The popular online marketing slogan ‘content is king’ not only refers to the importance of writing engaging copy that also speaks to search engines. It also refers to the broader idea of understanding your medium and how your audience consumes content, including video, music, and images, within that medium.

This is especially the case when part of a new gadget’s hype is built around the groundbreaking ways it enhances our content consumption. After all, what is a nifty piece of technology without the amazing things that it can show us, customized for our specific interests?

Continue reading →

Even though keywords in your tweets are now showing up in Google’s real-time search results, people are still skeptical about the value of using Twitter.  Webcopyplus is here to tell you that in addition to increasing your social media ROI, Twitter can help make you a better person.  In fact, we’re going to show you how you can use Twitter to become a charismatic, hilarious, philanthropic superstar — without every having to leave the comfort of your glowing screen.

Continue reading →

When MSN’s Bing was launched last year, it arrived with a new look, featuring photos to entice users. Well, it looks like Google’s starting to flirt with that strategy…

Continue reading →

What is an SEO writer? That was a question at a recent web writing workshop, and one that gets asked frequently by business owners learning about the Web.

An SEO writer, or SEO copywriter, is basically a writer who develops keyword-rich website content.

Well-researched, keyword-rich content is a highly effective online marketing tool savvy businesses use to gain high search engine rankings, and generate leads and sales.

Accordingly, it’s the job of the SEO writer to effectively optimize website content with keywords that align with popular search terms.

Continue reading →

Copywriters, designers, developers — they all have a part to play in building a successful website.

Like life, there are sequential stages of progression. A child learns to lift his head, turn over, sit up, crawl and finally walk and run.

As Stephen Covey points out in his best seller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he states: “Each step is important and each one takes time. No step can be skipped.”

This hold true for websites as well. The planning, copywriting, design and development take time, too, and need to be a part of the process.

Otherwise, skipping any of these steps cause websites to fall flat on their faces.

Microsoft Sites held the largest share of time spent online among the top worldwide properties in Europe (16.8%), Latin America (35.9%) and the Middle East/Africa (33.1%), reported comScore.

Yahoo Sites captured the largest share of time online in North America with 11.2% share, while also attracting a notable 7.9% share of time spent online in the Asia Pacific region.

Google Sites commanded a strong share of time spent online in Latin America (19.4%), Middle East/Africa (9.7%), Europe (9.6%) and North America (9.1%).

Other notables:

Facebook.com, which continues to see significant growth on a worldwide basis, was the fourth most engaging destination with visitors spending 1.4 billion hours on the site in September, up 193% from the previous year.

In September 2009, nearly 27 billion hours were spent on the Internet globally by a record online population of 1.2 billion Internet users age 15 and older.

Read the full release.

New York Times reports today’s Internet is “flatter” and “more densely connected” than ever before.

The newspaper notes there are only 30 large companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and YouTube that account for a disproportionate 30% of all Internet traffic.

Consolidation is not the only trend revealed by the new findings. There’s also an abrupt decline in peer-to-peer traffic, which only two years prior peaked at 40% of all traffic worldwide. Today, peer-to-peer traffic has dropped down to 18%.

Why the change? NY Times explains: “For the most part, the file-sharing that took place on networks like Limewire and Napster back in the late 90s and early 2000s, has now been largely replaced by streaming video thanks to sites like YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix.

“Given easier and less technical ways of accessing media, consumers have begun to shift away from the headache of P2P to these new and often free or ad-supported sites.”

Read the entire article: Google Accounts for 6% of All Internet Traffic.

Anchor Intelligence identified a click fraud ring being run out of China, which involved 200,000 different IP addresses and racked up more than $3 million worth of fraudulent clicks across 2,000 advertisers in a two-week period.

Click fraud occurs when someone sets up a website, signs up with an ad network, and then clicks on the ads to generate ad revenues with false clicks. DormRing1 operated the same way, except it easily involved more than 1,000 people who set up more than 10,000 Websites to spread out the fraud.

Read the full Tech Cruch article: Massive Chinese Operation DormRing1 Uncovered.

Before you start your website’s development, it’s a good idea to determine who will be in charge of website updates and how much time will be required to stay on top of them, suggests Brad Haima of Circle, an Abbotsford-based Vancouver web design firm.

“Many companies have great expectations but are often too busy to do simple website updates,” said Haima. “Having a good game plan ahead of time will allow you to prepare for how much time and staff you are willing to commit to website updates.”

He points out there are a number of pros and cons for each site editing option:

Outsourcing to a Web Design Firm

Pros:
1. Work will be done professionally and reflect the image your company deserves.
2. Because each page is edited manually your site can have a unique look throughout rather than a website that uses the same template over and over on every page.
3. Many web firms can also provide automated software solutions.

Continue reading →