For those who don’t know it yet, I moved back to Hawaii. I am on the island of Kauai on a remote bit of the north shore between Hanalei and Haena. 

This morning I woke up to a call from my friend Zane and then I went to go for a swim. I swam a bit then got up to the beach and laid on the sand. I heard a noise and then watched as an endagered monk seal flopped it’s way out of the water and headed right towards me.

I love seals. Long story.

The seal came up to me and laid next to me. I was looking at it and the beach and thinking about how pretty it all was then I realized I was supposed to put up signs around it, a responsibility I inherited from the person in the house before me. I went back to my house and got the signs and set them up… 

I was wishing I had a camera, but I don’t so I asked my neighbor if I could borrow hers for a sec and I went back to take photos.  She said yes and so I get to put some photos up, and show you the seal, and the view from the deck…

and the beach outcrop in front where I go swim in the mornings, now with a monk seal and my handy work :) 

It is a good morning. Well, it is now noon. I have to go to my deck and work now.

This lesson will surely give you an upper hand in having your Google gadgets be seen by more people. 

It explores the best practices of how to effectively describe and spread your Google gadgets via the underused method of complete ModulePrefs.

Guide to ModulePrefs

What are ModulePrefs?

ModulePrefs are the “metadata” of a Google gadget.

On a web page you define the title of that webpage using meta data, with Google gadgets however, the title is defined using ModulePrefs. You also define things like the height and width of your gadget with them, if you have a Google gadget, you already have a ModulePref section in the code of your gadget as it is required (prefs stands for preferences).

Why are ModulePrefs important?

Without the ModulePrefs code, your gadget wouldn’t be defined in anyway and probably wouldn’t even work.

What can be done with ModulePrefs that I am not already doing?

Here is the important part, most people (as in the vast majority) are under utilizing what can be done with ModulePrefs and are absolutely missing out on the many SEO benefits and, just as importantly, the directory benefits available to them. To display the different possibilities we will use this gadget as an example…

If you use all the ModulePrefs availible to you, then Google will create four different pages (in addition to your gadget itself) where information about your gadget can be found and linked to.

1) the iGoogle gadget directory description page, 2) the gadget add page, 3) the author page and 4) the gadget syndication directory description page.

What is found on these pages is defined by what ModulePrefs you use in your gadget. These four places are the places where most of the things defined by your ModulePrefs will be displayed. By knowing where and how your preferences are displayed you can strategically optimize your gadget to be used by people and you can use some basic SEO strategies as well.

The good news is you already are using Moduleprefs in your gadget. The section of a gadget that is called “ModulePrefs” is a required element of your code. The trick is to use all of the ModulePrefs available to you. You are likely only using the minimum, required prefs. Most Google gadgets have the common ones defined like “title”, “height”, etc.

ModulePrefs Defined

Moduleprefs are the part of the gadget code that lies between the <modulePrefs> and </ModulePrefs> tags. Let’s examine a common set from a Google gadget…

The above code represents a very common set of ModulePrefs - “title” “description” “screenshot” “thumbnail” and “height”. These are the minimal values you can set, their values are defined below.

title

title=”Ferret Virtual Pet”

This is self explanatory, the “title” field sets the title and is displayed within the Google gadget and also on the gadget description page. The title is important and should be accurate and descriptive of the gadget, but it is also important to consider what people are looking for when they search the directory. In this example I am using  “ferret virtual pet” for a title. By calling it this I am improving the odds that this gadget can be found not only to those searching for “ferret” and also those searching for “virtual pets”.

description

description=”A funny little ferret pet for you to play with. Feed it some eggs, and see what happens when you pet it (make sure to hold down your mouse button while you do so).”

The description is obviously a description of the the gadget. It is displayed in all four pages Google creates about your gadget and is also required to submit a gadget to the iGoogle gadget directory.

