The Problem: Effective HTML in Emails

Most websites now-a-days use CSS to style their web pages and, in doing so, they typically call an external style.css file.

Ideally, you could then structure all of your company emails to have the look and feel of your website. However, despite vast advances in technology, email programs lag behind…their ability to effectively render any fancy HTML or read external stylesheets is dismal.

The Solution: Convert External CSS to Inline (on-page) CSS

Though fancy CSS styling in emails is progressing at a snails pace, it IS possible to configure your emails to look very nice using HTML with inline CSS–that is, implementing CSS directly within the email.

So, short of starting from scratch and recreating your whole website look and feel with raw inline CSS, what can you do?

Fortunately, there are tools you can use to convert your external CSS file into inline CSS. These tools will call your external css file and incorporate the inline CSS into a new file. The best way to use these tools is to first create your ideal email template (with external CSS) and then use that as the “input” URL that these tools will use.

I am going to present two of these tools that convert to inline CSS and I recommend that you try them both, though I tell you which I selected.

The two tools are the HTML Email Inline Styler and the CSS Inliner Tool.

I tried both of these and my preference was the first, the HTML Email Inline Styler. It did a much better job of effectively converting the CSS from my style.css file.

Converting External to Internal CSS Example

Would you like to see a finished product of this in action?

Visit my #1 SEO and Social Media Software homepage where I have a free 14 page whitepaper just for you entitled: “On-Page SEO: How To Implement On Page Search Engine Optimization To Achieve The Best Search Engine Results”. When you signup for it, you will be emailed a copy of the guide and the email is the one that I produced using the HTML email inline styler mentioned above.

Conclusion: Using CSS and HTML in Emails

Remember, unlike websites, all email programs treat HTML very differently and many email programs, by default, will not show a good portion of your HTML, like photos.

Thus, even though you have now learned how to convert external CSS to inline, on-page CSS, you still may not want to overdo it as many email clients will not render nearly the same image that you see in the browser.

The reasons for doing this are numerous. Many use this referring information for statistical analysis while others use it to perform a particular action. If visitor came from xxx.com, then do this.

By the way, it looks like you came directly to this page. How do I know? Well, that is what this post is about so read on!

Whatever your reasons, let’s take a look at how to accomplish this. It’s just a few simple lines of code that I have included, with comments, below:

PHP Code For Determining Referring URLs & Extracting Domain Names

<?
$ref=@$HTTP_REFERER;  // this gets the entire URL from where your visitors arrived
$url = parse_url($ref);  // this parse_url PHP function returns the various elements of that URL
$checkresult=$url['host'];  // This is not required.  I use it to determine if there is a referring URL (some users visit your page directly).
// This is the if empty statement.  If empty, then do this...
	if (empty($checkresult))
{echo "There is no referring URL.";
}
else {
$myhost = $url['scheme']."://".$url['host'];  //  this truncates the referring URL down to just the domain name
echo "Your referring URL is $myhost!";

}

Conclusion: Capturing Referring URLs

I tried to comment the code above so that you would see what each line is doing. To test this out immediately, simply copy the code into your favorite text editor, give it a PHP extension, upload it to your server, and play around with it.

Obviously, this article assumes some base PHP knowledge but I hope that is has been helpful to some out there who are trying to extract referring URLs. If you have any questions, ask them below and I will try to answer them if time permits.

Cheers,
Richard

The Most Comical Google Webspam Update: Viagra Can’t Keep It Up

In an effort to thwart those who try “game Google” buy buying domains names that match the exact terms that they want to rank for, Google has completed devalued and in fact penalized “exact match domain names”.

Let’s take a look at an example of this. Let’s say that you realize that many people type “how to cook steak” in the search engines. One tactic to try to monopolize this term is to buy the exact match domain called “howtocooksteak.com” and then build a website that you hope will be the #1 result for that term. In the past, having an exact match term in the domain name drastically improved your chances of ranking for a term.

No longer.

The new Google Webspam update, which some refer to as Penguin, actually seems to count this against you and one prominent example is Viagra. As you see in the search results graphic above, Viagra.com does not rank for the term “Viagra” anymore. I had read that this was fixed (and probably will be by the time that you read this) but whatever Google datacenter that I am hitting does not return Viagra.com in a search for Viagra on the first page of the results. It actually appears half way down the second page right now.

