Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 184
March 10, 2017
Amazon.com now sells you stuff in Spanish
You can now browse Amazon’s main website and mobile app in Spanish — and, yes, we mean Amazon.com, not its .es counterpart. The e-commerce company has even added an easily accessible language settings option on the website’s interface, right next to the “Accounts & Lists” drop-down menu. As CNET noted, Amazon is most likely looking to attract more Spanish-speaking shoppers, especially since the US now has 41 millionnative speakers and 11 million bilingual residents. It even recently expanded Prime to cover Mexico, offering the same free unlimited shopping and streaming videos customers get in the US.
A spokesperson told the publication:
“Customers will be able to shop, browse and search for millions of products, view their shopping cart, and place orders in Spanish on Amazon.com and through the Amazon Mobile Shopping app.”
If you don’t see the option yet, you’ll get it soon enough. Amazon will continue rolling out the feature to more accounts over the next few weeks until everyone can access the new language option.
Source:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/03/10/amazon-com-spanish-language-option/
8 Great Ways to Market Your Audiobooks
If you’re a traditional author looking to market your books, you’re in luck. If you want to put in the work, there are literally hundreds of spots that can help you to sell more books, and book readers follow them eagerly. Audiobook fans, on the other hand, are a different breed. They listen to your books on the go, in the gym, while doing work, and even while driving the car. None of this is true of the typical book reader. Audiobook listeners are a fast-moving bunch, and you’ll have to adjust your book marketing strategies to catch their attention.
Give Them a Sample
Most audiobook producers allow listeners to download a short sample for free, sort of a try-before-you-buy setup. Go one step further and put up the first chapter of your book on SoundCloud. Use the same tags for this listing as you did the book online, and curious listeners will be able to search for your book. If you’ve got multiple books, you can keep them all on the same SoundCloud page, giving you a chance at multiple sales.
Make it Available
Audiobooks seem to get pushed into the background when it comes to book marketing. The simple act of giving the audiobook equal billing with your print novel and ebook will create more sales across the board.
Gather Those Reviews
Your producer may give you a certain number of coupon codes when they publish your audiobook. Use these for the most popular reviewers, giving them a copy of your work and asking for a review. In addition, ask all your loyal readers for a review as soon as they finish listening. Reviews sell.
Team Up With Your Narrator
The least you two should be doing is pushing each others’ work on your webpages and social media. Host a virtual release party with her or, if you live near each other, team up for a live event.
Show Them How it’s Done
Readers and listeners love to hear about the insider’s view of writing and publishing books. Bring your fans along while you write your next novel or nonfiction book, and then take pictures and talk about the production aspects of creating an audiobook. This will alert people to the audio before it’s live online.
Go To the Audio Audience
Email book podcast owners and volunteer to be interviewed. They’ve got to fill big editorial calendars and having a ready subject for one day could be a lifesaver for them. Do readings on radio shows, volunteer your nonfiction expertise on online talk shows, and go anywhere else you find a listening audience.
Make a Book Trailer
If you’ve got the movie-making ability to put together a quality piece about your book, you’ve already got half the work done with an audiobook. Cut together audio scenes and flash a series of relevant pictures and you’ve got a great advertisement to put on your website as well as social media.
Join the APA
The American Publishers Association is a non-profit organization that raises awareness for audiobooks. June is National Audiobook Month, when they put on a social media campaign to get the word out.
Source:
http://blog.infinitypublishing.com/bloginfinitypublishingcom/8-great-ways-to-market-your-audiobooks
What’s the best way to listen to ebooks?
My wife used to love reading but since her stroke has aphasia, no speech, limited vision and limited dexterity in her left hand only. She can select TV channels on a remote but she cannot read a short news story let alone a novel, so she listens to the radio and watches a lot of TV. I thought of getting her a Kindle e-reader but they don’t seem to do text to speech any more. A shop assistant suggested a tablet with a text-to-speech app. If so, which tablet/which app? It needs a really simple interface or my wife will not be able to use it without assistance.
I have installed OverDrive for RNIB talking books on my phone. This is far too fiddly for my wife to use. Also, the choice of books is limited. Peter
There are lots of answers to this question, but they may not work for your wife. The possibilities include good old-fashioned cassette tape recorders, specialised talking book readers such as the Victor Reader Stream, CD players, MP3 players, smartphones, tablets and PCs. You may need to use different technologies for different types of material.
