first samples for adwords

http://www.google.com/apis/adwords/php.html

Good news, all of them are now available from the Jazar application!

CMS integration? Respect the basics

I started as a software engineer in probably one of the most process driven company, motorola. Trouble was it can be very heavy sometimes, and it turns out that you only spend 10% of your time coding. the rest is left for process maintenance, reviews, etc ..

Applied then for an internet agency where nobody knew what a process was. What I then realised is that a process helps you focusing on what is important: improving performances - if something goes wrong, this means that either a team or an individual hasn't followed the process, or it means that the process is wrong - you meet then , and suggest changes to improve it. quite simple...very hard to convince people about that when they have learnt the hard way: if something goes wrong, point at some else before anybody can point at you.

Decided then to Set up Jazar. We have set up simple processes (such as simple software development process, following roughly the V cycle, a way to manage feedbacks and reviews, control of customer acquisition), and now keep imporving the process.

We have just release the Version 1 of our content management system, completed box and integration testing, run "alpha" testing (in house integration), and are ready to make it available in beta version to a selected bunch of integrators. Here come the necessity to define a new process to teach our integrators: integration process or "CMS implementation model". Just pick up a nice summary from CMSwatch - here we go:

First you need to determine what sort of development cycle are you planning to use to implement the JDD (Jazar CMS) -- or any other CMS. Different cyles have different milestones. Your choices include:

Traditional Software Development Model – The Waterfall
In this model there are numerous milestones and formal documentation is a must. Use this method if your organization requires predictable, structured development. This method affords you the most control of your resources (human and financial). It’s a heavy process, however, which makes it difficult for organizations to develop systems quickly.


Prototyping Model
In this model, there are few formal milestones. The implementation team creates iterative prototypes of your system until you get it right. This might be the way for you to go if are doing your implementation in house and not not paying an integrator -- and are really not really sure of your requirements. Beware, though, you could spend a lot quickly in the system iterations.


Rapid Application Development
If you’re in a hurry and are working with a known team and a controllable budget, the Rapid Application Development approach might be right for you. The key milestones here are JAD (joint application development) sessions between the technical folks and the CM user core team. And then you undertake iterative prototypes. Each prototype is analyzed by the end user cm team and then progressive tweaks are made. RAD is a compromise between a traditional software development lifecycle and the prototyping model.

Google adwords api ... at last!

Here we go: http://adwordsapi.blogspot.com/

I just cannot wait getting my hands on it! We still stuck with sending a spreadsheet to google for every updates. now, we can apparently do it ourselves, and use our appli' at its full potential, hurray!

More about it when I get my hand on it.

resources section

Just created a resource section on Jazar. I'll provide with pdf, surveys, etc ... about SEO and content management systems.

Have a look: http://www.jazar.co.uk/resources/index.html

cool tools

Today is "cool tools day":

http://www.faganfinder.com/
http://www.freewebsubmission.com/cgi-bin/seranker/

post on the google blog

Officially released here : http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html

Links are going to become more and more expensive! "sell a "nofollow" link for $1000. pfffu, this could get a bit tricky when everybody will start adding the nofollow attribute so that they can keep their pageRank just for themselves. You then keep the cool link while keeping your pageRank in the same time.

Sounds quite cool actually, because the only people really interested in this are "search engine marketers, and all they will do is adding nofollow to all their outbound links.

And kill each others at the end!

Mmmmh, I don't really mind actually. anybody can hide links with javascript anyway, and it make it just look like a bit easier. but at the end of the day, it doesn't change anything to the fact that if you follow good onpage structure, get a few nice inbound links without having to spam blogs, you get a good ranking anyway... Unless you are stuck in this bloody sandbox.

Ok, let's move jazar.co.uk onto the new JDD! Trouble is: I cannot do any url rewriting with this bloody ensim shared hosting. Will have to find an other way!

new attribute: "nofollow"

no need to hide your links with javascript to avoid PageRank leaks: You only need to add the attribute rel="nofollow" to your "a" tag.

