First, right-click in the middle of the square below. A menu will appear. Then, choose ‘Copy Image’. (This will copy a transparent PNG file to your clipboard.)

Right-click in the middle of the square above.

Select the “Copy Image” option in the menu.

Right-click the .DS_Store icon on your desktop and select ‘Get Info’ from the menu.

An info panel will appear. Press ‘tab’ once or click on the white icon in the top/left corner of the window to highlight the icon.

Once highlighted, paste the image that is in your clipboard press Command+V.

The .DS_Store icon goes transparent.

Deselect the icon on your desktop and you’ll then only see the icon label.

This tutorial was adapted from superuser.com.

So, it looks like Raven users will either have to find a new rank tracking tool or find new ways to track the effects that rankings have on a website’s traffic volumes. Either that, or just go out to find another tool that will continue to provide ranking reports instead.

As a search engine optimization professional, myself, this whole incident brings up some important questions to consider. What is the future of SERP Tracking and reporting rankings to website owners, Do we continue to focus on search engine rankings? What do we do?

If you are like me – which, as a business owner or Internet marketer, I know you are – you are still concerned about organic search engine rankings, So, is there another way to continue tracking and monitoring your website’s position in the search engines? For instance, there is a way to get the position a search results was in Google when it was clicked. We could create a secondary profile in Google Analytics for each client and use a custom filter to record the position that the keywords was in when the search result was clicked.

Google Webmaster Tools’ Average Position of a Keyword

Or perhaps we’ll have to use Google Webmaster Tools to get data somehow. In GWT, you can see the “Average Position” of a keyword over a few weeks.

As we’ve discussed, ranking data is still a great way for Internet marketers to show their clients if they are gaining or losing visibility in the search engines. It helps SEO’s to report how effective their efforts have been.

So, back to the dilemma. Because Raven Tools uses Adwords API data to show the keyword search volume and advertiser competition of a keyword, they can not use scraped ranking data. But, if another rank tracking tool out there doesn’t need to be in compliance with the Adwords API TOS (because they don’t use that API to show search volume and advertiser competition), they can still technically provide their ranking data and not be violating any TOS, right? Perhaps. I’m not completely sure.

Raven was faced with a decision. This was a tough business decision, according to an open letter by Patrick Keeble, CEO of Raven Tools.

A message from Patrick Keeble CEO of Raven Tools about no longer supporting SERP Tracking because their data comes from scraped Google data.

However, Keeble goes on to say that scraped Google ranking data provides unreliable results, inflated customer expectations (or inflated customers’ clients’ expectations), is risky to use (because it violates certain Google TOS), has an unpredictable future.

Was it really a tough decision for Keeble to make? It sure seems like his company weighed the pros and cons. The tools they provide rely heavily on data from the Google Adwords API. They have a lot of research tools to look up data on keywords and they also have an interface that allows you to view your Google Adwords account performance right in the Raven dashboard. Yes, Raven had to make a decision, and as discussed earlier, it was a business decision. They made a good case for the importance, reliability, and future of using keyword rank tracking as a metric, but is the SEO world ready to let it go just yet?

Keeble says,

“This metric, though deemed essential by some SEOs, would only continue to diminish in relevance as campaign performance metrics replaced it in importance.”

It sounds like Raven’s future will be more centered on providing tools and data that prove ROI, conversions and goals and not simply rankings.

In a private conversation I had with, Raven Tools’  CPO, Jon Henshaw, and a few of their team members, Jon says that their plan is to eventually incorporate the Google Webmaster Tools “Average Position” data into their tool, but the GWT nor the Google Analytics supports that functionality yet.

Raven Tools’ CPO, Jon Henshaw, mentions their future plans.

Also, Raven Tools’ CTO, Scott Holdren, says here in the GWT product forum, that the Google API is not yet providing the data we would need in order to grab data from Google Webmaster Tools to use in third-party reporting tools.

