Google has made it easier by adding an option on its website verification page. With this new option (called “Add a User”) a website can have several verified owners in Google webmaster tools without worrying about creating Meta tags & uploading verification HTML files for each user. This new feature of Google webmaster tools looks like this:

To use this new feature of Google webmaster tool, each and every website must have at-least one directly verified user through HTML verification file or through Meta tags & new users must have Google Accounts. It does not require any verification. Once a website has one directly verified owner then ownership of website can be shared with several users, the only thing new users must have is a Google account.

There is one important thing which you should keep in mind before sharing verified ownership with several user.s New owners (users) will have access rights similar to primary owner they can also share this ownership with others. So don’t share ownership to people whom you don’t trust.

• No set up is required, what you need is a Gmail Account
• Google Buzz is faster than any other social media applications
• Google Buzz auto generate your social network

• Google Buzz puts replies & updates in your Gmail Account. Unlike to other static messages Buzz message are live conversations you can reply from here directly. Here comment appears in real time.
• Sharing experience is pretty interesting with integration of images and videos
• You can share with your network in the way you want, publicly or privately. You can control whom you want to send update in the network.

When we are talking about sharing, network etc Google Buzz seems pretty interesting but here is one point which make me think. Today we are living in marketing age where people trying to increase there network for business purpose what role will buzz play in that case. For them update in email inbox may be more annoying. Let’s say a person having 1000 friends in the network. Just imagine if from them 100 people share something what will be the situation of email inbox then? You are going to get hundred of messages which may not useful for your business.  I think Google Buzz have following disadvantage:

• Biggest disadvantage of Google buzz is Google profile. In Google profile worst part is we can not change its URL it will automatically taken as http://www.google.com/profiles/username Or one suggestion http://www.google.com/profiles/123456789 (some random number). This is not user friendly URL.
• Can provide hacker a clue to hack your account
• People may not ready to mix social and business contacts

Finally, Its a new social Media platform which  will allow us to manage social connection and emails under one roof with improved features. However, the question is “Are people still want to join another new Social Media platform where they already have good success on there existing Social media platform?”.

Writing for Searchers

Your main objective when writing for searchers is to persuade site visitors to take action on a page by highlighting the best features and selling the experience. Keep your pages focused.  It is better to write shorter pages with links than it is to have long pages that your visitors need to scroll down.  Web pages should be between 250 to 500 words long, as a rule of thumb.  If an article is longer than 500 words, separate it into several pages linked together.  Since readers scan most web pages, you may still want to break them up with headings so searchers can easily find specifically what they are looking for.  Make your headings bold or larger than your normal page font.  You can also use bullets and numbering to make your pages more readable.  Also make sure you edit your grammar and check for typos.  Luckily these same rules apply to search engine programs too.

Writing for Search Engines

Your job is to weave search keyword phrases into the page text so that your site ranks well for them. The hard part is to minimize the awkward nature of this repetition as much as possible, by interspersing the keywords with rich description that matches the tone and style of the website’s existing branding efforts.  Many times you will need to use more than one keyword phrase per page as well. The following points will help you:

• Keyword Strategy. When developing copy, concentrate on the primary keyword first, and then rotate usage of the other phrases throughout the page. Don’t try to optimize for more than three keyword phrases per page so that your results are focused.
• Copy Length. Optimal page length for the search engines is 250 to 350 words.  This length allows repeated mention of keywords without while maintaining focus.
• Meta tags and Titles: As a general rule, the title should be 60 characters long because that is the length of a Google search title. The meta description should be 150 characters long for the same reason.  You may choose to use a meta keyword tag to keep track of the phrases you are optimizing for, although many search engines do not read this tag.  It can be about 250 characters long with no keyword repeats.
• Deep Links. Hyperlinks to other pages within the site – or “deep links” – help boost search-engine rankings, especially when the links contain full or partial keyword phrases.
• Places for Key Word Phrases: Title, meta description, meta keywords, headings, bold print, text links, first two paragraphs of text, last word on the page if possible, and alt tags for images.
• Number of Pages. Most brochure websites will need between eight to 10 pages of optimized copy.  This can include home page (with the most competitive keywords), about page, services or products pages, FAQ page, and contact page.  A news section or blog really helps to develop additional pages and keep content fresh.
• Keyword Density. Strive for between 2% to 5% keyword density.  Here is a free keyword density tool for existing pages: http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density/ Here is a free keyword density tool for text: http://textalyser.net/ In order to get keyword density up, sometimes this means that a page must be split into parts so that keyword phrases can be used about 3 to 5 times on a 200-400 word page. Simply add a link at the bottom of the page to read more about “keyword phrase”, and this link will take them to the next part of the page.
• Single Versus Plurals. Use both the singular and plural forms of keywords.   Research shows that most users search for plural keywords, although it’s easier to insert the singular form when writing about an individual product or service.  Use the plural form in the first heading whenever possible.
• Variation of Antecedent. Make sure to use variation with the word that precedes each keyword phrase.  Without variation, the search engine will read the article and keyword as a single cohesive unit, instead of recognizing the targeted keyword phrase as a stand-alone term

By following these rules of thumb, and editing several times for both errors and clarity, you can develop user friendly content that is also optimized for search engines.

With that incredible number, you might worry about how people are going to find you, and if you already have good rankings, you might worry about losing them if you were to convert to a WordPress content management system.

If you need an easy platform that’ll allow you to rank well and drive more traffic, consider a WordPress website. WordPress websites are popular due to the ease of use, great functionality, and professional looks. Check out these showcased WordPress sites: http://wordpress.org/showcase/archives/ which showcase how popular and versatile the software platform is, and about its search-ability and large-scale usability.  If National Geographic and The Wall Street Journal are using WordPress, that speaks volumes about using it as a possible platform for your site.

If you’re still thinking of Wordpress as a personal blog, you should know it’s so much more—an excellent tool for small or medium sized websites, host for galleries of videos and photos, forums and online communities, corporate portals, and of course blog posts. Most people who have blogged are familiar with the convenience and usability of WordPress, which makes it a logical choice for using as your main website too.  If you are already used to blogging with WordPress imagine how easy it will be to maintain your own site pages using the very same tool.  So we know WordPress is easy to navigate, easy to administer and maintain, and very versatile.  The question is whether WordPress is SEO-friendly as well.  Converting your website into Wordpress could be scary if the software destroys your hard-won search rankings.

