Combining these buttons with the WordPress codex is pretty easy. Insert a couple snippets of code and you can easily add the URL and post/page title dynamically to the “Tweets” and “Likes”.

The codes from the WordPress codex that we’re going to use are:

<?php the_permalink() ?> and <?php the_title(); ?>

Two lines of code and you’re all set up. Copy and paste the code below, style as needed to position the buttons how you see fit. For the Twitter Tweet button, don’t forget to replace my username with yours.

Facebook Like Button

<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php the_permalink() ?>&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=100&amp;action=like&amp;font=arial&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;height=21" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:100px; height:21px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>

Twitter Tweet Button

<a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-text="<?php the_title(); ?>" data-count="horizontal" data-via="robbclarke">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

Did you find this useful? Wouldn’t hurt to share it with others would it?

Note: The following blog post, while being serious, is meant to be read with a sense of humour and is not intended to be arrogant in any way, shape or form. So, put on your Serious Hat and your Humour Pants and start reading.

Your Website Might Be Outdated

It’s true and chances are that it probably is, well, not entirely at least… but probably parts of it. The web is a constantly changing environment and what was relevant and current six months, a year, two years ago, just don’t make the grade today. If you want your site to be current, you need to not only look to the future but also be prepared for change. A good web designer and developer not only has a rough idea of the upcoming forecast but they also plan for future changes. They can see shifting trends in designs and technologies and plan to utilize them properly for you.

When Was the Last Time You Got a Redesign?

Better yet, when was the last time that your competitor got a redesign? Is their site design more recent than yours? Are they taking advantage of current trends in technology? Why aren’t you?

Has it been over a year or two since you’ve had a new design for your site? If not, chances are that you aren’t taking advantage of a lot of the great new technologies out there that have been released in the past few years. jQuery, Mootools, HTML5, and CSS3 (to name a few) have taken the web by storm in the past couple of years and are major players in where the web will be going.

Was your site designed 4 or 5 years ago? You’re in dire need of a site design. Look at your competitors, chances are that they’ve had theirs done in the last little while. Now think about the two sites from a consumer’s point of view, which one are you going to gravitate towards? Exactly, the more modern, stylish design. Why isn’t that you?

You’re Using Social Media, Right?

“Social what?!” you say? Social Media sites like Twitter and Facebook, for example, are great ways for you and your business to interact with clients in real time. Prompting users to “Like” your Facebook Fan Page on your website will give them instant access to your Page and keep up to date with you and your business even if they aren’t looking on your website itself. The same goes for Twitter. Having a Twitter feed appear on your site or at least prompting users to follow you on Twitter will give you another means to connect with that user. Keep them up to date by Tweeting updates and prompting them to visit your site.

Look around my site. There are a million and one ways for you to get ahold of me and to interact with me. Why don’t you take advantage of that for yourself and use Social Media tools on your site?

Is Your Site Build Using Tables?

HTML Tables are a thing of the past. It’s not 1995 any more… and hasn’t been for about 15 years so why is your site coded using Tables? They don’t allow for easy changes done to the site. They’re clunky and messy and severely outdated. Your site should have been coded using a combination of HMTL and CSS that will allow for easier changes to be made to the layout and format of your site. View the source of your site (View > View Source [or similar] in your browser), if you see “table” “td” “th” and/or “thead”, you’re in trouble. Time to get an update!

Do You Have to Get Your Web Guy To Update Your Content?

If so, why? Why are you paying your web designer/developer each time you want to add a new news item to your site or change your contact information? Why wasn’t your website coded using a content management system which would let you update the website at your leisure without paying extra to do it? Content management systems like WordPress (for example) are becoming easier and easier to use and install. It shouldn’t have to cost you extra each time you need to change something on your site, which brings me to the next point.

How Often Are You Updating Your Website?

If you’re paying your web guy their hourly rate each time you need to update your site then chances are the answer to that is “not very often.” Taking advantage of a content management system will let you make changes whenever you want, on your own time and without having to pay an arm and a leg to do it too! Using a content management system will even let you easily install a blog onto your website where you can keep users up to date with new product arrivals, business changes, pretty much anything that you want. Hell, they can even subscribe to an RSS (really simple syndication) feed and be notified instantly of new news items or blog posts made on your site.

Flash Sucks

Not everyone is going to agree that Flash sucks, and really, it doesn’t. It’s extremely powerful and used in the right way, it’s absolutely perfect but its days of being the leading way that websites are built are in the past. As a web building tool its dying. Search engines can’t read content in a Flash file so if your website’s navigation is built in Flash then they have no way of visiting the pages on your website and therefore don’t know that they exist and therefore can’t index them which then means that they aren’t searchable to users using the search engines. See how that’s a bad thing for you? I’m not going to use any names for the following anecdote but rest assured that it’s true.

Recently we were approached because a website wasn’t showing up in search results, even when you searched the domain name itself. This was absolutely horrible for the site. What’s the point in having a website if it can’t be found, right? The problem was that the whole navigation was coded in Flash and like I said earlier, this means that the search engines can’t read it and therefore couldn’t find any of the other pages on the website. The content itself was also coded in Flash, again not readable. It was no wonder that this site wasn’t showing up anywhere. Combined with a number of glaring search engine optimization errors, the site was a disaster. After a couple hours rebuilding the framework and recoding the site it was good to go and was relaunched. Within a few days it was indexed by search engines and quickly skyrocketed to the top of search results. Its been holding steady at or near the top of the results ever since.

I ask again, why was your site coded in Flash? To do some fancy rollovers and your navigation that can be done using CSS and HTML and maybe a little Javascript? Combine that with the fact that Flash isn’t viewable on iPhones or iPads and you’ve got yourself one hell of a problem. That’s right, if I go to your website on my iPhone (which happens A LOT) and your navigation is in Flash then I hit a dead end and I can’t go any further and immediately start looking at competitors’ sites. I’m not the only one. How many people do you know that have an iPhone? Ask them to go to your site.

Maybe it’s time to re-examine why your site was built using Flash, eh?