I have not tested that though , but this in not that difficult: here we go . Nobody (please don't link to it ;-)) links to this page, except me from this post.

If this page is not found in your search engine by the end of this week, it means that this works. This would be good news for the blogs community! I receive up to 40 spams a day on some blogs, this looks like the killer weapon.

On the other hand, watch people exchanging links with you - they may want to add this attribute to their listing ...

The New Rules for Quoting

Just came across this article from brendon sinclair ( I wish my name sounded like that!), and I liked it. So here we go. Copy & Paste of the whole article:

My advice for quoting is this: never, ever charge by how long it will take. Don't charge by how skilled you are. And certainly don't charge less than the competition. Charge more -- usually lots more. I base my charges on how much I think the client will pay. We win 95% of all the jobs for which we pitch, and I can just about guarantee we're the most expensive every time.

Why? Well, the key to quoting is to realize this: clients won't assess you on your skill or programming level. They won't assess you on your creative genius, or even on your design ability. They usually don't have the technical expertise to objectively judge that stuff anyway.

The only thing the client is interested in is: can you do the job? And, more importantly: is contracting you as the designer going to be less risky than using someone else?

How To Win With a Higher Quote
We won a job a couple of weeks ago for $17,000. We were up against two other designers. The other quotes were for $3,000 and $3,500. So why did we get the job?


Are we better qualified? No.
Would we finish the site quicker? No.
Are we better designers? Probably not.
Do we live closer to the client? Nope.
Is the client my dad? Good question, but no!

I'll go through what we did so you can see exactly why we got the job and continue to get jobs at a premium price.

Initiation

The client rings the office and tells me he wants a Website. I make an appointment for 3 days time.

Letter of Thanks

As soon as I'm off the phone I send a "Thanks for the call" letter confirming the time and place of the meeting. We include a business card. The client receives it the next day.

Research

We do as much research on the potential client as possible, including when the company started, products, people in the firm, etc. This takes a couple of hours.

The Meeting

I arrive on time to the meeting wearing a perfect blue suit and a blue tie (as this is the client's corporate colour). I'm carrying my beautiful leather briefcase. I open the conversation with some small talk and tell the potential client what an awful weekend I had because I shot a 85 on the ABC Golf Course. He says "Really? I'm a member there. I love golf." Gee, what a co-incidence that is.

We finish the small talk and get onto business. I bring out a manila folder with his name, position, business name and logo on a sticker on the front. Also evident is the time and date of the meeting. From this I pull out a 6 page 'Assessment Form' that I'll use to identify his needs and wants. We go through this at the meeting, and I make many notes using my lovely fountain pen.

After an hour-long meeting I thank him for his time, tell him I'll be in touch again on Thursday, and leave.

Letter of Thanks

Back at the office I draft the "Thank you for your time" letter and post it off.

The Follow-Up

On Thursday at 9am I ring and let the prospect know that we've reviewed his needs and wants and have a draft proposal ready. I explain that we need to go over the draft to "ensure I have everything straight in my head" and I make an appointment to meet with him in 3 days time. I send off a letter confirming that appointment.

The Second Meeting

I go to the next meeting with a neat, concise overview of what his needs are, and what we need to do together in order to achieve them. I toss in a few case studies of previous clients to show we have a complete understanding of what he requires.

The client says "Yep, that's about what we need." I ask when he needs our quote, and the client says "It's quite urgent, so the middle of the week." I promise to deliver it to the client by Wednesday at 4pm.

Letter of Thanks

You guessed it -- the client gets another "Thank you for your time" letter.


Proposal Delivery

On Tuesday at 9.30am the client receives the quote from us via courier. We've attached a polite note that explains that, as he needed the quote urgently, we worked on it over the weekend to have it ready early.

The quote itself is actually a 30-page, nicely-bound proposal that reiterates his needs and wants, and shows how the site will address them. It includes testimonials from previous clients (with contact numbers), proposed site flow charts, and a timetable of exactly what would happen and when.

We also include profiles on the team members who would work on the site, and the FAQ section has 20 of our most common questions and answers. We also include copies of articles from computer magazines that have reviewed our previous sites, and a CD-ROM that contains examples of our previous sites.