In our experience at Boomtown Internet Group, WordPress is an ideal solution for the websites of smaller businesses. It can be set up quickly, easily publish content, and quickly optimized to show up in Google’s search results. Every page can be indexed by Google, which sometimes doesn’t happen in other more traditional CMS (content management) systems.  Wordpress has many plugins and applications that make it easy for internal optimization, allowing you to build a website that features an attractive and functional design, and one that can easily be customized and managed yourself—not to mention it’s SEO-friendly.

So How SEO-friendly is Wordpress?

If possible, design your WordPress style sheet to have your content close to the top of the page, for better readability—most search engines only scan the first half of web pages. Wordpress can also keep sidebars, footers, and other page elements towards the bottom and out of the way.  This design will allow your visitors easy readability as well.

The WordPress default installation doesn’t allow for strict control of page titles and meta tags for keywords and page descriptions—but there is a really great plugin called The All-In-One-SEO Plugin that’ll take care of it for you.  For more control, it lets you add page titles and meta tags manually, as you’ll get the best results that way.  Don’t forget to optimize with regional spelling and supply the search engines with information specific to your website for the best results.

Since blogs publish the same content on many pages such as archives and category pages, you can be penalized for duplicate content.  For instance, if a blog post is placed in more than one category, the post content can appear on the individual pages for each category.  If Google sees the content on more than one page of your site, it can be downgraded as duplicate content.  However, with the All In One SEO Plugin, the post is only accessible to search crawlers in one place. The other links to it will not be followed, which takes care of the duplicate-content problem without messing around with the Robots.txt or other workarounds.

So you’ve got great content, now you need great links. The quality and quantity of your links are important and play a role in search engine favoritism.  Who is linking to you?  WordPress makes this easy, with trackbacks, pingbacks, and blogrolls.  You’ll know who’s linking to you and you’ll easily be able to link to other people, giving both them and you search engine credit. Consider installing the “Related Posts plugin” and have your articles link to other similar articles you’ve written.

Not only text can be optimized for the Search Engines:  WordPress allows you to optimize your images as well. Taking the time to write alt tags and mindfully name your files will drive additional traffic to your site.  It’s important to take advantage of image optimization—even if your visitors can’t see your image tags, you’ll still get traffic from different engines.  I recommend that you take the time to do this yourself, but if you don’t have the time, use one of the available WordPress plugins to do it for you.  The plugin is called “SEO friendly Images” and can add titles to images in posts and pages.

One experience we recently had while in development mode on a website convinced us of WordPress’s innate SEO-friendliness.  We were designing the website www.rcdtechnology.com which had a section on RFID UHF Wristbands.  We forgot to disable the xml rpc ping notification feature on WordPress while we were in development, and the same day we put up the page on UHF Wristbands, the client got a call inquiring about them.  This sort of looked bad for Boomtown because we were still in development, but it really accentuated the complete SEO-friendliness and quick rankings which can be achieved by using the WordPress CMS software as the basis for your website.

For many businesses WordPress is a very robust CMS platform that will allow you much more flexibility and administrative control over your content, while giving you the added benefit of inherent SEO-friendliness.  You don’t have to know HTML or CSS to use a WordPress website or blog.  WordPress offers a built in editor, pre-existing customizations, tutorials, and how-tos. Although WordPress may not be the most perfect CMS solution, it’s so easy to set up, run, and maintain a great website and if you put in a little time, it’ll deliver great search engine results.

If you’re interested in learning more about Wordpress, email us at sue.mccrossin@boomtownig.com and we’d be happy to answer any questions.

Google Buzz is actually a social networking tool provided by Google with a Gmail account. It gives users the power to share recent updates, photos, videos with other Gmail users. Google launched Buzz in two phases together:

• Gmail Account (Official Announcement at Gmail Blog)
• Google Mobile Application (official Announcement at Google Mobile Blog )

First Google launched BUZZ with Gmail accounts.  It automatically follows the contact present in your chat list or more specifically it could be said this application automatically follows  the friends whom you are in frequent contact with from your friends list. Google said it is integrating with existing social networks, and you can share directly to twitter from BUZZ now. You can make your post both public and private. Google also provides access separately from gmail, and anyone can login to Google Buzz from http://www.google.com/buzz.

For those who want to remove Google Buzz from their Gmail Account, Google provide a separate option for it from the Gmail account setting tab.
No doubt it is a very smart and timely approach from Google, Twitter etc. to provide both your professional contacts and social contacts together!

Gmail is one of most popular email services these days, and has a large number of users. Google already owns a popular social networking platform Orkut. The main advantage of using Google Buzz, is that people do not need to visit ant other website and log in there. They now can do public chat or micro bloging directly from there Gmail account.

Now the question of month is: Can Google compete with other social networking sites like facebook? Is this a real Twitter killer or a threat to Facebook? What I personally think is that it is an attempt by Google to keep its users from bothering to try another social network like Facebook or Twitter, because now they can get everything together under one account. Google may be successful, but one question arises: Are you ready to handle your professional and social network together? For me it is a little bit difficult – let’s see what you people think!

Click the link to watch:  SEO Internet Strategies for 2010

Sue and I discuss 5 hot Internet Marketing trends you can expect to see in 2010:  Universal Search, Google Caffeine, Social Media, Video Phones, and the new FTC changes.

If you have any questions or comments regarding the webinar, email us at sue.mccrossin@boomtownig.com or erica.ronchetti@boomtownig.com.

Our next webinar will discuss Google Analytics!

We’ve done a bit of research on Magento already, and found that while it is very powerful and flexible, there is very little documentation and some people have found that the layers of programming and thousands of files are tricky to customize, and this makes it take up to 5 times longer to customize. In addition, I have read that the cart runs slowly, requires at least a semi-dedicated server, and can be costly to host as the number of products increases.

Magento allows for multiple stores to use one cart, an obvious savings to our clients. It also allows for multiple product images so that customers can get a really good look at what they are purchasing. It also allows coupons and different pricing for customer groups. Google checkout, PayPal, and PayPal Pro are all integrated, and there is a one-page checkout process.

As far as SEO goes, this cart has the ability to add unique titles and descriptions and keyword rich URLs on pages, just like Squirrelcart. It also has a nice CMS which allows your customers to add informational pages which can be used for SEO as well.

You can download the cart for free from http://www.magentocommerce.com, and there is also a fully supported enterprise edition of the cart for just under $9,000 for larger businesses that want to integrate their carts and inventory systems. The cart is coded with the latest PHP 5 object oriented standards and uses the Zend framework.

