HTML5 is going to be big and there's no doubt about it. While we are still some way off before we get some fancy HTML5 features, it's a good idea to start using HTML5 DOC type's in your site and even start using the elements which make HTML5 so great.

In HTML5, each element now has a Header, Section and Footer, you can then nest each element with sub elements of the same. It makes for clean and easy to read HTML code. While this will never really benefit the user, it makes good practice and makes it easier to come back and make changes later.

Using HTML5 today means you can then add more fancy elements later down the line when they come a reality. By the end of this year you're going to see some nice HTML5 animations, games and 3rd party developments to use on your site.

Original post on Squidoo

A microsite is an Internet web design term referring to an individual web page or a small cluster (around 1 to 7) of pages which are meant to function as a discreet entity within an existing website or to complement an offline activity. The microsite's main landing page most likely has its own domain name or subdomain.


Microsites are typically used to add a specialized group of information either editorial or commercial. Such sites may be linked in to a main site or not or taken completely off a site's server when the site is used for a temporary purpose. The main distinction of a microsite versus its parent site is its purpose and specific cohesiveness as compared to the microsite's broader overall parent website.

Microsites used for editorial purposes may be a page or group of pages that, for example, might contain information about a holiday, an event or similar item which gives more detailed information than a site's general content area may provide. A community organization may have its main site with all of the organization's basic information, but creates a separate, temporary microsite to inform about a particular activity, event or similar.

Often, microsites will be used for editorial purposes by a commercial business to add editorial value. For example, a retailer of party goods may create a microsite with editorial content about the history of Halloween or some other holiday or event. The commercial purpose of such editorial microsites, (beyond driving product sales), may include adding value to the site's visitors for branding purposes as well as providing editorial content and keywords allowing for greater chances of search engine inclusion. Normally, microsites do not contain web applications.

Microsites may be used for purely commercial purposes to create in-depth information about a particular product, service or as editorial support towards a specific product, such as describing a new technology. A car manufacturer, for example, may present a new hybrid vehicle and support the sales presentation with a microsite specific to explaining hybrid technology.
With the prevalence of keyword contextual advertising, (more commonly referred to as Pay per click or PPC), microsites may be created specifically to carry such contextual advertising. Or along a similar tactic, they're created in order to specifically carry topic-specific, keyword-rich content with the goal of having search engines rank them highly when search engine users seek such content topics.

An additional benefit of a microsite is that it can lower your PPC cost because the microsite can focus on specific keywords improving your Quality Score therefore lowering your cost per click.

Original Content from: Wikipedia

Born sometime between the launch of the VCR and the commercialization of the Internet, Americans 18-34 are redefining media consumption with their unique embrace of all things digital. According to Nielsen and NM Incite’s U.S. Digital Consumer Report, this group—dubbed “Generation C” by Nielsen—is taking their personal connection—with each other and content—to new levels, new devices and new experiences like no other age group.
The latest Census reports that Americans 18-34 make up 23 percent of the U.S. population, yet they represent an outsized portion of consumers watching online video (27%), visiting social networking/blog sites (27%), owning tablets (33%) and using a smartphone (39%). Their ownership and use of connected devices makes them incredibly unique consumers, representing both a challenge and opportunity for marketers and content providers alike. Generation C is engaging in new ways and there are more touch points for marketers to reach them.

Who is Generation C

No, this is not about a new niche generation of youngsters born between March 12, 1988 and April 24, 1993; the C stands for CONTENT, and anyone with even a tiny amount of creative talent can (and probably will) be part of this not-so-exclusive trend.

So what is it all about? The GENERATION C phenomenon captures the an avalanche of consumer generated ‘content’ that is building on the Web, adding tera-peta bytes of new text, images, audio and video on an ongoing basis.
The two main drivers fuelling this trend? (1) The creative urges each consumer undeniably possesses. We’re all artists, but until now we neither had the guts nor the means to go all out. (2) The manufacturers of content-creating tools, who relentlessly push us to unleash that creativity, using — of course — their ever cheaper, ever more powerful gadgets and gizmos. Instead of asking consumers to watch, to listen, to play, to passively consume, the race is on to get them to create, to produce, and to participate. 