Descriptions should portray what your gadget is and why someone should use it.

height

height=”385″

This sets the height of the gadget and is not displayed anywhere but determines how your gadget will display. This value is defaulted to pixels.

screenshot

screenshot=http://www.gadzi.com/gadgets/images/ferret.png”

The screenshot is a larger image of your gadget. Gadget screenshots should be 280 pixels wide. The height of the screenshot should be the “natural” height of the gadget when it’s in use and can be .gif or .jpeg, but .png is preferred. It should be about this same size as your gadget is. The screenshot image is displayed in three of the four pages Google creates about your gadget. The iGoogle description page, the gadget syndication directory page, and the add to Google page. It is not displayed on the author page.

thumbnail

thumbnail=”http://www.gadzi.com/gadgets/images/ferret-tn.png”

The thumbnail image is displayed on the author page and in the iGoogle gadget directory results.

The thumbnail is a small image that previews your gadget pleasantly and descriptively. Gadget thumbnails should be 120×60 pixels and can be .gif or .jpeg, but .png is preferred.

Okay, we have defined the ModulePrefs that are commonly used. The ones defined above are already existing in most Google gadgets. Let’s get to the ones that are not used as often and discuss their usefulness for search and directory optimization…

title_url

title_url=”http://www.gadzi.com/animals/virtual-pets.html”

This ModulePref is one of the more important ones, particularly for spreading your gadgets. Using this ModulePref you can make your gadget title into a click-able link that points wherever you choose.

I can not stress enough that this is one of the most important ModulePrefs to use.

Using the “title_url” allows you to guide users of your gadget to another page. By planning out your gadgets well, this can create enormous traffic to your gadget page. The vitual pet gadgets I have all use this and link to a page where other virtual pet gadgets can be found. This page receives tens of thousands of visits a month, not through search engines, but from gadget traffic (people clicking the link in the gadget or the link in the title of the gadget).

This is particularly important if you or your business have multiple gadgets. Using “title_url” you can have your gadget link to your gadgets overview page and enjoy serious direct traffic. To learn more of this strategy, see my old post “3 Ways to get money and traffic from Google gadgets“.

Author related ModulePrefs:

The next few ones we will define are all author related. Simply put, these create a new Google page that displays information about the author of the gadget. The author page is very useful in many ways for both businesses and personal authors. See my example author page or let’s get to the ModulePrefs for authors…

author

author=”Gadzi”

In this example I used “Gadzi” which is the nickname I use for my example gadgets.

By properly utilizing the author and author related ModeulePrefs (more described below) I have an author page which lists and displays my example gadgets for this account. This author page carries pagerank and can be used as a very powerful SEO tool that allows your quality themed gadgets to rank better in the iGoogle gadget directory. You can use your name, a nickname, or if you have a business name I recommend using that for this field.

author_email

author_email=gadgets@gadzi.com

The author email is actually the field used to define your author page. This is an important one to keep universal across all your gadgets. If you use different author emails in different gadgets, you will have multiple author pages even if you keep the author name the same.

This also allows people to contact you about the gadget via your author page.

author_photo

author_photo=”http://example.com/images/profile.jpg”

The author_photo let’s you display an image on your author profile page. As can be said of any profile page, it is useful to have an image, whether it be a photo of you or your businesses logo.

The requirements of the author photo are a little bit geared towards photos because of the dimensions of the photo, which is basically a tall rectangle (see image on right). The image must be 70×100 , PNG format preferred, but JPG/GIF are also supported.

author_aboutme

author_aboutme=”My name is Patrick Sexton I am a consultant for gadget strategies for brand promotion. I discuss Google gadgets at SEOish.com”

The author_aboutme field defines the content for your author page. This can describe yourself  or your business. I keep mentioning businesses and the reason I do is because the author page is an excellent and useful business profile page that can link to your website.

The more author related ModulePrefs that you use the more content rich your author page can be. with the author_aboutme one, you can really create a meaty page. Resist the urge to just put a sentence and really describe yourself or your business. The more text that is used in this field, the more content rich your author page will be.

author_link

author_link=”http://www.seoish.com”

Yes!

You can link to your website from your author profile page. To do so include the author_link ModulePref .