Check back to our blog in early January after we complete our first Magento ecommerce website, when we will review our coding experiences using the software.

When most people visit websites, they assume the animated material is Flash.  That’s not always the case.  Due to the growing popularity of JavaScript frameworks, there are now a variety of exciting options for incorporating animations and animated material into your website that don’t involve Flash, which can’t be read by search engines.

You want your website to be creative and interactive, but you also want to show up in the SERPS.  You don’t have to sacrifice any optimization with jQuery.  It serves as an excellent tool for front-end developers to present information to the end user in more interesting ways.  The fact that jQuery website animation uses JavaScript to manipulate DOM objects, (represented with HTML and styled with CSS) makes it easy to stay SEO friendly because you can reveal and hide content from the user with effects, but still keep the same page markup for search crawlers.

If you’re interested in jQuery animation for your website, check out these 6 cool website animation techniques:

1.   jQuery Cycle: http://malsup.com/jquery/cycle/

A great way to display your images!

This useful plugin can be used to create slideshows of images without the need for Flash.  You can use this to display a gallery of images and choose the manner you’d like the images to transition.  Effects include Shuffle, Zoom, Fade, Turn Down, Curtain, and Scroll.

Boomtown uses this jQuery animation here: www.boomtownig.com

2.   jQuery Accordion: http://jqueryui.com/demos/accordion/

Manage your content.

The jQuery Accordion can help you display lots and lots of content in a condensed form that’s still visible to search engines, but doesn’t overload users’ senses. 

RCD Technology uses the accordion plugin to successfully manage their content:  http://www.rcdtechnology.com

3.  Form Validation: http://jquery.malsup.com/form/

Doing client-side form validation is made much easier with the jQuery forms plugin.

Widely regarded as one of the best jQuery plugins, Form Validation involves doing things like checking that all required fields were filled out and, if so, were they filled out to a required specification (e.g. correctly formatted phone numbers or dates), enabling you to get the information you need.

4.   Superfish: http://users.tpg.com.au/j_birch/plugins/superfish/#examples

Create a cross-browser multi-level horizontal or vertical navigation.

The jQuery Superfish plugin is great for managing drop down and multi-level navigation.  With the Superfish navigation plugin, you’ll be able to showcase and direct visitors to the many webpages your site has to offer.

It’s used for the navigation in the orange top menu of the Boomtown site and blog:  www.boomtownig.com

5.   Subtle Animation Effects: http://www.rcdtechnology.com/rfid-applications/partners-customers/

Create subtle animation effects for page items and images. (You can view these by mousing over the partner logos).

The creation of these effects for page items adds different movement to images.

6.   Or you can use any of the widgets in the jQuery UI to enhance user experience:
http://jqueryui.com/demos/

We hope these 6 tools will inspire you to explore all that jQuery has to offer—there are numerous other plugins and website animation techniques as well.  Learn more about jQuery and what it can do for your website!

#!/bin/bash
for domain in `cat domains.txt`
do
   echo $domain
   `whois $domain >> whois-results.txt`
done

You could take this a step further and do some regular expression matching to only get the lines of interest, but this needed to be quick and dirty.

Outline of Components

1. Adding a unique id to the body tag of each page in the zend framework project
2. A modal dialog using jQuery UI that displays the exit survey
3. An AJAX call to our Zend Framework controller that logs the survey results
4. A script that runs from the crontab to email the survey results on a daily basis

Directory Structure of Zend Framework Project

Here’s what the directory structure of my Zend Framework project looks like. Htdocs is the web root and all of the application files are in the FTP root, safely prevented from being accessed via the web in a folder called app_jsc.

You’ll notice that the Zend Framework library is mysteriously missing. I keep this at the same directory level as app_jsc and htdocs because I might want to run multiple apps on this hosting account.

Add a Unique id to Each Page’s Body Tag

I like to add an id to the body tag of each of the pages in my Zend Framework projects. For example:

<body id="the-name-of-this-page">

This comes in handy if you need to target css or javascript to certain pages only. In the app_jsc/views/layouts/main.phtml, put this code:

<body id="<?php echo $this->bodyId ?>">

I have a controller plugin called ViewSetup that I use to execute certain code during the dispatch cycle. Setting up and registering controller plugins can vary depending on which version of Zend Framework you’re using, so I won’t cover how to specifically do that in this post, but you should be familiar with how this works. In the dispatchLoopStartup() of my plugin, I put this code that assigns a value to bodyId and passes it to the view:

public function dispatchLoopStartup(Zend_Controller_Request_Abstract $request)
{
  // Get the name of the controller and action of this request
  $controllerName = $request->getControllerName();
  $actionName = $request->getActionName();
 
  // Get static instance of ViewRenderer helper
  $viewRenderer = Zend_Controller_Action_HelperBroker::getStaticHelper('ViewRenderer');
  $viewRenderer->initView();
  $view = $viewRenderer->view;
 
  // Assign value to the bodyId and pass it to the view
  $view->bodyId = $controllerName . '-' . $actionName;
}

So, on the home page of the site, the HTML will look like:

<body id="index-index">

jQuery UI Custom Build

First, we need to head over to jQuery UI and get the components we’ll need to construct the modal dialog. I want to download a custom version of the jQuery UI that contains only the components I really need for the exit survey. The UI demo pages are really good about specifying the dependencies needed for each widget to work. The jQuery Dialog widget needs UI Core, UI Draggable, and UI Resizeable. The last two are only necessary if I want the dialog to be resizeable or draggable (surprise). I might want this, so I’m going to include them in the custom build I specify on the download page. On this page, I specify that I want the Cupertino theme. I check the UI Core, Draggable and Resizeable from the Interactions, the Dialog widget, and all of the effects because I might want to apply one when the dialog appears. They aren’t necessary for this to work though.

When you build your own download package, jQuery is going to give you a zip file containing a css folder, a js folder, and another folder called development-bundle. I only need what’s in the css and js folders. The css folder will contain a folder with your theme name and, inside of that, the themed css file and an images folder. I’m just going to drop the cupertino folder into my public css folder (I call mine “c” for short) in my project. I’ll also drop the files from the js folder into my public js folder in my project. I need to place some code in app_jsc/views/layouts/main.phtml to make sure the css files and js files are included in my project.

Code to place in the head tag to include the css and javascript files:

<!-- First we need jquery -->
<script src="/js/jquery-1.3.2.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
 
<!-- the custom jquery-ui javascript -->
<script src="/js/jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
 
<!-- the javascript where I put all of my DOM ready code -->
<script src="/js/init.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
 
...
 