Scott Holdren, CTO of Raven Tools discusses the state of Google’s API.

In another discussion, Scott Holdren says,

“A temporary measure could be to manually import CSV data from GWT, but long term it needs to be data available from the API. The Google Analytics team has confirmed that despite GA having access to Average Position, the data still lives in GWT.”

He says that the Bing Webmaster Tools API actually does include Average Position data, but that it is not as desirable to Internet marketers and webmasters as the Google data.

In reply to a discussion on SEOmoz’s Q&A where I asked, “What’s the future of SERP Tracking?” and “Is SEOMoz’s SERP Rank Tracking in compliance with Google Adwords API Terms of Service?”

Marketers are skeptical when it comes to some of Google’s actions at times. My colleague / acquaintance, Greg Huegerich says,

“The real question… does Google seek to monetize this through their own tools and interfaces? Step 1 is to eliminate the current solutions, Step 2 is to step in as the market savior with their own paid tool offering.”

As any marketer might, Greg Huegerich wonders about Google’s true motives.

While I’m not sure that is Google’s agenda in this case, it is interesting to think of why Google is so protective of their ranking data in the first place.

Maybe we never should have thought in the first place that we had the right to do bulk lookups in an effort to determine where our websites rank in the Google search results for certain keywords? Or maybe we just need to take our focus off of rankings and put it on other metrics like conversion rates and traffic volumes instead like Jon Henshaw says.

Many search industry professionals are upset. Milind Mody, CEO at eBrandz – an SEO agency in, India – says,

“Scraping SERP data is against Google’s TOS and they have not given permission/ rights to any company. The situation with Raven really stinks. In my opinion it is Google using its dominant position in search to enforce their rules.”

Gyorgy Bolla, Senior Online Marketing Consultant at First Rate replied to my question here, saying that it appears SEOmoz has “no plans to change their data service options”

With the question of “What’s the future of SERP Tracking?”, a lengthy discussion broke out on the SEO Club of SE Wisconsin‘s Facebook page.

The article posted on the Digital Always Media Inc. blog, Jim says,

“The announcement from Raven Tools earlier today marks one of the last major milestones in the transition of the industry. The old way of reporting results is now effectively dead. Google has made it clear that serious analytic companies will no longer be able to provide ranking reports using data scraped from Google by query-bots. Keyword Ranking Reporting will be yesterday’s news within the next twelve hours. It’s a natural maturation but it’s a big one. One which bears marking.”

In response, one Wisconsin-based SEO, David, says,

“I am so tired of these articles. Because Raven is dropping rank tracking, it has NO impact on SEO or the future of SEO or the “maturation point… I’ve been doing SEO for 10 years, every year it was always something new to be the “death of seo” or some variation.”

Although David is in a similar situation as the rest of us, he doesn’t seem as concerned. He states,

David Kauzlaric says, “Nothing has changed.”

“Nothing has changed, though. Just because Raven is shutting down their SERP tracker, there are 50 companies taking their place. Not one thing has changed.  Clients dont care about content strategies, they care about results. If content is required to get them results, then so be it, but they only care about results. The idea behind SEO is to rank websites for keywords, is it not? I don’t know where [edited: person] is getting his clients, but I’ve done over 500 SEO campaigns and I don’t recall a single client out of the 500 that didn’t care about keyword rankings.”

Another Milwaukee area SEO, Mike, says,

“I think my life is over…I rely on SERP reports from Raven because…well 1) it’s our contracts and 2) IMO, it’s a good indicator if your making progress… And moving a ton of customer reporting to a new service scares me, lol.”

This brings up an interesting question in my mind. Should we ask Raven Tools for a discount on our subscription fee since their tool will no longer do what we signed up for it to do? I agree with Mike in thinking that moving over so many clients to a new rank tracking tools and recreating all of those reports is scary. But, should we even bother going out and looking for a new SERP tracking tool? Are Internet marketers ready to give it up? Are our clients going to be upset when their SEO company can’t or won’t provide them with this data any more?

