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Top 5 Reasons Most Internet Businesses Fail Top 5 Reasons Most Internet Businesses Fail By Mark Yarrobino (c) 2009   If you've been online for any amount of time, then I'm sure you've heard many of the success stories about internet entrepreneurs, and how they're making millions every year, and you've probably heard how easy it is for you to do it, too. And the truth is, it actually is kind of easy, but not as easy as most salesmen would have you believe. There is a little bit of work involved, and anyone who's really been successful has put in the time and effort to get there. And they've managed to avoid the pitfalls on this list. If you're trying to start your online business and things haven't gone as well as you've hoped so far, then hopefully, these suggestions will help. Here are the five most common reasons that most internet businesses fail that I've seen, in no particular order: 1. Information Overload You've probably already been inundated with emails explaining how some new money mak? scheme is the hottest thing on the planet and you need to get in now so that you're on the cutting edge of internet marketing. The problem is that you haven't finished working on the previous hot new thing yet, and as soon as you start this one, yet another hot idea will hit, and so on, and so on. In every valid email you get, there should be an "unsubscribe" link at the bottom. Start clicking on it, and just stick with a few of the people who you know are giving you good information about building your business from start to finish in the right order without any distractions. And make sure that you see every task through to... more.. Landing Page Quick Reference Guide Landing Page Quick Reference Guide By Michael Cordova A landing page is a website page that is created for one purpose - to persuade the site visitor to convert into a customer by making a sale, completing a form (thereby becoming a qualified lead), signing up for a newsletter, etc. We provide this landing page quick reference so you can pull it out every time you are creating a persuasive landing page. It is divided into 4 sections and is intended to be an all-inclusive tip sheet. Most importantly, consider that you have 8 seconds or less to convince your visitor to act. If you haven't convincingly made your case in this time then your visitor will move on and will be lost, as the Internet has created the most fickle customer in sal?history. Page Layout Place your logo at the top left. Visitors expect it there so display your branding where it counts. If the visitor came from a search engine keyword search or a PPC ad, then place the keyword terms in bold at the top of the page. This reinforces to the visitor that they came to the right place. Always keep the Golden Triangle in mind. It is the most important and scanned part of the page. It is the area of the page that starts at the top left of the page moves to the top right side of the page then down diagonally to the bottom left of the page just above the fold. The fold is the area of a web page that the visitor sees without scrolling vertically. You should nev?force a visitor to scroll horizontally.... more.. Where's Social Media Headed? Where's Social Media Headed? By Nipa Shah (c) 2009 Barack Obama started using social media and the marketing gurus went "Oh my God, he's a genius, now all we have to do is use his name to promote this and voila, clients will be lining up to buy social media marketing (SMM) services". Well, it didn't quite happen that way. And the wonderful case study that was "Presidential candidate Barack Obama" became a not-so-active name on various online portals including, Twitter, where from November 2008 to May 2009, his twitter update has had five posts. Yep, only five posts in six months. So what is happening in the Social Media world right now? Well, first of all, social media website use has exploded with millions of people using popular Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and dozens of others. I personally "play" and "work" on many, but my favorites remain Twitter and Facebook. Celebrities and politicians seem to have found a way to pontificate one-way to their audiences. I say pontificate because most of these are rarely engaged in a two-way discussion, more times sending out their updates but not really engaging with others who may wish to interact with them. Politicians and celebrities across the globe have taken their messages to their fans and followers on Twitter and Facebook. However, millions of users and dozens of so-called SMM experts later, small businesses remain offline and are positively scared of using social media websites. The business owners I interact with when I'm speaking at an event or when I'm networking offline (yes I still do that) are concerned about using social media websites to promote themselves. They are worried about the lack of privacy and a... more.. Six Ways Into Yahoo Six Ways Into Yahoo By Kim Roach (c) 2006 Yahoo was started in 1994 by two college students named David Filo and Jerry Yang. They started Yahoo as a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet. Nev?did they imagine that their online ventures would turn into one of the most recognized brands on the Internet. The Yahoo directory quickly gained popularity as the hot spot for finding useful Web sites. In the fall of 1994, Yahoo had its first million-hit day, translating to almost 100 thousand unique visitors. Today, Yahoo is one of the top sites on the internet, receiving over 345 million visitors every month. Through the years, Yahoo has gone through a number of facelifts. You can see a visual history using the WayBackMachine. Yahoo has n?xpanded into one of the largest portals online, offering everything from shopping, video, and podcasts to finance, news, real estate and personals. Along with this expansion have come many additional opportunities for webmasters to distribute their content. Many webmasters today are constantly worried about their rankings in Yahoo. However, there are a number of other ways to get into Yahoo besides the Yahoo Search Engine. In this article, we will discuss 6 ways that you can market your content within the Yahoo portal. Mobile Site Submission Podcast Submission Product Submission Yahoo Directory Submission Media RSS Feeds Yahoo Answers Yahoo Mobile Site Submission Yahoo, Google, and MSN n?rovide many options for the mobile browser. With cell-phones far out numbering computers, this user-base is one that is far too lucrative to pass up. It's time we developed our sites for the communication... more.. Google Everflux: Just What We Needed, Google on Speed Google Everflux: Just What We Needed, Google on Speed By Titus Hoskins (c) 2008 Is it just me or has Google gone into overdrive? As a professional full-time online marketer I have to keep my mind firmly placed on what Google is doing. As much as I try not to because Google has probably driven more people around the bend than Chrysler and Mercedes-Benz put together. Like any professional marketer, I monitor my numerous keywords on a daily basis - especially my major targeted keyword phrases that bring in the most sales and subscribers. For years now, I have had top rankings in Google for my chosen phrases; they move up and down, but mostly they don't leave the first page. However, lately I have been noticing a lot of jumping in the top listings. Links out of nowhere are appearing, links being dropped and my own links moving up and down much too quickly for my comfort. Even six months ago the Google main index seemed to be a whole lot more stable than it is now. Within the past months, rankings within Google have become more dynamic, more fluid. They can change from day to day, what some people are calling Google Everflux. This is very similar to the old Google Dance we used to have a few years ago...when Google would update or refresh its index about once a month. Now Google is stepping out on that dance floor every day. Once upon a time, your keyword rankings in Google didn't change that much. Every four or five months Google would do major updates where your keywords and your site's PageRank... more.. Effective SEO Through Good Code Structure Effective SEO Through Good Code Structure By Adriana Iordan (c) 2006 For a successful Search Engine Optimization strategy, take into consideration that search engines look at content and also at the structure of the markup. They emphasize the importance of text content, page titles, keywords rich text, meta descriptions and information architecture. A website where quality of content and code prevails will rank higher in the major search engines. There are many Search Engine Optimization tactics, but try to find the best combination and don't sacrifice the usability and performance of your website. Here is some basic information about improving your source code from an SEO perspective: Avoid Classical 404 Error Pages The 404 - File Not Found - page is presented to the user by the server as an error page. The user gets this message directly from the server of the website he is trying to visit. This error page is supposed to appear only when the server cannot find the requested location and is unsure of its status. In the vast majority of cases, the 404 error emerges for pages that were moved or even deleted or the layout of the site or page information changed. Many host? companies offer a 404 redirect page. This means that when a user enters the URL of any page of your domain, and that page does not exist or can no longer be found, you can automatically redirect the user to a specified page - usually your home page or your sitemap. Pay special attention when you decide to delete certain pages. Remember to redirect them to a main page of your site using the 301 (Moved... more.. Using Images for SEO Using Images for SEO By John Case (c) 2006 Humans vs. Search Engines Human visitors and search engine robots that visit websites and index information about them look for different things in a page. People like to see an attractive layout with nice pictures and graphics, animation, easy-to-locate navigation, and friendly greetings like "Welcome to Annie's Online Shop" at the top of a page. Search engines, on the other hand, like sites that have lots of textual content, good site structure (sitemaps, consistent linking style), and a meaningful phrase such as "Chicago Area Florist" as the heading of a page. While search engines can read the "alt image" tags of graphics, they cannot "look at" pictures the way a human visitor can, and far prefer text. Replacing Text with Images One way to work around this paradox is to shift some of the text that search engines have no interest in over to graphics. For example friendly greetings like "Welcome to Our Site" or "Annie's Online Shop" work best as header graphics. Creating a header graphic in a graphic editing program like Photoshop, Illustrator, or Fireworks has the advantage of letting you know exactly what that part of your site will look like to visitors. If you create a header or navigation bar with text, you are limited to a common set of fonts. If you use a fancy font that is installed on your computer, your page will look great to you, but when a visitor who does not have that font on their computer visits your site, their browser's default font will be used and that nice aspect of your... more.. 10 Most Valuable Free Google Marketing Tools 10 Most Valuable Free Google Marketing Tools By Titus Hoskins (c) 2006 Google has become the dominant search engine on the Internet. It would be hard to imagine a web without Google. For that matter, it would now be hard to imagine a world without Google. As frightening as that may seem to many people, it is none the less true. For better or worse, Google has permeated into almost every aspect of our everyday life. Being Googled is now a common expression and an act carried out by mill?s of users around the world each day. New Google products and services are coming on stream at a frightening pace, further increasing Google's impact on our lives. Despite this dominating presence, many people still don't realize Google offers some excellent fr?marketing tools for marketers and webmasters. Marketing tools which can prove extremely valuable to any webmaster or marketer trying to promote their sites or products online. Useful tools that will make your promotions easier and much more profitable. Don't be fooled by the 'fr? label, these marketing tools might be fr? but they are also valuable. One even wonders why Google would be giving away these tools and services for fr? It probably makes good business sense in the long run, by providing these fr?tools Google is fostering a lot of company good-will and building up the Google brand name in the process. Good PR is good business. Every marketer and webmaster should be taking advantage of Google's good-will and snapping up these professionally run services and marketing tools. Here's a quick run-down of the 10 most valuable fr?Google Internet marketing tools: 1. Google... more.. 10 Super Tips for Choosing the Right Web Hosting Company 10 Super Tips for Choosing the Right Web Hosting Company By Amy Armitage (c) 2008 The Web hosting firm you choose can make or break your small business. Good ones can run things smoothly, are easy to reach, and fix problems efficiently. But bad ones can have more problems than they are worth, be unreachable at critical times, and bring your business to a screeching halt. Finding a good one is crucial to your success. Here are some tried and true ideas for how to select a host that will save you money, avoid technical snafus, and build your online platform for the future. 1. Choose a Service that Primarily Does Hosting Although it might be tempting to sign-up with a firm that provides an umbrella of services in addition to website hosting, a good rule of thumb is that if a company overly-diversifies its services, it won't deliver top quality in any of them (e.g. tech support, updates, maintenance, etc.) 2. Choose a Host with a Great Record for Online Security Most secure hosts will provide SSL Certificates to guarantee your security. Without an SSL Certificate on your site, visitors may come and go without identifying themselves, and this could put your site at risk. Make sure your host implements best practices when it comes to maintaining security architecture, updating security software, and responding effectively to breaches if and when they do occur. 3.Excellent Technical and Customer Service Support via Phone Does the host provide phone support around the clock? Or can you only email for help during non-business hours? You definitely want the option to call a staffer. Studies... more.. 3 Things to Help Google Trust You 3 Things to Help Google Trust You By Mark Daoust (c) 2006 Google is all about trust. Who knows, maybe they were in a bad relationship, but if you want to rank well with Google, you need to be trustworthy. And let me make the bold assumption that you are currently not trustworthy (most sites are not ? especially new sites). So how do you get Google to trust you? The most obvious answer, and most commonly quoted answer, is to get inbound links from trustworthy sites. Any webmaster who has been around the block a couple of times knows that this is a bit of a catch-22. Sites that are high in Google's trust typically do not just hand out links to small startups ? those go to sites that are already established. Unfortunately, while this is probably the most frustrating answer you can receive, it is also the lions share of building trust with Google. There are, however, a few other things you can do to help Google trust you more. While having these things may not rocket your site to the top of the rankings, they will bring you closer to finding a good relationship with Google. Define a Privacy Policy A privacy policy is a page that explains to your users what information is collected, how it is being used, and what options they have to access or change that collected information. It may be a bit ironic that a major search engine would place any emphasis on privacy in light of the recent AOL data release scandal, but having a privacy policy in place shows a certain level of trustworthiness. This... more.. How to Troubleshoot Dropped Search Engine Rankings How to Troubleshoot Dropped Search Engine Rankings By Ross Dunn (c) 2008 Are you baffled about a recent drop in your search engine rankings? Do you know where to start and get a handle on what the problem might be and how to remedy it? One option to consider is using search engine forums as a resource. They are full of questions from people who have experienced similar situations and are great resources for an answer or two. But let's say you really want to get to the bottom of the problem and you want to do it yourself. The following are some of the beginning steps StepForth takes when evaluating dropped rankings. Retrace Your Steps Write a list of everything that anyone has done to your site within the past 3 weeks. Now look for anything that could have negatively impacted your content, site structure, or the reliability of your URLs. Once you write down the course of events the answer might pop right out at you. Here are some common situational culprits: You just moved your website to a different hosting provider: did your site experience much, if any, downtime during the switch over? Quality hosting companies will allow you to setup your site on their servers before the switch takes place so that downtime is minimized if not removed entirely. If a search engine happened to visit your site while it was down, there is a small chance your rankings would be negatively affected, but it will only happen for a short period. Once the search engine re-indexes your website everything should be back in order. The... more.. Google Sitemaps Explained - How To Use Google Sitemaps Google Sitemaps Explained - How To Use Google Sitemaps By Titus Hoskins (c) 2006 Three Ways To Index Your Site With Google Sitemaps [Difficult, Hard, And Easy] Google has recently implemented a program where any webmaster can create a Sitemap of their Site and submit it for indexing by Google. It is a quick and easy way for you to keep your site constantly indexed and updated in Google. The program is appropriately called Google Sitemaps. In order for you to best use Sitemaps, you must have an XML generated file on your site that will transmit or send any updates, changes, and data to Google. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is everywhere these days, you have probably seen the orange XML logo on many web sites and its often associated with Blogging because Blogs use XML/RSS feeds to syndicate their content. Today RSS is known mostly as 'Really Simple Syndication' but its original acronym stood for 'Rich Site Summary'. XML is only simple code like HTML and it is used to syndicate your content to all interested parties. And the interested party in this case is Google. By creating Sitemaps Google is really asking webmasters to take charge of the indexing and updating of their sites. Basically, doing the Googlebot's job! This is a 'Good' thing! With the steady influx of new web sites growing rapidly, indexing all this material will become a challenge, even with the resources of Google. With Sitemaps, webmasters can now take charge and make sure their site is crawled and indexed. Please note, indexing your site with Sitemaps WON'T improve your rankings in Google. You will still be competing with the other sites... more.. SEO Copywriting Tips for Google, Yahoo and your Prospects SEO Copywriting Tips for Google, Yahoo and your Prospects By Angela Charles, President, (c) 2008 Pilot Fish It might not seem logical, but a web site that's well-written for human consumption with a little SEO help usually is also well-received by the robots of search engines like Google and Yahoo. So, what does "well-written" mean? Here are some tips to good SEO copywriting for Google, Yahoo and site visitors. SEO Copywriting Tips ? How to Write Great Web Site Content Keyword research: This topic deserves a whole article on its own, but suffice to say that you'll want to base your site content on the keyword terms that you know are most popular among the audience you're trying to reach. There are online tools available that can help you determine the right keywords for your company. Among them are WordTracker and Keyword Discovery. One topic per page: If your company makes 5 different products, you'll need to devote at least one page per topic. Details, details: Each topic should be covered in enough detail that the site visitor can determine whether to contact you for more information. From an SEO standpoint, the more detail you provide on each topic, the more easily the search engines will be able to determine the relevance of your site to that keyword. Kill the sales brochure: Internet users don't appreciate going to your web to find only a sales brochure. Avoid flowery language; it usually signifies a page that's light on content and heavy on sales pitch, which the search engines won't rank well. Good SEO copywriting will focus on objective facts about your company's products and services,... more.. 10 Secrets to Using Twitter to Attract More Followers and Get More Clients 10 Secrets to Using Twitter to Attract More Followers and Get More Clients By Donna Gunter (c) 2008 I do wonder at times if some Twitter users have any time to get any work done. Several of the more prolific ones that I follow swear they spend no more than 30 minutes a day on Twitter, but I really find that hard to believe. Many times it seems they are twittering just to say something, like "Good morning Twitterverse" when they begin their day, give more details than I want to know about what they had for lunch, what their children said to them, or when they take a nap. I realize that this is part of the "like, know, and trust" process that enables people to get to know each other, but sometimes it's simply too much information..LOL. I'm Twittering primarily to market my business. Consequently, I try and limit my personal twitters to no more than 2 per day. My clients, who create Twitter accounts for marketing, as well, tell me, "I'm signed up. Now what in the world do I Twitter about? How do I market my business with this tool?" Here are 10 strategies that I use regularly to market my business and my expertise via Twitter. Remember, you have only 140 characters for your tweet (Twitter post). 1. How you're helping clients. Talk about specific ways that your business helps clients and use their Twitter ID if you have their permission, i.e. "Just finished @clientname brainstorm great Internet marketing plan for 2009" or "Finally finished setting up Quickbooks for local hardware store -- now they can... more.. The Evolution of Online Advertising - Pt 1 The Evolution of Online Advertising - Pt 1 By Scott Buresh (c) 2008 Medium Blue Please bear with me as I go through a brief history of basic online advertising. The evolution of targeted online advertising is interesting, because I believe the perceived harmlessness of early advertising technology and targeting tactics lulled many people into a sense of complacency or perhaps even false security. In the beginning of targeted online advertising, there were banner ads. As many people recall, these were supposed to drive the Internet marketing industry in its infancy. Scads of publishers paid scads of money based on a CPI (cost per impression) model or simply paid huge dollars for banner ads and other targeted online advertising on well-trafficked sites. Then something crazy happened - nothing. It turns out that the banner advertising technology on the Internet was not the magic bullet it was purported to be. The old way of making money based on providing content (the way magazines and newspapers ran advertising) just didn't seem to work in this context. This new advertising technology was part of the reason for the collapse of the dot-bomb era. All the talk was about "eyeballs," "stickiness," "bleeding edge," "cradle to grave," and several other terms that, in retrospect, would have sounded more at home in a Wes Craven movie than in an emerging industry. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of business models depended on a traditional marketing strategy working more or less the same as it always had when introduced into a non-traditional setting. All the while, one company, originally called GoTo, then Overture, and finally bought by Yahoo!, actually formulated a targeted online advertising... more.. Search in Internet Marketing The Importance of Search in Internet Marketing By Claudia Bruemmer (c) 2007 For long-time search marketers it will come as no surprise that search has become a media darling. Pay-per-click advertising is the most popular online marketing strategy, and organic search engine optimization provides top click-through and conversion performance. Search is more popular than display ads and ema?marketing because of its excellent performance and ROI. Internet marketers should take note of the development in the search marketplace in order to better focus their advertising budgets. Search is Evolving As the Web grows exponentially, search engine databases suffer from information overload. As a result, technology and consumer search behavior adapts and changes. One of the early attempts to make search easier was the use of metadata in search. The search engine, Clusty came out in 2004 to "deliver groups or clusters of similar results rather that mill?s of search results in one long l?." The clusters were supposed to help users see search results by topic so they could more easily find what they were looking for. Another of the early changes to search was the development of multiple databases within general search. Whether you go to Google or Yahoo, you'll see category choices such as Web, video, images, local, news, etc. These are all different databases that can help you target specific queries. Google aptly named this concept its OneBox solution; you could access many different databases from one box. Along with the development of multiple databases on niche products or subjects came the vertical search engines. These verticals are particularly useful for B2B companies. The latest trend in the evolution of the market is... more.. Finding Balance Between SEO and Non-SEO Traffic Generation Finding Balance Between SEO and Non-SEO Traffic Generation By Kurt D. Lynn (c) 2009 KLynn Inc   So much SEO. You might think, from all the buzz about search engine optimization - SEO - that it offers a cure for all the world's business ills. Somehow, SEO has been propelled from the backwaters of Internet geekdom into the forefront of modern business marketing. For example, if Google's own search results are any indication, the interest in SEO yields almost 50% of the interest in general advertising. That level of interest seems way out of proportion to the realities of business advertising. So Why All The Hubbub? The excitement seems to be around the notion that SEO means "free advertising", that it means, if you do it right, millions of people will be clicking through to your site willy-nilly having found you on some search engine and then will immediately do business with you. And behind all that excitement are thousands of overnight SEO "experts" that, variously, all claim to ... (pick one): Have SEO secrets that will help you get an unfair advantage over the next guy;   Guarantee you a first-page listing for an incredibly low monthly rate; Provide hundreds of high page rank sites that will link to your site;   Give you 5/10/20 quick tips to immediately improve your rankings;   Tell you what Google/MSN/Yahoo doesn't want you to know about SEO;   Tell you that whatever SEO you're doing is all wrong; or   Some other variant of the above. To some extent, this notion of "free advertising" is not altogether inaccurate. SEO can result in your site being found - free of charge - and it... more.. Click Fraud: A Guide To Protecting Your Pay-Per-Click Campaign Click Fraud: A Guide To Protecting Your Pay-Per-Click Campaign By John Hill   Spending on Internet advertising is growing faster than any other sector of the advertising industry and is expected to surge from $12.5 billion last year to $29 billion by 2010 in the U.S. alone, according to the researcher eMarketer Inc., with around 50% of this spending being spent on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Click fraud is the latest 'hot topic' circulating the online marketing arena, but what is it? And how does it affect you as a merchant running a pay-per-click campaign? Here we offer you a complete guide as to what this phenomenon is, who is likely to commit such an act, how to identify & prevent click fraud and how to best report instances of suspected click fraud on your PPC campaign. What is Click Fraud? According to Wikipedia "Click fraud is a type of internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link" Click Fraud is estimated to range from 5% - 15% of pay-per-click traffic (some estimates are as high as 20% - 35%) although Google estimates click fraud at only 2% due to the rigorous detection methods they claim are in place. In a recent study by Click Forensics, click fraud reached a new high of 14.2% in the last quarter of 2006 with the average... more.. Evaluating Facebook for Your Business Evaluating Facebook for Your Business By Tinu AbayomiPaul (c) 2009 Social media is here to stay. There. I said it. It will be around in some form for years to come. Do you really see Facebook, Twitter and Web videos going somewhere? Or do you just see them evolving and becoming part of a larger system the same way business blogs did? Great. Then we can start figuring out how to use social media to our benefit. Now that we're past this issue of whether we are in love with MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning, etc., and we realize that we're focusing on whether these tools are useful or not, (not on whether or not they give us the warm fuzzies), there's still a fundamental question. This goes for whether you're using Facebook pages, Facebook ads, or a regular Facebook profile. How do you know if sites like Facebook are for YOU? How can you tell if a social networking site can help YOUR company? It boils down to three things. 1- Are There Enough People on the Site in Your Interest Area for it to Be Worth Your While? You have to think about business connections too, not just clients. You can connect with people who send you business. Think about what the value of a new client is too, whether you think you can get one out of 100, and how long it takes. When people come to your profile, are they visiting your site? If not, is your profile set up correctly? Experiment. There are several very subtle things you can do that maximize your exposure, not just daily clicks through to your site. To find... more.. Google Caffeine and the New Ranking Factors | Google Caffeine and the New Ranking Factors | By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009 Google Caffeine is the name given to Google's "Next Generation" search engine, which it will use to rank and index all the pages on the wonderful world wide web. According to all indications, this is not just another one of Google's infamous Updates, but a major "Overhaul" of its index and algorithm - the complex formula and calculations Google uses to rank all web pages, including yours. If that doesn't sound ominous enough, according to Matt Cutts (Google Spokesperson) one database is already showing Google Caffeine, and the full blown version will be released after the holidays. The reasoning behind this - Google doesn't want to upset webmasters and site owners during the lucrative holiday buying season. In the past, other major Google Updates have come around this time of the year, most notably the "Florida Update" which severely affected many web sites and webmasters. Recently, Google has been more aware and much more generous to webmasters by being more open and forthcoming in regards to how it indexes its pages. This time around, webmasters were even given access to a beta version of Caffeine which Google released last summer ('09) where webmasters could check to see how well their keywords and site would fare in this new search index. This beta site (www2.sandbox.google.com) has now been taken down by Google. Like any professional search engine marketer who works online, I was constantly checking my sites and keywords in Google's new search engine. I have drawn some conclusions from what I have observed, but please be aware it is often very foolish to draw conclusions and make predictions from a... more.. 25 Ways to Add Quality Content to Your Web Site (Part 1) 25 Ways to Add Quality Content to Your Web Site (Part 1) . . . Using ideas that cover at least 25 different industries! By Robin Nobles We've known for a long time that quality matters to Google. In a post Senior Google Engineer Matt Cutts made to his blog, "quality" was mentioned several times as being important to Google. Quality matters when it comes to content, and it matters when it comes to links. However, building content and links doesn't have to be painful. Web site owners tend to think of content in a very limited way. So, let's open up our creative minds and think of all sorts of ways of adding quality content to a Web site. A few things to remember: You're only confined by the boundaries you set for yourself and your Web site. Allow yourself to think in a totally different way than you've thought before. Your Web site content should be written for your buying customers . . . not for you. Your Web site content should not be written for the search engines. The search engines are not your target audience. Think of the overall picture of your site, as if it were a living, breathing entity. After all, Web sites should continue to grow on a constant basis and nev?be stale or stagnant. Let's Get into the Fun Stuff: Quality Content for Your Target Audience 1. A calendar of events. This is ideal for sites like real estate sites to show upcoming open houses; book stores to promote upcoming book signings or writers' meetings; collectors' sites to show meetings across the country, etc. Be sure to allow visitors... more.. Cracking the Google Code? Under the GoogleScope Cracking the Google Code? Under the GoogleScope by Lawrence Deon Google's sweeping changes confirm the search giant has launched a full out assault against artificial link inflation & declared war against search engine spam in a continuing effort to provide the best search service in the world? and if you thought you cracked the Google Code and had Google all figured out ? guess again.Google has raised the bar against search engine spam and artificial link inflation to unrivaled heights with the filing of a United States Patent Application 20050071741 on December 31, 2003. On March 31, 2005 is was available online for the first time.The filing unquestionable provides SEO's with valuable insight into Google's tightly guarded search intelligence and confirms that Google's information retrieval is based on historical data.What exactly do these changes mean to you? Your credibility and reputation on-line are going under the Googlescope! Google has defined their patent abstract as follows:A system identifies a document and obtains one or more types of history data associated with the document. The system may generate a score for the document based, at least in part, on the one or more types of history data.Google's patent specification reveals a significant amount of information both old and new about the possible ways Google can (and likely does) use your web page updates to determine the ranking of your site in the SERPs. Unfortunately, the patent filing does not prioritize or conclusively confirm any specific method one way or the other.Here's how Google scores your web pages.In addition to evaluating and scoring web page content, the ranking of web pages are admittedly still influenced by the frequency of page or site updates. What's new and interesting is what Google takes into account... more.. 8 Tips To Create A Landing Page 8 Tips To Create A Landing Page By Ayat Shukairy (c) 2007 Introduction You need copy for your landing page but you're not sure where to start. First let's clarify what we mean by a landing page. A landing page can be a page that visitors come to after clicking on a promotional banner or link. Ultimately, the landing page must convince the visitor that they should stay on your site. You may also have a goal that you want accomplished, such as: Signing up for a newsletter or filling out a f? Buying a product Reading informational pieces What's going to keep them there? The structure, the language, and the visual appeal all play a part of it. Ch? out these tips to create a great landing page, or reinvent the one you already have. The Structure People arrive at your site looking for answers. They scan to see if they're in the right place and assess whether it's going to be a quick and easy visit or a long grinding one. Your landing page is the welcome wagon inviting them in and feeding them the information they need. The structure of the page will either pull them in and encourage them to fulfill your goal, or distract and cause them to cut out of there before getting the whole picture. The structure of the landing page in general should be matching that of the banner, ?or link they clicked on to get them there. So for example, if your PPC Ad is targeting SEO articles, your landing page should discuss exactly that. If a Victoria Secret's ?for lingerie... more.. Give Your Site a 10-Point Legal Check-Up Give Your Site a 10-Point Legal Check-Up By Chip Cooper (c) 2009 It's early in the year, and it's time to fulfill your resolution to give your site a quick legal check-up. Online businesses are now highly regulated, and there's substantial liability if your site's not legally compliant. In addition, your customers are becoming more Internet savvy, and a site that's not legally compliant is not going to be trusted. So, let's get started. Use This Checklist If You Already Have The Basic Site Documents In Place 1. Copyright Notice. Check Your Copyright Notice. Your copyright notice consists of the following elements: the word "copyright" or copyright symbol (c in a circle) followed by the year of first publication followed by the name of the copyright owner. It's also a good idea to add "All rights reserved worldwide". Example: Copyright 1996-09 Digital Contracts, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Note that if you update your site from time to time, you should add a date range reflecting the fact that the site has been updated each year within the date range. If you haven't updated yet for 2009, do it now. 2. Blogs, etc. Have you recently added a blog or any other functionality that permits visitors to post text or digital files to your site? Or, do you plan to do so as part of your marketing plans for 2009? If so, you need to have a DMCA notice in your Terms of Use and you also need to file a DMCA Registration form with the U.S. Copyright Office. These steps will create a "safe harbor" from strict... more.. Simple SEO Truths Simple SEO Truths By Kim Roach of UnleashTheTraffic.com According to the 1998 Georgia Tech GVU User Survey, 85 percent of respondents found Web pages from search engines. Since then, other studies have reported 50 to 80 percent of Web site traff?comes from search engines. Searching is second only to email as the most popular online activity. Unfortunately, there are many marketers who simply do not put enough effort into preparing their web site for the search engines. The following guidelines will help you to start seeing results in the search engines. Your first step is simply choosing the right keywords. Choosing the Right Keywords Often times, people make the mistake of optimizing for very general keywords like used cars or online marketing. Although these terms get lots of traff? it is very unlikely that you will be able to rank highly for them. Then, even if you do, this type of traff?produces very low conversion rates because they are not targeted prospects. For example, if you are selling hiking backpacks, it would be much more beneficial for you to target the phrase 'hiking backpacks' rather than the extremely competitive keyword 'backpacks'. It would be even better to target the phrase 'camelbak commander'. This is a specific type of backpack and therefore will attract more buyers than searchers. In fact, according to Jupiter Media Metrix, 28 percent of searchers will type a product name into a search engine. Nine percent type in a brand name and 5 percent type in company names. The more targeted your keyword phrase, the more likely they are to buy. A person who types in 'backpacks' may be looking for... more.. The State of Search Engine Advertising Reality and Alternatives The State of Search Engine Advertising Reality and Alternatives By Mel Strocen (c) 2007 The herd mentality nev?fails to amaze me. When the pay-per-cl? concept was first pioneered in 1997-98 by GoTo.com (now Yahoo! Search Marketing), it was years before the model was widely accepted. GoTo virtually created the market for pay-for-performance search single-handedly and redefined how businesses market online while other search engines sat on their collective hands. Then, when it was obvious that there was "Gold in Them Thar (PPC) Hills" hundreds of search engines entered the PPC arena and hordes of advertisers followed suit. As a search engine advertising model, pay-per-cl? was, and is, brilliant in its simplicity. In theory, it is a perfect way to bill advertisers based on consumer interest in their advertisements. Unfortunately, in real life mon?can bring out the worst in human, and business, nature. In today's search engine reality, pay-per-cl? should be on its last legs. But, as anyone with a knowledge of the search engine industry knows that simply isn't the case. Let's first examine the main reasons why advertisers should be abandoning PPC in droves: 1. Cost According to the Fathom Online Keyword Price Index, the average keyword price paid by online advertisers reversed a downward trend and increased 16.5% percent to $1.48 in the third quarter of 2006, up from a $1.43 per cl? at the end of 2005. That's one report. Another compiled by Cl? Forensics concluded that the average pay-per-cl? search-term cost was $4.51 across retail, financial services, health and fitness, technology and entertainment advertising. Whatever the average cost, it's too high for most small to medium-sized businesses. More stats and... more.. Making Sense Of Website Statistics Making Sense Of Website Statistics By Paul J Coulter (c) 2007 Every website owner wants lots of traff?directed to their website, but this can sometimes involve spending a lot of time and mon? Fortunately, most website owners can ?rease their return on ?estment simply by paying closer attention to their website log files. Most website host? companies have special software installed that will process these website log files and display the information in an easy to read format. From this information website owners can get an understanding as to how many people are visiting the website, where the visitors are coming from, where they are entering and exiting the website, the average number of page views per visit, and many more interesting facts. These statistics will allow you to better analyze the effectiveness of promotional campaigns and give you some insight as to how you can tweak your website to ?rease your return on ?estment. "Hits" Explained There seems to be some confusion regarding the terms used to describe website visitor traff? We usually hear website owners speak in terms of "hits" to their website. Hits don't accurately describe the number of visitors viewing the website ? they are actually just any sort of HTTP request made to your server. Not only are requests made for website pages, but also for all the images and other files associated with viewing a single page. Therefore, one page view could actually result in dozens of hits, and, if a single user visits many pages on your website, this visit could generate hundreds or even thousands of hits. This can excite some website owners, but this number is not a... more.. The SEO's Toolkit - Firefox The SEO's Toolkit - Firefox By Dave Davies (c) 2009 Every SEO uses different tools and resources. Some tools are paid, some are free and some are internally developed tools that we use for ourselves and our clients - but we all use them. Very often I get asked what tools people should use if they're looking to optimize their own sites and what resources they should use to keep up with the latest going's on. While telling people how to optimize their own sites and what the tools we use isn't generally the best of business practices - I just can't help myself. If your budget doesn't allow for the hiring of a professional SEO company - trying it yourself may be the only option. I also try to remember that once-upon-a-time I was optimizing my own sites and was new to SEO and without the open advice of others already involved in the community - I wouldn't be running a successful SEO company today. To this end, it only seems right to provide a list of some of the main tools we use on virtually every site. When I initially started writing this article I was going to cram a slew of various tools and resources into one article, but the article was going to end up running WAY too long to hold your attention (or mine) so I've cut it into three EZ parts (as opposed to three EZ payments which you'll be familiar with if you too watch late night TV with a laptop in front of you writing things like SEO articles). But let's get to the meat of this article shall we? The series will be... more.. Top 10 Tools to TurboCharge Your Marketing Top 10 Tools to TurboCharge Your Marketing By Donna Gunter (c) 2005  Most business owners hate the entire marketing process. I find marketing to be an energizing exercise to showcase my creativity, however, and enjoy it -- when I do it. However, I fall into the same trap as mill?s of other small business owners -- I'm so busy with clients (my profit-generating days) that I often push aside my marketing (my business development days). So, to aid me in my marketing efforts, I try and "get the most bang for the buck" out of what I actually end up doing -- and try to do that with a minimal amount of effort. These are 10 tools that I use in my marketing efforts that help me turbocharge my marketing: 1. Assessment Generator: Like to create an interactive survey or assessment that will help your visitor learn something about his/her life or business? With Assessment Generator, you can create online assessments that you can post to your website to increase your traff?and attract more clients. 2. AudioAcrobat: AudioAcrobat makes audio streaming fast and simple, whether you want to add an audio greeting or audio test?nials to your website or send out an audio postcard or record a teleclass. 3. Ezine Director: Ezine Director is a great service for creating, mailing and reporting back on the success of yournewsletter. I love to be able to see how many readers opened my newsletter, who opened the newsletter, and what links they clicked on from the newsletters. EzineDirector offers the service fr?of charge if you send out less than 249 emails per month. 4. FreeAudioConferencing.com: Ever need to meet with colleagues, associates or even family members at a distance but don't want to do it... more.. Google's Paid Search vs. Organic Results, A Rickety Wall of Separation Google's Paid Search vs. Organic Results, A Rickety Wall of Separation By Scott Buresh (c) 2007 Medium Blue "Chinese Wall - The ethical (not physical) barrier between different divisions of a financial (or other) institution to avoid conflict of interest..." Investopedia.com "While Google nev?sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results." Google's Webmaster Help Center FAQ "NO pay for inclusion, and a complete separation of the search index part from the money part." Google Chief Engineer Craig Neville-Manning, Search Engine Strategies 2004 The good people at Google have long maintained that there is a Chinese Wall between paid search results and organic results ? that is, the department responsible for advertising is completely separate from the department responsible for organic search engine placement. The company insists that Google Adwords is a completely separate entity than the Google search engine, and nev?the twain shall meet. This all sounds very good, in theory. But do they live up to this ideal in practice? You don't hear Google talking much about Chinese Walls these days. This is certainly in part because they have had great difficulty gaining traction in the literal and very competitive Chinese market (headlines such as "Google Hits Chinese Wall" or even "Google Advance Halted at Great Wall of China" were commonplace). But might there be other, more nefarious reasons? Is there a reason why we hear less and less from Google about the virtual wall that separates paid search results from organic search engine placement? What Is Google Really Doing for Its Big Spenders? It has long been rumored that Google will provide technical... more.. Anatomy of a Web-Advertising Campaign Anatomy of a Web-Advertising Campaign By Jerry Bader In The Beginning There Was Marketing Anyone in business who has any interest in using the Web to further his or her business is well aware of "search engine optimization." Not a day goes by that my email in-box isn't loaded with information on how to get the best search engine results, and not a week goes by that a client or potential client doesn't request that their website be not just search friendly but search engine fanatical. For some time we have been preaching the importance of delivering the marketing message and that your message should not be corrupted or distorted by techniques aimed at attracting search engine robots while driving away real people who may actually be potential customers. Now I realize that in many circles this attitude is considered outright heresy, but hopefully there are a few marketing types around that understand websites have to deliver more than miscellaneous random eyeballs; websites have to deliver a message that is memorable, understandable, useable, and if you're really good at your job, information that can be incorporated into your audiences' belief system. With that in mind we were pleasantly surprised when Google the primary target of this SEO obsessive compulsive frenzy of technical slight-of-hand announced that they were instituting Google Video Ads and to add a little icing on the cake, they purchased YouTube adding to their already considerable ?estment in Google Video. Somebody at the big "G" thinks video is a viable Web-medium even if the purveyors of search engine fool's gold would have you believe otherwise. The list of companies, including Forbes, Amazon, Wyeth, and Ford,... more.. 11 Things Every Successful Website Needs 11 Things Every Successful Website Needs By Merle (c) 2009 MerlesWorld.com So you've put together a spectacular website, and you're ready to go live on the Internet for the whole world to see. Not so fast there Bucky. In case you didn't know, there are a few essential requirements that every site needs to include in order to be successful. Let's review, shall we: 1) Privacy Policy/Disclaimer: Now, I'm not a lawyer and don't claim to be one, but these two documents should be standard issue for every site you have. People want to know how you're going to use their personal information, and a "privacy policy" does just that. In today's litigious society you'll also need to include a discla?r/terms of use page. This protects you and spells out to your visitors what they're agreeing to by using your website. If you don't know where to start in generating these documents, you'll find plenty of help online.     ? DMA Privacy Policy Generator     ? OECD Privacy Statement Generator     ? Google Adsense & other Ad Networks Privacy Policy Generator     ? Privacy Policy Generator     ? Free Site Discla?r This is not legal advice, and if you need help in this department, consult with a local attorney. 