<!-- Main site stylesheet -->
<link media="screen" type="text/css" href="/c/style.css" rel="stylesheet" />
 
<!-- custom jquery-ui stylesheet -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/c/cupertino/jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />

Now, you can get all fancy and use Zend Framework’s headScript, headLink, and headStyle helpers to append everything somewhere up the request dispatch cycle, but this is just a simple website that doesn’t use any logic to append certain styles or javascript. Every page gets everything, so let’s just keep it simple for now.

The HTML for the Modal Dialog

The HTML for the exit survey needs to go on the contact page (app_jsc/views/scripts/contact-us/index.phtml) and stay hidden until we call the dialog() method on it.

<div id="survey" style="display:none;" title="Before you go...">
  <p>Would you mind telling us why you're leaving this page?</p>
  <form action="" method="post" accept-charset="utf-8" id="survey-form">
  <input type="radio" name="reasons" value="Don't want to leave email" /> <span class="reason">You want to contact us, but don&rsquo;t want to leave your email address</span><br />
  <input type="radio" name="reasons" value="CAPTCHA trouble" /> <span class="reason">You want to contact us, but had trouble with captcha verification</span><br />
  <input type="radio" name="reasons" value="Got her by accident" /> <span class="reason">You got to this page by accident</span><br />
  <input type="radio" name="reasons" value="No interest in contacting" /> <span class="reason">You have no interest in contacting us</span>
  </form>
</div>

The Javascript

I like to put all of my DOM ready and onload code in a file called init.js and then include that on every page. I can hook page-specific javascript code on the unique body id that I’ve already set up. Here’s my init.js file:

$(document).ready(function(){
 
  // Check the radio button associated with the label
  $('span.reason').click(function(e){
    $(this).prev('input:first').attr('checked',true);
  });
 
  // Bind function to the click events of the navigation links
  $('#contact-us-index #topnav a, #contact-us-index #navigation a').click(function(e) {
    // Prevent the browser from loading the page the user tried to visit
    e.preventDefault();
 
    // Save the URL of where the user wanted to go
    destination = $(this).attr('href');
 
    // Show the exit survey
    showExitSurvey();
  });
 
});
 
function showExitSurvey()
{
  $('#survey').dialog({
    width: 500,
    bgiframe: true,
    modal: true,
    close: function() { $('#survey').dialog('destroy'); },  // Destroy the dialog.  Allows it to appear again if closed.
    buttons: {"Continue >>" : log_answer }                  // Add a continue button that logs the answer when clicked
  });
}
 
function log_answer() {
  $.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: "/contact-us/abandon/format/text",
    data: $("#survey-form").serialize(),
    dataType: "text",
    complete: function() { $(location).attr('href',destination); }
  });
  return;
}

The comments pretty well explain what is going on here, but lets discuss the basic flow. I like for the text associated with a radio button or check box on a form to select the radio button or checkbox when clicked, so that’s what my first bit of code does. When the text in the span tag is clicked, the first previous radio button sibling is checked.

Next, I’m going to assign a function to the click event of the page navigation links. Notice, I’m using my bodyId hook to only bind the click event to navigation links on the contact page. When the user clicks on a link, I want to stop the browser from taking them to the page they wanted, so I call preventDefault() on the click event. I’ll need to know where the user was going in order to redirect them after they fill out the exit survey, so I save the destination for later.

Finally, we call the showExitSurvey() function. This defines our jQuery modal dialog. The close option has a function associated with it that destroys the dialog box. If the user clicks on the X in the top right corner of the dialog to close it and then clicks on a link to leave the contact page again, this allows the dialog to reappear. I’m only defining one button on this dialog because I want to make it as simple as possible. I don’t want to force the user to enter an answer. They should just be able to hit the continue button and get on with what they were doing. The continue button has a callback associated with it, log_answer. Let’s take a look at that function.

The log_answer() function is where we build the AJAX call to our script that processes the survey. I’m simply sending the data as a POST request to our controller. I serialize the data from the form and tell jQuery to expect the AJAX response in plain text. When the AJAX request is complete, I forward the user on to where they wanted to go in the first place. I like to use the complete option instead of success. The complete event fires after the success and error events of the request. It’s pretty much the last event to be fired during the AJAX request cycle, so you can be sure that everything is done. In a more complex setup, you could have other things happen during the success and error events before redirecting, but here, I just want it to fail silently and let the user get on with their browsing.

A Word About When a User Closes the Browser Window

It would be nice to administer the survey when the user tries to close their browser window. Unfortunately, there is no good cross-browser way that I know of (commenters, got any ideas?) to implement this. Gmail users have seen something similar to this when they try to close the browser window before finishing a new email. It will say something like, “Are you sure you want to leave this page?” warning us that our changes will be lost. This topic (the onbeforeunload event) has been covered in great detail by many other bloggers. Check out Patrick Hunlock’s great article on the matter, for example. The bottom line is that, while it is possible to display a confirm message to prevent changes from being lost when we close a browser window, it is another matter entirely to collect data from a form and send the results to an asynchronous processing script.

The Controller

I need to tell my controller which actions can respond to AJAX requests. You do this by making use of the AjaxContext action helper. In this example, I’m using plain text as the AJAX response, so I’ll need to define this as a new context. I could easily have used xml or json as the response type. These are built in context types in Zend Framework, but this will give us an opportunity to see how to define a new context type for a controller action in Zend Framework. First, I need to get the AjaxContext helper, add my new context, then associate that context with the abandonAction() in my controller.

class ContactUsController extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
 
  public function init()
  {
    $ajaxContext = $this->_helper->getHelper('AjaxContext');
    $ajaxContext->addContext('text',
      array(
        'suffix' => 'text',
        'header' => array('
          Content-Type',
          'text/plain')
        )
      )
      ->addActionContext('abandon','text')
      ->initContext();
  }
}

What we’re doing here is using the addContext method to define our new ‘text’ context. After we define it, we can tell the controller that the abandon action can respond to XMLHttpRequests with this new context. The client request will be to /contact-us/abandon/format/text. You could just as easily say /contact-us/abandon?format=text.

