So, like me, you saw the advertisements for the new iPhone 4.0 operating system and thought “Golly, I can’t wait to install that on my beloved 3G phone and take advantage of all the new exciting features!”  Then, like me, you gleefully plugged your phone into iTunes, and waited patiently for the exciting new features to materialize.  Then maybe, like me, you were initially disappointed that features like “multitasking” and “home screen wallpaper” were not available on your device (despite the fact you had all these features and more 2 years ago when you experimented with JailBreaking).  Then possibly, like me, you were horrified to discover that your beloved 3G iPhone was rendered nearly unusable once the software was installed.

Can I get an iMen?

So maybe like me, you scoured the net to find solutions to your woes and discovered fixes such as:

Perform a hard reset: Hold down the sleep and home buttons simultaneously for roughly 15-20 seconds, until the screen powers off then an Apple logo appears, which signifies a reboot.

Turn off Spotlight. Navigate to Settings -> General -> Home Button -> Spotlight Search and turn off all the options by tapping each one.  Then perform a hard reset.

Free up space. Make sure that your iPhone has at least 10% of its available memory free.

… but none of these restored your phone to its previous iOS 3 glory.

So possibly like me but maybe not at all like me, you are part of the iPhone developer’s program with access to all the latest iOS beta seeds, and you religiously upgraded your phone each time a new beta was released (and erasing all your saved files, contacts, etc. in the process), in the hope that your phone would somehow be faster.  Well, if you are possibly like me, then you will have discovered that the iOS 4.1 beta 3 does fix some, but not all, of the issues of installing iOS 4 on a 3G iPhone.

*Note, the follow issues are unique only to the author of this post…  unless you are like him.

Issue 1:  Slow responsiveness.

After installing the new iOS 4.1 beta 3, I did notice the phone’s responsiveness improve, not dramatically mind you, but enough to make me not want to throw it out the window.  Opening up the iPod application doesn’t take a full 30 seconds anymore, and the Mail application actually allows me to check my old email as soon as the app opens, as opposed to after it’s finished downloading new mail.  Also, when I hit “reply”, the view pops up smoothly like it used to, instead of stuttering like George McFly.

Issue 2: Random and Unexplained Crashes

Unfortunately, I haven’t had the new OS running long enough to say one way or another on this issue, but so far so good.

Issue 3: Autocorrection

Okay, this isn’t quite an iOS 4 issue, but ever since I installed the beta version, the autocorrection hasn’t been as quick to make my emails set off every spam filter known to man due to horribly mangled english…  but to be fair, that may be user related.

So if you’re like me, you might just want to wait until iOS 4.1 is available to the general public before downgrading back to iOS 3.  Or maybe not…

Sometimes projects take a life of their own, and when improperly managed can develop into a tangled hydra. It’s important to take a step back, sometimes a very big step back, to have a broader scope when tackling your IT or project management issues. This is an increasingly important step in your successful project called the discovery phase, and having your tech team there from the very start is crucial to consistency in the development and implementation of your project or fix.

This phase ensures that all parties understand the current state of your business and/or project, trouble spots, possible solutions to the various challenges that you’re looking at, and vision and goals. Having your techies there for the discover phase is recommended particularly for a project if the details of the project, or the technical challenges your company faces are unclear or uncomfortably complex. These guys eat complex for breakfast, they see complex differently, and then thy create the simplest antidote for it.

Why it’s important to have your tech team in the room with you when doing discover should be obvious, but some companies overlook the importance of it. These are the engineers of the solutions dreamed of in this phase. Whether it be building or improving your eCommerce platform, improving your online business model, or tackling information management challenges, the guys and girls who understand the nuts and bolts are a valuable asset right from the get go. Knowledge of the building materials in this process can help in both managing expectations (some things just aren’t possible or affordable) in offering alternatives, and to ensure that from the first step all the way to Quality Assurance that the discovery, the vision and the implementation of solutions are consistent and the pros and cons of decisions or solutions are explored.

With your tech team involved in discovery, you’re both at an advantage by both clearly understanding:

a) The problem(s) and reason why it needs solving

b)  the requirements of the project (staffing, budget, platforms and tools, timeline)

c) Strategies for tackling the problem

d) expectations, limitations and hopefully some acknowledgment of ‘unknowns’

e) whether in fact a real big problem exists or if it’s a simple fix!

Your tech team being there from the start ensures that both parties are on the same page and that progress, challenges that arise, technicalities, and goals are all clearly communicated. Because of this your project should be a smoother one on both ends.

A useful, but underused and misunderstood, meta tag is the “link canonical” .  This meta tag is accepted by most major search engines and is perfect for duplicate content pages generated by various CMS systems and eCommerce platforms.  How it works is simple, you insert this tag in the <head> field of your page and specify the proper URL that the page should resolve on, and if there are duplicates, the Search Engines will treat the tag the same way they would treat a 301 redirect.

