Our Solar Energy Future

The transport sector of the US business community have helped make this country the strong nation is. Progress has been made in many areas that will strengthen our future of solar energy and improve our position in the world, even more than it is now. The good news comes from the reduction of petroleum use and emissions of greenhouse gases in the transport. This comes from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory and confirmed by the Ministry of Energy and its previous assessments. Transport is responsible for over seventy percent of our oil consumption thus reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, accounting for more than thirty percent of this number is very beneficial to our national well-being power.

Solar electric cars are increasing. However, prices will fall further to average consumers can find cars more affordable. Like many of the technology, there will be less expensive ways for manufacturers to produce them. The positive effect on air quality will be. Our future solar energy will become stronger as the benefits are seen by all citizens. The will of the people is behind it, because the results will be positive on the economic cost of gas and the continuous increase.

Progress not only in the US but around the world about our future of solar energy continues on many levels. Many universities are investigating solar cells that develop increasingly effective in terms of the amount of sun energy will turn into practice. Although the use of decreases fossil fuel, the need throughout the developing world to cheap energy is increasing. Once solar energy becomes cheaper to use, there will be more interest worldwide in its use for domestic and industrial use. Germany is an excellent example of what the enormous changes that have taken place in connection with the switch of the nation in solar energy. Our future solar energy will also grow if the same initiatives that Germany has used can be used in the US also. Germany provides financial incentives in the form of payments for his people to make the transition to solar energy in their homes and businesses.

Our future solar energy will have a major effect on our economy with increased employment in relation to many sectors of the labor market. As this industry grows, jobs will be added in the manufacture, marketing, construction, and research and development to the list of job opportunities.

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The Benefits of Switching to Solar Power

As our lives become increasingly dependent on electricity to keep our needs, it seems that we must be careful how we get a profitable renewable. While other forms of “green energy” are only practical on a commercial level, solar panels are easy to install-power for residential consumers. Sunlight is a natural source of clean energy that is abundant worldwide so there is little reason not to enjoy. Simply switching to solar panels for 25 percent of its electricity, emissions overall average consumers will be reduced by more than 1.5 tons, helping to conserve energy for future generations, while saving thousands of dollar homes in the long term.

While this may seem like an expensive investment installation of solar energy systems, the average life of the solar system is more than 25 years, during which you are less dependent on a grid. In fact, if installed optimally in the right conditions, the solar panels are able to create the surplus electricity to sell to electric companies.

At the first change solar panels, many consumers decide to buy 1-3kw system, which accounts for about 25-40 percent of its current energy consumption. While this may not seem like much, the amount of electricity generated even a panel can lead to annual savings in electricity bills. In a few years, solar power has completely paid for itself and has 20 years to reduce energy costs for consumers.

A common concern about solar energy is that the cloudy regions receive good sun and force the end user to use only electricity from the grid of the utility company. Although there is a reduction in the amount of electricity produced during cloudy days, the panels installed optimally will collect enough energy to be a worthwhile investment. If the solar system is not able to gather enough electricity to power your home, the houses are without electricity. As a precaution all solar panels will be able to store excess electricity to use the reserve and are able to draw from the grid, utilities connected to ensure that a home is never without electricity. Another common concern is that residents with flat roofs may not get adequate sunlight, but the use of systems modern panel mounting for maximum power, regardless of how the tilt sunroof.

Although the transition to renewable energy appears to be a dangerous investment for the development of modern solar technologies they are both the environment and a great way to save money, even for residential users. The long-term savings from the solar panel to move not only help to maintain a healthy environment for future generations, but also economically benefit the end user.

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Related Questions Grow +500% in 5 Months

Posted by Dr-Pete

Earlier this year, Google rolled out the Related Questions feature (AKA "People Also Ask"). If you haven't seen them yet, related questions appear in an expandable box, mixed in with organic results. Here's an example from a search for "Samsung Galaxy S6":

If you click on any question, it expands into something that looks like a Featured Snippet:

Currently, Related Questions can occur in packs of between 1–4 questions and answers. Here's an example of a box with only one question, on a search for "lederhosen":

Once expanded, a typical answer contains a machine-generated snippet, a link to the source website, and a link to the Google search for the question.

How common are related questions?

We started tracking Related Questions in late July on the MozCast 10K, where they originally appeared on roughly 1.3% of queries. Keep in mind that the MozCast set tends toward commercial queries, and the absolute percentage may not represent the entire web. What's interesting, though, is what happened after that. Here's a graph of Related Questions prevalence since the end of July:

You can clearly see two spikes in the graph — one measured on October 27th, and one on December 1st. As of this writing (December 10th), Related Questions appeared on about 8.1% of the queries we track. In less than 5 months, Related Questions have increased 501%. This is a much faster adoption rate than other Knowledge Graph features.

Where do the answers come from?

When you expand a question, the answer looks a lot like another recent Knowledge Graph addition — Featured Snippets. Digging deeper, though, it appears that the connection is indirect at best. For example, here's an expanded question on a search for "monopoly":

If you click on that search, though, you get a SERP with the following Featured Snippet:

It's interesting to note that both answers come from Investopedia, but Google is taking completely different text from two different URLs on the same site. With Featured Snippets, we know that the answer currently has to come from a site already ranking on page one, but with Related Questions, there's no clear connection to organic results. These answers don't seem tied to their respective SERPs.

Where do the questions come from?