I Can Help

I can. It’s true. I wouldn’t lie. What’s stopping you from sending me an email to get the ball rolling? Is it the lack of a contact form? I can help with that too. VOILA!

Dalby’s reflects his career as a DJ out west at The Peak in Smithers, BC. Jay’s showcases an image from his trip to Ireland.

Yeah, not an overly long blog post. Sorry. Easily the best 18 seconds of your life though, I’m sure.

@Dalby

@JayAClarke

I’ve become horribly addicted to Empire Avenue. I’m obsessed with networking and the stock prices on it. Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s a brilliant way to make connections that I might have otherwise not have made. So what is Empire Avenue?

“Empire Avenue is a revolutionary online influence stock exchange combined with an advertising platform that allows individuals and organizations to convert their online influence and reach into revenue. To this end we will be connecting advertisers, consumers and influencers in a manner not as yet undertaken in the online space. Through the Empire Avenue influence stock exchange and its tracking features we will measure the influence value of individuals registered with Empire Avenue.

Influencers will be given control over the advertising they carry, and advertisers will be better able to reach their target consumer. We believe that this better targeted advertising approach will lead to better returns and leads for advertisers. Empire Avenue sets itself apart not only in its unique feature set, but also by paying influencers the majority of advertising revenue generated unlike other major advertising networks.”

In short, you or your business become a stock. As people invest in you your capital increases and you have the ability to spend more and invest in others, all the while networking with these people. The goal is to have the highest trading stock on the site and become the top influencer.

If you’re on there, check me out on Empire Avenue at e(ROBBCL).
EDIT: Seven days is what it took me to lose interest in Empire Avenue. The concept is phenomenal and the site is brilliant (I’m very jealous) but it turned into such a huge time vampire.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is, in its simplest form, making your web site easy to find via search engines with targeted keywords and key phrases. The main goal is to increase the volume and quality of organic search engine traffic to your web site.

Search engine optimization starts with the coding of your web pages (including meta tags, meta descriptions, browser titles, etc.), proper keyword placement within the content of your web site as well as other techniques used to increase the effectiveness of search engine indexing.

Many SEO companies focus on pushing as much traffic to your web site as possible. There are many methods used to achieve high rankings with search engines, and some of these methods (known as “black hat SEO” or Spamdexing”) are not considered relevant or proper by search engines and can have negative results such as lower ranking or even blacklisting from the search engines themselves. All of our SEO techniques conform to search engines’ guidelines and involves no deception.

When we work with our clients to search engine optimize their web site, we focus on one key metric, quality of traffic first, then quantity of (relevant) traffic. In the end, the main goal for many companies’ web sites is to sell more products or services, and/or provide valuable information to their current clients.

Pushing as much traffic to a web site for the sake of getting traffic does not benefit the web site owner in the least, and performing simple web site traffic analysis will quickly show you if the traffic to your site is relevant or not.

Essentially, a search engine optimization strategy should be no different than a basic business strategy – provide answers and solutions to people’s problems and needs. With this focus in mind, you will not only achieve higher rankings (as you will be addressing the needs that people are searching for) you will also increase the conversion of these leads into customers! This is really what search engine optimization is all about – connecting people with questions and needs to web sites that answer or fulfill those needs. Converting your web site traffic into relationships is much more successful with highly targeted and relevant traffic!

Search engine optimization is really just a piece of puzzle. The first step is to make sure you have a web site with focused goals and methods of tracking success. Understanding these goals will help you optimize your site to attain relevant traffic to reach your goals. Once this is achieved, your search engine optimization and marketing starts to pay off!

Now you are getting traffic on your web site. This is where the fun begins! With traffic analysis, you can determine how people are finding your web site, and how that traffic is interacting with your web site. Adjustments must be made on your web site to better service and fulfill your visitor’s needs. Analyzing the keywords they are currently using to find your web site will allow you to search out and find other keywords that your target audience may be using to find similar products and services you are offering.

The loop starts over. You optimize your web site for these new (and sometimes better) keywords and key phrases and analyze the traffic that comes in from them to determine if the conversion rate is improving.

You can probably see now that merely shoving non-relevant traffic to your web site will not help you convert traffic into client relationships, but only increase the number of people that leave your web site annoyed that they wasted time on your site looking for something you did not offer.

Source: http://www.connetik.com/website_seo_services.php

While Dropbox isn’t an overly new tool, it’s new to me and it’s changing the way that I store files. It’s friggin’ awesome! Put your files into your Dropbox on one computer, and they’ll be instantly available on any of your other computers that you’ve installed Dropbox on (Windows, Mac, and Linux too!) Because a copy of your files are stored on Dropbox’s secure servers, you can also access them from any computer or mobile device using the Dropbox website.

You get 2 gigabytes of storage for free, you can pay to have more. It’s a fantastic way to back up documents and to have them readily available across multiple computers. I have Dropbox set up on my work computer, my home PC, my Macbook and my iPhone so I can access important files at the drop of a hat. That, and after watching my PC crash twice in the past month and losing data (stupid me for not backing up), Dropbox is going to be my salvation for backing up files.

“Dropbox is the easiest way to store, sync, and, share files online. There’s no complicated interface to learn.”

It’s free and super useful. Check it out at www.dropbox.com.

Sign up at Dropbox.com and get 2GB for free or sign up using this link and get 2.25GB for free.

What does that $30 get you?

• One domain name.
• Installed WordPress content management system (letting you update and modify your website at your own leisure).
• 40+ themes for you to choose from to style your website, these themes are changeable at any time!
• The ability to upload your own themes and plugins to further customize your site!

Want to save even more money? Pay for a year up front and save $60 on the annual cost. That’s right, for only $300 a year you can get a domain name and a website up and running!

* A custom designed and built website is not included in this special.

Interested? Fire off an email now!

Last night I kicked started a Sodaless Summer campaign for what was originally going to be just Fredericton but the response has been huge so far and word has spread quickly via Twitter and Facebook and now its spread past Fredericton to much of Canada.

What’s a Sodaless Summer you ask? In short, it’s cutting out soda from your diet to start a healthier lifestyle. Myself, I drink far more soda than a normal person should so I’m cutting it out altogether and replacing it with water and juices. Why? To be healthier and to lose weight.

