In case there was any doubt about the spread of mobile Internet usage, here's a video showing the spread of Android smart phones and tablets, from 2008 to now.

It would be interesting to see a similar graph for Apple's iOS.

Global Android Activations

Besides, it's a cool video.

And then there's the CEO of Google, in this video, talking about how much faster mobile usage is growing - faster than even they predicted:

Mobile Growing Faster Than All Our Predictions

This generally excellent article covers issues to address when redesigning a website, in regards to Search Engine Optimizatiion:

8 Necessary SEO Steps During A Website Redesign

It does omit how to do redirects so you don't lose your existing rankings - a subject which is thoroughly covered in Google Webmaster material (see: 301 redirects).

Usually people pay attention to NONE of these factors, because neither the client nor the designer understands SEO.

At best that is a big waster of time and money since a lot of this takes no or little extra effort.

Done later it can be a major pain, even requiring a complete additional redo or rebuild of the site.

The hunt for top search engine rankings is only a small part of Internet Marketing.

Of course that's what people (clients) have heard of and want. And should have.

But what about such not-so-subtle factors as "What happens once they arrive on my site?" and "Is anyone really searching on those terms?"

They can easily make the difference between complete failure and spectacular success.

Here's an excellent article on the subject:

I'm Ranking So Where's My Traffic?

Pay attention class.

Google announced yesterday a major update to their search algorithm.

This is interesting in part because they usually do NOT make announcements of such, and if they ever talk about them, it is usually well after the fact.

However, there has been a LOT of talk about search quality recently - much of it critical of Google.

In recent weeks Google has done a lot on this. Some of it talk (explaining things, talking about what they are up to, attacking Bing).

They also penalized three major websites - J.C. Penney, Forbes, and Overstock.com - for cheating.

They added a feature to their Chrome browser that lets you blacklist a site for your own searches - and reports on it to Google.

Now they've announced "a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries" "to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful."

The complete announcement:

Finding More High Quality Sites in Search

I think we are getting the message they are serious about improving Search Quality.

Google launches a lot of free services and tools. Some of these work out, some don't. Some prove invaluable.

One I think is useful is their Documents Viewer which lets you view many file formats on websites online without having any corresponding program installed on your computer.

This can be very useful with certain file formats where you don't want to have to purchase a program, or run a very large program just to look at a file.

They've added several file types to their capability including Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator

Announcement: Twelve New File Formats in Google Docs Viewer

There's a mobile version of it as well.

The viewer is here: Google Docs Viewer

Do you tweet?

That's the verb used to describe the action of communicating on Twitter, usually described as a "micro-blogging" service.

A what?

Let's make this real simple. A short intro to Twitter, currently used by 8% of Americans, and rising.

I'm going to assume you know what email is.

So imagine your emails were limited to 140 characters and that instead of sending an email to one or more specific people, they were broadcast to the universe.

People can then find your tweets in one of several ways:

1. People who have elected to "Follow" you, will automatically see your tweets when they are logged into Twitter. Recent tweets from everyone you are following are displayed in chronological order, most recent at the top.

2. People will "re-tweet" tweets they like or want to spread. So if someone you are following re-tweets a tweet, you'll see it too. Re-tweeting is as easy as pushing a button, so that makes Twitter a great tool for virality.

3. You can search for tweets from or referring to a particular Tweeter, by name (identified with a "@" symbol, like @billgates).

4. You can search for tweets by subject if the tweets use "hashtags" which start with a "#" (hash mark). So tweets often use hashtags to "tag" a tweet as to what it is about.

Got it?

Not for everyone. But useful (or fun) for many.

A wonderful graphic illustration at how slow Microsoft is in upgrading Internet Explorer, compared to all other major browsers.

Modern Browsers SHIP

As a result IE is always at least a year or two behind everyone else.

This holds up the widespread implementation of new and better web technologies.

It also continues to erode IE's market share.

What, if anything, is Microsoft going to do about it?

No, I'm not talking about Civil Rights.

Social media such as Twitter, Facebook are as valuable as they are easily used - and that means integration with many other programs, devices, and applications.

Companies are frantically busy producing newer, better integrated versions of their software to deal with this. Even though market penetration for most social networking programs is still low (Twitter is in use by only 8% of the U.S. market), Facebook is huge.

And everyone expects the whole Social area to just keep growing.

Plus, Social reaches a lot of the prized Innovators, Early Adopter types - not to speak of a younger crowd in general.

So no surprise that just yesterday, both Firefox and Google rolled out significant upgrades to their Social Media capabilities.

Announcements:

An Update To Google Social Search

Mozilla Makes Firefox More Social

Watch for this trend to continue.