It's clear that both the answers in Related Questions and the snippets in Featured Snippets are machine-generated. Google is expanding the capabilities of the Knowledge Graph by extracting answers directly from the index. What may not be as clear, at first glance, is that machines are also generating the questions themselves. Look at the following example, from a search for "grammar check":

Out of context, the question doesn't even make sense. Expanded, you can see that it relates to a very specific grammar question posted on Quora. While the topic is relevant, no human would attach this question, as worded, to this search. Consider another example, for "cover letter examples":

The first and last question are obviously, to a human, redundant. To a machine, though, they would look unique. To be fair, Google has come a long way in a short time — even a couple of months ago, some of these questions were riddled with grammar and spelling errors. As of this writing, I can't find a single example of either.

Finally, there are the questions that no human would ever ask:

No rational human would ever want to know what kind of meat is in a gyro. It's better that way.

What's coming next?

It's clear that Google is rapidly expanding their capability to generate questions and answers from the index. Both Featured Snippets and Related Questions have evolved considerably since their respective launches, and Google's ability to understand natural language queries and semantic data is growing daily. It may be months before we fully understand if and how these results cannibalize organic clicks, but it seems very clear that Google no longer considers these features to be experimental and will be aggressively pushing forward question-and-answer style SERPs in the near future.

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Solar Panels A Safe Investment Option

Green energy sources are more sustainable energy production resources. These renewable energy sources can be used several times and do not cause environmental pollution. These are not very expensive. On the other hand, non-renewable energy sources can not be renewed. At the current rate of consumption, the future generation will be under the threat of energy. While green energy sources such as solar energy should be used to meet energy demands.

One of the main dangers of using fossil fuels such as coal oil and natural gas is dramatically affects nature. Carbon emissions through the use of fossil fuels causes global warming and many other health risks. Vehicles and households contribute to global warming. Over the years, people have realized the harmful effects of using them and they are slowly changing to other energy sources that are friendly to the environment. Other sources, solar energy is becoming increasingly popular because it has many positive factors. The sun’s energy is used to generate power here. Solar panels are used to exploit the sunlight, which is converted into other forms. This is also the best method to get rid of electricity bills as the power to homes and commercial organizations can be recovered by the solar panels. People slowly recognize the many benefits of using this technology and make investments in solar panels to produce energy.

Usually, a lot of energy for heating and cooling in the summer and winter use. The use of solar panels for heating, a lot of power and money can be saved. The use of this alternative energy, you help the environment welfares. Green energy sources can also be used for lighting and running appliances. The only drawback is that solar panels can not be used when sufficient sunlight is not available. However, if the sunlight received during the day can be stored in solar cells and can be used at night to power generation. Most people have a misconception that these panels are very expensive and difficult to install. Installing solar panels is not a difficult task if the right help is requested. In addition, the installation cost is not very high in relation to future prospects. Considering all these factors, the investment in solar panels is a good investment to make.

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What Size Solar Panels Do You Need?

Les panneaux dans différentes solaires viennent tailles. Et quand nous parlons of tailles, nous nous soit le référons généralement name watt Un Certain produire peut panneau, ou à sa taille physical. Les deux d’entre eux sont lies, Parce que les plus watts UN panneau produire peuvent also il est grand.

Deciding game of the likes of votre système solaire facteurs dépend de deux: the quantité d’électricité use votre maison et l’argent que vous êtes ready to invest dans le système solaire. Solaires Les systèmes et peuvent être très couteux, même si elles pour eux-mêmes paient dans le temps, l’achat de tous les panneaux alimenter pour toute une maison peut être hors de portée financially pour familles de nombreuses.

The taille moyenne d’un système solaire

Juste pour vous donner une idée, un moyen panneau solaire peut produire 150w environment. A 150w panneau est d’environ 1 pied rack of size. Ce que vous avoir devriez toujours à l’esprit est le fait le panneau That is able to Produire autant d’Energie south parfaits beaux jours, lorsque le soleil sur elle tombe directement. Par consequent, votre panneau 150 watts VA Produire 3-4 heures seulement par jour (quand le soleil est brillant plus), en fonction de l’isolation of the region où vous habitez.

The taille d’un système solaire est calculated in kWp, pour une crête abbreviation kilowatts. A 1.5 kWp système peut produire 1500 watts sur les heures de soleil. A fee will be système composé tel 10 Chacun solaires panneaux 150w occupé 10 carrés pieds et d’espace de toit. A système solaire ne peut pas wp 1500 fournir toute l’énergie nécessaire pour a ménage moyen, mais ce fee will be faire un travail décent fournir une partie de celui-ci.

Ceci est juste one exemple, et il ne pas dans votre pourrait appliquer cas. Malheureusement, une maison typique use beaucoup d’énergie, and if vouliez fournir vous toute l’énergie avec l’aide d’un système solaire, aurait vous à payer sur elle des milliers of dollars. La meilleure rate will chose the solution trouver June qui SOULAGE Engagement au moins une partie des besoins ENERGETIQUES de votre maison.

If the UN système solaire fournirait qui toute l’énergie de vos besoins de maison est trop grande taille, et vous devez soit pas assez d’espace d’argent ou pas assez pour permettre him, il ya quelques solutions vous Pourriez essayer. L’un d’eux stay would be Réduire votre consommation d’énergie. BUPA également pour acheter des appareils éconergétiques votre maison. Une autre idée d’acheter les rate will solaires UN panneaux à la fois, lorsque avez vous de l’argent. Autres financières sont également solutions available, comme des reductions et des vertes tax incentives, tariff will be donc il une bonne idée à propos de ceux dans votre Implementation date renseigner State.