Proposal Meeting

I visit the prospect as promised and ask if he has any questions regarding the proposal. We discuss these, and I then ask for the job. "Well John," I say, "would you like us to work with you on this project?"

Letter of Thanks

When he says "Yes", we send him a "Thanks for choosing us" letter, along with our first invoice (of 50% of the total quote). We include a Reply Paid envelope that he can use to mail us the cheque.

I then send the person who referred this client a "Thanks for the referral" letter, and then take him and his wife out for a very nice dinner.

Following Through

As it turns out, we didn't do what we'd promised on this particular job... we did more: 2 extra pages, a little Flash, and one or two other things.

When the site was finished I took the client out for lunch and thanked him for the assistance with the project. I told him what a pleasure it had been to work with such a professional, and gave him a gift of a framed photo that we'd scanned and put on the site. It was a photo of the business' founder -- the only photo that they had of him. I also sent flowers and chocolates to the graphic artist who had helped us on the job.

After we started work I found out that the other two firms who pitched for the job never met with the client. They took his details over the phone in a 10 minute conversation. Both provided a one page quote a week later, and one of them hand delivered it wearing a pair of gardening shorts.

Take a stab in the dark and guess who the client has just signed on to keep their site up-to-date, submitted to the engines, and more -- at a very, very healthy fee!

Why We Won
The reason we got the job was predominantly because we were perceived as less risk than our competitors. They may well be better or quicker designers, but the client doesn't know that. Also, the way we developed the relationship indicated to the client that we had a very thorough working knowledge of the obstacles facing their Internet strategy. And finally, clients do tend to associate a lower price with lower quality.

The strategy I've outlined here relies on two critical elements:


Relationship: the better the relationship we establish with the prospect, the more comfortable he/she will be with us. That equates directly to more sales.


Perception: positively influencing people's perception is vital. People will make an assessment of you within about 3 seconds of meeting you. That's why I always visit clients impeccably dressed, carry a briefcase and use a fountain pen.

I disagree 100% that skill and talent are the requirements for success in anything. The perception of those things is more than a little important, too. The designers we were up against may well have been better than my team. They may have more skills. They may be better qualified. But it doesn't matter. The client only wants to know that you can do the job and that there is no risk involved in employing you.

We convince the client that we are the better people for the job by convincing him to perceive us as expert, reliable and safe.

People buy for 2 reasons -- and 2 reasons only: fear and greed. People equate higher prices with better quality. It's human nature.

If we have a prospect who is the middle manager from a big company, we focus on his fear that if he picks the wrong designer he will be in trouble with his boss. We show him that we're the right choice by making sure he thinks we're the best by a million miles. The price is very, very rarely an issue with these guys -- aside from their budgetary constraints. With smaller clients we focus on the fact that they don't want to risk their money by going with someone who doesn't understand exactly what they want and need.

If you have 100 equally talented designers vying for a job, the job will be won by the designer who is perceived as the best --- by that, I mean the most reliable. And that's decided by things like what he/she is wearing, testimonials from previous clients, and how quickly you respond to them etc. It's not decided by who's the best designer -- that's just a subjective thing.

Don't charge by the hour, and don't charge based on what everyone else charges. Charge what you think the client will pay someone of your (perceived) professionalism.

wireless - be careful, check your MTU size ...

Just set up a wireless router. Fantastic! The trouble was: I could not get access to messenger. I decided to check www.msn.com . Could not connect either!

what was wrong? I thought ... probably an ISP issue, ... no! It is down to the router. You must check that you MTU size (WAN settings) is set to 1400.

It took me 2 hours to sort that out. hopefully this post will save you times if you try to get your own wireless network sorted.

getting out of the sandbox

Keep saying that I'll remove this bloody alias, but don't do it - might mean that I am not that concerned to get our site on page 3 for the keyword jazar.

Ok, let's get out of the sandbox now. My first conference 2005 is beginning feb, and I have still our main site sand boxed. does not look good.

Here is the plan. Simple.

