One of the most common questions I get from my Joomla training students now is: “how do I make my Joomla site ready for mobile phones?”

There are two different paths to do this and the choice depends largely on whether you have a template or not.

1) Template Frameworks: If you’re looking for a template, choose one of the designers whose templates automatically adjust for mobile browsers. Click to visit this section. But there are many out there. Just “google Mobile Joomla templates.”

2) Template plus plugin: If you already have a template, there are systems that will provide both the mobile template and a plugin to detect when someone is visiting from a mobile phone. 
Here is a guide to the different ways to make your site mobile and at the end we’ll show you how to manage and update your site from your phone.

Template Framework: Rocket Theme. and the Gantry Framework

• Site: http://rockettheme.com
• Framework: http://gantry-framework.org
• Sample site for your phone: http://demo.rockettheme.com/sep10/features/gantry-features
• Price: The framework is free to download. Fully designed templates cost $50 and up
• Screenshots and video:

Template Framework: Joomlart and the T3 Framework

• Site: http://joomlart.com
• Framework: http://wiki.joomlart.com/wiki/JA_Template_Framework/Overview
• Sample site for your phone: http://templates.joomlart.com/ja_rave/
• Price: The framework is free to download. Fully designed templates cost $59 and up.
• Screenshots and video:

Template Framework: Joomla Junkie and the Morph Framework

• Site: http://joomlajunkie.com
• Framework: http://www.prothemer.com/morph/
• Sample site for your phone: http://www.joomlajunkie.com/demo/themelets/explorer/
• Price: The framework part of the JoomlaJunkie.com membership package starting at $49
• Screenshots and video::

Template plus Plugin: Tap Theme

• Site: http://taptheme.com
• Price: $29 each for the iPhone, Android and iPad versions.
• Screenshots and video:

Template plus Plugin: Mobile Joomla

• Site: http://mobilejoomla.com
• JED Listing: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/mobile/mobile-display/11722
• Price: Free
• Screenshots and video:

Managing Your Site From Your Phone: J! Admin Mobile

• Site: http://www.covertapps.com/jam
• JED Listing: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/mobile/mobile-display/11722
• Price: Free or $9
• Sample screenshots:

                          

Here is the first Ibero-American map of social networks. This map was created to provide the fullest possible information on major social networks Latin America.

Created by iRedes in Spain developed by Chiquite Esteban, director of Nuevas Narratives of lainformacion.com, an online publishing company in Spain.With documentation of Miguel Jorge , journalist Gentedigital.es and author of iBlog

Published by iRedes.com in Spain who recently hosted the Ibero-American Conference in Spain. They also have annual awards to the most relevant and popular bloggers.

Here is Interactive map bellow. Enjoy it

                          

By Mary,

Sometimes you may want to write a tweet just to remember you’re there, create a conversation or simply entertain, but you do not have inspiration at that current moment.. I share a list of 20 possible topics that may help you break the ice when you’re not inspired:

                          

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By Mary,

There has been several times where I ran online campaings for clients whos main converstion goal is to generate phone calls. This poses a problem for many business owners becuase of the lack of tracking ability.

One way around this is to assign unique phone numbers to specific online traffic sources (e.g. PPC, SEO, keywords, domains, ads, emails) to track conversions. There are two tools you can use for this:

1. Google Voice

Google Voice lets you create free multiple phone numbers within any area code in the country (only available in U.S.). You can attach each number to specific campaigns. With Google Voice you can  to track how many phone calls an specific  ad is generating. Each phone number gets forwarded to any phone you may choose. It saves voice online with the ability to listen in on messages while they’re being left. Another cool feature is that It transcribes your voicemail to text, so you can monitor your sales force.

Here are  some other aditional things you can do with Google Voice:

1. Read transcriptions of voicemails. Watch a video »
2. Customize which phones ring. Watch a video »
3. Personalize greetings for different callers. Watch a video »
4. Make cheap international calls. Watch a video »
5. Forward SMS to email. Watch a video »
6. Share voicemails with friends. Watch a video »
7. Block unwanted callers. Watch a video »
8. Screen callers before answering. Watch a video »
9. Access the mobile app on your phone. Watch a video »
10. Conference call with co-workers. Watch a video »

You can see all these videos at youtube.com/googlevoice.

2. ifbyphone

ifbyphone is a tracking software that comes with 1800 toll free numbers. It allows you to track calls in four ways:

SourceTrak Basic

SourceTrak Dynamic

SourceTrak Dynamic Groups

SourceTrak Session

This last option is not free, but is an excellent tool.

                          

Here we listed “12 Best Open-Source Social Networking Software To make Your Social Network Stronger Than Ever“…

1. Sourceforge

2. redhat

3. Elgg

4. Xoops with Yogurt extension

5. BuddyPress

6. Mahara

7. Kickapps

8. Insoshi

9. Lovd by Less

10. Anahita Social Engine

11. Mixxt

12. AROUNDMe

If you are using any other Social Networking Software to built a site than please share with us in comments.

