Your web stats are an important collection of information regarding your site’s visitors, referrals, and other essential information.   This information is important to you because it can help you measure the success of your marketing campaign, determine where to improve your site and how to tweak your site for success!

Below are ten vital elements of your web stats and why you should study them.

1. Unique Visitors – This component will tell you exactly how many people have come to your website.  No matter how many pages this visitor clicks to, he is counted as one visitor.  You need to utilize this statistic to see if your traffic is improving over time or getting worse.  This will help you determine if you need to enhance your search engine rankings and other methods of getting traffic.

2. Location of Visitors – Knowing where your visitors are coming from is important because you can research how to reach a wider worldwide target market.  You can see where the largest percentage of people are coming from and work on expanding your global visitor base.

3. Search Phrases – Your web stats will let you know exactly what search phrases/keywords people are using to get to your site.  Studying this critical component can help you fine tune and improve your keywords and site content for better placement in the search engines.

4. Referrals – Referrals are websites or pages from which your visitors have found you.  Study them to find out where your traffic originated and exactly how they found you.  You can find out who is linking to you and which of your articles are bringing you more traffic.  You can then submit these popular articles to more sites.

5.  Pages – This item will help you determine which of your site’s pages are the most popular and which ones are not visited much.  Analyze this info to see why some pages are so well travelled and some are not being used much at all.

6. Entry and Exit Pages – Analyze this information to find out where people are entering your site and from which page they leave the most.  This can help you stress your sales pitch more on certain pages and learn how to keep visitors from leaving other pages.  Put special offers on popular landing pages.  Spice up or add more interest to pages from which people are leaving.  Study those pages to see what could be making them leave as opposed to exploring additional pages.

7. Time of Day – Your web stats will tell you the time of day when each visitor came to your site and visited individual pages.  This can help you schedule chats and/or webinars and can help you determine when to publish new content and/or special offers and sales.

8.  Days of the Week – This information will help you in much the same way time of day stats help you.  Study the stats to find out when to offer specials, teleclasses, chats, contests etc.

9. Length of Visits – This critical information can help you find out if people are lingering on your site and taking the time to read the content or if they are clicking a page and leaving almost immediately.  Studying this information can help you find where to improve your pages and find ways to get your visitors to stay longer.

10. Error Reports – Find out if people are having trouble accessing any of your pages and getting error codes.  With this info, you can correct these errors promptly so people will not leave your site.

Web stats can look overwhelming and seem a daunting task but it is vital that you learn what all the statistics mean and how to interpret the information they give you.  Look at the statistics as a whole to find out the trends but also study the individual stats to see how you can refine your site and your marketing campaigns to bring you more traffic and longer visits to your site, thus increasing the chance for more sales conversions.

About the Author:
Terri Seymour has over twelve years of online experience and has helped many people start their own business.  Visit her site for free articles, resources, information, resell ebooks and more.  Sign up for the RSS Feed for a free business ebook with MRR. http://www.SeymourProducts.com

Self Service Best Practice

A lot of dollars have been invested by companies on implementing internal web sites and more recently on developing HR applications for the intranet to facilitate employee and management ‘self-service’. This idea makes a lot of sense as it helps to increase employee engagement with company goals and procedures as well as reducing workload on internal key personnel and outsourced service companies. This can remove from them the often routine day-to-day trivia enabling them to become more focused on what matters and enables them to control their costs.

As well as this intranets can provide a greater degree of flexibility for individuals and groups as well as assist in the creation of a ‘learning organization’ where change becomes easier and embedded. However, despite what seems to be obvious benefits to both the individual and the organization overall practice shows us that utilisation of these systems is generally very low.

This post offers some best practice pointers we can follow to ensure employees are motivated to use company intranets and self- service facilities.

• Make sure each business area or department whose services are being delivered on the intranet are involved in the design, implementation, evolution and diffusion of their web sections. Better still, ensure they plan and define their expectations and use of the web to ensure goal attainment – the system is far more likely to be effective if it is business needs driven.
• Ensure that the end users are monitored continuously and asked for feedback on the design and useability and any later changes you decide to implement.
• These sorts of initiatives must have enthusiastic support from the very top – and make sure that this is disseminated in a controlled manner.
• Ensure all information on your intranet is important and relevant to user’s jobs and of benefit to them in their work – it should also be up to date. If you can include aspects of work that they must use, or will be motivated to use because it is simpler (such as booking vacation on line or clearing expenses), that will help increase usage.
• Make available a searchable, easy to navigate, repository of information. Whilst care should be taken not to overload people with too much information, research shows staff can become more productive if they have easy access on the intranet to a range of standard company documentation.
• Give recognition for any work published or pages developed to those who created the content. This not only increases motivation but ensures changes can be communicated to the right person, increasing accuracy and reliability.
• Technically the system must be fast, reliable, and easy to use. If not and staff have to invest time finding information, or struggle with using the system, they will give up. There are detailed best practice guidelines for the technical development of websites available, which include best use of colour, format and content presentation, identifying new items, ensuring no broken links, and reducing the number of clicks/ease of navigation. These should be adhered to.