1) Clean the site, and remove this alias: the site is then completely clean.
2) If this doesn't help in 2 weeks, I get on with a method I've heard was working: put my domain on an other sub domain name, domain name not sand boxed obviously .. this blog has been sand boxed too for instance apparently, doesn't rank for galide!get it ranked properly again...should not be hard with jazar...and then bing a 301 back to the main site. not very nice, but if this is the only solution, will have to do it!

Just because a sie is young doesn't mean that I should be pushed back to the 3rd page. Google will give our ranking back soon or later, but I don't want to wait. will see if this work. the funny bit is that all our client are just fine. Just our site seems to be in this mud. I am wondering if the rumour saying that sandbox targets only seo sites is true ... aaah, an other myth. my belief is that seo tend to overoptimize a little bit too much their own site. they would not do that with clients, but they do that with their own "flesh"..cannot help it.. and get then the sack!

flickr

Just created an account with http://flickr.com

Different funny functinalities on this site, such as the uploader through emails. Send your photo to looked14think@photos.flickr.com and it will upload automatically your picture at the address above!

An other nice thing is blogs, synchronized with your own blog (such as this one for instance). Love that. Because basically you can have different activites on the web (blog, wiki, forums, etc ...) and synchronise everything from one place!

spammers and ugly

Just made a nice comparison on SEO chat, and thought. Hey, nice one, will post it on my blog. Here we go:

If you see an ugly bloke kissing a nice girl, it doesn't mean that you should not worry about your look if you want to pull.

If you replace the ugly bloke with the spammer, the girl with google, pulling with getting ranked well in google for your set of keywords, and your look with the look of your site, you pretty much get the picture.

&filter=1

Still cannot work out for sure why jazar.co.uk has moved to page 3 for the keyword "jazar".

Using on page optimisation + a few nice links should bring us to page 1. If I append &filter=1 at the end of the url, I get rank #1 for jazar!

So, ... what is this &filter=1.

1) Some people say that it might be a duplication penalty - and I tend to think the same.
- You can have a look at http://www.copyscape.com/ to see if anybody else has made a copy of your site.
- check your 404 pages. Some site redirect their alias to their main sites when the page is not found => duplicate! That's what happens with jazar, I have put an other site on the top of www.jazar.co.uk, and if a page is not found, it will show the jazar.co.uk homepage => penalty.

This is quite an easy fix. I just need to fix the 404 (As soon as I am finished with the content and update the version of the application).

2) you site has been hijacked
1. Search in Google for allinurl:www.mysite.com
2. Look for any listings that are not your site but have the exact title as your site.
3. View the Google cache to see if it looks just like your site.
4. Use my HTTP Response Viewer to view all HTTP headers being returned.

=> the site using this technique may replace your innocent site in the search results!

=> How to fix that: add some url rewriting directives in your .htaccess files to prevent site redirecting to your site. this fixes the problem very fast!

lesson from kipling

Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”

If you can keep your head
when all about you men are losing theirs
and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
but make allowances for their doubting, too.

If you can wait but not be tired of waiting,
or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
and yet don't look too good nor talk too wise,

If you can dream but not make dreams your master,
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with triumph and disaster,
and treat those two imposters just the same,

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
and stoop and build them up with worn-out tools,

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
and risk it on one turn of pitch and toss,
and lose and start again at your beginnings
and never breathe a word about your loss,

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
to serve your turn long after they are gone,
and to hold on when there is nothing in you
but the will that says to them "hold on,"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
or walk with kings nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
if all men count with you but none too much,

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
with 60 seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
and which is more, you'll be a man, my son.

seo is moving to the next level

I have been reading a few articles from stanford university, and to be honest, I would need to spend a fair amount of time to summarize the tfiIDfi model ... but no need for that!

http://www.miislita.com/

Is just doing it for us (and other great tools are provided on the site, really worth the visit!). Just have a read. You will realise that all these posts about keyword density are pointless ... seo is not about that - go back to basics: this is all about keywords frequency and the way they are weighted, not density.