2) Contact Us Information: I can't tell you how many sites I've been to that fail to include a way to contact the owner. If you can't include a phone number, at the very least have an email address or a "contact us" form. By providing this information, you'll make your visitors feel more comfortable knowing there's a way to reach you should the need arise. If you need a form and don't know how to... more.. Increase Search Engine Traffic With Quality Content Increase Search Engine Traffic With Quality Content By John Dow (c) 2007 Every web site owner wants to ?rease search engine traffic. It's free and the visitor is targeted to your subject matter, product or service. What more could you ask for in search engine traffic? The downside is that you need to understand search engine ranking methods and that is quite a challenge for many. The number of opinions and "experts" on ways to ?rease search engine traff?is overwhelming. And regardless of what anyone might tell you, they're all guessing. The search engines themselves don't divulge how their methods work for one simple reason. As soon as anyone figures out the method, there's a mad rush to implement changes based on the method. In a perfect world, where there were no scoundrels, this might not be a factor. Everyone would organize their web site information so that a visitor could easily find what they are looking for, and life would be good. But we certainly don't live in a perfect world and scoundrels are everywhere. So we are at the mercy of the search engines to help us sort through the clutter to find what we want. And that's the value that the search engines provide, accurate and meaningful search engine results that are related to the search terms or phrases. So it goes back to the quality of content, that's the only common factor in all 3 major search engines' ranking methods. Each of the big 3 (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) search engines use a little different method and technology to arrive at any given web site's ranking under specific search terms. As mentioned above, no one knows exactly how... more.. Bounce Rates Count Bounce Rates Count By David Leonhardt (c) 2008 Of late there has been a lot of discussion about bounce rates and whether or not the search engines count these in their algorithms. As far back as late 2007, there were reports that webmasters were seeing a difference in their rankings for major keywords within a few weeks of drastically changing their bounce rates. However, none of the tests and reports seem to be complete enough or repeatable enough to constitute proof. As a result, there are plenty of naysayers who believe that such things as bounce rates are not now and probably won't ever be part of the search engine algorithms. I am of the opposite view; bounce rates will certainly be part of the search engine algorithms and probably already are. What I would like to do here is share with you some of the common naysayer objections and refute all but one of them. But first, for those who are scratching their heads about what bounce means, we are referring to people leaving a website. A bouncy website is the opposite of a sticky website, one where people stay a long time. Objection 1: There is no definition of "bounce rate". Response: This is the flimsiest of arguments. A bounce is when someone leaves a website, going back where they came from. Objection 2: I don't like how Google Analytics defines a bounce. Response: Sadly, Google doesn't ask me for advice, either. But cheer up, the bounce rate in Google Analytics might not be the same as they use in their algorithm, just as the little green bar is not necessarily the PageRank... more.. How to Optimize for Google - 1 How to Optimize for Google - 1 By Scott Van Achte (c) 2009 In today's online world search engine rankings can make your business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very valuable, their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important. In this three-part series on How to Optimize for Google we will touch on a number of important aspects for top Google rankings including website optimization, links, Google Webmaster tools, and a number of other considerations. The focus of Part 1 will be with on page website optimization. THE RIGHT KEYWORDS This article is not about keyword research so I will not spend too much time on this topic, however, I felt it was important to at least brush on this slightly. Make sure that your targets are achievable. If you select the wrong keywords it can make your entire optimization experience essentially a waste. Choose keywords that are attainable but yet still provide a reasonable search frequency for your industry. Your phrase selection should also be targeted to bring qualified traffic to your site. Using the hotel industry as an example, targeting the word "hotel" would make very little sense but by narrowing it down to "Victoria BC hotel" you now have less competition, and a more qualified audience. Keep your targets in perspective and go after the obtainable rankings. WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION There are many on-site factors that play a role in your search engine rankings. Here are a number of those factors and what you can do to improve your chances of success. Title Tag The title tag plays one of the most important roles in search results at Google, and is... more.. How to Fire up Your Link Building Skills How to Fire up Your Link Building Skills By Jeremy Morgan (c) 2008 You know you need inbound links to your site to succeed in SEO. What you may not know is, you don't need to spend a dime to get them. In fact, I would advise you not to purchase links. The recent Google shakeup is all about paid links. Stop paying for links now! Google is now "punishing" websites for having paid links, because they feel it's cheating the algorithm. You might be upset by this, but they are doing it to improve the quality of their results. Here is how you can take advantage of it. Google is moving towards algorithms that favor sites that are "naturally" linked to. What is "natural" linking? These are links that a webmaster puts up because he or she wanted to, not because they were paid to. They saw something they liked, and put a link to it. This means all those shady SEOs who were buying links up by the hundreds can't cheat good sites out of the rankings anymore. So how you do get natural links? Focus on Your Subject There is a saying in marketing, if you market to everyone, you are marketing to no one. Maintain your focus, and keep your content within your niche. Don't try to spread yourself too thin. I personally have been guilty of this sin in the past. At one time JeremyMorgan.com had SEO articles, PHP scripts, Ford Mustang News and photoshop tutorials, and pictures of my family and locations back home. Needless to say I didn't really dominate any of those... more.. Search Engines are Not the Be All and End All for Internet Success Search Engines are Not the Be All and End All for Internet Success By Tom Foster (c) 2008 There is more to internet exposure for your business than search engines. Editor's Note: The author wrote this article with law firms as his target audience, but his points are applicable to any business or web site. To be sure, Google, MSN, Yahoo and the like are all excellent ways of getting your name out there. But it can take a long time to get your site to the top of most of the major categories, and since the number of categories is only limited by the imagination of the typical Google user, getting the results that you want can sometimes take awhile. So while you are waiting to move up the rankings, what else can you do to improve the web presence of your law firm? What can you do to get more clients? What can you do to get better cases? For one thing, you might want to take a look at what your kids are doing on their computers. Facebook and MySpace are the scourge of teachers and employers everywhere. In many schools, a student caught looking at one of these sites during class ends up in detention, and younger employees caught on these sites during working hours can get reprimanded or worse. Wikipedia, which is an encyclopedia site that gives brief or lengthy summaries of almost everything, is also the scourge of academics because, since it is updated by users, it can be inaccurate. Many are the lazy college students who have been caught cutting and pasting a Wikipedia entry on their... more.. Social Bookmarking and Power Linking Social Bookmarking and Power Linking By Andrew Daum (c) 2008 Just in case you missed it... the Web has changed. I think a little history of the Internet is in order to grasp the big picture. I'm not going to give any dates (late eighties and early 90's)... I'll just give a quick run down. I would say nearly fifteen years ago I had a dial up Internet connection that allowed me to log into various College computers, BBS's (bulletin boards) and Newsgroups. The Internet was much different than the Web is today. There were no graphics... it was totally text based and everything was dial up. All you could do was basically post to a newsgroup, post messages on some BBS's and send email. Internet Marketing as we know it today did not exist. In time though - a few brave souls ventured out of the shadows and began marketing within the newsgroups. This started wars between the "Purists" and new "Marketers" that I still remember to this day. You see, the Purists considered the Internet to be their own little playground. They viewed anyone selling something as evil. After all... Marketers had the TV, the Radio, Magazines, Newspapers, etc, etc as an avenue in which to sell their crap. "The Internet is ours" was their battle cry. They viewed the Internet as a way for them to communicate with each other without having to wade through all the BS advertising - and they could control what was being said. When the evil "Marketer" entered the picture, this all changed - and it changed quickly. Once the evil Marketer had discovered the Internet as a new... more.. Twitter Demystified for Business Users Twitter Demystified for Business Users By Nancy McCord (c) 2009 Twitter is the current top "hot property" on the Web, but its popularity and how to use it has mystified many business owners. Many people think that they want to, or should be using Twitter, but simply do not understand the platform, its use, or its place in building web exposure. This article will demystify Twitter and help you to learn how to use it in the workplace and to promote your business. First, I have to say that I had been confused on how to use Twitter to benefit my own business until I downloaded TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a desktop application that allows you to review and post status updates on Twitter and Facebook simultaneously. I consider it a "must have" application for anyone who wants to make sense of Twitter. TweetDeck allows you to sort the people you follow on Twitter into groups, allows you to limit the number of Tweets (Twitter micro posts) to be shown at any time, and also allows you to discard all Tweets you have seen with one click. Additionally, using TweetDeck, finally a Twitter search on a topic makes sense. Since using TweetDeck, I have had a much better Twitter experience. As a Twitter newbie, visiting your Twitter home page is intimidating; it consists of post after post from people who you are following, who you may not know much about, and it just seems like a huge volume of content. To get started effectively first group the people who actually have something interesting to say on TweetDeck and voila, you have a powerful tool that keeps you at the forefront... more.. The A to Z Guide to Getting Website Traffic The A to Z Guide to Getting Website Traffic By Shawn Campbell In September of 1999, Brett Tabke wrote "26 Steps to 15k a Day" in the Webmaster World forum. A lot has changed since then, and now is the time to consider a new 26-step plan that meets the current needs of webmasters in 2006. Some of the old ones still apply (writing new content everyday, for example), and some don't (submitting to the search engines is no longer necessary), and we're here to tell you which is which! As you probably already know, bringing in traff?is not easy - it takes hard work, determination and lots of elbow grease. So if you're ready, roll up your sleeves and follow these 26 simple steps, and within just one year you will generate enough traff?to keep you busy for a long, long time! A) Keyword Research Before you do anything else, use a keyword research tool and do an extensive job researching the right keyphrases to use for your site. What keyphrases are your direct competitors using? Are there any keyphrases that create a potential for market entry? Are there any that you can put a spin on and create a whole new niche with? B) Domain Namemore.. The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit Checklist The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit Checklist By Matt Siltala (c) 2009 From month to month I have the opportunity to present 4 different webinars on different topics related to Internet marketing to brand new online business owners. The reason I bring this up is because no matter what the topic I am presenting on, I usually get asked the same question by completely different random people. They are all wanting me to "look at their site" and give them a "quick, what do you think?". These people are wanting to know if their site is ready to "go live" (although I never really understand why people ask that question) but for these people, and this post - I have come up with what I'd like to call "The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit Checklist". If you have a brand new site, and haven't done any kind of SEO before, this will be a great list of reminders that will set you off on the right foot. 1. URL canonicalization and 301 re-dirs. One of the first things I look for on any domain I am giving a health check on is the URL canonicalization. In My Opinion it does not matter if you pick proper URL canonicalization pointing to the www's or non-www's, but you need to pick one and stick to it. I personally always choose the www's because more people (from my experience) tend to link to you with the full URL. So you need to get into your .htaccess file and make a few edits. Any variation of the homepage URL needs to be done this way too - for example you need to have the /index.php also re-direct to the main URL (however you have it set up) Bottom line here, you need to... more.. Using New Content to Build Links Using New Content to Build Links By Rob Sullivan Sometimes, link building is more than just searching out sites to request links from. Sometimes you have to get creative in how you build links. In this article, we look at another way of building links that doesn't really require you to go out and search for relevant sites to request links from. The web is growing at a phenomenal rate. Technorati, a popular blog search and syndication site estimates that the blogosphere alone doubles in size every 5 months. As of the end of July 2005, Technorati was tracking over 14.2 million weblogs, and over 1.3 billion links. Who knows how much the rest of the web grows? I would bet that while it doesn't double every 5 months its rate of growth is pretty impressive. It is because of this growth in the web that other forms of link building become somewhat easier. I am talking about building links through content creation and publishing. Chances are you are reading this article on the Text Link Brokers blog, or one of a number of syndication partners who agree to republish the article with links intact. Through such syndication, you could come across this article through a variety of high profile websites on the web. In addition, these high profile sites are industry specific. This means that any links I embed into this article (which is then syndicated) will ultimately point back to this site on important key phrases. Think about this, for the time it takes me to write this article, I could have built as many as 2 dozen high quality, keyword rich links back to both the main site as well as the blog site.... more.. What Google Thinks Of Your Site? What Google Thinks Of Your Site? By Titus Hoskins (c) 2008 How Google views your site does matter if you want to succeed online because Google has become the dominant search engine on the web. It now has over 60% of the U.S. search engine market. In other countries around the world that percentage rises to 80% or more. In addition, the Google Brand Name has solidly permeated the popular psyche and any top rankings within Google will bring much weight and prestige along with all that traffic. If you're a webmaster, you will already know how vital Google is to the success of your site, especially if you rely upon organic keyword rankings for your traffic. This free organic traffic from Google is highly desired by webmasters because it is extremely targeted and delivers high conversion rates. In trying to reach the highest rankings possible, I (like most webmasters) have to be constantly aware of what Google thinks of my site and content. As a webmaster and marketer I have always geared my onl? marketing towards Google. I have spent years building my keyword rankings within Google; if you take out the fact that it has nearly driven me insane, it has mostly been a positive experience. This experience has also shown me it is indeed important for anyone to know how Google views and rates your site or content. The more knowledge you have, the better able you will be to tackle any obstacles and challenges that will come your way. SERPs Is The Only Opinion That Counts And like most webmasters, I try to find out as much about Google... more.. 47 Simple Ways to Build Trust in Your Website or Blog 47 Simple Ways to Build Trust in Your Website or Blog By Miles Galliford (c) 2007 If your website does not create a sense of trust in your visitors, all your efforts will be in vain. Your online business will not succeed. That's the bad news. The good news is that it is very easy to create and build trust in your online visitors. Below, I have listed all the techniques used by the hundreds of websites I have helped launch. If you have additional techniques, please add them to the l?. As the old saying goes, you have only one chance to make a first impression. Building trust cannot be achieved by one single action. Trust is achieved by hundreds of little things you do throughout your website that, when taken together, give readers a sense of honesty, legitimacy and stability. The other bit of good news is that few website owners focus on building trust in the minds of their visitors. If you do it well, it can become a real and sustainable competitive advantage. Here are 47 simple actions you can take to get started.   1. Trust is built by lots of small actions on every page of your website.   2. Your website design is the first impression. Make sure it is professional and relevant to the subject matter.   3. Navigation must be intuitive. If visitors can't find what they are looking for easily, they will question your competence in providing what they want.   4. Make the website personal by giving it its own tone and voice. People buy people.   5. Follow the HEART rule of creating online content. (Reminder:... more.. Get Your Company Link Building With These 5 Simple Tips Get Your Company Link Building With These 5 Simple Tips By Oliver Feakins (c) 2009 As the online market place continues to warm up to the idea of SEO, link building has become center stage as it tends to be the most time consuming and crucial part of any internet marketing strategy. Link building services are the most commonly outsourced aspect of SEO. This process involves finding qualified and thematically relevant one-way linking partners who will link back to your website. At first glance this sounds easy and there are hundreds of automated products out there that claim to add thousands of back links overnight. The truth is there are no short cuts in cultivating authoritative back links for a site. Link building companies spend many hours link building by hand in order to get the best results. Spammy automated products often don't cultivate valuable links and tend to do more harm than good. Here are a couple quick suggestions to help you get started. 1. Know What Keywords You're Targeting Link building strategies are an extension of your current SEO practice. You'll want to reference the list of keywords you have selected to optimize your site. Make sure that the anchor text of the link has the keyword you are targeting. For example, if you're targeting the keyword "baby names" you'll want to place that keyword in the anchor text of the link. I've seen many companies go after links by using their company name. Although this does boost link popularity it fails to pass popularity for a specific keyword and can be seen as a failed attempt. 2. Develop a Link Building Strategy There are many strategies link building companies use to source qualified... more.. Is Your Website an Asset Or a Liability? Is Your Website an Asset Or a Liability? By Nick Yorchak (c) 2007 Remember back in the good ol' days when having a website was something every company needed and wanted? Websites were the wave of the future, and the dream of transitioning to conducting business onl? filled our heads with visions of a revolution in the way commerce was conducted. With a website, a company could reach clients and interact with potential customers on a global scale. A website was indicative of a company's technological prowess, symbolic of the desire to innovate and evolve with developments in the industry. Today, this mindset has changed drastically. We all know that we need a website, but many of us think that simply having one is enough. In fact, there is research indicating that many firms with an online presence haven't touched their websites in years. They haven't spent any time improving functionality and appearance, and they have yet to consider the basics of website usability and the inherent potential of search engine optimization. Of course, we all recognize by now that having a website is an essential business asset, if it's done correctly. It's easy to see that if your site is an outdated eyesore, it becomes a liability that hurts you more than it helps you. Conversely, a well-designed site can make all the difference. It's the first place users go to research your products and services, serves as a lead generator, a CRM tool, and even to make purchases. We've all heard the adage about first impressions, and it's no secret that they're the most important factor in the way people remember... more.. Knowing Your Visitors Through Website Traff?Analysis Knowing Your Visitors Through Website Traff?Analysis By Don Resh (c) 2007 Analyzing your web traff?statistics can be an invaluable tool for a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data. Most web host? companies will provide you with basic web traff?information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don't understand how to apply it to your particular business and website. Let's start by examining the most basic data - the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. These figures are the most accurate measure of your website's activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traff?you see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge the effectiveness of your site. Traff?Analysis There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as "hits" and what is really effective, quality traff?to your site. Hits simply means the number of information requests received by the server. If you think about the fact that a hit can simply equate to the number of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how overblown the concept of hits can be. For example, if your homepage has 15 graphics on it, the server records this as 15 hits, when in reality we are talking about a single... more.. Getting the Right Marketing Mix Using Social Media Getting the Right Marketing Mix Using Social Media By John Sylvester (c) 2009 For months (or is it years now?) we have been reading articles on how businesses should develop a presence on Twitter and build a Facebook Page as part of their SEM objectives. Now, with social media firmly established in the armoury of our online marketing efforts, how can we best take advantage of these two social media giants? As if to demonstrate their power in the market these days, both Twitter and Facebook (to a lesser extent) have been targeted and dealt painful denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and, as a result, many hours of downtime. With hackers determined to bring Twitter down to earth, it was acknowledged that although defensive measures had been taken on the company's part to repel further attacks, third-party developers whose applications have been using their application programming interface, were found vulnerable. In a similar vein, the social-networking site Facebook was also hit with a DoS attack, but it didn't appear to be quite so threatening as the one that knocked Twitter off its perch on the same day. Social media, as a phenomenon, has taken marketing online by the scruff of the neck and placed it in the control of the general public. In essence, traditional search engines, where votes have often been bought and traded by sleight-of-hand SEM tactics, have now been delivered on a platform where we decide our preferred content. Not ideal, but popular. But how do we achieve success in this and what should the marketing mix be? Let's take a look at how some of the "big guns" treat social media? One of the best marketing campaigns I have seen on Facebook Pages is that... more.. Your Guide to Top Search Engine Rankings Your Guide to Top Search Engine Rankings By Trent Brownrigg (c) 2006 Does it seem like no matter what you do your website just won't climb up in the search engine rankings? If so, your web site may not be optimized well enough for the search engines to increase your rankings. There are some very important factors that determine where web sites are ranked. These factors are referred to as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques and they can make all the difference in your site's rankings. Here are some of the most important factors that the search engines use in determining your rankings: 1. Web Site Content Content on your site is one of the most important factors for successful search engine optimization. Your web site should provide valuable information on specific subjects relevant to your web site. Furthermore, your content should be updated regularly. It's not enough to just put up a few content pages full of information on your site and then nev?add to it. This is a continuous process that will help your search engine rankings if done correctly. It's also important that you don't try to trick the search engines by flooding them with multiple versions of the same page, repeating the same content over and over. Doing that will not help your rankings and will eventually lead to your site getting banned from the search engines. 