Either way, remember that cassettes have been doing this job for decades, and there are thousands of tapes on eBay.co.uk. Prices vary, but you can often pick up cheap bundles for £1 per book, or less. CD audiobooks are not as common, but you may find some titles your wife would like.
In the future, I may have a two-word answer: Amazon Alexa. The longer version would be “a voice-recognition system with intelligent personal assistant software that can play audio on demand”. There are other AI-based PAs including Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri, but Alexa is already available on the Amazon Echo, which makes it instantly available for voice commands. Google has yet to launch its copycat product, Google Home, in the UK, but it’s expected in this year’s second quarter. Alexa will also appear on Amazon’s £39.99 Fire TV Stick on 6 April.
Alexa won’t work for your wife if she has “no speech”, but voice-driven AI systems like Alexa can not only answer questions and play audio, they can operate a lot of smart gadgets. They should make life easier for people who, for whatever reason, struggle with small screens, tiny buttons and incomprehensible user interfaces. That includes me.
Kindle talk
Text-to-speech (TTS) is a relatively old technology: Texas Instruments started making the speech synthesis chips used in its Speak & Spell toy in the 1970s. Amazon introduced text-to-speech in the Kindle 2, but it ran into objections from the Authors Guild. In a New York Times opinion piece, The Kindle Swindle?, the Guild’s president argued that ebook rights don’t include audio rights, and authors needed the extra cash. (See my story from 2009: Amazon caves to Authors Guild over Kindle’s text-to-speech reading.)
But now, at long last, you can get a Kindle option. Amazon is offering a Kindle Paperwhite Blind and Visually Impaired Readers Bundle for £134.98. This includes a 7th-generation Kindle ebook reader, a small external Kindle Audio Adapter, and VoiceView for Kindle software. The audio adapter has an audio socket for headphones or speakers. It works with Kindle ebooks that support VoiceView, but it doesn’t play music. Incidentally, in the US, Amazon sells the Kindle Audio Adapter separately for $19.99 (£16.44).
Audible audiobooks
Audible Inc was one of the pioneers of digital audiobooks, and Amazon bought that company in 2008. Unfortunately, the UK’s Amazon Prime service doesn’t include a selection of Audible audio books alongside the free movies, but there is some hope: American Prime users now get free Audible Channels, for streaming only. Either way, it might be worth subscribing to Audible, which costs £7.99 per month after a free first month. Your wife might like its BBC Collection in particular.
There are numerous ways to listen to Audible books, including Amazon Fire tablets and the Echo. There are apps for Apple’s iOS, Google Android, Microsoft Windows and Windows 10. You can also listen online via a “cloud player” or use a compatible MP3 player. Audible has its own file formats – AA, AAX, AAX+ and M4B – which include DRM copy protection. However, audiobooks can be transferred to other devices via iTunes or Audible Manager software for Windows. (I’m not a subscriber so I’m not certain this still works.)
There are several other audiobook services that are worth a look. These include OverDrive – which you already have – Downpour and Hoopla. The Open Culture, Project Gutenberg and LibriVox websites are good sources of free audiobooks.
Amazon also offers free audiobooks. You can find them by searching for “audible audiobooks free”.
Source:
Google’s new reCAPTCHA automatically tells you’re not a bot
Over the years, Google has utilised a number of methods to distinguish between human and bots on the web. Its take on the CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) test, known as reCAPTCHA, has required you to transcribe distorted words, confirm Street View addresses or simply just tick a box. Soon, you won’t need to do the hard work, because Google’s making the system invisible.
Using a combination of machine learning and advanced risk analysis, Google has updated its system to detect user habits without dedicated interaction. When you arrive on a web page, the controls should disappear and serve the relevant content. However, if you do trip Google’s risk analysis algorithms, you may need to quickly solve one of the search giant’s puzzles.
While the new system is invisible, it will still consider variables like your IP address and the movements of your mouse. Google says its technology will “actively consider a user’s engagement with the CAPTCHA — before, during, and after — to determine whether that user is a human.” That means no more transcription, which offered a human balance to Google’s optical character recognition, but you may now find what you were looking for a lot quicker.
Source:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/03/10/google-new-invisible-recaptcha/
Apple wants to make it harder to repair your already-hard to repair iPhone
It appears Apple has no intention of making it easier to fix your broken MacBook and iPhone devices.
