Why Your Website Content Needs To Be Explicit!

Search engines constantly have to change their ranking algorithms to ensure that they get the best possible matches for the searched term. Previously, there was a lot more emphasis on looking for the presence and frequency of specific words or phrases but this approach had some significant failings. Firstly, searching for keywords alone does not account for synonyms so the search could fail to identify other terms which referred to the same thing. Secondly, when only taking note of a keyphrase, it is easy to run into difficulties if a keyword has multiple meanings; merely identifying a word such as ‘apple’ does not help the search engine determine whether it refers to the brand or the fruit making it difficult to match with an appropriate search. Because this method can end in poor results, search engines have now given more weight to Latent Semantic Indexing.

What is Latent Semantic Indexing?

Latent Semantic Indexing refers to the way in which search engines determine the context of a website’s content in order to successfully match it to a user’s search. For example, a website could use the word 'java' but this has multiple and very different meanings. Therefore, to ensure that the word is not matched to an unrelated search, a search engine would use latent semantic indexing to evaluate the rest of the content. For example, a search engine would have to decide whether the word  'java'  referred to coffee, a country or the computer programming language. This is achieved by looking at the co-occurrence of signal words in the document or document set. So, using the term 'java' with other references to beverages would sway the search engine towards coffee being the correct meaning within its context. Using this technique to rank websites means that search engines are giving more weight to the central themes or intent of websites as opposed to the density of specific keywords. It is therefore crucial that website owners stick to Google's recommendations and make their content as explicit as possible while backing up their keyphrases with related terms. 

Optimising your website content

There are various things you can do to make sure that your website content is clear and more easily matched with related searches. You can still use keywords and keyphrases but Google will penalise pages it deems as ‘over-optimised’ so be careful to only use them where they sound natural. It is also important to make sure that you use related words to describe terms that could be misinterpreted. For example, if you have a product listed that is described as ‘tangerine’, make sure you relate the word ‘colour’ to it in the description so as to distance your site from the definition of tangerine as a fruit. It is also a good idea to use keywords and keyphrases in your ALT text for an image which depicts what you are referring to. An explicit reference describing the image will help to make the context and purpose of your site crystal clear.

Should Every Website Have A Mountweazel?

A ‘Mountweazel’ is a fake entry which is deliberately published in a reference work to detect copyright infringement. Ironically, ‘Mountweazel’ which is now associated with this real and used definition was itself originally a fabricated entry!

According to the 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopaedia, Lillian Virginia Mountweazel was a fountain designer turned photographer who died in 1942 in an explosion while on assignment for a magazine.  Does that sound farfetched? It ought to, because the entire entry from the name Lillian to the detailed back story is completely fictitious. Editors included Lillian to protect their copyright knowing that if anyone were to include her in any of their work, they would have to have copied from the encyclopaedia. Dictionaries too have made use of this technique.

So, a cunning trick to identify content theft? Certainly, but does it have any use on websites? Unfortunately, online plagiarism is common and with many sites dedicated to similar or the same topics it can be hard to spot who copied who. If you include a Mountweazel on your website however, the culprit will soon be identified and there’ll be no denying it! What’s more, website owners do not even have to make the Mountweazel visible on the site itself, but instead they can hide it in the website code.

KALQ – the keyboard of the future or an unnecessary QWERTY substitute?

In our fast paced society patience is apparently a dying attribute, especially regarding technology. When it comes to loading, connecting, updating and now even typing, the general consensus remains the same: the quicker the better.  

That’s why researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics have designed a new keyboard specifically created to speed up typing on tablets. Currently, the common practice for typing on tablets is to use two thumbs, a technique which is somewhat inefficient on the standard QWERTY keyboard.  

The KALQ keyboard (so called because the bottom four letters to the right read K A L Q) has been designed around the conventional horizontal grip adopted by a user typing on a tablet.  The letters are split into a 4x4 grid on the left and a 4x3 grid on the right which sit in the bottom corners of the screen. The aim is to minimise the moving time of the thumbs and thereby reduce strain. Commonly used letters are clustered together to reduce travel distance and to ensure that both hands work equally. In theory, the KALQ design prevents long sequences from having to be typed with one thumb by placing all the vowels in reach of the right hand and assigning more keys to the left. For left hand users the layout can be reversed. The hope is that eventually, experienced users should become so proficient that they will be able to use their thumbs simultaneously.

Source

While creatively thought out and well engineered, adapting to the KALQ keyboard does require some effort, apparently taking eight hours for QWERTY users to learn. This, coupled with the fact that Bluetooth keyboards are a popular tablet accessory, prompts the question: is a KALQ keyboard necessary? As much as it might improve onscreen typing on tablets, as long as physical keyboards remain popular, it seems the KALQ keyboard may well be the solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Furthermore, one must question the practicalities of using the KALQ keyboard for phones, tablets and other such devices and the QWERTY for everything else. There is some doubt about whether all users will be able to switch smoothly between the two. 

We think it is probably better to be proficient at using a universal keyboard rather than having an optimal layout for every single device that makes use of a typing feature. We may not be able to type on a tablet as quickly as at a computer, but at least we won’t be hunting for the letters every time we switch machine.

From Beauty to the Beast: Google+ Profile Picture Changes

Google has recently implemented a radical overhaul to the styling of the cover and logo photos on Google +, which initially, seemed like unnecessary tampering. After rearranging our images and exploring the various new aspects to the layout however, it would seem that the updated changes are worthwhile. In fact, as of yet, the new version appears considerably better than the original, even if it does require some effort to switch to.

The most obvious change to be introduced is the enlargement of the cover photo, which can now be up to 2120 pixels x 1192 pixels (min. Is  480 x 270). 

This does mean that the picture dominates the majority of the screen but automatic resizing of the logo/profile pictures when scrolling down the page is a somewhat redeeming feature. As people scroll they will still be able to see a bar showing the bottom of the cover photo and a rationalised version of the profile/logo picture. 
 

The initial design featured the logo to the right, and it was presented in a square shape. Now, the logo sits to the left and is circular. This will undoubtedly cause some problems for people who do not regularly check their account because the new design has been rolled out without notification. This means that some users may discover that important parts of their cover photo have been blocked out by their logo as demonstrated here:

At first, we were also concerned that the new circular design of the logo would not lend itself very well to some user’s logos, especially those that feature long names. Such logos were well suited to the previous square shape. However, upon further inspection, we discovered that it is possible to make the background of the circle transparent so that only the logo itself appears over the cover photo without a surrounding white circle. This provides a much better finish both than with the circle and the previous rectangular shape: 

 

 

Lastly, the new changes have been extended to other areas, significantly tidying them up. Now, when hovering over people in your circles, their profile picture or logo sits centrally in the foreground with their cover photo as a backdrop and their information underneath.  This makes for a design which is neat, concise and much more professional looking than the previous layout. Your logo background colour will remain consistent so if you have chosen a white background or made it transparent, these choices will still apply:

 

However, if your cover photo is predominantly white;

it will be greyed out when someone hovers over your profile:

Google Shopping Becomes Payable

We always knew this day would come, but it seems all good things must come to an end eventually. The sad news is finally here; clicks obtained from Google Shopping listings have been free up to now but from this autumn, you will have to pay for feeds targeting the US. Later in the year or early 2013 this will be extended to include feeds targeting the UK.

This will come as a hefty blow to those online sellers who rely on Google Shopping listings to drive traffic to their website.

To have any chance of a decent click through rate (CTR), it has always been Optillion’s recommendation that any listings you make are sufficiently relevant to the search term so that they appear in the top three results in Google Shopping, and therefore appear on a normal search engine results page (SERP).

Once the transition to paid clicks occurs, the listings will be dependent, not only on their relevance to the search term (as they are now), but also how much you, as an online seller, are willing to bid for a click. Payment for paid clicks will be taken through the Google AdWords system where you will see an invitation to create a Products Listing Ad Campaign on your Merchant Centre Dashboard.

Through Google AdWords, it has been possible for some time to have your Google Shopping listings displayed as an Advert Extension (for the top three ad positions only) and the changeover to paid clicks for Google Shopping will be a further integration of the two systems. Your shopping listings will be created as a Products Listing Ad Campaign.

For anyone familiar with Google AdWords, this integration should be fairly straightforward, but others may need help setting up their account. If you have questions about the changeover to paid clicks, or about the creation of an AdWords account, then please don’t hesitate to contact us.

On a more positive note, you will see from the notification on your Merchant Centre Dashboard that the owners of those feeds targeting the US are being offered a $100 credit towards their first paid clicks. Happy news indeed, because we’re sure that something similar will be offered to site owners in the UK when the time comes. We’ll keep you informed as the changeover approaches.