In the last few days there have been articles on Forbes.com and J.C.Penney getting in trouble with Google for cheating.

In a new short video, Google's spokesman for Search Quality, Matt Cutts explains in some detail, how to get into trouble with Google - and how to get out of it.

If giant companies like these can get in trouble, you might want to exercise a little caution when someone knocks on your door and promises you great rankings overnight for $99.

It's not that I'm trying to drum up business.

It's just I keep having the same experience over and over again.

Someone is trying to run their own click ad campaign.

We are contracted to manage their Internet Marketing. As part of the process, we review and take over managing their click ad campaign (Google AdWords, or Bing's equivalent).

We discover that they are wasting LARGE portions of their spend (as much as 90%).

AdWords is complicated, there are all sorts of options, and default settings don't necessarily produce good results.

If you must do it yourself:

1. Start with a small spend (daily budget limit).

2. Revisit the campaign every few days. Study the statistics. Think about what the numbers mean. Explore the options.

3. Do the Google AdWords professional training program online. You'll find out about all those nooks and crannies like the four different match types, Display versus Search, the different ways of specifying where geographically your ad will run, etc.

4. Plan on taking months just to find out if it will be cost effective for you.

Discouraging?

Reality.

Click ad campaigns are a VALUABLE part of many Internet Marketing Programs.

They aren't for amateurs.

Sorry to have to be the one to break it to you....

"Black Hat" Search Engine Optimization is any method of trying to trick Google into giving high rankings.

Mostly this falls into two categories:

1. Showing Google something different than you show visitors to the site. This is called "cloaking" and there are many ways of doing so. Google knows all of them.

2. Setting up links to a site to make it look like the site is popular, when that isn't really the case - for example by buying links.

It has long been known - and stated by Google - that these can lead to Google dropping your rankings drastically or even removing your site completely from its index.

Now a new video gives more information on this subject - as to when and how Google implements penalties (both automatically through its algorithms, and manually). And also how to escape from Google Hell.

The bottom line? It isn't worth it (trying to trick Google in the first place)..

2011 is the year of mobile.

Per Google:

By the end of 2011, an estimated one billion people around the world will be connected to the mobile web and 50% of all Americans will own a smartphone. Because of the explosion of web-enabled mobile devices, mobile usage is now on a hockey-stick trajectory: searches on smartphones and tablets have increased by 4x in the last year

15% of all searches are now from mobile devices.

Got it?

One of the most powerful methods of getting a message across is to tell a story.

Long testimonials in which the client tells their whole story are MUCH more powerful than an equal number of words in shorter testimonials.

Case histories / case studies that tell stories are a powerful way of communicating what you can do for the prospective client customer or patient.

If the story is about someone in a similar industry or with a similar problem to the prospect's, that's even better.

All the fuss about Google versus Bing, Blekko "The Third Search Engine", search quality issues, and now a major New York Times article on black-hat SEO from, of all companies, J.C. Penney.

So Google or Bing, is that the question?

I don't think so. A recent article trashing Google trashes Bing even worse. And while Bing has its fans, Bing is clearly playing catch-up with Google on, for example, personalization and handling of local searches.

To really frame the debate, you really need to divide Search into at least four spheres:

1. Informational. In most areas, Google does fabulously well on information searches. Bing does well too.

2. Local commercial. Google has put an enormous amount of work into this area over the last year and is mainly doing a fine job of it. Bing does well but clearly not as well.

3. Niche commercial. If you are looking to buy something in a niche market, again, Google and Bing both do well (and their results are very similar).

4. National commercial. This is really where all the discussion and criticism comes in. If you are doing a search for an online store or other non-localized items, such as for major consumer items, results vary. Why?

Too Much Money. There are millions, billions of dollars at stake in the results on organic search for the kind of search terms that get millions of searches each month - and from people looking to buy something.

Take health related searches for example. Health care is 12% of the U.S. economy, trillions of dollars a year. What's it worth to own a top ranking on a term like, say "natural asthma cure"?

The same impulses that lead to a Bernie Madoff lead to many companies investing large sums into various trickery to try and dominate rankings for terms like these.

What's the solution?

It is really questionable whether there is any ultimate solution, but certainly there are trends, and I believe that for this last category, the trend is towards other solutions than Search.

When I'm looking for a book, I don't Google it. I go on Amazon.

What many people know about making the Internet work, is Search Engine Rankings - appearing at the top on Google.

There are a lot of other factors and rankings are really only about 25% of it.

Here's an article, a bit of a rant on the subject. It exaggerates greatly, but it makes a key point: top rankings for WHAT SEARCH TERM or TERMS?

It's easy to get top rankings for terms no one is searching for.

Excuse Me While I Have a Ranking Report Rant

There are a lot of elements of typography that can affect the aesthetics of a design and change the mood of a piece.