The way clients view SEO has evolved and grown-up a lot over recent years. SEO measurement now needs to ensure that the key performance indicators (KPIs) from campaigns are based around return on investment (ROI) and revenue. While previous SEO metrics such as rankings and traffic are still a good indicator of SEO success, they aren’t a clear measurement of performance at a business level.

Typical Business Goals vs. SEO Goals

Business Metrics	SEO Metrics
Revenue	Organic Search Traffic
Net Profit	Year-on-Year Search Traffic
Volume of Sales	Non-Branded Search
Average Order Value	Target Keyword Rankings

 

The table above highlights what I’ve found to be a common issue with reviewing SEO performance; the metrics aren’t in-line! If key decision makers are looking at business metrics to manage their search marketing budget - we need to understand the value of SEO based on the same goals.

SEO metrics are great indicators to show if a campaign is on track, but it’s not what a marketing director or CMO really needs to analyze performance or justify budgets and their decision to hire you!

Decision Makers Understand the ROI of Paid Search

The paid search model has been understood by decision makers for years. Despite the percentage of organic clicks being much higher than paid, the ROI of PPC is much easier to measure – making it less of a risk and easier to justify and scale budgets.

Having an agency background, I’ve found that client-side SEO is now commonly run by either a search-savvy marketing manager, or in many cases a dedicated search team. Of course, each of these clients will need to justify costs and pitch for SEO campaign budgets from their own board. This means you have to show that if your client increased spend by an extra $10,000 per month on SEO – what can they expect to see in return?

Using the PPC model it’s easy to predict, you can review past performance –average cost-per-click (CPC), cost per conversion and overall ROI. But if you analyze what you spend on SEO costs in a similar way, there’s no reason why you can’t find your SEO CPC, CPA and ROI calculations. It’s just harder to predict the uplift in organic traffic generated via SEO activity and to put a long-term value on this - whereas in PPC, when the budget dries up, so does your traffic.

If you assess budgets in a consistent way to the PPC model, you may find that it costs you $1.00 per click on PPC and your equivalent SEO CPC is $0.50. So then you know you should invest more in SEO!

Alternatively, if SEO is more expensive than PPC – put your budget where it works better for you in paid search instead. But at least it’s a balanced analysis.

One of the major problems with SEO budgets is that no one knows how much they should be spending, whereas in PPC we track ROI so closely that we can scale campaigns to the point that you’re squeezing as much profit/revenue out of a campaign as possible. With SEO we’re not quite there yet.

7 Step Process to Measuring SEO Like PPC

In order to ensure that you're measuring SEO as closely as possible – I would recommend clearly defining your clients business goals. And then looking to measure these using a similar method to the paid search model, as follows:

1. Analyze Organic Traffic Valuation as a Potential PPC Media Spend Cost

This is based on multiplying actual organic search traffic with paid search cost-per-click values (ideally at keyword level) in order to calculate the media spend value of traffic if it were to be paid for (at CPC prices).

2. Calculate the Revenue Value of SEO

This then takes things a step further for e-commerce sites, by applying conversion rate and average order value figures to calculate the value of that traffic in terms of predicted revenue generated.

3. Competitor Gap Analysis

Figure out where you stack up against your competitors. Perform keyword research analysis for a set of key terms, using tools such as Hitwise, SearchMetrics or SEM Rush to find out which keywords competitors are getting traffic from.

4. Potential Market Share

Start to analyze the market more closely. Using tools such as Linkdex you can compare current rankings, predicted traffic levels (calculated with average CTRs) and the total value of clicks (at PPC media spend prices).

From this, you can accurately estimate how much traffic your competitors are getting, the media spend value, and predicted revenue. That gives you a clear picture of the market and the share that you own versus your competitors – giving you a great way to highlight the potential revenue you can generate from search.

5. Make it Actionable

Using tools such as the Webmaster Tools report in Google Analytics, you can now view organic search in a similar way to PPC. This will show you not only the volume of clicks generated, but also impressions, average position and CTRs too.

You can get a clear idea about the potential traffic that is available and how you can make actionable improvements towards hitting targets. Plus it’s one of the best ways around the “(not provided)” SSL search issue that we have available at the moment.

