However, when the iPhone 4S came out, I migrated back to the iOs world. So when they made the announcement yesterday, I of course checked it out again. Overall rating: C.

The upside:

First the platform is unchanged except it isn’t beta and you can upload 20,000 songs for no cost. This is pretty good if you ask me. I have about 6,000 songs up there now. They have added a more comprehensive music store and just like iTunes they are giving away free music all the time. The quality is better on the tracks though as they are 320kbps versus iTunes 256kbps.

The downside:

There is no native iOs application. However there is an iOs friendly HTML5 web app. This uses the HTML5 audio tag to stream music. When you first load the app, you are shown artists and can see albums, songs and playlists if you slide left and right. There is search, a right hand alpha listing to jump around and logout. Thats it for initial controls. No “play” fromt he top level meaning you can’t just jump into playing a random song (I like that on the web and in iTunes). Upon finding you artist, you have to click to open the artist, then the album, then the song before you get a “play” option. What if I want to play all songs by the artist? Clicking play and letting it run on the first song will automatically go to the next track when the first completes.

Since this is a web app, it doesn’t respond to the play controls available in the iOs compatible headphones. This is a feature I love in iTunes, especially when its cold out or I am at the gym. Pandora even has pause/play working via the headphones. Since it is a web app streaming over the internet, use it on wifi. over 3G, due to the high quality of the tracks it stutters and buffers like crazy. In addition, one of the issues I had with Pandora’s HTML5 solution and the beta google Music is sometimes the next song just won’t play. This happens in the iOs web app as well.

The big downside:

So I bought a bunch of the free albums at launch and even paid for the new Coldplay ($4.99). However they didn’t show up on the iOs web app to play. Messing around with it for a while I decided to erase any content related to Google Music and see what happens. When you first launch the app, it asks you to authorize allowing the database to be up to 25 mb. In order for new music you just bought to show up you need to delete this library/database and start over. In addition the UI is slow to respond, sometimes doesn’t render anything, and crashes frequently. While some of the labels are readable by VoiceOver, they are the labels that are not rendered on the current UI, therefore I deem it inaccessible. Don’t even try to listen to it read you the name of the album art image.

Summary:

If there was a native iOs app, I would use this all the time. Maybe more than iTunes as I don’t have enough room on my iPhone to hold all my music. But to make it good, they need to work on compression schemes for the music over 3G. I certainly like this over iTunes Match as it is free and DRM free, it just isn’t usable on an iPhone yet.

How Long it Takes to Get Listed

Every search engine is different. In order to be found in the search engines you need to be listed, and they do this by indexing your site. Indexing consists of the search engine crawling your site looking at all of the content on it. They do not see images, only text and links. The search engines then stores that data for quick reference and classifies your site based on the content it finds. They go further to apply complex algorithms to grade your site. In order to be found you must have relevant content to the search performed and have a grade that results in a ranking high on the list.

Typically you will not get indexed with a search engine for at least 30 days. However it can take up to 6 months to get listed in their indexes. However, this does not mean you will be found.

How to Find Out if You are Listed

Go to www.google.com and type in “site:” followed by your complete website address (include the www) and click on Google Search. The result will be a listing of only those pages Google has indexed.

Go to www.yahoo.com and in the search box type in “site:http://” followed by your complete website address (include the www) and click search. The result will be the list of pages Yahoo! has indexed. Next to the number of pages on the left hand side you will also see Inlinks. This is Yahoo!’s term for Back Links discussed below.

How to Optimize your Site for Search Engine Traffic

Internal Links

When creating links inside your site, be sure to use phrases that describe the destination. Do not use the words “Click Here”, but focus on phrases like “ATV Accessories”. This enhances usability because the customer now knows where they are going. In addition, these words are granted greater importance by the search engines as keywords.

Text Content

Write for your customers and not computers. Focus on concise well written messages you need to deliver to your customers. Try and keep everything short and scanable. If you feel a particular phrase is important, bold it or make it a link to more details. The average customer spends 5 minutes on a website. In that time they do not want to spend it reading War and Peace. Try to keep ideas to one paragraph.

Content Ratios

Any keywords used in your Meta Tags, need to be used in your website text content. Ideally the ratio should be no more than 7% of the total text content should be your keywords, but they should be used at least 3 times. If you use 8 words in your meta tags, then they should be used 24 times in your body text. The total word count for your body text should be 343.

Any more than this or writing the keywords in long continuous strings that are not reader friendly is picked up by the search engines and penalized.

Meta Tags

While keywords are important to have, don’t let anyone convince you they are the end all be all for search engine placement. They can break you more than make you. If you use something in your keywords and not in the site, you will be penalized. While there is no limit on how many you can have, can you imagine writing enough text and to make sure you don’t exceed the 7% level for the keywords you do use? Would your customers read that text if it was there?

