Millions of people around the world don’t know what a browser is, they don’t know the difference between a search bar and an address bar and they sure don’t follow the finer points of Google’s many little changes it makes to their search results. They go to the Google and they type in Facebook login. Then they click on the links that show up, sometimes with very humorous results.

Google today introduced a new feature that will let mainstream users get search results to hold still and remain where they expect them to be. It’s called Stars and it’s essentially pinning a link permanently to the top of a search results page for a certain query.

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Above: Probably not how this feature will generally be used.

When one of our blog posts showed up high in a Google search last month for “Facebook login” we saw hundreds of thousands of confused people stream into our site and post typo-ridden comments like “I WANT MY FAFEBOOK!” Many of them couldn’t tell that they were visiting a blog post about Facebook, and with Facebook Connect login, and not Facebook.com itself. Even though we said as much in big bold letters after the first few thousand of them.

Thousands more people visited the site to gawk at those users and their comments. A common response was for web designers to say “we must not be serving mainstream users very well if they are confused in a situation like this.”

Enter features like Google Stars. It’s a great idea. No dumbing-down the internet for those lucky relative few of us who do know how to use it, just some additional options for those who are still beginning to learn. Expect to see more developments like this as regular web use becomes a more common experience for non technical people. This may be an example of a best-case solution.

Update: Several people in comments have said they don’t think Stars are going to work for mainstream users, either. What do you think?

Discuss

YouTube is readying the launch of an automatic captions feature for the site’s videos. This and a new automatic caption timing feature will make it easier for anyone to add captions to their videos, and will enable anyone to read captions on more videos.

"Since the original launch of captions in our products, we’ve been happy to see growth in the number of captioned videos on our services, which now number in the hundreds of thousands," says software engineer Ken Harrenstien, who helped design YouTube’s caption features. "This suggests that more and more people are becoming aware of how useful captions can be. As we’ve explained in the past, captions not only help the deaf and hearing impaired, but with machine translation, they also enable people around the world to access video content in any of 51 languages. Captions can also improve search and even enable users to jump to the exact parts of the videos they’re looking for." (emphasis added)

"However, like everything YouTube does, captions face a tremendous challenge of scale," adds Harrenstein. "Every minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded. How can we expect every video owner to spend the time and effort necessary to add captions to their videos? Even with all of the captioning support already available on YouTube, the majority of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me."

To help with this problem, Google has utilized its automatic speech recognition technology, and integrated it with YouTube’s caption system to offer automatic captions. The captions generated by this will not always be perfect, as you can imagine, but as Harrenstein notes, even when they are flawed, they can still be quite helpful. He also says the technology will continue to improve over time.

YouTube is also launching automatic caption timing to make it easier to create captions manually. With this feature, users can just create a simple text file with all the words in the video, and Google will use the automatic speech recognition technology to figure out where the words are spoken and create the captions for the video. That’s pretty useful stuff.

Google says both new features will be available in English by the end of the week. At first, auto-caps will only be visible on a few partner channels, so they can get feedback. Eventually, they will roll out more broadly.

Related Articles:

> YouTube Adds Captions Option to API

> YouTube Now Allowing For Captions

> YouTube Translation Should Help Globalize Videos

Google has announced the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, which it refers to as a real-time marketplace for helping online publishers and ad networks/agencies buy and sell display ad space. Prices in the marketplace are set in a real-time auction.

Google says it has three principles for its approach to display advertising:

1. Simplify the system for buying and selling display ads: For example, our DoubleClick ad serving products help advertisers and publishers manage campaigns and ad formats across thousands of websites and from thousands of advertisers.

2. Deliver better performance that advertisers and agencies can measure: We’re building a host of new features to help advertisers to run display ad campaigns across the Google Content Network (comprising hundreds of thousands of AdSense partner sites) and on YouTube. We’re also developing better measurement and reporting technology so they can figure out what’s working and what’s not.

3. Open up the ecosystem: We want to democratize access to display advertising and make it accessible and open, like search advertising. We recently launched the Display Ad Builder to help businesses easily set up and run display ad campaigns. 80% of advertisers who use that product have never run a display ad campaign before.

AdWords advertisers can run ads with the same AdWords interface through the exchange. Ad Exchange sites are considered part of the Google Content Network. Ad Exchange placements will appear like any other Conent Network Placement in AdWords reports. Users can still use the Placement Performance Report to see where their ads have run, and which ones performed best. Google does note, however, that Ad Exchange sites can choose to remain anonymous, and in cases like that, the site will appear in your reports with an anonymized label like "123456.anonymous.google." You have the power to exclude these placements though.
 

