typed into the search and queried, then all status feeds with that index show up in the results index.  In Blekko’s feed, theoretically, you would type (interactive marketing/techblogs).

I do wonder, however, if Blekko is getting into the game too late for the site to become a mainstream purveyor of search.  Google Instant allows users to type less in the search query.  Blekko wants a longer line in the cloud.  Location-based applications from social media websites also are personalizing search queries based on entered data characteristics and can deliver results in real-time for mobile devices.  It’s not clear if Blekko has a mobile application available for smart or dumb phones.  On any level, I will Blekko it for awhile by slashing and see what comes up.  On a hunch, I think Google is safe.  You can view a test run of the site here:

blekko: how to slash the web from blekko on Vimeo.

1.  Microsoft Experiences A Profit Boom

Could the tide be turning for Microsoft?  After recently unveiling their new portfolio of Windows 7 mobile phones, the blue chip posted a raise in profit margins of up to 51%.  The strength of this rise can be marked to an increase in purchases of the new Windows 7 by businesses at all levels.  While Vista was universally panned by everyone, the new operating system’s positive response bodes well for the health of computer sales.  As the WSJ mentions, this long-term growth will be dependent on whether they can enter the mobile market with technology that consumers want, ranging from mobile applications to tablets.

2.  YouTube Hits 1 Billion Subscriptions

Many in the media industry feel that Google has yet to make a statement in social media, with the failures of Buzz and other efforts.  Regardless, its purchase of YouTube remains a seminal moment. YouTube now stands as the pioneer of video sharing, where anyone can upload content from multiple channels.  Performance artists have revolutionized the website’s ability to infiltrate cyberspace without the benefit of professional audial or video equipment.  Thus, the video for music studios was killed and reborn.  Lady Gaga’s video channel reached 1 billion views.  Her abilities are evident, but it is highly doubtful that she becomes an international superstar without YouTube, where corporate management can control content distribution without using a costly production budget. They also are not depending on her videos to elicit optimum record sales.  YouTube has offered a widget for video developers to embed on their sites.  Viewers can subscribe to channels even if outside of the site.  Click here for more details.

3.  MySpace Calls It A Comeback

I wrote a short piece this week on the rebranding of MySpace for the social media market, although it’s unclear how different those changes will be now that Facebook has become the leader.  MySpace plans to further segment themselves as a portal of media distribution for bands and singers on the rise.  As the Mashable piece mentions, MySpace also is developing a new user called the curator.  If a user gains a following in a social trend, you gain access to several tools to unlock exclusive content and engage with true fans.  The concept is similar to the true premise of social media marketing, but for MySpace, it’s all dependent on the execution.  At least they cleaned up the website.

4.  Opposition in Vietnam Silenced By Virus

This story was intriguing to me due to its coverage of a topic not prominent in mainstream media.  Internet security is becoming a task in which governments use web development for manipulate reasons, namely to silence communication. Vietnam long has been a nation of conflict where insurgencies from within and outside have sought control.  The story also mentions that viruses have been used in parts of Russia to counteract insurgencies.  Click fraud is real, people, and it goes beyond consumer products.

5. Politics of the Mouse

The midterm elections of 2010 next Tuesday represent another watershed in politics, as disillusioned voters have created online communities that have morphed into Tea Parties, who are stepping up their presence with demonstrations and activism in the public.  Business leaders and voters have foreshadowed the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate changing several seats with some suspecting a Republican sweep.  The results will come in by this time next week, and it speaks to the power of digital media as a force to organize discourse, emotion, and information.  We have seen the Obama administration use social media to incredible effects in the 2008 election. It would be the height of irony if Congress was flipped in the same method.

Mr. Isaac explains in greater detail about the vision of the site’s reconstruction, in how they pulled top qualities from rival social media sites such as Foursquare’s recognition compass, Twitter’s content trending, and Facebooks’ Pages.  I no longer have a MySpace account, so I can’t speak about the upgrades, but the website was sorely in need of them, as we all know, with a jumbled interface of color and scheme.  The lack of security also was a problem on several levels, as cybercrimes became local and national stories, sullying their reputation. This blog has more screenshots and video presentations of the new theme.

It will be interesting to see if MySpace can develop a niche collection of followers looking to separate themselves from the Facebook omnipresence in social marketing.  At the minimum, the prowess of News Corp as an online advertiser should allow them to gain partnerships for exclusive content.  For those who still have MySpace accounts, leave thoughts about the website design in the comments section. Here’s also a introductory video to the branding relaunch. Thank you.