Want another example?

You’re on it right now. This is my professional site and every single article is original and written by yours truly, Richard Cummings. I don’t do much SEO for this site and almost every inbound link is a natural one from someone who liked an article I wrote. Thus, a search for “Richard Cummings” would always return this site on the first page of Google, usually between locations 3 and 9.

Today, I don’t exist for that search term and the only reasonable conclusion is that it is an “exact match” domain issue because my site is http://richardcummings.info.

A Faulty New Google Webspam Algorithm?

The Internet is abuzz about the latest Google Panda and Webspam updates. On a personal level, I find the Viagra situation kind of funny and the fact that my site is no longer returned for my name is not going to break me. Perhaps it will return after Google implements fixes.

However, for many, this is a very serious issue.

Take a look at some of the quotes from around the Internet today.

From a user who lost nearly all rankings in one day…

Please Google. Don’t dash my hopes that 10 years of hard work building the most user friendly site in our industry wasn’t in vain…

Another web owner who lost all rankings says:

Is this the week that the world turns back to Bing and Yahoo? I for one like their new look and my website shows in the rankings as well as it ever did, which at least brings in SOME traffic to my site since Google has disowned it.

However, the saddest are posts like this:

Title: Being Ruined.

Not that it will make any difference or even get noticed but the recent update is ruining me.

I work hard to build good sites, with unique content, and the result is being dropped behind lesser sites. After all, haven’t we been taught SEO all these years as a way for people to find us based on relevancy?

I have two small boys and a wife with a brain tumor, so this is really the last thing we need, to be ruined this way without seemingly having done anything wrong. In fact, doing what we were TOLD to do!

Again, I understand this is a worthless exercise here, more for my own therapy as I try to deal with this development.

There is no question so no comments are needed.

All of these stories and more can be found on this Google Webmaster forum.

Should Google Do Anything Different?

In a recent article entitled Google Then and Now, I discussed whether Google was losing their way or finding it.

This latest change indicates to me that they are losing a bit of perspective or, at a minimum, customer appreciation.

To those honest folks–the ones who create great content and have been de-indexed, who basically lose their livelihood because of Google algorithmic changes, Google would retort, “Well, we have to do what is best for our business and, after all, you have made money off of our services for many years.”

True, however, if you look at the sum of the parts–the collective web content creators who place Google AdSense on their sites, Google has earned billions off of their efforts as well.

Don’t they owe some sort of explanation?

This is a seemingly simple question but may contribute to the success, or failure, of your social media strategy.

Social Media: Mixing Business and Pleasure

Let’s start out this discussion by way of example. This morning, I have two things on my mind: setting my work agenda for the week and commenting with like minds about what happened on Madmen (one of my favorite shows) last night.

Since the topic today is mixing business and pleasure on social media accounts, and asking ourselves “is it a good idea?”, we can run with this example and ask the question:

Do my business social contacts really want to know that I watched MadMen last night?

In an entertaining article called Why I don’t have a separate business & personal accounts on Twitter, the author did a poll of her visitors asking: “Should I have two different Twitter accounts?” and the resounding answer was no!

I enjoyed the article but disagree with the conclusion.

With the idea that “people buy from people, not businesses”, the author concluded that she will combine personal and business social media accounts into a one size fits all.

But does one size fit all?

Suppose, instead of watching MadMen last night, I went clubbing, to a political rally, or to support some controversial cause…do I want my business contacts to know this information?

Absolutely not. Not only might people not care, they might be offended to the point where they will not do business with you. In some drastic cases, you can imagine litigation against your company for something that was said in a social media environment.

So, then, you are faced with a choice. You can either maintain one personal/business account and restrain yourself because your personal social media account IS your business account OR you can maintain two accounts.

Interestingly, the author of the above article, who is an advocate for one mixed personal/business social media account says “you have no IDEA how much I have to edit myself”. Thus, while the article is about letting your personality shine through, it’s really about letting your “edited” personality shine through.