You can get involved by reading more about it on the website at http://www.sodalesssummer.com or on our Facebook Group.

UPDATE: This article has been featured in more places on the internet and in print than I could have ever imagined. It’s really very cool to see. Since its initial posting in November of 2009 at Noupe.com, the Commandments have spread across the internet and have been Dugg and referenced more times that I can count. Most recently they were published in the June/July 2010 edition of Chartered Accountants Magazine.

Thank you all.

There are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to social media. People seem to think that every day standards and decency get tossed out the window because of the anonymity of the Internet. Unfortunately for those people, that’s not always the case. First off, the Internet is getting smaller, and by that, I mean that it’s getting easier to find out who people are. You know how the saying goes “It’s a small world.” That reigns true for the Internet, especially social media sites, as well. Everyone is connected one way or another. There’s a whole “Six Degrees of Separation” thing going on.

There are Ten Commandments of Social Media that you should always try to follow. They will not only make you a better person but they will make your followers that much more appreciative of what you have to say.

Commandment #1: Thou Shalt Not Be a Narcissist

Social media is not all about you. It’s about people. It’s about being social, hence the name. Take the time to engage others in conversation. Don’t simply sign on and post something about yourself and leave. For every one post that you make about yourself you should dedicate at least three to engaging others in conversation whether it’s Retweeting what they’ve said, commenting on their photo album or asking them how their day is. A little bit of human contact goes a long way in the social media world; after all, human contact is what the whole concept is based off of.

You need to immerse yourself in the community and become part of the conversation. Social media is about relationship building and if you’re just spouting out posts and Tweets about yourself then people will quickly lose interest in you and what you have to say.

Commandment #2: Thou Shalt Listen to What Others Are Saying

This ties in with the previous commandment; social media is all about engaging others in conversation and to do that you need to first listen to what others have to say. Actively participating in conversation helps build relationships and listening is the most important part.

There are a lot of tools out there that will not only help you listen but will also help you engage. Tools like TweetDeck are fantastic tools for monitoring and engaging the conversations that are happening. TweetDeck is fantastic because you can not only monitor the obvious Twitter but you can also monitor Facebook and multiple other Twitter accounts.

TweetDeck Interface

Commandment #3: Thou Shalt Not Spam

If you’ve been using email for the past 15-20 years then this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Don’t spam your friends and followers with links and chain letters other useless nonsense that just gets tossed in the trash or deleted. Be courteous to others. Just because you think it’s cute to show 26 pictures taken milliseconds apart of your 9 month old rolling around on the floor doesn’t mean that anyone else will.

Think about all of the things that make you roll your eyes when you read them on social media sites. Now think, do you do any of those things? If so, stop.

Shameless Self Promotion With a Side of Spam

Commandment #4: Thou Shalt Say Something of Substance

How often do you get online to find Joe blabbering on about his latest conquest at the bar or how many Filet o’Fish he’s eaten today? How many times have you seen Mary complain about how she didn’t get enough sleep last night or how her friends annoy her? Do these people really actually say anything? Usually not.

Far too often people take to social media sites to air their dirty laundry and complain about something and why? Would they be doing the same in front of a group of their friends, peers, coworkers, and prospective employers? Probably not. So why online?

Scott Stratten from UnMarketing made a great Tweet about posting on Twitter but the same applies for all social media sites. He said “Don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t want to see on a billboard with your name/face/logo/phone # and your mom driving by.” It’s true. You wouldn’t be saying half of what you say online if it was real life so why do it? If anything what is said online is worse for your reputation than saying it in person. Why? Because it’s posted online and people can find it and reference it at any time.

The rule is simple; watch what you say and whom you say it to.

Commandment #5: Thou Shalt Not Abuse Thy Neighbour

Tying in to the previous Commandment comes another Commandment that you would think would be pretty obvious but sadly it’s overlooked. Don’t abuse people online. Flaming on the Internet is just about as old as the Internet itself and it’s just as unacceptable as it has always been. No one wants to go online and be verbally assaulted for his or her beliefs and opinions. It’s not good form.

You know how the old saying goes; “If you can’t say something nice then don’t say anything at all.” Just because you’re online doesn’t make it acceptable to do. Chances are that you’re not going to openly mock or humiliate someone in person so why do it online?

Commandment #6: Thou Shalt Give Credit Where Credit is Due

This is a Cardinal Sin in most circles, especially on Twitter. Stealing someone else’s ideas, quotes, pictures, whatever, are incredibly taboo not to mention amateur. You wouldn’t want someone coming along and stealing your intellectual property and posting it as his or her own now would you?

Here’s an example of the proper way to give someone credit for what they’ve said on Twitter.

How to Retweet Properly

Note that it’s perfectly acceptable to truncate words or paraphrase what was said if Retweeting takes up more than the allotted 140 characters.

Commandment #7: Thou Shalt Learn How to Spell … or at least use a spell checker

This one should be pretty obvious. Learn to spell and use grammar and punctuation properly. It’s incredibly hard to take what you’re saying seriously if it’s full of grammatical errors or you’ve mixed up your to, too and twos.

It’s not the hardest thing in the world to run your blog post through a word processor like Word before you post it. It’s actually in your best interest to type the whole thing in there in the first place regardless.

For those that are Tweeting or updating their Facebook statuses try using Mozilla’s Firefox. It has a built in spell checker. It won’t catch all of your spelling mistakes and it doesn’t catch grammatical or punctuation errors but it will put a dent into your typos.

Commandment #8: Thou Shalt Use Real Words

The previous Commandment is the perfect segue into this next one. Please, for the love of all things holy, try your best to use real words. Seriously. Social media sites have turned people into absolutely horrible spellers and text and instant messaging aren’t doing people any favours either. Quit with the OMGs, the LOLs, the WTFs and the ROFLs.