6. Categorise SEO Keywords Into Ad Group Buckets

Break keywords down into categories to make this more manageable (in a similar way to how adgroups work in AdWords). This means that you now know what your targets are, which key areas you need to improve, and where the most potential value of traffic is available.

This leads into creating a project plan to help you achieve these goals, analyzing the top ranking sites for these terms and asking do they have:

• Better/more content
• Stronger/higher volume of links
• Better on-site SEO 
• Etc.

Once you have this information, you can put together a prioritized action plan to measure performance and help you close that gap between competitors.

7. The SEO Forecast

Once you’ve analyzed the market in full and have an action plan to take your SEO strategy to the next level, you can then look to forecast potential improvements. One way to do this is by providing these three levels of predictions to try to set expectations on the targeted success of a campaign:

• Optimistic
• Realistic
• Pessimistic

This should be based on your assessments of the SEO improvements available and market potential to increase results.

The End Result

When you look at things this way, it’s easier to justify budgets and there’s more scope for scaling spend if your SEO campaign is working well. Likewise, by making performance more transparent in this way, it also highlights poor performance quickly too – so it will put the pressure on – so just make sure you get great results!

While SEOs can provide clients with valuable services, some unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. Practices that violate our guidelines may result in a negative adjustment of your site's presence in Google, or even the removal of your site from Google's index. Here are some things to consider:

• Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.

  Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:

  "Dear google.com,
  I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..."

  Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

  Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google.

• Be careful if a company is secretive or won't clearly explain what they intend to do.

  Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or "throwaway" domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google's index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it's best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to "help" you. If an SEO has FTP access to your server, they should be willing to explain all the changes they are making to your site.

• You should never have to link to an SEO.

  Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of "free-for-all" links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don't affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines -- at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.

• Choose wisely.

  While you consider whether to go with an SEO, you may want to do some research on the industry. Google is one way to do that, of course. You might also seek out a few of the cautionary tales that have appeared in the press, including this article on one particularly aggressive SEO: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002002970_nwbizbriefs12.html. While Google doesn't comment on specific companies, we've encountered firms calling themselves SEOs who follow practices that are clearly beyond the pale of accepted business behavior. Be careful.

• Be sure to understand where the money goes.

  While Google never sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results. Some SEOs will promise to rank you highly in search engines, but place you in the advertising section rather than in the search results. A few SEOs will even change their bid prices in real time to create the illusion that they "control" other search engines and can place themselves in the slot of their choice. This scam doesn't work with Google because our advertising is clearly labeled and separated from our search results, but be sure to ask any SEO you're considering which fees go toward permanent inclusion and which apply toward temporary advertising.

• What are the most common abuses a website owner is likely to encounter?

One common scam is the creation of "shadow" domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects. These shadow domains often will be owned by the SEO who claims to be working on a client's behalf. However, if the relationship sours, the SEO may point the domain to a different site, or even to a competitor's domain. If that happens, the client has paid to develop a competing site owned entirely by the SEO.

Another illicit practice is to place "doorway" pages loaded with keywords on the client's site somewhere. The SEO promises this will make the page more relevant for more queries. This is inherently false since individual pages are rarely relevant for a wide range of keywords. More insidious, however, is that these doorway pages often contain hidden links to the SEO's other clients as well. Such doorway pages drain away the link popularity of a site and route it to the SEO and its other clients, which may include sites with unsavory or illegal content.

• What are some other things to look out for?

There are a few warning signs that you may be dealing with a rogue SEO. It's far from a comprehensive list, so if you have any doubts, you should trust your instincts. By all means, feel free to walk away if the SEO:

• owns shadow domains
• puts links to their other clients on doorway pages
• offers to sell keywords in the address bar
• doesn't distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear on search results pages
• guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway
• operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info
• gets traffic from "fake" search engines, spyware, or scumware
• has had domains removed from Google's index or is not itself listed in Google

Article Originally distributed by Google

We wanted to know how much that organic traffic was worth to us in terms of equivalent PPC ad spend. So we went to the Google Keyword Tool and looked up the Exact Match estimated CPC for each phrase where we ranked. Then we multiplied that number by the actual visits we received for that Exact Match phrase.