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Case Study: How Switching Tools Increased Email Reply Rates by 187% in 1 Month

Posted by kelseyreaves

The link building world is in a constant state of evolution. New tools are continually introduced to the market, with SEOs ready to discover what works best. Our outreach team at Modernize recently found ourselves in this position. In need of a new email automation service, we were eager to explore and test out new tools to see what improved our overall outreach system.

Modernize is in the home improvement space, and we focus heavily on energy efficiency and green living — thus, we target lots of green blogs, solar websites, etc. Our aim at Modernize is to be a resource for homeowners and provide quality content so homeowners can make informed decisions when it comes any home improvement project.

When faced with this task of changing our email automation service, we were pleasantly surprised to come across a more effective tool. This recent switch drastically increased response rates and ultimately our number of attainable back links. In an effort to help other link builders increase reply rates, I wanted to detail our process of switching from Get Response to Pitchbox, and how we eventually increased our response rate by 187% in only one month's time.

The original setup: Get Response and Infusionsoft

Our link building strategy has two main parts that work in conjunction to generate links: our initial outreach email sent via Get Response and our marketing automation built in Infusionsoft. Both parts are essential to our outreach strategy; however, with time we had realized Infusionsoft was working great, while Get Response was causing us some trouble.

To begin, we take the list of prospects we've assembled and upload them into Get Response. Next, we craft our initial outreach message using a Get Response template. Each email used similar messaging, although we swapped writing examples based on the vertical we sent to. For example, green websites would be sent samples of our content on “How to Save Energy at Home This Winter” and “Why Solar is Always a Good Investment.” Home decor bloggers were sent our sample content on “Trendspotting: Home Accents in Neon” and “Great Sources for Temporary Wallpaper.”

For each response, we’d create a record in Infusionsoft that contained their basic information, including their first name, the source, email, website name, Domain Authority, and Page Authority. We also place each contact within the appropriate status in the 10-point sales sequence we created.

Here's each step in that sequence:

1. Not Interested: The contact isn't interested in having us contribute content.
2. Interested: When an individual is interested in learning more about what we are doing. They may ask questions like “What's in it for me?”, “What is in it for you?”, “Do we have to pay for content?”, etc.
3. Negotiation: When they're interested in hearing article topics. We usually pitch 2–3 article topics for them to choose from. We also leave the option open for them to suggest ideas to us.
4. Article Requested: When we've agreed upon an article topic and it's now time for our content team to write the article.
5. Article Sent: The article is completed and sent out to be reviewed.
6. Scheduled: Article is scheduled to go live.
7. Won: The article is published and live on their website.
8. Paid: There's a fee for posting an article.
9. Lost: If a contact had at one time expressed interest and was moved into the sales sequence, then changed their mind (ex. they did not like the article), we classify them as "lost." The biggest reason for moving a contact to lost is that we simply never received a response back, even after a series of follow-up messages.
10. TTYL: When the individual is interested but would like to discuss at a later date.

Example contact in Infusionsoft

Example contact placed into marketing automation within Infusionsoft

We place each record created in Infusionsoft within our marketing automation. If a prospect doesn't respond within a week, they get an automated follow-up. The messaging varies dependent upon where they are in the sales sequence. Each stage has a series of 5 follow-up messages. If after 5 tries there's still no response, we move the contact to “Lost.”

Snapshot of 2 stages of our sales sequence built in Infusionsoft

Problems we experienced with Get Response

As we standardized the process, it was clear that Get Response had drawbacks. With Get Response, you’re required to use one of the pre-made templates when sending out a bulk email. We tried to make the template look as "real" as possible. However, the best template we found offered a cupcake-yellow background and unusual centering. As one would expect, our initial email looked very spammy. Furthermore, the “From: 332015@getresponse.com” at the top was a dead giveaway that the email was automated.

With this process, you cannot set up automatic follow-ups to those who do not respond or open the initial email. It’s essentially a one-and-done deal. Therefore, if a prospect didn’t respond to our initial email, we would have to manually export the list, craft a follow up template, and send an entirely new message. Needless to say, this was not a viable option for the volume we were striving to reach on a weekly basis.

Why we made the switch

When making the switch from Get Response, we had certain features we were in need of that the new tool we tried, Pitchbox, was able to fulfill. These included:

• Follow-up messaging: After the initial email is sent, we wanted the ability to create two unique follow-up messages for those that that do not open the first email, second email, and so on.
• Lots of personalization: The ability to personalize each email with website name, first name, etc. Pitchbox syncs each website with their Facebook and Twitter, giving us the option to quickly access their social media if we feel the need to mention their latest article or social media post within the outreach message.
• Synced with Gmail: Our message will be sent through our own Gmail accounts; therefore, it's a real email that doesn't come off spammy.

Pitchbox templates, including the initial message and two follow-up messages

Setting up Pitchbox

Our first step when setting up Pitchbox was to connect our outreach email to the account. After we synced our account, we crafted the first outreach message. Minus a few changes in wording, we essentially used the same message in Pitchbox as we had used with Get Response. The pitch read:

Over time, we tested different subject lines and discovered our highest-performing subject line was “quick question about: domain.com” that had an average open rate of 60.19% across all verticals.

Next, we went ahead and created the follow-up messages. We wanted the follow-up messages to look as realistic as possible, and therefore used the following message as our first follow-up. The idea was to make it seem like we were replying to the last message we sent them.