Typeface (style of the type) and font size are just the most obvious of these.

One of these, often overlooked, is the spacing between words.

As this article makes clear, it can contribute, or leave a subtle sense of "something's wrong" about a design:

Word Spacing

If there is one thing that will prevent stupid errors in marketing - and which is essential to great marketing - it is the ability to put yourself in the shoes of the people you are trying to reach, to see your campaign the way they would see it.

Claude Hopkins, the father of modern advertising, wrote back in the 1920's that he preferred to market to the common people because he was one. He could understand how they felt, their hopes, desires, wishes, fears, hates. He knew how to speak their language and what would offend them. Or bore them - the worst crime in marketing.

Most businesses don't have the luxury of marketing only to people like themselves. They have to familiarize themselves as best they can with their public (target market) and cultivate the ability to think and see things as they do.

Take the common "Mission Statements" you see from companies.

Who cares?

Yes, you need to have that worked out and known internally amongst your staff and possibly your suppliers.

But your prospects could care less that you say you are "Passionately devoted to ensuring the highest quality products and swiftest service to our customers."

Trust me on this one folks.

From both ends - the Internet Marketer, and as a user of the web - URL Shorteners like goo.gl and bit.ly should carry a mental warning label "Use With Caution."

As a user, you should be aware that a URL shortener can hide a link to what would otherwise be obviously a spammy or dangerous site to visit. So click with caution, have your anti-virus software up-to-date, and be prepared to hit your back button.

For the same reason, these URL shortened links are increasingly being blocked. Meaning if you have such a link on a web page, or in an email, it may not be a functional link at the other end.

The thing is, there is no good reason to use a URL shortener except where characters are at a real premium.

And that means on Twitter, where they are indeed useful.

Otherwise, they may be cute, but pointless at best.

Internet, like Dog Years, run about 7 to 1 human year. Three years is a generation. 10 is a lifetime.

So, the most visited site on the Internet, Facebook, is 7 years old today - or 49 Internet Years.

And if you think that's the exception, Live.com goes back to 1994, if you trace its history to the first public Microsoft website.

And that's the oldest of the 13 most visited websites in the world.

Yahoo also dates to 1994, Yahoo's Japanese site to 2000

Amazon.com was started in 1995.

Google was started in 1998.

QQ (Chinese instant messaging service) in 1998

Blogger 1999

Blogspot in 2000

Baidu (Chinese search engine) in 2000

Wikipedia 2001

YouTube in 2005.

Twitter in 2006

How will it look in another generation (3 years)?

Different.

When it comes to commerce, to a very large degree, mobile = local.

The reverse isn't true.

Only a small percentage of browsing and purchasing online are done on mobile platforms - iPhones and other smart phones, iPads and other tablets.

That is still true when it comes to local businesses, but the percentage is MUCH higher.

Someone looking for a restaurant is much more likely to be on their cell phone, than someone looking for a new supplier of steel I-beams.

In some cases the percentage becomes more than small. That particularly is true for what is called "LBS" - Location Based Services (Facebook check-in, Google maps, etc.).

Yelp - the review / recommendatons / check-in service - reports 35% of their visits are from mobile browsers.

I've been saying this forever it seems, months. This is the year of mobile.

Social Media in their early life are a lot like Multi-Level Marketing. Or a Ponzi scheme for that matter.

Their exponential growth depends a lot on people's spreading the word that they are growing like mad.

At some point reality meets the road. That happens one of two ways. Corruption / fraud / mismanagement / criminality take it down. Or it just fails to deliver.

The best of them meet the challenge, mature, and enter a new phase. But most organizations don't meet the challenge.

MySpace is almost gone. News Corp. is having a fire sale trying to unload it. It couldn't be sustained just by musicians looking for audiences, plus pre-teen girls pretending to be 16.

Now everyone is on Facebook.

But the chinks are starting to show, and I hope Zuck and company are paying attention.

Click-through rates for Facebook ads are declining. Criminals and sharks of all sorts are hacking accounts, finding creative ways to lie, cheat, steal and deceive.

After explosive growth for months in my number of friends, that has slowed WAY down. And guess what?

I'm spending much less time on FB now. I'm on to the Next Big Thing.

Twitter is SO interesting.

Google has proven that Bing steals search results from Google.

After releasing the proof of this, Bing responded by a) denying it; b) saying "of course we do, but it is not big deal"; and c) calling Google names.

Search Engine Land's original article

Google Blog Post

Microsoft response

And the best of all, back and forth tweets between the Internet Giants:

TechCrunch posts tweets

None of our websites were down for more than 5 minutes in the entire month of January. Average uptime was greater than 99.999%