View Scripts

First, let’s add the view scripts needed for the abandon action. Create two new files:

app_jsc/
  views/
    scripts/
      contact-us/
        abandon.phtml
        abondon.text.phtml

The first file, abandon.phtml, will be rendered if you type http://www.domain-name.com/contact-us/abandon/ into a browser. You don’t really need this file if you don’t care that an error is thrown should someone go to the URL. The second file, abandon.text.phtml, is the context-specific view script that will be rendered only if the controller detects an XMLHttpRequest (in other words, AJAX) to the abandon action. Note, that if you try to put http://www.domain-name.com/contact-us/abandon/format/text into the browser, the controller will still render the abandon.phtml view script because it’s not an AJAX request.

Here’s what’s in my abandon.text.phtml and my abandon.phtml file.

<?php echo $this->response ?>

The abandonAction()

class ContactUsController extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
  public function abandonAction()
  { 
    // Bail if it wasn't a POST request
    if(!$this->_request->isPost())
    {
      $this->view->response = "false";
      return;
    }
 
    // Fetch the post variables into a local array
    $post = $this->_request->getPost();
 
    // If they selected nothing, reason set as no-reason, otherwise
    // it's set as the reason they selected
    $reason = empty($post['reasons'])  ? "No reason given" : $post['reasons'];
 
    // Set up a new logger that writes to a file
    // Log the reason
    $logger = new Zend_Log();
    $writer = new Zend_Log_Writer_Stream(APP_PATH . "/logs/contact-abandon-log.txt");
    $logger->addWriter($writer);
    $logger->log($reason,Zend_Log::INFO);
 
    // Tell the view that we're finished
    $this->view->response = "done";
  }
}

The first thing that happens here is the action just bails out if we don’t have a HTTP POST request. Then we’re going to use Zend_Log to create our log file. Passing a string to Zend_Log_Writer_Stream will always try to open a file in append mode or create the file if it doesn’t exist. So our log will just build and build each time this action is called.

Note that I did not call disableLayout() anywhere. That’s because the AjaxContext helper disables this for us. An AJAX request to this action will only render the code and text in the abandon.text.phtml view script.

So, now we’re logging people’s responses when they leave our fabulous page. Now to set up the script that will email the results daily.

The Emailer Script

I want a script that will check the contents of the log, email me the results, then clear out the log for the next day’s data.

app_jsc/
  cron_scripts/
    email-results-of-log.php

// Add zf library files to include path and require mailer
ini_set(
  'include_path',ini_get('include_path') .
  PATH_SEPARATOR . dirname(__FILE__) . "/the/relative/path/to/your/zf_library_files");
require_once('Zend/Mail.php');
 
// Get the contents of the log file
$filename = "/absolute/path/to/your/application/app_jsc/logs/contact-abandon-log.txt";
$contents = file_get_contents($filename);
 
// Bail out if there is nothing to report
if(empty($contents)) {exit(1);}
 
// Empty the log file
$handle = @fopen($filename,'w');
fclose($handle);
 
// Now send the mail
$body_html = nl2br($contents);
$mail = new Zend_Mail();
$mail->setFrom('info@thedomain.com',"Some Name");
$mail->addTo('person@test.com','Your Name');
$mail->setSubject('Reasons People Abandoned Contact Page - ' . date('Y-m-d'));
$mail->setBodyHtml($body_html);
$mail->send();

Pretty simple really. The only tricky part is making sure you add the Zend Framework library files to your include path. Then you can use Zend_Mail as a standalone component. That’s one of the things I like about Zend Framework. The ability to use parts of it as needed in your standalone scripts.

Schedule the Emailer to Run Automatically With Cron

I want my emailer script to send me the log file results every morning at 8:30am. That means executing this script from cron. Cron is just a task scheduler for unix/linux. If you’re not familiar with it, check it out, but chances are, if you’ve gotten this far in this article, you’re probably aware of it. You’ll need to work with your web host to find out how to edit your crontab. In this hosting environment, I have shell access, which allows me to use lots of powerful command line tools on the server. To edit my crontab, I type:

crontab -e

Now, in goes the following:

30 8 * * * php app_jsc/cron_scripts/email-results-of-abandon-log.php

Save the changes to your crontab. This will execute the command, “php app_jsc/cron_scripts/email-results-of-abandon-log.php,” in my user’s home directory every day at 8:30am. The email you receive every day should look something like this:

2009-11-30T15:30:43-05:00 INFO (6): No reason given
2009-11-30T15:43:04-05:00 INFO (6): Didn't want to leave email address

Obviously, if you’re site’s really busy, the log will grow quite large and maybe you’ll want to come up with a better way of examining the data.

Some of our clients are concerned that they are not in compliance with the new FTC “marketing disclosure” regulations.

If your website or blog features testimonial ads or endorsements, you should be aware it is now necessary to disclose all “material connections” (payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers.

These are often connections that consumers would not expect.  For instance, the post of a blogger who receives cash or payment to review a product is considered an endorsement.  Following the new FTC guidelines, bloggers who receive endorsements must disclose the connections they share with the seller of the product or service.

So consider putting a disclaimer on your blog or website.

The FTC guide suggests:

“Results not typical” or the stronger “These testimonials are based on the experiences of a few people and you are not likely to have similar results.”

It’s good to stay informed.  A PDF of the Endorsement Guide document can be viewed or downloaded here.  It offers multiple case studies and many examples.

Or simply read a brief overview here.

Click Newz has recently published a helpful article “FTC Compliant Endorsements & Testimonials” that you may wish to read for further information.

UPDATE: It appears this is broken again when upgrading to WordPress version 2.9.2.  Currently working on a fix.

The Problem

I was developing a custom WordPress theme for a client in a shared hosting environment when I ran into a problem with the WP Post Thumbnail (WPPT) plugin.  When editing a post in the WordPress admin, the loading spinner image next to the Preset1 tab never disappeared.  It just kept spinning and spinning.  To troubleshoot, I enabled the console panel in Firebug to examine the AJAX request/response data.  As is common in the AJAX paradigm, the response is sent back to the requesting page as JSON.  But the Firebug console reported a JSON parse error when trying to evaluate the AJAX response.

WPPT makes use of PHP’s json_encode() and json_decode() functions to encode/decode data.  The JSON extension is bundled with PHP >= 5.2.0 by default, but a lot of shared hosting environments have older versions of PHP where these functions are unavailable.  The WPPT plugin accounts for this and bundles its own versions of the functions to be used should native PHP functions be unavailable.  In wp-content/plugins/wp-post-thumbnail/wppt.php, it checks for the presence of the JSON extension and includes it’s own file if it doesn’t exist:

if ( !function_exists('json_encode') )
	require_once( dirname(__FILE__) . '/includes/json.php' );

Unfortunately, the functions bundled with this plugin do not produce 100% valid JSON and you’ll still get the parse error.  So what to do?