Another fellow Internet marketer has a different stance. He says,

“As far as rankings go, we’ve always pushed our clients away from those as numbers to follow, so dropping that as a metric doesn’t hurt us and our reporting at all… Does suck though overall given that it’s been a cornerstone of the product… It will be interesting to see how SEOmoz is affected depending on their integration and data sources.”

“…what if reporting on rankings wasn’t business as usual? I think it’s an easy ‘sell’ to say that it’s highly important and should be focused on, but it doesn’t really provide the most value. I don’t (personally) believe that rankings are largely important and educate our clients that way. I think this is a problem mostly for those that did make it a highly important success metric, which yes, it is going to suck for them…”

So, what’s the future of SERP Tracking? Damned if I know! Tell me your thoughts?

It seems that my Google Voice number (262) 204-7265 is no longer accessible from my Google Apps account: accounts@scottofford.com

I originally set up my Google Voice number to be associated with my Google Apps account. I had recently deleted that email address in order to turn it into an alias of web@scottofford.com instead of being a separate inbox.

A couple of week later, I realized that, by deleting my email account and using an email alias, I had inadvertently cut myself off from being able to log into my Google Voice account.

Now, the number still works… I can receive voicemails to that number still, but I can’t seem to figure out how to gain access to the account in order to change settings.

I need help. Here’s the steps I’ve taken so far to try to troubleshoot this.

Searched for support in Google

Used the google voice forgot username form

Instructions supportedly sent to my email address, but never arrived

No email arrived, so I recreated email account in google apps

I tried deleting my account and added the email address as alias instead to another address instead

I tried getting login instructions sent again to alias this time, no luck

I checked multiple account but no instuctions to be found

I called my google voice number and left a vm to make sure the number still works. it does

I received voicemail via email just fine

I deleted the alias from google apps and tied seeing if I could log in as an old “personal” google accounts account, but no luck

I tried a third time to get info sent to email address on file with no luck

I then recreated the account in google apps as a separate email address again

I logged into Google Voice with the accounts@scottofford.com email address but it wanted me to sign up for a new phone number

I found the google voice “transfer account troubleshooter”

I found the “transfer google voice number to another account” support page on google, but it wasn’t what I was looking for.

I tried the account transfer process to see if it was what I needed, but alas, it was not what I was in need of

It brought me to an instructions page to turn on multiple sign-in so I gave up on that

So, as you can see, I need Google’s help getting back into my account or re-associating my phone number back into my account some how.

Any ideas? Could you point me in the right direction?

I posted a question in the Google Voice Support Forum here if you are interested in following this story or able to chime in:
http://productforums.google.com/d/topic/voice/hrvWlV1B4Jw/discussion

Thanks
~ Scott O

Update: Google Voice Account Transfer is in progress! See screenshot below:

Google Voice Account Transfer is in process!

Last year, I leveraged the Black Friday fever and made over $20,000 in the month of November by posting leaked Thanksgiving circulars on my site: thanksgivingblackfridayads.com (TBFA).

How did I do that? Recognizing a profitable opportunity, I put Google Adsense on my site and also used a few affiliate programs like CJ,  Linkshare and Amazon Associates to make money from ad clicks and commission on referral sales.

Anyways, traffic usually spikes at my TBFA website every year just after Halloween, when shoppers start thinking about holiday sales. Visitors usually flood to my site hoping to get an early peek at the Black Friday ads.

The year-over-year growth of TBFA had been astounding… that is, until this 2012 Black Friday.  Google penalized my site because of bad links built to my site last year.

I tried removing the bad links and requested a reconsideration on Google Webmaster Tools earlier in the year. Google wrote back and on Oct 19th told me my site still has bad links pointing at it. So, later than night, I uploaded a massive disavow list and then requested another reconsideration. It’s been 20 days and another reconsideration request later (just to make sure they got my first one) and I still haven’t heard back from Google.