Here's what the follow-up message looked like:

The last follow-up message followed in the exact same form:

We decided the optimal wait time between follow-up messages was 4 days. This gave us time both to respond to all emails and to follow up close enough to convey a sense of urgency.

Our next step was composing the outreach schedule. Pitchbox sends one email out every 3–4 minutes; with multiple campaigns running at once, it was essential to create an outreach schedule that could handle a large volume of emails. Therefore, our outreach schedule sends out emails every day of the week, 7am until 8pm specific to the recipient's time zone. We also added another outreach email that helps to split up the volume of the emails.

Now we could send out two emails every 3-4 minutes, not just one. With Get Response, we did have the ability to send out emails all at once, therefore we could test different times of the day to see what works best. Since Pitchbox sends via Gmail, we don’t have the luxury of testing different send times.

Tracking our emails with Bananatag

Pitchbox provides you with awesome analytics, specifically related to response rates. It can differentiate between the different replies, such as an out-of-office response versus an actual response back. It also looks at the opportunity age and accounts for the amount of responses over time. Get Response didn't have analytics on responses, but it did have analytics on opens and clicks, which Pitchbox does not currently have (though it's a feature they're adding in the future). Our weekly reporting focused heavily on response rates as well as open rates, so we needed to find a solution that would track the open rate and click rate of our outreach emails.

After researching our options, we discovered the email tracking service Bananatag. With this tool, every email sent through Pitchbox is given a tag that tracks the interaction.

Individually-tracked emails found in Bananatag

For reporting, I’d simply export all tags and do a VLookup in Excel to compare email lists sent with the tags Bananatag has tracked. From there, I’m able to find the open rate and click rate for each campaign.

The hard numbers speak volumes

It's clear in this case; the numbers tell the story. When we were using Get Response as our email automation service, our average reply rate was 16.55%. The accept rate of an individual expressing their desire for an article was 5.32%. When we made the switch from Get Response to Pitchbox, our average reply rate increased by over 187% to 47.44%. The accept rate increased as well: it's at 7.35% and continues to steadily increase over time.

We also saw a positive increase in open rates of the initial outreach email. With Get Response, the average open rate was 49.59%. With Pitchbox, the average open rate is now 54.76%.

Reasons for the overall increase in performance?

It’s safe to say the switch in email automation service was the reason for the overall increase in response rates and accept rates. We hypothesized that the main reason for the overall increase was the legitimacy of the initial email. Because it's sent through gmail, therefore looks like (and is) a genuine email. There aren't any weird alignment issues or off-colored backgrounds — just a good, ol'-fashioned email that looks as if I crafted each one individually. The follow-up messages are also another big reason for our increased reply rates. With Pitchbox, we increase our chances of getting a response with the three message we send, unlike the one chance we got with Get Response.

How could the process be improved?

Moving forward, we really want to test different types of messaging, specifically related to the follow-up messaging and the outreach schedule. Currently, the two follow-up messages we use in our campaign are sent out every 4 days. We'd like to test this and see if we should narrow that time from 4 days to 2, or possibly extend the time in between follow-ups from 4 days to 7. Testing our messaging is also vital to improving the process. Are prospects losing interest too quickly because our message is too long? We plan on A/B testing this in the future, using our original message and a shortened version.

In conclusion

When faced with the task of changing our email automation service, we were pleasantly surprised to have not only improved upon the tools we use in our link building process, but ultimately increase our reply rates drastically — by 187%. Have you had your own success with any particular outreach tools? Share your tips in the comments!

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Learn All About Solar Panels

The following article is solar panels. The reader will have to put on your thinking cap because some of the terms mentioned are rather technical. Here you go. A solar panel in its simplest definition is a set of photovoltaic cells. A photovoltaic cell, also known as a solar cell, converts the energy of sunlight into electricity by the photovoltaic effect (the photovoltaic effect refers to the process by which electrical currents are created by a material upon exposure to light ). In fact, these electric currents are passed between the bands leading to the current accumulation.

Construction / design solar panel

The basic construction of a solar panel is something like this: The panels are described as the top layer or the bottom layer (which is in reference to the flow of electrical current through a particular band). Accumulation of cells could be done using a wafer or thin film silicon. These cells are connected together, and several of them are a solar panel. Its typical solar panel are the following: an inverter, a battery and the wiring connected to each other. It is important to note that much of the sunlight is captured by these panels are not fully utilized by the fact that these cells are not fully capable of converting light spectrum (ultraviolet and infrared).

There are one or two of the recent improvements in design that the solar panel was submitted. The purpose of this is to ensure that these panels essentially maximize their effectiveness. The design improvements are: First is the issue of having the lens on the panel surface that focuses light to select the cells. The second design improvement is to split the light into different wavelengths and direct the bream in cells that are listening these ranges. This relates to the issue of solar cells that can act only on monochromatic light.

Its typical solar cell can be mounted in three ways: The first way that can be mounted on the ceiling. This is by far the most common method of meeting. The panels can be mounted on the floor. For this mode of mounting a need for support from racks and frames that are used for work. The last mounting system is through crawlers. These trackers detect the direction of the sun and the tilt of the solar cells in this direction to ensure maximum light absorption. Trackers are the latest technology, but also expensive.

This sums up the lesson of 101 solar panels. It is expected that the production of this product to grow exponentially due to the fact that the world has adopted the preservation process long. The price of this product has been declining over the past decade. This is probably due to the fact that solar panels are being built from intelligent design and the fact that the world is doing its utmost to conserve energy. Learn how to build your own savings are huge!

