April 14th, 2009
As many professional SEO people already know, Web accessibility and SEO are often tied together. Those area of expertise are just starting to hit mainstream Web Development if we can say so. Moving forward to develop better website, search engine optimization knowledge and more recently accessibility are important assets. Let see how title tags and headings can both add context to your site. Helping users with disabilities (can be extend to all users) and search engines getting more out of your website.
- One of the most important data for people with disabilities is the title tag which is also one of the top ranking factor according to SEOs.
- The title tag should be as informative as possible on what content the end user will find on that particular page, reuse important keywords that are relevant. Sounds easy, but keep in mind all the others principles it often get tricky.
- The title tag should be also unique for every page of the site, avoid duplicate title tag which are confusing for users and to some extend for search engine. Duplicate content is still a major issue in SEO. Limit yourself to 65 characters including white spaces.
- The second most useful element for Accessibility is the first level heading, which is used as a navigation tools to skip block of content. It also give meaning to the content of the page for the user and the search engine, it’s often very similar to the title tag which isn’t a problem if you follow the next recommendation.
- Keep title tag and headings as short as possible starting with the most useful relevant first. Title tags should length less than 65 characters (including spaces) and about 80 for headings. 80 characters is also a recommended length for a normal line of text on a Website.
Hope you find these useful.
Tags: accessibility, seo, w3quebec, web standards
Posted in Web Development | 1 Comment »
April 2nd, 2009
Display Advertising is having a hard time these days with the raise of text related advertising and search advertising, and I have jump in that bandwagon too. So this post about display advertising by Fred Wilson really make me see things more globally.
More importantly, it open the discussion about how we price banner/display advertising and how the current model could be broken.
I will definitely see a strategy like going for banner advertising in your niche starting with a big chunk of budget and going toward a more SEO-PPC tactics over the months expecting a 80-20 shift over a 6 month period.
Great post as a reminder that display advertising is still and need to be an important part of the total eMarketing package.
Tags: advertising, banner ads, eMarketing
Posted in Marketing | 1 Comment »
February 12th, 2009
The iTunes Store officially reach more than 20 000 applications available this week, it took 6 month to do the first 10k and another 3 month to break the 20k so how long until 100k applications ?
It’s already crazy the choice you have, sure a lot of those applications are worthless, the need for 69 farting applications is hard to explain. But the amount of applications, a lot of them free, give the opportunity for everyone to have the mobile device they want. Of course non authorized applications can extend far beyond the default settings what you can do with your phone. Cydia Applications for exemple give you access to a lot of tweaking but get ready for a wild ride.
The number of applications available, the ease of use of them (and of course of the OS) is a revolution in the mobile world, creating a sustainable strong platform.
Google Analytics on your iPhone
One that I was waiting to see is finally realease for the iPhone platform. Analyticsapp, a Google Analytics application with a lot of features including traffic, visitors, content … even events tracking you’ve set up and your own customized reports. You can access to more than 30 differents report, a very rich application, you can change date range or sort them by day, week, month, etc. Like in the web based Google Analytics, the dashboard provides an overview complete with easy-to-read graphs. Of course you have complete access to all of you Analytics account and profile under them, switching easily between them.
Besides that it offers a lot of features for a quick analytics fix, the design is pretty decent. Clean and very usable. Can’t wait to show it in a client meeting, client often barelly know that website statistics even exist, that should be fun 
The only downside that I see is the price, at 5.99$ isn’t for everyone, but every webmaster and Analytics geek should love this app.
Tags: analytics, google, iphone
Posted in Apple | 2 Comments »
December 9th, 2008
Communication has always been used by marketing people using medias to make us buy and think in a certain way. Nothing new here, and yes its a good thing as we now live in a time where basically everyone can be a media outlet. With industrial media also referred as traditional media, marketers were able to control the production to get global reach. Media production required high cost and specialized skills and training. Not anymore! with the Internet and social media, its been years we have been saying that, preaching and educating marketers how to fit in that new paradigm. Marketers need to let the information go its way without any control of the end result and more importantly lets the masses take control of the information.
