Zé Mayer on Twitter Trending Topics

Brazilians are making Zé Mayer facts, a joke with the actor that always does the same type of character: a handsome and seductive man, who always hooks up with woman half his age. A soap opera staring him launched last Monday.

Source: Twitter / Search "Zé Mayer"

Willie Smits restores a rainforest

via ted.com

I did a translation to Portuguese to help my friends in Brazil

Posted via web from João's posterous

Joint Ventures - JV's

You want to note here that it is called a JV partner, not a JV helper. Finding a JV partner is not as difficult as some would make it out to be. Think about what you are trying to accomplish, think about what benefit you would like to get from your JV partner, think about what you can offer your partner.

The biggest tip I can give you about finding JV partners is to think in terms of what you can offer your partner. I think just the term "JV partner" scares some people, but if you think of it as simply as another person who will help you with your business. The most common name is "JV's". It is a partnership.

Use your head and you will find and create profitable partnerships. Some partners may need certain skills that you may have, like editing audio, or creating great graphics, whatever. There are tons of great graphics designers out there who are not in, or are brand new to internet marketing.

Choosing which internet marketing strategies you will use is about analyzing your business and deciding which of the many internet marketing tools out there would be the best fit for you. A great strategy is to hook up with others and work together on a project that benefits both of you.

Sometimes this is really, really obvious and sometimes it requires a conversation with that person to find out what they are looking for. You will figure out a way that they can help you and ALSO figure out a way that you can be of help to them.

You don't have to be some big guru with a huge list. I think this is the biggest stumbling block for new people. If you stop and think about this you will see that being new doesn't have that much to do with it.

Top 10 Twitter SEO Tips by Mike Dobbs

With all the rumors suggesting that Google will soon offer real-time search capabilities, indexing Tweets and other real-time web data, now is a good time to take a closer look at your Twitter (Twitter) presence. Even now, what you tweet can be held against you on the engines, although it can also work to your advantage.

As an example, Google (Google) is already indexing tweets (albeit not in real-time) so Twitter pages and even individual tweets have already started appearing within Google search results.

1. Choose a good handle
   
   Be sure to pick an optimal handle that’s relevant to your brand or campaign and easy to remember. Your handle (also known as your Username) then becomes part of your customized Twitter URL such as twitter.com/yoursite or twitter.com/yourtopic. Doing this creates a static address for future search indexing, which also helps usability for other cross-channel promotions. So choose wisely! The fun challenge: doing all this while keeping your name short and succinct so it’s easily tweetable.
   
   
2. Select an account name wisely
   
   Optimize the Twitter account name to best reflect your brand. Your name is what appears next to your profile, which can be different than your handle/URL. You obviously want an account name that promotes yourself, your company or your brand. You should also consider which variation of you brand name has the most search frequency every month.
   
   
3. Make your bio count
   
   Optimize your Twitter page’s “Bio” line so it includes the most important, mission-critical phrases for your brand. Take advantage of all 160 characters! (Yep, that’s right: They give you 20 more characters than a normal tweet.) Your bio is consistently indexed so its contents are what provide your Twitter page with its core relevance.
   
   
4. Spread the word
   
   Now think about ways to build the link reputation of this newfound social web address. For example, you can integrate your Twitter URL into your website by placing a call to action on the site for your customers to follow you on Twitter. You could also integrate your Twitter URL within your site’s Global Footer, which appears at the bottom of every page of your site. Both of these options offer usability to your site visitors and help drive your Twitter URL up in the search engines.
   
   
5. Remember your URL
   
   In the account settings, be sure to add your website’s URL or perhaps use it to promote your presence on another social platform, for example, yoursite.com. This is a great way to drive traffic back to your destination of choice; although, truth be told, the link does not provide any offsite reputation – a.k.a. SEO link juice – due to a “Nofollow” attribute that Twitter has in place. (Sorry Twitter spammers!)
   