I’m afraid that they are so overwhelmed by the excitement around their new disavow tool that perhaps they are getting way behind on processing requests. Or, maybe a Google employee decided they didn’t like my site and perhaps thought I didn’t do a thorough enough job of disavowing bad links? Or.. maybe they just want me to suffer this year and will magically reconsider my site once Black Friday madness is over and its too late for me to make money from organic traffic?

I know I’m probably reading too much into this and taking it way to personally, but it’s hard not to, especially when I know the other Black Friday sites out there. This is where I could really use your advice. I’ve tried everything in my power and I’m losing hope.

Well, anyways, this year, organic traffic is down over 95% from last year due to the Google penalty. It doesn’t help either, I suppose, that Yahoo/Bing decided to globally deindex almost any site that had the words “Black Friday” in its domain name last year too.

For the past three years I had consistently been gaining 500 to 1,000% increase in visitor traffic, each year attracting more visitors than previously projected, as documented here: https://pagodabox.com/case-studies/scale-wordpress-case-study.

Actually, this year, because of streamlining and optimizing placement of Adsense ads, I’m making around 2 cents every time someone visits my website. Last year I was only making around half a cent because I didn’t have large banner ads and they weren’t placed optimally. So, at least I’m still making enough to pay my expenses this year, but I can only imagine how much more traffic and $$$ I could have been making if Google allowed my site to rank again.

Here’s an example of how my site is ranked this week for 10 sample keywords compared to my competitors who employed the same SEO tactics I did last year.

So, that is my dilema.  Any advice before Black Friday 2012 passes in the wind and I remain penalized?

UPDATE, Nov 9, 2012 8:33AM CST: I’m tracking a couple of conversations about this here: http://redd.it/12wfuq and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4761514. Could you help me get a little lift in visibility for those posts? Perhaps leave a comment or vote on the post on reddit or ycombinator? Thanks.

Update, Nov 15th 7:55PM CST:

I just heard back from Google finally. It was denied again! It was 10/19/12 that I uploaded my first disavow list and sent in a reconsideration request.

Do you think I should upload an even more agressive disavow list?

Here’s a list of all of my links as seen in Google Webmaster Tools today.

Can anyone tell me if there are ANY links in there that I should keep? Because… I’m thinking about disavowing at least 90% of those links. (I’ve already disavowed a good 75% of them already).

Any ideas?

Social media in the workplace – in or out? If your first thoughts are visions of your employees wasting the day away playing games on Facebook or making their evening plans with friends on Twitter, it may benefit you to take a second look at what social media can do for you, your employees and your company these days. From solving tough problems to boosting productivity, the benefits of social media in the workplace far outweigh the time wasting fears that may be holding many business owners and employers back from utilizing these powerful tools.

Social Media as a Problem-Solving Tool

While the Internet itself is a vast repository of information, the development and explosion of social media has turned it into an incredible source of collaboration. Rather than tread the same tracks and struggle to solve issues on their own, employees can reach out on Twitter to ask questions of their peers. Or, you may find that your employees like to share their own knowledge by participating in a Q&A on linked in. Additionally, services like Quora can provide expert advice to help provide the little creative nudge an internal team may not otherwise be able to access. A wealth of information, assistance, and new ideas are available to your employees via avenues they are probably already familiar with personally, and can naturally integrate into their work flow.

To Ban or Not to Ban

It is true, or at least highly likely, that your employees already have some kind of personal social media presence. While it would be nice to be able to keep them from saying anything negative about your company or brand on those profiles, that really isn’t possible. But by locking down the use of social media in the workplace, you are also preventing a lot of good from being shared as well! When using their social media profiles in a business environment, your employees will be reaching out and interacting with clients, coworkers, and the coworkers of competing companies as well. Your employees will be passing their updates, information, and the brand message to a larger network of well-targeted people. These connections are highly likely to generate a positive social media presence rather than a negative one, as many companies may have feared in the past.