Social Media: Business With a Personality

In the end, this decision might come down to your type of business. If your business is celebrated because of controversial points of view, you may want to maintain one account.

But this is not usually the case.

Most businesses should separate accounts and develop their own business social media identity. This identity does not have to be bland and fact-based. It can shine with personality, albeit an “edited” personality that addresses primarily topics of the business!

Why I Selected The W3 Total Cache Plugin

I host many websites on a Hostgator dedicated server platform, which I fully recommend to improve website performance so that you are not at the mercy of unknown websites in a shared hosting environment. One of these websites is an article directory which has over 100,000 articles. With so many articles, I was looking for a good caching solution that I could setup and forget. After reading many reviews and on the recommendation of Hostgator, I selected the W3 Total Cache WordPress plugin.

I installed the plugin, implemented the suggested settings, and forgot about it.

The W3 Total Cache Plugin: What Happened?

Now, fast forward 6 months…which brings us to yesterday.

While working on one of my websites, I was using WS FTP Pro to upload files to the site and received an error message 552, which prevented me from uploading files to the server. I did a little research on this error message and here is what the message means: “Requested file action aborted. Exceeded storage allocation (for current directory or dataset).”

This was one of those messages that make you go…hmmm. I have 500GB of storage available to me and I know that I am not using even 20% of that. This message must be wrong. It must an FTP program error. So, I decided to use Fielzilla even though WS FTP Pro has always been my FTP client of choice. The result? Same message.

Out of space? There is no way that I have used 500GB of space. WordPress sites and databases simply do not take up that much space! I did some research in my WHM panel and put in a call to Hostgator. Sure enough…I was out of space.

What could be the culprit? Well, WHM and cPanel both have tools that can display disk usage. However, these tools were having “timeout” problems because they were attempting to access 500GB of data…somewhere. Where is this 500GB? It’s like trying to find an elephant in your house but being unable to do so.

After much clicking around in the article directory’s cPanel, I clicked the w3tc directory. I now know that this is the directory that was hosting the caching files of the W3 Total Cache plugin. When I clicked on a subdirectory of w3tc, I experienced that long delay that screamed to me: YOU HAVE JUST FOUND YOUR ELEPHANT!

In the end, W3 Total Cache had created caching files that exceeded 350GB. Yes, 350 Gigabytes!

We all know how easy it is to delete a file on website. You just simply choose the file and delete it. Well, it’s not so easy when that file and/or directory is 350GB! Routine deletion procedures did not work. In the end, I had to access the server through the root and it took the better part of 24 hours to delete all of the cached files from the server. During much of this time, my this website was inaccessible and I had to manually delete the W3 Total Cache plugin which caused some problems as well.

W3 Total Cache Review: Conclusion

In conclusion, you should not implement the W3 Total Cache plugin as I did. I simply set it up according to how Hostgator said to do it and forgot about it. I find it a bit ironic that Hostgator told me to use this plugin and then did not have any idea that this plugin could be the culprit of my “out of space” messages. Clearly though, the set it up and forget about it approach did not work for me.

To be fair to the author of this plugin, I did not look at any of the settings of the plugin other than what I was instructed. In addition, I was using this plugin on a site with over 100,000 articles which is very different than most usage scenarios.

If you find yourself in a similar situation and need to manually uninstall the W3 Total Cache Plugin, check out this article entitled: How to Uninstall with no Admin Panel.

The W3 Total Cache Plugin seems to have both supporters and detractors. Some have said it destroys their website, gives them a blank screen, destroys permalinks, and much more. Others, though, say that this plugin increases blog performance and is a necessity.

When you have conflicting recommendations like this, there is only one way to proceed with this plugin and it reminds me of an old joke:

How do you make love to a porcupine?

Very carefully!

Google Then and Now: A Profoundly Simple Question

This past Friday night I was dining with a friend who works in real-estate but stays somewhat abreast of Internet technology.  He noticed that I had created and updated my Google Plus profile recently and asked me why I had started using Google Plus with more frequency.  I responded that Google has just instituted Google’s Search Plus Your World which favors many Google properties, like Google Plus, in the search results.