                          

Introduction

First, lets use Zappos as an example on how to run an ecommrce SEO.
A quick intro to the search marketing landscape within Zappos.

In 2008, Zappos did over $1,000,000,000 in sales. In addition to strong customer loyalty and an increasingly strong brand, the company has a robust and sophisticated paid search program in place (led by Darrin Shamo).

While SEO has always been a part of the plan at Zappos, it’s become increasingly important over the last couple of years. During the early part of 2009, Zappos has been working on creating synergies between paid search and SEO – from developing a feedback loop on keyword data, to strengthening ROI by supporting high-cost terms with increased organic performance. There is a lot to be gained when the SEO team works closely with the PPC team, in any business.

What to Look for with Large Sites?

The most important issues when dealing with ecommerce sites (and for that matter, any large site), is really two-fold:

1. First, look for scale. What optimizations can be implemented which have the longest reach, and require the least amount of internal resources?

2. Secondly, look to leverage what’s there. Do you have several hundred thousand pages indexed in the search engines? Do you have several million backlinks? Taking advantage of these existing strengths should be a top priority.

A third point, which I’ll keep on its own, is to approach SEO with a user-centric point of view. A large ecommerce site is made up of a great many customers. These are not blank faces – empty people with full wallets – they are your company’s lifeblood and the advocates (or deterrents) of your brand. Additionally, keeping the focus on your users will pay rewards down the road in search marketing. What are links, for example, if not votes that search algorithms score? As Bob Massa precisely states,

“Search engines follow users.”

What are the Goals?

What exactly are the goals of SEO for ecommerce sites? Well, obviously sales! Revenue is the bottom line. But what tactics and strategies lead to sales? And what is the overall goal of those tactics and strategies? Briefly, the goal is SERP domination (relevant, user-centric domination of course).

At Zappos one of our aims is to populate search results with a diverse set of listings. The following screenshot shows an example with the query women’s shoes in Google:

There are 6 listings for Zappos and 6pm.com (a site owned by Zappos) above the fold, including product feeds from Google Base, paid, and organic listings.

What are the Main Factors?

On big sites it boils down to one thing: muscle. Large sites can attract a large amount of links, and can get large amounts of pages indexed in the engines. On-page SEO becomes paramount; it’s not about what others are doing so much. Acquiring backlinks matters less when you have a few million. With a lot of internal PageRank to push around, URLs, content and internal linking are the major factors at work. This is especially true as Google, for example, begins to reward brand strength with increased search visibility.

Here’s a screenshot with backlink info (and much more) from Aaron Wall’s essential SEO toolbar. If you’re not using it already, I highly recommend the install.

Once you have 6mil backlinks and nearly 1mil pages indexed, the game changes. There is more muscle to push around. In situations like this, ask youselves: what can we do that will have the biggest impact, with the smallest resource investment?

A few of the main criteria to look for include:

• • URLs:
  • Internal linking:
  • Content:
  • Internal linking:
  • Backlink acquisition:
  • Internal linking

Search engines like pretty, user-friendly URLs without excessive duplication (one URL per page please). They improve the experience in search results, they add context and relevance, and make the search engines a better place to search. Keywords in domain names trump pretty much everything (but not sub-domains anymore, so much).

Internal linking isn’t just about spiders, of course, but it sure helps them get around. A good information architecture should be the foundation of any ecommerce site. Above and beyond that, related product and category links (relevant, targeted, and limited in quantity) are very effective for users and SEO.

Everyone knows people want content. Because people want content, search engines want it too. Therefore, make content that people want to read, and share, and tweet, and bookmark, and make it easy for bots to find.

It’s important! So I listed it again.

As was already pointed out, backlinks become less of a dependence issue as they grow in quantity. Where backlinks continue to be important, however, is when a company wishes to branch out and extend their brand into new product or category verticals.

Yup, listed it again. It’s that important.

SEO isn’t Only About SEO

You read that right – SEO isn’t just about search engine optimization. It’s also (dare I say mostly) about people. Getting buy-in on projects can be very difficult in a large organization, where development resources are spread thin. What’s the solution? Create projects that aren’t about SEO, but have valuable search benefits. Projects that build on interesting or creative ideas, but also have SEO value baked in, can be very effective for taking shortcuts around typical company ’sell and deploy’ time cycles.

Using language beyond just “getting some links” or “encouraging crawling”(things we care a lot about as SEOs) gives you more credibility and implies a wider potential impact that other teams will appreciate. It’s also easier to push a project from idea to implementation. By making it less about SEO and more about the site’s visitors, and by providing enough inherent value that it will spread well on its own (or at least have a good chance), we can shortcut SEO into particular lifecycles of the company.

Why is this a good thing? In short, user-centric projects:

• Are sometimes easier to get buy-in
• Take the focus off SEO for essential departments like dev and UX
• Keep the focus on providing value (the end goal, right?)

The Big Picture

Aside from the benefits and challenges in working with large ecommerce sites, there are political factors at work. Bottom line: you have to know where your place is in the overall processes of a large organization. SEO isn’t everything, and your team is just another team with their own particular needs, goals, and priorities.

Resources are a constant hindrance to success in SEO at any large company. The dev team is already taxed and limited with time, and the last thing they want to hear about is your SEO needs. There are also difficulties getting SEO ‘believed in’ among development and UX teams (and if they’re anything like Zappos, they’re going to be incredibly bright and sharp folks). They code the sites, create the user experience, and we’re the consultants recommending tweaks and fixes (as well as new initiatives). I’ve found the best way to fit into such a professional hierarchy is with sincere respect, and a knowledge of my own place in the picture.

At the end of the day, we are all working towards the same thing: growing revenues. It’s not about you, it’s about the company’s bottom line. Put your ego aside, provide value, and make it happen!

                          

Social media has become an essential part of any digital marketing initiative. Companies are discovering the importance of having a vital reputation and social presence online.

As more and more social outlets appear online, it is of imperative importance to have a well-designed social media plan that includes a follow-up phase. Part of that plan is to put in place a tracking mechanism to measure your social media effectiveness and success.

Here are five tools for measuring and and tracking your company’s social impact.

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.1.Socialmention €“ Social Media Analytics  Tool

Social Mention is a real-time social media search and analysis tool. The system displays information where your name has been mentioned in variety of social outlets. It provides graphical information about the strength ratio of mentions of specific brand being discussed in the social media sphere, the sentiment rating of positive or negative mentions, the passion of individuals repeatedly talking about your brand, and the reach, which measures the range of influence authors mentioning your brand. Along with very in-depth information of the more often used keywords, top users, top Hashtags, and the sources.

HOW IT WORKS: Just enter your name and switch between blogs, microblogs, bookmarks, comments, events, images, news or all of them at once. Slower than Serph, but occasionally offers different results. An RSS feed is available.

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2. Backtype.com €“ Social Impact Monitoring Tool

Other good Social analytics tool is backtype.com. A platform that helps companies understand their social impact.

HOW IT WORKS: Type the  URL, or blog site, and the system will display  a graph similar to Google analytics with monthly engagement statistics of comments done on blogs, dig, friendfeed, reddit  and tweets related to the domain name, audience analysis and conversion analysis. Additionally, it provides competitor comparison against any other website like yours.

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3. Radian6 €“ Social Media Monitoring Tool

Ridian6 is a popular social media monitoring tool that helps you track quite a lot of signals and get insights into your brands performance on various social media channels. They cover almost all the social media channels like blogs, twitter and facebook. It provides detailed analytics reports and charts, perfect for that presentation you want to pull off.

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4. Alterian Social Media Monitoring

Alterian€™s SM2 social media monitoring tool is one that gives advanced user behavior statistics, measures and analyze daily volume, demographics, location, positive or negative content tone, themes, and trending topics for your brand/product. A little too much details but a good tool nevertheless. This one too, covers a range of social media channels like digg/linkedin/facebook/twitter/delicious etc.

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5. ScoutLabs Web based Social Media Monitoring Tool

An eye candy this one. Scout Labs social media monitoring tool is web based, and with an interface like Google Analytics it tracks almost all the online social media channels. It measures all the negative/positive signals and gives you reports based on the overall performaces.

Go try it out, and have fun!

                          

By Mary,

Recently, Google explained to digital marketers that links coming from social media like macroblogging, digg, youtube, facebook, etc., count as an important factor for website ranking.

Google describes how links that come naturally from viral word of mouth, on the basis of the merit (people linking to a website because they genuinely like it), are more valuable, opposed to inbound links coming from “link building marketing” efforts which build links in a none organic way.

Google explains they’ve been monitoring this closely and is taking in consideration those links that have been attracted on their on…on the basics of the interestingness of a website. Of course, this comes as surprised to many SEO professionals, specially link builders, but this is part of the new algorithms changes Google implemented recently.

Links that are editorially base and come naturally are better than those typical link-building tactics because you won’t have to work for them nearly as hard. Plus, Google will consider these vital links as high valuable traffic, leaving the none organic ones below value rate.

Does this mean link building is going to disappear?

It looks to me more like link building is evolving towards a more natural way, where the online user has the upper hand, and not the link builder guy. Google recently explained they consider inbound links coming from pages to be only one out of their 200 factors, so they have asked people to relax with the link building frenzy and concentrate more on generating interesting and unique content for their users. Of course, they do not discard adding those on-page keyword elements to make sense of what a website is about.

Some example of vital linking:

• Links from video sites, and microbiologist sites
• Links from different social networks and profiles like Facebook, Mysepsace, hi5, friendster, twitter, etc.
  

• VERY IMPORTANT FOR RANKING:
• Social channels like youtube or facebook need to generate comments and attract views and generate quality of followers and quantity of      followers ratio.
• Need to reply to people on youtube for example, as well facebook (constant activity)
• Generate User Authority
• High youtube presence and user activity makes videos more visible. Google does not prefer youtube, and you sholud post videos on other places like. photobucket.com
• Among many other factors… which requires lots of time and work (even more than SEO). SMO is another type of digital ad marketing campaign all together.
  
  
  
• MICRO BLOGGING Tips for ranking factors:
• The ration of followers to the number of people following  counts.
• Freshness of and the number of time people people take to retweet what you tweet.

Yes! times are changing. Many of those Google changes happened at the end of last year, including Personalized Search, and most recently last May. Google is moving towards semantic web technology and real-time SEO, and common SEO practices are becoming obsolete. One of them is Link building practices who a lot of companies still use as their main SEO strategy. SEO professionals need to keep in mind that it is not about jumping into social media as the only new best way to link/rank a site– it is more about gearing the focus towards Semantic Web as a whole. Read more about Semantic web.

                          

Having a video showing up on Google organic is not the result of  the usual application of SEO strategies. This is because a video on Google organic comes from a well coordinated plan of  SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING (vital marketing) strategies.

This is call SMM (Social Media Marketing), Not SEO. Video Marketing is a whole different ball game. Very often, Search optimization can’t  rank a video on Google organic as well as it  does with other regular content pages. This is because Google’s video ranking factors come mostly from social activities.

Some example of factors:

• Linking video from other socia/video sites.
• Link video from different social networks and profiles like Facebook, Mysepsace, hi5, friendster, twitter, etc.
• authority and constant activity.

VERY IMPORTANT FOR RANKING:

• First and most important, you need to create a video site map. Creating a video site map is easy. Here are the five things you need to include in the site map:
  x
  1) Title
  2) Description
  3) Play page URL
  4) Thumbnail image URL

  Once you’ve collected this information, sign into Google webmaster tool and submit your video site map.x
  

• If the video is hosted in your site, make sure you include keyword information about it, in your page title, name of the video, or text around the video.
  One tip: I would recommend introducing a place for people to leave comments. This will generate more natural keywords from users commenting about the video.
  x
• Those videos need to generate comments and attract views and generate quiality of followers and quantity of followers.
  x
• Need to reply to people on youtube for example, as well facebook (constant activity).
  x
  Generate User Authority
• High youtube presence and user activity makes videos more visible. Google does not preffer youtube, and you sholud post videos on other places.

• Free places to distribute online videos:
  • YouTube.com
  • twitvid.com (for twitter)
  • bubbletweet.com (cool vid for twitter like and websites)
  • Vimeo.com
  • 12seconds.tv
  • Zipvo.com
  • Homeumentary.com
  • Tweetube.com
  • Twitvid.com
  • TwitCam
  • Twiddeo.com
  • RealeFlix.com
  • Realestateshot.com
  • TweetReel (for iPhone)
  • Blip.tv
  • Facebook.com
  • Myspace.com

• MICROBLOGGING Tips for ranking factors:
• Again, introducing functionalities where viewers can leave comments about your videos will generate natural keywords and relevant content from users, which Google semantic search is now ranking as important factor.
• The ration of followers to the number of people following  counts.
• Freshness and the number of time people people take to retweet what you tweet–with video links.

KEYWORD FACTORS

These are the key parts where you should focus:

• Include keywords in your video name, titles & description.
• Build a video library to make your channel more relevant
• Activate comments, rates, favorites through your channel
• Add a link to your website within the description

Among many other factors… which requires lots of time and effort (even more than SEO). SMO is another type of digital marketing campaign all together, but should be part of your overall online marketing plan.

Create a channel with multiple videos

NOTE TO KEEP IN MIND: Even though youtube or Google doesn’t look at video quality to rank videos, a good produced  and interesting video is required to generate the social media traffic that subsequently will help your video rank high.  I have studied video production in the past, and I will soon write a post about how to produce a good quality video for the web. In the mid-time, you can check out Media Trust Blog post  Crash Course in Creating Compelling Product Videos as an starting point.

Related news and articles:

• Small Business Social Media Marketing eBook (slideshare.net)
• Using Facebook for SEO and Driving Traffic (shawndrewry.com)
• Social Media Optimization: SMO is the New SEO – Part 2 (briansolis.com)
• Can You Keep Ignoring Social Media? 10 Reasons Why You Just Can’t (blonde2dot0.com)
• What is Social Media Optimization (SMO)? (antonrsa.co.za)