For example, we rank for "call option" which has an estimated CPC (for Exact Match) of $13.66. We got 286 clicks from that phrase in 2011, which would have cost us 286 x $13.66 or $3907 if we had purchased those clicks via PPC. Do that same exercise for all of the phrases that sent us organic traffic during 2011 and you get a number in excess of $100,000. Those are visits we got for free because of our SEO. (Did I mention how much we appreciate our training from SEOmoz yet?)
Cool. So How Did You Get Those Rankings?

Ah, yes. The secret sauce. Because we are grateful to the community here, we are going to share our tactics. None of this is rocket science or breaking new ground. But rather than vague assurances, we can say for certain these tactics worked for us.
On-page optimization. We created an Excel file and mapped our site so we knew which phrase was mapped to which URL. We limited ourselves to one phrase per URL (okay, maybe two phrases if one was the plural of the other). Then we used the Report Card feature of the On Page tools here until we got an 'A' grade for every phrase/URL pair. We did this for about 200 phrases we care about. Yes, it took a while (a little bit of time each day spread over six months).
Internal linking. If a blog article on one concept mentions a concept we have another blog article for then we make sure the first points to the second with appropriate anchor text. We also interlink our Tutorial with our Blog. We actually repeat this process about once every 90 days, so to make sure that older content is referring to newer content (and vice versa) as we add more content pages.

New content. We add at least one page of unique content per week to the site (300-500 words written by us and relevant to our audience). We have a list of phrases we'd like to rank for that we don't currently rank for and tend to create content around one of those phrases each week.

Link building. We build deep links to every page. For some pages, optimized for long tail phrases, it only takes 1 or 2 links with appropriate anchor text to get a decent ranking. But for most of our phrases it requires many more links than that. We wrote a ton of guest blog articles and article marketing articles (non-spun, non-spammy) and posted them on themed (investment related) blogs and sites. An example is this guest post on a PR5 site.

BLU. Blogger Link Up is a free email list where people post requests for articles every day (there are a few of these kinds of sites). If you write something they will give you a link back. Before spending time creating new content for someone else we always check their traffic stats and look at their site. If their site is spammy looking then forget it. But many of them are quality, well-curated sites that will provide a decent link in exchange for quality content.

HARO. If you aren't using HARO you should be. It stands for Help A Reporter Out. You sign up (free) and then get a daily email from journalists looking for sources on articles. If you are relevant to the article they are working on and offer them some expert answers or content they may cite you in their article (and give you a link back). Major publications use HARO and we have successfully gotten links on sites like American Express's OpenForum (PR6 site) through this process. It's not the same as having an expensive PR firm, but it will give you at least some access to the same kind of publications a PR firm would.
Press releases. Never underestimate the links you will get if you issue a press release. We use PRWeb but there are others. Make sure the release is SEO optimized (put in a few links to deep pages on your site). Seems like no matter what you issue at PRWeb there are dozens of sites that will republish your release, creating dozens of new links. Yes, you have to pay for the releases. Do it a couple times a year, minimum.

Forum participation. This does not mean posting spam in forums. This means find where your audience hangs out and provide meaningful participation. After you've established yourself as credible (posted a certain number of non-spam postings) then most forums will let you have a do-follow link in your signature line for each post. Yes, it takes time to read and participate in the forums. You will not only get some link love (for the bots) but eventually but you will also get human visitors who just like what you're saying in the forums and come check you out.
YouTube videos. We weren't sure about this one until we did it, but it's totally worth it. Create a channel on YouTube (which will get you one do-follow link from a PR9 site) and post some videos. We saw a noticeable increase in rankings once we did this. We think that PR9 link really helped.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+: Set up profiles and every time you write a blog entry post it to these outlets.

Chrome for Android will not run Flash Player, the popular software that Apple has famously banned, Adobe confirmed last week.

The acknowledgment was no surprise: Last November, Adobe announced it was abandoning development of Flash for mobile browsers. In other words, Google missed the Flash boat by several months.

"Adobe is no longer developing Flash Player for mobile browsers, and thus Chrome for Android Beta does not support Flash content," said Bill Howard, a group product manager on the Flash team, in an Adobe blog Tuesday.

The stock Android browser included with the operating system does support Flash, noted Howard.

