In addition to videos, images, news and some other type of searches, Google has introduced the new Google recipe search.
This search relies on rich snippets, a microformat for certain types of information like people, events, reviews, products and recipes. These are basically tags attached to that type of information that allows search engines to easily recognize and index it. Large websites like Epicurious and The Food Network are already using rich snippets for their recipes, but it's certainly not too late for smaller recipe sites to incorporate. You can read all about rich snippets and find tools and tips for implementation at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=21997Amplify’d from www.wired.com
Google Recipe Search Cooks Up Next Gen of Search
The Recipe feature will show up in the left side bar, underneath other so-called vertical searches such as Shopping, News, Images and Videos, and gives searchers options to refine results: such as finding a red curry recipe, then specifying one that has less than 300 calories and includes red peppers.
But the real innovation is in the background: the entire search is built on structured data that webmasters have built into their webpages using markup code that’s invisible to humans but is extremely useful to machines. The dream of the so-called semantic web is built upon the idea that web pages will be full of such underlying tags so that search engines can parse a webpage to learn someone’s e-mail address or know exactly what a restaurant’s operating hours are by scanning underlying code invisible in the browser.
The dream of a structured web has proven nearly impossible to create in practice as it requires coordination on building specs and then that web page builders take the time to mark their pages up in complicated XML. A more grassroots effort, known as Microformats, has had more success by focusing on just a few kinds of data and making innovative use of HTML, the lingua franca of the web, to simplify publishing meta-data. Google introduced its own suggestions of how websites could start publishing Google-friendly meta-data in 2009 (such as how many stars a rating is), with its so-called Rich Snippets.
So for instance, Google is able to show a searcher only Pho recipes that use tofu that take less than a half an hour to make, not by searching for pages that include the word “Pho” and “Tofu” and “Recipe”, but by actually knowing that a recipe for something called “Pho” has an ingredient “Tofu” and a listed cooking time of 1 hour (for example, the is done after publisher’s wrapping the word “1 Hour” in a defined HTML tag ()and then interpreting that in the search results ).
Friday, February 25, 2011
Google Recipe Search - Rich Snippets Recipes
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Mobile Website Design - Best Practices
If you have been wondering what the best practices for mobile website design are, here are some good starting points.
It is important to be very clear on two things: your customers objective, and your company's objective. So, you basically start with the desired outcome, and then work backwards from there.Amplify’d from 60secondmarketer.com
Mobile Website Best Practices
One of the first things your business should determine when designing your mobile website is what is the main activity that you want visitors to take or what is the most important information they want from you. Your mobile website should not incorporate all of the functionality and content of your traditional website. If you try to do this, your mobile site will be difficult to navigate and probably take forever to load.
To summarize the aforementioned best practices for mobile website design:
- Focus on the customer – Design your mobile website around what your customers are currently doing most often on your standard website.
- Keep the layout simple and the content succinct – You want your mobile website to be easily and quickly read on a range of mobile devices.
- Use a scrolling feature – Making your mobile visitors click through multiple pages is not a good idea.
- Don’t use tons of graphics or Flash – Use of large graphics files or advanced media will slow down your mobile website to a crawl.
- Test! Test! Test! – Did we mention you should test your mobile website?
- For an example of a very well designed and thought out mobile website, read about Penny Saver USA’s new mobile site
Friday, February 18, 2011
WordPress SEO Plugin Review
This is a great article review on WordPress SEO Plugins.
Please note that you won't need to install all 8 plugins, as some are very similar in function, like All in One SEO Pack, SEO Ultimate (which I am using on http://mylocalseoguide.com), and Platinum SEO Pack. I had not come across SEO Rank Reporter before, and am glad I found it. There's no way you can optimize your site's SEO or traffic, without tracking how your website is performing for your chosen keywords, as well as the ones you didn't even know you were ranking for but that bring you traffic. I will be installing it on my site this weekend and see how it does.Amplify’d from sixrevisions.com
3. SEO Ultimate
These WordPress plugins will give your WordPress site a complete SEO overhaul. Installing them and getting to understand each plugin’s inner workings may take some time, but it is worth it to know how each plugin can benefit your site. When used correctly, your content will be more visible, potentially attracting additional traffic consisting of your target audience.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
6 Small Business Blogging Tips
Here are 6 small business blogging tips with a few important steps to take, once you've set up your business blog on WordPress. Below is a sneak peek. Make sure to click through to the article for all six tips. They are easy to implement!
Amplify’d from smallbiztrends.com
You’ve taken the plunge. You’ve finally accepted just how powerful a blog can be to your small business and made the decision to add a WordPress blog to your site. You’re even working hard cracking out some small business blog ideas that will help you build thought leadership, connect with potential customers, and answer common questions. Now what do you do?
Before you even write your first post there are few things you’ll want to knock off your To Do list on your brand new WordPress blog. Below are six simple tweaks small business owners can make to their blogs today to ensure they’re stepping out on the right foot and optimizing the findability of their blog to customers.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Mobile Marketing For Local Businesses With Yelp
Mobile marketing for local businesses seems to be all the rage. More and more people access the web via their mobile phones, and it turns out that one third of Yelp searchers are using their mobile devices to find a business. The cool thing is that these searchers are looking to do business with you right now! (see the official Yelp statistics below)
So, just when you thought you have no clue on how to get mobile marketing for local businesses going for your small business, turns out, if your business is on Yelp, you are already heavily involved. Now there are things you can do to improve your chances of being the chosen business. Yelp offers location-based marketing check-ins, and you could provide special offers to those that check-in at your business. Or you could also advertise a special sale or offer on Yelp.Amplify’d from officialblog.yelp.com
Who you gonna call when you need a local business? We think we have some idea. In December 2010 alone, yelpers called a local businesses every other second -- and that was just via a Yelp mobile app!
- 3.2 million unique visitors used a Yelp mobile app*
- 35% of all searches on Yelp.com came from a Yelp mobile app
- Every other second a consumer generated directions to a local business
- A photo was uploaded every 30 seconds from a Yelp mobile app
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Creating A Facebook Fan Page For Your Business Just Got Easier
Creating a Facebook fan page was a little daunting until just a few days ago, when Facebook made it much easier to make a Facebook fan page for your business.
Not only was it difficult to figure out what category to use for your business, you really had to read up quite a bit to get started. No more! A simple, intuitive graphical interface makes it easy to get started with your Facebook fan page design. The choices are very clear and you won't make a mistake when choosing the type of page you want to create. Even better is the option for local businesses to create a Facebook places listing for their business at the same time they create their fan page. This is such an outstanding opportunity to market your business for free. Don't miss it!Amplify’d from www.allfacebook.com
The new starter subsite has a visual guide that shows newbies exactly how a page will be named and classified on the site. Icons depict the different groupings of pages that new admins can select from to start creating a page.
Behind this the easier-to-use interface is a more detailed categorization scheme that makes sure new pages show up in the right place on the site.
The new interface also includes the opportunity to supply a current address for a local business that people would be able to check into using the geolocation service Places.
