Category Archives: Headline

  • 06
    May 09
  • 2

Looking forward to SMX London

Category:Events,Headline Tags : 

After just returning from speaking at A4U a new challenge awaits. In two weeks time SMX London starts. This event is organized by Third Door Media, the company behind the Search Engine Land. Host is Chris Sherman who I met for the first time in New York a couple of months ago. I’m very much looking forward to this SMX for a couple of reasons.

Speakers
First of all the conference has got a lot, and I really mean a lot, of good speakers present on the speakerslist. Names like Rand Fishkin, Christine Churchill and Mike Grehan are always good to listen to. The quality is very high, which guarantees a good time.

Networking
Second at this conference I’m seeing a lot of people I like again. There’s Lisa Ditlefsen and Jon Mayers, both bloggers at Searchcowboys, which I really look forward to seeing again. And there are more people, both on and off the speakerslist who are great to meet up with. People like Dave Naylor, again Mike Grehan, Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Dixon Jones and Judith Lewis are great to talk to and hang out with.

Speaking!
Third, a very important one! I’m speaking myself! Originally I was supposed to speak at two sessions. The linkbuilding session, which I also performed in at A4U, got cancelled because SMX wants to keep more focus on the advanced track. They therefore canceled the entire track in which also my linkbuilding session was placed. But I’m scheduled to speak in another session.

On the first day I will talk in the Search Issues Track in the session "Searchscape: Latest Stats About The Search Engines". I want to give the audience a view on what’s going on in the European market: which search engines are the most used, what are the differences in Europe, how do people (differently) use these search engines and where are we heading. It’s a subject with a lot of numbers, but I will make something special out of it!

Finally why I look forward to SMX London is the final part: London. A great city where I always like to come.

If you want to see me speak or just want to be there because the conference is so good, come! At Searchcowboys you can get a 15% discount, I’m hoping to see you there!

  • 04
    May 09
  • 1

“Advertising 2.0”: it makes me happy

Category:Headline Tags : 

Everybody hates commercials. There’s no television show I can put on without first having to see commercials. But why are these commercials so annoying? After all they are important. They pay for the programs and make sure we want to buy what we buy. After all, would you have bought that Samsung tv if Samsung hadn’t advertised for it?

There is a change going on though. People don’t want to be ‘forced’ to waych commercials. They want to choose if and when they watch them. Therefore commercials on YouTube are watched more often. Besides that, commercials have to be a lot more creative.

The video I found on YouTube is in my opinion a great example of ‘advertising 2.0’. This kind of commercial makes me happy. T-Mobile is giving the right example. It brings people together to do a fun thing (in this case singing) and make the ‘brand’ T-Mobile a fun brand.

It’s not the first time T-Mobile has done this. Earlier this year they did a probably even better one, with dancing.

  • 25
    Feb 09
  • 0

A checklist for website launches

Category:Headline,Projectmanagement

The launch of a website is a very intense period. Every step taken in the project have to come together at that point. Everything has to be correct. Still to often it goes wrong.

The reasons for the failure of such a process are multiple. One thing that happens most is that people tend to panic because everything HAS to go well. That means stress. And when there is Stress people tend to forget things.

At those times its handy to have a checklist. Simply cross off the things you have to do, you won’t forget a thing. The owners of the website "BoxUK" are helping us with that. They published the checklist below. It’s a pretty complete checklist. For some projects things can be cut for others things have to be added. But in general it is the ‘ultimate checklist’.

 