This link does not pass much juice but it can result in much direct traffic, and if you are a business this link can bring in the users of your gadgets to the place you desire them to come. Consider making a page specifically designed for your Google gadget users.

author_location and author_quote

author_location=”Kauai, Hawaii”

author_quote=”Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. - Douglas Adams”

These are simply more details you can enter about where you are at and your favorite quote or tagline.

These are good to have if only to make the page more full and interesting.

There are even more ModulePrefs to use and more are coming out often with the new gadget documentation. Here are some of the places to look for more details:

Google gadget (legacy) ModulePrefs

Google gadget XML reference

The use of AJAX in the Google gadget directory can confuse the heck out of alot of users. When you add a gadget from the directory, it does not take you back to your home page so you can see the gadget in action, it just used to say “added”. and left you on the same page of the directory and new user would have to sorta flail around to figure out how to get back to heir iGoogle page to interact with the gadget.

Today there is a new feature where they have made the fact that a gadget has been added more clear to a user…

Now you will see a more distinct box, and a link to “other gadgets” you may be interested in….

This small change is rather significant, and definately useful because the old system you culdn’t even tell if gadget had been added unless you were really watching.

Unfortunately it does not really resolve the problem of getting back to the iGoogle home page where the gadget that was just installed actually resides.

I think it would be really useful if they added a second link in that box that said “Back to your homepage” or “see your gadget”. Something that told users how to see their gadget that they just installed.

Here is a gadget that displays the latest videos from Matt Cutts and the Google Webmaster Help team. Whenever they put new videos up they will be displayed automatically in gadget.

This pulls the latest videos from The Google webmaster help YouTube channel which can be found here. (if you can’t see gadget in feed then see it here.)

Gotta love it…

I have that monkey gadget I am always talking about. It has 110,000 users, but what does that really mean?

This gadget gets over ten million views a month.

It is hard to keep track of gadget views especially since the Google gadget directory stop showing views (now they only show users).

Since the files for Google gadgets are cached by Google and displayed from that cache, it is hard to know how many times the gadget is actually displayed.

Since there are essentially two APIs for gadgets now (legacy and new) it even gets harder.

There are two ways provided by Google to let you know your numbers. The first one has a new way to do so from Google Labs.

Google Analytics:

From Google labs, there is gadget tracking.

You can track not just the gadget views,but also the interactions with your gadget like…

ga.reportEvent("Counter Gadget", "Increment", "Button");
ga.reportEvent("Counter Gadget", "Reset", "Button");

There is even “Event Tracking”…

The event method provides a different model for you to use with gadget tracking. First, event calls are calculated separately from page view calls, and the resulting data is displayed in a separate part of the Google Analytics Content reports. Thus, you could track the view of a gadget sepately from user interactions on the gadget, without having user interaction inflate the overall numbers for gadget views. Secondly, this method employs the event tracking model, whose structure is specifically designed to analyze user interaction on gadgets. In this model, both label and value are optional parameters.

Event tracking is in beta I think still but will come out soon.

To use Google analytics with the legacy gadget api (older gadgets), you can find instructions here.

Everyone is using the internet to get their information instead of the local yellow pages. How do you make sure that your business is represented online well?

How are people finding your business online? Many times it is through Google searches when they show the local results above the regular search terms. If someone in Honolulu wants pizza they check google for “pizza honolulu”…

The top listed results next to the map are results from Google’s local engine. They are not results from the normal Google index. Some of the businesses listed in those results do not even have a website.

That’s right, even if your business does not have a website it can be listed at the top of Google.

How do you do that?

The places that Google local (or Google maps) gets their information from are varied. Much of their information comes from data providers, phone directory data dumps, or even directly from the business owner. Many times the information Google or other search engines have is outdated or incorrect.

As a business owner you can go to each of these types of places individually and list your information by filling out forms on each one, which is a good option because it is free to do so.It is also very time consuming.

It used to be that to get your business information distributed to all the places it needed to go was a bit expensive, but there are new options out there that are making it possible to economically list your business in all the right places.

I am going to highlight ine such place today. (aff)

UniversalBusinessListing.org allows you to enter your business information just once, and then it takes that information and distributes it to all the major listing entities out there. Places like Google, Yahoo, and MSN, etc.  use these data sources to update or include your business.

What I like about this service is how cheap it is (30 dollars per year).

The time saved alone is worth it. This service lists your businesses into virtually all major Online Yellow Pages, Search Engines, 411 Directories and other vertical industry directories all at once.

Places that you get listed (in addition to Google, Yahoo, etc.) include:

411 DA, ALK -CoPilot, AOL, Ask, AssistGuide, City Search, Collarity,  DENSO Auto Nav, Dex, GetFave, Go2,  IBegin, Idearc, InfoSpace, Insider Pages, JVC GPS, kgb_USA/infonxx, Kudzu, LiveDeal, Lowrance/Navico, LSSI - Volt, Menu Network, Merchant Circle,  Mojo Pages, Onstar,  Open List, Quebecor/Canoe.ca, Search Bug, Spock,  Super Pages, TeleAtlas, Telemap, Tellme , Topix, V-Enable, viaMichelin, Vindigo/Zingy,  WhitePages.com,  Windows Live,  Yellow Book, Yellow Bot, Yellow Page City,  Yellow Pages, YellowPagesInc,  Yelp, YP, Zenrin and more.

You could add you business to many of the above entities for free, but can you imagine filling out that many forms? Ouch! (I have put in bold the ones I think that you should concetrate if you are going the free route).

Universal Business Listings also has a business directory as well, where you can check out how your listings are going, and update your information. This is very useful. Imagine your phone number has changed and you have to go to all those places (or wherever your business is listed) and update them.

If you update your info with this service, it actually pushes out that update to all the places you have been listed at, which is simply a great service.

Resources:

Form to list your business through Universal Business Listings

See more places that help your business get listed online for free or cheaply

Free tool that tells you how you are listed now in local search engines

It is a good idea to register your business name or your “handle” at social media sites. There are many sites like YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr that are essential, but how can you check for for your user names at all the different social sites that are out there? There is a new tool in town for this very thing…

CheckUserNames.com

This free tool lets you enter your desired user name once and then it will check that names availability at over 100 social media sites. It will tell you if your name has been taken yet at each platform. If it has not been taken, you can click straight through to the sign up form at that platform and claim your name.

There was an earlier tool that provided this same functionality but is now no longer available. That tool ran into some problems when a user entered a short user name. Since each platform has different rules about how short or how long they allow user names to be, the previous tool sometime said name were available which in actuality were not.

CheckUserNames.com has solved that problem, and has added more platforms to the mix.

Go here to check for your user name now.

Very impressive tool. Since it lists so many social sites, virtually everyone is likely to find a new or useful site for their niche.

New from iGoogle…

You can watch and post videos of why you love iGoogle and gadgets here.

You can also write stories if you don’t have a webcam. The featured stories link to the gadgets mentioned

After you submit a story Google says thank you with a free set of laptop stickers…

Hi, I am Pat.

I would say that I am in love with Virginia Nussey, but due to recent stalking laws I am required to say “I believe Virginia Nussey is a very nice person”

Virginia was a delight to meet both in person, and through her writing. I have since seen Virginia a bunch of times, and it always is a pleasure.

Virginia Nussey

Virginia writes for the Bruce Clay blog and loves tortoises. She is also an extremely talented writer and blogger.

Recently Virginia wrote an article named “True Confessions of a Boring Blogger” which was a personal and heart felt post. I know Virginia but even if I didn’t know her, I would have melted. Since I know her a bit, I actually moaned, fell over,  melted, and decided to write her this.

In her post, Virginia boldly takes responsibility for the drooping numbers and comment levels of the blog. She honestly and openly discussed her role of taking over the blog from the popular blogger Lisa Barone and the difficulties involved with doing so.

I have some important information for you Virginia.

You are the perfect writer for the job and the blog that you so wonderfully write for has a few problems of it’s own. There are some correctable and easy to implement solutions here.

The goal of this post is to highlight some things that I feel can greatly improve the Bruce Clay blog I will be blunt and will try to keep it funny, but I am going to be blunt.

