USA vs Algeria World Cup Match Could Set New Internet Traffic Record

The dramatic ending to the World Cup match between the USA and Algeria could set a new record for Internet traffic.

We’ve been watching Akamai’s Net Usage Index, which tracks visitors per minute on more than 100 of the major news sites in Akamai’s network. In the minutes following Landon Donovan’s game winning goal in the 91st minute of action (which sent the U.S. to the round of 16), traffic spiked to 11.2 million visitors per minute, which moves the event past the 2008 presidential election as the second highest traffic spike of all-time.

Today’s number was also likely pushed significantly higher because England and Slovenia were also playing a suspenseful World Cup match at the same time. The plethora of World Cup breaking news briefly knocked Yahoo Sports offline and also caused issues at Twitter –- though the latter has been somewhat of a regular occurrence during the World Cup (on a related note, tweets containing “USA” spiked to 6% of total tweet volume).

The overall traffic record was set earlier this month during the first day of World Cup action, where traffic exceeded 12 million visitors per minute. We’ll wait and see what the final numbers are from Akamai, but for the moment, it looks like Donovan’s goal will go down in Internet history at least as a solid number two.

Source: http://mashable.com/2010/06/23/usa-vs-algeria-world-cup/

Multilingual SEO: Things to Remember

Google has recently done a series on the usability of multilingual websites and it got me thinking about multilingual SEO. How do you, in fact, optimize the same website for keywords in multiple languages?

But let’s start with the core basics. In simple terms, a multilingual website is a website that has content in more than one language. And such website has a lot of on-page stuff that is often done wrong. Let’s take a look at some common issues:

1) Language recognition

Once Google’s crawler lands on your multilingual website, it starts with determining the main language on every page. Google can recognize a page as being in more than one language but you can avoid crawler confusion by doing the following:

* Stick to only one language per page
* Avoid side-by-side translations
* Use the same language for all elements of the page: headers, sidebars, menus, etc.

Some web editors create code-level attributes automatically but these attributes are not very reliable, so keep in mind that Google ignores all code-level information (from “lang” attributes to DTD (Document Type Definitions) during language recognition.

2) URL structure

A typical pet peeve of SEO but even more so with multilingual websites. To make the most of your URLs, consider language-specific extensions. Language-specific extensions are often used on multilingual websites to help users (and crawlers) identify the sections of the website they are on and the language the page is in. For example:

http://www.website.ca/en/content.html

http://www.en.website.ca/content.html

http://www.website.ca/fr/content.html

http://www.fr.website.ca/content.html

This is a great way to organize URLs on a multilingual website because not only does it help the user, but it also makes it easier for the crawler to analyze the indexing of your content. But what if you want to create URLs with characters other than English? Here’s how to do it right:

* Use UTF-8 encoding for non-English characters
* Make sure your UTF-8 encoded URLs are properly escaped when linked from within your content

i.e. if a URL contains an é, which is a non-English character: http://www.website.ca/fr/contént.html

here’s how it will look properly escaped: http://www.website.ca/fr/cont%C3%A9nt.html

* But if you have to escape the URLs manually, use an encoder such as one from Meyer Web or look for others

It is important to note that Google directly extracts character encodings from HTTP headers, HTML page headers, and content. There isn’t much you need to do about character encoding, other than watching out for conflicting information – for example, between content and headers. While Google can recognize different character encodings, use UTF-8 on your website whenever possible.

3) Crawling and Indexing

Another common area of focus for SEO. On multilingual websites, follow these recommendations to get more pages crawled:

* Avoid redirects based on user’s perceived language: they could, in fact, prevent both users and SEs from looking at more pages on your site.
* Keep the content for each language on separate URLs
* Don’t use cookies to show translated page versions
* Cross-link page by page

Last but not least, please remember that Google does not recommend automatic translations.

By getting the on-page basics right, you will set a great base for your multilingual SEO in the future and, unlike so many others, you will not have to beg (in multiple languages) SE crawlers to come and index your content.


Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/multilingual-seo/19903/

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Building Links

SEO: If you do nothing else, build links!

It’s more-or-less official: link-building is quite possibly the most important part your SEO campaign if you’re at all serious about breaking into the ranks of page-1 Google results.
But the more we hear people talking about building links, the more mysterious the whole subject becomes: surely there’s a lot the average person can’t know about it?
Actually, it’s not that mysterious. Here’s a breakdown of what you need to get right to create a world-class piece of linkbait that will garner valuable links as well as get people talking about you and your blog or website!