Things to Avoid:

• Do not leave it all to the IT department to organise. They can only take responsibility for the technical aspects, not motivating individuals or selling business practices. The strategic effectiveness of intranets can also be adversely affected if content and structure is left solely to IT.
• Do not assume that staff will start to use it in time, or after a short initial training course. They will need good reasons for using the system as well as ease of use – if there is no value they will not use it!
• Do not use as a general data repository or an uncontrolled mass-communication device. People suffering from information overload actually reduce the time and effort spent on the system and can miss the information that is valuable. Focus on the relevant.

Developing these areas of best practice should enable companies to ensure that investment in intranets is not wasted and users will actually get some benefit from accessing the information

One of the primary implications of a well-organized / good website is to keep your visitors in the website. A website is definitely created for a purpose, unless intended for personal use, which is the minority. For example, a portfolio website would want to be visited and its content viewed. For companies and internet businesses, your website certainly aims to provide product information, to make sales, or somewhat similar. However, most individuals undoubtedly prefer visually captivating designs, so on and so forth. It is undeniable that this causes no harm, but one must put himself/herself in other people’s shoes, as to understand how a visitor to the website might think, do and react.

Navigation

A web designer has to learn how to think the way your visitors think for example of the following 2 scenarios:

Situation A: Website with good navigation (2-3 hyperlinks to target page), well planned in terms of placement, and design.

Situation B: Website with poor navigation (takes forever for the visitor to reach his/her target page), hard-to-read navigation fonts and poor placement of the navigation buttons/bar.

In Situation A, a visitor will always want to be able to access his/her target page. For example, the individual comes across your website, and is interested in the product sold, but wants to find more information. He/she finds the navigation with no trouble, and enters the particular product information page.

As for Situation B, a visitor stumbles into the website, and would also like to find out more information about the product. Unfortunately, due to bad placement and fanciful font-types, the visitor takes forever, or even fails to find the navigation bar. Even when he/she does so, links to the product information are nowhere to be found, (example : home > about > products > product image > etc.[a few more clicks] > product information ).

Analysis: In both situations, wouldn’t a website with characteristics similar to the Situation A be more rewarding ergo better?

Spyware is one of the fastest-growing internet threats and I have had several nasty incidents of infection of my PC’s with this sort of malware. According to many sources spyware infects up to 80-90% of all PCs. These unobtrusive, malicious programs are designed to bypass firewalls and anti-virus software without the user’s knowledge and install themselves. Once embedded in a computer they wreak havoc on the system’s performance while gathering your personal information.

How do these programs get in?

Typically a PC gets infected with spyware in three ways:

• Downloading a free ware program or file from sharing site.
• Pop ups asking you to optimize some feature of your PC like security.
• Attack programs on websites that are designed to force an installation.

The most common way is when the user installs it. In this scenario, spyware is embedded, attached, or bundled with a freeware or shareware program. The user downloads the program to their computer along with the file (often pirated music or files). Once downloaded, the spyware program gets to work collecting data for the spyware author’s personal use or to sell to a third-party. Beware of many Peer2Peer file-sharing programs – they are notorious for downloads that possess spyware programs.

The user of any downloadable program should pay extra attention to the accompanying licensing agreement. Often the software publisher will warn the user that a spyware program will be installed along with the requested program – Microsoft do this with their spyware called Genuine Advantage which checks your installed Microsoft components for pirated copies. Unfortunately, we do not always take the time to read the fine print – particularly if it is several pages long. Some agreements may provide special ‘opt-out’ boxes that the user can click to stop the spyware from being included in the download but you have to look carefully for these.

Another way that spyware can access your computer is by tricking you into manipulating the security features designed to prevent any unwanted installations. The IE browser was designed to prevent websites starting any unwanted downloads automatically. That is why the user has to initiate a download by clicking on a link. However these links can prove very easy to hijack, for example, a pop-up modeled after a standard Windows dialog box, may appear on your screen. The message may ask you if you would like to optimize your internet access – a popular trick. It provides yes or no answer buttons, but no matter which button you push, a download containing the spyware program will start. This is how Antivirus 2010 gets in for example. Newer versions of Internet Explorer are now making this spyware pathway a little bit more difficult but it seems to me that these types of program have little difficulty in getting past these security patches and I had one case where even Symantec offered no protection to these types of attack.

Finally, some spyware applications infect a system by attacking security holes in the Web browser or other software. When the user navigates a webpage controlled by a spyware author, the page contains code designed to attack the browser, and force the installation of the spyware program.

What can spyware programs do?

Spyware programs can accomplish a multitude of malicious tasks. Some of their deeds are simply annoying for the user; others can become downright aggressive in nature.

Spyware can:

• Monitor your keystrokes for reporting purposes and track your browsing activity
• Snoop through applications on our desktop – like Microsoft!
• Steal credit card numbers, passwords, and other personal information.
• They often do not provide the user with an uninstall option and places itself in unexpected or hidden places within your computer making it difficult to remove. Many times you have to dive into the registry to remove them – not a trivial task!
• Deceptive functionality. Spyware often uses a classic ‘Trojan horse’ tactics like a virus. It can offer to synchronize your PC’s clock or keep track of forms then get to work in the background on more interesting tasks.
• Hijack your Home page. Did you ever find that your home page was changed, or have you discovered new sites in favorites that you didn’t add?
• Loss of privacy. Some spyware keeps track of the web sites you visit and sends that information back to the spyware vendor. Do you want to tell everyone what naughty sites you have visited?
• Even more advertising by delivering annoying pop up advertisements. Did you install a popup stopper but you are still getting popups? The ads you are getting may not be from the web site you are on but from spyware.
• Stolen advertising – instead of showing the ads that should appear on a web site, some spyware substitutes its own ads which can rob a web site of revenue.
• Reduced performance by useing up system resources, CPU time, memory, disk space, and bandwidth, making your system slower.
• System instability – most spyware isn’t very well tested or debugged the result can be system crashes, hangs, or other strange behavior.
• Security risks. Some spyware has a built-in update feature that lets the spyware maker download and install new code to your system without your knowledge or approval.

Here are a few examples of commonly seen spyware programs:

CoolWebSearch – a set of programs that install through ‘holes’ found in Internet Explorer. These programs direct traffic to advertisements on Web sites including coolwebsearch.com. This spyware nuisance displays pop-up ads, rewrites search engine results, and alters the computer host file to direct the Domain Name System (DNS) to lookup preselected sites.
Internet Optimizer – redirects Internet Explorer error pages to advertisements. When the user follows the broken link or enters an erroneous URL, a page of advertisements pop up.
180 Solutions reports extensive information to advertisers about the Web sites which you visit. It also alters HTTP requests for affiliate advertisements linked from a Web site therefore the 180 Solutions Company makes an unearned profit off of the click through advertisements they’ve altered.
HuntBar (WinTools) or Adware. Websearch, is distributed by Traffic Syndicate and is installed by ActiveX drive-by downloading at affiliate websites or by advertisements displayed by other spyware programs. It’s a prime example of how spyware can install more spyware. These programs will add toolbars to Internet Explorer, track Web browsing behavior, and display advertisements.
Some more to be aware of:
Gator (GAIN)
180search Assistant
ISTbar/AUpdate
Transponder (vx2)
BlazeFind
Hot as Hell
Advanced Keylogger
TIBS Dialer

How can I prevent spyware?

There are a couple things you can do to prevent spyware from infecting your computer system. First, invest in a reliable commercial anti-spyware program. There are several currently on the market including stand alone software packages I recommend Enigma software package as I used it once to successfully remove antivirus2009 when it got past Symantec on my daughter’s PC – link is here take a look: http://www.enigmasoftware.com/ Other options provide the anti-spyware software as part of an anti-virus package. This type of option is offered by companies such as Sophos, Symantec, and McAfee but they are not optimized to deal with this threat and I think offer poor protection. As with most programs update your anti virus software often as there are thousands of new versions coming out almost every day.

As discussed, the Internet Explorer (IE) is often a contributor to the spyware problem because spyware programs like to attach themselves to its functionality – spyware enjoys penetrating the IE’s weaknesses. Because of this, many users have switched to non-IE browsers like Firefox that seems a little more secure. However, if you prefer to stick with Internet Explorer, be sure to update the security patches regularly every Tuesday and only download programs from reputable sources and never engage in download sites whose specialty is pirated software or content you are certain to be infected.

When people think about the Internet, they think about technology – but the most intriguing aspect of your online business isn’t about the technology. It’s about human connections, and how you can create these in a virtual environment. It’s commonly understood that ‘people buy emotionally, not intellectually.’ Even when people think they’re making a rational decision, powerful subconscious factors come into play. To sell effectively, we’re told to anticipate our customers’ needs, to demonstrate that we ‘feel their pain’, and to respond to clues in their body language and tone of voice.

For the online visitor, your Website is the next best thing to that in-person conversation with you, your colleagues or employees. And since so many people are researching products and services on the Web, it’s critical that your site has maximum impact in persuading them to take the next step with you.

• So how does your Website connect emotionally with your visitors?
• Do they feel listened to, understood and appreciated by your Internet presence?
• Are you instinctively meeting their real needs?
• Do your existing customers feel supported and valued when interacting with you online?
• Are you failing to evoke the crucial emotional responses which can significantly enhance your response rates, sales and ongoing return on your Web investment?