He then asked a profoundly simple question:

But…I thought Google succeeded because they provide objective results?”

Google Then: Objective and Viral

Do you remember the ads that you saw on TV that first prompted you to use Google for all of your web searches?

Of course not.

Google may have been one of the first truly viral successes. They did not advertise at all. They succeeded because they provided the best search results and people talked, and they talked some more, until eventually everyone was using Google. When someone wanted to find something online, they would simply say: “I’ll Google it.”

When you become a verb, you have won.

But once you have won, how do you stay on top?

Google Now: Subjective and Advertising

The new Google Now clearly intends to thrive with a completely different model, providing subjective results and getting the word out through the more formal vehicle of advertising.

Google’s New Subjective Results

The simple question my friend asked “…I thought Google succeeded because they provide objective results?” signals the biggest change in Google to date.

With this new Google Plus Search Your World feature, Google is clearly manipulating search results to favor Google properties. Not only do we see Google Plus searches being favored, all Google properties are favored. For certain topics, YouTube simply dominates the results. And, frankly, on most occasions I do not favor a video over text.

Let’s take a look a few examples of Google’s new subjectivity. These three examples are just from this morning as I began my workday:

(1) Google places a Chrome advertisement on top of my Mozilla Firefox as you see in the photo below:

(2) I type in the term “how to snow ski” as I want a refresher for ski vacation. Take a look at the top 3 results below–all Google’s YouTube:

(3) I type “cooking” into Google and the whole right side of the screen features Google results as you see in the photo below.

Google and Advertising

While Google Then succeeded virally, Google Now uses a different model: Advertising!

Here are just a couple of the new Google commercials you may have seen on TV lately:

Google Dear Sophie Commercial

Google Plus Commerical

Conclusion: Google Then Versus Google Now

We already know Google Then succeeded beyond anybody’s wildest dreams using a simple model of great objective search results that created a viral, word-of-mouth success. Google built it and, without any advertising, people came.

Can Google Google Now, with their new model of more subjective results and increased advertising, continue the success of Google Then?

This is the billion, or possibly trillion, dollar question!

We know one thing: businesses, especially Internet businesses, have to adapt to survive. Nobody can begrudge Google for doing what they think is best for their company.

Business adaption is often precipitated through heightened competition. And, in this case, the competition is Facebook. As we see in the photo below, Google and Facebook are now the #1 and #2 most visited websites on the web according to Alexa.

However, if you break down the different Google properties, you find many that say Facebook is the Most Searched and Visited Website of 2011.

In the heat of this competition, Google is adapting. They have fully launched their social media strategy with Google Plus, which seems to be growing at a rate unknown even to Facebook. This would indicate that they are heading in the right direction.

But, they are also changing their money maker–Google search.

Google Now: Tinkering With Search Is A Serious Risk

In an article entitled How Does Google Make the Big Bucks?, we read the following:

“Google is now making $3 billion a month in advertising — the majority of which comes from little text ads next to search results.”

Estimates vary and Google remains tight-lipped about their revenue breakdown but it’s no secret that the bulk of Google’s revenue still comes from the Google search results. By providing subjective search results, Google Now is threatening the core revenue producer. Will Google Now be the “New Coke” that failed miserably?

The answer to this is unknown.

But we do know that many people are now dissatisfied with the New Google results and speaking about it. Many have complained that the new Google search returns Google Profiles of people who are not even active on Google Plus. A much better result would be the Facebook page of that individual or business, which Google is often not showing.

In one recent outcry, prominent site LifeHacker wrote an article entitled How to Turn Off Google’s Annoying New Personal Search Results. Most people (as yet) don’t seem to like the new subjective results and, frankly, most people probably won’t want to actively turn it off. They may instead just look for a new search engine.

We know that New Google hires some of the brightest people in the world to house in their Googleplex. They obviously know that they are taking a large risk, but feel that it is a risk worth taking.

But we cannot overlook the point…if people leave Google search, the empire crumbles.

What Google Should Fear Most

I began this story with an anecdote and I shall so conclude.

I like to travel and, when I don’t have my laptop, I pop into Internet cafes. Recently, in a full Internet cafe in Argentina, I looked at the screens of the 20 computers in use: All 20 people in the cafe were on Facebook.