Social media is primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. [..] Wikipedia
As one of the hottest buzz words of 2008 I thought it would be great to see how big companies are actually using it in a bad way. Maybe they are just unaware of their web presence, maybe they get bad advice from their web design and marketing department or most likely a mix of both.
Let see how it turns out for Mercedes Benz Canada with their micro site for the Bluetec campaign. It’s should be pointed out that I barely know anything more about this Bluetec thingy…
NOT using the tools effectively
Internet Marketing is too often see as a stack of technical tools on top of marketing strategies, I’m tired of that. This isn’t about technology to get the right information with a good reach or whatever, using technical tools won’t get you the magical twist to take advantage of the word of mouth. The fact that everyone can be a media and use it to get heard is mainly because we have come to a point where the entry level skills are low and the hardware and tools are available for everyone. In fact most of the people are creating media and information without knowing what a RSS, Twitter or even a blog is.
Despite this fact, some big brands with high profile web agencies are making huge mistakes. This example, with a Flash based micro site with barely no content at all, they figure that to get their campaign a social media twist was to add a Digg button. Wrong.
This is just one of the many sites trying to use site like Digg but without taking a minute trying to understand whats it’s all about, a shame. So I submitted to Digg with a nice title as every submitter to Digg know they can write whatever title and description for the news site. And remember this micro site is currently linked from the Mercedes Benz Canada main site and the submit to Digg button will lead you to :
Why they think people will submit to Digg a flash advertising site !? Somebody must explain to them what exactly is Digg. Why not a real site ? Something that lets user comment on the product and interact with it. But come on ! A send to a friend link in the footer isn’t a big interaction feature. Nor is a “Digg this” button.
Any thoughts on that ?
Tags: branding, digg, facebook, flash, marketers, marketing strategies, medias, social media, Twitter, web design, word of mouth
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »
November 21st, 2008
The yesterday rumors were right about the upcoming 2.2 firmware update for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. With the yesterday release of a small iTunes 8.0.2 update, the chance of this 2.2 release was greatly anticipated by website such as macrumors. One of the best blog covering all about mac stuff, from a very dedicated blogger. They are primarily known for their great Mac Buyer’s Guide, the guide to check every time you want to buy apple products.
Cool new features
- enhancement to Maps application including Google Street View (not Canada)
- improved stability for Safari
- better html email handling
- downloading Podcast directly from the iPhone
- the ability to turn on/off the keyboard auto-correction
www.samuellavoie.com on Safari iPhone 2.2
What’s missing
- copy/paste within all the iPhone’s application
Don’t forget to check out the new Google Mobile App with Voice recognition… its simply amazing. Yes I’m a big fan of the iPhone (and my MacbookPro and my Cinema Display) and you should expect more blog post about my switch to the Apple side in the near future
Tags: Apple, google, iphone, ipod, mac
Posted in Apple | 1 Comment »
November 7th, 2008
Quebec is an information-age laggard and we need to fix this problem. As a group of business bloggers said in an open letter to the Quebec Government: Quebec need a digital plan. Business need to have the tools to sell online to the Quebec population. As a fact actually only 52% of Quebec small and medium business have their own website. This is a huge space of the economy where our companies aren’t doing any business, so international and especially US based enterprise are taking this virtual space. Statistics from Quebec stat agency SOM Recherches et Sondages, reveal that only half of the $300 million spend by Quebecers online went to non Canadian websites.
More information technology training for youngers
The letter point out this problem and that struck me how really this is need when I realized that one of my younger brother who just get to CEGEP (Quebec institution comparable to colleges) wasn’t able to use a word processing software. Some basic stuff like this should be done at school… I clearly remember word, spreadsheet and basic Internet course when I was in high school. How can they figured out to cut those course is beyond me. Younger are surfing the interwebs, sure they are also gamers but they need to have the basic knowledge it take in this information-age to be competitive.
More information in English from Nicolas Cossette and in French from Patricia Tessier. A friend of mine just did a incredible job to put together a lot of info and blogs about the Plan numerique pour le Quebec.
I did personnaly signed this letter from Michelle Blanc at the last Yullbiz Montreal meeting and I can only urge you to join the Facebook group to keep pushing this to the government.
Tags: business, digital plan, yullbiz
Posted in Internet Strategy | 1 Comment »