Neil Patrick Harris had a brilliant Tweet making fun of people doing this. He said “Prfkt. Thx 4 L th advyc evry1. This s a way ezr way 2 cmuNik8. Un42n8ly, itz takn me 3 hrz 2 ryt, but itz much pre4d 2 gtn cut off lyk i u”. I don’t know what he said but that’s what he said. It shouldn’t take 140 seconds to try and decipher your 140 characters on Twitter. I know you’re doing it to “save time” but did you really save time? Did you actually cut seconds off of your posting time or did it really take you minutes longer to be “clever” and come up with those new words? Think about it.

Hard to read, isn’t it?

Commandment #9: Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness

Websites like TinyURL, Cli.gs and Bit.ly all offer a brilliant service; they take your exceptionally long URLs and turn them into short and sweet ones, perfect for the character limiting Twitter. These sites do have a downside though, they enable people to hide spam, porn or even the passé Rick Roll (yes, people are still doing that) in masked URLs.

When URLs are hidden like this users are unable to see where they’re headed and are often lead to undesirable websites. Be courteous to others and don’t hide links using these services.

That being said; these service providers do attempt to warn users of malicious websites that may be hidden in shortened URLs so there is light at the end of the tunnel.

On a related note; how many social media “experts” have you seen on Twitter that claim they know the key to being successful in both business as well as on social media sites? There are thousands of them out there. Do you know what their magic key is? The answer; our last Commandment.

Not Really Nick Nolte

Commandment #10: Thou Shalt Not Be a Friend Whore

Last but certainly not least is our final Commandment of Social Media. Don’t be a friend whore. Social media is not a contest to see how many friends or followers you have. Having thousands of followers does not make you a better person or show that you’re a better quality user.

It’s incredibly common to see people on Facebook and Twitter adding as many people as they can as their friends in hopes that they befriend them in return simply to accumulate higher numbers.

Friend Whore Follows Three Users for Every One That Follows Them

Social media is not a contest. Plain and simple.

Following these Ten Commandments of Social Media will not only make you a better user of social media sites but they will also make your friends and followers appreciate you that much more. They aren’t hard to follow. Give them a shot.

Today, while moving a WordPress built site from one domain to another I ran into a snag. Import/Export for blog posts and pages worked great for moving the content from one site to the other but what do I do with the 79 users on the website? WordPress, sadly, doesn’t have an Import/Export function for users. For a minute, I panicked and thought “Am I going to have to manually enter all of these users into the site for a second time?” The answer is no.

Here’s the math:

Step 1: Export Original

Users to CSV is a useful plugin by Joost that lets you export your user list as a CSV file. Install the plugin to your site and run the program via the Users tab in the navigation of your back end. From here you’ll get a nice, neat CSV file with a table of your users – complete with IDs, email addresses, URLs, display names, first names, last names, nicknames, and registration dates.

Step 2: Install Importer

Now that you’ve got your CSV file exported you’re obviously going to need to get it installed on the new site. A great tool for this is Rode Works’ tweek of Dagon Design’s Import User plugin. The original automatically sent out notification emails to the new users saying that their new account was set up. Since their accounts are already supposed to be set up, you don’t wan to be sending out new notifications, this is where Rode Works’ tweek of the original code comes into play.

Step 3: Adjust CSV and Import

You’ll need to adjust your CSV file using Excel (or similar software) and move some cells around to meet the requirements of the Import User plugin but for the most part it’s pretty straight forward. You can either import the CSV file via the plugin or copy and paste the content into the back end.

There’s a bit of playing around involved but it in the end it should only really take about 10 minutes to do all of this – which is far better than the hours it would take to do it by hand, or worse, force the users to do it themselves.

For a little over a year now I’ve been using Hubspot’s Twitter Grader to measure my Twitter “score.” While Twitter obviously isn’t a race (although some will lead you to believe that it is) this online tool helps measure influence, track followers and other stats. Combined with other tools like Twitalyzer, you can get a pretty good idea of your influence and whether or not there are things that you need to improve to make yourself more noticeable on Twitter.

I kind of went off on a tangent there…

Like I said, I’ve been using Hubspot’s Twitter Grader for awhile now and it got me using their Website Grader as well. This grader takes numerous things into account to give your website a rough score out of 100. While it’s not perfect, it does give you a good idea of things that you need to improve on with your website like your SEO, content, images, etc.

The grading system is split into five main categories, each with their own sub-categories which give you a more in depth analysis. The categories are:

I. Create Content

• Blog Analysis
• Blog Grade
• Recent Blog Articles
• Google Indexed Pages
• Readability Level

II. Optimize

• Metadata
• Heading Summary
• Image Summary
• Interior Page Analysis
• Domain Info
• MOZ Rank
• Last Google Crawl Date
• Inbound Links

III. Promote

• del.icio.us Bookmarks
• Link Tweet Summary
• Twitter Grade
• Google Buzz Count

IV. Convert

• RSS Feed
• Conversion Form

V. Analyze

• Traffic Rank
• Score Summary
• Historical Data Available

The system isn’t perfect but it gives you a good idea of what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong and also gives you a good idea of what search engines are looking for as well as users. The site doesn’t leave you hanging with just a score, it gives you tips on how to improve the different aspects of your site as well. If you have a blog on your site, check out their Blog Grader as well for tips and tricks on how to increase the visibility of your blog.

I’ve been using the Website Grader for a little over a year now and it has helped me understand a bit more about visibility of websites. My initial grade was a somewhere in the low 30s but I’ve managed to increase it to a 77. It’s not something that I’m obsessing over but it’s nice to see it increase.

This week I’m proud to announce the launch of the new River Valley Arts Alliance website. The website is build on the WordPress content management system, letting the client update the website at their leisure.

The site features:

• an events calendar
• photo slideshow
• photo gallery
• member application forms
• donation forms
• an artist database
• a microsite for their annual Dooryard Arts Festival

The website is going to be a great resources for keeping up to date with RiVA and the arts community in and around the Saint John River Valley. Be sure to check back frequently as we near the festival dates for Dooryard as more events and festivities are announced.

I’m proud today to announce the launch of the new York Street Dental website, the new online home for Drs. Andrew Smyth and Jim Roxborough. The York Street Dental website features information about the practice’s team members, services and includes online appointment request forms as well as patient education software and videos.

