Warning: Video contains strong language.
I never realized this until now, but it looks like Mario is cheating on Princess Peach in this game… unless these two have an open relationship… who knows?
[Via BuzzFeed]
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Microsoft is finally withdrawing the Xbox LIVE online gaming service for owners of the original Xbox (ie, not the 360). The move will also mean the withdrawal of online play for Xbox titles played through the Xbox 360.
The firm isn’t giving too much detail about the reasons for the change, but says it’s related to forthcoming improvements to the Xbox 360 service which will be incompatible with the way original Xbox games are handled online.
The best guess would be that Xbox LIVE is being redesigned to add support to the motion control features of Project Natal. It’s also possible that some of the structures put in place at the initial launch of the service are simply inadequate in the 360 era: for example, the limit of 100 people on the online friends list may now be raised.
The service will be withdrawn from April 15. However, customers who only use the original Xbox will have their auto-renewals switched off immediately. Those affected by the changes should be getting messages through their LIVE account or e-mail in the next few weeks.
The strongest reaction to the news appears to be from dedicated fans of Halo 2, the best selling game on the original console and at one point the most popular online Xbox game for nearly two years. Speculation at the moment points to it being added to the Arcade section of Xbox Live or even being re-released for the Xbox360.
The news won’t be particularly welcome for people who’ve recently downloaded original Xbox games to their 360 with the intention of playing them online.
Whether the change is fair or reasonable is certainly open to argument. Owners of the original console may feel aggrieved at the move, particularly given that rival Sony still supports the 10-year-old PS2. Defenders of Microsoft would note that ditching some form of support for older products to concentrate on the latest systems is a well-established part of its business strategy.
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When I first started Copyblogger in 2006, I was almost militantly against on-page search optimization. Seems strange, since I’d been a successful student of SEO since 2000.
It was because I saw all these people fretting over keywords like it’s 1999, and yet they had no links. Their content was weak. Their sites weren’t trusted.
You can’t optimize something that’s dead in the water. So my initial goal was to get people to focus on content that attracted attention and links first. Only then do you have something you can make better (that’s what optimize means, naturally).
Fours years later, it seems things have swung in the opposite direction for some. Social media “experts” maintain that SEO doesn’t matter because search traffic just “happens.”
Yes, search traffic “happens” if you produce unique content and don’t make it impossible to find. But the “right” search traffic doesn’t just happen, not unless you’re lucky (which simply means you don’t know what you’re doing).
This article is designed to help you know how to tell search engines what you’re talking about is the same as what people are looking for. That’s all SEO really is.
I feel compelled to quickly discuss the things you need to focus on first. Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz gives us a quick list of the stuff that must come prior to on-page optimization, so I’ll repeat those here with my own commentary:
Accessibility – If search engines can’t see your content within the code, your page can’t be indexed and ranked. This is why Chris Pearson created the Thesis Theme for WordPress, and why he obsesses over making it better. Code matters.
Content – Now that the code structure is right, we come to what people actually want. Create great content and the people, sharing, and links will follow. And then you hit the bonus round: Google gives you even more goodness.
User Experience – The easier your site makes it to consume and share your content, the better you’ll end up doing SEO-wise. People don’t consume or share content that creates barriers, sometimes even if only a little.
Marketing – To paraphrase Rand on this one, spreading the word is often more important than being right, being honest, or being valuable. I like to say promoting your content is a virtuous necessity. Whatever works for you, but do get the word out.
Okay, now let’s move on to the five areas to focus on with your web page, blog post, online press release, whatever . . . they’re all the same in the eyes of Google.
Before we get into this, let me share a few strategic considerations.
When I’m building an authority site, I don’t care about optimizing everything I write. I use a lot of metaphors and pop culture references instead of keywords to get people reading and linking to build the overall trust of the domain. Then when I want to rank well for something, like copywriting, or seo copywriting, or landing pages, my job is much easier.
If you’re a news blogger (or newspaper), things are different. You want to optimize everything as best as possible up front, then move on. Different strokes for different folks.
That said, here we go.
Whether you optimize up-front or later, you at minimum need to know what keywords you’re targeting and include them in the title of your content. It’s generally accepted that the closer to the front of the title your keywords are, the better. But the key is that they appear in the title somewhere.
You’ll notice that the title of this post contains the keyword phrase “SEO copywriting,” but it’s positioned at the end of the title. That’s because I go with the more compelling headline first and foremost. But I can serve an alternate title in the title tag (which is the snippet of code Google actually pulls the title from) thanks to a post feature in Thesis (also available with the All in One SEO plugin for WordPress).
So, I can always enter a more search-optimized alternate title later, such as:
SEO Copywriting: The 5 Essential Elements
The emphasis on keywords in the title makes practical sense from a search engine standpoint. When people search for something, they’re going to want to see the language they used reflected back at them in the results. Nothing mysterious about that.
Having keywords in your title is also important when people link to you. When your keywords are there, people are more likely to link to you with the keywords in the anchor text. This is an important factor for Google to determine that a particular page is in fact about a particular subject.
You should try to keep the length of your title under 72 characters for search purposes. This will ensure the full title is visible in a search result, increasing the likelihood of a click-through.