   
6. Select the initial characters of each tweet carefully
   
   The “lead-in” of each tweet appears to be important for SEO as it will determine what appears in the tweet’s title tag when it shows up as a search result on Google. Approximately 42 characters are factored into each tweet’s title tag, including the account name, as well as the initial characters of each tweet. Keep in mind that your full tweet and all its characters are still being indexed by major engines, though. The first characters of your tweet may have the most impact on its future SEO value.
   
   
7. Write keyword-rich tweets if possible
   
   Wherever possible, start your tweet with a primary keyword phrase to theme each message. Take advantage of any “active lingo” or buzz words as this will enable you to capitalize on timely searches on those terms. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should fill your tweets with buzz words at the expense of providing value to your followers! Rather, think carefully about which word choices will best convey your message and also allow you to leverage the real-time and long-term index relevance across the engines that continuously spider and index tweets.
   
   
8. Mind your retweetability
   
   Make sure your tweet’s character limits allow for optimal “retweetability.” If you want a message to proliferate on Twitter, it’s ideal to keep it under 120 characters so your followers can easily add RT @YourHandle in front of the tweet. However, the exact number is different from everyone as it depends on the number of characters needed for someone to include the phrase “RT @yourname” in their re-tweet.
   
   
9. Provide some link love
   
   Insert back links to redirect users back to your content. Twitter has proven to be a significant traffic driver for bloggers and others using the space to share links. If you do share links, use one of the many URL shorteners available (TinyURL and Bit.ly are two common shorteners). We recommend using the URL shortener Bit.ly, as it tracks click-throughs for the specific links you share on the platform. Bit.ly even has the power to track links in aggregate. For example, if multiple Bit.ly URLs were created and shared by separate users, all leading back to the same URL, the service can track and report click-throughs for all of them in aggregate. Bit.ly also tracks clicks over time, so you can see when people are clicking your links most.
   
   
10. As always, give ‘em what they want
    
    When providing Bit.ly links or any other URLs, make sure the redirection leads to pages which provide a richer content experience. Twitter users are hungry for information and accustomed to getting it “right now.” Send users directly to the details instead of having them fish around for it.
    

Mike Dobbs is the group director of SEO at 360i, a digital marketing agency that drives results for premier brands through insights, ideas, and technologies. The agency recently released the Social Marketing Playbook, a guide for brands utilizing social media to connect with their customers. You can follow 360i on Twitter.

Embed mp3 with a player in the post

There are dozens of plugins to create a podcast blog/post but is very common to want a player into the post to listen to some speak, music; show a flash video and so many other types of media. The way to do that is to use the full editor and the insert (or edit) embedded media.

The following video shows how to embed a mp3 music with a mp3 player.

You can explore different media types and players you can embed using WordPress.

How to start a new blog - your audience

Before starting a new blog it helps to define what your goals are for it as that will guide you in every aspect of its development. Who wants to build a blog to promote an existing business will do things differently to somebody who is blogging for a cause for example.

Whether you have already a blog or about to start one, think about this first factor:

What is your audience?

Think about who your target audience is for your blog. It can be segmented by sex, location expertise, age, and so many other factors. A young tech guy is far more likely to Digg your posts than a mom who doesn't even know what bookmarking is. Your audience will respond differently to many other topics also. The same tech guy is much less likely to click an ad than the mom.

If your target audience is somebody who will carefully read through your posts in detail trying to glean as much information as possible or are they a "give-it-to-me-quick" kind of person? These affect the content and writing style. The former may respond well to in-depth how-to posts whereas the latter will likely prefer quick, easily-scannable lists.

If any of the things don't make sense to you, don't worry as I will write more posts about blogs! I'm giving examples so that as you read the posts you'll understand what aspects will be more applicable to your particular blog.

I will be back

7 Simple Ways To Build Traffic To A New Website

 
7 Simple Ways To Build Traffic To A New Website
By Mike Tekula (c) 2008      

Got a brand new website? That's great, but nobody cares.

OK, maybe that's a little harsh. The truth, however, is that just having a website doesn't get you much.

Editor's Note: Publication of the SiteProNews newsletter will be intermittent during the next 2 weeks. Visit SiteProNews.com for the latest articles, webmaster news and blog posts. We wish all of our loyal readers a happy holiday season.

Many business owners I meet are surprised to find, once we look at the numbers, that the shiny new site they had built not too long ago gets little to no traffic on a daily basis.
Many newcomers to the web make the mistake of thinking that just by buying a domain name and putting up your site, visitors are going to happen by - something like when you buy property and build a storefront in a busy part of town.

It just doesn't work that way. The web is harsh. You can have the best looking site in the world with great resources and content and go entirely ignored or unnoticed. It happens. It's happening right now. Somewhere out there in the ether is a brand new gorgeous website loaded with great content, and nobody cares. Poor little lonely site.

But there is hope. Every website had its early days. Even sites that get hundreds of thousands of visitors a day started out with none.

Here are 7 simple things you can start doing right now to help drive traffic to your site.

1. Get Some Quick Links From Trusted Directories
   Link building is a long-term process with long-term goals, but for brand new sites with no history you've got to start somewhere. There are a number of directories out there that provide free and paid listings (subject to editorial review, of course). Here are the ones I recommend:
   • Yahoo!
   • Business.com
   • JoeAnt.com
   • DMOZ.org
   • BOTW.org
   • there's a great list of directories sorted by SEOmoz's Trifecta score - bookmark it and get started
2. Start Blogging
   OK, blogging isn't for everybody (especially you boring people), but it's a great way to build relevant content at your site on a consistent basis. It also gives your visitors/ customers a way to engage with you. But please don't make the mistake of being too "corporate" on your blog - do yourself a favor and check your Public Relations cap at the door. Don't be afraid to discuss your mistakes, missteps you've made, and what you've learned from them as well as your triumphs. In short, be a human, not a brand.
3. Consider Paid Search
   For new websites, the day when you receive all the traffic you need for free from search engines and other referrals is a long way off - if not just a pipe dream altogether. Often times paid search campaigns are a great way to get your site in front of your target market today. Be sure to keep your budget modest, though, until you're confident in your ROI. Be sure to do your keyword research to find lower-cost "long tail" keywords - going after the big traffic keywords might be tempting, but it gets expensive and the ROI is often not the best.
4. Use Article Marketing To Build Links
   As with any tactic, I'd recommend using this one in moderation. Article marketing is, essentially, trading words for links. It can help with link building, but the quality of the links it garners is usually less than stellar.
   Here's how it works:
   Write an informative article on your site topic (or something related)
   Include an "about the author" section as well as links in the article that point to your pages using relevant anchor text
   Submit the article through one of the many article syndication services (such as EZineArticles.com or GoArticles.com)
   The deal is, anybody can come along and publish your article on their website - provided they use the article in its original format including the "about the author" section. So when the article is published, any links you include back to your site are published as well.
5. Guest Post At Relevant Blogs
   This certainly requires some up-front investment, mainly in terms of building relationships with bloggers in your topic (a little brown-nosing never hurt), but it can help get the flywheel turning for your site like nothing else can. Take the time to make your guest post remarkable and smart - your host blogger will appreciate it, and it'll improve the likelihood of attention coming back to your site (which you'll link to in your guest post, of course). Links from blogs are some of the most powerful editorial links you can get - don't underestimate them for a second.
6. Submit Your Site to Design Galleries
   Is your website breathtaking to behold, beautiful enough to make angels weep? Yeah, sure it is. But seriously, if it looks pretty sharp there are plenty of web design galleries that accept submissions for new sites and link to the sites they feature. Particularly for CSS-driven design there are a number of galleries that will consider your site for listing (provided your site uses CSS for layout/styling - and God help you if it doesn't) - including CSSElite.com, CSSHeaven.com, CSSBeauty.com and many others. Just search in Google for "CSS design gallery." Unless your site is ugly - in that case, I can't help you, and stop asking me to look at it.
7. Sponsor a Local Event or Charity
   OK, I admit this is kind of a tired tip - but it works! Especially for local small businesses. Is there a local event coming up in your community? A local charity that has a website? Not only will sponsoring such an event give you all of the normal PR benefits (and self-righteous bragging rights) that are the byproducts of charity, but any web announcement for the event will potentially include a mention of your website as well as a link to it. And you can feel good about yourself for a change.

Bonus Tip: Be Patient
Alright, this one is cheap, I admit it. Not much of a tip. But it's important to remember that you're not going to see your unique visitors count skyrocket immediately for your new website. Most "overnight successes" actually take a few years to get going.

And if you find yourself checking your traffic numbers on a daily basis, please do us all a favor - step away from the computer, go toss the ball around with your kid, maybe take your niece out for ice cream. Contrary to popular belief, staring at your site traffic data has no positive effect on it.
About The Author: Mike Tekula is the president of Unstuck Digital, a Long Island Web Design and Search Marketing agency based in Ronkonkoma, NY.

Posted via web from João's posterous

10 common Web design mistakes

The following list of design mistakes addresses the needs of commercial Web sites, but it can easily be applied to personal and hobby sites and to professional nonprofit sites as well. When you start designing a Web site, your options are wide open. Yet all that potential can lead to problems that may cause your Web site to fall short of your goals.

1. Failing to provide information that describes your Web site
   Every Web site should be very clear and forthcoming about its purpose. After all, a good experience with a Web site that is not useful is more likely to get you customers by word of mouth than a Web site that is obscure and difficult to understand. It's even important to explain why some people may not find it useful, providing enough information so that they won't be confused about the Web site's purpose. Either include a brief descriptive blurb on the home page of your Web site or provide an About Us (or equivalent) page with a prominent and obvious link from the home page that describes your Web site and its value to the people visiting it. It's better to send away someone uninterested in what you have to offer with a clear idea of why he or she isn't interested than to trick visitors into wasting time finding this out without your help.
2. Skipping alt and title attributes
   Always make use of the alt and title attributes for every XHTML tag on your Web site that supports them. This information is of critical importance for accessibility when the Web site is visited using browsers that don't support images and when more information than the main content might otherwise be needed. The most common reason for this need is accessibility for the disabled, such as blind visitors who use screen readers to surf the Web. The purpose of alt and title tags is, in general, to enhance accessibility. Just make sure you don't include too much text in the alt or title attribute -the text should be short, clear, and to the point. You don't want to inundate your visitors with paragraph after paragraph of useless, vague information in numerous pop-up messages.
3. Changing URLs for archived pages
   All too often, Web sites change URLs of pages when they are outdated and move off the main page into archives. Popularity on the Web is built on word of mouth, and you won't be getting any of that publicity if your page URLs change every few days. This can make it extremely difficult to build up significantly good search engine placement, as links to pages of your Web site become broken. When you first create your site, do so in a manner that allows you to move content into archives without having to change the URL.
4. Not dating your content
   Help your readers determine what information might be out of date by date stamping all the content on your Web site somehow, even if you only add "last modified on" fine print at the bottom of every content page. This content needs to be dated, so that your Web site's visitors know what is new and in what order it appeared. Even in the rare case that Web site content does not change regularly, it will almost certainly change from time to time -- if only because a page needs to be edited now and then to reflect new information. This not only helps your Web site's visitors, but it also helps you: The more readers understand that any inconsistencies between what you've said and what they read elsewhere is a result of changing information, the more likely they are to grant your words value and come back to read more. People come back only if there's something new to see. In general, you must update content if you want return visitors.
5. Creating busy, crowded pages
   Including too much information in one location can drive visitors away. Keep your initial points short and relevant, in bite-size chunks, with links to more in-depth information when necessary. The same principles apply to lists of links -- too many links in one place becomes little more than line noise and static. Keep your lists of links short and well-organized so that readers can find exactly what they need with little effort. When that gets old, they stop reading altogether.
6. Going overboard with images
   With the exception of banners and other necessary branding, decorative images should be used as little as possible. Use images to illustrate content when it is helpful to the reader, and use images when they themselves are the content you want to provide. Images load slowly, get in the way of the text your readers seek, and are not visible in some browsers or with screen readers. Text, on the other hand, is universal.
7. Implementing link indirection, interception, or redirection
   Never prevent other Web sites from linking directly to your content. There are far too many major content providers who violate this rule, such as news Web sites that redirect links to specific articles so that visitors always end up at the home page. This sort of heavy-handed treatment of incoming visitors, forcing them to the home page of the Web site as if they can force visitors to be interested in the rest of the content on the site, just drives people away in frustration. When they have difficulty finding an article, your visitors may give up and go elsewhere for information. Perhaps worse, incoming links improve your search engine placement dramatically -- and by making incoming links fail to work properly, you discourage others from linking to your site.
8. Making new content difficult to recognize or find
   In #4, we mentioned keeping content fresh and dating it accordingly. New content should stay fresh and new long enough for your readers to get some value from it. New content today should not end up in the same archive as material from three years ago tomorrow, especially with no way to tell the difference. By breaking up new items into categories, you can ensure that readers will still find relatively new material easily within specific areas of interest. Help them do that as much as possible. This can be aided by categorizing it, if you have a Web site whose content is updated very quickly (like Slashdot). Here's another consideration: Any Web site whose content changes regularly should make the changes easily available to visitors. Effective search functionality and good Web site organization can also help readers find information they've seen before and want to find again.
9. Displaying thumbnails that are too small to be helpful
   When providing image galleries with large numbers of images, linking to them from lists of thumbnails is a common tactic. It's also important to produce scaled-down and/or cropped versions of your main images, rather than to use XHTML and CSS to resize the images. When loading a page full of thumbnails that are actually full-size images resized by markup and stylesheets, a browser uses a lot of processor and memory resources. When images are resized using markup, the larger image size is still being sent to the client system -- to the visitor's browser. Browser crashes are even more effective at driving visitors away. This can lead to browser crashes and other problems or, at the very least, cause extremely slow load times. Slow load times cause Web site visitors to go elsewhere. Thumbnail images are intended to give the viewer an idea of what the main image looks like, so it's important to avoid making them too small.
10. Forgoing Web page titles
    Many Web designers don't set the title of their Web pages. A Web page title that is too long is almost as bad as no Web page title at all. It would be far more advantageous to provide a title for every page that identifies not only the Web site, but the specific page. This is obviously a mistake, if only because search engines identify your Web site by page titles in the results they display, and saving a Web page in your browser's bookmarks uses the page title for the bookmark name by default. A less obvious mistake is the tendency of Web designers to use the same title for every page of the site. Of course, the title should still be short and succinct.

Enhance your Web site's chances of success by keeping these design principles in mind. These considerations for Web design are important, but they're often overlooked or mishandled. A couple of minor failures can be overcome by successes in other areas, but it never pays to shoot yourself in the foot just because you have another foot to use.

This information is based on the article "10 ways to improve the design of your commercial Web site," by Chad Perrin.

Joao B. L. Moraes

http://twitter.com/jblm

Posted via email from João's posterous

Roaming Heading this blog

Nice! So many hot heads in the GFC gadget. I will have a look if there is some clue at the comments there. Some of them are in a rush. It's a tour!

Let's go!

A Blogger Blog with Google Friend Connect

There are some tricks to use Google Friend Connect in a Blogger Blog. The Blogger platform offers the Followers widget but you can add another text/HTML widget and fill the code for a Wall GFC gadget so that your friends can comment. Any other GFC gadgets can be added.

I am not sure that Google will offer all the GFC gadgets for bloggers and we need to fill the code by ourselves. I have other blog that needs localization and I saw the source code for Followers with another parameter: Locale pt-Br

I will give a try to change the code and see how is the behavior. That's all for now my friends.
Labor day is over so, let's back to work! All the best.