2. Link Popularity Inbound links are very important for achieving high search engine rankings. Most of the search engines today regard link popularity as one of the most significant determinants of your website's rankings. Here are some of the best ways... more.. Google's Last Dance! Could Semantic Search Mean The End Of Google? Google's Last Dance! Could Semantic Search Mean The End Of Google? By Titus Hoskins (c) 2007 As a full-time online marketer and webmaster I try to keep my eyes peeled to what is happening with the search engines. These complex creatures control the Internet. They truly are the heart, soul and brains of the web. Unfortunately, they also control the faith of many struggling webmasters who are clawing their way to the top of SERPs in organic search. Being listed on these first page results for your chosen keyword phrases is the ultimate goal and it is often the determining factor in the success of your site. Recently, I have noticed some strange movements with my closely watched keywords, especially in Google. Which shouldn't alarm anyone because there are often sudden movements and adjustments as Google tweaks and refines its algorithm, the complex series of formulas it uses to determine which pages and sites get featured. (Side note: An excellent resource on Google's Algorithm and ranking factors can be found at: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#f41 It's way too early to jump to any conclusions but the big question on everyone's mind: Is Google Moving Towards Semantic Search? Or more precisely will Google have to move to semantic search if it has any chance of surviving in our 'here today - gone tomorrow' search world. Most of us old folks can easily recall a pre-Google web. Is a post-Google web possible? That's very hard to swallow but stranger things have happened on the net. But the real question should be: will Google have to embrace semantic search or perish? Wikipedia defines Semantic Search or Semantic Web as the evolving process of taking all the content... more.. Webmaster Tips Webmaster Tips By Sharon Housley According to Matt Cutts, there are over 100 factors that affect search engine ranking. For those of you who don't know, Matt is a Google guy guru, he is employed by Google but writes an independent blog and shares information related to Google and search engine optimization. Unfortunately, of those 100 items that account for search engine ranking, there are only a few that webmasters can actually control. Unless you are a interested in an exercise of futility, it is important to only focus on those ranking factors that you, as a webmaster, can control and influence. What Search Engine Factors Do Webmasters Control? Outside of the obvious (webpage title and description) those items over which the webmaster has the most control are: PageRank, TrustRank, Anchor Text, Keyword Density, Domain Age, URL, and Relevant Links. How Can a Webmaster Use These Items to Help Ranking? First off--the obvious, each and every web page should have a descriptive page specific title and description. The title, description, and header tags are channels to communicate the most important details of a specific webpage. They should be used effectively, but not be abused. The web page should make use of h1 and h2 tags (header tags) to emphasize pertinent keywords and phrases. Particular attention should be paid when formatting urls. Keywords related to the webpage can and should be used in the webpage urls. Use hyphens rather than underscores between the keywords. Search engines are designed by developers and programming languages will recognize a hyphen and distinguish separate words, while an underscore blends the words. Keywords in the URL should not... more.. 10 Truths About Obtaining Better Google Rankings 10 Truths About Obtaining Better Google Rankings By Kevin Gallagher (c) 2007 Introduction I have read hundreds of articles telling me how to get better rankings in Google. Some of this advice was very good and some was not. Here you will find 10 truths about getting better rankings in Google that I personally have found to be true after years of research. So let's cut through the fat and get to the lean meat of the subject. 1. The Quick Fix First the bad news, unfortunately there are no quick fixes in creating higher rankings in Google. You have to have a lot of patience in the search engine optimization game. It will take months for your efforts to come to fruition. That's why it's important to get things right from the start and plan out your strategy. 2. Keywords Keywords are the most important part of search engine optimization. You must do your keyword research before starting your website if you can, because this will form the basis of all your search engine optimization. There is no point going for broad keywords such as "website design" since there is too much competition for those keywords and you will find it very difficult, if not impossible, to reach the top spot in Google. You are better off using long tail niche keywords. They will have a smaller search volume, but it will be easier to obtain top position. People are more likely to find what they are looking for with long tail keywords. For example, if someone needs a website, they may type "web design" into Google and visit a... more.. 9 Practical Reasons Why Web-Audio Is A Necessity 9 Practical Reasons Why Web-Audio Is A Necessity By Jerry Bader (c) 2006 1. Limited Screen Real Estate Computer screens have increased in size over the years but website designers still have to deal with the problem of how to get all a client's information presented 'above the fold' so visitors don't have to scroll too much. It's hard enough to get prospects to read anything, let alone copy that drones on. This problem isn't being helped by SEO tacticians promoting inflated text presentations often amounting to exercises in key-phrase diarrhea. If you have a lot to say, turn some of it into audio, so prospects can sit back, listen and absorb what you have to say, rather than hunt desperately for the information they're looking for. The single most important thing that effects a user's Web-experience is how fast they find what they came to learn and what could be easier and faster than pressing an audio button. 2. Computer Screen Readability We have all been raised with the eight and half by eleven format permanently implanted in our heads. Unfortunately computer monitors' four by three aspect ratio is horizontal and the new breed wide-screen monitors use a sixteen by nine format - great for timeline editing and spread sheets, not so great for reading. Computer monitors have nev?been all that easy on the eyes and the new flat screen LCDs are brighter and display more contrast which is great for graphics but again not so great for reading. So instead of giving your potential clients eyestrain and a headache, deliver the information using audio, a much more user-friendly experience. more.. Top 10 Tips for Using Web 2.0 to Promote Your Business Top 10 Tips for Using Web 2.0 to Promote Your Business By Kevin Stirtz (c) 2007 We hear a lot about "Web 2.0" these days. It sounds neat and it's trendy to talk about blogging and social media. But does it really affect our businesses? Is Web 2.0 just for kids and tech-hipsters or is it something we business owners should use to help promote our businesses? I can't tell you if Web 2.0 is right for your business, but I can tell you it's something to be aware of. Ignoring it means ignoring a possible tool that could be valuable in helping you get more customers. So, to help you get started in thinking about Web 2.0 for your business, here are some things for you to consider. 1. Have a plan Don't dive in just because it's cool or because you read an article about it. Be clear about what you're trying to accomplish, how much you're willing to invest and what time frame you are working on. Like any aspect of your business - plan ahead. 2. Make sure your target audience is online Web 2.0 tools are fun but useless if the people who see your stuff don't want what you off? Or if they don't look to the Web for information to help them buy what you sell, then your efforts will be less effective. Like any marketing channel, it only works if your prospective customers are there to see (or hear) your message and they are receptive to it. 3. Create good content Web 2.0 is the social web, but it's still... more.. Predicting Search Engine Algorithm Changes Predicting Search Engine Algorithm Changes By John Metzler With moderate search engine optimization knowledge, some common sense, and a resourceful and imaginative mind, one can keep his or her web site in good standing with search engines even through the most significant algorithm changes. The recent Google update of October/November 2005, dubbed "Jagger", is what inspired me to write this, as I saw some web sites that previously ranked in the top 20 results for extremely competitive keywords suddenly drop down to the 70th page. Yes, the ebb and flow of search engine rankings is nothing to write home about, but when a web site doesn't regain many ranking spots after such a drop it can tell us that the SEO done on the site may have had some long-term flaws. In this case, the SEO team had not done a good job predicting the direction a search engine would take with its algorithm. Impossible to predict, you say? Not quite. The ideas behind Google's algorithm come from the minds of fellow humans, not supercomputers. I'm not suggesting that it's easy to "crack the code" so to speak because the actual math behind it is extremely complicated. However, it is possible to understand the general direction that a search engine algorithm will take by keeping in mind that any component of SEO which is possible to manipulate to an abnormal extent will... more.. The Importance of Meta Tags Providing the Human Touch The Importance of Meta Tags Providing the Human Touch By Matthew Coers For the uninitiated, meta-tags are pieces of code within your website that contain information about each page. These tags are supposed to tell search engines and users what the page is about. If you're a little rusty on your Internet jargon, here's a primer. There are essentially three types of meta-tags that concern most marketers: Title - This is the text that appears in the title-bar of your web browser. Description - This is a quick summary of the information on the page. Keywords - These are words that are important in the page. Up until about 4 years ago, there was a tremendous focus on meta-tags as a method of improving search engine rankings. Webmasters could stuff all sorts of words into the meta-tags to improve their... more.. Why Social Bookmarking? Why Social Bookmarking? By Tinu AbayomiPaul (c) 2009 Someone sent me the question "Why Social Bookmarking? " And I thought to myself: "Um. Why not?" Since I'm not really sure what they meant by that, I'm going to assume that this person mean "Why should I use social bookmarking in my business?" - with a full understanding of all the risks associated with "assuming". I figure that if you're reading this, you have that question, or a similar one. There are three reasons:      1 - More links      2 - More traffic      3 - More credibility More links are always a good thing. Think of links as the road traffic that moves through the web. If there are no roads to where your business "lives" online, namely your website, it's far less likely that the visitors you want will end up getting to you. That's true whether you're talking about search engines or links from other sites. Search engines use a mysterious cross between the number and quality of links to your site in their determination of whether you should be number one or number 701 for your desired keyword. In addition, the "nicer" the road, the more traff?will flow through it - think of an authority site linking to your site as a highway that leads directly to your site, and one from a reciprocal link or link exchange scheme as a back street in a sketchy neighborhood full of potholes. Improved traffic, also good. From social bookmarking, this traffic is often targeted. Through tagging, the description someone writes, or the title they assigned to your link, the person who discovers the submitted link on a social bookmarking site knows exactly where they're going, and why they're interested in getting there. It's like seeing the cover of a magazine on a rack.... more.. Website Traffic Generation Planning and Methodologies Website Traffic Generation Planning and Methodologies By Duncan Wierman (c) 2009 Real Estate internet marketing is like any other kind of marketing, you're trying to reach a niche market and must plan accordingly. You have to start by identifying your target market in order to develop your message conveying exactly the kind of high value business proposition which your niche will respond to. The first steps are to:      1) Identify your target market; start with geo targeting and work with the demographics from there.      2) Decide how you want to be perceived by this target market and decide how you'll foster this          perception.      3) Identify and refine your value proposition. Once you've done this, the next step is to develop and distribute your value proposition, making sure that your value proposition is perceived by your target market exactly as intended. In marketing, shaping consumer perception isn't just the most important thing: it's everything. You have to start by positioning yourself to be perceived in a specific way; from here, you'll need to maintain, develop, grow or alter this market position as you deem necessary. The real challenge is putting these principles into action: Driving Traffic There are some important principles of traffic generation you need to understand in order to be successful at bringing visitors into your website. There are both principles and rules of traffic generation; principles have to do with your approach to the task and the rules are the practical nuts and bolts of driving traffic. You need to have an understanding of the larger picture before you can successfully put the practical techniques into action. What you'll usually see a lot of is the techniques alone. While this is still valuable information, you probably... more.. Brand Positioning Using Web-Video Brand Positioning Using Web-Video By Jerry Bader Multimedia Modeling and Vicarious Observation Albert Bandura, distinguished psychologist and expert in the field of social learning theory, points to television commercials as an important influence on social learning through multimedia modeling and vicarious observation. We often forget that like all creatures human beings are subject to our hardwired instinct for survival, one of the most important being our ability to learn through vicarious experiences rather than just direct encounters. We may learn not to touch a hot stove by putting our hand on a hot heating element, but it is far less dangerous to learn the same lesson by watching someone else do it, even if that observation is simulated as in a commercial. As Web-video presentations ?rease in popularity as a means of delivering marketing messages over the Internet, there will be the inevitable major successes and unfortunate failures. It is only a matter of time before Web-video becomes the dominating vehicle for businesses that are serious about marketing communication. The businesses that will be successful will learn how to use the medium beyond its technical implementation, focusing instead on the psychological elements that communicate beyond mere surface meaning. Marketing Campaigns Are Learning Experiences All marketing campaigns are learning experiences for the target audience in that advertisers are attempting to manipulate viewers' behavior by vicarious demonstration of brand benefits resulting from product or service use. Cost has limited the use of broadcast television commercials to all but the most deep-pocketed of advertisers, but the broadband Web and digital technology has changed all that. The means to produce reasonable-cost Web-video is at hand, witness the... more.. Internet Marketing Blogs that Beg to be Bookmarked Internet Marketing Blogs that Beg to be Bookmarked By Merle (c) 2008 PayPerClickResearch.com Let's face it, Blogs on the topic of Internet marketing are a dime a dozen. Everyone and their dog seems to have one. I'll be the first to admit it takes a lot to impress me. Some blogs are just boring and uneventful. But then there are some that make me want to come back again and again. So, what are the qualities of a great blog? Well, for me it's one that offers me something of value, whether that be in the form of valuable information, or points me in the direction of free products or services. It's all about me. By the same token, I do appreciate a blogger with a sense of humor or strong personality. If you're stiff and mechanical it's just not for me. Show me who you really are and what makes you tick. One final point. Don't forget about design. Blogs that are easy on the eyes, uncluttered and simple get my vote every time. If it has a black background and white text, I'm out of there in a big hurry. So, who has some of the best blogs online today? So glad you asked. Listen closely as I enlighten you and point you in the right direction. 1) Willie Crawford: An experienced online marketer, Willie is considered one of the world's leading Internet marketing experts. Listen to Willie, he "walks the talk" and can teach you a lot about the world of online market?. He also has a radio show at: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/WillieCrawford 2) Michael Fortin Blog: Copywriting... more.. How To Find The Right Keywords To Optimize Search Engine Results How To Find The Right Keywords To Optimize Search Engine Results By Nelson Tan (c) 2009 Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination - your website - you need to provide them with effective signs that direct them right to your site by creating carefully chosen keywords. Think of the right keywords as the "Open Sesame!" of the Internet. Find the exactly right words, and presto! Hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are too general or overused, the possibility of visitors actually making it all the way to your site - or of seeing any real income from the visitors that do arrive - decreases dramatically. Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may not get the chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases. You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven't followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It's hard to be objective when you are right in the center of your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source. Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search... more.. The Ten Commandments of Search Engine Optimization The Ten Commandments of Search Engine Optimization By Bhaskar Thakur (c) 2008 Most of the time when we pitch to a new client we are asked for SEO guarantees. "Your competition has guaranteed top results and submission to 100,000 Search Engines and Directories". We go all out educating clients that Search Engine Optimization is all about smart work and not just adding random keywords and submitt? to every directory possible. I'm writing this article to reach out to the SEO buyers and help them distinguish the crooks from the genuine SEO cos. I've compiled my Search marketing experience over the years in this article. I hope this helps you in selecting your Search Marketing initiative. Commandment 1: There are No Rank Guarantees. (Period) Search Engines alone control their indexing and ranking algorithm. Do not try to trick Search Engines. The only way to improve your search engine rank is by playing by the rules. And the rule is very simple: make it logical. Web content is primarily for the site visitor and not crawlers. If your Search Engine Optimizer sold you magic "Top rank on Google in 10 days flat". Forget it. There are no short cuts. Top ranking in Search Engine Natural Results will take time. Hard work is imperative especially in developing the content on your website and the links to your site. Commandment 2: Ranking is Not the End, It's the Means. Ask yourself what will a top search engine rank get you? Most businesses are interested in increasing sales on a website or at the least driving qualified traffic. Ranking for the right keywords (keywords used by... more.. Social Media Optimization -Shifting the Landscape of Search Engine Marketing Social Media Optimization -Shifting the Landscape of Search Engine Marketing By Julie Ann Ross (c) 2009 Social media optimization (SMO) is an important ingredient within your SEO and SEM campaigns. In the past, social networking sites were not much more than an oddity. Today, many have received enormous ranking authority from top search engines. If you are not leveraging these sites to improve your exposure and communicate with your niche consumer, your search engine positions are vulnerable to your competitors. In this article, we will describe the influence that SMO currently has on search engine marketing. We will also give you the rules of engagement for executing an effective social media optimization campaign. We'll explain what SEO social media is, and the advantages of hiring an experienced SEO consultant to spearhead your social media optimization efforts. The Influence Of Social Media Optimization On Search Marketing Search marketing has always relied upon exposure in the search engines to drive targeted traff? For years, gaining that exposure was based solely upon the development of your site and generating links pointing to your site. Both are still important today. However, social media optimization has shifted the landscape of search marketing. Google once maintained several disparate search platforms for blogs, videos, news, and similar types of "social" content. Each functioned as a separate search engine with its own set of organic listings. A few years ago, Google blended the listings from each platform into a system called Universal Search. Bing and Yahoo have since incorporated similar systems. Universal Search is now used as the primary index. That means blogs, videos, and news have been incorporated into the natural listings, pushing many sites off the first page. This is... more.. Real-Time Search - 5 Reasons Why Real-Time Search - 5 Reasons Why By Ben Behrouzi (c) 2009 If you don't understand why the Real Time Web is huge, you will soon. Thanks to micro-blogging sites like Twitter, a constant stream of human-posted content has infiltrated the Web. This growing infiltration has created a bottoms up approach to content creation that via the progressive support of rapidly developing applications has and will continue to empower every individual to co-create what is deemed as "important" on the Web. The Real Time Web serves as both the database that informs us of what is happening right "Now" and the human touch to the content that will compete with the traditional algorithms for what is deemed as "valuable" content to us all. Its challenges lie in the filtration and mass integration of both the content and the act of sharing to the Real Time Web. There remain major aspects of the Web that have not yet integrated "searching" and "sharing" of the Real Time Web, including traditional search. But as filtration and integration progress the Web will take the form of a living breathing database. Here are 5 reasons why Real Time Search will help the Real Time movement change the Web and your experience forever. 1. The "Now" Factor We saw it with Michael Jackson's passing. We saw it with the Iran Protests and we see it more and more everyday -- the Real Time web provides us with what is happening right "Now" and with vivid detail from around the globe. "We" is driving the "Now" factor. 