1. First, be very clear about what linkbait–or link bait–really is: it’s plain, old fashioned quality content. Even super-quality content, no matter what it actually is. It can be an article, a blog post, a photo, a cartoon, a video or an audio post. If it’s good, people willl link to it and it will be linkbait.
2. Decide if Linkbait is what you need or if you should be buying plain old links. Here’s a discussion debating paid links v linkbait.
3. Read up about specific definitions of different types of linkbait is so you can do a better job. Here’s Matt Cutt’s post on the subject, and here’s celebrity blogger DoshDosh’s take on list building, which is a very successful form of linkbait creation.
4. Choose a subject for your linkbait that is 100 percent relevant to your site, and that will have benefits for readers. Making linkbait useful is critical to its success.
5. Be sure that the linkbait you choose isn’t going to compromise your brand in any way (hence the caption above).
6. Create a title for your Linkbait that will compel the reader to continue. Copyblogger’s post on creating magnetic headlines will help you get started on creating your own masterpieces.
7. While press releases are not strictly speaking Linkbait, I’m including them on this list because they can get you a lot of incoming links and can enhance your brand image when done properly. Chris Crum over at WebPro News gives us a lot of information about press releases.
8. To be sure there are examples of linkbait that are scaremongering, lies, disinformation or all of these and more, but in my experience if linkbait is to have long-term value it’s better to stick to the truth and keep within the guidelines of ethics.Providing your linkbait is not unethical, you should be OK with Smashing Magazine’s Golden Rules of Linkbaiting.
9. Some ideas to get you started: you could write an expose of something you think is wrong, a review of a product you like, create a controversial opinion piece that you know some people will hate (no such thing as bad publicity), create a list of tools or services that will be useful to your audience, come up with some breaking news that no one else has yet and make sure people know you had it first, conduct a poll or a survey,  come up with a video that is highly popular (this is a good one–get it right and you’ve got it made!), create a top 10, top 20 , or top anything list (go as high as you like).
10. Assess the level of emotion your article is going to trigger. If it doesn’t elicit emotion you are dead in the water, as Search Engine Journal’s Dave Snyder explains.
11. If your linkbait is the written kind, don’t forget to link out to anyone who provided information or inspiration–they’ll probably link back to you so your piece will have a built-in linking mechanism.
12. When you’re done, promote, promote, promote. Some sites that you may find useful for buzzing up your linkbait are Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, Plurk, Posterous, Digg, Mixx, Delicious, and Tip’d if your piece has anything to do with the world of finance. OK I know there are scores more, but this should be enough to seriously get anyone started promoting their pieces.
13. Notice I didn’t talk about paid links: if you buy (or sell) links, and Google catches up with you, you’re sunk!

Source: http://www.wellwrittenwords.com/101-linkbait-resource-everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-building-links/comment-page-1/#comment-1677

20 Facebook Tips/Tricks

If you surf Facebook on daily basis or occasionally, chances are you’re already familiar with regular stuffs like add/delete friends, update statuses, walls and profile, add and explore pages & applications, etc, but there’s more..
This week we want to cover some interesting things you can do on (or with) Facebook; inclusive of tricks that are not documented or unknown to many, as well as tips to stay connected better with your friends. Without further ado, here’s 20 Facebook Tips/Tricks You Might Not Know.

 1.  How to Place Facebook Chat On Firefox Sidebar

If you are using Firefox, you can place the Facebook Chat at the sidebar.

2. How to Download Facebook Photo Albums

FacePAD: Facebook Photo Album Downloader allows you to download your friends’ facebook albums, Events albums, and Group Albums, en masse, with the click of a button.

3. How to Share Flickr Photos to Facebook

Flickr2Facebook is an unofficial Flickr to Facebook uploader(bookmarklet) which allows you upload photos to Facebook from Flickr.

 

4. How to Update Facebook without Using Facebook

hellotxt and Ping.fm both introduced features that let Facebook administrators update Facebook Pages.

5. How to Schedule Facebook Messages

Sendible lets you schedule Facebook messages ahead of time so you can send messages to your friends, customers or colleagues in the future.

6. How to "Friend" Someone on Facebook & Hide It From Your Status Updates

A short tutorial on Makeuseof to guide you how to hide Facebook status updates and keep that fact confined to your closer friends.

 

 7. How to Create a Photo Collage Using Pictures of Your Facebook Friends

Click on Friends tab. Proceed to More tab. From "Choose an option" dropdown, choose any of the dashes "—" . Your Facebook friends collage is right on your computer screen.

8. How to Know When Facebook Friends Secretly Delete or Block You

X-Friends is a unique tool for tracking friends that disappear from Facebook.

9. How to Display Selected Pictures Only on your Facebook Profile Page

A little-known feature in Facebook that lets you decide who shows up in that Friends box. Click that "edit" pencil in your Friends box and type the names of your best friends in the box that says "Always show these friends"

10. How to Remove Facebook Advertisements

This Greasemonkey script – Facebook: Cleaner removes many of the annoying ads and updates that unavoidably appear on your Facebook pages.

11. How to Syncs Photos of Facebook Friends with Contacts in Microsoft Outlook

OutSync is a free Windows application that syncs photos of your Facebook friends with matching contacts in Microsoft Outlook. It allows you to select which contacts are updated. So you can update all contacts at once or just a few at a time.

12. How to Display Facebook Statuses on Wordpress Blog

The following method make use of Facebook status feed and Wordpress RSS widget to display Facebook Statuses on WordPress blog.. It will also work for self-host Wordpress blogs.

13. How to Post Your Blog Posts to Your Facebook Wall Automatically

Wordbook allows you to cross-post your blog posts to your Facebook Wall. Your Facebook “Boxes” tab will show your most recent blog posts.

14. How to Access Facebook Chat on Desktop

Gabtastik and digsby let you keep Facebook chat sessions open on your Windows desktop outside of your regular web browser, using minimal screen real estate and system memory.

15. How to Create Quiz on Facebook Easily

LOLapps provides quiz creator that can be employed to conjure up these popular personality quizzes that are so widespread in Facebook.

16.  How to Hide Your Online Status on Facebook Chat from Select Contacts

Facebook has integrated friends list with Chat and you can also choose which of these list members get to see you online.

 

17.  How to Get Facebook Updates on Email

NutshellMail consolidates your Facebook accounts through the inbox you use the most.

18.  How to Update Facebook Status from Firefox

FireStatus is a status update utility for multiple social networks, including FaceBook.

 

19.  How to Get Facebook on Your Desktop

Seesmic Desktop, Facebooker, Xobni, Facebook Sidebar Gadget, Scrapboy and Facebook AIR application are desktop applications that allows you interact with your stream just as you would on Facebook, but without the browser.

 20. How to Delete, Cancel and Terminate Facebook Account and Profile

A simple guide to terminate, delete or cancel Facebook account, together with the Facebook profile easily.

Source:- http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/20-facebook-tipstricks-you-might-not-know/