Alert Blog Reviews

If you do not have some sort of disability like impaired sight or hearing the idea of web accessibility is something that you likely don’t consider. I didn’t. I don’t think that makes any of us bad people but considering the time of year it may give us some pause to count our blessings. Apparently, the one group that needs to be thinking about the issue more than most are web designers and developers. If the article from cnet is any indication it appears that that these folks are thinking about more on the front-end rather than being reminded and having to retro-fit sites later. The cnet article draws attention to Yahoo’s efforts in this arena in particular . Yahoo’s Victor Tsaran knows how much time Web designers spend agonizing over color and font-width choices when laying out an application. So when he started Yahoo’s accessibility push two years ago, he had a tough time arousing sympathy for engineers grousing about how much extra time was needed to create accessibility features. Fortunately for Tsaran, Yahoo’s accessibility manager, he’s running into that problem less and less. Web designers are starting to take accessibility as seriously as button placement or heading layout when they develop their products, improving the Web experience not only for people like Tsaran–who lost his sight at the age of five–but for Web users in general. While not quite yet ubiquitous the idea of web accessibility is important and will continue to be so moving forward. More large companies are acting on their increased awareness according to the folks at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). YouTube has added captioning to its capabilities in response to the need. Honestly, until I read this article I was not aware how great that need actually is. There are about 60 million people in the U.S. who can’t use a computer to get on the Internet in the normal fashion, said Yahoo’s Alan Brightman, senior policy director of special communities. For those people, a mix of screen reader software, keyboards with special buttons, and even motion-sensing Web cameras must take the place of the mouse and QWERTY keyboard. That can cause problems for Web designers who rely too heavily on mouse navigation, or who design pages with special multimedia whiz-bang effects that look cool only to the people that can see them. “There can be an assumption of homogeneity on the Web,” said Naomi Bilodeau, technical program manager for Google. Users of screen readers–software that essentially reads out loud a description of text, links, and buttons on a page–are confounded the most by Captchas and Flash Web pages, according to a recent survey of screen-reader users conducted by WebAIM. 60 million people? That is 1 in 5 Americans cannot experience the web without the assistance of some form of accessibility enhancement. I had no idea. The chart below gives a general idea about how people see the progress being made. So as the web roars forward with HTML5 standards being debated and more and more advances there is a reason beside just fairness that should make businesses stand up and take notice of web accessibility concerns: money. It is estimated that there is $220 billion in discretionary spending available to disabled people. So where are you with accessibility issues for your site? Have you given them consideration? Now many may find this next question as a way to rile up some folks. If that’s the case then so be it. Consider this: In the current day and age of more and more aggressive government regulation would you be prepared both operationally and financially to make the changes to your website that could be a mandate? It’s already a requirement to do work with the government. And in order to do business with the U.S. government, companies must comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which insists that electronic and information technology products sold to government agencies be designed with disabled employees in mind, and that government services produced by contractors consider disabled citizens in equal measure. Are you ready?

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Web Accessibility Moving More Toward the Norm

It is a common belief that Article Marketing strategy can be practiced only by those who are talented in writing. It is not so.  Anyone can do it. It is worthwhile to consider the following points to succeed in article marketing: 1. Give an appropriate, interesting title for the article. 2. Contents should be easy to read, but should carry depth. 3. There should be no grammar mistakes or spelling mistakes. Mistake will result in   losing the faith and the readers will underestimate your talent. 4. Give a little information about yourself, preferably at the end. Out of the millions of articles floating in the Net many of them are on article directories. Major Websites, small business owners, and those looking for free content to display on their website visit article directories regularly. With this there is so much competition for article marketers. This calls for efficient market strategy, so that your time and money are not wasted. You have to bear in mind the needs of the reader. The reader will try to know as to how useful is the article for him. How much he can gain out of the article? So your focus should with respect to the reader. Your writing should have the essence to win the heart of the readers. Obviously, you have to take some pains.  You are expected to make a good introduction, body and conclusion. You must have the writing style and skill to attract the readers. Good articles will get high search rankings. Try to write about something new. Take your time to write nicely such that your efforts bear fruit. Find out the keywords needed for the topic. These keywords are necessary for the search engines. Give an impressive title. If your article tops the list with respect to the topic, you will grow. Internet site owners will back you and your articles will establish a permanent place in the website. Try to gab what the audience is interested in. Base your topic on that. Type your ideas for every article. Make your writing style consistent so that the readers recognize you. Remember, though Article marketing is free, it will require your extreme effort to find a place in the net because of stiff competition. The proper strategy comes into play how. The following tips can be useful: Article marketers always meet at forums to discuss about latest developments in marketing. You can post a small piece of your article. Make it a point to post everyday.  • Make an e-book with your articles. Your readers should be permitted to distribute the e-book as well. • Write as many articles as possible. Then more and more people can read your article. • They will also try to get an idea on how to write, where to distribute, and so on. • Test it. How good is your article? Ask your friends to read it. Take their true opinion. • Follow their advice if any as your interest may not match with that of the readers. • Present in such a manner that readers enjoy reading it. Put bullets and numbers as required.