2. We Become Co-Creators The Real-Time web offers us the ability to become co-creators in not only content but also in what is deemed important. Why? Because... more.. 11 Ways To Drive Traff?Away From Your Webplace 11 Ways To Drive Traff?Away From Your Webplace By Jerry Bader (c) 2007  Why Web-Users Are So Impatient While viewing a Toronto Raptor basketball game I saw T.J. Ford, one of the fastest players in the league, rush down the court like a man possessed and proceed to throw the ball behind his back to a trailing Andrea Bargnani. The trouble was the ball sailed over the head of the seven-foot Bargnani into the second row of seats. Ford, himself, finished up with a beer and popcorn fac? after landing in the lap of a front row patron. So what does this have to do by using webplace design and marketing you ask? A lot. As talented as Ford is as a basketball player he sometimes plays out-of-control, and his major asset, his speed, turns into a litalent. When this happens in a basketball game the answer is to gradual the game down and get back in control. Don't Speed-It-Up; Gradual-It-Down Webarea visitors are like the velocityy T.J. Ford; they are so intent on getting what they want as quickly and efficiently as possible, that they generally surf the internet out-of-control. How many times have you sat in front of the computer by using your hand resting on your mouse seeking for some desired product or service, service, or information, when all of sudden you find what looks similar what you would like, but before you even have a possibility to discover precisely what it's, your hair-trigger finger decides it\'s time to move-on. It\'s like your finger has a mind of it\'s own. Velocity Kills Marketing Labors All the talk and discussion about short attention spans caused by people raised on video games and quick-cut-edited music videos is very misleading. What website visitors won\'t tolerate are webplaces that waste their time, and many webplaces are guilty of... more.. 7 Social Media Tactics for Explosive Results in Your Business 7 Social Media Tactics for Explosive Results in Your Business By Tinu AbayomiPaul (c) 2009   First, let's define the term Explosive Results for our usage. A standard social media campaign helps spread the word about you and encourages other people to as well. An explosive social media campaign has inherent viral exposure, inspires community driven communication, helps make the web a better place, and even brings joy to people, however fleeting. When you share in social media, if your goal is just to get more people to see your links, you're on the right track, but at the same time, you're limiting your potential. You may think that getting explosive results from social media will take more time, energy and money, but this doesn't have to be the case. If you're a business owner, you know that working harder doesn't necessarily mean better results - what if you're working hard on the wrong thing? Sometimes the remedy is working smarter. Here are a few small changes you can make to your social media approach that can propel your social media results from lukewarm to smoking hot. Explosive Social Media Tactic #1 - Hot Content The cornerstone to any social media campaign is the content. If you get this component wrong, it doesn't matter if all other elements are perfect. Study what's going hot in your targeted topic and find a unique angle to tailor your content into what people already like, without stealing their ideas. Explosive Social Media Tactic #2 - Niched Network Nuances The more tightly focused your submissions to social media sites are, the more likely they are to go viral, whether they are links you share by other people... more.. Social Networks - Search Engine Marketing for Web2.0 Social Networks - Search Engine Marketing for Web2.0 By Warren Pattison Social networks are getting a lot of attention these days including Wikipedia, del.icio.us and MySpace. Along with the buzz, these sites are also generating a lot of traff? How can you integrate links for these types of social network sites into your search engine marketing program? While there are an increasing number of social networks, this article will stick to the above as they are kings of their domains so to speak. I recently had the opportun? to attend Search Engine Strategies in New York City this past February, 2006. While attending a session in regards to community marketing tactics using both Wikipedia and tagging, the panel asked the audience, "Who here knows what Wikipedia and tagging are?" - less than half the room raised their hands. Let me give you an overview of these concepts. Wikipedia is a fr?community content driven encyclopedia. I have included an excerpt about Wikipedia from their about section located at About Wikipedia. "Begun in 2001, Wikipedia has rapidly grown into the largest reference website on the Internet. The content of Wikipedia is fr? written collaboratively by people from all around the world. This website is a wiki, which means that anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit, correct, or improve information throughout the encyclopedia, simply by clicking the edit this page link (with a few minor exceptions such as protected articles)." Your benefits of using Wikipedia as an online marketing strategy are various. To begin with, your submitted content about your product or company may be very short and simple to begin with. As your content ages and more members view and contribute... more.. 9 Hot Tips to Increase Site Conversions 9 Hot Tips to Increase Site Conversions By Gary Klingsheim (c) 2009 "Site conversion" is a very dry and unexciting way of saying "how to get more prof? from the same amount of website traffic." Isn't that a more upbeat way of expressing it? Who doesn't want to get more prof? from the same number of visitors? Increasing your conversion rate is a straightforward, even dramatic way of positively impacting your bottom line. It really cannot be emphasized too much that any improvement at all in your conversion rate means additional revenue that is total prof? Remember this fact when you are told that the way to "make more money" is to invest in more traffic-generating schemes (and dreams, at times). Before you start spending more money to generate additional traffic, you need to do as much as you can with the traffic you are already getting. If you keep the horse ahead of the cart in your planning, you will have an efficient, stable, measurable conversion rate from which you can extrapolate x amount of additional profit from y amount of new-traffic generation. The following tips are not in any particular order (except for Number 1), and can be modified and reordered to suit your particular situation. Take ownership of the change and improvement, and make sure everyone involved understands the importance of maximizing every revenue source, beginning with the existing ones! 1: Before you can repair or improve something, you have to have a good way of measuring where you are, what you're doing, where you're going, etc. You can sign up for a free Google Analytics... more.. Success Strategies for Optimizing Online Press Release Campaigns Success Strategies for Optimizing Online Press Release Campaigns By Craig Cannings Before I outline the key steps we took in our own online PR endeavors, let's first review the key benefits of an optimized Press Release campaign: I was recently having breakfast with a good friend of mine who is in management with a large Brick and Mortar Company and the topic of Press Releases came up in our conversation. My friend questioned the real value of this medium and pointed out that Press Releases, while certainly apart of his company's communication strategy seemed to have little impact or value on their business as a whole and were rarely picked up by major news publications. Well, in my last online press release campaign, I can honestly say we did not receive an enthusiastic call from the Business editor of USA Today or the New York Times or even the Grand Forks Herald for that matter! However, this recent Press Release campaign did result in a top 5 listing for one of my keywords in Google, multiple top 20 listings, strong placement in Yahoo and Google News, many new quality in-bound links and a significant ?rease in our overall web visibility. The campaign proved to be a roaring success in driving quality traff?and gaining great exposure for our site, even though we were largely ignored by all of the mainstream news publications. So, how did we do it?   ? High Quality One-Way Links to Your Website A well-constructed Press Release campaign can result in multiple in-bound links from various sources such as industry-related websites, news and media sites, many of which have a decent Google Page Rank. Given that our business was launching a... more.. The Importance of Website Conversion The Importance of Website Conversion By Scott Buresh (c) 2009 Medium Blue Many companies make the mistake of spending money in areas where it's not necessary. Take, for example, companies pumping marketing dollars into increasing traffic on the website. It's great to get more traff? but that is just the first step. Now you need that traffic to do something. Website Conversion Defined The percentage of total visitors who come to the website, follow through after clicking on the company's desired point of action (POA) and submit information, download a demo, make a purchase, etc. is the definition of website conversion. In an e-commerce application, multiple visitors will add items to their shopping carts, but a smaller percentage will actually make the purchase. The percentage of visitors that complete the transaction signifies the conversion rate for the website. In a lead-generating application, multiple visitors will follow a path that you desire for them to follow (at first), but will not complete the form, download, etc. The percentage that does signifies the conversion rate. In order to boost the website conversion rate, companies need to determine why potential customers drop out at certain points in the process and eliminate these roadblocks in order to improve sales. Clearly defined POAs, intuitive navigation, and simple checkout processes all make it easier for potential customers to buy, contact, download, or whatever else it is that you want them to do that will lead to a sale. Point of Action Basically, the POA on your website is what you want visitors to do initially. Many websites will have more than one POA, so POAs... more.. Web Directories for SEO Web Directories for SEO by Adrian Lawrence If you are looking for ways to promote your website, then web directories should definitely be considered a big part of your promotional plan. Web directories provide web visitors with a one-stop destination on the web to find the information they are looking for. Further, in using web directories, you can increase the visibility of your website and derive myriad benefits offered by web directories. Let's take a look at the benefits that webmasters derive from web directories: 1. Some webmasters might wonder why they should bother to submit to web directories when 80% of all website traffic comes from search engines. The answer is simple when you consider the following: what about the other 20%? When you are attempting to maximize the traffic that comes to your website, every little bit of promotion helps and web directories can help you gain a big chuck of that 20% of web traffic you have been missing out on. 2. Did you know that a key factor in the ranking algorithm of search engines is link popularity? By using web directories you will be creating more links that point directly to your site and the raising your ranking in various search engines across the Internet. Further, everyone knows that a higher search engine ranking is equivalent to easier accessibility... more.. Green With Envy in the Google Game Green With Envy in the Google Game By Bill Platt (c) 2007 Links And Traff?/A> Beginning on April 14th, 2007, a firestorm blew through the Internet community with the search engine optimization (SEO) community burning the hottest. The embers were warm and waiting for a strong wind to blow and kick up the flames, but it took Matt Cutts, the Google engineer extraordinaire to fire the flames with an off-the-cuff comment about "paid links." The flames raged and in most forums, the wind quickly shifted moving the firestorm back towards Cutts and Google. Thread Watch offered the most biting rebuttal to Cutts' comments: http://www.threadwatch.org/node/13925 and http://www.threadwatch.org/node/13941 . Aaron Wall at Thread Watch is a respectable fellow, and he tore into Google with a ferociousness that I had not anticipated. Matt Cutts tried to answer some of Aaron's quest?s, but it seemed that Cutts' rebuttals only added more fuel to the fire. I would not have wanted to be in Matt Cutts' shoes that week. Oh my, it was brutal! Even on Cutts' own blog where the "paid link" comment originally surfaced , Danny Sullivan posted a question that went unanswered, so Sullivan commented about it on his site. Search Engine Watch even mentioned this issue and linked to additional forums where the debate was raging. What Most Readers Took From Cutts' Comments There were only a few readers who took Matt Cutts' comments to be brotherly-advice. The vast majority of people were screaming that Google intended to exercise their "monopoly control" over the Internet to run all of their competitors out of business. Generally, I am not a "reactionary" type person. But... more.. Top 10 Sins of Blog Usability Top 10 Sins of Blog Usability By Linda Bustos "Sinning" is an archery term, which literally means "to miss the mark." If you're blogging to establish a two-way dialogue with the world, the "mark" is the optimal reader experience. The following is a l? of ten things that can hurt your blog's usability. 10. Sending Mixed Messages The focus of your blog should be decided before your first post and then committed to. Random blog entries about a melee of topics might work for a personal blog read by friends and family, but is not a good approach for a serious, professional blog. The lifeblood of any blog is in its loyal subscriber base. And readers are more willing to subscribe to blogs that talk about their area of interest on a consistent basis. If your blog's "personality" includes the odd personal entry, create a separate category for "fun stuff," "random" or other "personal," and think about each post's fit with your target audience before you publish. Or start a separate blog on that topic and cross-link your blogs. 9. Making It Hard to Subscribe Because subscribers are such an important part of blogging success, you need to make it easy for users to sign up. Since not all users understand and use RSS feed aggregators like Feedburner and Bloglines (also called newsreaders), off?both email and RSS options. Make them very conspicuous, preferably placing them at the top of your navigation menu and above the fold. Don't be afraid to "ask for the subscription" at the end of each post as well. Chicklets are mini-icons that make it easy... more.. Do You Really Need To Come In First Place? Do You Really Need To Come In First Place? By Erin Ferree (c) 2008 When I was in 6th grade, track and field was all the rage. I've never been particularly athletic. But it was 1984 and everyone in my class was pretty fascinated with the Olympics that year. As you can imagine the school's annual track meet turned into a mini-Olympics. So I surveyed the events and the sign-ups for each one. I decided that the long-distance running events held the most promise for glory. The 2 mile, in particular, only had 2 other girls signed up - so I was pretty much assured a "medal". That sounded pretty exciting. Maybe I could go for the gold! However, watching the other events leading up to the 2-mile, I soon learned that one of the other girls was a seasoned runner. She knew all about pacing, how many minutes she should be able to run a mile in, and all that fancy stuff. At that point, I knew that first place was pretty much done for. I barely knew how many laps around the track I had to run. I ran the race anyway and wound up coming in second - which was just fine by me. It's not all about winn? - a place or a show can be just fine. Whenever I talk to a client about search engine placement, this track meet comes into mind. The client comes to me wanting to be Number 1 for their chosen search term. But for many small businesses, being ranked first is not truly that important - and depending on the search term, being... more.. Search Engine Optimization for Universal Search - Back to Square One? Search Engine Optimization for Universal Search - Back to Square One? By Scott Buresh (c) 2007 Organic search engine optimization, until recently, had been a fairly straightforward endeavor. The goal was to optimize the content on a website so that it would show up in the organic results on one or more of the major search engines - results that were comprised of nothing but other websites. However, in the middle of May 2007, Google began rolling out its new "Universal Search," something it had been working on behind the scenes for several years. This new search option may have long-term repercussions for every search engine optimization company in the industry if it is something that is preferred by the public at large and if it becomes the standard going forward. What Is Universal Search? Someone using Google's Universal Search will find that a query brings back results that encompass not only web pages, but also videos, blogs, images, news articles, and other media available online. While Google already had in place options for searching each of these areas individually, many searchers did not notice those options or did not know how to use them, a phenomenon that became known as "invisible tabs." With Universal Search, there's no need to select a separate menu item - the search will return results that encompass many different types of media. For example, a search for "breakdancing" might bring up not only web pages about breakdancing, but also blog posts about it, videos showing technique, and news articles about it. It would not, however, give you the reason why you were wearing parachute pants and trapped in the eighties. However, Universal... more.. Yahoo Panama - Pros and Cons Yahoo Panama - Pros and Cons By Scott Van Achte (c) 2007 Near the end of 2006 Yahoo officially unveiled the new back end for Yahoo Marketing Solutions, widely referred to as the 'Panama' Update. Since then they have been slowly allowing the upgrading of accounts from the old into the new system. While not everyone has had a chance to have their accounts switched over, it is expected that all will be upgraded by the end of this quarter. After several months of waiting, this new backend is a welcomed change as Yahoo finally moves into the future but as with any new system, it is not without its pros and cons. New System Cons There are a few negative aspects that have been widely noted in many forums and by Yahoo advertisers. As with any new design and back end, it is expected that there will be some wrinkles. Most of the problems are relatively minor, and for advertisers on top of their campaigns, these should not present any major issues. One of the downsides most discussed is the transfer of account stats from the old system to the new. Once your account has been transferred, the new system will not log any of the old system historical data. While this information is still accessible by logging into the old interface (which is made read only), it would certainly make more sense if stats were available under the new account login. Another issue is campaign tracking. After the switch has been made, as long as you do not change any tracking settings everything should continue... more.. Attracting Links To Your Website Attracting Links To Your Website By Trey Pennewell (c) 2008 the Phantom Writers You know it is funny in a way. Webmasters have learned that the most important thing that they can do to improve the traffic to their website and to attract attention from the search engines is to build links to their website. But when it comes time to actually start building links to one's website, people typically pick the hardest way to accomplish the task and then they get to work. Working Hard People have been told about various ways to build links to one's website, and they go through the process of picking out the method that they would prefer to use. It is kind of ironic that most people pick the method that they believe will be the easiest and least expensive to achieve, and when all is said and done, they will have picked out the hardest, least effective method of building links. For example, most newcomers to online business choose: Reciprocal links; Directory submissions. With Reciprocal Links, people buy a software package that helps them to search out websites that are supposedly "related" to theirs and then they send an email to the person who owns that website, proclaiming the benefits of trading links and asking for the link. With directory submissions, webmasters can get software that is supposed to help with the process, but it takes hours just to subm?one's website to a few dozen directories. Fortunately, there are service providers who also provide submissions to web directories. Regardless of how you get links subm?ed to web... more.. Social Media and Conan O'Brien Social Media and Conan O'Brien By Pace Lattin (c) 2010 The way I see it, NBC has little chance of survival in the next ten years. They've proven themselves so caught up in the normal TV schedule way of thinking that they fail to understand their audience, what little of it is left. Their lack of knowledge about social media, how it's formed and how it can control the conversation is part of their failure in this situation and may very well be part of their failure as an organization. Conan O'Brien on the other hand was able to harness the internet and social media to make a stand and, in the end, become more famous than he ever was before. I'm going to explain this slowly, for the folks at NBC, if they are reading this. Let's think of Conan O'Brien & Jay Leno as a brand, and that the internet is the next big media thing, where there will be millions and millions of Americans making decisions about their life based on what they read on the internet. When people run a search on this website called GOOGLE, they get thousands of pages of choices that they can read about the topic in which they are interested. That perhaps in the future, someday, consumers and people who watch television (aren't they the same?) will be able to type in "Conan vs Jay" and get real time results that help shape their thinking about the subject, and therefore create brand identification and/or brand alienation depending on what happens. Now for the rest of us, who understand Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization and a bunch of other three word phrases with Affiliate,... more.. How search engine marketing tools can work for you: or, searching is really all about finding How search engine marketing tools can work for you: or, searching is really all about finding Summary This is the second of three articles. Part 1 appeared in the August issue of Information Outlook. Search engine optimization and marketing covers a wide range of activities, many of which are similar to what a reference librarian, systems librarian, or market researcher does. Although the focus is the World Wide Web, many of the tools that are used have broader applications for special librarians. Internal corporate processes. Web analytics tools measure and analyze corporate sales, customer preferences and problems, viable products and channels, and other issues that may provide answers for questions received by special librarians. Competitive intelligence/market research. Keyword research, Web site saturation and popularity tools can provide information on a company's competitors: how they are marketing on the Internet, what they are spending on online marketing campaigns, how they are pricing their products. Legal issues. Who Is tools can provide valuable information relating to copyright and trademark issues. Link Popularity tools can show who is deep-linking to your site. Log files, in conjunction with Who Is tools, can tell you who may be committing click fraud on your paid placement campaigns or spamming your e-mail servers. Back end knowledge of how Web sites work. These tools can show you what may be keeping search engines from indexing your site and can highlight customer service issues. SECOND OF THREE ARTICLES Web site saturation and popularity tools show how much presence a Web site has on search engines through the number of pages of the site that are indexed on each search engine (saturation) and how many times the site is linked to by other sites (popularity). more.. 8 Methods Of Adding More Content To Your Site 8 Methods Of Adding More Content To Your Site By Matt Jackson (c) 2007 Content is king and your content site is your kingdom. When the adage "content is king" was first coined, the web was, in many respects, a simpler place for Webmasters. Creating a website with ten to twenty pages of keyword rich content would generate excellent search engine results and a mass of traff?as a result. Note that keyword rich has now been replaced by keyword optimized ? a subtle difference, but a difference nevertheless. However, the web evolved (difficult to imagine that it's only now considered web 2.0). With the evolution of the web came a much greater demand from web users. Where the static content site was once the epitome of everything good about the Internet, that is less true of the most recent incarnation of the World Wide Web. Your website visitors demand more, but are you able to provide it? We look at various methods of including more content on your website.   More Pages OK, we'll deal with the most obvious method first. Add more pages. It's simple and it might be considered old school to many, but it still has a place. The more pages of content you have, the more information you can provide and the more keywords you can target. The math is simple and the technique is devastatingly simple. Try to add new pages for new topics and, if a particular topic looks like being too verbose, split the page down into several parts. Host? plans usually allow for a lot of disk space so you should have no problems with space limitations in this respect. Content Management Systems... more.. Smart Webmasters are Wasting Online Real Estate Smart Webmasters are Wasting Online Real Estate By Kim Roach (c) 2006 Many webmasters are not using their websites' traff?to full potential. The Web is full of wasted advertising space. Chances are that even your website has some virtual wasteland. These are areas that often go unnoticed by even the most experienced marketers, resulting in the loss of thousands of dollars of potential revenue. Below, four of the most underused online real estate spots are discussed as well as how you can reclaim these areas while maximizing your prof?. 1. 