Speaker Profile

Speakers:
Shari Thurow, Founder & SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive
Alan Perkins, Head of Search Marketing, SilverDisc Limited

Description:

This is a very concise description of the session:

This session is about how successfully architecting sites for search engines and how specific page elements and design technologies may impact your ability to gain good organic listings.

Subjects: Directory and file structure, server-side includes (SSIs), 404 error trapping, JavaScript, robots.txt use, frames, and secure area usage

Insights:

• User expectance is different from IT view and SEO has to match user expectations, not IT.
• Recommended book: Information architect for the world wide web by Louise Rosenfeld , http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/

Shari Thurow:

• Knowing keywords tools still does not make you a copywriter. 
• Consistency in Information Architecture, site navigation and urls.
• Do not assume: test, test and test your architecture.

Alan Perkins

• SEO is all about the content on your site and links into it.
• IBM defined pages in the core of the web. A core page needs to link to our site.
• Best IA skeleton: hierarchical
• Tim Berners Lee: Don’t change URLs, change content within them, but not them.
• URLs ending with / are the best
• Don’t use urls with .html end since tech might change and you will be forced to change URLs
• Ensure IA allows deep linking into your site.

Renowned SEM professionals are gathering in London this week for this conference.

SES London 2010

Where search engines issue is a key success factor in today’s any marketing plan the expectations that its importance is growing.

With that in mind and with the experience Endeavour gained in the area of search engines (SE) I headed to London to participate, this is my second year I am following SES.

Topics such as: online marketing, search engines optimisation, search words and phrases, conversion, links directories and crawlers are all to be discussed here.

I am blogging on the latest in the search engines field from the conference as it happens and hope to bring you in real time the latest on SEO.

More about SES London site and conference can be viewed at: http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/london/

Enjoy,

David Dekel

Final frontier, as James T. Kirk used to call it.

Today, Endeavour space scuttle took off again in one of its last missions as the whole shuttles project will be terminated by the end of this year. The space shuttle Endeavour has set off for the International Space Station (ISS) on a repair mission and the video can be seen below.

The story of the NASA project is both unique and tragic. It has began some 40 years ago based on even earlier concepts of reusable space shuttles. Six Space Shuttle orbiters were built; the first, Enterprise, was used only for testing purposes. Five space-worthy orbiters were:

 Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour.

• On January 28, 1986, orbiter Challenger (OV-099) disintegrated 73 seconds after launch in a dreadful explosion well remembered by anyone who have ever seen it.
• On February 1st, 2003 Columbia was lost during reentry.

In both cases, NASA lost all astronauts and mission specialists onboard and went through a process that risked the entire project.

Endeavour was built as a replacement to Challenger. Columbia was never replaced.

Believe it or not but we are witnessing history in the making as the Shuttles project will be terminated by the end of the year. Further NASA projects will imitate the old way of taking off on a top of a missile and landing with parachutes into the sea, just like in the old Apollo program.

So space shuttles as we used to see them are terminating an era in space exploration and will not be replaced by reusable shuttles. It is impossible to evaluate how many people worldwide were touched by the ambitious NASA shuttles project. It started by a mass correspondence to the white house, by Star Trek series fans to change the first shuttle’s name from Constitution to Enterprise and became part of all of us with its victories and failures. The tragedies affected our life.

I clearly remember myself as 18 years old teenager watching the documentary movie Hail Columbia at the Air & Space museum in Washington on a giant screen. It was an amazing movie and one of the only few I witnessed people cheering to a movie at the end of it.

 Therefore, every time they take off, we hold our breath, together with all NASA employees and pray to see it landing safely.

This post is dedicated to the brave men and women who lost their life in this project and to their families. They made us so proud.

President Reagan said in the memorial service of Challenger:

” Sometimes, when we reach for the stars, we fall short. But we must pick ourselves up again and press on despite the pain”.

Challenger: STS-51-L crew: Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ron McNair. Ellison S. Onizuka, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, Greg Jarvis, and Judy Resnik.

Columbia STS-107 crew:  Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael P. Anderson, Laurel B. Clark and Ilan Ramon (Col. IAF) . (Pic by NASA).

However, as from last night, there is an unusual additive to the building: the Dutch brewery started brewing browsers… Google Chrome to be exact. Slides of the browsers logo are projected on the outside wall of the Heineken building to be seen by nearly frozen by passers.

We are witnessing Google efforts to promote their almost two years old browser. One can see Chrome advertisements everywhere on newspapers, magazines and of course online.

In terms of popularity and according to Net Applications, Google Chrome web browser has just passed Apple’s safari and is occupying the third place in popularity after Internet Explorer various versions and Firefox. This popularity is expected to grow once Google will release it Chrome OS.