You can view the website at http://www.drsmyth.com

Search Engine Optimization is one of those things that most people think they can do easily, while this is somewhat true, there are a lot of common mistakes that are made which either hurt you or do absolutely nothing to help your ranking.

Search Engine Optimization is not as easy as you might think. It requires a lot more effort than just adding a couple of keywords here and there and waiting for the Google Fairy to come along and rocket you to the moon. That being said, Search Engine Optimization isn’t complicated either. Whoa! Hold the phone! I just said that it wasn’t easy and then I turn around and say that it’s not complicated? What the deuce? It’s hard work and you need to be on top of things but it’s not overly complicated at all. The underlying principles of Search Engine Optimization are pretty simple; use keywords wisely, focus on your target market and don’t be stupid. It’s not rocket surgery.

With all that said, I’m going to talk a little bit about common misconceptions and mistakes made with Search Engine Optimization which for sanity’s sake we’ll refer to as its more common abbreviation; SEO.

Myth: Meta-tags carry the most weight in rankings

What is this, 1995? This couldn’t be further from the truth. Meta-tags are essentially one of the most useless things on your website as far as SEO is concerned. Google has even said it themselves, they don’t look at meta-tags like meta-keywords anymore. They have absolutely no weight in SEO and rankings anymore. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Who is to blame for that? Porn. Plain and simple. The porn industry used to, and still does for that matter, flood their websites with keywords not related to their content just to get you on their sites. Search engines saw through this ploy and opted to focus on other aspects for rankings.

Fast-forward from 1995 to today and you’ll find that search engines now use hundreds of variables to determine rankings including title tags, content and the freshness of said content, incoming and outgoing links, alt and title attributes as well as your header tags.

All that being said, not all meta-tags are bad. Meta-descriptions help users find out more about your site on their search results. You can also add in useful data like your geo-location, the author, copyright information and much more so don’t write off meta-tags altogether – just meta-keywords, toss those buggers to the curb.

Myth: Hidden text is a your key to success

Designers and developers used to think that they were clever when they hid content on a website by making it the same colour as the background (white text on a white background). These clever chaps flood their websites with keywords that may or may not (usually the case) be related to the content of their website. Their train of thought was that they were being clever hiding the content this way because you as a user couldn’t see it but the search engines could.

Well Hot Shot, guess what. It doesn’t work. It does absolutely nothing to help you out. In fact, it actually hurts you. That’s right, it hinders your ranking. Search engines aren’t dumb robots that troll through websites collecting data and throwing it in a database. Like the T-800s in Terminator, they’re “learning computahs”. They’re smart and they know what to look for and most importantly they know when someone is trying to trick them. When search engines find that someone has attempted to trick them by flooding their sites with hidden keywords red flags shoot up and you get classified as a jerk for your shenanigans.

Long story short; hidden text on your website is a no-no.

Myth: If you build it, they will come

So, you paid good money to have a website designed and coded by a world class designer and your site goes “live”. Days pass and no matter how much you search yourself on Google or Bing you just don’t show up. The first thing that shoots through your head is that you’ve been had! That SOB walked away with your hard earned money! Sue that sumbitch!

Ok don’t. Simmer.

This semester my students have been building their portfolio sites and a week after one of their sites went live one of them asked me why he couldn’t find himself on Google. The answer is simple – Google didn’t know that the was there yet. Their bots hadn’t stumbled across his corner of the Interweb. Patience is a virtue. It takes time for search engines to crawl your website for the first time. Having incoming links to your site will help speed up the process so get on those social media sites and share your URL with people.

Before you run off to Twitter and Facebook and piss off all of your friends by flooding your status with “Check out my new website” and “I done got me one-a-dem-der websites” you also need to consider that there’s more to it than just patience and incoming links. According to Google, “[c]rawls are based on many factors such as PageRank, links to a page, and crawling constraints such as the number of parameters in a URL. Any number of factors can affect the crawl frequency of individual sites.”

A website not only needs to be built in a search engine friendly way but once it’s launched it will need an Internet marketing campaign or at least a reason for people to visit your site. Hopefully you’ve already taken this into consideration before you decided to get a website and paid someone to design and code it. If you haven’t then what the hell?

Competing websites are probably already using some sort of marketing campaign so a site without a campaign of its own will fall to by the wayside pretty quickly – and no one wants to be by the wayside, it smells there.

Remember that it will take days, if not weeks for search engines to find you in the first place and then even more time for you to climb your way up the rankings. Keep your content fresh with blog posts and changing content. Give the search engines and ultimately more importantly, the users, a reason to come back to your site more and more often.

Myth: Your website will be “number one on Google”

This is such a common request for designers and developers to come across. Mary Sue Internetexpert wants her website to be “number one on Google.” It’s not going to happen for a couple of reasons. The first being that the number one ranked website on Google is Google. Go ahead, try to get ahead of them. If you do it, I’ll give you a buck. The second reason being that I’m fully aware that when the client wants to be “number one on Google” that they don’t mean the first ranked site on Google itself but that they want to be the first ranked site under a certain keyword but they don’t know how to articulate that.

That being said, chances are that you won’t be the number one ranked site for your search term either unless your search term is something completely obscure like “The mating rituals of the Lower Shibobian Albino Alpaca”, in which case, it’s yours for the taking.

Vague search terms are not your friend. You really need to narrow down what search terms users will find you with. Personally, I know that I’m not going to be ranked anywhere near the top of the Google search results for the phrase “web design” but if I narrow it down to “Fredericton Web Design” I’m not doing too bad. It’s in your best interest as well as your client’s to focus where and how you want your website to be found. A broader, more vague search term is going to lead to millions of results but if you narrow your focus then you’re going to find it easier to step into the spotlight.