404 Error Pages The dreaded 404 page is something that almost everyone has encountered in their online journeys. The most common reasons for landing on a 404 page include: - a mis-typed URL - an out-of-date bookmark - a search engine link that is out-of-date - an internal broken link that the webmaster hasn't noticed Surveys suggest that approximately 40% of users who run into a 404 Page Not Found error will leave your site, nev?to return. However, as a webmaster, these pages should be customized in order to help the user find their way back to your website. To create your own customized 404 page, keep the following guidelines in mind. Provide an explanation of what went wrong. A nice way to apologize would be to offer them a fr?report. By using this technique, your visitors will not only be impressed by your creativity, but you can also collect their name and email adress at the same time. Provide a link to the site map. By redirecting them to your sitemap, they should be able to quickly and easily find what they are looking for. Provide... more.. Using Social Media to Boost Search Engine Results Using Social Media to Boost Search Engine Results By Lauren Hobson (c) 2009    Most of us are well aware that the search engines frequently change their algorithms to improve search results for users (and foil spammers), which can make it challenging for small businesses just to keep up. But as web technology continues to evolve, it also creates new opportunities for small businesses to improve their SEO strategies and boost their rankings as well. Social media (sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Technorati, Digg, etc.) provide an excellent opportun? for small businesses to not only promote their products and services online, but also to gain significant ground in the search engine results. One of the most critical components to getting top search engine rankings is the number of inbound links and link popularity a web site is able to build. Although there are several existing link building strategies available to small businesses (e.g., press releases, directory submissions, article syndication, etc.), social media can help create additional high-value, on-target inbound links that are essential to achieving top placements in the search engines. For example, each time you use Twitter to publish a link to new content on your web site, that link gets "planted" on the Twitter page of each person following you, and has the potential to spread even further as your followers share that information with their own network of contacts. Integrated Social Marketing (ISM)TM If you have properly integrated your social networking profiles together, that same Twitter "tweet" could then be fed via RSS to your Facebook business profile, your corporate blog, your LinkedIn account, and any number of other social sites that you have set up for your business. It's not a far stretch to imagine... more.. Guide to Listing on DMOZ Guide to Listing on DMOZ By Rob Fenn (c) 2010 What is DMOZ? Dmoz is a human edited directory that has been running since 1998. It was created as a cooperative environment that would allow volunteer editors to keep up with the internet explosion. Way back, Yahoo used to be a directory - not a search engine - and Dmoz was an (eventually bigger) alternative to this. The only difference of course is that we are now well into the Google era of information at your fingertips. Dmoz on the other hand, is pretty much where it started. Dmoz's full title is the Open Directory Project. Dmoz is an acronym for Directory Mozilla. The acronym reflects loose association with ex-owner's Netscape's Mozilla project, an Open Source browser initiative. Originally called 'Gnuhoo' by founder Rich Skrenta, it was renamed the Open Directory Project in October 1998 when it was bought by Netscape. It was then acquired by AOL shortly thereafter, and Dmoz was one of the assets included in the acquisition. Unlike a search engine, for websites to be l?ed in the Dmoz directory, they have to be submitted first. They are then reviewed by individuals (known as Editors) who are assigned to various categories within the Dmoz directory. Is a DMOZ Link Worth It? It's fair to say that Dmoz isn't what it used to be. You may notice whenever you search for something online these days that a Wikipedia entry is often on the first page. This used to be the case for Dmoz, meaning it was a good referrer of traffic to websites. The key words there are that it 'used to be'. Dmoz's category pages do not rank... more.. 4 Quick Ways to Build Quality One-Way Links 4 Quick Ways to Build Quality One-Way Links By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009 Obtaining one-way quality links is often cited as the "Holy Grail" of online success. Especially if you take the SEO route for getting high rankings for all your profitable keywords in the search engines. It's no wonder then, achieving top spots for valuable and popular keywords should be the ultimate goal of any webmaster or online marketer. How well you do in this "link quest" will largely determine the success or failure of your site or online business. Assuming of course, you're going after free organic traffic from the search engines and not using Pay Per Click or other means of succeeding online. Link building and achieving top placements in the search engines (especially Google) has been my main objective for over ten years of online market?. Over the years, I have tried hundreds, if not thousands of link building methods in order to get those links. I would like to discuss briefly some of those methods and then explain in full detail my four favorite and most effective proven ways to get quality one-way links. First, some general tips on how you should approach your link building from the get-go. You must realize the web is based on content; web surfers/users are looking for quality content. If you can supply valuable content that surfers want, you will build your links naturally. People will see your content and want to link to it. This process is often referred to as link baiting - you make your... more.. If You Want To REALLY Promote Your Site, Here's How... If You Want To REALLY Promote Your Site, Here's How... By Steve Shaw (c) 2006 Site promotion gimmicks and traff?techniques come and go, but the ones that really work are those that stand the test of time. This article highlights what I consider to be the most effective methods to promote your web site of all time. 1. Get Your Site High In The Search Engines Getting your site linked high in the search engines for your keywords and keyphrases. One of the best ways to do this is to ensure your site has a good number of incoming links from quality sites - I discuss how to achieve this with relative ease below. Also make sure that your site reflects the keywords/keyphrases that you are looking for - they should be in your title tag, your headline tags, and in your initial paragraphs. Don't however over do it, or it will look like "keyword stuffing" and you will do more damage than good - just make sure they are there in a natural fashion. more.. 7 Things You Can Do Now To Cash in On Social Marketing 7 Things You Can Do Now To Cash in On Social Marketing By Jonathan Jay (c) 2009 Seven is a magic number. Why? Because there are seven simple strategies every small business can employ to jump on the social marketing bandwagon. The best part: most require only a moderate investment of time and/or money. 1. Start Blogging - Blogging is old news to many. Not quite the distant past, but still not the future... sort of a Web 1.5. Is blogging what's 'hot' at the moment? Well, no. It certainly doesn't compare with chasing a link from the front page of Digg. But blogging is alive and well! It continues to be a great way to get interactively connected with your customers. 'Dialoguing' is the reason social marketing exists. How much time you invest in your blog is up to you, but you'll get out what you put in. You don't have to drive yourself crazy putting in daily entries, but you should establish a regular schedule for your blog updates. Otherwise, when people check your blog they'll see the same-old/same-old so often that they'll stop visiting your site... which is the whole reason you started the blog! So don't shoot yourself in the foot by creating a blog that's a visitor-repellent rather than a visitor-magnet. Blogging is not a monologue. Your blog is not the electronic equivalent of Hamlet's soliloquy. Just the opposite! Blogging is about creating conversations and joining others in progress. Take time to read what others in your industry are saying. Get in on the discussion (and get your name out there) by posting your... more.. How I Got 70,000 Useless Visitors To My Site In One Day! How I Got 70,000 Useless Visitors To My Site In One Day! (An Analysis of Social Bookmark Traffic) By Titus Hoskins (c) 2007 Recently, a page on one of my websites was bookmarked or listed on Digg, a popular social bookmark site. It gave me the perfect opportunity to study and analyze the traffic coming from these social media sites. Read to discover the advantages and disadvantages of social bookmark traffic and how it can be applied to your own online market? or site.   Is Social BookMark Traffic Useless? First, we must make the distinction that no traffic is useless. Any visitor to your site is a good thing and should be welcomed. However, all traffic is not created equally, there are great differences in the sources of your traffic. This article takes a close analytical look at social bookmark traffic from an internet marketing perspective. In case you haven't noticed, right now social bookmark and media sites are all the rage on the web. Social bookmark traffic comes from such popular sites as Slashdot, Digg, Stumbleupon... basically these sites are driven by their users - that is, users or members pick and bookmark the content they want to view and discuss. These social bookmark sites are extremely popular; they command the high traffic numbers most ordinary sites can only dream about obtaining. But is this social bookmark traffic useful? Is it worth your time? Should you be actively promoting to these social media sites? Should you concentrate your online market? efforts on these types of sites? More importantly, what are the benefits and disadvantages of getting a front page listing on a site like... more.. More Freeware SEO Tools for the DIY Webmaster - Part 2 More Freeware SEO Tools for the DIY Webmaster - Part 2 By Mel Strocen (c) 2007 In Part 1 of this article , some of the better, freeware keyword, sitemap and ranking tools available to webmasters were listed. Part 2 covers meta tag generators, link popularity apps, link checkers and general SEO tools. Again, all of these tools can be found in the SiteProNews Webmaster Tools Directory along with new additions as we find them. Let's start with a look at meta tag generators. Since meta tags lost their SEO relevance several years ago, most of the freeware programs in this category are either no longer supported or haven't been updated for several years. But, then again, not much has really changed in meta tag usage so the apps listed below should still be useful. Meta Tag Generators 1. BHead 4.1.1 (1.0 MB) is an advanced meta tag generator that can create your entire HEAD section, including CSS style sheets. Generates the code for all popular meta tags and also has an option for custom tags. Keywords and description can be imported from files. Comes with a basic Style Sheet editor that includes a color picker. Other features include spell ch?, search replace, syntax highlighting, etc. For Windows 9x/NT/ME/2K/. 2. Metty Meta Tag Maker 1.31 (2.5 MB) is a meta tag creator with support for 33 meta tags that ensure search engines properly index your website. Easy to use and requires no knowledge of meta tags. For Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP. 3. Search Engine Buddy 1.0 (2.7 MB) analyzes web page meta tags and web page content on or offline to help you create the... more.. Marketing in the New Technological Eco-System Marketing in the New Technological Eco-System By Leslie Lyon (c) 2009 Spas2b Inc. There is a whole technological Ecosystem developing before our eyes, that we can either ignore; adapt to slowly at our own pace (recommended!); or race to embrace. These new methods of network marketing provide us with everything from enhanced lead generation, to high level CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Knowing that many industries are slow to move in the technological arena, I am confident that this "Snapshot" will be eye-opening to many of you! Our Top 5 Sites for Social Networking and Micro-Blogging These are not just communication devices to chat from, they generate leads and help close sales by increasing exposure and developing relationships. Another purpose they serve is to improve your organic ranking, as search engines are now sending traffic to your site based on these social networking "traffic sources". Here are just a few to consider... 1. LinkedIn - Use LinkedIn for business referrals and leads. A great way to introduce men to your business. This business-oriented site is used for professional networking and has a primary demographic of males averaging 41 years of age. Your developed "connections" are people you know and trust in the business. Your connections, connections & their connections (called second degree and third degree connections) allow you to be introduced to possible business opportunities. You can join relevant alumni, industry, or professional groups of your choice. 2. Twitter - Use Twitter to notify your clients of latest business developments; promotions and business initiatives. Demographic of 35-49 is biggest. This "follow-me" site allows you to put in up to 140 characters which are displayed on your profile page and delivered to those... more.. Is Google No 1 Forever? Is Google No 1 Forever? By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor, StepForth Placement Inc. Google is without a doubt the world's number one search engine. According to the research firm Neilsen/NetRatings, Google's share of the global search market in February 2006 was 48.5%, more than double the 22.5% share its nearest rival Yahoo saw. Having been the engine of choice for nearly five years, Google is synonymous with search. Because Google is the first thing most folks think of when they think about search, it is the most important search marketing venue, at least for the vast majority of SEOs. That might be changing in the coming years. There's a sense in the SEO sector that the horizons have expanded significantly and the search marketing map has gotten far larg? What the new landscape will look like exactly, and how large Google's footprint will be, is still unknown. The emerging online environment is still being explored, so to speak. As it is explored, it is evolving very quickly. In many ways, it feels like the early days of the commercial web where everyone knew that everything was about to change, but no one really knew exactly how. While Google's influence is incred?e and its dominance appears unassailable, a number of... more.. 20 Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools 20 Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007 Anyone working in Search Engine Marketing knows that this industry travels at warp speed. If you're trying to market your web site or the web sites of your clients via search engines, chances are your time is limited - severely limited. To squeeze as much into my schedule as possible without resorting to self-cloning, my daily routine involves the use of a range of time-saving tools and software. I use such tools on a daily basis and I truly don't know how I'd function without them. I'm not the only one. I've talked to other SEM experts and they also rely on various tools to help them through their hectic schedules. Here is a l? of 20 must-have tools used by busy SEM professionals:   1. Freshbooks Invoicing and Timesheets Freshbooks is an online estimating, invoicing, project management and time tracking service that gives your business a professional image, no matter how small. I use it to invoice all my clients online and it can even be set up to automatically bill and debit the cred?cards of recurring clients every month. It also has built in staff timesheets and project management tools for online collaboration.   Price: Free for 3 clients or less   2. XML Sitemaps Generator The XML Sitemap Generator trawls through all levels of your site to generate an XML sitemap. It also gives you a running count of pages, provides a text-based URL l? and a HTML sitemap you can import straight into your site. The online version of the generator is free for sites of less than 500 pages, but there's also a low-cost script-based... more.. 5 Tips for Writing Website Content - That Gets Results! 5 Tips for Writing Website Content - That Gets Results! By Brandon Cornett (c) 2008 I'm going to ask you to use your imagination for a moment. Think of a topic that interests you. Maybe it's your favorite sport or hobby, for example. Now imagine that you're searching the Internet for information on that topic. The first article you come across is related to the topic you're researching, but it doesn't offer much in the way of value. It's too general and full of pointless "fluff." It makes obvious points that a third-grader could grasp. And it fails to offer any related information or resources. The second article you come across is much more in-depth. It explains several aspects of your topic with refreshing insight. It is helpful and useful, and it links out to many related articles and resources on the subject. If you could only bookmark one of these pages for future reference, which one would it be? It would be the second page, right? You, like most people, would probably prefer the second page to the first. It's an easy choice, and that's because the author of the second article understood (and delivered) the most important concept of website content development -- the value factor. 5 Benefits of High-Value Web Content This kind of content has value for the reader, obviously. But it also benefits the author / publisher. Here are the top five benefits of creating high-value website content for your small business website: 1. It keeps people on your website longer. 2. It makes people more inclined to trust you. 3. It encourages readers to recommend the site to others. 4. It encourages other webmasters to link to your... more.. Top 10 Ways to Improve Search Engine Ranking Top 10 Ways to Improve Search Engine Ranking By Darren Dunner (c) 2007 My top 10 ways to improve search engine rankings are based on 7 years of banging my head against the world wide web's search engines and reading numerous books on top 10 SEO tactics. Let me say first of all that there are a lot of books, sources and tutorials that make promises of getting your website into the top 10 spots on the major search engines. Most of these are self promoting and the end result is that you have to hire these people to accomplish the things they say you can do on your own. So I want to preface this by saying that this article on how to improve search engine rankings is not necessarily a do-it-your-self guide. In fact, the art of SEO can be time consuming and irritating to say the least. Some methods require the help of companies like mine so I write this in hopes that you will understand what it really takes to gain exposure, realize what you can do on your own and determine when you need assistance. One final point I want to make is "Don't use any SEO Company that can't explain what it is doing and that makes claims of using secr?software that you can nev?see or use". Yes, SEO can be complex but not to the point that you can't understand what is being done. A good SEO company is able to educate you on what is being done and explain that it is best to leave some techniques to the experts. My 10 Ways to Improve Search Engine Ranking... more.. 10 Tips For Creating a Brilliant Landing Page 10 Tips For Creating a Brilliant Landing Page By Joanna Colek (c) 2009 Building a great landing page should be on top of your priority list if you want your website visitors transformed into customers. While a great looking website can grab the attention of your visitors, a strong landing page will keep them involved and get them to buy your products/services. Wikipedia defines a landing page as: The page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, and that is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines. Wikipedia's definition sums it up nicely but there is certainly more to a great landing page then relevant and keyword rich content. Here are 10 things that you should be looking at when optimizing a landing page: - Relevant Content A landing page's content should be directly related to organic search results, PPC campaign, anchor text in inbound links and any other targeted inbound advertising, online and offline. If people don't get what they expect, they will be more likely to leave. - Multiple Landing Pages A landing page shouldn't necessarily be your homepage. In many instances a homepage is a good landing page. However, for more targeted traff?and better results, you want a landing page to be focused on a specific offering and specific call for action. To accomplish this, a given website should have multiple landing pages. Create some deep link landing pages that will focus on a specific proposition and your conversion rate will be higher. - Focus on Functionality More and more visitors seem to judge the professionalism and... more.. Hidden Content Sources for Your Website Hidden Content Sources for Your Website By Kim Roach (c) 2006 As I travel through the Google search engine, there is one element that defines almost all of the top-ranking websites. It's great content. People come online for information and those that offer the best content reap the greatest rewards. Unfortunately, this type of content is hard to come by. In most cases, you either have to spend hours in front of the keyboard or outsource the job to others. Both of these options are very costly. One requires your valuable time and the other requires an ?estment of around $10 - $20 per article. That's why I have scoured the net in search of valuable fr?content sources. I'm still not quite sure why I'm revealing my treasured piles of fr?content, but I certainly hope you enjoy them. One of my favorite sources of content is public domain. This comprises the body of knowledge without a copyright. Anyone can use this material for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Below are some excellent sources for public domain material. Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg is a library of 18,000 fr?ebooks whose copyright has expired. "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", "Pride and Prejudice", "The Time Machine", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and "The Canterbury Tales" have all passed into the public domain. This means that you can put these on your website or even sell them in electronic or book format. Explore a wealth of fr?content at Gutenberg.org. Archive.org At Archive.org you can find th?nds of works that are currently in the public domain. Want to put some cartoons on... more.. The Impact of Social Media on Search Rankings The Impact of Social Media on Search Rankings By Susan Esparza (c) 2007 Over the past few years, the Internet has increasingly become a participatory social network where user-generated content is just as important as traditional advertising messages. This means your articles, blog posts, videos, podcasts, and other comments on the Web are now critical sources of information about your company, your products and services. This phenomenon has given consumers a voice and weakened the power formerly held by advertising media. Social media, therefore, becomes increasingly important to a Web site's success and its visibility in search engines. Not long ago, search engine optimization focused on fine-tuning your on- and off-page Web site elements in order to achieve better rankings in the search engines. While on-page elements remain the fundamental building blocks of your SEO campaign, it is no longer the entirety of the puzzle. With the rise of social media, it is more important than ever to create and optimize many different types of content in order to dominate the SERPs. The ?rease in user-generated content, and implementation of Google search personalization and universal search, has helped bring this about. Search Personalization In personalized search, individual user search results are reordered based on their previous search behavior and other indicators. Pages can move up or down based on the influence of a user's Google home page content, bookmarks, search history, Web history, etc. While Google is the only search engine currently adjusting rankings using personalization factors, Yahoo and Ask have variations on this theme with MyWeb and MyStuff. Google's reasons for initiating search personalization are that it delivers more relevant results and can reduce sp@m. Others have... more.. SEO Web Links - Directory Alternatives SEO Web Links - Directory Alternatives By Joel Walsh If you were writing a textbook on SEO linking circa 2001, you almost certainly would have included a chapter on web directories. They used to be the primary way of actively acquiring one-way inbound links, before content syndication, blogs, or the paid link market really took off. Web Directories and SEO Links: What Went Wrong? Fast forward a few years, and you'd have to rewrite the chapter on directories and web links. In fact, you would probably downgrade web directories from a chapter to a page or two. In the SEO world, nothing good ever lasts long, and so it is with web directories. ? Traff?/B> With Google more accurate than ever, there was no more reason to turn to a human-edited list of websites. A directory might get you one or two click-throughs a month--or none at all. ? Redirects Once directory owners realized their link popularity was valuable, they started hoarding it. Overnight, many, if not most, directories switched their HTML links to search-engine-invisible redirects. more.. Three Hot Trends to Watch Out For Three Hot Trends to Watch Out For By Michel Fortin (c) 2008 Since the new year is right around the corner, bloggers and marketers alike are posting their predictions as if a psychics convention has come to town. So in keeping with that tradition, I'd like to post a few of my own. But unlike those who post their predictions in point form, I won't make a specific l? but rather share with you some of my thoughts. (Near the end, however, this post will culminate in what I believe will be three major trends to watch out for and dive into, if you want to make some serious money in 2008 and beyond.) First off, let me state that you may or may not agree with me on these. But something is definitely going on right now that points to these three trends. All the clues are pretty evident, and you've probably seen some of these yourself. What I'm talking about is... ... Internet marketing is correcting itself. When the stock market tumbles, short of a full-on crash, they call it a "correction." Sometimes it happens precipitously. Other times, it takes place over a period of time. Likewise, I believe that Internet marketing, right now, is going through a similar correction. It may not be as precipitous as the stock market, but it's indeed quite significant. To explain what I mean, let me back up a bit. If you've read Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing The Chasm", then you understand the product adoption curve. (In marketing and academic circles, they call it the "Diffusion Process.") In plain English, it means that new markets go through a certain adoption process that... more.. Fluff vs. Quality Content Fluff vs. Quality Content By Devin Hansen (c) 2007 There are basically three types of content you can use for your site. Fluff, leased, or custom. All three have their pros and cons, but which would work best for ranking well with Google and the other major engines? Let's first explore the definitions of this varied content: Fluff: Written cheaply by non-native-speaking writers, and used to fill up a web site with inexpensive content. Leased: Identical articles that are well-researched and written, but sold to numerous web sites. Custom: Well-researched, authoritative content that is tailored specifically to meet the needs of you and your business. Fluff content is fine for businesses just starting out. It helps you to at least get a place in the race to the top of the search engines, but for long-lasting results, fluff just won't cut it. The wording is often choppy, incoherent, and doesn't achieve your primary goal which is customer conversion. Also, if the content of your site is sloppy, it will not instill confidence in a potential customer. Leased content works well because it is professionally written, topical, and easy to find. Search engine algorithms favor content that has keywords and phrases that are strategically placed but those words and phrases must also be embedded in text that is lean and carefully crafted for consistent results. The drawback of leased content is that it can be found in a wide variety of other websites and cannot meet the unique needs of your business or specifically target the audience that you want to attract. Custom Content Custom content is content that has been professionally crafted to feature the keywords and phrases... more.. How to Find Free Content for your Web Site How to Find Free Content for your Web Site By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007 I see a lot of webmasters complain in forums and chat rooms that they don't have enough content on their web sites, but they don't have the means or the knowledge to find more. There are actually many ways to obtain more web site content. You could hire someone to write it for you. You could purchase some ready made content about your site topic or you could spend some time and write content yourself. But did you know that there is a way you can get hundreds of pages worth of high quality, fresh content every day without paying a cent? There is. It's called article syndication. Article Syndication Articles relating to thousands of topics are freely available for syndication on web sites. Authors provide them for this purpose to gain a wider audience and achieve more back links. Generally, the only requirement for webmasters is that the author's by-line, resource box and link are included with the published article. In terms of copyright, you simply need to follow the author's publishing guidelines when republishing their article. This usually involves an "About the Author" paragraph at the bottom of each article with a sentence and link to the author's site. These syndication requirements are generally specified in the article itself. How to do it: 1) Browse the Internet to find articles you can syndicate. I use the article announcement groups at Yahoo Groups, but you can also find them at sources such as Submit Your Articles. 2) View the articles being distributed by the group and review their freshness and... more.. SEO: Best Practices SEO: Best Practices By John Sylvester A few nights ago I was asked by a regular in a bar I frequent: 'what is this pub doing with a website? Somewhat bemused, I replied that it receives substantial hits to its website and that it is listed on all the Bangkok portals. More importantly, they have consistently remained at #1 on Google, Yahoo!, MSN and the other major search engines for well over a year. Visitors the site, although not verifiable, must convert into a lot of money.' He looked slightly bemused, shrugged his shoulders and muttered something about not knowing much about search engines. That is where we stand on building websites: our philosophy is based on making the web work for our clients; in providing them with a new revenue source. We don't just deliver tastefully designed websites, we also provide detailed research which we convert into accurately anticipated keywords likely to be used by potential visitors when searching for a source of information. With this knowledge, we optimise our clients' web pages and register it with sites we know will boost its rankings. This strategy has been successfully employed on sites based in Thailand, the UK, Germany, Australia, France, Austria and France. But there is another option to be seriously considered: commercial search. It is by far the most dynamic and fast-growing industry segment now, estimated to extend beyond $5billion by 2006. Pioneered by Overture (now Yahoo!), pay-per-click was created in response to three fundamental issues concerning internet search: poor quality results; random ordering of listings; and a weak advertising revenue model. It solved these problems by creating a real-time market for keyword bidding. Recently, however, it has spawned a series of bidding wars among a growing number of... more.. Websites, It's the Experience Stupid Websites, It's the Experience Stupid By Jerry Bader (c) 2007 The other day I picked up a book that was sitting on my night table for over a year. It's just a small book and seemed like an easy read, perfect for falling sleep. It was called, "The Invisible Touch" by Harry Beckwith. Mr. Beckwith has written several books and is an expert on positioning, branding, and client relations. I wasn't sure if I was going to bother reading it or not, but after looking at the introduction I was hooked. This guy knew what he was talking about; he must because I agreed with most everything he said. That surely makes him an expert, at least in my eyes. Anyway, he tells a story about going to a concert for one of his favorite artists, a Laura Nyro. He purchased her recordings and loved them for their exquisite sound and her technical playing ability but the concert was a disaster. Ms. Nyro performed with her usual skill and precision, but she nev?once looked at the audience, preferring instead to sit at the piano staring offstage while she played. Each song was preceded by a perfunctory introduction that was barely addressed to the audience. Needless to say, Harry was disappointed, as you can imagine anyone would be.   The Difference Between Products and Services The point of the story Harry Beckwith was making was that there is a big difference between products and services. To quote from his book, "Products are made; services are delivered. Products are used; services are experienced." In this case, recordings are products and concerts are services. This got me thinking of my own experience, perhaps not... more.. Tactics to Draw People Back to Your Site Tactics to Draw People Back to Your Site By Jeremy A Gislason (c) 2009 One of the biggest measurements of a website's success is the stickiness of its visitor base. Generally web masters would rather have 1,000 visitors who return regularly (they are "stuck to the site") as opposed to 3,000 visitors who only visit once or twice. These days the web is massive, carving out a niche for your site and gaining a following within that niche is the key to success. There are many reasons why you should try to make your website as sticky as possible. Visitors who return regularly are more likely to purchase some of your products or content. If you have a membership site, then retaining your member base is critical for growing your ?ome and long term success. Also, a faithful following will encourage viral promotion of your site. Search engine optimization can be a costly and time consuming task and your site's listing can be hammered down by the powers that be (Google) in the blink of an eye. If you gain a faithful user base though, they will tell their friends and family about your site and encourage them to use it as well. Viral marketing is the cheapest and most effective type of marketing there is and making your site and content desirable is the only way to achieve this phenomenon. There are "five C's" of stickiness to remember, and they are: Content Regardless of the site's design, without good content, the visitor will not come back or stay at the site for more than a few minutes. "Content is King" is a clich?but true. High quality content is far and away the most important... more.. Copyrights, Trademarks and Patents. Understanding Intellectual Property Copyrights, Trademarks and Patents. Understanding Intellectual Property By Kelly Sims (c) 2007 You are a business owner with a web presence. During a routine Google search for your page ranking, you discover something disturbing. There is another company out there with a name very similar to yours and almost identical content on their website. What do you do? Is your company name and website content automatically protected by copyright law? Should you have registered your company name as a trademark? Can you demand that they change their name and dismantle their website immediately? Intellectual Property can be a confusing topic, and one that all business owners should know about. Sadly however, many entrepreneurs simply don't. Intellectual property is in very simple terms an idea that legally belongs to somebody, be they a company or an individual. Only the owner of that idea, or somebody the owner has a legal agreement with can use the idea. Generally, the owner of the idea is usually its creator unless someone paid them to create the idea, in which case the idea's owner is the person who paid for the idea. There are different kinds of intellectual property, but for the purpose of this article, we will focus on copyright, patent and trademark. Patent ? A patent protects the creators of new inventions. An invention can include anything from a new product or business method to a recipe. If you decide to patent your invention, there a few things you should know. First, you will need to apply for a patent in every country where you would like your invention to be protected. Secondly,... more.. Machine Translation SEO Machine Translation SEO for Foreign Language Search Engine Success By Mike Banks Valentine (c) July 12, 2006 Are English speaking websites based in the US simply insular and uncaring about foreign web traff?or are we actually Xenophobic? Xenophobia - a phobic attitude toward strangers - comes from the Greek words xenos, meaning "foreigner", "stranger". Trolling through the "referrers" section in my web site traff?logs routinely shows hundreds of Google foreign language searches. Those foreign language search referrals usually total just slightly more than the combined total of Yahoo and MSN English language search referrals. So doesn't it make sense to pay more attention to foreign language search in SEO than to fiddle with Yahoo and MSN optimization? My traff?logs routinely show hundreds of translation tool referrals. Those referrals come from foreign language searchers that REALLY want to read the pages. Foreign language visitors who don't know about online translation tools (like Google's) will leave the search result pages without visiting your site. Why not provide your pages in the most common European and Asian languages with your text in their native language already? Look in your logs for the following referrer URL: http://64.233.179.104/translate_c with URL's of your own site appended. This query at "Google English" is a request by a foreign language user for a translation of that page on your site. The most common of them are from Google.es (Spain) and Google.de (Germany) and Google.pt (Portugal). Last month there were nearly 1,000 of these queries from Google translation tools in my logs. Ch? that tool out here: http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en This translation - or "Language Tools" page at Google is helpful in escaping our insular attitudes about English language search... more.. Why 2010 Will Be A White Knuckle Ride For Web Marketers | Why 2010 Will Be A White Knuckle Ride For Web Marketers | By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009 Next year may just prove to be one of the most challenging times for pursuing online or Internet marketing on the web. It may just be a watershed moment for many marketers struggling to keep abreast of all the different factors which have come into play in recent months. Most of these changes will stem from two main sources for potential upheaval: the first being the New FTC (Federal Trade Commission) Guidelines regarding Testimonials and Endorsements and the second being "ALL" the recent changes within Google. Actually, we already have the new FTC Guidelines which came into effect on Dec. 1st of 2009, but how these new rules are enforced will play out in the coming year as test-cases are brought to court. Basically, these new rules call for absolute disclosure and full transparency regarding Testimonials and Endorsements when a product or service is being offered for sale. Any business (monetary) relationship between the endorser and the company must be made known to the potential buyer. Obviously for those in online or affiliate marketing this could have a great impact if these new rules are strictly enforced. Just imagine all the website owners and bloggers who slap a few banners or affiliate links on their sites to cover hosting or operating costs... will they now have to disclose all these business arrangements? For professional affiliate marketers and the companies/products they're promoting, these new guidelines could cause potential headaches and/or legal ramifications since a general blanket disclaimer on their sites will no longer be suffice. To help solve this problem, many of the major companies are now placing... more.. Reciprocal Linking vs. Mutual Linking Reciprocal Linking vs. Mutual Linking By Scottie Claiborne  Some of the advice floating around regarding linking for your site can be pretty confusing, especially when it comes to reciprocal linking. Is it something you have to do? Can your site succeed without reciprocal links? Will you be penalized for reciprocal linking? There are so many conflicting theories. Let's try to clear the subject up a little. Link Popularity The founders of Google worked off a premise that has been active in academic papers for years: citation authority. They found that the more academic papers cited another's work, the more likely that cited work was to be an authority on the subject. Similarly, when a lot of sites link to one site, it's likely that site is an authority for the topic. The "topic" is whatever those links say it is. If 25 sites link to another site with the term "oak shelving," it's likely that page is an important page for oak shelving. Manipulation of Links It didn't take long for people who wanted to rank well for certain terms to figure out that they needed a lot of links with their chosen keyword phrases to improve their rankings in the search engines. Many schemes were born, including mini-sites, site networks, link farms, and reciprocal linking. Reciprocal Linking At the most basic level, reciprocal links are links you trade with other sites (you add their link, they add yours) in order to build link popularity. There are online services, group exchanges, and software available to help you link up with more like-minded webmasters, fast. As a result, many sites have grown sizeable directories on topics that have nothing to do with their area of expertise, simply because those other sites were willing to... more.. How a Google Penalty Can Make Your Site Stronger How a Google Penalty Can Make Your Site Stronger By Ross Dunn, CEO/Founder (c) 2009   Over the past 12 years consulting on web marketing I have answered countless questions but one question I receive often stands out from all; how to clear a Google penalty. The following is an example of a question I received in the past from a person named Patrick: Please Help! For the last 8 years we were #1 for a ton of search terms but then my site got penalized by Google because we had overused some keywords. We fixed the issue months ago but my top rankings are all still over the place. Sometimes we get back into the top 10 and we all breathe a sigh of relief, then just a few hours later we are on page 5. What is going on and how can I correct this? We are beyond frustrated! First, Some Research In order to answer Patrick's question I needed to find out a couple of things about his website to make my answer more accurate: ? His site has excellent content right now and when I looked at past versions of the site I see the content was still great but definitely had keyword stuffing problems. Key finding: his site is really well done so I can see why it had top rankings before. ? I took a look at competitors found in the top 10 under several keyword searches that were obviously main targets for his website. After reviewing the backlinks for each competitor's sites I could see they were all very well entrenched but their content was not... more.. How To Effective Link Building through Link Baiting How To Effective Link Building through Link Baiting By Rob Sullivan (c) 2006 There is a tactic out there embraced by bloggers but rarely used by typical websites. It is called Link Baiting. In this article I explain what link baiting is and how everyone, not just bloggers, can use it to build quality links. This is a topic that's been around for a while but I don't think a lot of people know what it is, or how to use it to their advantage. I think the name "Link Baiting" could be considered a black hat technique which is why most people wouldn't consider it as a legit?te organic tactic. However link baiting is merely link building with a twist: Rather than hunting out links, you are bringing the links to you through unique and popular site content. So how does Link Baiting work?more.. Analysts Speculate on IT Tech Trends for 2008 Analysts Speculate on IT Tech Trends for 2008 By Anne Sych (c) 2007 Novo Help Desk Software What are the experts predicting for tech trends in 2008? At the recent Gartner Symposium/ITxpo held last October in Orlando, more than 6000 senior business and IT strategists from virtually all major industries gathered for the industry's largest conference to gain the latest advice on driving prof? and performance with IT. Attendees rely on the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo for their annual planning and to gain insight into how their organizations can best use IT to address business challenges and improve operational efficiency. Reflecting Gartner's very latest research findings, the analysts projected the 10 technologies likely to play a 'strategic' role in 2008. Gartner defines a strategic technology as one "with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years." In addition Gartner also looks at "high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar ?estment, or the risk of being late to adopt." "Companies should factor these technologies into their strategic planning process by asking key quest?s and making deliberate decisions about them during the next two years," said David Cearley, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "Sometimes the decision will be to do nothing with a particular technology. In other cases it will be to continue investing in the technology at the current rate. In still other cases, the decision may be to test/pilot or more aggressively adopt/deploy the technology. The important thing is to ask the question and proactively plan." Here's a look at the top 10 tech trends, and what... more.. Google's New Patent Translated Google's New Patent Translated By Kim Roach (c) 2006 There is always great interest within the search engine marketing community whenever a search engine files for a patent. This is especially true for Google, which just recently released a new patent application - System and method for supporting editorial opinion in the ranking of search results. However, we must keep in mind that just because a patent has been applied for or granted, the search engines may or may not implement the patent within their primary search results. Nevertheless, these patents often do give us clues about what the search engines are looking for in a website. Some of Google's patents have given us insight into the influence of anchor text, fresh content, themes, data history, link popularity, user behavior, and domain-related information. However, Google's most recent patent application shows a shift from focusing on algorithm-based changes to the integration of a human editorial process. Ultimately, Google is striving to create the best possible search results for their visitors. This patent proposes one possible method for doing that. For the most part, search engine algorithms have reached their peak. We've known for quite some time now that an algorithm-based search engine can never permanently deliver excellent results. Why, you might ask. Simply because there will always be people out there trying to reverse-engineer the system. Therefore, a cat and mouse game is created. Out of this problem, a number of solutions have evolved. One of these is social search engines, which rank their results based on the wisdom of crowds. Another solution to arise from this problem is a human editorial process. And now, Google has proposed in their patent application a... more.. Google Reinvents the Phone with Google Voice Google Reinvents the Phone with Google Voice By Merle (c) 2009 twitter.com/msmerle When it comes to "cool tools", Google is the master inventor. Say what you want about Google, but they know what they're doing when it comes to giving the public what they want and need. Take the telephone for instance. An old invention that now has been given a new twist with " Google Voice" (G.V.) . Hold onto your chair as I'm about to tell you how to have a lot more fun with Ma Bell. Google is giving you the ability to manage all your phones with one centralized number. At the time of this writing, it's only available to those in the U.S., and by invitation only. Upon registration, you'll be given your phone number that you connect to any existing phone number. When someone calls the Google Voice number, it rings the phone number that you specified. The option of selecting a word for your personalized number is also given. Now, if all Google Voice did was send phone calls to your cell phone, that would be great all by itself, but the amount of extra tools and features are truly amaz?. When a call is received you can answer it, send it directly to voice mail, listen in on the incoming call to decide what to do with it, or start recording the call upon answering. How's that for a few options? After receiving a call you'd like to record, hit 4 on your phone to start recording. Different states have different laws when it comes to recording calls, so check your current federal and state laws before using this feature. Currently outbound... more.. What is Internet Marketing? What is Internet Marketing? By Daniel Scyphers (c) 2008 Internet marketing is still a complete mystery to a large majority of Internet users. For many users, internet marketing is seen as some foreign area of the web, populated with silly get-rich-quick schemes and unsavory characters ready to rip off the innocent and uninformed consumer at the click of a mouse. In reality, Internet marketing is populated mainly with hard working professionals promoting and selling high quality brand products by many of the world's Top 500 companies. Worldwide there are now over a billion Internet users, representing one large global consumer base or marketplace. The total amount of goods sold online has been steadily increasing each year as the Internet gains in both popularity and familiarity. Studies have shown people shop online because of lower prices, a wider selection of products, easier comparison shopping, and many just prefer not having to travel to stores to make a purchase. Still Internet marketing has gotten a raw deal. If you mention to any group of professionals that you're an Internet Marketer and that you work full time on the Internet... you will receive some very skeptical looks and more than one arched eyebrow of disbelief. Regardless of this lingering skepticism, Internet marketing has become a viable alternative for many disgruntled professionals dissatisfied with their working hours or conditions. It has become a viable alternative for many people from all walks of life. From the college student to the bored housewife to the retired doctor... all are enjoying a part time or full time income from the comfort of their homes. And since the Internet is now practically available to... more.. 20 Simple Ways To Get Massive Traffic To Your Web Site 20 Simple Ways To Get Massive Traffic To Your Web Site By Penny Sansevieri (c) 2008 Embarking on an Internet marketing campaign doesn't have to be difficult, tricky, or complicated. Here are a few simple ways (twenty in fact) that you can easily implement to get tons of traffic to your site right now! 1) Write articles: believe it or not this is an incredible tool for driving traffic. Well-written, relevant articles can net quite a bit of activity to your web site. Don't forget to add your URL in your byline. Articles should be 500 to 2,000 words in length. You can send articles to sites like: Article City, GoArticles, Submit Your Articles and Ezine Articles. 2) Social bookmark *everything* - and I do mean everything - you can bookmark each page of your site and each blog entry you post. While this might seem tedious, it's worth it. You'll see a strong increase in traffic if you social bookmark each page on your site and each of your blog entries. 3) List yourself in the best directories ? you'll have to pay for this but since most people don't do this (since everyone's looking for a freebie) you could really enhance your traffic by getting a listing: dir dot yahoo dot com, business dot org, botw dot org. 4) Get yourself listed at: DMOZ dot org ? it's not easy to get listed there, but worth the effort. 