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Harness Solar Energy for Your Home Electricity Needs

If you explore your options beyond energy, see that you have an option that is fully effective and profitable: solar energy, that is.

Have you ever explored the option of solar energy at home? If so, then you should. Miss this opportunity available could pocket and nothing good could feel the added burden of their daily expenses. With the world focusing too much on global warming and the rising costs of electricity and fuel can help reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce electricity consumption by households who choose to transition to solar energy.

Solar energy is not too much introduction, and just about the only source of energy on the planet: the sun. By harnessing the heat and sunlight and convert it into electrical energy, we can increase our homes in a way no pollution. No energy is wasted and no pollution occurs solar energy is clean and renewable. Imagine that we can convert radiant heat and sunlight into electricity for our homes.

This is possible by installing solar panels at home. There are three ways in which we can use heat and sunlight to our national needs:

• Thermal / Solar heating – If you use the sun’s energy for heating, it is called solar thermal or heating. You can feed domestic applications, including hot water, showers, kitchen, heating and even for washing and swimming pools.
• Solar photovoltaic – If you use the sun’s energy to generate electricity at home, called photovoltaics. The installation and use of photovoltaic cells (a wide range of special cells made of semiconductor materials) can help generate electricity.
• passive solar – can also directly use the sun’s energy to heat or dehumidify the air inside your home in order to improve insulation.

Why should I switch to solar renewable energy? Let’s have some benefits:

• Reduce your electricity bills – Once you have paid for the installation of photovoltaic panels, you can see your bills down. Sunlight is free, so why not use it?
• Environmental Gain – How? Reduces emissions of greenhouse gases and the carbon footprint. Pollution is reduced and your home could save many tons of carbon dioxide a year.
• Enjoy more savings through incentives and government grants – The government is strongly encouraging owners to switch to solar power for home use. In return, they offer discounts for installing photovoltaic panels, in addition to tax exemptions or deductions for sales and property tax credits or deductions for income taxes. Check with policies on solar energy systems in their areas.

You have choices in your energy needs of households. Why stick to the electricity or natural gas when prices are rising and your wallet is getting thinner by the minute? Harnessing light and heat from the sun and enjoy the benefits of using clean, renewable energy. Contact your local utility company installing solar panels today.

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Interested In Knowing How To Build A Solar Panel?

If swithering about the opportunity to discover how to build a solar panel, but worry that you may not have the necessary skills, as long as you can understand and follow the basic instructions in carpentry, it is actually quite simple. And as for the necessary materials, you can easily shop at home improvement and on various websites.

For starters, the first task for you to do is calculate the number of solar panels that will be needed to meet the requirement of energy. As a guide, 80 solar cells typically have the capacity to produce 100 watts of electrical power. Before the placement of cells, be sure to use the voltmeter to test individually to determine the power produced each. It is important to determine the total amount of energy needed and to design a series of solar panels to better meet that requirement. If you find that this is an area that does not get much direct sunlight, the solution is to use more panels or simply accept less capacity.

While rectangular is the most popular form of panel used this does not mean that you need to ridgedly a common understanding. If the area to be used is not appropriate to use rectangular panels, so feel free to design the shape of the panel that will take the circumstances you are facing. Do not limit your use of the solar panel is only for electricity supply of a house. What would you consider creating a garden shed for the garden or illuminate?

What are the materials needed for how to build a solar panel? First, you get some plywood panels that form the basis of solar panel and a sheet of plexiglass and some glass cutters. The following is the number of solar cells that will be needed to provide the required amount of electricity as well as a soldering iron, wire cutters. The use of silicone sealant is to ensure the panel is sealed to the edge of the wood is done with UV protective varnish.

Now that the solar panel is completed, a voltmeter is claimed to measure the amount of electricity generated and also need a diode which is a one-way valve for transmitting power to battery power when electricity is generated ensuring it does not then you can not move back out of it. It also requires an inverter to change the DC power to AC appliances that require it.

These are all basic materials you need to learn how to build a solar panel. Do not be discouraged, it seems a little too technical at first because by simply following the step by step that anyone can learn and use these skills to save money instructions by not having to buy a ready solar panel for use more energy bills reduced. If a surplus of electricity then there’s the option to be injected into the national grid and therefore the panels will generate money for you.

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Giving Searchers a Reason to Prefer Your Brand - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

It's the season of giving, and that notion extends to search! Brand preferences have an almost tangible impact on several levels, from consumer affinity to a rankings boost on Google. In this holiday edition of our now-traditional Whitebeard Friday, Rand explains why it's important to keep brand recognition at the forefront of your strategy, and offers up a framework on how to get started on giving searchers a reason to prefer your brand.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to the special Christmas edition of Whiteboard Friday. Now, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, my family is Jewish, at least ethnically, but we still love Christmas. We used to get a tree and presents and all that kind of stuff. But Merry Christmas to all those of you who celebrate religiously or non-religiously, and to all the rest of you, hopefully you're having a lovely and wonderful December holiday break time, middle of wintertime. The sun's going to start getting a little higher in the sky. The days get a little longer. I'm really looking forward to that, especially being here in Seattle.

I want to talk today about giving searchers something, a reason to prefer your brand. This is why it is so critical going forward into the next year, into 2016. We have seen that the last few years have been years where Google, where social media sites, where consumers and customers, web users of all kinds and platforms of all kinds have given brands — especially brands that have recognition, that people have an affinity for — they give them a lot of preference. I'll show you what I mean.

Even small brand preferences can yield these sort of remarkable and amazing results because of the amplification that they receive all the way down the line in your marketing effort. Let's say, for example, that you are able to get a slight lift in brand recognition, in brand affinity, in recall, and in positive associations. It's going to do a few things for you.

Raise CTR in search results

First off, it'll raise your average click-through rate in search results. As a searcher is performing whatever queries they are, the hopefully many thousands of queries that lead to your site, if you appear in position four, five, or six, you might see a slightly higher click-through rate than what you would normally see for an average website ranking in that position because of the brand preference. What this does, actually, is over time it results in higher rankings because Google is set up to reward a long-term click-through rate bump and all the other signals that come with that into higher ranking

So even if you are someone who says, "Ah, I'm not really sure whether Google's using click-through rate models in my stuff," they are in a lot of stuff now. Even if you don't believe that, what's happening is you're getting a slightly higher share of visits, which means a slightly higher share of people who can amplify your brand, link to your brand, all those kinds of things. All of those signals over time slowly, positively increase your potential ranking.

Increase return visits to site

Next up, if you have that slight brand preference, you're going to increase the rate at which visitors return to your site, come back to you through bookmark, through type-in, through branded search, all of those kinds of things. Those forms of returning visits, whether it is branded search or direct visit or a bookmark, that will lead to browser and search biasing. You can see this in all of your browsers.

If I'm on my iPhone or my Android device, if I'm in Google Chrome on a laptop or desktop, and I start typing something, all of those browsers and all of those systems will look for previous patterns that start to match what I'm typing in or voice searching, and they will be more likely to bias to show me those kinds of things. If I've been to Moz in the past and I type just "M" into my Chrome browser, I'm likely to see Moz in that dropdown list of things that it suggests to me, particularly if I visit with some real frequency. So you get that preferential treatment.

But this also goes back to helping your rankings up here because brand-based search queries, as Google has shown, can have an impact on non-branded, unbranded query ranking. If lots of people are searching for let's say "Virgin America flights to San Francisco," when Google sees the query of flights to San Francisco, they might say, "Hey, you know what, Virgin America should rank a little bit higher because we've seen lots of branded search volume for them."

Improve conversion likelihood & likelihood for social, press, and WoM Aamplification

Obviously, brand lift can help conversion likelihood which leads to more sales. That's one of the most direct and obvious ones. That's one of the reasons that big brand marketers invest so much in it. But it's also the case they will increase the likelihood, so let's say that you are reaching out through social media or amplifying messages through social media, through press, obviously through word of mouth which may be somewhat under your control and a lot not in your control, all of that amplification will be slightly enhanced each time with additional brand preference, and that means that in the future you have a larger audience for future marketing, future targeting. It's hugely helpful there.

Perception of value and quality improves

Also, you can see that perception of value and quality actually improves as brand affinity and recall and recognition goes up. You've seen this in lots of consumer tests. One of my favorite examples is the Bing study, where Bing looked at replacing Google's results with Bing's results, but they had the Google logo and the Google layout, and then they showed Google's results in Bing. No matter whose results they showed, if they showed the Google logo next to it, people said those were the better results. So essentially, the brand is part of how we judge the quality of something. It is part of that.

This goes to some consumer-based tests around wine, the flavor that you get from wine or the enjoyment you get from wine. If you set something down and it is a recognized bottle known to be very high in price, known to be hard to get, you will actually see areas of the brain light up and perceive that wine to be better tasting and to provide more enjoyment, even if it's actually filled with cheap $5.00 wine. This psychological preference is actually improving our perception of quality from the brand perspective, and because of that we get higher retention, more recidivism.

So brand can help you in a huge number of ways, both technical through algorithmic and social means, and also psychological means. Worth investing in absolutely, for the years to come, and certainly as the last few years have pushed more and more stuff in web marketing, it becomes essential for all of us.

But how do we do this? I'm not going to be able to get into all the tactical details today. I mean, we could spend a whole Whiteboard Friday on any one tactic in these groups, but I wanted to provide some framework around these groups for you to think about and add potentially to your strategy going into the new year.

Brand values

Things like brand values matching customer values or overlapping with them, or working against them, can impact how a brand is perceived. Most obviously, many consumers are very frustrated with brands like Volkswagen or Enron before that, who we feel like they've pulled the wool over our eyes and they've been dishonest. Cigarette marketing in the tobacco industry turned off many, many consumers in the western world to a lot of those brands. Then brands that have values that we recognize and respond to, we can see those getting brand lift.

Voice, tone, and visuals

Voice, tone and visuals, this is essentially the style of how you present yourself and whether that matches and has resonance with your audience's preferences, with their own styles, and with existing cultural cues. So you can see that it's like speaking the language of your customer, but we're not talking about a verbal language like English versus Hindi versus Spanish versus German. We're talking about the resonance on the cultural language level. Are we in the same cultural zeitgeist? Do we have the same cues and recognition? Do we have the same things around nostalgia and associations between concepts, all those kinds of things?

Content

Content, this is one that we talk about a lot, matching your content to your audience's potential needs, their desires, things they enjoy, their influencers and what their influencers are going to amplify. This is really where content strategy comes into play, because if you take content down to the tactical level only, you are not thinking about the overlap. Well, many times when you're doing tactical content creation and content amplification, you're not thinking about the strategic overlap with what's my audience's needs, what do they desire, what do they have associations with, what do they enjoy, what do their influencers enjoy, all of that kind of stuff. When you do this, you get closer and closer to making that Venn diagram match, and your content is much more likely to have a strategic, positive impact on brand association.