One important aspect of introducing the use of social media as an accepted practice in your business is the boost to employee morale and improved company culture. In the midst of a tedious task or high-stress day, a few moments connecting with peers or outside sources with fresh ideas may provide exactly the break or boost a worn-thin employee may need to increase productivity. A good day or major success shared over social media channels not only cheers the team with congratulations, but chalks a point up in favor of your company to all those colleagues and clients your employees are networking with as well. Additionally, the empowerment to manage their own time and access to these tools instills a feeling of trust between employer and employee that should not be undervalued.

Not All Social Media is Good For Business

It should be noted that it is not appropriate in all situations for an employee’s personal and professional social media profiles to intersect. There are always certain circumstances and topics that will not be appropriate to share with the general public, as well as topics where an employee’s opinions must not be seen as representing the company’s or brand’s unless expressly stated as company policy. These guidelines should be clearly stated in a company social media policy, and some employees may wish to maintain separate social media profiles for professional and personal use. These cases would be the exception, of course, to social media use in the workplace. A clear company policy on appropriate separation of the two will neatly prevent any issues.

In Sum

Your knee jerk reaction to social media in the workplace may be to ban it outright to protect a valuable asset to any business – company time – but the benefits listed above only begin to scratch the surface of improvements to employee creativity, morale, and company culture social media can bring to your business.

Tech Milwaukee is a diverse group of meetups and meetup organizers who love technology. As the website states, “It’s nothing fancy or overly official.” It’s an initiative that gives a glimpse into the vibrant Web, tech, hacker and maker community in the Greater Milwaukee area.

Orion Group is looking to become the founding sponsor of this joint effort between the School Factory, Bucketworks, and the Milwaukee area technology community. Tech Milwaukee will help the tech community in Milwaukee by making it easier for the meetup and conference organizers to run their meetings by providing them with food and drinks during their meetups and free space in which to conduct their meetings.

In the Memorandum of Agreement between Orion Group and School Factory, it is stated, “A desired result of this program is for the Milwaukee tech community leaders and influencers to realize that Bucketworks fosters a collaborative learning and working environment and is a viable location to host monthly meetups and annual unconferences.”

Our goal is for Bucketworks to be established as the homebase for the tech community in Milwaukee, which is made up of the various technology-related meetup groups that meet at Bucketworks, for instance, Web414, Milwaukee WordPress Meetup, HTML5 Meetup, DC414, WordCamp, BarCamp and many more.

So, be sure to check out the new (still in alpha testing) techmilwaukee.com website and let me know what you think in the comments area of this blog post here.

Download my presentation notes to follow along here (click the image top open the PDF file on your computer):

I hope you learn a lot about SEO and how to avoid Google penalties and how to recover from Penguin/Panda!

To ensure that your content is up to par, you should develop an SEO content generation strategy.

Specific tips for doing so are highlighted below.

• Know Your Audience – Identify your target audience. What interests them? Why would they be shopping for your products or services? What kinds of advice or information are they looking for on the Internet? By answering these questions, you’ll be able to create content that is compelling, engaging and informative enough to convert casual visitors into paying customers.
• Identify Your Keywords – While you need to avoid being overly repetitive, you should identify the best keywords and phrases and make sure that your content touches upon them in some way. If you hire others to create content for you, make sure they are fully aware of these keywords and phrases.
• Keep Your Blog Fresh – The content on your site should be finely honed and expertly optimized. To keep a steady stream of fresh, relevant content on your site, you should update your blog consistently. Set a schedule and stick to it. A dormant blog is a waste of time, but an active blog can really bolster your SEO efforts.
• Promote Content Through Social Media – At the very least, you should be active on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Don’t just post bland links on those sites. Jazz them up with short, snappy descriptions that actually make people want to click on them. As with the blog, set a schedule for posting to popular social media sites as well.
• Generate Different Types of Content – Your blog should form the nucleus of your SEO content efforts, but it’s not enough. Branch out by periodically posting press releases that relate to your business or industry. Market separate articles on article directory sites. If possible, post guest blogs on sites that relate to yours in some way. By getting as many different kinds of content out there as possible, you’ll generate backlinks that will enhance your SEO efforts in a big way.