What are the key emotions that you need to evoke in your online visitors to create and sustain a profitable relationship with them. How well your Website does this can have a major effect on the visceral, instinctive reactions of your visitors, and their propensity to buy from or connect with you.

When we talk with customers or prospects, it’s important to show very quickly that we understand their issues and needs, and that we have ideas and solutions to address these. The most important task for your home page is to accomplish this initial introduction. You’ve heard the ‘ten-second’ rule about how long a visitor will stay on a site that doesn’t engage them.

• So, does your home page really tell me what you do?
• Does it speak to me in specific terms that make very clear what services you provide?
• What type of customers or clients you work with?
• Does it use language that I’ll understand even if I don’t know the jargon of your industry or specialization?

Yes sounds simple doesn’t it?

But there are astounding numbers of Websites that fail to provide basic information on the home page.

• If your goal is to get the customer to visit your store, does your home page clearly show your location?
• … and how to get there?
• Every time you force the visitor to make a decision, such as ‘Do I click on the Contact Us page to find their address?’, you open up the possibility that they’ll make the wrong choice, or worse still, they’ll just leave.
• Is it clear to me whether you can – or would want to – help me?
• Are you geared towards corporate bulk buyers, or small businesses, or both?
• Do you operate nationally or only in your immediate location?
• Will your visitors know what you mean by generic terms such as ‘business systems’ or ‘total business solutions’ or should you be more specific as to what you offer?
• Do I Feel Engaged as a website visitor?
• Your Website has to make the visitor feel drawn in – that they want to know more about your business, your products and your services – but again, from the viewpoint of their needs and interests. And you have to give the visitor a clear sense that you want to find those points of connection, and to learn more about them. If the visitor doesn’t feel invited in, if they feel left to themselves to find their way around – if they’re overwhelmed, confused, or simply not interested in your site, they’ll leave.

Think about whether:

• Your site present a bewildering array of manufacturers, products, or options without any guidance as to selecting from these?
• Think about the conversation that you’d have with a customer if this were a real store.
• If you were in a store and were looking for something you’d ask the store assistent – so how can you mirror this process online?
• Do you have ‘Help Me’ pages that guides visitors through some Frequently Asked Questions or other choices?
• Do you provide links to recommended products based on their answers.
• You could incorporate an interactive chat facility with a customer service agent during office hours, or access to a searchable knowledge base.
• Do your customers feel convinced by your website? Visitors seeing your business for the first time need to be comfortable that you are who you say you are, and that you can deliver what you promise.
• Are you anonymous – one of the most important elements in establishing this part of the connection is to show the ‘faces’ of your business. Have you noticed how many Websites don’t name any of their owners, or the people that customers will interact with?
• It’s much easier to have a conversation when I know who I’m talking to! Customer testimonials and other third-party endorsements are critical elements in establishing trust – they say far more about you than your own marketing statements. How many sites have we all seen that trumpet ‘nationally recognized’ or ‘premier provider…’? Prove it! Include client quotes and success stories right across your site where they’re front and center as visitors are engaged in your content. If you win an award, tell the visitor what that means for them in terms of how you were evaluated.
• Do I feel motivated to take action? With and online visitor we need to persuade them to buy something, or to tell us who they are, and give us permission to reconnect with them. Too many Web pages tail off with no call to action or directions about where to go next.

So at every point on every page where the visitor might be thinking ‘Tell me more’, or ‘How do I get this?’, provide a clickable link to the next step, to your shopping cart, to your newsletter subscription page, or to whatever you want them to do. Don’t wait until the end of the page – they may never get there! Look for the emotional ‘tipping points’ on every page where they’re ready to talk more with you and grab them in the moment!

Diluting the Connection Of course, it’s all too easy to undo all the good feeling that we create by frustrating or annoying the visitor, or simply by giving them a dead end. One of my favorite bugbears is the site search engine that allows me to enter my query, and then tells me ‘No results found. Please try again with different search terms’. How is that supposed to make me feel? What was wrong with my keywords or my parameters if the search page allowed me to select them? Am I being stupid? Or do you really not want to help me? Your visitor is clearly looking for something, and has taken a step towards connecting with you. So how about a results page that lets them know that you can’t immediately answer their question, but offers a link to your contact form so that they can send a question, or some tips or suggestions on how to find more information.

So how ‘Emotionally Connected’ is your Website? I hope that I’ve sparked your curiosity enough to take a fresh look at your Website. Think about specifically why visitors are coming to your site, what might be on their minds, and review your copy and navigation accordingly. Think about new customers and existing ones, employees, media – everyone who might have a reason to visit. Are you doing everything that you can to create an ‘emotionally connected’ experience for everyone? The right mix will gain you significantly higher time spent on your site, more calls from pre-qualified leads, more signed contracts, happier repeat customers, attention from new markets, offers of strategic alliances and collaborations, and insights into creating successful new products and services.

This article is an edited version of an original by: Philippa Gamse who is a professional speaker and web strategy expert who spends much of her time creating website strategies for her clients. To read her blog and free articles visit http://websitesthatwin.com for more information.

