Better Title tags for SEO & Accessibility

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.

Display Advertising still works but Differently

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.

Predict my 500th Twitter follower and Win

February 15th, 2009

Approching the incredible 500th follower pretty quick on Twitter, I had the crazy idea to make a little and fun contest ;) A quick and easy contest for all my followers. How to enter and win ?

  1. Follow me on Twitter.com/sammyQc if you aren’t already doing so.
  2. Predict the day and time I’m going to hit 500 follower on Twitter. As I received and automatic email each time I got a new follower, the email time will be match to the more accurate contestant. All time are EST.
  3. Tweet the following message with your time and date prediction
  4. I predict @sammyQc 500th follower at 9:99PM february 99th. Predict and Win http://is.gd/jzcM #sammyContest

amazon.ca gift certificate example
Price ? 50$ CAD (50$ for 500 followers ;) ) on Amazon.ca gift certificate, or on your local Amazon store.

Get your Analytics fix on your iPhone

February 12th, 2009

Google Analytics on iPhone 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.

Interactive Strategist at TMP Worldwide

February 3rd, 2009

A new year started and with it came a new job position for me. As a fact I have been pretty quiet over there at my blog, without any substential information about my move. Twitter and facebook have been an incredible way to start rumors and give very fresh info to my friends, contacts, followers and peers. But No Twitter will not take the place of this blog, it just took away a lot of my energy from developing and writing for it. After more than 18months on Twitter I start feeling that sometimes my toughts, ideas and opinions could have a greater impact in the intertubes. Don’t get me wrong I’m really not aiming for fame, but you know just get heard. But as this blog traffic goes so far it doesn’t emerge as something with a decent readership…yes this default layout and erratic blog post should be the reason. So Twitter give me the interaction that I need especially with a lot of great folks in the Montreal Web scene. But I realize that a blog post push you to your limit, in a very different way than a tweet, you need to write down your ideas, to develop them. That’s something I really need to do more and it’s only with a blog that it be achieve. Ok Now you know one of my 09 resolutions.

Working at NVI was a great move

I did work with incredibly talented people at NVI Solutions, a agency on the very edge of everything eMarketing. I learned a lot during this year, a lot of things that have now shaped the way I see the Internet. Search Engine Optimization strategies and tactics and  general search engines strategies to really understand the marketing perspective applied to this medium. I have also been able to eyes open the team to subjects like usability and accessibility wich I’m pretty proud off. Also started a internal Wiki a great tool to share knowledge. To add to this, it was just a great time with great people.

TMP found me

So at the end of last year, a TMP Worldwide’s senior VP found me on Linkedin. First off as a business evolving in the HR world it was a good move to use social networks to reach me as a pasive candidate. Within a few email and phone chat I really got the feeling that they were able to offer me a nice challenge with responsabilities and so on. So I did the move starting this year working downtown Montreal in the same building as Pluc a PHP developer now at Cloudraker and also ex-NVI.

Is this blog will ever have a real layout?

I’m currently working and experiencing with things like bluescreen CSS and way to add more semantic code to wordpress. Hope this third version of my site will finally see the light…

What features make you use Twitter for months

January 20th, 2009

Twitter has been pretty addictive lately but I think it’s important to take more than 140 characters to recap all that and to know why I’m still using it. So here is a reminder of why I use it, maybe it’s the same thing for you, I’m curious.

It bring you valuable information

Its a pretty good news filter, as much as you control who you are following, Twitter can be used to filter news and bits of information people you follow will give to the stream. Adding to that tools like Hashtags and MrTweet and you can fine tune it pretty easily.

It give you near instant feedback

You just ask a question to your network of followers and by extension the Twitter universe and boom you can get instant feedback. And as opposed to the email, it’s instantly on the web, open for everyone to converse. I usually get 2-3 answer in the next hour but I have a pretty small network and of course bigger your network is, more this feature is a key for you.

It make you more connected

Having the priviledge to meet people that share the same dedication for the Internet, a better Internet, in real life is something special with Twitter. To know and also to be knowed by people like Sebastien Provencher and Benoit Meunier before meeting in real life is really something.

It’s real fun

Of course Twitter ain’t be cool if it was only a business tool, it can also be used to just rambling about things with friends and when it goes intense, Direct Message make it.

It’s not really the application in itself that make all that happened but a mix of things, the application features, the social around it and all the interaction, conversations going on with it. Some might say web 2.0 let just call that the real web, the web as Tim Berner-Lee  envision it…

So go and connect with Samuel Lavoie on Twitter.

How to NOT use Social Media

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 ?

iPhone Applications hit 10k & my top5

November 30th, 2008

Originally launched on July 11th, the App Store have reach the 10k applications that can be downloaded. With around 25% of them for free this is plenty of them to fill your shiny iPhone. That’s pretty amazing taking into consideration that the iPhone hardware limit you to 144 applications… which I wont rant about, its pretty decent for a 600mhz machine (under clocked around 440mhz).

As I said in July the Application are the killer app (literally) of the iPhone and it success can’t be denied as it’s now the third most sold cellphone in the US. The future of the iPhone is exciting, not only a cellphone or even a smartphone but a new platform :)

Appstore Application Analytics for November 30th 2008

Appstore Application Analytics for November 30th 2008

Top5 iPhone 3G App

My humble top applications I’m using almost everyday:

Twitterific: Using Twitter on the field is really what make that conversation system useful and with an always connected iPhone 3G and Twitterific it’s a perfect match. If you don’t use Twitter you should check that out to keep in touch with interesting people. I like it so much that I bought the 9.99$ ad-free premium version.

STM Mobile: A must have utility for the urban montrealer. Very convenient to consult metro and bus schedules.

Tuner & Last.fm: Two must have music application for the music lover on the road. The first one isn’t free (5.99$) but the stack of Internet radio station it offer is astonishing (with all my iTunes fav one :) ) The latter let you connect to your Last.fm account and discover music you like with the same quality as on your computer.

Mobile Fotos: Let you browse and upload photos directly to Flickr. The most (and the best!) popular online photo managment and sharing application. Organize and share your photos online has never been so easy.

Shazam & Sonic Lighter: To close my top5 iPhone Applications why not get these two to impress your friends with your fantastic iPhone ;) Shazam let you find any song you hear anywhere. Within seconds Shazam will tell you the artist and track name and even a link to the Youtube video. On the less useful app, Sonic Lighter is hard to beat, a realistic lighter wich you can light up and blow out the flame with your breath… really impressive.

So what about you?

iPhone 2.2 update

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
Safari on iPhone 2.2

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 ;)

Quebec is an information-age laggard

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.