CrossLoop Unveils Helper Marketplace

Back in 2006, I informed you about a new piece of software called Crossloop. As you may recall, they specialize in connecting two computers together for remote management. For example, I could easily connect with my brother in Texas if he needed me to assist with installing software on his computer.

But what happens if my bother needs help and I'm too busy helping my sister, my parents, my brother-in-law, and my uncle? Don't laugh, it could happen!

Earlier this week, they added an interesting component to their business model called the "Helper Marketplace". The idea is that you can connect with other "tech savvy" individuals who are experienced and can help you solve a computer problem. So, when my brother runs into an issue, he can search for a "geek" to log onto his computer and assist him.

As a "techie", I have the option to register with them and get paid for assisting others. I might make a little money and you get your computer fixed... it's a win-win for everyone.

From a business perspective, I'm impressed by CrossLoop's innovation in this area. When I first wrote about them they barely had a concept, and as of today they have served 30 million desktop sharing minutes and received some excellent recognition - CNet's Download.com recognized them one of The 10 Best Downloads for 2007, Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal recommended them and InformationWeek recognized them as one of the Top Tech Sites for 2008. That's fantastic for a little start-up with a big idea.

Ask CWS: Should I register this domain?

Every few weeks, I'm asked a question about a domain name and if it should be registered and/or renewed from a particular vendor. Most recently, I received the following email which had been forwarded to me from a confused customer:

Dear COMPANY, Inc.,

We are Beijing Inveis Network Information Technology Co.,Ltd which is the domain name register center in China. We received a formal application from a company who is applying to register "COMPANYinc" as their domain names and Internet keyword on April 19th, 2008. Because this involved your company name or trade mark so we inform you in no time. If you considered these domain names and internet keyword are important to you and there was necessary to protect them by registering them first, contact us soon.

Kind Regards,

Kevin zhang
Tel:+86-10-82476192 ext.604
Fax:+86-10-62477798
Beijing Inveis Network Information Technology Co.,Ltd

While I do not believe this to be a complete scam, I do find it hard to believe that COMPANYinc.cn is in high demand. They are probably simply trying to persuade the owners of the popular .com domain name into purchasing the .cn domain (by creating a sense of urgency). On a side note, I also found it interesting that the company was not using a .cn domain name themselves, they preferred the .com domain name too.

I advised the customer that there are literally hundreds of domain name extensions available (for nearly every country) and that you can't possibly register them all. Nor would you want to, as the cost of doing this far outweighs the benefits.

To keep it simple, here are a few tips to remember when it comes to domain names:

1) Know who your domain is registered with and keep this information in a safe place.
2) Know who to call if you have questions about your domain.
3) Know when your domain renews. You will receive solicitations from other registrars as much as 6 months before it will expire. If the notification is not from the company listed in #1, ignore it.
4) Have one primary domain and do your best to get it listed with search engines. Avoid trying to market/promote several domains at once. If you do have several domains, use them for testing and measuring ad campaigns.
5) If you have multiple domains, consolidate them at one company to avoid confusion.
6) When in doubt, refer to #2.

Case Study: Mayo Medical Laboratories

Last summer, CWS worked with Mayo Medical Laboratories to redevelop the structure of MayoMedicalLaboratories.com, and we have continued to support the expansion of its offerings. We put a lot of effort into the architecture of this site's codebase, and recent statistics have shown that these efforts are paying off.

Overall traffic to the site has doubled, but even more interesting is a six-fold increase in traffic specifically referred by search engines over an eight-month period. More recently, we've worked to develop a system for public access to the catalog of medical tests offered by MML, and this tool is already drawing nearly half of the site's traffic.

Here are a few of the strategies employed to achieve these measurable results:

• Good separation of content and style. Most people know that a Web page is driven by some underlying code that's not usually displayed. But what's not always understood is that not all code serves the same function. Of course the actual text you see on a page is included, but a good portion of the code that's loaded into your Web browser is about style -- the way a page looks. When a search engine looks at the page, it doesn't care about style; content is king. In modern Web design, it's possible to almost completely separate style code from written content, but this practice isn't always followed well. When it is, the results can be dramatic. In addition to giving search engines a clearer picture of content, code separation can significantly reduce the time required to load pages and make changes far easier to implement. It also opens the possibility of repurposing content for alternative devices, like mobile or print versions, without duplicating the content.
• Appropriate use of structure. The third type of code that makes up a Web page represents its structure. Many types of structure can end up yielding the same visual result. Looking at a building from the outside, you might not know if its studs were made of wood, steel, or Styrofoam. But that doesn't make all three building materials equally sound. The same is true of Web pages; the underlying structure can have a big impact on accessibility and maintainability. It's also particularly helpful for allowing search engines to assign context to words. For example, human beings rely on visual cues like text size and color to identify headings and other important words on a page. Search engines (not to mention visually impaired human beings) can't do this, so they rely on the document's structure to determine what's important.
• Internationalization. When websites aim to attract a global audience, it's important to correctly encode and structure multilingual content. This improves performance with international search engines and also ensures that pages display consistently across a diverse range of platforms and browsers.