Variety and consistency are the most important aspects of any SEO content generation strategy. You have to be committed to producing content on a regular basis, and that content has to be fresh, relevant, engaging and well-written if it’s going to get you anywhere.

So… get the ball rolling. It might take awhile, but it will start paying off before you know it!

Functionality Is Key

Before your jaws drop in wonder about how a single parameter can define the failure of success of an app, it is vital to take note of app usability. This covers all the other aspects of iOS app development from the biggest features down to the minutest details. So when it comes to the popularity of a certain app, it is safe to say that the key is functionality.

User-centric Development

When it comes to application usability, iOS developers must need to concentrate on the needs of the end user. These people’s preferences must be surveyed because not doing so will inevitably result into failure.

Developers must focus on usability because this means that you are essentially making the application more engaging or interesting. Once the user’s attention has been captured, it can be said that your app is bound to succeed.

Usability must also come with easy-to-use app controls. These should be configured with newbies in mind. If the developers are able to achieve this, then they can truly say that all kinds of users will have a grand experience (or zero difficulty) in using the app.

To be able to accomplish all of what’s been discussed, the developers must note their target market. They don’t just keep shooting. Of course, they need to determine who to market the apps to.

And if you’re aiming to develop your own app and be as successful as the makers of Angry Birds and other such apps, you need to remember these simple requirements. The iOS is a brand new platform so this is the perfect time to develop the applications that users would be downloading.

Keep in mind that the winning apps in the market are those that are user-centric – this is at the very core of iOS app development. Just read through the raving reviews of the most famous apps in the market today and you will realize that it’s all a game of user-friendliness.

ChrissyW, most notable for her work in digital scrapbooking, creates digital scrapbooking templates for the use of other scrapbookers, available on the website twopeasinabucket.com. ChrissyW’s templates are creative and strikingly unique. With a nod toward the whimsical, ChrissyW’s templates are designed down to the tiniest of details. Her emphasis on the details makes her a popular pick among digital scrapbookers. ChrissyW’s templates are made to be customized by the purchaser, making every page created with a ChrissyW design truly one-of-a-kind.

ChrissyW’s templates illustrate themes popular with her many followers. Her themes range from the staple seasonal and holiday themes, to hard-to-find themes such as her “SEW cute” kit which is sewing themed, or her “Lucky Bum,” a dog themed kit. Scrapbookers familiar with ChrissyW’s works of art find them easy to spot in a crowd, due to the always saturated colors, and fine-tuned elements that make her famous. Those lacking idea or direction are easily inspired after looking through ChrissyW’s templates, alphabets, papers, and elements. Against the characteristic vibrant colors and zealous designs, scrapbookers find that their photos and other memories simply bounce of the page.

Purchasing a template is really only half the fun. Adding to ChrissyW’s design with their own memories, photos, and style is a process scrapbookers relish. Scrapbookers, upon choosing and purchasing their design, have creative license to go wild with ChrissyW’s template. The raw materials provided give a thoughtful and fitting home for photos and other memories to live. While the creative leg work is already done, the templates inspire scrapbookers to bring their own touches to the design and customize the template, making the end result a cherished piece of personal art.

ChrissyW’s designs can be purchased in pieces or in larger kits to make things cost-effective for scrapbookers. Those looking for a truly individual design, made by a famous scrapbooker are quick to purchase from ChrissyW. The name associated with these works of art, and the trademark heavily designed themes make purchasing and using her designs a gratifying experience. ChrissyW’s digital scrapbooking templates can be found at http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/shop/_chrissyw_/digital-kits/