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Strategies of Article Marketing

At one point in time US President John F. Kennedy triumphantly declared “Ich bin ein Berliner!” in a speech to the German people. Now the debate rages on as to whether the president proclaimed he was a Berlin citizen or a donut but that’s for another blog. Today though we learn from TechCrunch Europe that Eric Schmidt from Google may need to head to Deutschland to proclaim that he is one of the good guys as there are calls to ban Google Analytics from sites with a .de extension. Several federal and regional government officials in Germany are trying to put a ban on Google Analytics, the search giant’s free software product that allows website owners and publishers to get detailed statistics about the number, whereabouts and search behavior of their visitors (and much more). According to an article in today’s Zeit Online (poor Google translation here), multiple federal and state government officials charged with guarding over national data protection are convinced that Google Analytics is against the law in Germany and are mulling imposing fines on companies who use the service to gather detailed stats based on their website visitors’ usage patterns without the explicit consent of those visitors. What is probably just as interesting in this quote is the swipe taken at Google’s translation service . I woudn’t know a good German translation if it came up and smacked me in the head (apologies to Herr Manger who was my German teacher for two years in HS. Nothing stuck other than “Ich habe keine idee” which I think means “I have no idea” – NOTE- This was confirmed by Google Translate ) So apparently this isn’t the first time that the German government has voiced these concerns with most of their worry pointed at healthcare data and other sensitive areas. Interestingly enough some of larger media organizations use Google Analytics so this should be fun to watch if it actually turns into anything. So what’s at risk for those using Google Analytics One German lawyer that gets cited in the article says the penalties could amount up to €50,000 (about $75,000) per website that uses Google Analytics to keep track of its visitors’ usage patterns. Google’s take. Well, they disagree of course. What else would you expect? Google Germany’s Per Meyerdierks, however, says the company is well within its rights to process user data in the United States because it respects the Safe Harbour treaty between the EU and the USA. He argues that an opt-out would be entirely unnecessary, and that users always have the option to refuse cookies anyway. Now my question to the German government is the following. If you are uncomfortable with Google having this kind of data for many companies what about the individual companies that are collecting the same data using something else and not nearly as secure as Google is?

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Ich bin ein Googler!

Internet marketing today is a dog-eat-dog arena for the online businessmen. One of the strategic ways to draw free traffic onto your website is through Article Marketing. This includes extracting valuable facts, write it down, and then submit it to article directories. If your article is interesting, webmasters, some publishers and bloggers will download your original article and use its content to their respective websites. Downloading articles from the directories is free, but it is required that the resource information at the bottom of the article and live hyperlinks is visible. Attracting a great number of free traffic is easier when articles are written using catchy keywords, which are searchable by the search engines. The quality one way back links is a component to let search engines notice you and compute your internet fame, so automatically Article Marketing is a great method to help a page rank boost. It is as good as acquiring traffic from click through, free searches and interesting promos. The primary key ingredient to the Article Marketing is its content. It should be well researched, free flowing to read and informative to the topic you are targeting to be promoted. An article that is related to your niche can draw people who are interested in it and finds them helpful. It is a plus for your product or service you are promoting. While writing an article that is not related to any of your website content or theme is a less effective move for what is only invited is not the targeted traffic but only curious audience. Your selected keyword included to a catchy title is an important step to succeed in the Article Marketing tactics. It will help your article be found and seen by interested people who are searching your keywords. The title should grab one reader's attention while the article content should keep them engaged. That is why an article body needs to be useful, relevant and creatively written. Its job is to make the whole article itself hypnotic and convince people in the extent that they will visit your website through clicking your link in the resource box. When writing an article you should always use basic search engine optimization knowledge, the primary tool of Article Marketing. That is where keyword density enters. It is a vital accessory in the whole article and should be use passively in the first paragraph, in the last few sentences and in few places somewhere in your article content. You should be able to determine your reader's interest. This way, you will have a bigger chance of them visiting your website using the resource box. A great technique to be use when submitting articles is to divide them into two parts. The first part should be submitted to any article directory you prefer and the second part must be placed on your website. Then you can insert links on the article that will direct your reader to other pages on your site. Though organic, you should not let Article Marketing do the advertisement alone. But never forget that it is costless and effective if used properly.