A Real Replacement For json_encode() and json_decode()

For a true json_encode() equivalent, I turned to PHP PEAR.  There is a Services_JSON package available.  You can donwload this package and get the source code or just copy and paste the code here.  Simply replace the code in the wp-content/plugins/wp-post-thumbnail/json.php file with this code.  But you’re not done yet.  Keep reading.

Avoid Conflicts With Other WordPress Plugins

There are other WordPress plugins that use this code for their own json_encode() substitutes.  Twitter Tools is one.  If you have Twitter Tools installed and include this code with the WPPT plugin, your whole WordPress installation will break because you’ll be declaring the classes Services_JSON and Services_JSON_Error in two places which isn’t allowed.  To avoid this, I namespaced the class names in the json.php file by prepending Wppt_ to the class names.

Do a search and find all instances of these lines:

class Services_JSON
class Services_JSON_Error

Replace with these respectively:

class Wppt_Services_JSON
class Wppt_Services_JSON_Error

Final Step

Add the following code at the end of the wp-content/plugins/wp-post-thumbnail/includes/json.php file so that when the WPPT plugin calls json_encode() or json_decode(), these functions will be called:

function json_encode($data) {
	$json = new Wppt_Services_JSON();
	return( $json->encode($data) );
}
 
function json_decode($data) {
	$json = new Wppt_Services_JSON();
	return( $json->decode($data) );
}

That should do it.  The WPPT plugin should work without any errors.  One thing to note is that any subsequent plugins that rely on the PHP’s JSON extension will also use the functions you just defined above.  I’m willing to live with this since the Services_JSON package is vetted by virtue of being part of PEAR.  Should the client’s web host decide to version up PHP, all plugins will start using the native JSON functions and mine will simply fade into obscurity.

There’s a handy step-by-step guide in the documentation for moving your WordPress installation to a new server.  The usual stuff is covered.  Back up your database, replace any hard-coded references to the development URL in your template files, move the files to the new server, edit your config file with any appropriate changes to the database credentials, etc.  But there is one thing in particular that isn’t mentioned.  All the hard-coded references to the development URL that are stored in the database.

You’ll probably have posts or pages with uploaded images and links to other pages within the blog.  WordPress will store all of these in the database with your development URL.  Most people, myself included, won’t feel like going through all of your posts and pages manually to update any references to your development URL.  When researching this problem, I came across a really helpful solution and wanted to share it.

You’ll need access to the database to execute some SQL that will find and replace all references to the development URL with the new production URL that you provide.

UPDATE 
   wp_posts
SET
   post_content = REPLACE(post_content, "www.dev-url.com", "www.live-url.com")

You need to execute a similar statement for a few other fields in the database:

wp_posts.guid
wp_options.option_value

Additionally, if you have any custom fields associated with posts or pages, you’ll want to do the same update on:

wp_postmeta.post_value

Check the database for tables used by any installed plugins.  You may need to update fields in those tables as well.

Even though you have to scan and examine the database, this method is much faster than updating references manually.

First of all you need to submit your website to Bing search engine. Follow all the rules & guidelines of Bing Search Engine Submission, which can help you achieve better rankings on Bing.

Next submit your website to Bing Local Business Center. Follow all the rules & guidelines on Bing Local Business Center, which will help your website to appear on your local area listings on Bing.

Website Content Recommendation for search engine optimization on Bing:

Everyone knows that content is king, Bing also gives more value to those websites that have unique & valuable content. So your webpage should contain valuable & unique content which can attract visitors and keep visitors coming back to your website. The following are some recommendation that may help you to get good rankings on Bing:

• Write unique & valuable content with good keyword density. Don’t do keyword stuffing that looks like spam.
• Try to use text links for menus or website pages.
• Use an html sitemap that contains text link of all of your web pages.
• Don’t put keywords on images.
• Image size should be smaller than 150KB
• Try to downsize your web pages as much as you can.
• Every page should 1 to 3 clicks away from main page.
• Make your page title and descriptions unique and descriptive (don’t spam).
• Use appropriate page headings in page content (you may add keywords).
• Use Alt Tags on Images.

Website Technical Recommendation for Search Engine Optimization on Bing:

Technical optimization is strongly recommended for by all search engines. You should technically optimize your website for MSNBot and allow it to index your website pages. Following are some important technical recommendation that may help you to get good rankings on Bing:

• Your web page html code should well-formed. Validate your website html codes with W3C Validation Tool.
• Check your website broken links and correct them. Remove all broken links from your website. This will exclude some of your webpages from being indexed by search engines.
• Optimize your robots.txt to control search engine robots and MSNBot crawler & other crawlers. This will help you to control & block Search engine crawlers or robots, blocking unwanted crawlers.
• Check your WebPages and make sure that they are not blocking MSNBot Crawler from indexing your website.
• Always use SEO friendly URL. Don’t use dynamic URLS.
• Check your website out going links and make sure that it’s not linked to any malicious software websites that force user to install or save malicious images, documents, software, html, JavaScript etc.,
• Create Xml Sitemap for your website and submit it to Bing
• Go to Bing Webmaster tools and submit your website & authenticate your website with Bing Webmaster Tools. This will help you to watch your back links, submit xml sitemap, check your domain score etc.

The above recommendations are for website owners, who are interested in optimizing their website for Bing. You may hire a professional search engine optimization company for improving your ranking on Bing.

Many types of businesses are beginning to see real benefits from social marketing.  Social sites are growing.  Take a look at these impressive statistics from http://www.quantcast.com/ which show the top five social sites.

You will notice that there are millions of people actively using these networks. If all these people, who incidentally are probably your target demographic, are active members of a social network, it makes good sense for your business to monitor what is being discussed, and create corresponding marketing platforms and services which target your lead generation goals.

This article attempts to simplify a strategy that will work for a generic company to make use of the data and connections available on social networks.

I’ve chosen four of the five social networks mentioned above, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn for my generic social marketing plan. The company blog or website will be the target of this social media plan.

Any successful social media campaign must begin with an exercise in listening to the issues people are discussing about your specific topic. After listening or monitoring various social networks using Google Alerts and other monitoring tools, you will have a good overview of the issues being discussed, the most influential sources of information, and where the opportunities for engagement exist. You should be able to make a list of blogs and social networks to monitor for opportunistic discussion participation.

The next step in a social media campaign is to prepare everyone who will be working on the campaign. You will need to prioritize the topics you will blog or write about, create your corporate social media policy and train the people who will be using social media tools on best practices. This will allow your marketing staff to recognize where, when and why to participate in social media conversations.

Next, you will need to plan your campaign around social media and make a campaign schedule. Your blog or website needs to be setup specifically to engage visitors for your campaign.

You will need to create or participate in social community (here we will use Facebook), and therefore, you will need a page on one of these networks describing your campaign and its objectives, events, and other features. You will need to set up a Twitter account to discuss subjects relevant to your marketing campaign. You will need to create a series of videos, which can be used on Youtube to virally influence visitors, and for this you may need to create a widget to make it easy to share this content. You will also want to create accounts on several social bookmarking sites like digg.com and de.licio.us to bookmark any interesting articles about your campaign.

Once your accounts are set up, your people are trained, and your plan is constructed, you are ready for engagement.

The next step in the social marketing plan is engagement. Remember, the idea behind social marketing is to start a dialog with your potential clients, not to hit them with a hard sale.

As an example, let’s pretend your generic business sells widget services and or makes widgets, and you have written an ebook. Let’s say it is called “How Widgets Help Get Us Through Tough Economic Times”, and it just happens to promote your services and products. Now you want to create a social media campaign to launch this ebook which will lead people back to your website and blog.

First you will need to decide on a specific keyword phrase you will use to “optimize” your website. Let’s pretend the keyword phrase is “widgets that help in tough economic times”. Then you will identify your target audience as small to medium sized businesses having trouble in tough economic times. You will start monitoring blogs and social networks using tools like Google Alerts to see what types of problems they are having, make a list of issues, and a list of networks and blogs they visit.

Next you could post your ebook on your website or blog – available via a download after filling out a contact form. You will title the post “Widgets That Help in Tough Economic Times” and use these words a few more times in the posting. On the download page you might add a button to “Tweet this” and a “Share” button for social bookmarking sites just so that it is easy for your potential clients to share this information with their friends in similar situations. In addition, you may allow visitors who have downloaded the book to write a review and to refer friends.

Next you may want to create a video “tease” called “Widgets that Help in Touch Economic Times” about the book with interviews from people who have successfully used it, or perhaps featuring the author discussing why he or she wrote it. Publish these videos on YouTube in your own account, tag them as “widgets that help in tough economic times” and link this account to your blog or website.

Next create a Facebook page for the book called “Widgets that Help in Tough Economic Times” and link it back to the website or blog. Use the event invitation system once you have planned the nature and specifics of your events for marketing the ebook. Call the event “Widgets that Help in Touch Economic Times Book Signing”.

Next create a twitter account called “Widgets that Help” just for the book and begin posting tweets about the upcoming book “launch”. Perhaps there will be “book signings” or webinars to describe various strategies in the book. Post these events in Facebook and Twitter about them.

Write a series of press releases and articles, using your “widgets that help” phrase and include the events and any reviews the book might have received. Bookmark each article and press release as “widgets that help in tough economic times”. Try to get reviews of the book published in trade publications and influential blogs by submitting articles or excerpts from the book to them. Identify groups in LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook which also might be interested in posting an except or review of the book.

Finally, monitor your traffic to your blog or website using Google Analytics.
Many social media marketing campaigns follow this type of plan, however only those with active and constant honest participation succeed. In any case, you will soon dominate search result pages for “widgets that help in tough economic times”.

1. Anchor Text with Keyword from External Links
2. External Link Popularity (Quantity & Quality of External Link)
3. Diversity of Linking Domains
4. Keyword in Title Tag
5. Trustworthiness of the Domain Based on Link Distance from Trusted Domains

Top 5 Negative Factors:

1. Cloak with Malicious/Manipulative Intent
2. Link from link brokers/seller
3. Link from spam website
4. Cloaking by User Agent
5. Frequent Server Downtime & Site Inaccessibility

Top 5 Most Contentious Factors:

1. Cloaking by Cookie Detection
2. Cloaking by JavaScript/Rich Media Support Detection
3. Hiding Text with same/similar colored text/background
4. Cloaking by IP Address 15.3% moderate contention
5. Cloaking by User Agent 15.2% moderate contention

This report shows that there was very little change from the 2007 search ranking factor document. SEOmoz changed the structure of the above survey.
The primary factors in SEO have not changed very much according to SEOmoz despite the fact that search engines improve their features and technologies continuously. Hopefully these search ranking factors for 2009 will help search engine optimizers who are serious about managing any changes in search engine optimization for 2009.

Microsoft released a PDF for webmasters about search engine optimization on Bing (the second SEO-related offering). This PDF is called “Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters”. This will help you to learn the new interface changes that come with the new search engine “Bing” and how it will affect your website search engine optimization or what you need to do for optimize your website on “Bing”. Microsoft also launched IIS SEO Toolkit. This toolkit will help developers, web server administrators, hosting provider to increase their website’s ranking on search engines.

Following are some important things we can learn from Microsoft’s release for Webmasters.

Golden Triangle eye-tracking pattern on a Search Engine Result Page (SERP): Now results pages will appear with a Golden Triangle eye-tracking pattern on Bing. This will make your website more attractive on Bing SERP, and help increase importance on Search Engine optimization.

Categorized Result: The new Bing first SERP (the first search results page of a query) will not show the first 6 through 10 results now. The 6 through 10 results will contain “categorized” results on the first search result page of a query. This new feature may impact website owners.
Quick Tabs: Bing quick tab helps you to easily navigate through result pages and find the desired information you are looking for. Top ranking results of each of quick tab will show category wise in SERP, which makes Quick Tabs data instantly available.

Related Searches: Bing provides a list of common search terms related to current search query in SERP titled “Related Search”. The “Related Search” & “Quick Tab” may infrequently become visible similar to each other in SERP.

Search History: Bing provides search history of previously searched terms. Bing also provides option to clear search history or enable/disable search history.

Instant Answers: This is an old feature of Bing but now it’s enhanced. Now “Instant Answers” will be found in organic result and also in categorized result of SERP.

Skip Flash Intro Link: Bing now provides Skip Flash Intro Link on Search Result; this will help searchers to go directly to the content page of flash intro based websites.

Page Translation Link: Bing now provides Page Translation Link on search result, this will help English language searchers to access other language websites in English.