Early hands-on reviews of Chrome for Android also noted that the new browser doesn't support Flash.

Adobe explained its decision to halt work on Flash Player for mobile browsers as necessary to shift resources, notably to its efforts on HTML5, the still-developing standard that will ultimately replace many of the functions Flash has offered.

"We will continue to leverage our experience with Flash to accelerate our work with the W3C and WebKit to bring similar capabilities to HTML5 as quickly as possible," Danny Winokur, the Adobe executive in charge of interactive development, said last year. He was referring to the World Wide Web Consortium standards body and WebKit, the open-source browser engine that powers Chrome and Apple's Safari. "And we will design new features in Flash for a smooth transition to HTML5 as the standards evolve."

Analysts read the move as a tacit surrender to the trend, first seen at Apple, to skip support for Flash on smartphones and tablets. In 2010, former Apple Steve Jobs had famously dismissed Flash as unsuitable for mobile devices because it was slow, drained batteries and posed security problems.

With Google's long-term plan to replace the stock Android browser with Chrome , Flash will ultimately be unavailable on the vast majority of smartphones: According to research firm NPD Group, Apple's iOS and Google's Android powered over 90% of all smartphones purchased in the U.S. during the last three months of 2011.

Experts expect that Flash Player on the desktop will also fade over time as support for HTML5 in browsers and websites expands. Microsoft, for example, has already said it will block the Flash Player plug-in from being installed on the touch edition of Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) within next year's Windows 8.

But Adobe has not thrown in the towel.

Earlier this week the company launched a beta version of a "sandboxed" Flash Player plug-in for Mozilla's Firefox on Windows -- following a similar move in 2010 for Chrome -- and said its next target for boosting Flash security will be Internet Explorer.

Chrome for Android requires Android 4.0 or later, aka "Ice Cream Sandwich," and can be downloaded from the Android Market.

As of mid-week, Chrome for Android was in the No. 190 spot on the Android Market's list of top free apps. The Market also noted that the beta browser had been installed on between 100,000 and 500,000 devices since yesterday.

Original Post from PC World : Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer , on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His e-mail address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

Adobe has made another huge step forward towards the great and powerful HTML5 technology by releasing the public preview of Adobe Edge tool (which by the way you can already download from Adobe labs). As it has been said, Adobe offers a preview of this new software so you could take part in the process of debugging and improving Edge by sending the Edge team your feedback concerning the brand new product. The real fun part is that this is basically the last hope of Adobe in terms of not losing the web animation battle. That’s why it matters so much to all of us.

Adobe Edge is the web motion and designing tool that creates animated content with the help of open source standards such as HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript programming language. It is obvious that with the release of Edge Adobe moves towards the mobile devices which are currently the sweetest piece of the web market pie. It seems that Adobe decided to remind us all that they are not only famous for Flash, but if you think that Edge is going to replace Flash I guess it is not quite right. Well, at least it won’t happen in the nearest future. It is just an additional software for mobile developers that may be a part of a powerful tandem with other tools. Also don’t forget about Wallaby project – Flash to HTML5 converter from Adobe, it still remains one of Adobe’s priority directions and can be considered a software complimentary to Edge and Flash.

Major features
User interface attracts with excellent easy timeline panel and additional toolbars. Of course those web developers who worked with Flash editor or After Effects will find many adoptions in the Edge’s interface but with easier usability level.
File import feature allows you to import SVG, PNG, GIF, and JPG web graphic files. SVG is not fully supported at the preview version and Edge developers promise more “SVG freedom” in the future.
Compatibility is the issue that is the most important to the majority of mobile developers. Adobe Edge is compatible with all major mobile web browsers that have HTML5 support (including iOS, Android, HP webOS and Blackberry mobile browsers) and all desktop browsers with HTML5 support.
The output standards are very promising for web developers because Edge not only reads but also writes HTML, CSS and JavaScript files. Edge uses JSON (stands for JavaScript Object Notation) data structure to store animated content which gives flexibility and reliability in working with animated files.
Adding animations wouldn’t deeply affect the HTML file because Edge’s technology creates a separate JavaScript file so Adobe Edge clearly differentiates between the original HTML and the code that you’ve compelled for animation.

Original post from Template Monster