It’s a new year, which brings with it the promise for more frequent blog posts. Our plan of posting one article per week hasn’t exactly panned out over the past few months and it’s something that needs to be rectified. There is no shortage of news and techniques or tools, it’s just a matter of getting those ideas down and posts finished. Hmm… sounds like something familiar.

Also, we want to hear from you! If you have found a specific topic to be especially useful or informative, let us know so we can dig deeper and provide more of it. We want to hear your comments and any critiques you can offer. Don’t worry, we can take it

Just leave a comment on the blog, or head over to our Facebook page and tell us what you think.

We have built a successful software and web development business over the last ten years, and we’re just getting started. Become part of the great team currently taking this business to new heights. You’ll be working in a fast-paced, yet casual environment in Burlington, Ontario.

We are a fun, open, group of friends who, simply put… like making awesome stuff with computers. We work with great clients such as the CN Tower and the Burlington Performing Arts Centre, and despite having high standards, we all enjoy a relaxed, friendly atmosphere. If you enjoy a team environment and being at the forefront of web innovation we’d love to talk to you. Our office is filled with opportunities for people who want to invent the digital future. It’s a big challenge, but it’s a big Internet. We offer competitive compensation and wonderful benefits. If you think you have what it takes to contribute to the continued growth and development at Glacier please get in touch. Positions are on-site.

Position overview: .Net Programmer

We need to add proactive, energetic and skilled team members with, at least, 2+ years’ experience programming for the Internet in ASP.NET and JavaScript. Glacier Digital customers enjoy a quality of technical expertise that makes us distinctive. Candidates are expected to contribute positively to customer experience.

Specifically, we are looking for details-oriented programmers who are driven and love code. Ideal candidates will be passionate about making data beautiful, understand LINQ and will have exceptionally strong skill sets in object oriented programming, data structures and code optimization, be highly organized and understand how to translate client-approved designs into functional applications.

You must have a high level of skill with c#, client-side technologies and client-side debugging tools (Fiddler, Firebug, etc). If you don’t get out of bed for a YSlow or Pagespeed score of less than 97, we should talk.

Qualifications

• 2+ years’ experience programming in .Net.

Responsibilities

• Work closely with project managers consulting on application requirements and information architecture.
• Develop awesome CMS modules, mobile application interfaces and design solutions.
• Work with developers on the build, test and launch of websites.
• Contribute to the development of application design and functionality.
• Provide innovative solutions to client’s problems.

Skills Required

• Expertise with .Net 3.5 (c#).
• Knowledge of Windows Server 2003 (IIS6).
• Knowledge of SQL Server Express/Standard 2005.
• Expertise with JQuery 1.4.
• Expertise with Fiddler and Firebug.
• You should enjoy bending the DOM to your will, crafting rich, performance-enabled cross platform interfaces.
• Knowledge of web standards.
• Manipulate CSS/JS as if they were silly putty.
• Expertise designing modern websites and mobile applications.
• GUI design experience.
• Deep understanding of CSS (you will not be writing CSS).
• Ability to meet agreed upon deadlines.
• Marketing sense and ability to add value to strategy discussions with directors.
• Balance priorities of special projects with ongoing operations.
• Excellence communicating with project managers and staff.

Beneficial (but not required) skills and experience

• Experience working with CMS systems.
• Knowledge of .Net 4.0 (c#).
• Knowledge of Windows Server 2008 R2 (IIS7).
• Knowledge of SQL Server Express/Standard 2008.
• Knowledge of JQuery (most current).
• Knowledge of DNS Zones and records (Windows, Linux)
• Familiarity with Subversion
• Familiarity with virtual environments

Full time employees enjoy a great benefits package.
Glacier Digital is an equal opportunity employer.
This position is a full-time opportunity.

If you would like to submit your resume, please visit the official listing on Workopolis, here : http://www.workopolis.com/EN/job/13444384

A common concern from business owners is that in order to climb the ever changing Google rankings, they will need to update their aging website, potentially spending tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. This may not necessarily be the case, and in fact, optimizing an existing website may be easier than you think.