The Cupertino behemoth has sent delegates to lobby against a proposed bill in Nebraska that will grant consumers and third-party repair chains access to service manuals, diagnostic equipment and replacement parts, BuzzFeed News reports.
Apple representative Steve Kester advised State Sen. Lydia Brasch against the proposed “right to repair” bill, warning the proposal could turn Nebraska into a “Mecca for bad actors” if passed. According to Kester, the act poses a large threat to consumers as it could grant hackers hardware-level access to company products.
The Big A has consistently voiced its preference that its products should only be handled by certified technicians. Samsung and John Deere have similarly argued the proposed legislation could expose industry secrets and compromise security and safety concerns.
Tech industry groups, including CompTIA, the Consumer Technology Association and the Information Technology Industry council have also taken a stance against the bill. Curiously, the groups represent some the leading names in technology like Microsoft, Google, Nintendo and Sony.
Among other things, the opposers argue the bill would “compromise intellectual property” and complicate safety regulations. They further claim consumers already have “substantial choice when it comes to visiting the repair facility that best suits their needs” as it is.
While Apple products are notoriously difficult to repair, the bill could make it easier to fix other consumer electronics that require less effort and skill to patch up.
But on the other hand, putting the “right to repair” in the hands of unqualified DIY repair aficionados opens the door for an uncontrolled stream of potentially dangerous “quick fixes.”
Still, as Repair Association executive director Gay Gordon-Byrne says, “[w]e should be able to repair the things we buy.”
Source:
https://thenextweb.com/apple/2017/03/10/apple-iphone-macbook-repair/#.tnw_bC2rEeeJ
March 9, 2017
‘Taboo’ Season 2 Ordered By BBC and FX
James Delaney (Tom Hardy) is a man you’d want to stay far, far way from. He knows he’s vile and isn’t right in the head, but sometimes he’s a loon that makes more sense than a viewer would expect. Delaney is a tough, violent, and nasty man, but sometimes no nastier than the world he wakes up to every day. In Taboo season 2, which has been officially announced he’ll bring his compelling madness to a new world.
Below, learn more about Taboo season two.
Before the news of this renewal even arrived, co-creators Steven Knight and Hardy said there’d be a second season of Taboo. Without spoiling anything major, as I’m still catching up on season one, season two is taking Delaney to another setting. The world Knight carefully took time establishing – London, 1814 – will be in Delaney’s rearview come 2018 when the show returns for eight more episodes on BBC and FX.
Knight has previously said he could see Taboo lasting two or three seasons. The finale ended with Delaney and some surviving characters on a ship, with an American flag, heading towards Ponta Delgada in the Azores. Knight wouldn’t tell EW whether that is the next season’s setting:
I think we don’t talk about that [Laughs]. In my mind, explosive stuff is going to happen, which will be great, should it happen. There’s a great destination for it, but I don’t know if we’re in a position to talk about the actual details of it.
The writer added:
In my forward thinking view of what this will be, I always thought we’re headed west. It’s a ship of fools, it’s a ship full of the damned, who are leaving the Old World and headed to a New World. They’ve almost self-selected because they are people who don’t fit in — they are rebels, people for whom that society doesn’t work, hence the line at the end, “We are Americans.”
Taboo averaged 1.24 million viewers on FX, while 5.8 million people on average would watch each episode within seven days on the BBC. The reviews were mostly enthusiastic, with plenty of praise for Tom Hardy’s performance. I’ve yet to see where he goes with the character in the last half of the season, but he’s riveting to watch as Delaney in the first couple episodes. He’s an unpredictable character, someone who can’t be reasoned with, pushed or threatened. The first few episodes of Taboo are a battle of wits between this madman and the East India Trading Company that makes you wonder, “How on Earth do you defeat a character as cunning and as nuts as Delaney?” It’s a dark, violent, and unpleasant story, but waiting to see what Hardy’s character does and says next on Taboo is hugely entertaining.
Here’s the synopsis for Taboo season one:
Set in 1814, Taboo follows James Keziah Delaney, a man who has been to the ends of the earth and comes back irrevocably changed. Believed to be long dead, he returns home to London from Africa to inherit what is left of his father’s shipping empire and rebuild a life for himself. But his father’s legacy is a poisoned chalice, and with enemies lurking in every dark corner, James must navigate increasingly complex territories to avoid his own death sentence. Encircled by conspiracy, murder and betrayal, a dark family mystery unfolds in a combustible tale of love and treachery.