CWS believes in producing Web sites and applications that are focused on meeting business objectives and producing measurable results. Contact us for a risk-free assessment.

THIS IS A SOLICITATION

OK, it's not. I selected that title for this article because it is important to know these four words and look for them on all invoices you receive. Two years ago there was a Search Engine Optimization scam that people asked me about often. Today, I've had two customers send me emails asking if the "invoices" they have received are legitimate. Take this one for example:


Now one might say to themselves, "this looks an awful lot like a bill." However, if you read carefully you'll see the following mixed into the text:

THIS IS A SOLICITATION FOR THR ORDER OF GOODS OR SERVICES, OR BOTH, AND NOT A BILL INVOICE, OR STATEMENT OF ACCOUNT DUE. YOU ARE UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO MAKE ANY PAYMENTS ON ACCOUNT OF THIS OFFER UNLESS YOU ACCEPT THIS OFFER.

Well, that's nice of them to make their "flyer" look just like an invoice. The only reason they put that text in there is because it's what keeps them out of prison. I checked out their website, which had no phone number to contact them, and they are located in Nassau, Bahamas.

Apparently they don't have jails in the Bahamas... because that's where these guys deserve to be. Their legal disclaimer may make this type of activity legal, but it's far from morally correct.

Personal Touch From 1,000 Miles

As I mentioned back in February, my family is gearing up for the March for Babies walk on April 26th. We've been actively fundraising and spreading the word as best we can for a cause that is very close to our hearts.

This year, we decided to do something a little different and order t-shirts for everyone who joined "Team Carson". Since we were ordering a very small quantity and needed a quick turnaround, my wife decided to order them online from CustomInk.com. They had a cool web interface that allowed her to "build a design" online and send proofs back and forth with me. She ended up with a nice design (below) and placed the order.


This is where her "automated" online ordering experience turned personal. Within a few days, Kim received an email from Robin at CustomInk.

Hi Kim,

I noticed that you have designed shirts for an upcoming March for Babies charity event. We think it's terrific that you are participating in such a worthy cause! CustomInk would love to help you reach your fundraising goal by making a small donation to your team.

Could you please reply to this e-mail with the link to your individual sponsorship page, team page or an address to which we may send a check?

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Warm Regards,

Robin Matheson
CustomInk.com

In a matter of hours, we had received a donation from CustomInk via our online fundraising website. This small gesture was enough for me to become a raving fan of CustomInk.com for life. It's nice to know that other online companies have been able to connect with their customers in a personal way. Keep up the good work!

No Such Thing as a Free Lunch?

One of the great things about the current generation of Web-based software is that much of it is available for free. Even fee-based services will frequently offer unpaid plans as a way of letting people try the software, and these free offerings can be quite useful on their own.

All of this is great news for nonprofits, who have limited financial resources and often rely on volunteers who don't share a physical office and can't take advantage of traditional business software. These organizations are uniquely suited to Web applications, which can be used from any computer with Internet access.

Google, with its drive for innovation (and deep pockets), is often a leader in providing terrific Web-based software for free. Recently they launched a portal site that specifically highlights resources for nonprofits.

Noteworthy offerings include:

• Google Docs - Create text documents, spreadsheets and presentations in a Web browser, and easily share them with others for collaborative writing. Supports opening and saving Microsoft Office documents.
• Google Calendar - Sophisticated calendar management that integrates well with other software
• Google Checkout - Collect donations via credit/debit card for free. Google offers a special service for nonprofits that waives all processing fees.
• Google Grants - You can apply for free advertising on Google's network

If you work for or with a nonprofit, any or all of these services could be a huge boost to your productivity. It's great to see corporations like Google supporting people's efforts to give back to the community.

SEO Yourself?

After the last post about SEO, we received an anonymous comment about the article which said:

Hello, I agree with you, Alan, that it is important to use SEO, but I do not think that it is neccessary to hire a SEO Firm.

This got me thinking about the perceived value of hiring a professional SEO firm. Is it really absolutely necessary to hire a firm like CWS for search engine optimization?

Amazingly, the answer is "No."

I must concede that one can perform SEO on their own website and not hire a professional firm. With enough research, analysis, and a little bit of luck any intelligent person could achieve measurable results without professional help.

However, I'll also argue that a professional can do it much better and faster than any novice who doesn't have the software or knowledge that comes by working with it every day. For example, a few years ago I decided to build my own deck. I studied websites on the subject, I reviewed the requirements of my local planning and zoning department, and I carefully built a deck with the help of a few friends. It took me nearly a month but turned out satisfactory.