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Article Marketing

A confession. Sometimes I use Bing.com. Stop looking at me that way. I said I “use” Bing.com. I didn’t say I enjoy it! In fact, I “use” Bing.com when I’m shopping online and want to get the best price. Bing has a pretty cool shopping engine and I can get up to 10% cashback with its cashback program . See? I use Bing.com. The problem is, that use does not result in me using the search engine for any other task. And that is the issue I see with rumors that Bing is willing to pay News Corp and other news organizations to provide their content exclusively to the Microsoft search engine. The FT reports : Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry. OK, so let’s say this deal comes together–which I really doubt–but let’s say it does. What will happen? I, and many others, will know that in order to read an article on the Wall Street Journal, we have to go to Bing.com and not Google. We conduct our search, read the article, then decide to keep Bing as our default search engine …go right back to using Google! While Bing does need to get some exclusives like this, I just don’t see them being enough to fully switch the masses away from Google. If I know that my favorite bread is only available at Trader Joe’s, I’ll occasionally buy my bread there. The rest of the grocery shopping will be done at Harris Teeter…technically by my wife, but you get the idea. What do you think? Will deals like this convince you to switch to Bing? Forget you–you’re smart–will it convince the average search user to switch? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Why a Deal With News Corp Would Make Bing the Trader Joe’s of Search

Oh, how I wish this was a cool YouTube video that could go viral. But it’s not. Instead, it’s some pretty interesting research by PostRank on how reader engagement in blogging has evolved over the last three years. Not so surprisingly, trackbacks as a means of joining the conversation have dropped off in favor of taking the discussion to Twitter or other social sites. Over the last there years, trackbacks have dropped from 19% of total engagement to 3%, while social networks have soared from

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The Evolution of Blogging

Article marketing is one sure shot way for you to be able to generate more traffic to your website. It works as an excellent tool to promote you and gain more visibility online. When people come to know about the products and services that you deal with based on the back links in various written articles, you will gain success for sure. Article marketing has several advantages associated with it. Firstly, it goes on to create a continuous and never ending flow of traffic to your website. This results in more and more traffic as your website grows. This is multi-faceted as this will go on to affect your ranking on the search engines. This high ranking in turn will fetch you more customers. The thing with Article marketing is that it adds on to your credibility and makes you a source to reckon with. When people search for those relevant keywords and find you with the right information they start looking up at you as a subject matter expert in that particular domain. Try and Google a person and if you don’t get any information on them that means they really haven’t made a mark online or for Article marketing. Article marketing will get you the niche traffic. Hence, you will not have loads of people stopping by and not buying anything from you. On the other hand the targeted traffic is already looking for those specific products. For every article that you post there will be a link at the end which will guide the reader to the product and the website. Now, with all these benefits you might be worried about the time and effort that is required. It does not require a lot of time. If you are able to write quickly then Article marketing will be an easy deal for you. Even if you do not want to do Article marketing yourself there are several companies who will do it for you. Article marketing is becoming the need of the hour and because of that there are several article submission companies out there who will not only write the articles for you but also submit them in relevant article submission directories. After you have done your share of Article marketing all that you need to do is sit back and relax. Instantaneously, you will find that the number of visitors has increased and this has of course generated in more sales for you. Although this does take a little bit of time and effort it is all worth it in the long run. Once you see the hits on your website you will forget the earlier teething troubles that you might have had with article marketing.

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Article marketing to gain a foothold online: