The website is currently down, but it’s still showing on the Google SERP (you’ll get the official “choose your language page” on Bing though.)

It’s a pity, from a SEO point of view, not to be able to analyze the code and the link profile of the page, but it’s interesting to see that the Google SERP isn’t showing the global homepage of the Vatican at all, or the English homepage: Wikipedia scores the second and third spot, the fourth goes to the Vatican’s YouTube channel, the fifth to the official .va Vatican Museums’ page and only the sixth is a vatican.va homepage in French.

The Vatican suffered from a long tradition of link bombing and brand-jacking, and as Nichola Stott pointed out in her Vatican VA website review, the website itself is not an example of usability and good web design.

Pierluigi Ruotolo on Twitter deserves credit for a finding that could make us question the value of keywords in URL for SEO. Also the exclusive .va TLD seemed more powerful last Christmas, but now .coms have taken the crown. Is it time to go Bing, or maybe Google is evolving into an “Answer Engine” like Wolfram Alpha?

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Google’s algorithm hasn’t been revealed and the more than 200 signals that determine whether a page is relevant for a search query are still secret, but if you want to know what happens when Google bots crawl the web following links, this is a very interesting resource.

After a page has been indexed, the algorithm, which is constantly being updated and refined through the input of human quality raters, evaluates the authority of the page and its compliance to editorial policies.

Before creating the search result page (SERP) according to the user’s query, Google uses related searches to suggest new keywords, considers the occurrence of synonyms, then applies localization (and personalization) to the page, offering universal search results (news, maps, real time results, shopping, video, music, books, meteo, etc.), ranked in relation to their relevancy with a side serving of targeted ads.

Click on the image below to explore how Google works in detail.

Infographic by PPC Blog

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In spite of Apple’s recent change in the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement that will make it impossible for Flash developers to convert their apps for the iPhone (or iPad), the rise of the application market isn’t going to stop.

In fact, there are so many apps that app marketers and developers are now facing a different problem: App discovery. To make users find your app you need to include optimisation and promotion in your app marketing strategy right from the start.

What do the best iPad apps have in common?

The answer is simple: They don’t dispel the Magic of the iPad’s user experience.

In the iPad’s Magic formula, immediacy is the key ingredient:

• There are no input devices, as keyboard and mouse, between the user and the touch screen; the high-resolution display is held at the same distance we normally use a mobile phone.
• The absence of multitasking isn’t noticed when the experience with an app is smooth, thanks to the fast A4 processor and the responsiveness of the interface.
• The latter, together with the close proximity of the iPad’s large and beautiful glossy screen (when held in your hands), make the experience on the iPad immersive.

In conclusion, user experience on the iPad is immediate in every sense (Free Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary definition of immediate):

1 a : acting or being without the intervention of another object, cause, or agency : direct
b : present to the mind independently of other states or factors c : involving or derived from a single premise
2 : being next in line or relation
3 a : existing without intervening space or substance b : being near at hand
4 a : occurring, acting, or accomplished without loss or interval of time : instant b (1) : near to or related to the present (2) : of or relating to the here and now : current
5 : directly touching or concerning a person or thing

Immersiveness and immediacy make the iPad ideal for media consumption, especially for media that require time and a higher level of concentration (compared to the web), as newspapers and magazines.

These aspects made many analysts declare that the iPad could revive print publications, but to achieve this ambitious goal, print publishing needs to produce apps that exploit the full potential of tablets and e-readers.

Apps are different from websites, and even more different from magazines. The web has added a layer of social interactivity that magazines and newspapers completely lack, but websites are consumed at a faster pace, pages are browsed and closed in a matter of seconds, while newspapers and magazines allow for (or demand) a slower pace of consumption.

iPad apps could combine the quality of long, in-depth newspaper articles, with interactive and rich graphic content that can be shared online and commented with friends. The best apps should also provide a transactional layer, that for instance could allow users to interact with ads, to book an hotel room, or to place a bid on an Ebay listed item, without leaving the app at all.

Developing the app for the iPad

While websites aren’t sexy as apps are nowadays (especially mobile websites), developing for iPhone OS requires complying with relevant technical and legal limitations listed in Apple’s guidelines. The first step in developing a successful app for the iPad is making sure you aren’t violating the guidelines prior to submitting your app to the App Store.

Assuming you know what your target customers expect to find on your app, like functionalities you can’t feature in print publications or on your website because of platform constraints, it’s important to be consistent in the way you present your brand across all platforms.

The iPad’s display size gives more screen real estate for developers to offer content, compared to the small screens of mobile handsets, and the A4 processor can handle more complex applications. Take advantage of the larger touch screen and other iPad features, like the built-in accelerometer. On the other hand, the iPad doesn’t allow multitasking and you should strive to offer a satisfying interaction and full functionalities without taking the user to the web browser or making the user want to leave your app to complete a transaction.

It’s vital to keep user experience smooth in your app and remove all unnecessary delays: E-commerce apps for instance, regardless of security concerns, should always keep users logged in the app, and save credit card information for future purchases, in order to limit users’ input as much as possible. Caching and pre-fetching pages or products would make user searches on your app run faster.

How to promote your iPad app effectively

Bryson Meunier on Search Engine Land hands us a few tips on app promotion:

1. Perform a keyword research by browsing the top 50 apps (or more) in iTunes, to find what users are looking for
2. Use popular and relevant keywords in your app name (it works as Page Titles do for webpages) because it’s an important ranking factor you can optimise
3. If you can provide a demo or free version of your app, use terms like “Lite” and “Free” to help your app gain exposure in the App Store
4. Use keywords in the body copy on the iTunes Store page
5. Mentioning popular apps related to your app can help increase visibility by making your app appear in navigational searches for those apps
6. Promote your app on your website, and on social networks where you have a following, but you shouldn’t forget to build a presence in online communities devoted to iPhone and iPad apps, before starting promotion activities
7. You can leverage the social web to make your app viral: By integrating Facebook Connect into your iPad app and encouraging users to write reviews, you will help your app gain visibility on Facebook and in the App Store, especially if you get high user ratings
8. YouTube videos showing your app in action can help promoting your app, and you can link the video if you plan to request journalist and bloggers for a review

Including calls to action and promotional language such as “On Sale” or “Game of the Year” in your app icon can help drive sales.

When submitting your app to reviewers, make sure you are providing complete information about your app (app name, contact information, company name, link to the app store page), describe what your app does in a simple and concise way, and include a promotion code for reviewers, to make them try the app hands-on.

Don’t send mass emails to bloggers and journalists asking for a review, but personalise your pitch and show that you are a reader of the publication you are contacting.

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If you know how to write an XML Sitemap file, adding images will be easy: You just have to add information about the images right after you specify the URL of the page where the image is residing.

The Sitemap would only show the location and the file name of every image, but Google will use meta tags and on page information like words “surrounding” the image, its alt and title attributes, to understand how to index it.

The following code is taken from Google Webmaster Central Blog:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″
xmlns:image=”http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1″>
<url>
<loc>http://example.com/sample.html</loc>
<image:image>
<image:loc>http://example.com/image.jpg</image:loc>
</image:image>
</url>
</urlset>

How to optimise your images for Universal SEO

Google images search can be an important traffic source and images take an important share of the Search Engine Result Page for many different queries: SERPs can show different kind of results, like images, News, Tweets and many more.

While adding images to your XML Sitemap would increase the chances for your images to be indexed, optimising images with proper file names, alt and title attributes are Universal SEO best practices that should be implemented in order to achieve better rankings.

XML Treasure Sitemap credit: Fabric Attic

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Overview: It causes hot debate. On the one hand it’s a necessary part of any communications programme. On the other it’s an unethical black art. With every shade of grey in the middle.

The truth is out there somewhere, and there are all kinds of services aimed at helping us.

Put the date in your diary – venue, table hosts and sponsors all to be announced.

Ticket Information: Free

Venue: Sun CBC, 45, King William St, London, EC4R 9AN, UK

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