Well ranked in Yahoo

4 days to get page 1 position for lenny kravitz unofficial site - quite good! Let see if I can get a yahoo search results pages indexed from here now :
Lenny kravitz songs

Let's see let's see :-)

Eminem fights back

Eminem has just released a new video - impressed! You can watch it here

bloody adware

Didn't understand what was hapening at first ... the google results were displaying results in top 2 which were not listed in the code!! what !? I thought...is it a trick from google to introduce paid placement ... it had to come from the browser itself if it was not in the code... I got rid of the google bar, but still there!

I eventually found out what hijacked my search engines results pages : Trjan description

Have a look, you may have the same bloody adware on your computer!

happy bithday E-Marketing!

Happy Birthday Internet! No, it is not the creation of the Web which one celebrates today but this anniversay date is still of importance. Advertisement on Internet was born exactly 10 years ago. Ten years since internet changed from being a medium to becoming a true media, and since we discovered that advertisement was one of its principal economic models.

October 27, 1994: An Ad was posted on line for the first time. The site HotWired.com (the online version of the high-tech magazine, which has now become wired.com ) had added to the main page a banner on behaf of AT&T. Produced by the interactive agency Modem Media, the size of this banner, 468x60 pixels, became the standard size for traditional banners.

New MSN Search

You can have a look at the new MSN search, beta version.

I decided to test for Jazar - Good news : in the classic search we are ranked 8, in the new one we are ranked 4. The tool page is coming up though ... mmmg, why!?

If I do jazar content management, I found us ranked number 1 - normal.

SEO Note: Using a link to a search results page is a good way to add a new link to your pages ... and this is a deep link!

Search for Altura (company running www.shop.com) by the way : you will find the site I have optimized for www.shop.com ranked number one. I definitely love this new msn!

make the best of amazon affiliation program

Quick tutorial about how to make the best of the amazon programm if you have registered with associate program. You can see how you can apply this tutorial by browsing Jazar-Music.com, released tomorrow.

A) Create a link to a product "dynamically"
1) Amazon Link
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001XAMC2/qid%3D1098207213/sr%3D8-1/ref%3Dpd%5Fcsp%5F1/104-6596417-7831136?v=glance&s=music&n=507846
2) Affiliate link
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=your-id-here&path=tg%2Fdetail%2F-%2FB0001XAMC2%2Fqid%3D1098207213%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fref%3Dpd_csp_1%3Fv%3Dglance%26s%3Dmusic%26n%3D507846

in fact it is quite easy to "build" automatically the url:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=your-id-here&path= +
tg/detail/-/B0001XAMC2/qid%3D1098207213/sr%3D8-1/ref%3Dpd%5Fcsp%5F1/104-6596417-7831136?v=glance&s=music&n=507846

You have just to replace "/" with $2F, "=" with "%3D", "&" with %26 and "?" with %3F

Usage: : use it to add a complement to a review, or an article. My next post is about how to fit it in your content.

B) search results

<br /><form action="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search"> <br /> <table class="normal" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <br /> <tr> <br /> <td style="background-color:#fff;"> <br /> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" align="top" height="90" width="120" style="border: 1px solid #000000 !important;"> <br /> <tr> <br /> <td style="background-color:#fff;" height="20" valign="bottom" align="center"> <br /> <span style="font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:10px !important; font-weight:bold !important;">Search Now:</span> <br /> </td> <br /> <td style="background-color:#fff;"> <br /> <br /> </td> <br /> </tr> <br /> <tr> <br /> <td style="background-color:#fff;" align="center" height="30" valign="top"> <br /> <input type="text" name="keyword" size="10" value="" /> <br /> </td> <br /> <td style="background-color:#fff;" height="20" valign="top" align="left"> <br /> <input type="hidden" name="mode" value="blended" /> <br /> <input type="hidden" name="tag" value="shopituk-20" /> <br /> <input type="image" width="21" height="21" border="0" value="Go" name="Submit" src="http://g-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/associates/build-links/ap-search-go-btn.gif" align="absmiddle" /> <br /> </td> <br /> </tr> <br /> <tr> <br /> <td colspan="2" style="background-color:#000;" height="40"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/shopituk-20"><img src="http://g-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/associates/build-links/ap-search-logo-126x32.gif" height="36" border="0" width="126" /></a></td> <br /> </tr> <br /> </table> <br /> </td> <br /> </tr> <br /> </table> <br /> </form> <br />

Usage: : Add the search option next to your website search.