Google says AdSense publishers will also benefit from more advertisers coming through the exchange. The company recently announced plans to give AdSense publishers a new way to generate revenue by allowing multiple Google-certified ad networks to compete for display ad space on their sites. This is related to the Ad Exchange announcement. The Google-certified ad network capability is powered by the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

"Certified ad networks are Ad Exchange participants who have gone through an additional certification process in order to be able to bid for your ad space through AdSense," Google says. "We call this feature ‘yield management’, because it offers you the most revenue for each ad that shows on your site in real time, regardless of whether it’s Google or another certified party who can offer you the highest bid."

Publishers using the Ad Exchange can use real-time data and bids to allocate ad space that pays the most at any particular second. They get access to more advertisers, Google manages billing and payments from networks, so publishers get one monthly payment.

Ad networks and agencies get access to more publishers, more ad space, real-time bidding, and a new API, which lets them integrate their own functionality and systems when using the Ad Exchange.

Google’s move is largely seen as its way of cutting into Yahoo’s share of the display advertising pie. This is one area where Yahoo has been quite successful, as Google has dominated the text ad market.

Update: YouTube has made an official blog post saying they’re ready to start rolling out the new channels design. Here’s a new video about the redesign.
 

YouTube also says that all existing channels will change over to the new design on July 15.

Original Article: Earlier this year, it was discovered that YouTube was "secretly" testing a new design for channels. While there is no official date yet for when this will launch for all users, YouTube says the time is getting closer.

Since the cat escaped the bag, hundreds of thousands of users have managed to find their way to using the new design, the company says. That of course means tons of feedback.

Tons of feedback means that there have been quite a few features added and/or changed. Here is a big list of those features:

- You can now have the full range of ads on your channel

- Sort controls – sort by most viewed, date added, or highest rated

- Ratings stars can now be clicked

- Counts for the number of videos in each section (when in "all" view)

- When playing a video, the video title now links to the non-channel video watch page

- View a small number of video comments as well as leave a quick comment – just click the comments tab when watching any video

- Font size is now larger when browsing through videos

- You can make the list of your playlists your features content set (like the new White House Channel)

- New share controls underneath the video

- Endless loading circles should now be gone

- No more channels with messed up layouts

- Search box when looking at uploads

- Honors are back

- Video thumbnails are now larger

- More interaction options under the video player

- You can now feature a video by URL

- The subscribe button is yellow again

- You can choose a featured video

- You can link directly to a specific video and a specific playlist on your channel

- You can rearrange boxes on your channel with little arrows

- You can message users

- You can delete recent activity items

- Subscribe button appears when you’re looking at your own channel

- UI improvements

- Tons of bug fixes

These are most of the updates that have been made since April. There are still more to go though. A few things YouTube says they’re still looking at include:

- The ability to reorder your uploads, or your lists of playlists

- Making URL autolink (in both the video description, plus the channel profile area)

- Showing the upload date in the video description

- More bug fixes

- And more

There seems to be plenty of feedback flowing, and YouTube is clearly taking it all into consideration and applying changes, where it sees fit. They’ve gotten a lot accomplished in the last couple months, and from the sound of it, it won’t be long until all YouTube users will get to experience the new channels redesign without having to go out of their way to do so.

 What are your thoughts on the new YouTube Channels design? Share.

Earlier this year, it was discovered that YouTube was "secretly" testing a new design for channels. While there is no official date yet for when this will launch for all users, YouTube says the time is getting closer.

Since the cat escaped the bag, hundreds of thousands of users have managed to find their way to using the new design, the company says. That of course means tons of feedback.

Tons of feedback means that there have been quite a few features added and/or changed. Here is a big list of those features:

- You can now have the full range of ads on your channel

- Sort controls – sort by most viewed, date added, or highest rated

- Ratings stars can now be clicked

- Counts for the number of videos in each section (when in "all" view)

- When playing a video, the video title now links to the non-channel video watch page

- View a small number of video comments as well as leave a quick comment – just click the comments tab when watching any video

- Font size is now larger when browsing through videos

- You can make the list of your playlists your features content set (like the new White House Channel)

- New share controls underneath the video

- Endless loading circles should now be gone

- No more channels with messed up layouts

- Search box when looking at uploads

- Honors are back

- Video thumbnails are now larger

- More interaction options under the video player

- You can now feature a video by URL

- The subscribe button is yellow again

- You can choose a featured video

- You can link directly to a specific video and a specific playlist on your channel

- You can rearrange boxes on your channel with little arrows

- You can message users

- You can delete recent activity items

- Subscribe button appears when you’re looking at your own channel

- UI improvements

- Tons of bug fixes

These are most of the updates that have been made since April. There are still more to go though. A few things YouTube says they’re still looking at include:

- The ability to reorder your uploads, or your lists of playlists

- Making URL autolink (in both the video description, plus the channel profile area)

- Showing the upload date in the video description

- More bug fixes

- And more

There seems to be plenty of feedback flowing, and YouTube is clearly taking it all into consideration and applying changes, where it sees fit. They’ve gotten a lot accomplished in the last couple months, and from the sound of it, it won’t be long until all YouTube users will get to experience the new channels redesign without having to go out of their way to do so.

 What are your thoughts on the new YouTube Channels design? Share.

For decades the cost of publishing on dead trees gave the publishing industry significant leverage over hopeful writers. But the Internet, specifically sites like Lulu and Scribd, are about to change all that.

Here is the classic scenario: A writer pours his heart and soul into a manuscript, polishes it up, and sends it, along with the lump in his throat, to a publisher in the hopes of validation of his art. After all, an unpublished writer may as well be no writer at all. Sometimes he even pays a reading fee, a small tax to weed out more impoverished competition while supporting publishers. He waits, he collects rejection slips, and if he hits the right publisher at the right time, he gets published.

If the publisher has a good relationship with booksellers, a hefty marketing budget, friends in high book review places, both the writer and the publisher succeed. The vast majority end up at smaller publishers dedicated to publishing fine works for minimal return as a sort of commitment to the arts. Regardless of who takes the risk (risk=cost of dead trees, marketing) on an author, the author’s standard reimbursement: a dollar per copy sold.

Yes, the reader pays upwards of $25 for a book, and the person who created it gets a lousy buck. The rest of the money goes to cover the cost of printing and marketing, and the rest is pocketed by publishers and booksellers. That lousy buck is fine if you sell millions, or even hundreds of thousands, but a book just needs to have a good week of 5,000 copies sold to qualify as a “best seller.” And the vast majority of authors would be lucky to sell that many ever.

If an author spends a year, two years, five years on a book, that’s not great return on investment.

The Internet offers good news, though, for modern authors. “Self-publishing” used to mean an author couldn’t convince a publisher to take a risk on him (or her, apologies to women writers everywhere—gender-specific pronoun is a convenience thing, not a statement), and the author footed the cost of publishing himself. Once labeled “vanity publishing,” self-publishing instantly took on the stigma of the second tier.

That meant if the author wanted to be remembered for anything, he had to play the upside-down game publishers wanted him to play, and accept the terms the publisher was willing to give him, often in the form of losing the rights to a work, dwindling advances, or puny percentages.
 
This 20th Century system worked basically the same way for music and movies as well. The advent of YouTube, MySpace, and other online promotional/publishing venues has set this model on its end by taking out the gatekeepers, the barriers between artist and public.

As for book publishing, there have been various outlets for vanity publishing on the Web for years; Lulu.com is one of them, which allows authors to upload their manuscripts and copies are printed as ordered.

But what about e-books? Aren’t we getting beyond the hardback and paperback? While some of us still love the smell of binding and the crack of a hardcover spine, no doubt times are changing and eventually bookshelves will exist only in nostalgic abodes. Amazon has nice self-publishing offerings for authors, especially with the advent of Kindle. However, Kindle carries the same issue iTunes does. E-books purchased for the Kindle can only be viewed on the Kindle.

That’s a bit restrictive, limiting the audience in such a way that, like in the past, only those with the hype Big Publishing can provide have any real chance at success. 

Enter Scribd, which touts itself as the YouTube of the publishing world. Scribd allows users to upload pretty much any document format, PDF, Word, PowerPoint, etc., and share as they like. Readers unattached to glossy covers can download the documents and print, read, embed, or share. Authors can charge for downloads, keep 80 percent of sales (as compared to a meager two percent), and control how the e-book is distributed.

Today, Scribd announced a deal with publishing giants Random House and Simon & Schuster, among many others to make books available and offer sneak preview chapters and excerpts.

While Lulu has held steady at 800,000 unique monthly viewers, Scribd in the past few months has rocketed past seven million. Already that’s a significant opportunity for authors looking to bypass the wait-and-hope approach and to take publishing matters into their own hands. It could even be a bridge between authors and powerhouse publishers, displacing agents and giving those risk-averse publishers a good indication of a book’s potential.
 