Brand representatives

Brand representatives, the human beings that we associate with a brand are critically important. In fact, I would say, and many, many marketers have been talking about this for the last couple of years, but more important to a brand's presence than ever before. We are getting to build brand associations through human associations. Oftentimes that's founders and CEOs, but many times it is also brand representatives, which can include a large number of people. It can include people who are amplifiers of that brand, not necessarily people who work at the brand, but amplifiers. It can include the testimonials that are present in the marketing messages. It can include brand contributors, whether those are guest contributors or full-time, and of course team members. The big one is often founders and CEOs and sort of the leaders of an organization, but many of these others have influence as well. If those match well to who your customers' influencers are or the zeitgeist of your customers' world, that can create additional brand resonance as well.

Pricing and positioning

Pricing and positioning, this is sort of the classic, old-school four P's of marketing, but the value perceived and the value that is quantifiable against the pricing and the cost associated with the service. Costs, I don't just mean financial cost, but also setup cost and work-wise and process cost and customers' own self-perception, meaning that if a customer believes that they are a medium-sized business but you're selling them a package that's called enterprise, they may perceive that they're paying too much. They don't think of themselves as an enterprise. Even though the enterprise package is right for them and it's providing the right kind of value, you're now sort of disconnecting the language of the positioning from what the customer actually thinks of themselves as. That can potentially harm brand affinity.

Psychological nudges

Then, of course, lots and lots of psychological nudges that build associations around a brand. So these are things like familiarity, liking, processing fluency, which we've had a whole Whiteboard Friday on processing fluency, I think last year in 2014. Those kinds of things, when I say "processing fluency," what I'm talking about is the ease with which I recognize something and can make an association. For example, one of my favorite studies around this was the correlation between stock prices of companies that have easily pronounceable names versus hard-to-pronounce names, and you can see that the easier processing fluency of an easier-to-pronounce name over time tends to correlate with higher stock value. Weird. Seems like markets would be more sophisticated than that, but human beings are subject to this stuff. User experience flow, that also fits into the psychological nudges.

As we're thinking about influencing all this stuff, a lot of times when people talk about brand and building brand, they talk exclusively about brand advertising. But as you can see from all of these categories there's a lot of organic work that we can do in SEO, in social, in content, in email, in community, in all the channels that we talk about here at Moz that can have a big influence on your brand, and that can have a big influence over time on all of these things positively as well.

All right, everyone. Merry Christmas. If you are celebrating another holiday, may you have a great holiday, and we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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The Basics and Applications of Solar Panels

A solar panel is an assembly of components packaged group consisting of solar cells for generating energy and electricity using energy soles. On the surface of the board is a grid like pattern formed by these cells collect sunlight during the day and convert it into energy. Solar energy is already used to heat things such as swimming pools and solar hot water panels to the use of hot water. Also the photovoltaic solar panels to provide electricity, which is very effective way for the use of small appliances, why not use it to heat your home?

Some owners tend to shy away from it because of the initial cost, but the impact this way, it is well worth the reward. Although there is still room for improvement, given the number of panels would be needed for use in a home or business, but there is great potential here, and further research is done all the time, it is much more cost and energy efficiency. The sun gives us this unlimited resource, we must enjoy.

Having solar energy available for your home or business can increase the value of the property, help the environment and even our world all the time reduces or even eliminate your electricity bills. Our country has become dependent on fossil fuels for energy that pollutes the environment and damages the planet. By installing solar panels can convert sunlight to produce clean, renewable form of energy at a fraction of the cost you’d pay over time for fossil fuels contaminated form of energy which is currently over pay at the moment. Solar energy does not harm the environment, so more ideal. Helping the environment helps us all.

In these times, more and more people are looking for homes and businesses with a green theme and are even willing to pay more for a property that uses solar energy, increasing property values. Believed that every £ 1,00.00 sum of annual energy savings of £ 20,000 for the resale value of your home. (Not bad!) There are also tax incentives from the state and the government to do, programs to help pay for the installation, and even discounts that can help cover the cost of your system, all vary depending on the country you live.

One of the greatest needs of the world’s energy and the shortage of it could be devastating. That is why some countries are already using solar panels on every possible home can and should try to follow.

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'Twas the Night Before Christmas... Moz-Style

Posted by FeliciaCrawford

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all throughout Moz
Not a laptop was whirring, the office on pause.
The colorful Great Wheel spun slow on the pier,
Downtown Seattle alive with good cheer.

The Moz Dogs were nestled at home in their beds,
Dreams of dropped tacos alive in their heads.
And I, staying late to write on the blog,
Had just closed my MacBook, and downed my eggnog.

Whence from down the hall came a soft pitter-patter;
I arose from my desk to spy what was the matter.
Peering ‘round corners, obscured by the dark,
Though I couldn’t see who, something gave a small bark.

Then, lit by the glow of some USB lights,
To my eyes did appear a confusing sight.
With a fuzzy red cap and Muppet-like paws,
Lettie Pickles the Moz Dog looked like...Santa Claus?

Though smaller in stature, with pointier teeth,
Her red hat the colorful glow did enwreathe.
With a very stuffed sack and a beard mighty thick,
No way to deny, she looked just like St. Nick!

As I watched from the shadows, her night’s work begun,
St. Pickles took off with her bag at a run.
From desktop to desktop, from seat to seat,
All Mozzers were gifted with savory treats.