C) A link to search results pages
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search?tag=your-tag-here&keyword=lenny%20kravitz&mode=music

You can dynamically change the parameters above according the context.

Usage: : extract keywords from the referrer (if the session is new, and the vistor is coming from a search engine), or from the internal query if the vistor is made use of your search. otherwise, I would not bother displaying it.

Note : You may want to hide the links to amazon. Here is a nice combination of javascript + php to just do that :

> <br />--------------- JAVASCRIPT BIT ------------------- <br /> <br />function popamazon(url, tag) { <br /> base = 'http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=' + tag + '-20&path='; <br /> w = screen.availWidth-10; <br /> h = screen.availHeight-20; <br /> features = "width="+w+",height="+h; <br /> features += ",left=0,top=0,screenX=0,screenY=0"; <br /> <br /> window.open(base+url, "", features); <br />} <br /> <br />-------------------------------------------------- <br /> <br />-------------- PHP BIT --------------------------- <br /><?php <br />$tag = "your-tag-here"; <br />$id = "tg%2Fdetail%2F-%2FB0001XAMC2%2Fqid%3D1098207213%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fref%3Dpd_csp_1%3Fv%3Dglance%26s%3Dmusic%26n%3D507846"; <br />$title = "Buy Lenny Kravitz Baptism"; <br /> <br />echo " <br /> <A href=\"#\" onClick=\"popamazon('$id', '$tag'); return false;\" TARGET=\"_blank\"> <br /> $title <br /> </A> <br />"; <br />?> <br /> <br />-------------------------------------------------- <br />

DLR & Jazar

Let's stop talking about content management, and back to search engine optimisation or how to get free advertising space.

PageRank here, google PR there - everybody is concerned about it - not really search engine optimisers anymore, but "marketing" people who have decided to find out recently what the heck is all google about - you can then easily associate the IPO (the coup, the media recognition), search engines (new platform visited by millions of people), search engine optimisation (way to get free advertising space ), and eventually PageRank which seems to be the measure of how much free traffic you can get from search engines.

If you dig a bit more, you will understand that PageRank is just a parameter used in the google search algorithm to weight on links, and influence the popularity of your pages according the nature of the links linking to it. This is not a metric.

Search engine optimisers don't really use metrics yet since just a few of them can combine both technical skills to understand what search engines algorithms are, and marketing skills to apply marketing methodology to it.

Some of them have started to do so though, and one of the metric they have come up with is : Deep Link Ratio (for Yahoo)

Let's define it and make the calculation for Jazar.net (let's then do the calculation for jazar.co.uk once we have officially launched the site, and properly optimised the site (January 2005 - be ready). We query Yahoo for this.

1) We first calculate number of external inbound links linking to the site except the home page :
linkdomain:www.jazar.net -link:http://jazar.net.co.uk -link:http://www.jazar.net -site:www.jazar.net => 2 external links
2) We then calculate the total number of external inbound links :
linkdomain:jazar.net -site:www.jazar.net => 4

=> this gives us a 50% DLR. Hey quite god isn't it :-). This doesn't mean anything really given the small numbers. But do this with sites like microsoft, epinions, etc ... and this will become more meaningfull.

setting up a business in France

Who said that setting up a business in France was complicated? the "journal du Net" draws a very good FAQs section for all the new french entrepeneurs :

Article here (in french)

JAZAR (UK) Ltd can help you setting up a business in France: http://www.jazar.co.uk/business/france.html

SEM Tip

Back to SEM today. Search engines are a very good tool to study competition. Let's say that you have found the set of 20 keywords defining your market, and website (if you have not done that already, I highly recommend you to do so, even though ... I have not done that yet for Jazar... do what I say, but don't say what I do).

You may be then interested to see who is ranking well in search engines for such keywords.

An obvious one for us is Jazar. We currently only rank 3, an other company is before us - and surprise surprise they are roughly in the same field. Ok, my objective is that in 2 month, we are number one.

I'll do my SEO homework, but do I have to check everyday if the ranking has changed? noooo . Instead use this very good too : TrackEngine. You drag and drop their object on your browser, and use it to save the search results pages for your keywords. Let's say for us:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=jazar&btnG=Google+Search

that's it. This engine will scan the results page every day, and send you a warning as soon as a change appears (which most probably is a change in ranking, or a new ccompetitor for the same keyword).

go Jazar, go to number 1!

A Lazy Day

Today was a Lazy day. Well, what do you call a lazy day. A few motnhs ago, I would have called a lazy day a day where I had not "produced" anything (design, or code, or drawing, etc ...). Well, following this definition, today was a very lazy day - have not produced anything.

But in the same time, I feel I have achieved a lot of things :

1) Eventually found a good HTMLArea from Interactivetools, which is opensource, fast, and pure javascript!
Plan

• integrate it to the Jazar Web content manager


• build at last a demo of our tool!


• Let know InteractiveTools that we are now using their tool


• ask them to add us to their newsletter (their site too?).
  

2) Eventualy met guy bondonneau, a webdesigner from London who gave me good advices about how to run a small business in this field - we went to a very good french restaurant in South Kensington:

La Bouchee
56 Old Brompton Road, London, SW7 3DY
Tel: +44 (0)20 7589 1929
Fax: +44 (0)20 7584 8625
Cuisine(s): French
Avg. Cost Per Head: £36.00

A bit expensive, but real french bistrot, same atmosphere, same quality of food (go fo the steak frite, salade verte).

3) Found our new hosting company and signed up for their reseller pack: www.unitedhosting.co.uk

4) Found a very good article about linking strategy :
ouuups, lost the email - should create a blog just to keep all the articles I want to keep track of! Let's quote an other article from searchenginewatch, entitled "what's right, what's wrong".

to summarize the article:

He (Danny Sullivan, "One of the famous leader of the SEO community") presented a webmaster's wish list that included features like warnings of shifting algorithms and index changes; some type of "express line' for accredited webmasters to report spam to the engines; agency-style commissions for selling paid search listings (Sullivan congratulated those few paid-SEM consulting firms who can survive on service fees alone, but felt it unfair that they must do so); and in general, "a partnership in attitude on both the paid and free sides."

Good try Danny, I just hope that nobody is taking you seriously. Search Engine Optimizers are hackers, nothing more. They don't bring any value to the web, and are just using the old method of reverse engineering to meet their objectives. And I hope that google & Co will not fall into the trap, and keep shrugging off these "indecent proposals" (do they?)

Hacking is an art, and I respect that. But this is a bit like if I hacked microsoft, and then said that Microsoft should then provide me with insights about their new releases ... hackers will always be hackers, and even though hackers see themselves as "testers" (some of the most prolific hackers send ultimatum to Microsoft, 15 days for instance to fix the bug, before sending the attack), this would be a suicide to start feeding them with this kind of info. Same apply to google & others!

5) Well, other bits and pieces (hey, I wrote this article for instance!), but this is mainly what I am most proud of. nothing productive really you see, but a good way to pave our way towards success!

Enterprise Content Management in London

Just come back from the ECM in London (Olympia). Great stuff - but what a surprise when I found out that all the CMS solutions are either java or asp! Some of them offer API to enable interaction, but it frankly looks to me like the market is now wide open for the Jazar Application. There is potential for good partnership between Jazar and other Content Management providers, but we will first focus on delivering a solid application which will meet all the basic requirements.

Note: contentmanagement365 which was there as a "Sponsor?" is built obviously on a content management system. But have a look at their forum ... I amy offer them to rebuild their site with our technology!

here are the key elements which make Jazar the best content management system:

1) a good text editor.
A good content management system is here to eliminates webmaster bottlenecks, and speed the time to web. Internet is nowaday the first marketing channel - you want your site to be updatable by anybody in your marketing team, without first having to write the specs to your webmaster!

A good comparison I heard was as follow: you can compare your site to your telephone network - it will never come to your mind to ask your IT department to build a telephone for you....

Operation on a website is a process, not an event

2) control system to ensure content is approved before it is published.
You need to allow contributors from across the company to supply information directly to the sites, speeding up information flow, cutting costs and placing the ownership of the site content into the hands of the relevant people. On the other hand if editors have too much opportunity to change the design and layout, it leads to branding and design inconsistency.

By managing publishing rights, you ensure that all the new content submitted by the different contributors is reviewed and corrected before going live.