The syntax is as follows:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/page.php" />

So, if you had duplicate URLs generated by, say, a search query:

http://www.example.com/page.php?search=seo

http://www.example.com/page.php?search=seo+tips

http://www.example.com/page.php?search=seo+tips+from+senses

If all of these pages generated the same output (posts tagged with “SEO” for example), you can save yourself some duplicate content headaches by simply inserting the link rel=”canonical” into the header file that is generating the header for the pages:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/page.php?search=seo" />

With this tag, search engines would treat the other pages as follows:

http://www.example.com/page.php?search=seo+tips --> 301 redirect --> http://www.example.com/page.php?search=seo
http://www.example.com/page.php?search=seo+tips+from+senses --> 301 redirect --> http://www.example.com/page.php?search=seo

Keep in mind, these pages would still resolve as usual to the end user..  they’re not ACTUAL 301 redirects!  Yet, there are many instances, especially in CMS or eComm systems, where a 301 redirect or a rewrite rule would not actually be possible or desired.  A proper 301 redirect is still the best method of dealing with duplicate pages, but when you can’t do a redirect, the link canonical tag is the second best alternative.

If anything, humanity has wowed itself with an innate ability to innovate, create and rethink approaches to problem solving. Yes we can be pretty damn crafty (like this guy to the left who almost figured out how to fly before plunging to his death) and the technologies we create tend to be an answer for many of the challenges we face. But they can often be the most expensive route too, and they don’t always work. In the worst cases, the technologies we create can become a bigger problem in and of themselves. (Take nuclear weapons for example…)

Far too often, young companies or companies who are experiencing difficulty will turn to technology as their first option- hoping that their dwindling revenue, poor customer service or dysfunctional work-flow can be solved by a simple gadget. Online business software and business technology can amplify what you do right and yes it can also solve glitches in your business model, but before you go searching for the elusive simple gadget to make everything right make sure you look carefully at everything that doesn’t heavily involve technology first. These fixes are usually free, and considering that, can often get you far more bang for your buck.

It’s good once in a while to step back and ask yourself this one question:

“What is one simple and inexpensive thing I can do to improve my business?”

You might find that more often than not you’ll have a good answer for yourself. And as you continue to make these simple and cost-effective improvements a part of your business model hopefully you’ll find that technology will be something you see as an asset in your growth and success and not a cure-all for your problems.

Though you may have hired the most brilliant and cunning team of website developers and SEO strategists to optimize your site back when it was brand new, it’s never a bad idea to revisit your meta-tags or site description and consider tweaking them once in a while. Here’s why.

The world is not a static and unchanging place so neither should your meta-tags be. The economy swings and stumbles, interest rates rise and fall, and spending habits can quickly change. This means that online search habits also quickly change. To condense meta-tags into a simple analogy think of them like advertisements. These are the things that bots and spiders are out there looking for on behalf of users, eager to find your service through search engines. They’re not the only thing to consider in SEO by any stretch of the imagination, but they are one of the easiest to monkey with and can yield results.

I recently encouraged a friend who operates a popular tourist destination to do exactly this, as the meta-tags for their website had not been changed in years. Back when the average tourist thought they had a lot of money thanks to sub-prime mortgages and endless magic credit, people thought the gravy train would never slow down- and so searching for fancy stuff was all the rage. Now that millions of tourists found out they’re actually piss poor and frantically climbing out of debt, searching for cheap stuff has become popular once again. So for this particular tourist destination including words and phrases like “BC tourism deals” or ‘BC affordable tourist destination’ or ‘best free travel spots’ (as some of this destination had free attractions)  might be good in lieu of some of the other nondescript tags that had been there for a while. Then when times are good, consumer habits change again, he could adjust them again.Your page description is also something worth re-examining on occasion and should be consistent with keywords and meta-tags so as not to confuse spiders and bots who may then consider you spam.

SO it’s good to re-examine your site’s back end and meta-tags now and then. These changes are pretty straightforward and easy to do, but they should be well thought out. If you’re not sure about what kind of changes to make, ask an SEO specialist. There are other tags to consider (author, copyright, robot) and your site description should be consistent with your keywords and meta-tags otherwise, I stress once more, your site may risk being mistaken for spam. So for a more detailed exploration you can head here.

On the topic of change, and spam,  I would also like to introduce a new feature on the Senses Blog which includes brilliant quotes from our Spam filter. This week’s top Spam comment is:

“The article is very wonderful. You analyse in the round. I will go on to attention your other wonderful posts. …” written in response to Tips for Small Business Blogging: Editorial Calendars

For everyone who still thinks Friendster is the premier North American social networking site, allow me to introduce you to Wordpress. Wordpress is a free, open source blogging software that is easy to install, highly configurable, and can be found powering sites just about everywhere on the internet (including this one you’re reading). Although traditionally a blogging suite, Wordpress can easily be used as a backend for a CMS system with a little php development and a “theme”.