You can’t help but notice the use of the word change over the last few months. Change is being brought up in anything you can imagine right now. In the sales world some would say we are seeing Change but are sales approaches just staying the same? I am going to jump on the Sales 2.0 craze here, but I will present it the old-fashion way.

Belly-to-Belly Sales Works

No sales technique is as effective as sitting belly-to-belly, chatting, and liking who you are hanging out with. Stop for a Minute… Have you ever created a long-term and highly profitable client over email? No. And, you never will.

The Internet has become an important and incredible marketplace for connecting intent and offers. However, it rarely sells and it never creates a customer relationship.

What About Amazon.com?

You said Amazon.com… Right? This is a perfect case study. Amazon.com probably thinks we have a fabulous relationship–thousands of dollars later. I got an incentive offer to buy online at Barnes and Nobles, another to purchase at a Borders bookstore. The result? Hundreds of dollars in lost sales revenue to Amazon.com. And, I would do it again.

I am not suggesting that Amazon.com get belly-to-belly with me. I am suggesting that if you are selling mortgages, real estate, or enterprise software that little “competitive opportunity” in your client relationship management will cost you thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions.

I am also not suggesting that you quickly visit every prospect in your sales pipeline. Here is what I am suggesting:

Get Social Online

I happen to be a big supporter of Internet marketing, but often it’s being poorly executed. Many companies and individuals are hiding behind the anonymity of the Web. This is the best way to diminish your sales opportunities. People don’t want to buy from “anonymous.” They want to buy from real people, people that are like themselves!

The growth of Social Media has made this process easy. The variety of social networking sites have given you simple platforms to design your social selling strategy. You don’t need to be an expert or need advanced knowledge of the Internet, web programming, SEO, or other technical barrier. Just simply sign-up and give us a little introduction to who you are, what you do, and how you can help people.

Form Connections

Now that you have created a social presence on some of the networking sites… ex: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter (it doesn’t matter). And, I like what I see. How do I contact you?

This is the biggest mistake that is constantly being repeated. Keep in mind that no one buys from “anonymous” or @HotRealEstateDeals or whizzy345@hotmail.com. Avoid complicating this! Don’t anonymize your contact information. Make contacting you easy.

This is important…. If they do contact you answer the email or phone call! Talk to everyone. Talk to anyone. It will make you more profitable!

Play: Be lively and Fun

No one likes talking to the stiff guy at the party right? Avoid being so stiff. Learn to have fun and play a little. Let prospective clients see you play a bit. Post pictures, videos, places you are visiting, books you are reading, movies you liked, ideas you are thinking about, dreams you are dreaming.

Also No one likes talking business all of the time–especially your customers.

The Secret Here: Those personal insights and playful posts attract people like you, people that will like you. And, people buy from people they like.

Win Offline

So bottom line is make your Sales 2.0 strategy to attract online and sell offline. The Key here is building trust and depth with your clients by getting belly-to-belly, just like the old fashion way.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Social Selling, Taking Sales 2.0 offline

Keywords are ground zero. They are essential to your online success. You must get your keywords right or it’s game over before you even get started. Mainly because keywords are the most important element of your online marketing.

It can’t be emphasized enough, especially to beginning online webmasters or marketers, choosing the right profitable keywords will largely determine whether or not you succeed with your online endeavors. You simply must get this element right or your marketing will be in big trouble.

What Are Keywords?

Lets start at the very beginning, keywords are the exact words someone types into a search engine to find what they’re looking for on the web. Some keywords are valuable/profitable, while others are virtually worthless.

Profitable keywords are the ones that convert into a sale, a lead or potential client/customer for your company or product. These are the words someone is searching in order to buy a product or hire a service. Someone searching for “honeymoon vacation packages” is probably in the market to book a honeymoon vacation and could turn out to be very profitable for the right website or business.

Profitable keywords are the ones where the searcher is in the right “mind-set” or frame of mind to buy what they’re searching for on the web. Tailor your online marketing to target these profitable keywords and it can spell success.

So what’s the whole process for finding or choosing profitable keywords to use in your marketing? Lets look at some ways to proceed…

Number of Keyword Searches Made?

You need to find out how many searches are made for your chosen keywords each month. Simply use WordTracker or a site like SEOBook. These will give you a preliminary number of searches made each month for your keyword. Highly popular, well-searched keywords with hundreds of thousands of searches each month will be extremely hard to rank for because you will have stiff competition from major companies with limitless resources.