Source:
http://www.slashfilm.com/taboo-season-two/
Kenyan startup BRCK launches SupaBRCK device to solve Africa’s internet equation
Kenyan communications hardware company BRCK unveiled its SupaBRCK this week — a waterproof, solar-powered Wi-Fi box that operates as a 3G hotspot and off-grid server.
SupaBRCK is the sequel to BRCK’s eponymous debut product, launched in 2013 to tackle two common African IT challenges: reliable power and viable internet options.
BRCK version 1 delivered connectivity and USB charging for up to 20 devices. The new SupaBRCK — with its dual core processor and a 5 terabyte hard drive — can be plopped down in just about any environment to provide up to 100 internet connections, streaming video for 50 devices and enough server capacity to run a Linux stack.
Accompanying BRCK’s hardware product is the startup’s new Moja service, which will provide ad-supported free public internet access and a content delivery network (CDN) service through SupaBRCK devices.
“We are moving from just being a hardware company to becoming a platform company, as we connect SupaBRCK to Moja and start having a network that covers entire countries,” BRCK chief executive Erik Hersman told TechCrunch.
As a startup, BRCK’s central focus has been delivering internet to Africa’s masses. Despite progress on mobile phone ownership and ICT infrastructure over the last decade, the continent remains one of the world’s most digitally disconnected. Though some countries, such as Kenya and South Africa, have attained high usage, internet penetration for the continent lingers at less than one- third of Africa’s estimated 1.2 billion people.
Improving those numbers, according to Hersman, is as much about cost as actual internet availability. “The demand on internet in Africa is largely driven by the 10 to 15 percent who can afford it. The real massive opportunity is trying to connect the 70 to 80 percent of the people who can’t. That’s where the internet race really is,” Hersman said.
BRCK’s revenue strategy, according to Hersman, includes not just generating sales from hardware, but “figuring out a business model that allows internet to work for those who can’t pay for it, while still generating a profit.”
Achieving this is a work in progress, he explained. Hersman noted possibilities to connect BRCK’s CDN network to greater advertising partners. There are also opportunities for partnerships with blue chip tech firms moving into Africa. “Most of the big companies — Google, satellite companies — are all doing transmission, they are not doing distribution,” said Hersman. “That’s where BRCK has a real competitive advantage and it makes us good partners with those companies. They provide the transmission end and we provide the transition out — that last meter between your phone and the Wi-Fi.”
Improving internet availability and affordability in Africa had become central to the continent’s burgeoning IT ecosystem. Pan-African e-commerce startups like Jumia need it to create a customer base. For global tech companies such as Facebook, Google, and Netflix — all of which increased their presence in Africa in 2016 — viable net access underpins growth possibilities on the continent.
BRCK, which is an outgrowth of Kenya’s iHub and Ushahidi crowdsourcing company, has been developing a suite of products to meet public and private internet needs.
Source:
Kenyan startup BRCK launches SupaBRCK device to solve Africa’s internet equation
Email: Still the Best Social Network Marketing Tool
While many businesses are guilty of chasing the latest digital marketing craze, good old email marketing is still the killer app to beat when it comes to return-on-investment for businesses.
“Email marketing allows us to send targeted messages,” says Jeffery Riggs, commissioning manager, Greyhawk, a program, project and construction management firm based in Mount Laurel, NJ. “We believe that participation on multiple platforms ensures we interact with others where they are most comfortable,” Riggs says.
Indeed, a 2016 study released by marketing consulting firm clutch found that email marketing still has the highest ROI of any marketing channel.
Eighty three percent of the companies Clutch surveyed said they were using e-newsletters to make new sales. And more than 70% were using stand-alone emails and follow-up emails to nurture nibbles of interest from customers
Moreover, Campaign Monitor, an email marketing firm, released a similar study last year. It found businesses can look forward to a $38 return for every dollar they invest in email marketing.
And Henry Hyder-Smith, CEO, Adestra — an email marketing service provider and consultancy — confirmed the trend yet again in a study his company conducted with Econsultancy
Those researchers found that 73 percent of 1,100+ marketers interviewed said email was their number one marketing channel in terms of ROI.
The study, “points out that companies investing at least a fifth of their marketing budgets on email are eight times more likely to see sales attributable to it in excess of 50 percent,” says Hyder-Smith.
