March 28th, 2012 Karen Callahan
The Marlborough Regional Chamber of Commerce held its Distinguished Speakers Breakfast this morning. Presenter was Steve Vinter, Director at Google.
Mr. Vinter is a relaxed presenter with a sense of humor. He kept the crowd’s attention using his humor and switching topics fairly frequently. He spoke about AdWords, Analytics, Google+, Speed, Ripples, Android, the Google Body Project, Non-Profits, Page Speed, Sharing, and more.
He demonstrated
- How he used a form in a Google Docs spreadsheet to get votes from a group of employees about where to have a celebration.
- How to find ‘gas stations’ within X miles radius of a location on Google Maps.
- How website developers like myself can improve page delivery speed using Google’s Page Speed tool to measure speed and suggest improvements
I learned new things about Google and some of its products.
The highlight for me was when Mr. Vinter demonstrated the use of Page Speed. He first tested CNN.com and the tool gave that website a rating of 81%. Then he tested the Marlborough Regional Chamber of Commerce’s website and that received a rating of 89%. Higher than CNN – and by 8%! That made my day, since CNN has so many more employees… and here I am, plugging away, able to get one of my clients such a fabulous rating! Very gratifying and a good way to start the day!
There were “oohs” and “ahhs” in the audience. Many people know that I maintain the Chamber’s website. I, of course, was more than happy to stand and take a bow. It was a moment to remember.
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March 23rd, 2012 Karen Callahan
I’m looking forward to an update on Google from Google Engineering Director Steve Vinter who will be speaking at the Marlborough Regional Chamber of Commerce’s Distinguished Speakers Breakfast meeting next week.
There have been lots of changes in the Google tools that I use, now, there are new tools and re-definitions. I hope to learn a couple of not-so-well-known nuggets that will give my clients a leg up on getting found on the Internet.
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March 9th, 2012 Karen Callahan
Been writing in your blog for a while and stuck for fresh ideas? A number of blog topics are commonly recommended and they are listed below, BUT, my number one recommendation is to look at the statistics (Awstats, Webalizer, etc. statistics programs loaded in your admin, and/or your Google Analytics) for your blog.
Why? Because you want to write about what people want to know...Checking your statistics lets you know the terms that the search engines associate with your blog (with you and your business).
When you look at the keyword terms section of your statistics, you see a list of a keywords terms and the number of times visitors where brought to your blog using each term. So any term appearing on that list is a term that the search engines associate with your blog.
My Process:
I review the list of keyword terms and the number of visits for each term. I’m looking at this information in order to exploit the already “good” associations the search engines are making. (Some keyword terms are working fabulously, and I am happy with the traffic that the search engines bring for those terms.) For figuring out what to write about in my blog, I choose a keyword term that I think should/could be bringing in more traffic, and I write about that keyword term.
Following this strategy, at a minimum, you reinforce that the search engines were correct in associating your blog with a keyword term in the first place, and, more likely, you are adding more evidence that you are INDEED and expert on that keyword term topic!
What do you think? Have you tried a similar strategy? If not, would this work for you? Let is know in the comments section.
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Common Topics
- How To…
- Five tips for…
- Changes in the Industry
- Training you are taking
- Upcoming Events
- Recent Awards
- Recent Articles or News Reports
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February 21st, 2012 Karen Callahan
CNET reports that Twitter has admitted to saving more than your tweets when you use their app on your smartphone. Twitter is uploading your contact data and browser history and saving it on their servers for 18 months. For what reason???
A spokesperson for Twitter says that in the next release(s) of the phone app(s), they will be more explicit about what Twitter does and does not do.
Learn more from the CNET video (1:30): Twitter wants your contacts, smartphone data
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February 20th, 2012 Karen Callahan
Today, a break from writing about WordPress and blogs to tell you about a great spam-filtering software tool that I (now) recommend. One of the tasks I had scheduled for Business Infrastructure Week (the week between Christmas and New Years) was to evaluate MailWasher Pro.
How did MailWasher Pro get on my list?
I have over 20 email accounts, most of which get checked daily. You can imagine the amount of spam that comes in with the legitimate emails. I needed relief from wading through the spam to find the important emails from my clients…a business colleague suggested MailWasher Pro.
I researched MailWasher Pro, downloaded the evaluation copy, used it for a couple of days, liked it a lot, then purchased a copy and installed it on my desktop.
It is a great product and I highly recommend it. MailWasher Pro allows you to connect to the servers of all your email accounts and review and categorize the emails and the senders before emails are downloaded to your computer. You can mark things for delete or approve, and blacklist and whitelist senders. Each time you categorize and delete and approve messages, MailWasher learns and remembers, so everyday, you are presented with a list of emails that MailWasher Pro has pre-categorized – saving you time – and over time, you are just checking that MailWasher Pro has got it right.
I no longer download unwanted email to my desktop. It is reviewed, categorized, and filtered on the remote servers, then downloaded. MailWasher Pro is a great time saver and has improved my productivity.
(Karen Callahan and Adventures Online are NOT affiliated in any way with Firetrust nor MailWasher Pro… just a fan!)
Posted in Recommended Software | No Comments »
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