Next stage is to build seo-tools based on these concepts. Cannot find any at the moment.

seo tools

Found interesting seo tools:
http://www.socengine.com/seo/tools/site-analyzer-tool.html

Need to spend a bit more time on them, but they look promising.

spending my 50% time on building directories at the moment. Hope it will pay off! I think I will stick one on this old good shop Jump.

And 50% of my time doing mathematics to understand pagerank concept and stuff, and start doing some "real" sestudy (building a search engine spider, database, & algorithm to test things from the other side: reverse engineering sucks, specially at this level now.).

And 50% of my time fixing marketing pitch for Jazar.

And 50% doing prospection,

and .. pffy, more than 200% of my time already used. Nothing left now!

annuities

We are going to build a bunch of financial websites for a client. Some areas are very, very competitive: secured loans, or mortgages. But others are surprisingly not, like annuities & pensions. You can sell your lead for a good value, but still, not really competitive at the moment (at least in organic search. Paid listing is a bit more ..).

So, well, I have decided to put my hands on it (internal project), and here we go. first "internal" financial website. Luckily, annuities are not as regulated as mortgages or loans, and anybody can build his own affiliation website :

url: http://www.best-annuity.net

Feel free to ask if you anybody needs a template.

submit to the right directories

If you start looking for directories where to post links to your site, you will spend hours trying to find the right ones (this one is asking for reciprocal links, this one has got a robots.txt blocking bots, this one will never process your submission, this one ask for a fee at the very end of the submission, etc ...).

Here is a list of directories where you can post your links for free, with a good ROI (ROTI I would say, Return On Time Investment):

All The Web Sites
Ezilon
illumirate
Jayde
JoeAnt
Massive Links
Mavica
Search City
The Super Ultra Mega Web Directory
Tygo
World Site Index
Wow Directory

there are obviously other good directories, specially the vertical markets (directories specific to the theme of your site), and I let you record them along with these ones.

look for info?

Just had a glance at http://scholar.google.com. Great! I wish I had google when I was studying ... mmmh... not sure actually! I loved getting on the bus, and go top the library. I would always meet friends there, and chat about everything. At the end, we would realise that we had not even started our homework, and ...

Google is to the search what transport is to travel. It is faster and faster to get what you want, but you miss all the charm of the journey to get the information you need.

15 steps to success.

Back from Cannes, spent new year there, and feel a bit lazy ... so I just read a good article about how to choose a CMS. First step for Jazar: be on all the sites listed in step 1 (before even thinking about getting our ass out of the google sandbox!)

Fifteen Steps to Select a CMS

These are suggested steps to research Content Management System options for your organization, large or small. They can take you from knowing nothing about CMS to final vendor and product selection.
Some steps are too expensive for many budgets, but we give the estimated costs for each step. You will at least know which things you cannot afford.
Some steps require a lot of reading and study. You may not have the time or inclination, but again, you will know what you skipped.
If you are a larger organization, you will probably hire consultants to do some or all of these steps for you. Just insist that they document how they covered each step of the way, and get them to put the results in your hands.

Step 1. Organize Your Content.
This means getting the staff who now manage your content to inventory and structure it. It needs to be categorized and labelled, arranged well for navigation, and perhaps indexed and abstracted to support searching. You will probably need an Information Architect. If you don't know the content workflow (what some call your business processes) beforehand, a CMS is more likely to be a problem than a CM solution.
Related Links
CMS Watch
CMS Forum
CMS Wiki
CMS Info
CMS News
CMS Lists
Content Wire
Content Manager (Europe)
Google CMS
DMOZ CMS
Metatorial
Step Two
OSCOM

Books on CMS

Step 2. Search The Web.
This is the least expensive step and the most powerful. And once you learn what is out there, you will use it over and over in the steps below. The CMS Review site attempts to list all the valuable places on the web with information about content management.

Step 3. Books and Articles.
Articles are free, books range from £10 to just under a hundred pounds. If you bought them all, it would still be a tiny investment compared to most consulting fees and the license fees for any proprietary CMS. You will need the time to read them, or assign a couple of trusted people to read them and be your advisors.

Step 4. Vendor-neutral Consultants.
You can hire top industry experts, like Bob Boiko, Tony Byrne, Gerry McGovern, James Robertson, or Ann Rockley, for a few thousand dollars. They can provide a day-long seminar for the key people in your organization who will be your CM team. If you have completed step 3, this step will be twice as valuable, because you will understand better the necessary jargon and technical terms of the industry. You will get much more out of the seminar and consulting advice if you are prepared.

Step 5. Magazines.
Advertising in the magazines is an indicator of companies that are strong at the moment, and may be more valuable than many articles in the magazine. They can help you narrow the range of vendors. Annual subscriptions are $50 to $100 or more, but you might buy single issues of all of them to see who is advertising prominently.
Step 6. Industry Analyst Reports.
These range from a few hundred dollars to $1000 or more. They will assess company viability and also technology trends that point to newer CM techniques and CMS tools that implement them. Be aware that some analysts may have strategic relationships with large CMS vendors, professional service agencies, and with information technology consultants.

Step 7. Trade Shows.
No single content management trade show is a must for all the industry players, but they provide a chance for you to talk to the companies and see demonstrations of their latest products. Speakers will often provide an overview of the technology you are considering. Costs are usually several hundred pounds, and if you travel you could spend thousands of pounds for a 3-day show.

Step 8. Vendors.
Directly approaching the vendors costs only your time. They will want to contact you, perhaps sending a sales engineering team. Remember that this adds greatly to the cost of their products. If their sales team only closes one sale in 10 prospects, then your purchase must recover the cost of the nine failures. So try to postpone their sales calls until after step 11 or 12.

Step 9. Vendor-specific Consultants.
Once you have an idea of possible vendors, you should use consultants who know those products very well. They may be suggested to you by the vendors. You can also find them on the CMS mailing lists. It is quite possible to take this step before approaching the vendors themselves. Reputable consulting firms who have experience installing more than one product may guide you to the ones best suited to your needs, but be aware that they may earn significnat fees or commissions from the vendors. Hourly and daily consultant rates vary greatly, and some may expect the bulk of their fees to come from the installation, training, and rollout phase as they work alongside the vendor to get your system launched.

Step 10. Needs Analysis/Specifications Document and Request for Proposals.
Your consultant will have been through this and can prepare your custom version. Chapter 16 of Bob Boiko's book is a comprehensive checklist you can use to assemble your own specifications, and there are requirements checklists in the appendices of books by Ann Rockley and JoAnn Hackos. Boiko's CMS Planner and James Robertson's Requirements Toolkit will provide tools and templates to work through the process. Our Features List is another resource.

Step 11. Demonstration Systems.
Whether it's a canned online demo, or an interactive "sandbox" (where you can upload your own content for testing), these are free opportunities to learn the interface and toolset you may be living with for some years. You should get the people now managing your content to test drive the system, instantiating your content workflow, and get their "buy-in" to its capabilities.

Step 12. First cut.
You should limit the number of systems to two to five at most.

Step 13. Prototype Sites with Your Content.
Serious vendors who make the cut will probably agree to build you a prototype site with some of your content running. If it is a really high-end system, they may want to be paid for this step. If you are looking at seven-figure license fees, these charges may be justified. Far too many companies have invested millions of dollars in a CMS that went unused once the content managers realized its limitations. If you can afford it, this step should include stress and performance testing to make sure it can handle your traffic levels.

Step 14. Timetables and Milestone Agreements.
These will vary with the size of your organization, the amount of content to be managed, whether it is a migration of existing content or a new build, etc. You should ask the vendors and consultants to provide examples of timetables for similar installations. Take these timetables seriously. Many failures are traceable to lack of realism in assessing the time and energy needed to bring up a CMS.

Step 15. Final Selection.
You are nearly there. Just remember that choosing the right CMS cannot be done from any number of its (claimed) features. A CMS is right and the features are real when your organization is using it every day. A CMS is only 20% purchased software and hardware. It is 80% the process of people using the tools to implement a content management strategy.