Myth: Flooding your content with keywords helps

It’s a common misconception that flooding your website’s content with keywords over and over again will do wonders for your ranking and search results. The reality of it is that it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Flooding your <title> tag, alt and title attributes and content with keywords is not going to help you. Like good old hidden text; it’s probably going to end up hurting you. Search engines will begin to avoid you like the plague if you start using the same keywords over and over again. Search engines see repetition of the same keywords as spam. The best way to avoid this is to read your content out loud. Have you used the same word 15 times in the span of three sentences? Does what you’re reading sound really awkward to you? If the answer is yes, then you need to cut back on the keywords. Don’t forget; the content on a website isn’t there just for the search engines to read – there are real people out there that will (hopefully) be reading that content as well. If you repeat “[your city]‘s number one night club” 15 times in a paragraph then they’re going to think that you’re a bit of an oaf. So be smart when you’re writing your content and placing keywords.

What have we learned today class?
• Meta-tags like meta-keywords do absolutely jack for your rankings.
• Hidden text is for amateurs.
• SEO doesn’t happen overnight so stop assuming that it will.
• Vague search terms are like camouflage; you won’t be found.
• Read your content out loud, does it sound stupid? If so, change it.

Search Engine Optimization isn’t the most complicated thing in the world. A lot of it is common sense. If you know when and where to place keywords as well as to use <title> tags, header tag and alt and title attributes you’re going to go a lot farther than Mary Sue Internetexpert.

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by a reporter at The Daily Gleaner by the name of Molly Cormier asking if she could interview me for an article about web design and social media. Not wanting to pass up any opportunity to get exposure I said “sure”. The end result is what I think turned out to be a great article (I’m bias) with a super exaggerated headline (I’m modest).

Here’s a small excerpt:

Q: How has the Internet influenced our world in the past decade, and how will it change as we move into a new decade?

A: Whether people like to admit it or not the Internet has completely changed the world that we live in. In some places you never actually need to leave your house anymore, because of the Internet. You can order groceries online, order movies online – really just about anything that you’d need to leave the house for you can do online now.

The Internet has made the world a much, much smaller place and with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter stepping into the limelight, it’s only getting smaller.

We’re now able to communicate with hundreds, thousands or millions of people at the blink of an eye.

The full article can be read here.

Thanks again to Molly Cormier for writing the article. You can follow her on Twitter at @mollycormier or follow me at @robbclarke

There are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to social media. People seem to think that every day standards and decency get tossed out the window because of the anonymity of the Internet. Unfortunately for those people, that’s not always the case. First off, the Internet is getting smaller, and by that, I mean that it’s getting easier to find out who people are. You know how the saying goes “It’s a small world.” That reigns true for the Internet, especially social media sites, as well. Everyone is connected one way or another. There’s a whole “Six Degrees of Separation” thing going on.

There are Ten Commandments of Social Media that you should always try to follow. They will not only make you a better person but they will make your followers that much more appreciative of what you have to say.

Commandment #1: Thou Shalt Not Be a Narcissist

Social media is not all about you. It’s about people. It’s about being social, hence the name. Take the time to engage others in conversation. Don’t simply sign on and post something about yourself and leave. For every one post that you make about yourself you should dedicate at least three to engaging others in conversation whether it’s Retweeting what they’ve said, commenting on their photo album or asking them how their day is. A little bit of human contact goes a long way in the social media world; after all, human contact is what the whole concept is based off of.

You need to immerse yourself in the community and become part of the conversation. Social media is about relationship building and if you’re just spouting out posts and Tweets about yourself then people will quickly lose interest in you and what you have to say.

Commandment #2: Thou Shalt Listen to What Others Are Saying

This ties in with the previous commandment; social media is all about engaging others in conversation and to do that you need to first listen to what others have to say. Actively participating in conversation helps build relationships and listening is the most important part.

There are a lot of tools out there that will not only help you listen but will also help you engage. Tools like TweetDeck are fantastic tools for monitoring and engaging the conversations that are happening. TweetDeck is fantastic because you can not only monitor the obvious Twitter but you can also monitor Facebook and multiple other Twitter accounts.

TweetDeck Interface

Commandment #3: Thou Shalt Not Spam

If you’ve been using email for the past 15-20 years then this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Don’t spam your friends and followers with links and chain letters other useless nonsense that just gets tossed in the trash or deleted. Be courteous to others. Just because you think it’s cute to show 26 pictures taken milliseconds apart of your 9 month old rolling around on the floor doesn’t mean that anyone else will.

Think about all of the things that make you roll your eyes when you read them on social media sites. Now think, do you do any of those things? If so, stop.

Shameless Self Promotion With a Side of Spam

Commandment #4: Thou Shalt Say Something of Substance

How often do you get online to find Joe blabbering on about his latest conquest at the bar or how many Filet o’Fish he’s eaten today? How many times have you seen Mary complain about how she didn’t get enough sleep last night or how her friends annoy her? Do these people really actually say anything? Usually not.

Far too often people take to social media sites to air their dirty laundry and complain about something and why? Would they be doing the same in front of a group of their friends, peers, coworkers, and prospective employers? Probably not. So why online?

Scott Stratten from UnMarketing made a great Tweet about posting on Twitter but the same applies for all social media sites. He said “Don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t want to see on a billboard with your name/face/logo/phone # and your mom driving by.” It’s true. You wouldn’t be saying half of what you say online if it was real life so why do it? If anything what is said online is worse for your reputation than saying it in person. Why? Because it’s posted online and people can find it and reference it at any time.

The rule is simple; watch what you say and whom you say it to.

Commandment #5: Thou Shalt Not Abuse Thy Neighbour

Tying in to the previous Commandment comes another Commandment that you would think would be pretty obvious but sadly it’s overlooked. Don’t abuse people online. Flaming on the Internet is just about as old as the Internet itself and it’s just as unacceptable as it has always been. No one wants to go online and be verbally assaulted for his or her beliefs and opinions. It’s not good form.

You know how the old saying goes; “If you can’t say something nice then don’t say anything at all.” Just because you’re online doesn’t make it acceptable to do. Chances are that you’re not going to openly mock or humiliate someone in person so why do it online?

Commandment #6: Thou Shalt Give Credit Where Credit is Due

This is a Cardinal Sin in most circles, especially on Twitter. Stealing someone else’s ideas, quotes, pictures, whatever, are incredibly taboo not to mention amateur. You wouldn’t want someone coming along and stealing your intellectual property and posting it as his or her own now would you?

Here’s an example of the proper way to give someone credit for what they’ve said on Twitter.

How to Retweet Properly

Note that it’s perfectly acceptable to truncate words or paraphrase what was said if Retweeting takes up more than the allotted 140 characters.

Commandment #7: Thou Shalt Learn How to Spell … or at least use a spell checker

This one should be pretty obvious. Learn to spell and use grammar and punctuation properly. It’s incredibly hard to take what you’re saying seriously if it’s full of grammatical errors or you’ve mixed up your to, too and twos.

It’s not the hardest thing in the world to run your blog post through a word processor like Word before you post it. It’s actually in your best interest to type the whole thing in there in the first place regardless.

For those that are Tweeting or updating their Facebook statuses try using Mozilla’s Firefox. It has a built in spell checker. It won’t catch all of your spelling mistakes and it doesn’t catch grammatical or punctuation errors but it will put a dent into your typos.

Commandment #8: Thou Shalt Use Real Words

The previous Commandment is the perfect segue into this next one. Please, for the love of all things holy, try your best to use real words. Seriously. Social media sites have turned people into absolutely horrible spellers and text and instant messaging aren’t doing people any favours either. Quit with the OMGs, the LOLs, the WTFs and the ROFLs.

Neil Patrick Harris had a brilliant Tweet making fun of people doing this. He said “Prfkt. Thx 4 L th advyc evry1. This s a way ezr way 2 cmuNik8. Un42n8ly, itz takn me 3 hrz 2 ryt, but itz much pre4d 2 gtn cut off lyk i u”. I don’t know what he said but that’s what he said. It shouldn’t take 140 seconds to try and decipher your 140 characters on Twitter. I know you’re doing it to “save time” but did you really save time? Did you actually cut seconds off of your posting time or did it really take you minutes longer to be “clever” and come up with those new words? Think about it.

Hard to read, isn’t it?

Commandment #9: Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness

Websites like TinyURL, Cli.gs and Bit.ly all offer a brilliant service; they take your exceptionally long URLs and turn them into short and sweet ones, perfect for the character limiting Twitter. These sites do have a downside though, they enable people to hide spam, porn or even the passé Rick Roll (yes, people are still doing that) in masked URLs.

When URLs are hidden like this users are unable to see where they’re headed and are often lead to undesirable websites. Be courteous to others and don’t hide links using these services.

That being said; these service providers do attempt to warn users of malicious websites that may be hidden in shortened URLs so there is light at the end of the tunnel.

On a related note; how many social media “experts” have you seen on Twitter that claim they know the key to being successful in both business as well as on social media sites? There are thousands of them out there. Do you know what their magic key is? The answer; our last Commandment.

Not Really Nick Nolte

Commandment #10: Thou Shalt Not Be a Friend Whore

Last but certainly not least is our final Commandment of Social Media. Don’t be a friend whore. Social media is not a contest to see how many friends or followers you have. Having thousands of followers does not make you a better person or show that you’re a better quality user.

It’s incredibly common to see people on Facebook and Twitter adding as many people as they can as their friends in hopes that they befriend them in return simply to accumulate higher numbers.

Friend Whore Follows Three Users for Every One That Follows Them

Social media is not a contest. Plain and simple.

Following these Ten Commandments of Social Media will not only make you a better user of social media sites but they will also make your friends and followers appreciate you that much more. They aren’t hard to follow. Give them a shot.

With everyone and their dog jumping on Twitter and trying to promote themselves it’s not hard to spot those that are doing it wrong. You guys stand out like a sore thumb. What are you doing wrong? I’m not only going to tell you what you’re doing wrong but I’m going to tell you how to fix the problem.

The “It’s All About Me!” User

The most frustrating and annoying people on Twitter are the ones that are into shameless self promotion. They’re the ones that get on there and Tweet a million and one times a day about themselves and nothing more. They’re Tweeting about their blog, their website, their company, their promotions but never about anyone else. If you want to lose followers then this is a perfect way to do it. Stop it.

The “Link Farmer”

Who are these people? They’re the ones that post nothing but links to other people’s material and don’t actually say anything for themselves. While it’s great that they’re out there promoting others, it’s beyond annoying to the rest of us when you flood our news feeds with links to random articles every few minutes. It’s a sure fire way to have people stop following you.

The “OMGLOLWTFBBQ” User

I know that Twitter limits you to 140 characters but honestly, use real words. Shortening some words is fine but really there’s no need to have a sentence like “Prfkt. Thx 4 L th advyc evry1. This s a way ezr way 2 cmuNik8. Un42n8ly, itz takn me 3 hrz 2 ryt, but itz much pre4d 2 gtn cut off lyk i u” (Thanks @ActuallyNPH for that jewel). There’s absolutely nothing worse than having to spend 140 seconds to try and decipher what you typed in your 140 characters. English motherf*cker, do you speak it? This is a great segue into the next one…

The “Spelling Bee Champs”

Call me crazy but Twitter has turned people into piss poor spellers. Take the time to spell things correctly. It’s always fun to try and figure out what you just typed because you don’t know how to spell. Not everyone is a great speller, I can accept that but knowing the difference between there, they’re and their is elementary… literally.

What Can You Do To Fix This?

What can you do to fix this? It’s beyond simple. Take the time to engage others in conversations. Comment on their Tweets or Retweet what they’ve said. To “succeed” at Twitter you should really aim for a ratio of about 3:1. That’s three Tweets NOT about yourself for every one shameless self promotional Tweet.

Limit the truncated words to a minimum. Not every word needs to be shortened. If your Tweet is too long then spread it out over two. There’s no harm in that. And while you’re at it, check your spelling.

Now that I’m done and you’re done reading this. Check me out on Twitter @robbclarke and while you’re at it, spread the word about this article by hitting the Retweet button.

In October I had the pleasure of meeting my wife’s cousin Craig, the Director of The Caribou Group, a Brisbane Australia based lighting company. He and I both share a fondness for Twitter which got us talking about the Twitter page for his company. The first thing that I noticed was that they were still using one of the backgrounds provided by Twitter. I decided that I would make it my mission to update their look, at least on the Twitter page. My “mission” being of course to send Craig a Direct Message on Twitter asking him if I could do it. A few weeks later he said yes and here we are.