The best advice here is to pick up to 8 keywords or phrases to include. Then narrow the focus of your text to emphasize your expertise in those keywords. It will be easier on your customers and more effective in the search engine.

More important that the keywords Meta Tag is the description Meta Tag. This is your chance to shine out from the pack. The description content is the sentence or two you see under the link when doing a search on Yahoo or MSN (Google takes actual text from the page). Here you can deliver why someone should buy from you before they even arrive on your site. Find 1-2 sentences (14-20 words) that are extremely concise and descriptive to input here. Remember this is your first chance to hook the customer.

How to Draw More Search Engine Traffic

So you have worked on optimizing your text, written quality (not quantity) unique text, and have been indexed by the search engines. What do you do next to get to the top of the list? There are two solutions, one organic and one not.

Back Links

Back links are the organic solution. Of all the variables in the programs used to calculate who should be listed first, the most reliable one that can be leveraged has to do with people telling the search engines you are an expert on what you do. This happens by them linking to you, hopefully with a phrase you want to be found under.

You can find out how many sites link to your site by going to Google and typing in “links:” followed by your complete web address. If there are no listings, then you need to get the word out. The fastest way to get the word out is having unique content that others need. Having short articles that answer questions or provide insight and interest is the fastest route, but how do you let people know you have this data? Browse through social websites, forums, blogs, or news sites relevant to your products and industry. Find people asking questions and answer those questions. Provide a link on the other site to yours with more answers if they desire.

Do not just post a link to your site. The search engines and community around that site will view it as spam. Try to use a user name that is not related to your site and make it sound like you have nothing to do with your site. Otherwise the community will view it as spam. The more sites of importance you have linking to you the faster you will raise in the search engine results.

Do not pay for, ask for, or participate in any scenario that has someone else’s site linking to yours in return for a link to theirs. This is called link farming and will get you black-listed from the search engines. Once black-listed you can never get re-listed with that URL again.

Sponsored Links

Sponsored links are those links you see on the right hand side of the search engine results. These are paid for links and only 10% of all searchers click on these. Before delving into sponsored links, we recommend giving our techniques for building back-links at least 6 months to take effect. While viral marketing happens overnight, getting the right marketing takes time.

If you have decided to do sponsored links you will need to set up an account with the search engine of your choice. Google has the largest search volume, plus their Adsense program is an easy way for website owners to place ads on their site in order to generate revenue. Given this coverage and that Google is a well known brand name; they are a good place to start. You can sign up for an account here: https://adwords.google.com/select/Login.

Upon signing up you will need to do the following:

• Set a budget
• Pick your search terms
• Write your ads
• Set your bids for each search term

The way you get to the top of the sponsored listings is to be willing to pay the most for that particular search term. If you want to be found anytime anyone enters the word “lawnmower”, you will have to outbid the others seeking that word. This could mean you only need to spend $0.05 or you could end up spending a couple of dollars. The advertising program you choose will show you high bids. Your bid is what you could pay on a per click basis.

If we are searching and see your ad for lawnmowers that you paid $1 for, when I click on it, you owe Google $1 even if we don’t buy a thing. Now the bidding process isn’t quite so cut and dry. If you are willing to pay $1, but the next highest bidder is only wiling to pay $0.50, when we click on your ad, you will only owe $0.51 to Google. You will need to monitor your account daily to make sure you ads are working and that you are happy with your budget.

Next they offer to submit your site a certain number of times to a certain number of search engines. There is no need to submit your site more than once to each of the following engines: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask, and DMOZ.org (not really a search engine, but important). Once found your site will continue to be searched on regular rotation as long as you don’t violate their policies. If you don’t see your site after six weeks (test this by typing site:www.YOURDOMAIN.com into Google), then you can submit again because it would appear they did not find you. Once you are in, you don’t need to worry, just keep building quality content. If you are listed in DMOZ.org (the Open Directory Project) then you are guaranteed to be found by Google, but it can take 6 months to show up there and it is manually verified by a group of volunteers. They can choose not include you if you play games with them. Further, Google or Yahoo! are contracted by hundreds of search engines to actually power their search. So if I go to Altavista and search, I am actually seeing the results I would get from Yahoo!

However, to be found first raises another question. Just how do we do it? The fastest way to get to the top of Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and other search engines is by being relevant to the topic at hand. The more relevant you are, the more people will want to use you as a source, thus linking into you. If they have been found to be respectable, the link in will be given more weight than just a random link. The more incoming links you have the faster you get found.

This doesn’t mean you should go out to every forum you can think of and post a link in one hundred different threads with your domain name as part of your signature. This is exactly what the SEO firms do. The search engines are wise to this and recognize it as spam, so they discount it. In reality if you factor in the work you had to do to get it there in the forum by the work you put forth for proper content, you will have penalized yourself greatly.