I like to pick less popular keywords that get only a couple of hundred of searches each day because my chances of getting on the first page greatly increases. But don’t get fixated on the number of searches, some keyword phrases that only get four or five searches daily, can still be very profitable.

For serious keyword research in a particular niche market I like to use Brad Callen’s Keyword Elite which is professionally designed software that makes all your keyword research so much easier. But there are plenty of free keyword tools you can use. One handy keyword tool is Google Adwords external suggestion tool which will help you find valuable keywords.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Commercial Intent of Keywords?

But how do you know if a keyword is profitable? Well, one convenient tool is from MSN which helps you with “Detecting Online Commercial Intention” of keywords. Just type in a keyword and it will give you a percentage or probability your keyword query has commercial benefit or intent.

http://adlab.msn.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/Default.aspx

Conversion Rate of Keywords?

Once you have your chosen keywords in place, next you want to have a landing page that converts those keywords or traffic from those keywords into buyers or leads for your online business. This is another crucial element of your online marketing – you must have a landing page or content/site that converts into a sale or you obviously won’t make any revenue.

Keep in mind, if you’re into affiliate marketing, you main goal is not to sell but to “pre-sell” your products or services. One effective way I have found to do this is to give potential customers/clients valuable information they can use in making their final purchasing choice. Comparison sites do well, as do review sites, top ten sites… potential customers use the Internet and keywords to not only find products but more so, to find information on those products. Your goal should be to provide this valuable information to make their task a little bit easier for them and they will reward you with a sale.

What are Long-Tail Keywords?

Long-Tail keywords are simply that: long three or four word phrases that searchers use to find what they’re looking for on the web. Because they are highly specific, long-tail keywords have proven to have better conversion rates than general keywords. This is also just common sense, someone searching for a “2005 ford mustang convertible” may just be in the right mind-set to buy such a vehicle; as compared to someone searching for a more general keyword phrase such as “sports cars.”

Study your website traffic logs religiously to find long-tail keywords that turn into a sale. Target these long-tail keywords in your marketing. Even buy PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising in the three major search engines – Google Adwords, Yahoo! Marketing and MicroSoft AdCenter – for these valuable/profitable keywords.

And build higher rankings in organic search for these long-tail keyword phrases. It’s really not that difficult for long phrases, especially if they’re related to your site; many times you can reach the top spot in a matter of days, especially in Google.

How To Rank High For Your Chosen Profitable Keywords?

Of course, the million dollar question is: HOW do you rank in the top spot for your chosen keywords? I believe the key to ranking high in the search engines (especially Google) is to be persistent in building your rankings for your keywords. Take a long-term view or approach, sometimes it may take months, even years, to rank in the top Five for your highly competitive keywords.

The best strategy is to “stick to it” and keep building relevant links to your keyword landing page. Create related blogs with valuable content linking back to your keywords. Write keyword related articles and distribute them all over the web. Create Google Alerts for your keywords and them place comments/links in the newly formed pages on the web that Google is indexing.

Be pro-active, download the SEOQuake toolbar and find your main keyword competitors. Check out their links and then go out and get the same links. Write better higher quality content than your main competitors because Google always rewards great content. Plus, use the free http://www.Addthis.com button and let your visitors bookmark your great content in all the social bookmark sites and build your keyword links for you.

Do keyworded Press Releases with your embedded links and spread them all over the web. Get these Press Releases into Google news and other important places on the web. http://www.PRWeb.com is really a great place for your press releases since you can embed your keywords in your links.

If you can try to get your most important keywords in your domain name. Many SEO experts argue the merits of this but from my own experience and marketing – it is much easier to rank high for your keywords if you have them in the domain name. Again, it is just common sense, if you have your main keyword in the domain, this keyword is obviously telling the search engines this is what your site is all about. I have even bought domains and created sites specifically around certain keywords just to rank high.

Always remember, you have to be persistent, I have been fighting some keyword battles for over four or five years! For really profitable keywords, it can be a constant struggle to remain on the first page, but the trick is not to give up, just keep fighting away at your competitors. Persistence usually pays off in the end and those profitable keywords will have your links in the top spot. Make ranking high for those profitable keywords your number one marketing strategy. Concentrate all your marketing efforts towards getting plenty of quality traffic for those keywords and you will succeed online.

About The Author:

Titus Hoskins – The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: Marketing Tools. If you liked the article above, why not try this Free 7-Day Marketing Course here: Internet Marketing Tools

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Keyword Strategies: Increase Your Keyword Rankings