The reason behind email’s potency? Despite all the buzz over social media, 58 percent of Internet users say the first thing they check on their computerized device each morning is email, according to a study by Exact Target
“Here’s the truth: When you have someone’s email, you’re allowed to communicate with them when you want, how you want,” says Derek Halpern, owner, Social Triggers, an online marketing consultancy.
Halpern says he conducted his own informal test recently, pitting email against Twitter. He sent out a post on Twitter with a link he wanted prospective customers to click-on. Then he sent out the same post and link via email.
The result: 50 of his Twitter followers clicked on the link, while 1,200 of his email subscribers clicked on the same link. “Yes, my email list might be twice as large as my social media following, but it generated about 24 times more clicks,” Halpern says. “That’s the power of email.”
Also helping email’s cause has been all the work IT departments have been doing to block spam from getting to company email boxes.
Overall, those safeguards have significantly decreased the amount of spam businesses users get as compared to just a few years ago.
Consequently, email open rates are looking healthy. On average, 17.6 percent of emails are now being opened by recipients, according to IBM’s 2016 Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark study.
Of course, getting email marketing right for your contracting business involves more than simply knowing it works. Here are the 10 most popular best practices for email marketing, based on insights from the Econsultancy/Adestra survey:
Engage in Basic Segmentation
Seventy-eight percent of companies said they’re doing basic segmentation with their email marketing. Essentially, that means they’re creating slightly different versions of the same email marketing message to cater to different segments of a company’s customer base. Some of your HVACR customers in the Southeast, for example, might get a slightly different message than customers in the Northwest.
Optimize for Mobile
Sixty-four percent of companies said they’re ensuring their emails are optimized for mobile. In practice, this translates into using single column email designs that allow for easier resizing, using responsive design that automatically resizes an email based on screen size, and eliminating content in mobile emails that is ordinarily displayed on full-sized computers.
“More people view emails on-the-go and we want to make our information as accessible as possible,” says Greyhawk’s Riggs. “We monitor our marketing email statistics and see a consistent 50-60 percent of opens on mobile devices. There’s really no logical argument against optimization.”
Adds Tom Templeton, owner, Coaching for Contractors says, “If you are depending on email as one of your sources of social media marketing,” optimizing for mobile is essential.”
Clean Your List Regularly
54% of companies surveyed said their email marketing success also hinged on ensuring they cleaned their mailing list regularly of emails that were bouncing back as no longer valid. They also are quickly removing email addresses from the list when customers request it.
Encourage Sharing of Your Email on Social Networks
Forty-seven percent of customers surveyed said they got more mileage from their marketing emails after asking their customers to share those emails on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media networks.
Use Your Transaction Emails for Marketing
43% of companies said they had a standard practice of inserting marketing messages into transaction emails. In practice, an HVACR contractor might pitch another job or upgrade when confirming a deal by email.
Include Video Content
Forty-two percent of companies said adding video content to their email was critical to the potency of those marketing messages. Given that YouTube, the online video sharing service, is the number two most popular site of the Web, the move sounds like a no-brainer for contractors, who could easily post a video of one of their recent projects.
Practice Re-Marketing
Forty-one percent of companies surveyed said they regularly use emails to remarket to customers. A Web visitor who fails to confirm their new subscription to a contractor’s e-newsletter, for example, might be prodded again by email to confirm that sign-up.
Personalize Your Email
Thirty-seven percent of companies surveyed said personalization of emails was also key to their marketing success. The personalization of emails went beyond simply addressing a person by first name. Instead, other personalized data was included in the email, such as the person’s birthday, acknowledgement of previous goods and services purchased by the recipient and similar qualifiers indicating the company truly knew who they were emailing when they put together the message.
Use Emails for Lead Nurturing
Thirty-five percent of companies said once they received a nibble on an offer by email, they regularly followed-up with additional emails to try and close the deal.
Combine Email, Multichannel Triggers
Thirty-one percent of companies said once contact was made by email, they followed-up — as Greyhawk does — by reaching out to the customer via other channels, including Facebook, Twitter, telephone, and old-fashioned snail mail.
Source:
http://contractingbusiness.com/residential-hvac/email-still-best-social-network-marketing-tool
Why you need to get back to SEO basics
Do a quick search on Google for “SEO tips” and you’ll get over 14 million results. That’s a lot of tips to wade through when trying to figure out the focus of your SEO strategy. What’s more overwhelming is that’s just one search.