While the flavor of liver won’t everyone please,
To give with abandon, the spirit it frees.
As she sprinted around with a comical gait,
From her magical gift bag did drop some small freight.

Creeping forward to read the scribbled-upon note,
(No crying, I swear! In my eye, a dust-mote).
The night’s giving detailed, no naughty or nice,
Just a list of those needing some holiday spice.

All over the world, dogs old and dogs young,
St. Pickles some holiday cheer will have brung.
As I stood there agape, the note in my hand,
Silent beside me Lettie Claus did stand.

With a wag of the tail and a sparkle of tooth,
No words were required to feel out the truth.
From Moz to the streets, from my home to yours,
It’s all about helping folks win their hard wars.

With all treats delivered and message made clear,
Lettie Pickles leapt off, other homes to appear.
So take just a moment, and Google a cause
Whether for those with two feet, roots, or four paws.

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Saving Energy With Solar Panels

The sun is here for 5 billion years. Electricity, as we now know, will occur the way for the coming years. So what should we do in this situation? Obviously, the use of solar energy to produce cheap, green electricity.

Solar panels are also known as photovoltaic cells that capture the sun’s energy and convert it into electricity. The good thing about these cells is that they need direct sunlight to work. You probably know that these toys, powered by solar energy, is distributed at home if you have kids toys. Even if they see no direct sunlight, which still work.

Inside a house, solar panels can be connected to your devices to save energy if these devices not only work on the energy provided by the sun. Obviously, this means reducing electricity bills. Over time, you can forget about your electricity supplier and use only the benefits of renewable energy.

Solar panels produce direct energy, which should be converted into alternative energy to work properly with the devices. Fortunately, there is an investor who can use.

Solar energy is green energy is not cheap, but no source of green energy is cheap nowadays. In fact, compared to other renewable energy sources, solar energy is the cheapest. We can all enjoy the benefits of the sun, all have access. We can not say the same for green energy supplied by the seas and oceans, for example; not everyone lives in a village near a water source.

Another disadvantage could be that at first you will have to do some work to install these solar panels, resulting in a higher energy consumption. But this is only temporary; Soon you will be able to use the energy provided by the brightest star of all, the sun – and for free.

In the UK, a solar energy system uses 3 kWp and costs around 10,000 pounds. This system generates over 2,500 KW / h of electricity per year. This is the amount of electricity to a household. For 2,500 KW / h, the system generates, it also saves more than a tone of carbon dioxide per year.

Given all the advantages, drawbacks are minor initial fairly insignificant, right?

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In-SERP Conversions: Dawn of the 100% Conversion Rate?

Posted by Alan_Coleman

By now, we're all pretty used to Knowledge Graph results in the SERPs. But what could it mean when Google offers the ability to make a purchase, a call, book an appointment, or otherwise convert customers within those results? In this video blog, Alan Coleman speculates about a potential 100% conversion rate in the SERPs and raises the question of Google's role in an increasingly app-centric world.

Video transcript

In this video blog, I’m going to talk to you about a key trend we’ve noticed with Google here at Wolfgang.

12 months ago, the key trend that we were talking about was Google had shifted its focus. From Google’s birth right up until last year, its objective was to get you to the website that was most relevant, most authoritative, most likely to answer your question — whereas what we saw 12 months ago was Google taking a lot more ownership of your journey from question to answer. And what we were seeing 12 months ago was a lot more questions literally being answered on the SERPs, pulling information from Wikipedia, from other websites and giving that to the user directly on Google.

A very recent update to this innovation is that Google is now actually using their own search data to give you further details. Last weekend I was searching for a restaurant and not only did it give me the reviews in the knowledge panel — the website, phone number, and opening hours — it also used its own data to give me the popular times: when I was most likely to get seated in the restaurant, and when it could be a problem.

So, armed with that information, we could go and have a lovely Italian lunch last weekend. But it doesn’t just stop at answering the question.

Conversions facilitated on the SERPs

Google’s methodology has always been to test things out in the organic list first and then, when they’ve learned the mechanics of it, they might try and commercialize it. What we’re beginning to see is not just questions being answered on the SERPs, but we’re beginning to see conversions being facilitated by the SERPs.

What you’re seeing here is someone searching for a medical practitioner. The searcher is actually able to book an appointment directly from the search engine results page.

Another recent innovation: call-only campaigns. Somebody's searching for a courier, for example, and again, they can call the courier directly from the search engine results without even visiting the website. We’ve also seen click-to-call campaigns, another example of Google users being able to convert directly from the SERP. Very exciting! In theory, we’re talking about 100% conversion rates here: everyone who clicks on your ad becomes a lead or becomes a sale.

There’s also this beta which is currently out — with a very limited number of retailers in the States — whereby searchers are taken from search, to checkout, to placing their order in 3 clicks, all happening on a Google property.

Image courtesy of Google

Why I believe this is significant:

This is Google safeguarding its position as we move to an app ecosystem. World Wide Web usage is actually in decline of late, because people are moving so much of their web behavior to apps, and Google’s strength has been that it’s our gateway to the Web. Google went down for a period of 4 minutes two years ago, and World Wide Web traffic fell off a cliff — it declined by 40% for that period.

Google is our gateway to the Web. However, if we start moving our Internet usage to apps, Google needs to be relevant there as well. I see that answering questions within Google and on Google, allowing people to convert, again in Google and on Google, is a move for them to safeguard their position as the place where we get our questions answered and where we do our transactions on the Web.

***

Do you have any thoughts on in-SERP conversions? Join the discussion in the comments below!

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