3) Multilanguage support.
This is self explanatory - all good content management system should leave you the option to create your pages in different languages.

4) Live updates.
Compliancy and Accessibility are very hot topics today - in the UK, the department of Trade & Industry (www.dti.gov.uk) and the office of the e-Government unit (www.e-governmentcabinetoffice.gov.uk) are coordinating the development of industry standards for web accessibility.

A good content management system will get live update from our updates server to make sure that:

• all your potential clients can have access to your site
  
• some websites have already been the victims of successful legal claims from disadvantaged users of websites
  
• we know now that search engines will always prefer compliantpages, improving your visibility in their search results pages.
  

5) Modularity.
You may want to add your own booking system, or own job posting solutions - a good content management system should be built in a way you can add easily new modules to your existing website, without having to build a new website.

Website development is costly - your system should be flexible enough to easily integrate new modules. Best practices tend to make an API available to programmers so that they can have access to high level functionalities to interact with the existing system. Jazar provides you with a content management system for your site - we are open to provide you with custom add-ons - but your IT may be keen on simply developing a module for the site: we provide them the set of functions to let them just do that.

6) Multi Channel support.
You may need to build different sites, related to different themes. But you want to manage them from a common interface. A content management system allows you to do that. Built around templates, you can easily manage the content across the different sites.

7) Searchable.
You want your whole website to be searchable, not only the database of your products.
All the content you create is stored in a database, which makes categorizable, and easy to index for specific searches.

Search feature is very important today - it allows you:

• instant access to relevant area of the site for people who know what they are looking for.
  
• opportunity to submit high density keyword pages which is very important for the promotability of your site in search engines.
  
• a powerful marketing tool to find out what your visitors are the most interested in.
  

A good CMS should provide with a webanalysis tool, delivering information about what people are looking for on your site, the popularity of your pages, etc ... This then give you the opportunity to fully use the functionalities of your content management system to analyse the data, and change the layout of your website to address potential issues highlighted during this analysis.

Setting up a new CMS team

The high failure rate of new technology projects such as CMS projects (by failure i refer to user acceptance, overtime and over budget), can be attributed to poor project management and large expectations. Although a highly technical team is required (such as programmers and database administrators), other skilled people are required to create sucessful websites.

• Information architects (IA) - who go about organising content, around user requirements;
  
• User experience designers - who work with (IAers) to create an enguaging seamless experience start to end for customer task competion;
  
• Graphic designers - who create the visual appearance of a website, consistent with offline collateral;
  
• Web strategist - who look at the long term strategy of a website;
  
• Editor - have at least one person who is going to use the system in from day-one;
  

On of the challenges of innovative websites is diminishing innovation, that is the time taken to replicate innovation diminishes over time. Therefore, it is essential think of strategic incremental improvements and align these with core business strategy.

Of course some of these roles can be combined within people, however I strongly believe that emphasis on each role is essential.

So back to those technical roles. If you are purchasing an open-source CMS, you will require a highly technical team consisting of expert programmers in the relevant lanaguage eg. PHP. There could be technical supoort offered as part of the package, however much of the support will require internal staff. Even highly experienced PHP programmers will require some time to graps the complexities of a new CMS.

If you purchasing from a third party provider, there may be a chance to work closely with the vendor to customise the implementation. Commerical CMS systems are also complex, and many have a custom programming language or template lanaguage.

So in either case (open-source or commerical) training is probably well worth the effort.

Most experienced developers will have an understanding of databases, however in a large implementation having a specific person allocated to this role will ensure issues are resolved quickly. Just as in accounting speperating tasks into different roles ensures that no body fiddles with the books. By this I mean developers can sometimes take short cuts, therefore the person who creates the code should not be the person who deploys the code to your development server, and different again to the person to implements changes to the database.

domain name issue - the return

I am going to cry - these bloody linkstream.net own our domain name!

Nothing either of us can do at the moment. According to the registration
records, you don't have ANY rights in the name. Fun isn't it ;)

You will just have to liase with 000domains and see what they can do for
you. Until the registration record shows you as the owner or admin
contact, there is nothing we can do this end.

Cheers,
Lee

This is from Lee Hodgson, domain name Guru (www.domainguru.com)

Lesson: Always register your domain names independantly from your hosting companies, with companies such as www.000domains.com.