Best match: Bing has included a new feature called “Best Match”. When a search query is entered & Bing is confident about the first result (that the first result is the best result or the best match what the searcher is looking for), the result will be marked as the “Best Match”. This result may contain more pages, contact details or features of the site. Bing will choose the best match when it’s highly confident in the result as said by Microsoft. Best Match is not good news for site owners who are in the first page for a query that show best match on Bing SERP.
You can also remove your site, change display phone number or remove link from best match by contacting bestmatc@microsoft.com.

Document Preview: Another good feature by Bing is Document preview. Document preview provides additional content like descriptions, links in a hover on Bing SERP. This feature helps searchers to find desired information without leaving Bing SERP. Also this will help to increased qualified traffic.

If you don’t like this feature to be used on your website then you can ignore this feature by just adding following simple codes to header section of your web page:
<meta name=“msnbot”, content=“nopreview”>
Or
If you want to ignore this feature from all pages then simply add the following code to your HTTP header:
x-robots-tag: nopreview

Local Listings: Now Bing provides the local listing center results in local business search. Now local searches are very heavily featured in Bing. You can add you business to local search listing by create a listing on Bing Local Listing Center (username/password required).
Enhanced Wikipedia: Bing has made some changes on Wikipedia Results. Wikipedia Content has been added directly to Bing’s index. When you make a search on Bing you will find a link of enhanced view on Wikipedia result. If you want to use this feature then you need to click on the enhanced view link.

Crawler Change: There is no minor changes have been made to MSNBot crawler.

The document provided by Microsoft doesn’t provide a lot of new information that can make effect on search engine optimization. But Bing’s new features may impact website owners through its new thing like document preview, categorized result & replacing the 6th result to 10th result with categorized result.

Finally you should increase your SEO efforts to increase your website’s on-page & off-page and get good rankings on Bing, because of the new ways of thinking about search results by Bing. Search Engine Optimization is the most important thing to get well rank on Bing. To keep your website on the top on Bing SERP, you should follow search engine optimization techniques.

After dealing with rounded corner images, CSS hacks, javascript hacks, and extraneous markup hacks for years, I decided it was time to put this thing to rest and come up with a solution that works for every design I’m translating into CSS, no matter where the rounded corners appear (nav bar, floating divs, on images, on background images, etc…)

If you know anything about me you know that I’m a stickler for semantic markup and clean code in general. XHTML and CSS that validate. So you’ll get an idea of my frustration level with this rounded corner issue when you hear that the solution I’ve settled upon doesn’t validate CSS. Yes that’s right. However I’m sleeping just fine and I’m quite happy that this solution is keeping me from spending 20 hours to create a style sheet!

So what is it you ask?

In short, I’m using native CSS rounded corner support for all browsers except IE… and for IE I’m implementing the BEST javascript-based rounded corner solution I’ve found to date: DD_roundies. So in my CSS I use the standard Gecko and Webkit syntax for achieving my rounded corners. I then use conditional comments to include the DD_roundies solution for any version of IE. It’s that simple.

I’ve tried EVERY single rounded corner javascript library out there. I’m not kdding… at least 20 different solutions. None work as well in IE as DD_roundies. In fact, conditional comments aren’t even 100% necessary since DD_roundies won’t invoke on any browser except the IE’s! So in the end I get a style sheet that validates EVERYTHING except the border-radius properties, and a design that can include rounded corners almost anywhere I desire. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to live with.

You do have to have a D&B number which gives you the ability to customize and feature information about your company. Plus it has that trusted D&B name for your prospective customers and vendors. You can customize your profile listing with logo, links, testimonials, etc. and list your services or products. But best of all, you can Increase the credibility of your existing website by adding the D&B badge.

This link has a flash demo of how it works:

http://dnb.powerprofiles.com/about

They say their directory gets 8,500 visitors a day.

1. Research Tool: Twitter allows you insight into an amazing community of people from around the world to find out what they are thinking, feeling and experiencing in different ways. In a sense Twitter becomes a news service where you’ll quickly find if there is a breaking story somewhere in the world by watching it. Twitter is getting more popular because it’s very quick and easy to use. Wide variety of people use twitter because of the character limit of the messages which keeps communications brief, convenient and Productive.
2. Collaboration and Networking: This interaction is helpful for business in way or the other. Such interaction can generate new ideas or can get business partner. For the ongoing partnership it can generate confidence among them. It can generate significant collaboration that can help now or in long term.
3. Direct Traffic: Twitter is all about the direct traffic! If your twitter page is not driving direct traffic to your website then it’s useless. There are many ways to drive direct traffic to your own website from your twitter page. You need to use these key benefits.
4. Twitter as a marketing tool: For marketers who use Twitter, this is a great way to reach out to a different demographic. Those who are not able to commit to blogging, particularly due to time restraints, Twitter could be an answer into social marketing. Using Twitter would be an interesting exercise for companies to try communicating their own announcements.
5. Reinforce Your Personal Brand: You can use Twitter to expand your brand or to show a different side of you. Some people inject humor into Twittering that you don’t see on blogs. There’s also something a little more personal about many of the people on Twitter.
6. Promote Content: Twitter can potentially drive traffic and promote content. Twitter provide a tool called Twitter Feed will take the titles and URLs from blog’s feeds and publish it on a Twitter account. This is a great way to promote your content.
7. Extend Audience: Bloggers after sometime started feeling that they have been started falling towards saturation point. Such type of falling take at up to 1 year to develop and that is a real time challenge for them. Such type of situation needs some encouragement to that blogger to overcome and beat this misleading feeling. Twitter can help them much it will attract potential leaders and this definitely generate confidence in them. So Twitter can help in uplifting not only the business but also the self satisfaction.
8. Excellent for Search Engine Optimization: You can gain popularity of your profile page of your twitter with the help of some tricks. You can found many famous people’s twitter pages which are having high page rank.
   For Example: “Brent D. Payne” is one a popular user who has 7 page rank and 21,720 followers to his profile. If you can link to their profile page, your profile will get popular and ranked.
9. Easy Updates: Now you can use cell phone to update twitter page! This will help you to keep update with fresh and related content to your twitter page from any where and anytime. You can very easily post text from you cell phone as twitter allows 140 characters for one post. Updating your twitter profile page frequently will bring people back to find what you are posting.
10. Find Out What People REALLY Think: Through Twitter you can get the sense of what people think on a subject, which is very good thing. Twitter helps you to know people better. Twitter also helps you to keep your finger on the thoughts of your potential readers and their requirements.