Search Engine Optimization is a process of choosing the most appropriate targeted keyword phrases related to your site and ensuring that this ranks your site highly in search engines so that when someone searches for specific phrases it returns your site on tops. It basically involves fine tuning the content of your site along with the HTML and Meta tags and also involves appropriate link building process. The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL and Ask Jeeves. Search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret, to get credit for finding the most valuable search-results and to deter spam pages from clogging those results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors while ranking the listings where the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually. Algorithms can differ so widely that a webpage that ranks #1 in a particular search engine could rank #200 in another search engine. New sites need not be “submitted” to search engines to be listed. A simple link from a well established site will get the search engines to visit the new site and begin to spider its contents. It can take a few days to even weeks from the referring of a link from such an established site for all the main search engine spiders to commence visiting and indexing the new site.

If you are unable to research and choose keywords and work on your own search engine ranking, you may want to hire someone to work with you on these issues.

Search engine marketing and promotion companies, will look at the plan for your site and make recommendations to increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. If you wish, they will also provide ongoing consultation and reporting to monitor your website and make recommendations for editing and improvements to keep your site traffic flow and your search engine ranking high. Normally your search engine optimization experts work with your web designer to build an integrated plan right away so that all aspects of design are considered at the same time.

Given the fact that there are so many KD theories flying around, my good friend Mike Grehan approached me after the Jupitermedia’s 2005 Search Engine Strategies Conference held in New York and invited me to do something about it. I felt the “something” should be a balanced article mixed with a bit of IR, semantics and math elements but with no conclusion so readers could draw their own. So, here we go.

Background.

In the search engine marketing literature, keyword density is defined as

Equation 1

where tfi, j is the number of times term i appears in document j and l is the total number of terms in the document. Equation 1 is a legacy idea found intermingled in the old literature on readability theory, where word frequency ratios are calculated for passages and text windows – phrases, sentences, paragraphs or entire documents – and combined with other readability tests.

The notion of keyword density values predates all commercial search engines and the Internet and can hardly be considered an IR concept. What is worse, KD plays no role on how commercial search engines process text, index documents or assign weights to terms. Why then many optimizers still believe in KD values? The answer is simple: misinformation.

If two documents, D1 and D2, consist of 1000 terms (l = 1000) and repeat a term 20 times (tf = 20), then for both documents KD = 20/1000 = 0.020 (or 2%) for that term. Identical values are obtained if tf = 10 and l = 500.

Evidently, this overall ratio tells us nothing about:

1. the relative distance between keywords in documents (proximity)

2. where in a document the terms occur (distribution)

3. the co-citation frequency between terms (co-occurrence)

4. the main theme, topic, and sub-topics (on-topic issues) of the documents

Thus, KD is divorced from content quality, semantics and relevancy. Under these circumstances one can hardly talk about optimizing term weights for ranking purposes. Add to this copy style issues and you get a good idea of why this article’s title is The Keyword Density of Non-Sense.

The following five search engine implementations illustrate the point:

1. Linearization

2. Tokenization

3. Filtration

4. Stemming

5. Weighting

Linearization.

Linearization is the process of ignoring markup tags from a web document so its content is reinterpreted as a string of characters to be scored. This process is carried out tag-by-tag and as tags are declared and found in the source code. As illustrated in Figure 1, linearization affects the way search engines “see”, “read” and “judge” Web content –sort of speak. Here the content of a website is rendered using two nested html tables, each consisting of one large cell at the top and the common 3-column cell format. We assume that no other text and html tags are present in the source code. The numbers at the top-right corner of the cells indicate in which order a search engine finds and interprets the content of the cells.

The box at the bottom of Figure 1 illustrates how a search engine probably “sees”, “reads” and “interprets” the content of this document after linearization. Note the lack of coherence and theming. Two term sequences illustrate the point: “Find Information About Food on sale!” and “Clients Visit our Partners”. This state of the content is probably hidden from the untrained eyes of average users. Clearly, linearization has a detrimental effect on keyword positioning, proximity, distribution and on the effective content to be “judged” and scored. The effect worsens as more nested tables and html tags are used, to the point that after linearization content perceived as meritorious by a human can be interpreted as plain garbage by a search engine. Thus, computing localized KD values is a futile exercise.

Burning the Trees and Keyword Weight Fights.

In the best-case scenario, linearization shows whether words, phrases and passages end competing for relevancy in a distorted lexicographical tree. I call this phenomenon “burning the trees”. It is one of the most overlooked web design and optimization problems.