So, why do SEOs love Wordpress? While I can’t speak for all the SEOs out there, I give you a couple of reasons:

1. Custom Permalinks

Right out of the box, Wordpress gives a user the option to edit the ugly /?p=23 url structure to a more search friendly structure (/this-feature-is-awesome).  No need to edit htaccess files!  This can be done automatically via the “Permalinks” menu in the wordpress administration, or right from the post a user is currently editing:

2. Built in Taxonomy

As it was built as blogging software, Wordpress has a built in Category/Tag structure that allows a user to build a full site taxonomy, grouping posts into specific categories and then into tags.  As search engines attempt to deconstruct the semantic meaning of a page by its contents, grouping pages into categories/tags is a great indicator to help a search bot understand what you’re talking about.  It also allows a user to find related articles based on the current subject, or even a list of all the pages based on a subject.  With Wordpress 3.0, you can even set and build custom taxonomies.  A custom taxonomy allows for a higher level of grouping tags, such as:

“Tag:  Color -> blue, red, green, purple”

This is a semantic step up from the wordpress 2.9 and lower “Tag: blue, red, green, purple” tagging structure.

3. Plugins, plugins, plugins

Did I mention that Wordpress has a lot of plugins?  A good number of these plugins are built specifically for SEO!  From auto-generating title tags based on the post title to automatic Google Analytics and Adsense installations, Wordpress has a large community of developers who build specifically for making SEO just a little less tedious.

These are just three of the many reasons why Wordpress is continually recommended by SEOs as part of a blog strategy, and often, as a CMS system.

Though early on in the internet’s existence we soon discovered the value of URLs, sometimes we need to remind ourselves of these basic things. For any businesses the value of URLs, even if they’re not being used, is something that should be taken into consideration. Think of them like stocks (or maybe more accurately bonds) that are primed to increase in value down the road, or a backup system that you know will come in handy one day. Maybe you young bucks reading this don’t remember the glory days of average joes selling brand name URLs for millions of dollars and then retiring in Belize; I remember it because I was old enough to know what was going on and too broke to do anything about it. Anyhow…

Have them ready to go for a 301 redirect so if you do move your webpage, any users who have your site bookmarked or cached don’t get a 404 error when they go to that now defunct address. Also, it’s a good idea to have numerous TLDs (Top Level Domain) suffixes for your name. This means buying .net, .ca, .org (if you can) or another TLD  for your company so that when someone types in www.yourcompany.ca (and your site is a .com) then it redirects it to www.yourcompany.com instead of going to some crappy search engine site you’ve never heard of or produce a 404 error.  If you don’t, you risk someone scooping it up on speculation and profiting off of your sudden need to buy it off of them or through ad revenue from making it into that fake crappy search engine loaded with spyware. Or what have you.

Having separate domains for services or products that are particularly popular is a good idea too. Example:

www.yourbusiness.com/particularproduct (original I know) will show up on a search so that customers won’t have to sift through your site to find this particular product.

Or if you have a new product coming out that you’re going to be marketing extensively you should have a separate URL for that product as it’s more direct than having it be a page indexed in your URL or a domain within your site. For example, Thirdi has helped develop a new product called Just the Bill. To have it be Just The Bill brought to you by Thirdi with the product page somewhere in one of the pages on the company site is less direct than to simply have www.justthebill.com and a basic site with all the info on it. The product comes first in this case, the company second. In some cases the company may come first and the product second (as is the case with content based products like news brands or producers who focus on variations of single products) so consider what order works best for your business and product.

From an SEO point of view, 301 redirects (0r 302 which are temporary) are the best way to redirect your URL.  For moved pages, search engines will index the new URL, but will transfer your link popularity from your old URL  so that your rankings are not affected. 302 redirects are not so great for moving page URLs. These are used through URL Forwarding features that most domain registrars employ. Because search engine traffic is dominated by Google this mitigates the fact that Yahoo or that other search engine Microsoft released a while back (what’s that called again? Bling?) don’t deal with 302 redirects as well. Still 301 is better to use overall though.

Speaking of which, I’m now going to 301 redirect myself out of the office. L8R.

One of my favorite, and commonly used SEO tools is provided free from Google.com.  Every search campaign should include installation of WebMaster Tools, which is a sure fire way of getting your site indexed, but there are many handy gems inside that can help with your SEO upkeep.

Right from the dashboard, you will find the most popular search queries that your site ranks for, crawling errors straight from GoogleBot, Keyword Significance to your site, and links to your site.