While there are hundreds of factors that Google uses when determining a website’s search ranking, a lot of them are under your control. A lot of Content Management Systems (CMS) have made this process incredibly easy, sometimes even automatic, but by no means does it mean that older websites cannot be optimized. The process may require more manual adjustments, but the underlying effect can still be pushed to search engines.

Do you have access to your code?

Regardless of whether your website was developed in-house, or by another agency, you should have access to the website code, whether it’s via FTP or a control panel.  This access is critical in order to manipulate or adjust the code for Search Engine Optimization purposes.

Whether you decide to hire an SEO agency to do this work for you, or do it yourself, changes in rankings will not happen overnight. In fact, they could take weeks or even months to have a real impact. Optimizing a website however, is the first step in building a powerful online sales tool. Not only does optimizing a website help search engines effectively crawl, scan and index the pages and content contained within, but it also helps visitors and potential customers find what they need more easily. This will ultimately create more sales conversions.

Quick optimization tips

• Make sure every page has a descriptive, concise Page Title. This is what users see first when they are sorting through the hundreds of search results.
• Write informative, unique META Descriptions. These are the second part of a search result that users see when viewing search results. If you do not have a Description, you leave it up to Google to determine what it will say, which can have negative effects.
• Give all of your images ALT tags. Think about it… does prodshot126.jpg mean anything to you? No, of course not. Google sees the same thing, so renaming the image to 3-iron-golf-club.jpg instead all of a sudden gives the image value and meaning. Can’t change the name of the image? By adding an ALT tag to the image, you provide a similar value.
• Do you have links to other websites? Add this code to the links (rel=”nofollow”). Not only will the links remain, allowing your visitors access to the same valuable resources, but you will retain all page authority (the importance of the specific page in Google’s eyes).
• Content Content CONTENT! If your site is a week old or a decade old, you will always have the ability to change content. There is a gap between what makes sense to humans and what makes sense to robots. Trying to bridge that gap will pay dividends, as users will be informed with quality content, and search engines will be convinced that your website is providing content relevant to visitor search queries.

Just by implementing these few steps, your website will become much more search engine friendly. No matter how old your website is, it will still output HTML. The techniques used above are very basic, however they are also very important and powerful. Also, nothing is ever final so feel free to tweak and change content. As mentioned earlier though, be patient as organic SEO (in case you couldn’t tell, these are basic SEO tactics) can take time. Good luck!

So, unless you’ve been completely disconnected for the last few weeks, you will have likely heard about Google+. This is Google’s latest attempt at breaking through in the very competitive and rapidly expanding social media realm. It’s not their first attempt mind you, but we won’t go into too much detail about Wave, Buzz and their other… let’s call them.. experiments.

They have quite a lot more invested in this project though, and have gone as far as planning to rename the incredibly popular Picasa and Blogger websites to Google Photos and Google Blogs, respectively. Last time we looked this change hadn’t gone through, but it’s planned to happen during the public launch of Google+, since it is still in invite-only beta stage.

Getting an invite however, is as easy as asking one of the over 20 million current users (as of July 19th, 2011)  for one of their unlimited invites. I had approximately 50 coworkers, family members and friends up and running within a few days. NOTE : In fact, leave a comment on this blog post and I would be happy to extend an invite.

After 10 days of frequent use, I have had a great deal of fun using Google+ but it’s not perfect. Here are some of my Pros/Cons.

Great features of Google+ 

• Integration With Other Google Tools.
  When you  want to share a video on Facebook, you need to either have the link ready, or upload the actual video to Facebook. With Google+ it not only features the option to add a video link, but you can also search and post directly from Youtube, or add videos from your cellphone (provided you are using the Instant Upload feature).
  
• That Amazing Notifications Bar.
  The updated toolbar that is present in nearly every Google tool has deep integration of Google+ Notifications. Not only can you check your Google+ notifications while reading your Gmail, but you can comment or +1 the comments without having to visit the Google+ site itself.

  

• Already A Google user? You’re Ready To Go.
  I have been a Google user (or… Google super nerd, Google Poster Boy, etc., depending on who you ask) for as long as I can remember. My phone is running Android, I have been using Gmail forever, my Contacts have been stored on Google’s servers since I got my phone, my Calendars, both personal and professional are, well…. you get the picture. Anyways, upon setting up my Google+ account, I was greeted with a list of contacts taken from my Google Contacts, making it very easy to invite everyone. My Picasa photos were automatically linked up to share, and I can only imagine what else will be enabled in the coming months.
• The Mobile App Might Be Basic, But It’s Already Great
  Last time I checked, mobile usage is growing. Having an app to compliment the great online service seemed obvious and Google doesn’t disappoint. Nearly everything you can do on the browser version can be done on the Google+ mobile app. In fact, the ability to have photos, videos and chats are makes even more sense on a mobile device, while you’re out and about.

Room For Improvement 

While not so much technical aspects of the service itself, there are potential roadblocks that could severely hinder any possibility for future success of Google+.

• Where is everyone?
  At last count, I had 75 people in my circles, however it seems as if only 3 people are actually using it. Don’t get me wrong, I am completely thrilled with every word they type (Hopefully they are reading this), but it would be nice to see a more engaged group. I’m sure this is something that will happen over time but it puts a damper on an otherwise very solid platform.
• The big blue elephant in the room.
  With Facebook amazingly continuing to increase its userbase to now over 700 million, it seems that nothing can possibly get in its way. Google doesn’t just have a hill to climb, it has to find a way to catch up with a speeding train with no signs of slowing down.
• No Business Support (Yet.)
  There is an ‘entity’ request form available for businesses, but until then there is no sign of how the business accounts will appear to the public. One of the issues I’ve found with Facebook is the occasional business account that posts dozens of times a day, cluttering the news feed (my apologies if you feel that way about us!). Keeping business accounts separate is a great idea.

Sure, everyone has seen them. Those funny URLs that don’t seem to make any sense. They show up in Twitter posts mostly, or even on your Facebook wall from time to time. Even Google and Youtube have joined the bandwagon. What I’m talking about, are shortened URLs. The way they work, is instead of using a standard (and long) URL such as http://www.glacier-digital.com/Internet-Marketing/Search-Engine-Optimization.html, shortening services can be used to get them down to a much more manageable, digestible size such as : http://bit.ly/ka1Qci. The reason they were originally created isn’t entirely clear, but (and this is just a theory) it seems awfully suspicious that they were introduced around the time Twitter began it’s quick ascent to the the upper elite of the social media realm. Short URLs feel right at home within those precious 140 characters.

Getting the URLs down to more manageable levels is all well and good, but there’s another reason that interests me a bit more. And this is definitely more up the alley of all the SEOs and SEMs out there. So I apologize if I get a bit nerdy when looking at charts like the one below.



The thing is, with URL shorteners, and depending on the service you are using the shorten them, you can track an abundant amount of data you might not have been able to before. This can include QR Codes scans, Video links, and basically any other type of URL. There is also the ability to install browser plugins, or use the service directly in management applications such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, allowing you to automatically shorten and track all links pasted into the tools.

Give it a try, as I mentioned, even Google is in on it. Shorten a link with Goo.gl

Or, if you want to stick around for a while, read some of our other relevant posts :

• 10 Quick Search Engine Optimization Tips
• Why Being #1 On Google Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be

If you’ve read online offers peddling any number of ‘enhancing’ pills, NBA swag or opportunities to purchase only the most affordable iPads online whilst perusing a forum or the comments section of a blog, then the purveyor of said website is probably in need of some measure of controling spam. The common go-to controls for such precautionary measures are called CAPTCHA, or their adorable little brother SAPTCHA.

CAPTCHA is an absurd acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart” and in its essence is a humanity test; kind of like the one administered in the 1982 movie Blade Runner, but with considerably less suspense. The hope behind CAPTCHA is to stymie a spambot by confounding it with a question or task that rudimentary bot software can’t figure out, but is still something a human with fully-functional fuzzy logic can solve easily.

The most typical implementation of CAPTCHA is through a slightly obfuscated pictorial rendering of a word, such as this disfigurement of my native language below:

I have a few issues with CAPTCHA controls and I suspect most people do as well, upon reflection. On more than one level, they’re kind of offensive. Visually, they’re ugly, and they confuse many users new to the Internet (such as my wizened parents). They rely primarily on visual perception, so people with disabilities are dependent upon developers implementing the responsible version of the CAPTCHA control (such as the Internet’s most popular CAPTCHA tool: reCAPTCHA).

So. Is there a requirement for CAPTCHA or CAPTCHA-like controls on a website at all? Think about this for a moment.

• People hate CAPTCHAs
• Bots hate CAPTCHAs (they’re irrefutably effective…for a while)
• They add another layer of frustration between “spam intention” and the successful “delivery of spam”
• They ruin the design of a page and are a general annoyance for all involved

So when, if ever, does one actually use a CAPTCHA control?

Here’s my best answer:

You use them in a “lesser of two evils” kind of way…and every conditional point here is a potential deal breaker, if it doesn’t check out:

Implement CAPTCHA in any instance where: the number of users on your site, who you may potentially lose because they are offended by spam, is greater than the number of conversions (where conversion is measured as the accepting of user-based website content contribution(value)) your site stands to lose due to CAPTCHAs road-blocking said ease of content contribution delivery.

Or in a less wordy way: use CAPTCHAs on user creation forms or in public forums and then ONLY when that forum allows anonymous posting. Otherwise don’t. You are not a focused target for spammers.

If you roll a CAPTCHA onto a site for any other reason you are potentially limiting conversions and weakening your ROI. Period.

Do not use CAPTCHA on:

• Login forms
• Email forms, where the email is delivered to a single business representative (i.e. NOT a mailing list)
• Authenticated user accounts
• When you have a moderator vetting value from trash before content is published to a user base.

My main point here is that CAPTCHAs have very limited applications to begin with.

But it gets worse.

Despite their limited practical application, CAPTCHAs are less and less viable with each passing day. Since, theoretically, CAPTCHAs are only routinely beaten by a human, all spammers need do to subvert the system is apply an abundance of (presumably affordable) human brainpower. Enter India.

A 10-second Google search will reveal “DeCaptcher” and “Death by Captcha”, which offers an army of human CAPTCHA solvers to you for as little as $1.39-$2.00 USD per 1000 CAPTCHAs, with typical response times in fewer than 30 seconds. For “numbers people” these services also offer reporting on failures, redeemable for credit; however, success rates are typically so high that most do not bother with this, erm…courtesies.

These services work really well with the most common types of CAPTCHA on the Internet, namely reCAPTCHA (remember them?), with slightly lower success rates on some more difficult CAPTCHA styles such as the kind used on the Wikimedia sites.

See where this is going?

I look at the rise and fall of CAPTCHAs as akin to Steve Jobs’ recent denunciation of MobileMe (to be superseded by iCloud). It’s an inevitable replacement to a languishing predecessor. CAPTCHAs had their time when most spam was being blocked successfully; there was a short period where we tolerated the inconvenience and CAPTCHAs enjoyed a bloom of adoption. Then the global economy kicked in and it became affordable for humans and bots to work together in relative harmony whilst spamming the planet: a marriage, of sorts, between the application of human intellect and the toilings of a looping subroutine…each fulfilling their collaborative role to annoy the world.

If you’ve already taken the leap of faith into the daunting, scary world of social media, then you will know that not only is it a very busy environment, but that it can suck a LOT of time out of your busy day. Not only do you need to think of something engaging to say, but you need to figure out the best way to get your message out to as many people as possible. All the while, making sure you don’t bombard your audience with 50+ updates a day.

Whether it’s to discuss industry news, some great new tool or technique you’ve discovered, or even to liveblog at a press conference or tradeshow you’re attending, the world of social media continues to offer a fantastic way to connect with your audience. That audience can consist of existing customers or subscribers who are eager to hear what you have to say, but it can also be those sitting on the fence wondering if they should take that incredibly important ‘next step’.

When I say next step, I am talking the conversion of interest to engagement. That could mean your Facebook page receiving a new fan, your Twitter account receiving a new follower or a retweet, but at the end of the day, your ultimate goal is a sales lead. This is what everyone hopes to achieve from social media, but it’s how they manage, interact and engage with their audience that determines if it will pay off in the end.

With so many avenues with which to reach out to customers, it can be difficult to choose which to use. There are the staples: Facebook, Twitter and to a lesser extent LinkedIn and Foursquare. But there are others that may appeal to your demographic. For instance, if you are in the entertainment industry, Myspace or Stumbleupon might be worth looking at. If you are in the news or media industries, aggregation sites such as Reddit or Digg would be highly beneficial. The point is, there is something for everyone, but not everything will work. Stick with the basics first and branch out as you see fit.

Management

So… you’re social media campaign is now underway. You’ve got a few blog ideas ready to go and have a handful of Facebook fans and Twitter followers (so what if most of them are colleagues and friends at this point). Now what? Litter their walls with non-stop information? Sure, unless you want them to actually read and share your posts.

Scheduling, or at least timing your posts strategically will help ensure you get the most eyeballs for the buck. Late Friday afternoon is statistically the busiest period of the week, but you can’t always hold your breath until then. To start, sticking to 2 or 3 Facebook updates per day will suffice, and the same goes for Twitter updates. You want to display to your audience that your identity has a heartbeat, but isn’t going into shock.

Once you get into a rhythm, you might become overwhelmed with the number of screens open, and go cross eyed looking at statistics from a handful of different sources. This is where social media management tools come in handy. There are a handful of them available, and range from free, to ad supported, to freemium, to enterprise level.

• Tweetdeck.
  A fantastic desktop application tool (and Google Chrome App) that allows for the posting of Facebook (Profile and Page), Twitter (multiple accounts),  LinkedIn and Myspace status updates, and even Foursquare geo-location updates. The ability to integrate with Bit.ly (for shortening URLs and tracking interactions) and to schedule updates for future, timed posts is also available and is very easy to implement. It is also available for nearly every mobile device.
• Hootsuite A very robust web-based management tool, mainly web based (with a mobile app). Highly customizable stream views, and built in monitoring/tracking with custom reports.
• Seesmic
  Very similar to Tweetdeck, featuring web, desktop and mobile based management, it streamlines the social media implementation process. Depending on your UI preference, you may prefer this over Tweetdeck.

Tracking and ROI

After all of that hard work, it would be great to see how effective it’s been. Tracking, analytics and ROI measurement will be able to provide this. Making sure the tools necessary have been installed and are correctly tracking all available data is the first and most important step.

• Facebook Insights
  Enabled by default, Facebook’s Insights provide analytics and the data necessary to display the interactions between you and your Facebook page audience. Accounts are FREE (obviously).
• Tweetmeme
  Allowing users to quickly retweet your articles, blog posts or site content is possible by integrating the Tweetmeme button into your site. Most popular CMS systems have a Tweetmeme plugin available.
• Bit.ly
  The ability to track how many times a link you’ve shared is valuable, especially to gauge the clickthrough rate and effectiveness. Services such as Bit.ly also shorten a link, to make it easy to share and so it won’t take up as much real estate in the notoriously small Twitter update window. Example : http://bit.ly/iAYUzM links directly to this article. *ahem* Feel free to share! Also, bit.ly accounts are FREE.
• Sproutsocial
  A feature rich web based tracking tool. Integrate your Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and Foursquare account into one centralized system for very easy to view reports and statistics. The ability to manage multiple accounts is very handy as well. Accounts start at $9/month with a 30 day free trial.

Check out our other related articles :

• How to run a social media campaign in 4 hours a week
• No time for social media? Think again.
• How to build your social network.

Glacier Digital is very proud to announce a new partnership with Epilepsy Canada. Glacier Digital will be providing a brand new online presence complete with their very own Aumbry Content Management System (CMS). Not only that, but the service and tools provided by Glacier Digital will be free of charge.

Glacier Digital has already received some kind words from the Epilepsy Canada Board of Directors :

Try to imagine our pleasure when we were informed of your fantastic gift to bring epilepsy.ca into the next generation.

On behalf of the Board of Directors, Epilepsy Canada would like to extend our sincere thanks and gratitude to the executives at Glacier-Digital for their generous gift “Creating a New Website for and on behalf of Epilepsy Canada”.

Please let us know if we can be of any assistance and we truly look forward to working with you.

They will have instant, real time access to content changes, image and media uploads, social media tools, search engine optimization, and will be able to drastically reduce online administration time used.

We at Glacier Digital are all very proud and excited to begin work on the new online presence for Epilepsy Canada!

One of the most common complaint from our clients is that they simply don’t have the time to maintain their corporate blog, Facebook page, Twitter account, moderate comments, search for new followers/fans and many of the other tasks associated with social media.

Who can blame them!?  It’s a lot of work.

My advice to them is generally of the kind, yet constructive variety. Something like this : “You need to try to put aside 2 hours a week, or 20 minutes a day to spend exclusively on your social media efforts. Put away your blackberry, turn off the radio/tv, and concentrate.”

What I would like to say, in a much more blunt manner, is along the lines of : “Suck it up! Do it, or you might as well hand your competitors the business because you obviously don’t want it.” Of course, it hasn’t come to that, and I hope it never will.

This diligent work, regardless of how many other tasks might be on the go, is what it takes to penetrate the market and capture the attention of potential customers. Frequency, relevance, and most importantly, captivation are what it takes to engage viewers and keep them coming back for more.

If a company cannot dedicate an individual to managing and maintaining their social media efforts (preferably in marketing or sales), then outsourcing the efforts is the only option. This option still doesn’t get them off the hook entirely though. Who is going to write the blog posts, or reply to a potentially angry commenter?

Only YOU know your business, and it’s up to you to back up your claims and your product.

Social Media is a highly interactive method of marketing, and unless you are on top of it at all times, you will find yourself left far behind with a mountain to climb instead of a mole hill.

You’ve heard it all before. “We can promise you will rank #1 on Google in a week!” or, even better is “If you don’t rank #1 on Google, you don’t pay!”.

What these companies don’t bother to tell you, is that they will get those ranks for keywords you don’t want, don’t need and didn’t ask for. Also, once your website receives those thousands of promised visitors, what will you do with them? Since they were most likely sent to your site via irrelevant or VERY vague keywords, you need to make sure they don’t hightail it.

At the end of the day, conversions are the only thing that matter

I cannot stress this enough. Time and time again, I’ll see a company throw thousands of dollars away on organic SEO or PPC campaigns, drawing all sorts of visitors to their (to put it bluntly) pretty crummy site.

What were they aiming to achieve, besides frustrating their visitors with their cumbersome navigation, poor usability, and complete lack of focus? Was there a goal set in place for the visitors? Probably not.

Converting a website visitor, whether they found your website through organic search, a paid ad, or simply word of mouth, is the most important factor for ANY website. Whether you want a new newsletter subscriber, to sell a product, to have a new member subscribe to a free/paid service, have a contact form filled out and submitted, or if you just want a very specific page to be viewed by as many eyeballs as possible, these are all clear objectives and are what drive a website to succeed.

1. Define The Goal(s) Of Your Website
   Surely you didn’t spend thousands of dollars just to have a page to display your address. Make use of the incredibly useful tool at your disposal and decide what you want out of your visitors and potential customers.
2. Track conversions as they occur, and adjust as necessary.
   This entire process would consist of a lot of wasted effort unless it was tracked effectively. Ensure that tools are put in place to accurately measure conversions, whether it’s done through Google Analytics, Call Tracking, or another service. Has it been a while and you haven’t seen much activity? Perhaps another measurement is in order.
3. Reap the rewards.
   If you begin to use your website as a marketing tool instead of a deadweight, you will begin to realize its potential. You will be able to focus efforts more effectively, while concentrating on what’s most important : your business.

I won’t even get into social media and the unlimited potential it brings to the table once you adopt this attitude. That’s for another week