Constructing a lexicographical tree out of linearized content reveals the actual state and relationship between nouns, adjectives, verbs, and phrases as they are actually embedded in documents. It shows the effective data structure that is been used. In many cases, linearization identifies local document concepts (noun groups) and hidden grammatical patterns. Mandelbrot has used the patterned nature of languages observed in lexicographical trees to propose a measure he calls the “temperature of discourse”. He writes: “The `hotter’ the discourse, the higher the probability of use of rare words.” (1). However, from the semantics standpoint, word rarity is a context dependent state. Thus, in my view “burning the trees” is a natural consequence of misplacing terms.

In Fractals and Sentence Production, Chapter 9 of From Complexity to Creativity (2, 3), Ben Goertzel uses an L-System model to explain that the beginning of early childhood grammar is the two-word sentence in which the iterative pattern involving nouns (N) and verbs( V) is driven by a rule in which V is replaced by V N (V >> V N). This can be illustrated with the following two iteration stages:

0 N V (as in Stevie byebye)

1 N V N (as in Stevie byebye car)

Goertzel explains, “-The reason N V is a more natural combination is because it occurs at an earlier step in the derivation process.” (3). It is now comprehensible why many Web documents do not deliver any appealing message to search engines. After linearization, it can be realized that these may be “speaking” like babies. [By the way, L-System algorithms, named after A. Lindermayer, have been used for many years in the study of tree-like patterns (4)].

“Burning the trees” explains why repeating terms in a document, moving around on-page factors or invoking link strategies, not necessarily improves relevancy. In many instances one can get the opposite result. I recommend SEOs to start incorporating lexicographical/word pattern techniques, linearization strategies and local context analysis (LCA) into their optimization mix. (5)

In Figure 1, “burning the trees” was the result of improper positioning of text. However in many cases the effect is a byproduct of sloppy Web design, poor usability or of improper use of the HTML DOM structure (another kind of tree). This underscores an important W3C recommendation: that html tables should be use for presenting tabular data, not for designing Web documents. In most cases, professional web designers can do better by replacing tables with cascading style sheets (CSS).

“Burning the trees” often leads to another phenomenon I call “keyword weight fights”. It is a recurrent problem encountered during topic identification (topic spotting), text segmentation (based on topic changes) and on-topic analysis (6). Considering that co-occurrence patterns of words and word classes provide important information about how a language is used, misplaced keywords and text without clear topic transitions difficult the work of text summarization editors (humans or machine-based) that need to generate representative headings and outlines from documents.

Thus, the “fight” unnecessarily difficults topic disambiguation and the work of human abstractors that during document classification need to answer questions like “What is this document or passage about?”, “What is the theme or category of this document, section or paragraph?”, “How does this block of links relate to the content?”, etc.

While linearization renders localized KD values useless, document indexing makes a myth out of this metric. Let see why.

Tokenization, Filtration and Stemming

Document indexing is the process of transforming document text into a representation of text and consists of three steps: tokenization, filtration and stemming.

During tokenization terms are lowercased and punctuation removed. Rules must be in place so digits, hyphens and other symbols can be parsed properly. Tokenization is followed by filtration. During filtration commonly used terms and terms that do not add any semantic meaning (stopwords) are removed. In most IR systems survival terms are further reduced to common stems or roots. This is known as stemming. Thus, the initial content of length l is reduced to a list of terms (stems and words) of length l’ (i.e., l’ < l). These processes are described in Figure 2. Evidently, if linearization shows that you have already “burned the trees”, a search engine will be indexing just that.

Similar lists can be extracted from individual documents and merged to conform an index of terms. This index can be used for different purposes; for instance, to compute term weights and to represent documents and queries as term vectors in a term space.

Weighting.

The weight of a term in a document consists of three different types of term weighting: local, global, and normalization. The term weight is given by

Equation 2

where Li, j is the local weight for term i in document j, Gi is the global weight for term i and Nj is the normalization factor for document j. Local weights are functions of how many times each term occurs in a document, global weights are functions of how many times documents containing each term appears in the collection, and the normalization factor corrects for discrepancies in the lengths of the documents.

In the classic Term Vector Space model

Equation 3, 4 and 5

which reduces to the well-known tf*IDF weighting scheme

Equation 6

where log(D/di) is the Inverse Document Frequency (IDF), D is the number of documents in the collection (the database size) and di is the number of documents containing term i.

Equation 6 is just one of many term weighting schemes found in the term vector literature. Depending on how L, G and N are defined, different weighting schemes can be proposed for documents and queries.

KD values as estimators of term weights?

The only way that KD values could be taken for term weights

Equation 7

is if global weights are ignored and the normalization factor Nj is redefined in terms of document lengths

Equation 8

However, Gi = IDF = 1 constraints the collection size D to be equal to ten times the number of documents containing the term (D = 10*d) and Nj = 1/lj implies no stopword filtration. These conditions are not observed in commercial search systems.

Using a probabilistic term vector scheme in which IDF is defined as

Equation 9

does not help either since the condition Gi = IDF = 1 implies that D = 11*d. Additional unrrealistic constraints can be derived for other weighting schemes when Gi = 1.

