It seems that a number of organizations have gotten hip to the practice of using brand names (other than their own) as targeted keywords for ad placements.  Generally this is because either the brand name has become common usage for a product or service or simply because the brand is far better known and has much better organic placement in regular search results.

So what can you do if a competitor is targeting your trademark brand in Google searches?

The answer is mixed.   If someone is using your trademark in the actual text of their ad then you can file a trademark complaint with Google here.

However, if someone is simply targeting your trademark as a keyword AND DOES NOT use your trademark in the actual text of their ad, then you essentially have no recourse.   Google Scope of Investigation document states:

“Google is dedicated to providing relevant advertising to our users, advertisers, and publishers alike. Accordingly, our trademark policy aims to provide users with choices relevant to their keywords. At the same time, we investigate trademark violations in ad text, both as a courtesy to the trademark owner and to ensure that ads are clear to users.”

They then provide a list of countries in which their policy of allowing trademarks in targeting keywords applies… they list all but about 8 countries.

In addition, while they do not allow direct ad copy that includes trademarks, they will allow – and I quote – “We do not take any action in situations where an advertisement is being triggered by non-trademarked terms, even though the search query contains a trademarked term.

The example provided shows that you can use the term ‘shoes’ as a keyword for your ad and Google will send you traffic from people searching for  “Nike shoes”

Confused about how this can possibly be legal?

While I am not a lawyer (apologies to my parents), the sense I get is that a direct ad title with a trademark brand is a very black and white area legally.  So Google has no choice but to disallow (if you go through the dance involved in complaining to them).  However, the rest of the issues on targeted keywords without trademark text as well as query strings including trademarks are sufficiently grey that they can afford a legal fight more than you can.

Anyone who has ever attempted to use photoshop to save a document as a pdf has encountered the dreaded conversion limitations of photoshop when it comes to saving a file as a pdf.

Long story short, documents with even the smallest images in photoshop result in tremendously large file sizes in the finished pdf document.   Working your way through the compression options and format selections, you will eventually run into the fact that you can either have a good looking document or a small document… not both.  This article shows you a quick and dirty method for generating a very small sized pdf for your site.

If you search online (even at the adobe website) for techniques to reduce the file size you will see many suggestions to use the ‘reduce file size’ option in acrobat.   Yet starting with a 5mb photoshop file you will be lucky to end up below 3mb after using their suggested technique.   A quick, dirty and efficient alternative is described below.   To use this method, you must have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer.

1. Open your psd document (in my case I am using a document 6mb  (8.5 x 11 Canvas Size at a resoultion of 300dpi).
2. Reduce your resultion to 150dpi (this is for moderate image useage… if you have large, important images you may want to keep it at 300dpi).   This is done via the Alt + CTRL +I command or Image – Image Size menu option.
3. 
4. Next, select File – Save For Web and Devices from the menu options.
5. We will save this file as a gif using high quality options (and preserving transparancy if it exists)
6. 
7. Find this .gif file and right-click.  Select the ‘Convert to Adobe PDF” command.   *Note: this assumes you have adobe acrobat installed on your system.  If you don’t… well then you’re in some trouble…

Using my example, I now have a pdf 142kb in size.   This is a massive size savings and allows me to have a pdf that web surfers can download and print.

There are some downsides to this technique.   First, you cannot preserve text as text for use in acrobat… so you cannot allow electronic editing and the pdf itself is not editable.  To make changes you need to go back to your original psd file to do so and then repeat this technique.

So as long as you do not need the pdf to be electronically edited and submitted and merely need a small, downloadable and printable document for your website you are good to go.

Today Google announced that they have addded site speed as a part of their ranking algorithm.
This has been expected for quite some time and Google states that they are concerned with site speed as an indicator of improved user experience on the web.

“Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. But faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs” – Google

It is still unknown exactly how much of a factor site speed will be on your site’s rankings, Google has indicated that it will lag far behind site relevance yet it can still have an effect.. .especially for users with bargain-basement hosting plans on crowded, shared servers.

If you are a site owner, webmaster or a web author, here are some free tools Google has suggested to evaluate the speed of your site:

* YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
* WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages’ load performance plus an optimization checklist.
* In Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/14/5-useful-and-creative-ways-to-use-wordpress-widgets/

More and more people are using WordPress both for blogging and handling their entire website.  This article provides some great resources on using widgets.

The article provokes some thought.  While the focus of her article is creating an environment that promotes quality reading for visitors we can extend this idea out to promoting quality conversions of targeted traffic.

When dealing with clients on a web site I find that the visitor is often treated as a random number.  I am frequently asked how to increase traffic, increase contact requests and how to achieve better rankings on the search engines.  I cannot recall ever being asked how to IMPROVE the experience of a visitor.

After reading Mandy’s article and putting some thoughts into my own clients’ websites it seems clear that we need to help our clients focus more on the quality of the visitor experience rather than being fanatically obsessed with the quantity of supposed viewership.

Let’s use a simple example for illustration:

Suppose we have two stores in New York selling hammers.

Store one consists of a large sign that says “new york hammers.”  Inside the store are well organized shelves of all hammer models.  On each shelf is a particular hammer along with a price tag and a description of the hammer, its purpose and features.