In case you are wondering which browser will be the most popular in two three years from now, the answer is somewhat surprising: whatever they will be named, they will be installed on mobile devices, namely, mobile phones.

According to Gartner, somewhere at 2013 browser-equipped phones will exceed 1.83 billion, compared with 1.78 billion PCs worldwide.

Get ready.

The new phone, categorized as a Super phone, is produced by HTC and runs on the Android 2.1 mobile operating system.

 As it seems right after the Google announcement, most speculations as for the technical specifications of e the new phone were accurate.

Nexus One Google new SuperPhone. Screenshot

Nexus One technical specifications:

• operating system: Android 2.1
• 3.7-inch display, 480 x 800 OLED display
• Processor: 1GHz Snapdragon from Qualcomm
• 5-megapixel camera with LED flash (guys from iphone, pay attention here: flash, you didn’t see it coming, did you?)
• Audio stereo Bluetooth
• Active noise cancellation using two microphones
• Live-action wallpaper that responds to your touch
• Google Maps navigation
• Improved Facebook integration

So, after all the hype created, the mother of all questions? Are we witnessing a revolution in either concept, design, technology or performance? More importantly: is this an iphone killer?

The answer is no to both parts unfortunately. Improved? Yes, but no revolution this time.

Nexus One demonstrate one interesting feature  is the voice to text capability. In terms of cool, this is a major one. It is so much easier to talk to a gadget rather than typing it on small keys or touch. These things are usually coming with a short period of training the algorithm and are not 100% accurate, but this is very interesting feature. It is more interesting by the fact that the voice recognition is being processed by Google servers, not the phone itself.

As expected the Nexus One demonstrated a friendly high resolution Google Earth feature. The application did respond to voice orders.

Other new software applications are: live background, new weather and news applications.

Nexus One Price:

The expected prices are: 529$ for unlocked Nexus One phone without service plan and 179$ for a phone with a T-Mobile plan.

The Nexus One will be launched today in the US, UK, Singapore and Hong Kong.

 New Google market

Google that started as a search provider, evolved to other fields such as browsers and ended up as the world’s largest advertiser has entered today to the field of retailing of phones and service plans.

 So far, Google sells only one phone, the Nexus One and one service plan on its Google phone marketplace, but that would change soon.

The concept here is worth mentioning: Google aims to provide and sell phones with simple service attached in a simple online way. The concept makes sense, however, we remember clearly many cases in which general retail shops failed selling mobile phone due to the high involvement customer required in purchasing mobile phones. Let’s see how Google addresses this problem with its new Nexus One phone and the online Marketplace.

It depicts the growing power social media gained in public opinion, access and usage. Just as much as it can contribute to a firm or individual PR, it can make a nightmare as well.

The story is a simple customer care issue that evolved via social media into an overnight nightmare, goes as follows:

An American guy named Dave Carroll flays United Airlines and in the process his guitar gets damaged in the cargo process. Carroll applies to UA, asks for covering his damage and the company takes few months to reply with a decision. Once they do take the decision it is not other than sorry, but no compensation, in so many words.  

So far, an everyday story. However, Carroll opts for the ultimate revenge and does what he does best: compose couple of funny songs named United Breaks Guitars and releases it on youtube.

The next thing happening is amazing: more than five million people viewed the clip! Some experts suggested the clip influenced negatively UA stock price and even caused long run damage to UA brand name. And if you believe this was the worst implication, now the story ended up on Endeavour’s blog…

The story ended by UA finally offering compensation to Carroll but he nobly rejected the payment asking them to give it to someone really needing it.

I myself refuse to join the party around this case, I believe it went out of proportion and that we can all learn a thing or two concerning customer relations and its consequences. I also refuse to add to the flames by naming this post United Breaks Guitars as the subject requests, due to the same reasons.  

Let’s pull this discussion upwards to its principal level rather than dealing with the single case at hand here.

As most of us are aware of, most airlines are responsible for any damage to people or luggage even though in many cases the airlines are victims to ground workers as well. Most airlines will offer compensation to proven damage and damage to luggage is an everyday issue for airlines.

From the company’s perspective, I can see two issues that needed to be solved: the length of time in making the decision and obviously the negative nature of the decision. The first issue should never happen of course and the second is questionable and got worse when the company finally offered compensation, probably after realizing the snowball.

Many firms need to communicate negative or unsatisfactory decision to customers’ demands, however, delaying and prolonging the process is not advised and unless the firm waits for the customer to give up on his/ her case, it is always advised to update the customer as for how long the decision process might take, the information needed, the actions to be taken and the commitment of the company and the person dealing with it for concluding it.