To sum up, the assumption that KD values could be taken for estimates of term weights or that these values could be used for optimization purposes amounts to the Keyword Density of Non-Sense.

References

The Fractal Geometry of Nature, Benoit B. Mandelbrot, Chapter 38, W. H. Freeman, 1983.

From Complexity to Creativity: Computational Models of Evolutionary, Autopoietic and Cognitive Dynamics, Ben Goertzel, Plenum Press (1997).

Fractals and Sentence Production, Ben Goertzel, Ref 2, Chapter 9, Plenum Press (1997).

The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants, P. Prusinkiewicz and A. Lindenmayer, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1990.

Topic Analysis Using a Finite Mixture Model, Hang Li and Kenji Yamanish.

Improving the Effectiveness of Information Retrieval with Local Context Analysis, Jinxi Xu, W. Bruce Croft.

http://www.e-marketing-news.co.uk

Have you thought about using Twitter to market your business? Twitter is free, and available to small and large businesses. Here are some tips and tricks on using Twitter to promote your business.  Here are four tips to use your Twitter account effectively.

Following other Twitter accounts that are in your target demographic will help you get an idea of what the conversation is. Then you need to post updates about your company, brand or product. As with any online medium, you want to be very careful to never spam any of your followers. Lastly, make sure that you follow successful online marketers, and look for other participants who are in your industry.

First Build an Account for Twitter Marketing
The first thing that you should do is to set up your Twitter account and populate it with several interesting Tweets, which are Twitter posts. Then begin following people who are also using Twitter, and you will find that most people will follow back. When your entire Twitter feed has blanks, though, most people will not bother to follow you. Once you start a micro blog post, you can get on with following any target demographic, and this can be done in either of two different ways.
1. Go to Twitter.com and do a search by typing in keywords that relate to the demographic that you are targeting. For example, if you are trying to sell an application for the iPhone, you would enter the keyword ‘iPhone’ or ‘iPhone app’ or anything that may find people who own an iPhone. It’s easy to follow people. If your posts are interesting and relevant, you will probably pick up some followers this way.
2. Locate Twitter accounts that you want to follow by clicking the ‘Find People’ option. Then enter your keywords, related industries, locations or other defining detail to locate followers, and begin following them.

Twitter Marketing Uses Current Information
By adding news that is interesting and relevant about your services or product, you can keep your Tweets current. You can also add information about related news for your industry to keep Tweets interesting and informative. For example, if you sell cooking gadgets, you may want to post news about food and recipes.
As you work on developing your targeted demographic, you need to keep your followers engaged, so you will want to tweet, or post, often. Make sure to retweet relevant tweets from other Twitter followers. This is another great way to pick up new followers, and when they start to follow you, you also are plugged into their followers. Retweeting is one of the fastest ways to build your following or network.
By checking with search.twitter.com frequently you can look for brand names and see what customers are saying. You can follow these Twitter accounts and thank them. If you see customers who are angry or dissatisfied, you can follow them as well. Then you can retweet them and solicit solutions to the problem. Your customers will be thrilled with the feedback from you, and even more thrilled when you rectify the situation. Twitter makes it easy to grow a ‘word of mouth’ reputation virally.

Twitter Marketing and Spam Do Not Mix
Spam in any electronic media is the kiss of death. If you begin spamming your followers, they will drop you like a hot potato. Spam activity would include only posting information on your own products, retweeting the same URL repeatedly, obnoxious Twitter handles, and frivolous tweets. Twitter followers are savvy consumers, and anything deceptive or patronizing is going to leave a bad taste in their mouth.

Twitter Marketing Can Assess the Competition
If you want to build a quality following, then follow quality people on Twitter. There are many online marketers that are experts on Twitter like Dave Peck, Chris Brogan and Guy Kawasaki, and they should definitely be included in your list on Twitter. Also look for corporations that are active on Twitter. They are blazing a trail with their marketing, and you can get good marketing information from them.
Do not forget to look at what your competition is doing. See how they are going about increasing their own following on Twitter. If you want to be a smart marketer online, then you need to constantly be aware of what your competition is doing out in cyberspace. You have a huge marketing opportunity if they rarely post on Twitter, never retweet, or attend to negative posts.

Twitter Marketing Requires Patience
When you are using Twitter as part of your Internet marketing plan, you need to give it time to work. Twitter results take a while to appear, because it is one of the more long-term strategies. You will have to build up your networks and following, and if you use the correct strategies, it will happen in a timely manner. However, do not start a Twitter campaign if you are not going to see it through to completion, because an unattended Twitter account is worse than no account at all.
Once you have built a good Twitter following, then you want to market with a gentle touch. Instead of using ‘in your face’ marketing tactics, pose a question where your product or service is the answer. Tweet that there are updates on your company’s blog instead of trying to cram the information into your tweet, and people that want to know more will click through to your blog.

Always respond when your followers tweet you. If you do not keep up with your following, it will begin to crumble. If you have too large of a following to maintain, then outsource your retweets or assign an employee to monitor and reply to your followers.

Twitter is an interactive marketing tool, and because of this it is valuable in two ways. While it is instrumental in getting your message out, it is also hugely helpful in taking the pulse of your customers. So make sure that your Twitter marketing efforts start strong and more importantly stay strong. For more advanced guidance, sign up for Anton Pearce’s ‘Clients on Tap’ ezine. It’s absolutely free and will show how to implement systems that generate all the clients you need for your professional practice. This ezine is essential reading if you want to get your online marketing systems set

Social media marketing is extremely important to your business and as this marketing method evolves, so must you and your business. Social media marketing is marketing through online communities, social networking sites, blogs, etc. If you are not already utilizing social sites for your business, you need to start NOW! Social networking enables business owners to get extreme exposure for very little or no cost. You can use social networking sites to build your reputation, brand your business and increase your customer base. The marketing potential of these sites is phenomenal! Now you can’t just register, make your profile and then never go back. You have to keep your information fresh, add new content, always be looking for new contacts, etc. Meeting new people, whether they be potential customers, business associates, or just people learning the ropes, can be very beneficial for your business and your reputation.

These sites allow you to make yourself much more accessible than just having your own site. Whenever possible, use your business name as your username to help make your business more recognized. Social marketing sites can also help you get more links thus increasing your search engine ranking. People who find your content and information helpful and useful will link back to you which will in turn cause your own website to become more popular. You can also use your social site pages to gather information and feedback from people on your products. This can help you improve your business and improve customer service.

By participating in social marketing you can find partners/associates for joint ventures. You can cross promote and build solid business relationships that can help everyone. By providing good and fresh information, resources and content, you can build trust with your visitors, associates, potential customers, etc., thus building your business a strong reputation. Building relationships is the foundation for a successful business. Adding pictures of yourself and/or videos can go a long way in making your social media marketing more effective.

The three main steps in social marketing:
1. Make Your Account
2. Always be adding new content, links, products, resources, etc.
3. Add friends, followers, contacts, etc. as much as possible.

This can be very confusing so start slow. Learn from other social marketers. Study social marketing strategies. Take it one step at a time. My three favorite social sites are: Twitter.com LinkedIn.com Facebook.com Come on over and see me sometime! Social marketing has made its mark and it is here to stay. You need to utilize these sites to make your mark as well.

About the Author:
Terri Seymour (also known as “The eBook Lady”) has over ten years online experience and has helped many people start their own business. Visit her site at http://www.seymourproducts.com for resources, $1 resell ebooks & software, free tutorials, affiliate programs, free ezine and free business ebook with Master Resell Rights.

You can store your computer data in several different ways. Data can be stored on removable disks, hard drives, CDs, DVDs, and other types of media. Even though there are several ways that you can store your data, at some point in time the electronic or mechanical device is bound to break down, resulting in a loss of data. Even though the device may work good for years, it can always break down when you least expect it, with no way to avoid it.

Hard drives are the most common way to store data, although they are mechanical devices and can break down or crash at any time. When they crash, you’ll normally lose all of your data, which can put you in quite a bind. To be on the safe side and keep yourself protected, you should always have a backup plan, such as an external hard drive.

An external hard drive is very handy to have around. You can store any type of file on it, including music and pictures. Most people use them for videos, as they can store a lot of videos. You can get them in many different sizes, going as high as 500 GB. If you have a lot of video on your computer that is taking up a lot of much needed space, you can easily transfer it to an external hard drive and free up some of your space.

On the data recovery side of things, external hard drives are a great solution. You can back up your entire hard drive on them, even a mirror image. Most external drives are FireWire or USB compatible and will work with most computers. To use an external drive all you need to do is connect it to your computer. Then, using the software that came with the device, you can begin to transfer your data and files.

If you have a big hard drive, you’ll want to get a bigger external hard drive. If you are transferring your entire internal hard drive to the external drive, it may take you a few minutes. You can also add files and such along the way as well, if you get newer files to add. Backing up your entire hard drive to an external drive is a very smart idea, especially if your area gets a lot of electrical storms.

Once you have backed up all of your data to an external hard drive, you can rest assured that your information will be there when you need it. External drives don’t crash, for the simple fact that they aren’t in use until you need them. They will last you many years as well, which makes them great for pictures and other precious files. If you own a business, you may find them to the best way to store your business documents and other files that relate to your company.

All in all, external hard drives are the perfect way to create a back up of your data. Once you have your data backed up, you’ll be ready for anything that happens to your internal hard drive. In the event of a crash, you can use your external hard drive and transfer the data back to your hard drive, and be back up and running in no time at all. External hard drives take all of the guess work out of the data recovery process – and may also save you the trouble of having to send your hard drive off to be repaired.

Hard Disk Recovery Service UK

If anyone knows some other useful services or utilities post a reply here: