For those of you that use Pay Per Click advertising as a form of internet marketing – this is VERY IMPORTANT!

What are Breadcrumbs?

Breadcrumbs in website terminology originally referred to a navigational path to show a website visitor the path they took to get to the page they are on – the term comes from the Hansel and Gretel fable. A basic breadcrumb would look like this:

HOME > PRODUCTS > SHIRTS > YOUTH SHIRTS > CLEARANCE

You started at the home page, went through the Products page and so on, until you landed on the Clearance page.

So, how does this apply to Search Advertising?

Basically, what Google has done is allowed, through the coding of your website, the ability to dictate which “breadcrumbs” appear at the bottom of your ad.  Much like this:

Google Adwords Breadcrumbs example

In order for your ad to have breadcrumbs it must meet a few criteria:

1. The ad must appear in the top banner position – ad position 1-3 above organic listings.
2. The ad will only display on searches from desktop computers – not yet available for mobile searches.
3. Only the top level domain can be set to display – an internal page URL would not be eligible. E.g. www.q2im.com/search-engine-optimization would not have breadcrumbs; however, www.q2im.com could.
4. The page must be coded with rich snippets for breadcrumbs. If the site does not have this markup included, Google will not display breadcrumbs for your ad.

So, why breadcrumbs?

Breadcrumbs on a paid add will obviously take up more space and draw more attention to your ad. If you’re competition does not have coding for breadcrumbs, your ad will obviously stand out more, resulting in more traffic to your site. Plus, you will only be charged for the click for the ad headline!

Say you do a search for shoes, originally the ad will display the domain URL to the main page with all the shoes you sell; with breadcrumbs you can now add women’s shoes > designer shoes > kids shoes > mens shoes. If the searcher is actually interested in kids shoes – they can now click on the kids shoes link and land on the page most relevant for their intended search.

BONUS!

Adding the rich snippets to your code will also result in breadcrumbs in your organic search engine results! Again – helping a searcher find the exact page they’re looking for, resulting in more relevant traffic to your site!

Final word

Google has yet to release this officially and only some online ads are receiving these new breadcrumbs. So now is the time to get your website updated with the rich snippet code necessary to get your breadcrumbs to appear organically and in paid search!

Q2 Interactive Media strives to bring you news, information, and updates about changes in the various ways to market your business. The recent release of information about some new changes to Google’s AdWords program should be of interest to any business with a website!

Credit to Searchengineland.com and periscopix.co.uk for information on this exciting new development!

One of our clients needed a way for their users to be able to upload files to a folder accessible to our client in order to conduct their business. Normally we would just create a form with a file upload field that pointed to a folder on the server and attach an email address to it so the client would be notified when a file was uploaded.

Because our client deals with print, the file sizes they deal with tend to be pretty large. This causes a problem because our servers have a maximum execution time of 30 seconds and a maximum file upload size of 16mb for security and server performance reasons.

We discovered that we were able to upload about 7.5 – 9mb before the server killed the script that was uploading the file. I don’t want to compromise the server performance or security so what do I do?

After some research I found a solution. It’s a two part solution that seems to be just as effective as the way we were going about it before the recent changes to our server.

The first part is to sign up for a Dropbox account. Dropbox is free and accessible from anywhere. Doesn’t get much better or more convenient than that!

The second part is to head over to JotForm for Dropbox. Once you are there you can attach your Dropbox account via a simple login process and then you can create a custom form for your clients, users, etc. to upload files to your Dropbox account. Without signing up for an account with JotForm you’ll get 20 submissions per month, but with a free account you’ll get 100. If you think you’ll be getting more than 100 submissions per month, they have a couple of paid plans that might be of interest to you as well.

After you’ve created your form, you can grab the embed script and put it pretty much anywhere that accepts javascript.

The best part about this setup is that, because JotForm hosts the javascript file, they control the file upload size and the maximum execution time and it has no impact on your server’s performance or storage space!

Do you have any similar solutions for file sharing like this? Post them in the comments!

These terms are starting to appear in various places around the web. So, what exactly is Social Search Engine Optimization and how is it different from “Social Media Management“ and “Search Engine Optimization“?

SSO is the idea behind what makes social media so powerful and where Social Media is going and why.

Social Media Management

By now every company, business, and/or organization should have a Social Media Management Strategy in place. Simply put a social media management strategy is how a website, business, or professional individual interacts with the social media networks on the web.

This includes the following activities:

• Blogging
• Facebook Posts
• Twitter Posts
• LinkedIn Comments
• Google+ Comments
• And much more! (but that gets you started)

The idea is to engage with other people – clients, business associates/partners, etc. about your likes, dislikes, comments, views, etc. A business uses these mediums as a strategy to promote products, events, etc.

But what good are all these posts, comments, tweets, etc. if there is no one to seem them or respond to them? That’s where SSO comes into play.

Social Search Optimization

When you tweet something and no one reads it, retweets it, or notices it, then it was pretty worthless, right? Well some might say “no”  because links are created, a history of tweets are kept, etc. but for a social strategy to work properly other people need to forward on your message along.

Social search strategies are designed to reach those people outside of your immediate network – friends of friends, other social circles (Good Google Garb there!).  As the social networks evolve posts, tweets, comments, likes, etc. are indexed and searchable. Those results are then organized and your search results are results based upon the influence of those in your social circles.

For example: How many times have you seen the Facebook ads that say something like: “Mike Paxton likes the Constitution”? – I see this one all the time (thanks Mike).  That’s because Facebook knows that Mike and I have a lot of similar interests; we both work at Q2 Interactive Media, we’ve worked at the same companies in the past , we’ve attended the same schools, we’re connected to a lot of the same people because of those affiliations too. Plus, we like a lot of the same Facebook business pages and groups; so Facebook is using that information to market to me.

How to apply SSO

All of the information about you, your company, products, services, and anything else related to your business or brand MUST be:

• Consistent
• Keyword optimized
• Current
• Engaging

Great Facebook pages (soon to be Facebook Timelines for Brands) have all of these elements. People like the pages and they know that when they like that page their connections are going to see those likes.

What’s coming next?

You notice the search fields at the top of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, etc., right? Well, the social networking sites are beginning to filter those results based on the likes and preferences of your friends. Bing is already integrated with Facebook and if you let it, Bing will change your search results on the Bing site to represent the interests of your friends on Facebook. Google is doing the same thing with Google Social Search or Google Search Plus Your World (GSPYW).

1. Organize your branding, products, services, etc.
2. Get your website ready to convert traffic, answer questions, and engage visitors.
3. Get a social media management plan in place!

And a little bit of free advice

Social media management is best handled by the people in the business! You know who you work with, who your professional contacts are, who your clients are, etc. You know which causes you support, which events you want to attend, what music you like, where you went to school, etc. These are all important networking pieces that will begin impacting your search results and the results of others.

Separate professional and personal social accounts are a good idea. Your professional connections aren’t always personal connections and vise verse!

So if you still don’t think Social Media Management is important, that social media is just a fad, or there’s no real reason to network online…I just don’t know what else to say!

If you need help organizing a social media management strategy or a social search strategy, contact the Web Presence Optimization Team at Q2 Interactive Media

• House Bill H.R 3261 Stop Online Piracy Act – SOPA
• Senate Bill S.968 – Protect IP Act of 2011-PIPA

We decided to enact our civic duty and called our Congressman and Senators to voice our opinion and get their stance.

For Congressional District 5, the representative is:

• Congressman Doug Lamborn (R) – (202-225-4422)

The state’s Senators are:

• Senator Mark Udall (D) (202-224-5941)
• Senator Michael Bennet (D) (202-224-5852)

Congressman Lamborn (R) – Currently Opposed. Website was down at the time of our call “due to large amount of email traffic to the site”. However, we were directed to his Facebook post : “While online piracy is a very real problem, and one that certainly needs to be addressed, it is equally important to maintain Americans’ right to an open
internet; therefore I am opposing SOPA.” - http://www.facebook.com/CongressmanDougLamborn?ref=ts&sk=wall

Senator Udall’s Position (D): Opposed. We were directed to Senator Udall’s website for his official statement on the bill: “Make no mistake, Congress must find ways to stop foreign theft and online distribution of illegal content to U.S. consumers. But, unfortunately, provisions in PIPA appear to create unintended consequences that could stifle U.S. innovation, limit Americans’ free speech rights, increase the risk of cyber-attacks, and undermine how the Internet functions. Such an impact would affect U.S. Internet consumers and entrepreneurs. We can’t allow this to occur.”

Senator Michael Bennet – CO-SPONSOR OF THE BILL. His staffers said Senator Bennet is aware of citizen’s concerns and hopes the bill can be changed. When asked for his official position on the bill as well as a link to the statement, we were directed to a Denver Post article written today which states: “Tuesday Bennet backed away from supporting it in its current form.”

It is clear that the politicians know these bills are bad news in their current state. Modifying the bills in their current state is not enough – they need to start over. The spin is that these bills are good for the economy and will create jobs by allowing the entertainment industry to grow and protect company who’s products are counterfeit and sold online. The government needs this bill to have the power to stop these websites – however, in November of 2011 the government seized 150 websites known for selling counterfeit goods or copyrighted materials.

Often it is hard to sift through the hype and excitement of the movements against or for legislation. For that very reason, here are links to official summaries, supporters, and opponents of these bills.

The official summaries of the bills can be found here:

• Official SOPA Summary
• Official PIPA Summary

Supporters and opponents of the bills can be found here:

• SOPA Supporters/Opponents
• PIPA Supporters/Opponents

Q2 Interactive Media is committed to an open internet! WE oppose the proposed SOPA and PIPA acts. WE will continue to stay on top of this legislation, actions for and against it, and keep our clients informed about what they can do to stay involved.

If you’re interested in Q2′s services please contact Michael Paxton at 719-266-2299 or visit our Website dedicated to design, development, hosting, web presence optimization, and above all – an excellent customer experience!

SOPA is referring to an proposed bill – Stop Online Piracy Act, which can be viewed here: H.R. 3261.

PIPA is the Senate’s version of the bill – Protect Intellectual Property Act.

SOPA is designed to provide intellectual property owners with an avenue to take down websites accused of infringing on copyrights – for example: hosting, streaming, or sharing movies and music; selling knock-off’s such as fake iPhones, iPads, etc.; and even those sites illegally selling prescription medications online.

On the surface that sounds great, right? So what’s the issue?

On the surface of the proposed legislation aims at foreign sites or “US Directed websites”, there is nothing protecting a U.S. website from being targeted. If a complaint is received by an ISP (Internet Service Provider), such as CenturyLink, Comcast, etc., the ISP would be required to take action against the site within 5 days of receiving the complaint – taking down the site. Search Engines would be required to do the same – remove links, ads, etc. Another concern is that the Act grants broad level powers to the Federal Government, which opponents of the bills are concerned it opens the doors for government censorship.

Imagine a competitor decides to report your website! What recourse do you have to keep it active? The bill permits the site’s owner 7 days to respond to the allegations or complaint. However, once you’ve been removed from the search engines, restoring ranking is an organic process – they will not just drop you back where you once were if the allegation is found to be false.

The Internet’s Response: Those of us who make a living through the internet have to protest this blanket legislation. Many websites are planning a “Blackout” on January 18th from 8am – 8pm EST, in response to the proposed legislation – a message to demonstrate what the web could be like, should these bills pass.

Opponents of these bills include just about every major website you’ve ever heard of Ebay, Paypal, Google, Yahoo, Craigslist, Facebook, Twitter, and many, many more.

Here’s a list of the proponents of the SOPA bill.

So, what does this mean for you?

Q2 Interactive Media will be participating in the Blackout. The www.q2im.com website will go dark for 12 hours on Wednesday, January 18th. We urge you to participate. This legislation has not been well thought out. It is wrong for the internet right now.

This bill has been brought about with pressure from Hollywood and the recording industry. Other bills have been proposed that would redefine the existing copyright infringement laws to include the illegal downloading or streaming of protected materials. That is a solution. SOPA and PIPA are not.

Q2 Interactive Media is a web presence optimization company specializing in web development, search engine optimization and marketing.  For more information about Q2 Interactive Media or this article, please contact Michael Paxton at 719-266-2299  x100 or Michael.paxton@q2im.com

Resources:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45501385#.TxX_629STEY

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/17/10175792-google-plans-home-page-protest-against-sopa

http://news.yahoo.com/wikipedia-blackout-websites-wikipedia-reddit-others-dark-wednesday-214444829–abc-news.html

http://marketingland.com/blackoutsopa-a-look-at-the-social-media-movement-that-helped-stall-the-sopa-legislation-3453?utm_campaign=mainfeed&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

These are questions business owners and marketing directors are asking themselves more and more often these days. The answer is relative to the results you want – long term results or short term results.

We can all admit Google is the number one, most widely used search engine in the world. So a primary focus on Google is appropriate.

Google is constantly updating their search engine algorithm, so do not believe anyone that tells you they can offer a guarantee for search engine results! Google even specifically warns against such a guarantee in their general guidelines for SEO: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”. Google’s algorithm is a secret, the best we can do is test, pay attention to what Google says, and roll with the punches.

According to Rand Fishkin at SEOMoz, the annual salary for a full-time, in-house SEO “worker” will cost you between $45,000 – $80,000 per year. You provide the direction, content, an HTML coder, etc. Not to mention the cost of tools to manage and monitor activity, rankings, links, trends, etc.

Many people try SEO on their own – the cost is too much to afford to hire someone in-house and how can you trust some random company to do SEO for you? Some folks are successful! That is until the competition steps it up and buries you. The primary reason is that effective SEO is a full time job. If you cannot spend the time researching, learning the techniques and tactics, and keeping up on algorithm and industry changes. So, the door is open for the competition to sneak up on you outperform the work you’re doing.

Hiring a firm to handle SEO for you is the least expensive route to go. But, which company to hire? Some firms charge as much as $5000/mo per keyword, others claim to charge as little $500/mo for unlimited keywords. There are sneaky tactics that some companies use that do not result in long term results! SEO is an ongoing, natural process of building your online reputation – as an individual, a brand, a company, etc.

Q2 Interactive Media is primarily a website design company, however we also offer additional website marketing services. We build websites with SEO in mind. We manually edit for on-page optimization, monitor rankings, submit to relevant directories,  build relevant back-links, and manage your overall web presence. Call us today or visit our website at www.q2im.com

A Web redesign does not mean a business needs to trash the site already in existence and start from scratch. Often, a website redesign company can offer new, cutting edge ideas to a businesses no matter what the market is or what market conditions prevail. An example of new thinking a website redesign company can bring to the table are new social media tools which will allow visitors of a website to share the information they find on the site with their friends on popular social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

A good website redesign company will also help ensure visitors to any site will have a pleasurable experience when visiting the site. Most people know what it is like to be frustrated on the Web. It can be something as simple as not figuring out how to operate the site, to simple things such as navigating the site and finding the information needed as quickly as possible. A good website redesign company will do a complete evaluation of any existing site and offer ideas on how to better improve user experiences.

Today, the culture and style on the Web changes monthly, if not weekly. It is vital to any business to stay on top of trends to achieve maximum return on investment on the Web.

The area I’m going to focus on today is font usage. There are 18 “web safe” fonts available to us, but sometimes they don’t work with the designs the way we’d like them to.

There are a few different ways we can change font are as follows:

We can create images in our favorite graphics program such as Paint, Illustrator or Photoshop. This gives us the ability to create whatever we want, but it has its limitations as well. Even with proper “alt” and “title” tags, search engines can’t read the text. If a search engine can’t read the text on your site, you won’t get indexed correctly.

Another approach is to upload the fonts you want to use to a folder in your website directory and embed them into your code. While this is effective, it’s tedious and not all browsers read embed codes the same way, so this means writing more code to make your site cross-browser compatible.

A popular alternative to these is called Cufón. It’s a javascript method of embedding fonts and works well. It renders well, makes your site easily editable and is cross-browser compatible (as long as you make sure to use the most current version of the Cufón javascript file on your site). The problem with it is that it renders in your browser as an image which raises the question as to how well your site can be indexed by search engines.

There is a newer way to do things that is searchable, editable and cross-browser compatible. There are a couple of services that I’ve tried. One of them is called Kernest. The other service is called Typekit.

They’ve both got free and paid plans and they’ve both got a similar method of font embed. There are some key differences, though:

While Kernest is geared more toward the “average” user, it’s slow, finicky and unreadable. Also, any time you want to add more than one font to your site, you have to add more and more embed scripts (one per font style).  I only bring is up as a point of reference about why I prefer Typekit as a method of embedding fonts.

Typekit lets you build font kits to be used across your site. The idea being that you build your kit on their website and then it generates a single embed script. It also tells you how big that script is and whether or not it will load quickly. They give you everything you need (regarding fonts) to have a great looking, fast loading, cross-browser compatible site.

If you’ve got other ways or services that you like to use to embed fonts, let us know in the comments section below.