The Search Queries tool is exceptionally useful, as it shows the average position your site appears in SERPs verses the number of impressions and the number of click throughs.  As a default, it shows results from all countries and all search engines, which can confuse your numbers, if you’re not careful.  Be sure to specify “Web” for organic web results, as this will filter out image search and mobile search results.

The Crawl Errors tool will show you which pages GoogleBot has found that can’t be found (404 error), cannot be reached (500 error), and other server errors that could be preventing your users from accessing the content that they’re looking for.  It also shows what pages are linking to the page that’s causing the problem, which gives you the chance to fix broken links, or redirect where necessary.  Best part is you can export the whole list to a spreadsheet, in case you have a large numbers of errors you need to sweet talk a developer into fixing.

The Keyword Significance tool shows a long list of the most common keywords that Google discovered when it last spidered your site.  This will help you know you’re on track with the keyword optimization in your site’s content.

The Links to your site tool does just what it says..  shows links to your site.  Although someone useful to show which links Google recognizes, from my experience, it isn’t quite as robust as Yahoo’s SiteExplorer.

If you have a local business, the quickest way to get first page rankings is to utilize a powerful, but often overlooked, Google service called Google Places.  Its free, easy, and even gets a phone call from GoogleBot itself!

If you’ve ever done a localized search, you’ve likely seen places in action.  Generally, it shows up as a conglomerated map listing in the first slot of a SERP result:

Getting incorporated into these listings starts by signing up with Places using your either your gmail, adwords account, or webmaster tools account (you have signed up with Webmaster Tools, haven’t you?).  Before you sign up, you should check the Google Places Policy to ensure you’re not in violation of the Places guidelines.  If all is copacetic, you’re ready to begin.

First, on the Google Places homepage, click Add New Business.  This will take you to a form where you fill out the vitals of your business (Company name, address, phone number and website).  The address and phone number are required fields, but the company name and website are important, as that is what will determine how the link in the listing will appear.  The company name will be the link anchor for the website.

After you’re finished and clicked Next you will be brought to some additional, but optional, information.  Don’t overlook this, as it will give you some greater flexibility in determining what you want to rank for.  Categories and Photos specifically, as categories will help give Google greater insight into what your business is about, and photos are a great place to put your company logo.

Once every thing is entered to your liking, you’re ready to Submit.  This will give you the option of how you wish to verify your company with Google, either a phone call or postcard.  While getting a “Wish You Were Here” card from Google is nice, the phone call option is much more quick and efficient, and you can even do it on your mobile phone!

The benefit to Google Places is you can change your listing as your company changes, giving you greater flexibility in your local SEO campaign.

Recently I’ve had a few business owners and non-profit groups asking me why their blogs or other  updates on Facebook pages don’t  show up on fans news feeds.  The main reason is this.  Facebook decides what makes it to news feeds through an algorithm that is somewhat random but is informed by your own interactions with other user’s pages. Plus it also posts the most current content, so within a few hours it’s easy for your update/important blog post to be buried under a barrage of baby updates, links to bizarre crap on Youtube or other senseless musings. Essentially it gives preferential treatment to the pages and friends you interact with most and whatever is newest, unlike an RSS feed which is how many businesses have misinterpreted it. This means that if your Facebook fans and friends aren’t actively visiting your page then you may potentially risk falling off the radar so to speak.

What you can do to keep interaction going? Some of these may seem obvious but I’ve been amazed at how many companies don’t do these simple things:

Add favorites to your page. This is a two way street. If you add other organizations and businesses to your favorites there’s always the chance that they’ll reciprocate and sometimes if a big on reciprocates it can create a lot of attention for you. Think of it like outbound and inbound links. While you do risk adding an organization or company’s page without reciprocity (this risk now being termed as preciprocity) nothing ventured nothing gained is what I say.

In recognizing that the things you post to you own page won’t always make it to everyone’s news feed, when you do have something that’s particularly important use the send an update to fans option on your page.  The frequency at which you use this function is up to you but I know some communications specialists who like to treat it like a monthly newsletter function. In fact, some of them have a monthly newsletter that they will use the update function on their Facebook page to send out along with their mailing list. If you only have quarterly newsletters then consider having one particularly strong blog post every month that you update your fans and followers with. Then maybe consider having a condensed newsletter post that invites your friends and followers to download the full version from your site when the quarterly comes out. To get to this option go to EDIT PAGE and then on the right hand side in the edit mode you’ll see the option to send an update to fans.

Consider a Facebook newsfeed widget on your site. If you post all your blog content to Facebook plus your Twitter feed then this is an easy way to aggregate content from them and can increase the visits to your Facebook page and blog at the same time. Although in my opinion it’s better to have people visiting your site through Facebook and Twitter as opposed to the other way around. Nevertheless, if you want to utilize Facebook more effectively this is something to consider.

These are just a couple of ways you can use Facebook in conjunction with your blog more effectively.