In addition, since there is always more than one way to communicate disappointing messages to customer, the worst thing to do is also making the customer angrier by the tone or manner in which the message was delivered. A customer might be willing to accept a negative answer to his demand but will not accept humiliation, patronizing or any none sincere reply with some empathy.

If a CRM professional makes the mistake and actually manages to add pain on sorrow, he can expect the customer to develop revengeful ideas and even carry them out.

We are all aware of the customers that can never be satisfied and will actually go the extra step just to have few Dollars refund. Some customers are very good at that and spoiling it for everyone else being firms and other customers. If you ever worked more than a day for any airline on this planet you must have heard the following sentence: I’ll never fly with you again…

I remember myself feeling so much better when finding out passengers are actually use that phrase against all airlines evenly. In addition, mostly the passenger is not aware of the carrier identity in the booking process and most flights are being selected for price and timing, not carrier.

The social issue media is actually changing the roles of the game for PR professionals and firms. In today’s reality individuals can get a massive public attention to their message for or against a firm and the days firms had absolute PR power over the individual customer, are over. CRM and PR professionals should take that in calculations when dealing with customers. As they say in relation to traffic but applicable here as well: sometimes it is better being smart than right.

David Dekel, CEO

Endeavour Enterprises N.V.

EU banking basic fees were reported to fluctuate from 27 Euros annual fees in Bulgaria, via 46 Euros in the Netherlands and up to 154 in France and 253 in Italy.

The EU report covers prices of various banking fees of 224 banks, accounting for 81% of the EU market.

 Another exposed issue was the clarity of services, terms, conditions and engagement rules with the bank. Many customers reported the level of clarity in given services was

very low, misleading and insufficient.

The above findings are just the tip of the iceberg as the report itself suggest. The report suggested that some of the misleading is intentional and revealed banking hidden fees and failing customers as a trend.

OK, what did I miss?

High street Banks are acting like some dodgy money exchange shops? What is going on here?

A little economic crisis and the banks are losing it? Just when we thought general trust in the financial system could not be worse…

Well, here is the main problem here: banks are essential part of our economy and finance foundations. If we have problem in this level, the whole system built on it will not function well.

Unfortunately, EU officials have only exposed the problem and are leaving each country and law enforcement agencies to take care of the rest.

The EU officials exposing the problem and publishing it deserve recognition for what they did, however, there is a lot to do in order to set a clear EU message to all EU financial institutes:

Zero tolerance towards dishonest banks and financial services!

EU commission and each EU country should impose strict regulations concerning banking fees and services. It is not possible that the whole world will try to recover from one of its deepest slow downs while banks will row the opposite direction.  This really has to finish.

IBC Amsterdam, is traditionally scheduled for mid September every year. It is the leading international IT forum for the electronic media industry. It is practically one of the largest IT conferences in Europe, attracting roughly 49,000 visitors and 1,300 exhibitors from more than 130 countries. IBC combines a highly respected and peer reviewed conference, an exhibition that demonstrates media innovative technology and networking opportunities.

IBC period is a paradise on earth for local Amsterdam hotels, restaurants, bars and taxi drivers as much as it is hell if you are a tourist or a businessman seeking a room in the city.

If you are reading this post from a distance, it might be useful to know IBC 2010 dates: 9 to 14 September 2010, at the Amsterdam RAI. You can visit the website at: www.ibc.org

This evening, the IBC organization acknowledged the pioneers in media creation, management, delivery and innovation as it does every year. One special award was given to Amber alert that I would like to share with you.

Amber Alert Netherlands

 The Amber Alert Netherlands, an innovative cross-platform system designed to spread information about a missing child as quickly as possible.

If a child becomes missing the system, developed by Netpresenter, gives the Dutch police one single point of access to push out alerts simultaneously to radio, television and the press. AMBER also delivers online messages to individuals and businesses who have registered for the service to computers, as SMS and instant messages, website alerts and RSS news feeds.

 “Amber Alert” was named after Amber Hagerman, the 9-year-old who was kidnapped while riding her bicycle in Arlington, Texas in 1996, and then murdered.

The first time the system was used in the Netherlands, the child was found within 45 minutes of the alert being issued by the police. Restaurant employees recognised the child from the alert message on the store’s digital signage screens.

“Mercifully, the abduction of a child is still a rare occurrence, but when it happens everyone is focussed on finding the child as quickly as possible,” said Michael Lumley, chair of the IBC Innovation Awards judging panel which is making this special award. “Amber Alert is a great use of technology in our industry which provides a real social service and we are delighted to make this award.”