I have had these thoughts about the Bruce Clay blog for a long time. For those who don’t know, I respect Bruce Clay and everyone involved with that blog very much and love to see them always. These are lovingly given suggestions…

1) The Sideways Barcode Problem

If you took a barcode…

And then turned it sideways…

You would have the visual of the Bruce Clay blog…

Solely on a visual front, this offends the eyes, makes yawns more possible, and leaves one seeking for links to click or back buttons to press.

2) Pleasure People Visually

Insert photos and images as much as possible.

Yes that is Virginia in knee socks, she has been nice enough to throw on a few pair of knee socks for me and Lisa for Kneesockz.com but my point is simple.

A post with images is more visually alluring than a post without.

The image can be a chart, or a screenshot, or Virginia in knee socks.

But whatever that image is, it visually breaks up those amazing words writen.

They make the pleasure of reading even more pleasurable.

Breaking up the lines and lines of text improve said text, no matter how wonderful that text is.

To solve the sideways barcode problem takes only a few moments.

Just post some images. I promise that this will make your blog more interesting and pleasurable. I am an adorer of their Friday recaps but I wish they had images in them.

3) You Don’t Need a Ring to be Engaged

The most frustrating problem I have had with the Bruce Clay blog is the inability to have real time conversations. Or even near real world conversations.

I honestly believe this is the biggest culprit killing engagement on their blog.

The Bruce Clay blog is not a place that people go to talk to each other or even to respond to each others comments. I have tried to respond to other peoples comments there, and when I do it is rare that the coment even gets posted in time to respond. I have made comments there that have not been posted for over 12 hours!

How am I going to be engaged by that? I am not. It enrages me and makes me want to slap someone with a fish.

After you leave a comment, you get to what I call “The grey screen of death” …

Why take me to a screen that tells me I commented? I already know I commented. Oh great there is a link back to the original entry, so I can get back. But why would I go back? My comment won’t be there. The link that says “Return to the original entry” might as well say “Take me to a less frustrating and complicated blog”.

4) Comment Settings

Set your comments to be auto approved. If not just to improve the above frustrating process, to have the ability for people to respond to each other in the comments.

Every other blog I engage with has something the the Bruce Clay blog does not: When I see a comment on any other blog that I have a response to, or I feel I can add to, I post a comment. I do not do this on the Bruce Clay blog because I don’t think it will get posted in a timely way.

To be clear about this, the comment system at the Bruce Clay blog is a fail. Change it. You will have more engaged users if you do.

5) Can I Haz Navigation?

To write this post I wanted to give some example of older posts I have commented on, but couldn’t because…

I could not find them.

Let’s go to the bottom of the home page of the blog, you know, the place where you can go to see “older entries” or “previous entries”?

Hmm.

The Bruce Clay blog says “no” to navigation. Here is the bottom of their blog home page, where amazingly, there is no way to see previous posts…

The Bruce Clay blog is extraordinarily difficult to navigate. If you can’t overhaul the whole thing then I would at least suggest a link to previous posts or some form of navigation at the bottom.

6) Sidebars Should Not Create Headaches

I think your sidebar needs some visual healing. The good news is that you have several ways for people to use social media and feeds. That is great, but could we make the chicklets and links more unified?

You are a marketing company, not a GeoCities page. Get a designer to create you some universal buttons for that sidebar.

And on the subscribe options… It is great that you have so many options to subscribe ( full, partial, XML, Atom) but the problem is you have no way to just plain ole’ subscribe.

I suggest one of those bright orange, universally recognized thingies.

Your advanced users will appreciate the subscribe options, but your regular users just want to hit a orange icon and subscribe to your blog.

I was honestly confused when I wanted to subscribe to this blog. I felt like I was getting tested or something. It made me scratch my head and wonder which option to use.

</constructive criticism>

Virginia Nussey and Susan Esparza are some of the greatest writers around. I believe that with a simple meeting, and about a days work, the platform upon which they write on could be drastically improved.

In any case however, the Bruce Clay blog is a great blog that should definately be on your reading list.