Click on the thumbnail below for a full size screenshot of their redesigned look or visit their Twitter page here.

It seems today that Twitter is being used by just about every corner of the economy and the restaurant industry is no exception. Twitter has become a fantastic tool for restaurants to not only promote their business but to also engage their clientele and monitor feedback and chatter. I’m going to look at a handful of restaurants, most local Fredericton based and non-chained, that are using Twitter as a means to grow.

The Garrison District Ale House // Fredericton, NB

@garrisonale
The Garrison District Ale House, a great restaurant in Fredericton, NB, has been taking advantage of Twitter for the past few months as a promotional tool. They’ve been announcing specials, new drinks, different events and celebrity appearances. They’ve also introduced Twitter Beer Tasting as a way to gain more followers and get more people into the restaurant. People can only attend and participate in the beer tasting if they register via Twitter. All in all these guys are doing a great job of promoting themselves – the only this that’s missing is a fancy looking Twitter page. **cough cough**

The Blue Door // Fredericton, NB

@theblue_door
Another Fredericton based restaurant, The Blue Door has been using Twitter to announce their daily specials. As someone that can never decide where to eat when we go out, being able to see the daily specials at a local restaurant really comes in handy when making decisions. They promote themselves as one of the most progressive and forward thinking restaurants in Fredericton, using Twitter definitely helps solidify that claim.

Marked5 // Los Angeles, CA

@Marked5
The Los Angeles based Marked5 uses Twitter to announce its location as it travels around Los Angeles. It serves little Japanese “burgers” on a bun composed of pressed rice. They also serve teriyaki salmon, katsu pork, you know, fancy Japanese stuff that they don’t serve in Fredericton. Now if only there were cool lunch trucks like this that traveled around Fredericton and Tweeted their locations. There’s dozens in LA that travel around and Tweet to their followers. They get hundreds of people waiting at their future locations just to get a bite to eat.

Racine’s // Fredericton, NB

@racineschef
Though not for the restaurant itself but for the Head Chef Thomas Gimblett, the Racine’s Twitter account has been great for posting lunch and dinner specials. More recently he’s been posting looking for a prep cook/chef. Like The Garrison and The Blue Door, Thomas has been promoting Racine’s and taking advantage of the massive number of people using Twitter. Also like The Garrison, he sure could use a fancy Twitter page **cough cough**.

Even with just a few examples it’s clear to see that Twitter is helping restaurants help engage their customers and promote their restaurants with upcoming events and specials. Remember though, it’s not enough to simply post about yourself. It’s all about engaging. For every one Tweet that you make about yourself you should have 4 or 5 engaging, re-Tweeting and promoting conversation.

Search Engine Optimization is one of those things that most people think they can do easily, while this is somewhat true, there are a lot of common mistakes that are made which either hurt you or do absolutely nothing to help your ranking. I’m going to talk a little bit about common misconceptions and mistakes made with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

You Will Not Be “Number One on Google”

You would not believe how often I receive requests from people that “want to be number one on Google”. It’s not going to happen for a couple of reasons. The first being that the number one ranked site on Google – is Google. Good luck getting ahead of them. The second being that I’m fully aware that you don’t mean that you want to be the first ranked site on Google, you want to be the first ranked site under a certain keyword but you don’t know how to articulate that.

Vague search terms are not your friend. You really need to narrow down what search terms users will find you with. I know that I’m not going to be ranked anywhere near the top on the Google search results for the phrase “web design” but if I narrow it down to “Fredericton Web Design” I’m not doing too bad. It’s in your best interest to focus where you want to be found. A broader, more vague search is going to lead to millions of results but if you narrow your focus then you’re going to find it easier to step into the spotlight.

In August when I launched my friend Nick Forret’s photographer site he wasn’t even registering under the most common search term for local photographers; “Fredericton Photographer” but now, 2 months later, Nick has sky rocketed up to the first page and is quickly overtaking established sites. What’s this doing for Nick? Well, it’s increasing his business for one. People are now able to find him.

This leads me to my next point…

Search Engine Optimization Does Not Happen Over Night

No, it doesn’t. It happens more often than not that people pay to have SEO applied to their site and then they call the next day or week and ask why they “aren’t the first result on Google.” Half of the answer to that is above, the other half is simply because it takes a while for search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to crawl your site. It takes time for these bots to travel around the internet and read sites. According to Google “[c]rawls are based on many factors such as PageRank, links to a page, and crawling constraints such as the number of parameters in a URL. Any number of factors can affect the crawl frequency of individual sites.”

Expect the time between crawls to be a week to a month for a low traffic website. Sites with much higher traffic with more incoming links get crawled more frequently and thus have their reports updated quicker.

Flooding Your Site With Keywords Does Not Help Your Ranking

Flooding your <title> tag, alt and title attributes, meta description and content with keywords is not going to help you, if anything it’s going to make search engines avoid you like the plague. Using the same keywords over and over again raises flags with search engines and they see it as spam. The best way to avoid this is to read what’s your writing out loud. Have you used the same word 15 times in the span of three sentences? Does what you’re reading sound really awkward to you? If the answer is yes, then you need to cut back on the keywords. Don’t forget, that content isn’t there just for the search engines to read – there are real people that will hopefully be reading the content on your site as well and if you repeat “Fredericton Web Design” 15 times in a paragraph then they’re going to think that you’re a bit of an oaf. So be smart when writing your content and placing keywords.

Meta Keywords Do Not Do Anything Anymore

This doesn’t count as a full item so it only gets half a point. It’s been speculated for years that search engines don’t see much weight in Meta Keywords and just recently Google announce that they don’t even look at them. It’s true, Google said it themselves. Adding them to your site does absolutely jack. You can thank the porn industry and spam sites for that.

I hope this has helped clear up a few misconceptions about search engine optimization. So next time you’re going to talk to your web guy about being the “first on Google” just stop and think for a second and remember what you just learned.

Thoughts? Feedback? Hate mail?