Pre-Launch
Content and Style
  Typography and layout  
     Check for incorrect punctuation marks, particularly apostrophes, quotation marks and hyphens/dashes  
     Check headings for where you could potentially use ligatures  
     Check for widow/orphan terms in important paragraphs  
  Spelling and grammar  
  Consistency  
     Capitalisation (especially of main headings)  
     Tense/Style of writing  
     Recurring/common phrases (e.g. ‘More about X’ links)  
     Variations in words (e.g. Websites vs Web Sites, or UK vs US spelling)  
     Treatment of bulleted lists (e.g. periods or commas at end of each item)  
  Check for hard-coded links to staging domain (i.e. ensure all links will change to ‘live’ URL/domain when site is launched)  
  Ensure no test content on site  
  Check how important pages (e.g. content items) print  
  For re-designs, ensure important old/existing URLs are redirected to relevant new URLs, if the URL scheme is changing  
  Check all ‘Hidden Copy’ (e.g. alt text, transcriptions, text in JavaScript functions)  
Standards and Validation
  Accessibility  
  HTML validation  
  JavaScript validation  
  CSS validation  
Search Engine Visibility, SEO and Metrics
  Page Titles are important; ensure they make sense and have relevant keywords in them.  
  Create metadata descriptions for important pages.  
  Check for canonical domain issues (e.g. variations in links to http://site.com http://www.site.com http://www.site.com/index.html should be reduced to a single consistent style)  
  Ensure content is marked-up semantically/correctly (<h1>, etc.)  
  Check for target keyword usage in general content  
  Check format (user/search engine friendliness) of URLs  
  Set up Analytics, FeedBurner, and any other packages for measuring ongoing success  
  Create an XML Sitemap  
  Configure Google Webmaster Console and Yahoo! Site Explorer  
Functional Testing
  Check all bespoke/complex functionality  
  Check search functionality (including relevance of results)  
  Check on common variations of browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome etc.), version (6, 7, 2.2, 3.1 etc.) and platform (Windows, OSX, Linux)  
  Check on common variations of Screen Resolution  
  Test all forms (e.g. contact us, blog comments), including anti-spam features, response emails/text, etc.  
  Test without JavaScript, Flash, and other plug-ins  
  Check all external links are valid  
Security/Risk
  Configure backup schedule, and test recovery from backup.  
  Protect any sensitive pages (e.g. administration area)  
  Use robots.txt where necessary  
  Security/Penetration test  
  Turn-off verbose error reporting  
  Check disk space/capacity  
  Set-up email/SMS monitoring/alerts (e.g. for errors, server warnings); consider internal and external monitoring services  
Performance
  Load test  
  Check image optimisation  
  Check and implement caching where necessary  
  Check total page size/download time  
  Minify/compress static (JavaScript/HTML/CSS) files  
  Optimise your CSS: use short image paths; make full-use ‘cascading’ nature of CSS, etc.  
  Check correct database indexing  
  Check configuration at every level (Web server, Database, any other software e.g. Content Management System)  
  Configure server-based logging/measurement tools (e.g. database/web server logging)  
Finishing Touches
  Create custom 404/error pages  
  Create a favicon  
Post-Launch
Marketing
  Social Marketing: Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Facebook, Stumbleupon, etc.  
  Submit to search engines  
  Set-up PPC/Google Adwords where necessary  
  Check formatting of site results in SERPs  
Ongoing
  Monitor and respond to feedback (direct feedback, on Social Media sites, check for chatter through Google, etc.)  
  Check analytics for problems, popular pages etc. and adjust as necessary  
  Update content  

 

PS Are you interested in a workshop on how you can manage a project like this? Get in touch!

  • 31
    Dec 08
  • 0

Happy new year!

Category:Headline,Weblog

That everyone will find what they are searching for in 2009 and most of all: all the happiness and good health in 2009!

Happy new year!

  • 09
    Dec 08
  • 0

LeWeb’s economic downfall?

Category:Events,Headline Tags : 

I’m visiting Le Web at this moment. LeWeb is one of the biggest conferences about the Web in Europe. This morning the fourth edition kicked off. I wrote posts about it on DutchCowboys and Searchcowboys. There you can read the reports on for example the talk of Nikesh Arora, one of Google’s major players in Europe.

Until now (lunchtime) LeWeb has not yet brought that what I expected. The atmosphere last year seemed a lot better and inspiring. Somehow it seems as if the economic downfall has hit this conference too. The heating is off (cold!) and the food was gone very fast. And that was not because there are a lot of people here, but because there was litlle food… Finally getting online was a disaster. After almost two hours I succeeded to get online on a press-spot. Not through the ever slow wifi but through a cable.

Let’s hope things get better soon. The list of speakers could do it, and the visitors off course, because there are a lot of interesting people here!

Do you want to follow LeWeb? You can do that! Below you can see the stream and there is a live community on which you can follow LeWeb.

And off course you can stay tuned at Dutch Cowboys and Searchcowboys!

Short bio

* Highly sought-after professional keynote speaker, trainer and strategist
* Awarded European Search Personality 2015
* More than 15 years of web experience
* Award winning consultant, trainer and professional speaker
* Founder of State of Digital
* Longer bio here

Bas van den Beld - Communicate like a pro - Get in Touch!