I watched their movements. The only time that they exited Facebook was to search for something on Google. After a quick search, they exited Google and went to the page that they were searching for and then quickly back to Facebook.

I had one thought, the thought that should strike fear into everyone at Google:

What if Facebook implemented its own search feature?

Google Panda Update and Article Marketing:  Initial Impression

Article marketing has always been beneficial for SEO purposes for two reasons:  One, you receive direct traffic from the articles themselves.  Two, and more importantly, you get very good benefits from the inbound links, especially from respected article directories.  In fact, as an expert eZine author, I have many articles that have attained a pagerank of 3.  Thus, I have derived great benefit from the inbound links on these pages.

My initial impression is that the Google Panda Update has definitely affected article marketing directories. For particular searches, I have noticed not only a drastic reduction of articles directories returned in the SERPs but a complete absence of them.

In the past, I knew that if I wrote an article on a certain topic and posted it to GoArticles or ArticlesBase that it would show up on page 1 in the SERPs within a matter of hours.  That just does not happen anymore (the same holds true with certain PR directories).  Typically, it does not show up at all.  As for the the granddaddy of directories, Ezine articles, they appeared to have been adversely affected by Google Panda originally but are now back in Google’s good favor.  Many pages that I have on eZinearticles still show up in the SERPs where they did in the past.

Google Panda Update and Article Marketing:  What Happened?

Many people are upset about the Google Panda Update because it has drastically reduced the amount of money that they were making and can make in the future.  However, there is no fighting this trend so adjustments are necessary.

Google is a business and their main business is search engine results.  Despite all of the cool stuff that Google produces, they still make most of their money from the ads they place on their search engine results pages.  So, if they provide poor results and people use another search engine, Google as a business would be in trouble.

Their goal with all of these Google Panda updates is to weed out bad and/or redundant results.  Again, this has angered more than a few and literally robbed some people of their livelihood.

However, the fact is that many article directories are filled with redundant, “spun” content that has no originality and exists solely to generate backlinks.  We should not be upset that Google wants to filter these results.  They must do this  to continue providing quality services.

A New Approach:  Google Panda Update and Article Marketing

With Google Panda, is article marketing now dead?  I would say “no” but add that most people need to change their approach.

Here is what I will change about my approach.  I have always written unique content and submitted this content to just a few article directories.  It was always interesting to see which one Google would pick up first. Now, I will narrow my submissions even more, with just a few unique articles going to the most important article directories, and right now that article directory is EzineArticles.

For those who have used article spinners and/or automatic submission of articles, I think this approach is not entirely dead but dying a slow death in the Post-Panda world.

Google Panda Update and Article Marketing:  Conclusion and References

The question posed in the title of this article was:  With the new Panda update, does article marketing still work?  The answer is “yes”, but you you may need to change your approach with a product like Ultimate Guest Blogger.

The world of article spinners and automatic submissions is dying a slow-death with each Google Panda update.  However, unique content submitted to quality directories still works very well.

Much has been written on the topic of article marketing in the wake of these Google Panda updates.  Here are some more articles that you may enjoy:

How Google Panda Update Impacts Article Marketing: Is Article Marketing dead? Absolutely not! Even though you might still get a little bit of link juice from a handful of article directories, the smart thing to do now is to submit exclusive content to relevant sites instead…

Did Google’s Panda Update Smash Article Marketing?: The change wasn’t anti-SEO, it was anti-SPAM…

Google Panda: Are you still focusing on article marketing?: The Google Panda update ensures that article marketing is still a good practice if you produce quality content that your visitors will appreciate and help you syndicate and share it…

Freelance Writers: 10 Reasons the Google Panda Update Makes (SEO) Article Marketing Even More Effective & Means More Work for You: Not to brag (only to prove a point), but content written by me about “SEO writing” occupies four spots on the first page of Google…

Ranking Post Panda – Is Article Marketing Still Working?: Panda is nothing to fear, if you do SEO the right way…

Article Marketing: What Happened and What To Do: This article takes a look at why article marketing with article directories does not work anymore and what the solution is now.