Each year there are new posts of list of the “hottest” tips and tricks that are “guaranteed” to work. While many of these tips are great, to really see results, you need to have a good foundation. In this post, I want to talk about getting back to the basics of SEO and why they are essential to long-term success.
When it comes to optimizing your site for search, the basics are some of the most important, yet often overlooked, aspects of SEO. The recent push of “content is king” has also caused many to forget the essentials and just focus on content distribution.
Here’s the deal: you can post all the content you want, but if your site isn’t optimized, you’re not going to get the rankings you want. So here are few basics you should cover before ever diving into the more complex elements of search.
Crawler access
If search engine crawlers have a hard time crawling your site, they’ll have a hard time indexing and ranking your pages, too. As a site owner or SEO, your first and most important job is to make sure that your site is crawlable. Using the robots.txt file, you can help direct and assist the web crawlers that are crawling your site.
There are certain pages on your site that you probably don’t want the crawlers to index, such as login pages or private directories. You can block files, pages and/or directories by specifying them as “disallowed,” like so:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /folder
Disallow: /private.html
You can also block certain crawlers from accessing your site using the following (replace “BadBot” with the actual bot name you’re trying to block):
User-agent: BadBot
Disallow: /
Just be careful when blocking crawlers from your entire site; in fact, don’t do it unless you know for a fact that a particular bot is causing you trouble. Otherwise, you may end up blocking crawlers that should have access to your website, which could interfere with indexing.
If you are using WordPress, there are a number of plugins that can help you do this. If you are not using WordPress, you can also easily set up a robots.txt file on your server. Learn more about robots.txt here.
After you’ve created your robots.txt, it’s important to make sure Google can crawl your site. To do so, you’ll first need to create a site map. This can be done manually or with third-party tools. (If you have a WordPress site, there are many plugins available to create site maps for you.)
Once you’ve created your site map, log in to Google Search Console. (If you haven’t set your site up on Search Console, check this out.) You’ll want to upload your site map by going to “Crawl,” then “Sitemaps” in the left-hand navigation, ten clicking on the “Add/Test Sitemap” button in the upper right-hand corner. From there, you can test the site map and submit it to Google for indexation. (Note that it will take some time for Google to crawl and index your site.)
If you have already submitted a site map and just want to test/submit an individual page on your site, you can use the “Fetch as Google” feature, which is also under “Crawl” in the left-hand navigation.
Once logged in, click “Crawl” in the left-hand navigation.
Then select “Fetch as Google.”
From there, enter the URL path of the page you want to test and click “Fetch.” (Leave this blank if you want to test the home page.)
Check status. It should have a green check and say “Complete.”
Click “Request Indexing” if available.
Making sure that Google can crawl your site is essential to getting indexed. Without having your site indexed, you will not rank no matter what you do.
Site structure
In today’s mobile-first, user-obsessed web culture, we sometimes overlook the simple and practical. While I am all for a good user experience and a huge believer in being mobile-first, I also believe we can’t forget the search engines. Having a solid site structure will add to your user experience and will help you rank better.
While this seems like a simple idea, building a good site structure takes time and planning. Not only does it impact your navigation and site links, it also helps the crawlers better understand your content and context. Site structure is all about putting your content together in a logical fashion. Don’t make your users or the search engines dig to find what they came to your site for. Learn how to create a great site structure here.
Titles and meta descriptions
Titles and meta descriptions are some of the most basic elements of SEO. While “titles” are considered in the ranking algorithm and descriptions are not, they both are still very important. Google may not use descriptions as a ranking signal, but that doesn’t mean they ignore them. The crawlers still read the descriptions — and any chance you have to tell the crawlers about your page, you should take it.
The title and the description are often the first things your potential visitors come in contact with in the SERPs. Here are a few tips for creating better titles and descriptions.
Titles
Optimize your title tag around the core focus of your page.
Don’t “keyword stuff.”
Stay within 50 to 60 characters.
Make it relevant to your users.
Don’t have duplicates.
Descriptions
Make it action-oriented.
Add your primary keyword.
Make copy easy to understand.
Stay within 135 to 160 characters.
Don’t have duplicates.
Having better titles and descriptions can lead to higher click-through rates and increase the visibility of your site in search. It’s important to note that if Google thinks your provided meta data doesn’t meet the users’ intent, they will alter it.
Before jumping into the latest and greatest SEO tactic, make sure you do the basics first. It’s amazing what a few simple tweaks and adjustments can do for your site and overall online marketing strategy. Make sure your site is crawlable, create a structure that is both user0 and search engine-friendly, and take the time to create better titles and descriptions. Doing the basics will help you build a strong foundation for long-term success.
Source:
http://searchengineland.com/getting-back-seo-basics-270246
4 Ways Self-Published and Indie Authors Can Make the Sale
Though self-published and small-press authors face unique challenges when selling books, many have found great success in turning browsers into buyers. I reached out to several accomplished independent authors to learn the secrets of their success. Writing a good book is the first step. Here are four things indie authors should do next.
RESPECT BOOK BLOGGERS
“Book bloggers spend hours each week reviewing and promoting books that they love,” says K.A. Tucker, USA Today bestselling author of Chasing River. She calls them her “number one ally,” and notes: “Aside from receiving free copies of a book in exchange for an honest review, they receive no payment for their time and energy.” Audiences thus trust those reviews, and a blogger’s recommendation can help a book climb the sales chart.
Authors would be fools to take book bloggers lightly. “The worst thing a debut author (or any author, frankly) can do is damage their relationship with bloggers by a) not respecting their time; b) not respecting their opinions; and c) expecting that they read and love your book.” Treating a blogger with disrespect or hostility will likely result in a burned bridge. “And it’s never just one bridge. In this tightly knit community, word spreads quickly and you’ll earn an ‘author behaving badly’ badge overnight.”
DON’T GO IT ALONE
Poets have long toiled in a difficult publishing environment. Because such outlets as The New York Times and The New Yorker rarely review books printed by small presses (where most poetry is published today) poets must be resourceful in order to reach readers. According to Joyelle McSweeney, a poet and the director of the creative writing program at Notre Dame, one way to find new readers is through heartfelt collaboration with fellow writers. Events such as joint readings not only increase the sizes of audiences, but also strengthen local literary communities.
“Forming honest and sincere collaborations with people—not just to promote your work, but to have a fun event celebrating both of your work—is a great way to build your audience without alienating anybody,” she says. “These are the people I want to read my book, and I want to hear my buddy’s new poem, so let’s do a reading together. Invite your friends, and I’ll invite my friends, and we’ll double the audience for both of our readings.”
The purpose of such gatherings is not to reach 200,000 fans. “The goal,” she says, “is to reach people who are going to be moved and changed by your writing. And so you should look at what’s an arm’s distance away from you and start there.”
KICKSTART THOSE SALES
Crowdfunding has emerged as a useful tool for self-published and small-press authors who want to pursue longer-term publishing projects. In such a campaign, readers in effect purchase prerelease copies of an author’s book. “Kickstarter campaigns can also be a form of advertising,” says McSweeney. “Because it goes up on social media, people become interested and intrigued. In some ways it’s easier to hook your readers then, than after you have the finished product of the book.”
Jane Friedman, a writer and consultant, advises authors not to launch Kickstarter campaigns without plans in place. “A lot of a writers’ Kickstarter success depends on how strategic that author has been in really developing a direct line to people who’ve enjoyed their work in the past.” Authors who are considering going the route of crowdfunding should not expect an army of strangers to line up with outstretched fists of cash. “Writers should be really cognizant of the fact that they’re going to be depending on their current network and not some inspirational, hopeful future network.”
Friedman also warns of the “mushy middle” of a crowdsourcing campaign. The first week involves energetic updates from authors and promising investments from friends and family. The last week is a thrilling race to the finish line. But during those middle two weeks, authors sometimes freeze up. They feel like they’ve said everything possible about their book, and fear repeating themselves by continuing to beat the drum. To counter the lull, Friedman suggests that authors hold a reading or give a talk at a conference—any kind of public event, really, where the Kickstarter campaign can score a mid-campaign promotion.
LOOK BEYOND THE BOOKSTORE
Independent authors shouldn’t limit themselves to bookstores to find strong sales, says Friedman. “Some of the best places have some sort of tie-in to the book. Somebody I know wrote a book that took place on Sanibel Island, and she sold the most copies of her book in a little gift shop that people would normally stop in as they were going on vacation, and needed something to read.”
Closer to home, alcohol helps. “Bars or places where people aren’t in the trappings of I feel like I’m in this proper bookstore and I have to behave in a certain way,” says Friedman. “Anytime you can get out of that formality and into a place where it’s much more convivial and about conversation, people will be more inclined to interact with you the author, or a particular idea or theme of your book, and spread the word.”
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