A few weeks later my neighbor had his deck built by a professional deck builder. It took them only 3 days to finish a deck similar to mine, as they knew exactly what they were doing and were highly skilled.

To strengthen this point, I received an email from one of our hosting customers who had been doing his own web design and search engine optimization for the past few years. Frustrated, he turned to us for some help. I think his thoughts sum up the situation best:

"I just wanted to mention that working with Jon on SEO objectives and with Ryan on design for my website has been a real pleasure. I am very happy with the results so far both in terms of current rankings, which are greatly improved, and functionality of design.

For the past several years I and my wife have designed and optimized our site. This was the first year that I decided to hire professional assistance and I am very glad to have had your firm fulfill our current objectives. I came to you because of your consistent hosting of an older site, ascencionrecordings.com, which has been with you for several years."

Gordon Kreplin
Ascencion Recordings/Photography

This is an excellent example that not everyone has the patience, time and tools to perform SEO themselves. Just as some will never try to build their own deck, finish their own basement, or fix their own car. Some things are best left to a professional -- the choice is yours.

Importance of Search Engine Optimization

For anything and everything, the Internet users today go to search engines, and type in what they want to find out. They get the result pages (SERPs), and click and visit some of the first results. This is what is happening everywhere; millions and millions of users access Google every day for information.

When a website offering a particular service gets a hit (traffic), it has a chance to make a sale. So, all of the companies out there try extra hard to make their websites hit the top of the search engine result pages. The simple set of procedures for this purpose is known as Search Engine Optimization, the art of getting a website to rank high on search engine search result pages.

Search Engine Optimization is done through various steps, and if not done properly, it can backfire.

Basic Steps of Search Engine Optimization

For a site to be well optimized for search engine traffic, its content should be understandable to the search bots (the program used by search engines to index a particular site; also called web crawlers, search spiders, etc.) The content in the site has to be generally useful to the reader as well as understandable to search engines; keywords and descriptions in metadata help you achieve this. An important step of Search Engine Optimization is creating Meta tags for each page, with keywords and descriptions. Also the title tag should have your most important keyword.

Search Engine Optimization requires keyword-rich content. People search for keywords on the search engines. And the search engine bots look for these keywords on the indexed pages. So, keyword-dense content easily scales up the search results. However, overuse of the keyword will blacklist the site as spam. Search Engine Optimization, hence, requires an expert to prepare good quality search engine-optimized content. Also, highlighting the main keywords with such formatting as bold, italics, underline, etc., is very advantageous.

A minimum keyword density of about 2-4% is effective. And the content is best optimized targeting only one keyword or two at the most.

Another important aspect of Search Engine Optimization is the number of incoming links to the page. The incoming links convince the search engines that the page is important enough to be displayed as a result. The incoming links, however, have to be from reliable sources (there are unreliable sources like link farms, which are websites solely made for linking to other sites). So, it is very important for Search Engine Optimization to create some links to whichever page you try to optimize.

These methods just introduce you to what you should do to achieve good Search Engine Optimization for your sites. There are, however, so many other important aspects in Search Engine Optimization. Google itself is known to count hundreds of different metrics to calculate the PageRank of a site (Google's measure of the importance of a site).

Conclusion

The potential business a firm can acquire on reaching the top of search engine results is amazing. Search Engine Optimization, as I said earlier, is an art by itself. It should be done methodically and painstakingly. If done properly, you will enjoy great profits from it; on the other hand, malpractices can get you undermined very easily. Hence, it is important for you to hire a reputed, reliable professional for the purpose.

CWS Acquired by Google

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Today we're excited to announce that CWS was aquired by Google for $80.5 million. "It's an exciting day for us", said Alan De Keyrel, who was playing Guitar Hero when we called. "We were holding out for $100 million", said De Keyrel, "but then we decided that another 20 million wouldn't affect our ability to play video games all day."

Continuing its trend of gobbling up promising Web 2.0 startups, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) acquired CWS, the developers of GroupLoop.com. GroupLoop allows users to store and work with text documents on the Web and had been hailed a threat to Google Groups. Users can share selected documents, manage a group calendar, and post messages.

Google declined to discuss its plans for GroupLoop. "We acquired GroupLoop for the innovative technology and talented design team", Google spokesman Larry Fudder said in an e-mailed statement.

Google has become an aggressive acquirer of innovative software startups in recent years. Last year, it snapped up Measure Map, a blog traffic tracker. Other recent Google purchases include radio advertising platform dMarc and video sharing social platform YouTube.

"Nothing will change here at CWS", said Lyle Mullican, "except it might take a little longer for us to answer the phone". When questioned as to why this would be, Lyle said, "It takes time to pause the game console".