Finally, it should be noted that Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam search team, is not terrible fond of article marketing as he states in this YouTube video. However, do note that he is referring primarily to low-quality articles on article directories.

Did Your Google PageRank Actually Drop to 0?

To those who are fretting that they suddenly lost all PageRank and Google authority, you need not worry just yet. Apparently, Google updated the URL which all of these add-on tools used to query PageRank and most of these tools have not been updated yet.

There were many people who were actually excited, not anxious, when they saw that all Google PageRanks disappear. In the article Update: Google PageRank is NOT Dead, the author points out the following:

On Twitter, the majority of people in the industry rejoiced the seeming end of Google’s Toolbar PageRank display. Since its first appearance several years ago it has been used, arguably more than it should have been, as a way of determining the quality of a website.

How To View Your PageRank Now

On my end, I use the Firefox SearchStatus Add-On (UPDATE:  as of 10/14/2011, the SearchStatus page rank component is now working with the latest version) for a quick check of PageRank and various other information. The first thing that I did today was update to the latest version of this tool and, as yet, it has not been remedied.

I will wait until this or another tool gets updated because the information is not absolutely critical. However, if you need to know immediately what your PageRank is, this article purports to tell you a solution. However, you have to use Internet Explorer for it so I am not going to bother right now.

Google PageRank Disappeared: News From Around the Web

This issue is being hotly contested around the web these days. If you would like to have a look at some more detailed articles, here is some more reading:

• Google PageRank Dissapeared Today – Where is my PageRank?
• Bye Bye Google Page Rank?
• Don’t Worry Page Rank is Still there and no PR update
• Google PageRank Outage

If you read the post PHP get date 7 days ago, you know that my project today called for querying a MySql database on a date 7 days in the past. Well, having gotten a string that equals the date from 7 days ago, now I need to query the MySql database with that date. However, the field is set at datetime. Thus, querying on the date like you see in the code below yields no results:

$oneweekago='2011-09-26';
mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table WHERE registration = '$oneweekago' ")  // not working because time is in the datetime field

As you see in the coding comment above, this query does yield any results because it also wants a time. So, we will use the MySQL between syntax to get the information that we want, which is all users who registered on the date of $oneweekago.

To do this, we create two new variables. The first will be the time at the very start of that day one week ago and the second will be the last moment of that day. As you see in the code below, we add these two variables and then we change the MySQL query to use the between syntax.

$oneweekago='2011-09-26';
$date1=$oneweekago." 00:00:00";
$date2=$oneweekago." 23:59:59";
mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table WHERE registration between '$date1' and '$date2'  ")  // this now gets all users who registered that day

Query Date in DateTime Field

There are many people discussing the best way to get the date from a datetime in MySQL/PHP. I found this way to be quick and easy. I hope that you did too.

Cheers, Richard

As I have said many times, I write these posts for both of us: you and I. When you are implementing tech solutions everyday, you are more like to forget than remember. So, today, let us review how to get the PHP date from 7 days ago.

It is fairly easy to get a past date in PHP but, as always, remembering the syntax can be a bit of a challenge. So, here we go.

PHP: Get a Past Date

You can get any past date you want in PHP but, below, you will find the formula to get the date from 7 days/one week ago.

PHP: Get Date One Week Ago

Ok, here is a little file that you can upload to your web server (I recommend Hostgator for PHP/MySQL) for testing if you like. I have noted the line that gets you the date one week prior.

 <?
// get today's date
$today = date("Y-m-d");
echo "Today is $today.";
echo "<br /><br />";
$oneweekago=date('Y-m-d',strtotime('-7 days'));  // this gets one week ago in PHP
echo "One week ago, the date was $oneweekago.";
?>

Summary: Past Dates In PHP

I hope this quick little tidbit about how to get past dates in PHP has been helpful. Today, I had a quick project in which I needed to get the date from 7 days ago in PHP. Hopefully, I will remember I wrote this so I can refer to it in the future.

But wait, my project is not over. I am doing a MySQL query where I have to get information from 1 week ago but the date is stored in a date time field…so I tell you how to do a query for date in a MySQL datetime field.