Things WE DO and Things we DO TOO MUCH
Things WE DO: We love video ads!
A new study from comScore finds that consumers watched 11 billion online video ads in October. According to the study, 183 million U.S. Internet users watched web-based videos in October. ComScore says that those viewers saw over 37 billion online content videos for the month.
Over 88 percent of web users watched at least one online video last month. The average online video was just over six minutes in length. While the average online video ad watched by web users was just under half a minute long
In the things WE DO TOO MUCH category, leading the list in my mind is:
Logging in, creating passwords, resetting passwords.
If I only had a nickel for all the times I have logged in, set passwords, typed my email address, entered my user name. Geeze.
It is a function of accessing so many platforms. Even with cool tools like HootSuite that makes it a snap to manage multiple accounts, I’m still logging into my bank, giving email addresses for coupons and interacting in dozens of ways that require authentication.
Recently, passwords have gotten even more restrictive with specific caps, symbols and length rules. Hey, I’m all for a more secure website, don’t get me wrong. Companies are requiring more frequent changes in passwords…which seems mundane yet challenges my memory patterns. A cap here, adding new numbers there and I can launch myself into “password recovery hell” via questions, texts or emails with temporary passwords.
With all that said, I am grateful for this year – my cool company and job, my awesome son and a season sans a hurricane (sorry New Jersey and New York). This isn’t a gripe. More of a cultural observation. Validate me (log in, password) and I can access the world (Welcome Margie!). That’s a good trade-off.
Now, get back to work…Christmas is coming.
Margie
DigMe Q&A: Search Engine Optimization
@EatDrinkMS asked us the following question via Twitter:
Thanks for your question. Here’s my answer:
Google doesn’t publish their schedule. But, in general, it takes Google between a few days and two weeks to crawl your site and for the keyword changes to begin having an effect on search results. Websites that are updated frequently are visited by Google’s spiders (the software “bots” that index web pages) more often. Sites that rarely updated are indexed by Google less frequently.
You can manually submit an updated page to Google using Webmaster Tools, however there’s no guarantee that doing so will actually speed up the process. Some people say yes. Others, no.
Keep in mind, also, that Google uses a complex algorithm to determine where one of your web pages will rank for any given search. It’s harder to get on page one for more generic or competitive keywords (for example, “Mississippi food”) than relevant “long-tail” keywords such as “Mississippi culinary magazine.”
If you want to get more on page one for more searches, your focus should be on offering high-quality, original content on your website. That’s what’s going to make the biggest impact in the long run.
I took a quick look at your website, EatDrinkMississippi.com. Here are the top three things I would do to improve your SEO:
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- Use relevant keywords in page titles (the words that are centered in the top of your browser window). Right now, each page of your website is optimized for the name of your magazine. That’s okay since you have some good keywords in your magazine’s name. But repeating those keywords on each page doesn’t help.
- Add more pages and more copy on your website overall. Adding a blog to your website and adding to it frequently is a great way to do it. In fact, according to Hubspot, companies that blog 15 or more times per month get 5X more traffic than companies that don’t blog at all. That’s a huge increase in traffic.
- Be sure to give your images descriptive file names to take advantage of image searches. An image labeled “freshwater prawns” will show up in the appropriate search, but “wpe5bfe967_05_06.jpg” won’t.
That’s enough to get you off to a good start, anyway. Feel free to tweet me @MarisWestBaker if you have any other questions. Good luck to you with your search optimization, and I wish you great success with your magazine!
– Randy
Six Signs That It’s Time For A New Website
The Internet is now the main way people search for businesses. So if your website isn’t performing, you could be turning away customers.
Sure, your website may look attractive enough. And you don’t have any dead links or cheesy under-construction animations. But is your website really doing its job? Or is it hopelessly out of date? Here are six easy ways to tell if it’s time for a redo. (more…)