SEO copywriting is not just about ranking. It’s also about the presentation of your content in a search engine. The meta description of your content will generally be the “snippet” copy for the search result below the title, which influences whether or not you get the click.
It’s debatable whether keywords in your meta description influence rank, but it doesn’t matter if they do or don’t. You want to lead off your meta description with the keyword phrase and succinctly summarize the page as a reassurance to the searcher that your content will satisfy what they’re looking for.
Try to keep the meta description under 165 characters so the full description is visible in the search result. Again, you can create a meta description in WordPress right in the posting area with Thesis or All in One SEO.
Unique and frequently updated content makes search engines happy. But you know that part. For search optimization purposes (and just general reader-friendliness) your content should be tightly on-topic and centered on the subject matter of the desired keyword phrases.
It’s generally accepted that very brief content may have a harder time ranking over a page with more substantial content. So you’ll want to have a content body length of at least 300 words.
It might also help to bold the first occurrence of a keyword phrase, or include it in a bulleted list, but I usually don’t get hung up on that. It’s also debatable whether including keywords in subheads helps with ranking, but again, it doesn’t matter – subheads are simply a smart and natural place to include your keyword phrase, since that’s what the page is about.
Which brings us to . . .
Keyword frequency is the number of times your targeted keywords appear on the page. Keyword density is the ratio of those keywords to the rest of the words on the page.
It’s generally accepted that keyword frequency impacts ranking (and that makes logical sense). Keyword density, as some sort of “golden” ratio, likely does not. But the only way to make sense of an appropriate frequency is via the ratio of those keywords to the rest of the content, so density is still a metric you need.
In other words, the only way to tell if your repetition of keywords is super or spammy is to measure that frequency against the overall length of the content. A keyword density greater than 5.5% could find you guilty of keyword stuffing, and your page could be penalized by Google.
You don’t need to mindlessly repeat keywords to optimize. In fact, if you do, you’re likely to achieve the opposite result.
Linking is the fundamental basis of the web. Search engines want to know you’re sufficiently “connected” with other pages and content, so linking out to other pages matters when it comes to search engine optimization.
Here are some “rules of thumb” for linking based on generally accepted best practices:
Again, these are guidelines related to current best practices. Don’t get hung up on rules; focus on the intent behind what search engines are looking for – quality search results for people.
There are other elements as well, such as URL structure and keywords, keywords in image alt files, tags and categories, and various other minutia (here’s a list of on-page elements and their varied importance). If you focus on the five areas above, however, you’re covering the vital elements of effective on-page optimization.
I know there are a lot of SEO ninjas out there who might be reading. What would you add as a vital on-page optimization element? Let us know in the comments.
Up next: Does Writing for People Work for SEO?
About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and CEO of Unglued Media. Get more from Brian on Twitter.
Google has just started releasing a series of videos documenting the story behind the company’s new phone, the Nexus one. In the first episode, various people who worked on the design of the phone talk about some of the decisions that were taken to make the Nexus One the most advanced mobile on the market today.
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The machine works by having a magazine of dominoes that is dragged along the table and a slider that moves back and forth sliding one domino out of the magazine at a time. All along, the machine is driving forward, which causes the released dominoes to be spaced out.
[Via Woodgears]
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If you're a hunter, are you wasting your gift chasing shiny but ultimately worthless objects?
And if you're a farmer, are you wasting your resources by planting and nurturing a crop that's fashionable but without real value?
It might be fun to win a Grammy or dominate your category in terms of market share, but what's it worth if it doesn't support the actual goal?
Marketing is more powerful than ever. We have more leverage than ever before. Which makes picking your milestones and your goals more critical than it has ever been.
52framework is a CSS framework which aims to provide an easy way to build websites using HTML5 & CSS3 while still supporting all modern browsers (including ie6).
It uses HTML5 tags like header, nav, section, article, footer or new input field types like url, email, etc. The framework also has a HTML5 compatible reset stylesheet.
52framework uses the new ::selection selector that enables you to customize the properties of selected text.
It can apply rounded corners for any block level element, text-shadow for text elements & more.
The framework also includes styles for creating grids: 16 column, 52 pixel based with 8 pixel gutter.
52framework is a user-contributed resource & you can easily send suggestions to improve it further.
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Don’t leave things to chance when you leave the office for any significant period of time. Here’s how to keep your campaigns running smoothly. …
Q: What do Snoop Dogg, David Beckham, and Star Wars all have in common?
A: Shoes.
Adidas is launching a line of Star Wars shoes, and somehow the obvious spokespeople are a rapper and a soccer player. In any case, today saw Darth Vader and a group of stormtroopers along with people in Adidas jumpsuits (who rather looked as if they were being escorted to their execution) marching through Times Square. They were there to hang with Snoop for the product launch at the NYC Adidas store.
There’s probably some joke in here about sneakers being invaluable for Star Wars geeks running from bullies in high school.
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gMap is a lightweight (2kb) jQuery plugin for easily integrating Google Maps into any website.
It can embed a map with a tiny function like:
$("#map").gMap();
and can be customized further with settings like:
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Ajaxed Add-To-Basket Scenarios With jQuery And PHP
Free Admin Template For Web Applications
jQuery Dynamic Drag’n Drop
ScheduledTweets
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