Social media advocates are often quoted as claiming that social media is the greatest form of advertising because it is free. At Silicon Beach Training we use social media in a big way; we use it to increase exposure for our training courses. We use it to build relationships with key influencers and our customers. We also use it extensively to promote and share our flow of content generated to inform and inspire our existing customers and potential clients. One of the most important paybacks for all of this activity is it seriously improves our ranking. I believe that Google is going to up the stakes on this one, too; social shares are going to become even stronger signals that affect page position. In order to sustain these benefits, however, we need to employ people. We employ full-time people and we need to tap many external sources for content generation, paid for in currency and in back-links. Time and people – Read the full article
Magento is an ecommerce script which is said to be more authoritative for ecommerce and was developed by Varien. Magento uses Zend PHP and MYSQL databases and is said to be an open source program. It is said to be more flexible in nature along with the modular structure and is totally capable of being scaled and also possesses a vast range of management options which most of the users of magento are fond of. Magento is more superior in nature and presents your products in a very powerful manner. You can create your products catalog easily and also manage it. Varien previously worked with osCommerce and they intended to diverge osCommerce but then decided to redraft and rephrase it and hence it resulted in the formation of Magento. Magento was started to develop in 2007 and in the month of august in the same year, a public beta version was announced and in 2010, Magento mobile was made available – Read the full article
Protecting your identity involves protecting anything that contains your personal information. And your cell phone or smart phone contains more data about you than you may even realize. Smart phones today are basically small computers, except they often do not have anti-virus protection on them. We use these devices for surfing the internet, checking bank accounts, and even making monetary transactions. The secret service has been trying to fight against identity theft and is recommending a cell phone firewall for all cell phone users to help guard against this kind of electronic hacking. People are spending more time on their phones as they are capable of doing more things. One of the most vulnerable aspects of using your cell phone is online banking. These connections are supposed to be secure, but if you are able to access your bank account by just pressing a button on your phone, then a thief who steals your phone can do the same thing. – Read the full article
Increasingly, people are accessing the Web from smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. It’s not just the desktop and laptop anymore. This means that, as a business owner, Internet marketer, or SEO professional, you have to come up with a search engine optimization strategy that’s specific to mobile – a strategy that will help you get found online more easily and quickly. Let smartphone users and mobile consumers find you whenever they search. Here’s a mobile SEO checklist to get you started: Plan for it. Set a strategy, identify your targets, and plan accordingly. Like any other SEO campaign, successful mobile marketing takes plenty of research and preparation. Know the various mobile search engines. There’s Google XHTML, Google Mobile, Bing Mobile, Yahoo! Mobile, AOL Mobile, and abphone – among many others. Familiarize yourself with these by using your own mobile phone or tablet device. “Mobilize” your website. There are plenty of plug-ins and tools for building a mobile version of – Read the full article
It’s great to drive traffic – online and offline – from all corners of the world. But if you’re a smart marketer, you’ll realize you don’t have to be so international – at least not when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). Thanks to local search, businesses don’t have to squander resources on attracting customers and visitors that are beyond their geographic reach anyway. One can instead focus on catering to the heart of the locals. Want to find out how? Here’s a list of 17 great local SEO and local search tips, tricks, and tools to help you get started. Claim. Claim your local listing on Google Places. While you’re at it, go to Bing Local and Yahoo Local and claim your listings there, too. Apply best practices. Read our guide on Google Places to put yourself closer to the center of the map. Submit your info to the online yellow pages. Sign up in online directories and – Read the full article
First of all, this is not a recommendation for Dreamweaver. If the title sounds like a covert suggestion to use Dreamweaver, please accept my apologies. All I want to do is tell readers why Dreamweaver is such a big hit amongst developers when it comes to creating websites and web applications. So without wasting any more of your time, here goes: Single Panel – Multiple Designs Dreamweaver CS5.5 offers you a feature known as ‘Multiscreen Preview Panel’. This feature allows a single panel view for styling and visualize rendering for not only the PC but also for smartphones and even tablets like the Apple iPad. This has made the job easier for developers to corroborate styles and data and ensure that a particular website design is compatible across various platforms and devices. Faster and Simpler Integration of Interactivity What do people want from their websites these days? They are looking for better interactivity, yet another reason why website developers love – Read the full article
The E-commerce industry hasn’t only grown bigger than ever. It has also become more social than ever. Thanks to the constant evolution of the Web – and to the popularity of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter – businesses and retailers are now doing more than just catering to individual Internet users and online shoppers. They’re also marketing to the people’s friends, inner circles, and communities, with the aim of bringing in more fans, followers, and dollars. Yes, dollars. In a recent story by Mashable, Jason Taylor, vice president of Platform Strategy at Usablenet, wrote that, when it comes to marketing, it’s “no longer just about ‘liking’ brands.” With a social network like Facebook giving way to new sales opportunities, businesses and online retailers are maximizing their social presence to drive not just marketing and branding campaigns, but also additional revenue. “By integrating purchasing into their branded pages,” Taylor said, “businesses can effectively take advantage of Facebook as a – Read the full article
The Internet and smart phones are two modern inventions that most people cannot now live without, especially since the increased processing power of phones is being used to browse the mobile Web. Statistics reveal that more and more people are using their mobile phones to access the Internet. According to Bango, a mobile payments and analytics specialist, the number increased from 10.8 million in January 2008 to 22.4 in January 2009. These figures are hard to ignore and there are suggestions that these growth rates are set to continue for the foreseeable future. If you’re a business owner, a blogger, marketer, or brand manager, then check out your traffic stats and see for yourself the increase in the number of your mobile searchers. Unfortunately, not a lot of webmasters have begun to recognize the importance of optimizing their sites for mobile. After all, what works well on desktops won’t necessarily work – or look good – on a smart phone. – Read the full article