Avatar: reality just gained another dimension

The award ceremony was ended with presentations of few actual scenes from James Cameroon’s new movie Avatar. From what we have seen, I have to admit this is an amazing experience. Not only the 3D issue was impressive, but the whole concept and story. It looks like reality just gained another dimension. I am looking forward to see the whole movie when it is published in December.

The IBC being a media oriented organization by its nature was aware of the copy & “sharing” capabilities of the participants and specifically requested not to copy any of the scenes in any way. So, if you want to take a look at what to expect, you can use the following trailer download link: http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/avatar/hd/ 

This is a two dimensions version only, however, impressive by itself. 

David Dekel

Endeavour Enterprises N.V.

We are not strangers to each other. We have met before.  It was March 2000 the month marked as the collapse of the Dot.com firms dragging with them the whole ICT industry.  At the time I was a Director of Operations in a Dutch software firm with great products but wrong timing. 

For those of you that joined the rat race after 2000, I can tell it was an amazing time back then, whereas just anyone could get an investment for any technology idea or a concept for a Dot.Com firm.  The new firms were traded in much higher values they represented and a catastrophe was inevitable.

When the IT bubble exploded, the NASDAQ that have reached above 5132, collapsed, avalanching the industries of IT, investment and global economy into a deep recession. And if that wasn’t enough, September 11 came the next year and did the same to the Travel, airlines and insurance industries. It took years for the economy to recover.

The world economy took a steep dive and I found myself with no job, just like many others. It was right after, in 2002 that I established my company Endeavour Enterprises N.V. against the advice of my lawyers and accountants. They were right, it was not the time to start new enterprises nor it was the time for bold Endeavours, however I preferred that than just waiting.

It was back then when I looked into the economic crisis straight into its eyes. I was just hoping it would take more than just few years before we meet again.

Let’s admit it; we all are taking economic growth as a given fact. We plane life accordingly, assuming growth in sales and increase of our investments’ value. No wonder we are so helpless when being hit by a major recession. The damage is enormous and is visible in our daily life: people losing their jobs, not buying many of the things they planned to, losing their savings and even their houses.

It is my opinion that we should deal with the human factor, the one that is partially responsible for this misconduct. If irresponsible managers and brokers contributed to the creation of the fall, we should hold them responsible and more importantly, create a better, more balanced and secured brokerage system.

What do we do now? Here are some thoughts:

Last week I found myself looking at my favorite shoes, half priced at a local store. I was just about to buy the shoes when a thought bothered me: in the middle of the worst world slowdown, I am buying shoes which I really don’t need just because they are on sale…

I can’t blame our surplus society and culture cultivating purchasing as a hobby or even leisure. I am guilty as one can be. When supermarkets are selling none-food, cheap merchandize at the entrances, they have people like me in mind… I can’t take that corner without buying something. I call it Buy-me corner.

Nevertheless, I was standing in the middle of the shop with the fancy shoes in my hand, pondering what to do. I took an unprecedented decision not to buy it. I thought that it would be extremely immoral to buy half priced shoes I don’t need at this time. Funny, I resisted my shopping urge because of the time we live at. My secretary would be proud of me. She knows better than to send me for office shopping.

Walking back home empty handed, my beaten shopping urge tried its last attack and another bothering thought came up: ok, great. 12 points for morality but did I actually helped someone by not buying the shoes? What happen if the rest of the world will do that on the macro level? We all actually contribute to the recession, not eliminating it.

Looking around me, we are already doing it. Everybody is just waiting for the recession to pass. On the professional level we stopped hiring long ago, we fired the unnecessary employees and  we did not sign the suppliers contracts. In the personal consumer level, we buy only what we really need. Well, most of us… and by doing so, we are helping the crisis to hold tighter to our economy.

Increased governmental investments & spending is the answer economists and heads of countries are giving us. The idea is to inject enough investments & spending to move the wheels of the economy forward. You can imagine an old coal train needing a major push forward or a jet engine rotating on its electric power before it catches up. So is the economy which is built for speed but need the injections of investments to move these giant wheels forward. It is only a question of time before that happens. Never before in the documented history, amounts of such scale where invested and deployed by countries and organizations in order to change the tide.

What we feel now is the fear and hysteria that is a byproduct of that crisis. The fear that we did not even reach the bottom is the strongest one and I admit it is not easy to live, let alone manage, in such scenario.

Here is what I am going to do as a consumer: I am going to make sure I spend some money on things important for me in places I like. I am going to make more lunch meetings at my favorite restaurant and have more time spending outside the office. I have few restaurants and bars owners here that have been friendly to ma and hence have direct responsibility to the few extra kilos I gained. This time I am refusing any free meals and food, I am paying also for the last few good years. I can’t save all of them but I can help a few.