Store two consists of 15 signs saying things like ‘new york hammers’ ‘best hammers ever!’ ‘hammers of new york’ ‘cheap tools’ ‘construction tools’ ‘low price construction’ etc.  The signs have flashing lights, giant, neon scrolling arrows pointing the store and they themselves are surrounding by giant, inflatable crazy arms guys. Inside the store are thousands of shelves of hammers in between screwdrivers, saws, and for some reason unpublished manuscripts written about golfing, travel in the Caspian and why he hates soccer.   There are descriptions of the hammers for sale but for every sentence describing the hammer there are three sentences advertising shoes, poker and viagra to be found at other stores.

While this comparison may seem ridiculous, this is exactly what we encounter on the internet.  Thousand of web site owners become enraptured with raw traffic numbers so they start demanding content for the sake of content.  While trying to sell hammers they start advertising related terms thinking they will create more buzz, more traffic and more sales.  Thus we end up with the ‘cheap construction’ advertisements.  Yes, we have more visitors, everyone comes and has a look at this flashy, loud store.  Yet a problem exists, thousands of people come over to look and then leave.  Some simply look in the window, and on seeing that there are actually no construction services… leave.  Others come looking for a cheap hammer and get sidetracked to go purchase viagra.  Perhaps the odd hammer gets sold but customers are constantly coming back and saying it is not the hammer they need, rather than a sledge hammer they discover they actually need a claw hammer.  This is not a well run store.

Looking back at store number one, we see a store that sells hammers to people looking for hammers.  Once those customers arrive they are able to  peacefully, and without distraction, learn about the various models and determine which one is best for them.   There are not thousands of people a day visiting the store, merely a hundred or so.  Yet the majority of visitors buy a hammer and leave happy.

If you wanted to sell hammers, which store would you prefer to run?

The website is no different.  Here are the keys to having a website that meets the needs of your bottom line:

1. What is the point of your site?  If the purpose is to sell a product or service, then sell only your product or service.  All too often I hear questions about Ad Sense or other on-page advertisement in order to create additional revenue streams.  This is a bad idea.  If your site was built to simply create traffic and then send them elsewhere then this is for you.  If you site was built to sell your own products or services, sending the visitor elsewhere is lunacy.  The same rules that apply to someone walking into your store apply to someone visiting your website.
2. Advertise what you sell – Sell what you advertise.  Yes you can drive traffic to your site by optimizing for keywords that get a lot of searches.  According to Google trends, a lot of people today are searching for Michael Jackson Memorial information.  Unfortunately, these people are not a good audience for your hammer site.  Yes you can generate a lot of traffic by offering up information on MJ’s memorial, but why put all that effort and cost towards something that won’t sell a hammer?  Use those resources to strengthen your web presence for hammer related information.
3. Don’t clutter your content with links, oppressive design or advertising.  If someone has visited one of your content pages, the chances are good that they are interested in what you’re selling.  So close the deal.  Use Mandy Brown’s ideas to isolate the reader and let them absorb the important information.  This means content unfettered by unrelated links, advertising or obtrusive design.  Draw the reader into the text and hold them there until the information has been absorbed.  Then provide a noticeable link to buy / contact / order or look for more information.  No salesperson in their right mind would stop their sales pitch on a hammer to tell the buyer about the viagra being sold down the road, or to point out how pretty the crown molding in the store is.  Why do people keep insisting on doing that on the web?
4. Make your contact forms easy to use and appealing to visitors.  Many companies try to use their contact forms for instant qualification of the buyer.  They want names, phone numbers, email address, name of company, date of birth, location, budget, etc etc etc.  Then they can’t figure out why they get so few contact submissions.  They have gone from qualifying a buyer to driving them away.  Your contact form should ask for a contact name, a message and a way of contacting them.  Only the name and perhaps one contact method should be required information, make the rest optional.  If they really want to contact you they will include an email or phone number.  The security of the form is an iffy issue.  Generally, I would say avoid captcha code or anything the visitor has to decode in order to submit their request.  however, if you are overwhelmed with spam, it may become a necessary evil.
5. Track your visitor experience rather than your hits.  Everyone knows to check how many hits and visitors their sites gets, but this is not enough.  Sign up for an Analytics account and start tracking the visitor experience.  How did your visitors get here? How many people simply left after looking at the landing page? (check out bounce rates to learn more) How much time was spent on particular content page?  How many converted into sales or contact requests?   Tracking this type of information will help you refine your site to be both more relevant to your overall purposes as well as improve the experience of visitors that find you.

After trying three different time tracking and invoicing systems (and finding all three woefully inadequate) I had finally resigned myself to putting in a substantial amount of time to creating my own system.

And then I stumbled onto freshbooks.

This system is an exceptionally well built time tracking and invoicing system.  All provided as a web service, meaning no downloads, no installation, no configuration.  You simply sign up for a monthly fee and create your clients, your projects and your services.

As you work for your clients you simply click a button and the system tracks your time.  At the end of the month you can generate an invoice for each project that imports the time you have put in.

Every feature you can think of is part of the system, multiple job rates, item charges, recurring charges, discounts, taxes, staff, contractors, etc.

The icing on the cake?  Clients can log in to your client site and pay their invoices using the payment processing modules attached to the system.

I highly recommend this system for anyone who needs to quickly and efficiently manage their time and their invoicing.

Check them out here.