To other manager I call to think it over once again before dismissing people. I remind you that not all costs related to dismissal can be quantified. Demoralization, training of new people, stress and other associated actions are mostly not being assigned to the cost of dismissing people.

This is the time to find people other tasks within the organization even reduce positions  to part-time, encourage people for study part-time, anything but layoffs.

Some of the public firms that I am a member in their board of directors decided this year to avoid paying any bonuses to management and all directors voted for a cut of 10% in their own salary. This is a clear message sent to some Dutch and American financial firms but moreover, it is the right thing to do.

Whatever happens, do not lose hope. Economy is the strongest drive known to mankind. It brought us so far, it will take us further.

David Dekel, CEO

Endeavour Enterprises N.V.

Our expectations for good service took off just as fast and we have to admit we expect nothing less than good service in today’s business environment.
Service is a key success factor in many industries and especially in the travelling and hospitality sector. This sector, by the way is characterised by high expectations, low tolerance for errors and constant interfacing with clients.

Hilton hotel Warsaw

Hilton Hotel Warsaw lobby

Allow me to share with you my last visit to Hilton Warsaw, Poland, where I experienced a service worth mentioning.
I visited Warsaw for a board of directors meeting and was happy to realize the Polish real estate market shows some positive recovery signs. There is still hope.

 
I choose the Hilton. I have never been there before, hence decided to give it a try.
I have requested a room with work space which I received. The room was big, comfortable and very well designed on a higher level than I expected. I am not a design freak, but it was simply beautiful to the level I have noticed it once walked in.
The room area was about 30-35 square meters and most customers immediately translate size to quality in this industry.
The hotel happens to accommodate the local Holmes Place health centre with a 25 meter long swimming pool. I just loved it.
A short while after arrival, I have received to my room some fruits and a local cake accompanied with a letter, signed by guest relation manager. Some hotels are doing that when they favour a guest. I did not expect that.
The next morning I missed breakfast and asked for a croissant and coffee at the hotel bar. I have received a giant coffee with few croissants. I am sure I was served more than I have ordered.

 
The crew of both the reception and concierge, were genuinely nice and pleasant, not the average corporate light smile produced by average customer service trainings, but a real care to guests’ requests. I got the feeling the crew was eager to assist me. I felt welcomed and comfortable while at the Hotel.
In general, the hotel would charge guests for usage of internet services, in my case they simply gave me a complementary code to use. At that point I suspected they were confusing me with someone else.

 
Since my flight was scheduled to leave at the evening, I needed to request a late check out. The receptionist didn’t hesitate and gave me five hours late checkout. No questions asked. I was impressed since the typical reply would be an hour or two after the usual checkout. The authority to approve such action was at the receptionist level.
When I left the Hilton Warsaw, I decided to write this post and analyze my satisfaction while at the hotel. Many hotels provide good service, but only few go the extra step and make you feel very wanted and welcomed.

Hilton Hotel Warsaw lobby 2

Room design: a major component in overall satisfaction of a guest. In this hotel the room was wide, with one wall made of glass, located at the 20th floor and providing beautiful city panorama. A separate working zone contributed to the feeling of space and utility. The bathroom design was impressive and the room stereo system enabled me to connect my IPod via USB and listen to my music.
Service level: outstanding and genuine as mentioned before.
Location: the Hilton is located just off the real city centre and not next to the downtown area; however, the business traveller mostly prefers that over noisy surroundings.

Facilities: the hotel provides the high class usual facilities expected from five stars deluxe level, however, the additional Casino and the local Holmes Place centre gives it a an edge over other city hotels.
Pricing: the price is actually the good news here. With global crisis here to stay for a while, it looks as if the high class hotels are making efforts to make their rooms affordable. A double room at Hilton Warsaw would cost around 130 Euros per night in mid September, weekdays. Breakfast included. If booked in advance with no refund possibility, the price dives to 109 Euros per night. Prices for end of august are even below the 100 Euros. Crisis, indeed.

All in all, I refuse to assign my positive experience at the hotel to fortune or luck. It definitely looks as the result of managerial approach and efforts. Superficially, it appears as if this hotel is positively managed with affinity to design and customer care as main goal. It is encouraging realizing luxury hotels are striving for excellent service level rather than sinking into mediocrity in economy slow down.
To avoid misunderstanding, I should properly state here although being a travel professional, there are no special business relations between Hilton and my company. I bring my unbiased opinion here. However, after being there once, I will definitely be back.

David Dekel, CEO
Endeavour Enterprises N.V.

Hilton Hotel Warsaw 1