5) Review: if you can review hot new products or books within your market, head on over to Amazon and start positioning yourself as an... more.. 7 Characteristics of a Great Webpage 7 Characteristics of a Great Webpage By Titus Hoskins (c) 2006 What makes for a great webpage? Wouldn't you like to know the main ingredients for creating a superior webpage? What basic elements you must have if you want a solidly designed webpage? A webpage that will stand out and be noticed by your visitors. One that will keep those visitors returning to your site, again and again. An effective webpage that is 95% better than most of the other pages on the Net. Follow these simple design features when creating your next webpage and you will have the answer: 1. Good Keywords The nucleus. The conception. Good keywords are the very first building blocks you must consider before your webpage even becomes a dim notion in your head. Picking the right keyword or keyword phrase is the ultimate factor that will determine the success or failure of your webpage. You must do major research on the keyword or keyword phrases that will be the focal point and drawing card for your webpage. You must get this right. It is vital. It is the single most important element of a webpage. You can use keyword research software and sites such as GoodKeywords, Wordtracker.com, Nichebot.com, or superior keyword research software such as Brad Callen's Keyword Elite. Regardless of what process you favor, you must choose your keywords very carefully. You must ch? the competition for your chosen keywords or phrase. You must ch? the number of searches made each month for your keyword. You must also ch? the keyword density of your page to see if it will register in the search engines. You may have to adjust or... more.. The Ultimate Guide to Directory Submissions The Ultimate Guide to Directory Submissions By David Eaves (c) 2008 Submitting to directories is a great way to build links and increase your search engine rankings. In semi-competitive industries it can produce great results. If you add article creation and social media marketing into the link building equation then you can achieve great results for any industry. The Ultimate Guide to Directory Submissions Free or Paid Directories? When choosing directories going for the paid ones can be better, mainly because the links seem to last a lot longer. Many of the free directories seem to disappear or delete links after a year or so. However, there are a few free directories out there that should always be used - directories that have stood the test of time. Niche or General Directories? Submitting to a combination of both niche and general directories is usually a good idea. For most industries there are a variety of niche directories out there - the best way to find them is through a search engine. Do a search on Google, MSN or Yahoo for directories in your niche area - those that come up in the first few pages of results are usually the best ones to use. With general directories it's better to go for those that are more established. The older a directory is, the better. PageRank - Does It Still Matter? Because directories are generally quite large, they need a certain amount of PageRank to get all of their pages indexed properly. However a high PageRank isn't the be-all and end-all. Google's recent crackdown on directories has made visible PageRank even more irrelevant when it comes to... more.. Search for secret millions + Google Search for secret millions + Google Ori Allon ? the 26-year-old UNSW student who promise to change web searches. IT IS the hush-hush deal that could be worth millions - many, many millions. Google, the world's biggest player in the internet search business, has paid the University of NSW an undisclosed sum for the rights to a mathematical process that promises to change the way we explore the web. But it is unclear how rich it will make Ori Allon, the 26-year-old doctoral student at the university who developed the algorithm, or formula, at the heart of the process. It could become the basis for the next generation of search engines, improving the relevance of responses to a search - and displaying a more detailed taste of each file so users can better decide if it is what they need. But having won a tussle against its two main competitors - Yahoo! and Microsoft - to secure the rights, Google has gagged Mr Allon and UNSW from saying too much. What we know is this: Mr Allon came to Sydney in March 2005 to work on a project run by Dr Eric Martin, of the university's computer science department, to develop a better search engine. Six months later, the team announced it had developed Orion - named after Mr Allon - which the university said would "revolutionise existing search engines". "I provided the spark," Dr Martin said last year, "but it is Ori who developed this through his amazing creati-vity and sheer hard work." Yesterday, he said: "What others would have taken two to three years to do, he did in six months." The university took the formula to the US, and now Mr Allon is working out of Google's head office in California. But because of confidentiality agreements, all the university can do is confirm that Mr Allon is... more.. Social Media Optimization - The Power Of Popular Opinion Social Media Optimization - The Power Of Popular Opinion By Brian Easter (c) 2008 Why should I care about Social Media Optimization? You should care about Social Media Optimization (SMO), because you care about your company's image. There's an old saying that goes something like, "A happy customer will tell one other person about his good experience. A disgruntled customer will tell ten people about his bad experience." Good or bad, that's powerful marketing. Social Media Optimization gives you the power to take an active role in managing your brand by interacting with your current and potential clients by discussing your products, their comments and concerns and continually promoting your brand. Social Media Optimization Defined In its most basic form, Social media optimization is any method used to raise your website's online visibility through meaningful communication. SMO opens a dialogue between you and your clients, using the power of popular opinion to fuel your marketing campaign. The open format strengthens your search engine optimization efforts by fostering a mutual connection with your clients through the myriad of online communities, also called social media sites. Current examples of SMO include: Creating profiles in social media communities such as MySpace, Facebook, and VIRB. Participating in and/or creating blogs. Disseminating your blogs or articles using RSS feeds. Creating and sharing content through community based sites like Flickr, YouTube, and more. Not to incorporate unnecessary buzz words, but SMO is a very Web 2.0 approach to Search Engine Optimization. Of course, Web 2.0 merely refers to the perceived second generation of Web-based communities and hosted services... more.. SEO for Traff?with Content vs Ranking with Links SEO for Traff?with Content vs Ranking with Links By Joel Walsh How do you grow your search engine traff?without adding a single new link or making any changes to your existing webpages? It's simple. Just add content. Simply having keyword-optimized pages of content on your site won't rank you high for competitive search engine keywords ? that's a fact of life. But keyword-optimized content can really bring in the traff?for low-competition and unique keywords. The low-competition and unique keywords are typically longer multi-word variants of the keyword. For instance, instead of "search engine ranking," "ranking for search engine traff?niche keywords." If you have lots of pages of optimized content?and you optimize well ? all the search engine traff?from these low-competition keywords will really add up. Plus, you'll usually get more repeat visitors and type-in traff? too. Just picture this realistic example of traffic-building with content vs. ranking-building with links. Company A invests $5,000 for link-building in order to rank for a competitive keyword. Company B invests the same amount, only in content. Company A and Company B: each start out on... more.. The 10 Commandments of Press Releases The 10 Commandments of Press Releases By Bill Stoller, Publisher (c) 2007 In baseball, it's said that you know an umpire is top-notch when you nev?notice his presence. If he's doing his job, he won't call attention to himself in any way. It's much the same for the writer of a press release. When the recipient of a release focuses only on its content -- and not on its creation -- the writer has succeeded. With that in mind, here's The 10 Commandments of Press Releases: 1. Thou Shalt Be Professional. No goofy fonts, rainbow paper or silly gimmicks. Even lighthearted press releases represent a communication between one professional and another. 2. Thou Shalt Not Be Promotional. If you can't get enough objective distance from your company to write a press release that's not filled with hype and puffery, hire someone to write it for you. 3. Thou Shalt Not Be Boring. Even the driest subject matter allows for some sparks of creativity. Journalists like knowing that there's a human being communicating with them, not some corporate robot. 4. Thou Shalt Be Brief. Learn to cut out extraneous words. Keep your sentences short. Include only the points necessary to sell the story. The well-crafted one page press release is a thing of beauty. 5. Thou Shalt Know Thy Recipient. A features or lifestyle editor is a very different creature from a city desk editor. If you're promoting the opening of a new winery, the food and wine editor may be interested in all the details about what kind of aging process and... more.. How To Tap Into Massive Sources of Traff?With Virtually No Competition! How To Tap Into Massive Sources of Traff?With Virtually No Competition! By Jack Humphrey (c) 2006  Tale Chaser Publishing, Inc. Things haven't been this perfect for a long time. In fact, not since one of the big engines really started to take off, when those who were lucky enough to be already seated firmly in the Top 10 for their keywords, has there been such a plethora of new traff?opportunities. The internet marketing world has become multi-dimensional in ways that are surprising to most people who are still hooked on search engine marketing as their sole website promotion strategy. Here are the new avenues of traff?that most people are NOT taking advantage of outside of the big companies and a handful of savvy marketers: 1. Podcasting While it was "the word of the year" for 2005, most people still have no idea what Podcasting is really about outside of being able to download music at iTunes.com. And, frankly, it's because the... more.. Are Your Ears Burning? - 20 Tools for Tracking Social Media Marketing Are Your Ears Burning? - 20 Tools for Tracking Social Media Marketing By Merle (c) 2010 MerlesWorld Social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter make it easy for people to come together and share opinions, experiences and thoughts on a number of topics. Smart companies understand this and are using the power of social media to connect and inform their customers, and potential customers. Referred to as "Social Media Marketing", it's a smart way to open the lines of communication between you and your prospects. Social media activities run the gamut from Blogging, micro blogging sites such as Twitter, social networking communities such as LinkedIn and Facebook, video and music uploading sites, discussion forums, photo sharing and more. With so many different sites and ways to participate, it can be difficult to keep track of all your efforts. Participating in social media doesn't take a lot of money, but it is very time consuming and businesses want to know that all of this investment in time is paying off. Before launching a campaign, you should have a firm grasp on what it is you're trying to accomplish. Is it increasing website traffic? Getting more ezine subscribers? Having more people download your free ebook or whitepaper? Or maybe you just want to work on your company's brand image. Whatever it is, you need to have a plan. As the old saying goes, "If you don't know where you're going, you'll never get there". Have your game plan intact before getting started in marketing yourself, or your company with social media. There are many different forms of social media, so it's impossible to use them all. Pick three or... more.. Develop Quality Content to Rule the Web Develop Quality Content to Rule the Web by S. Housley Fresh content The age old question keeps coming up, how do you retain website visitors, how do you make visitors return to your website? The answer should come as no surprise, fresh content. Content is truly king, the fresher the content the better the site. What many webmasters fail to realize is that there is an endless supply of content on the web that is freely available to webmasters. Not only can public domain material be freely used and syndicated on websites, but a number of content publishers provide content in exchange for a link back to their websites. A variety of contents related to the website theme that is integrated into the website will attract the interest of both search engines and web surfers. The key to taking advantage of free content is integrating or including content that is directly related to the theme of the website. 1. Articles Article repositories exist that categorizes content articles. Searching the repositories using keywords that are related to a websites theme will result in a wide variety of articles available for publication that are related to the site's existing web content. Articles in the repositories are available for syndication, which means webmasters can freely include the articles on their websites as long as they include the author resource box with valid links. Use the following to locate topic specific articles: Free Website Content GoArticles 2. RSS Feeds The contents of many RSS feeds can be syndicated. The added benefit of syndicating feeds is that they are frequently updated which will result in a steady stream of fresh changing content. In order to reap the benefits... more.. Top 10 Reasons A Website Fails To Perform Top 10 Reasons A Website Fails To Perform By Gary Klingsheim (c) 2008 You've taken the time to finally build a website, and now it is online. Months go by. Maybe you get a few visitors now and again. Maybe you land on the search engines. Mostly though, it just sits there. Is the website you paid for pulling its weight? A website is a tool and can be of significant help to your business. It can cut a lot of time you put into giving information to customers. It can answer questions and perform tasks for you. Find out where websites fail to perform and how you can figure out where to make it better. 1. Undefined Website Objectives Some sites try to do way too much at once, or worse, they have no definable purpose. Many provide no clear objective. A site can do more than look good and flashy and have your contact information. Websites can be informational, storing content and articles based on a topic. Sites can run eCommerce solutions that help you with your sales process. It can also generate leads, asking customers to fill out forms with their information and interests. It can also be a hybrid site, with mixed purposes, like offering a free ebook or free access to information (informational) in return for contact information (lead generation). Defining the purpose of your website gives a clear direction to your customers. Where should customers arrive when they find your website? Where do you want them to end up? Using a clear path and clear objectives, you can lead them through your site, your products, and... more.. Are Made for AdSense Sites Ruining Search Results? Are Made for AdSense Sites Ruining Search Results? By Adam McFarland of iPrioritize.com It's happened to you. You've searched for something on Google and several promising results appear. You cl? on a link, but when you get to the site all you see are a few ads and nothing even remotely close to what you searched for. So you go back to the search results and try again, only it happens again and again until you finally find a page with some decent content...or frustration sets in and you give up all together. Why does this happen? How come in this day and age Google can't give you the results you're looking for? A large part of the answer is the growing number of made for AdSense (MFA) sites on the web today. MFA sites are designed for the sole purpose of getting you to cl? on a Google AdSense advertisement. Define Made for AdSense A site is made for AdSense if its sole purpose is to get users to cl? on AdSense ads. Its owners don't intend that users will learn from its content or participate in a community. All that they want is for them to cl? on an ad. A site is NOT made for AdSense if its primary purpose is to provide unique content and the site owner decides to keep their content free by displaying advertisements, AdSense or other. This has been going on for years - television, newspapers, and magazines all generate revenue with advertisements. The difference is that the advertisements supplement the content of the show or article. The same applies for the web. If you have a news... more.. Metrics that Matter to a Good SEO Company Metrics that Matter to a Good SEO Company By Scott Buresh (c) 2009   "I want to be number one on Google for (insert hyper-competitive keyphrase here)." It's usually the first thing we hear in terms of search engine optimization - a company wants to be in that coveted top spot on Google, Yahoo!, Ask, and MSN. No matter the industry or specialty, when companies approach us with their desired goals for an SEO campaign, it's usually all about improving their rankings and positions...and often nothing else. Yes, achieving first page rankings or top spots on the search engines is an incredibly desirable accomplishment to many companies who want immediate and noticeable results. But with such a considerable investment in an SEO campaign, you'd think companies in need of search engine optimization services would also be concerned with their overall ROI, especially in light of the current economy.   Vastly improved (or even #1) rankings are rather easy to achieve in an SEO campaign, even by a novice search engine optimization company. I once wrote an article demonstrating that top rankings were simple - and proved it by optimizing... more.. 12 Simple Steps to Effective Websites 12 Simple Steps to Effective Websites By Nancy Fraser (c) 2009 The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea In a beautiful pea green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money, Wrapped up in a five pound note. Edward Lear must have had some precognition about what was in store for us all with the development of the internet when he wrote this nonsensical poem. Many people do feel at sea after they launch their website and attempt to navigate the sometimes confusing channels of the internet. They wonder why their website doesn't get more traff?and why their inbox is not filling up with emails from people clamoring to buy their products or services. It seems that the rules change as often as Oprah changes her clothes and who could ever hope to keep up with that! Price quotes for search engine optimization are all over the map; the process seems never-ending and expensive. How is it that some people seem to have great success on the web without spending a huge amount of money? Is it unrealistic to think that you can make a living working on the web? When faced with a seemingly overwhelming challenge it helps to break things down into bite-sized pieces. Effective websites should include the following: 1. Your website needs to focus on a specific niche. 2. You need to do keyword research and although Google no longer gives weight to Meta keywords some of the other major search engines still do. 3. Your website should have the main keyword used throughout and each page should be written around 5-10 keywords that are tightly focused on that particular page's topic. 4. Content is still King. Well written, focused content is crucial. 5. Meta titles need to include... more.. Linking With Integrity Getting One Way Links The Right Way Linking With Integrity Getting One Way Links The Right Way By Jerret Turner (c) 2008 It's just as important to know what not to do when executing a website linking strategy as it is to know what to do. With inexpensive linking software and services so readily available, there's a strong temptation to take shortcuts when it comes to getting quality links. Avoiding these traps will help your search engine placements rise naturally and stay that way for a long time. In this article, I describe two ways that you can help yourself avoid being labeled a link sp@mmer. Link Farms What is a link farm? A link farm is any website designed and set up for the sole purpose of getting search engine spiders to crawl and index web pages. These websites provide absolutely no end user utility or benefit. So how do you recognize a link farm? First, you need to ask yourself, is this site heavy laden with links? Most link farms will have a "farm" of links with little to no content. As for an explanation of the site's existence, it's usually missing too. The next question you need to ask is, what does the URL of the site itself look like? Most of the time, link farms will have long, hyphenated URLs (i.e. our-great-linking- directory dot com). This is a generalization so not all link farms will have these types of URLs. Many of these link farms are generated using software. The software will go out and find a domain name that contains specific keywords even if it settles on something with several hyphens and numbers. You may... more.. Adhering to Web Standards to Improve Business Adhering to Web Standards to Improve Business By Yuri Filimonov Taking web standards into account when designing a website may not be a primary concern for many site owners, but when it comes to finding an extra edge to improve their business, they are more than willing to do anything required to increase revenues. Let's see how complying with Web standards can help a business website. What are the Standards? On the Web, the main standards are the languages used when creating websites. The most wide-spread ones are HTML, XHTML and CSS. HTML or XHTML are used to create the backbone of websites - the structure. (The difference between HTML and XHTML is that XHTML was formed from XML and is forward compatible.) CSS, in turn, is used to style, format and position the structure and content. What is Web Standards Compliance? Put simply, web standards compliance is using web languages correctly. This involves using HTML tags properly and the way they were and are intended to be used. For instance, one of the most common felonies against the web standards is using table tags for layout, while the correct usage is to use them only for tabular data (information to be put in tables). Benefits of Standards Compliance Creating quality, standards compliant code has a number of benefits: website forward compatibility increased site download speed browser compatibility easier site maintenance broader target audience How Can This Help Business? Perhaps every entrepreneur is asking himself right now, "And where is the mon?here?" Probably every benefit can either increase revenues or... more.. SEO Duplicate Web Content Penalty Myth Exploded The "duplicate content penalty" myth is one of the biggest obstacles I face in getting web professionals to embrace reprint content. The myth is that search engines will penalise a site if much of its content is also on other websites. Clarification: there is a real duplicate content penalty for content that is duplicated with minor or no variation across the pages of a single site. There is also a "mirror" penalty for a site that is more or less substantially duplicating another single site. What I'm talking about here is the reprint of pages of content individually, rather than in a mass, on multiple sites. Another clarification: "penalty" is a loaded concept in SEO. "Penalty" means that search engines will punish a website for violations of the engine's terms of service. The punishment can mean making it less likely that the site will appear in search results. Punishment can also mean removal from the search engine's index of web pages ("de-indexing" or "delisting"). How have I exploded the "duplicate content penalty" myth? PageRank. Many thousands of high-PageRank sites reprint content and provide content for reprint. The most obvious case is the news wires such as Reuters (PR 8) and the Associated Press (PR 9) that reprint to sites such as www.nytimes.com (PR 10). The proliferation of content reprint sites. There are now hundreds of websites devoted to reprint content because it's a cheap, easy magnet for web traffic, especially search engine traffic. Experience. I've seen significant search engine traffic both from distributing content to be reprinted and from reprinting content on the site. How I Doubled Search Engine Traffic with Reprint Content When I first started distributing content for my main site, I was... more.. How to Create Search Engine Friendly Title and META Tags (Part 1) How to Create Search Engine Friendly Title and META Tags (Part 1) By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007 In this article, I'm going to show you step-by-step how to create search engine optimized Titles and META Tags.   The TITLE Element TITLE elements, (commonly called TITLE Tags), are one of the most important factors that search engines "look" at when it comes to determining the relevancy of a web page against a search query. In their ranking algorithms, nearly all the major search engines attribute a high relevancy we?t to the content of the TITLE tag. In the HTML code of a web site, TITLE tags look like this one (for a fictional florist): <TITLE>Miami Florists - beautiful floral creations made to order.</TITLE> To view the HTML code of any site, choose "View, Source" from your browser toolbar or right cl? anywhere on the page and choose "view source code". The META Description Tag META Description Tags are designed to describe the content of web pages. Search engine robots will gather up this information when indexing web sites and often use it when referencing web pages in the search listings. While not all search engines continue to utilize the META Description Tag, a majority of search engines rely on the content of this tag (together with a site's visible content) to provide information about a site that they can match with search queries. It is therefore important for webmasters to include keywords and phrases in the META description that they would expect searchers to use to find their site content. In the HTML code of a web site, a sample META Description Tag looks like this: more.. The Lifeblood of the Internet The Lifeblood of the Internet By Robert Imbriale (c) 2010 If you've been involved in marketing of any kind over the last two decades, I'm sure you've heard the saying, "content is King." Marketers, successful marketers, live by that mantra. When I look at the Internet what I really see are two things. There is the content and then there are the applications that allow you to interact with the content. To completely over-simplify things, the applications are what make it possible for us to create, share, and use the content we find on the Internet. So to say content is King, you'd have to also say that the applications are Queen in order to have a more complete view of the Internet. There are all kinds of applications from the browsers that make surfing the Internet possible to all sorts of applications that manage and deliver the content. Think about it. Without the application we know as Google, how would you find the content you're looking for on the Internet? I've been there and I remember finding things online was next to impossible, but that was back in 1987. Then we have Adobe TM Flash that allows us to see and hear sounds and images over the Internet. There are all sorts of content management systems available to us today that simply didn't exist a few years back. As it becomes easier and easier to manage and digest, the demand for new content grows and grows. Marketers who create quality content often find they are able to generate large amounts of traffic, they usually have large mailing lists, and it almost goes without saying that they usually have healthy bank accounts.... more.. How to Get Free Press How to Get Free Press By Kim Roach (c) 2008 Free press is one of the best ways to spread the word about your website, your product, and your brand. However, most people don't know where to start. Fortunately, it's really not as hard as you might think. There are thousands of articles being published every single day on blogs, newspapers, and magazines. Bloggers, writers, and journalists have pages to fill and all of them are actively looking for interesting topics to write about. Many people forget that PR is about public relations. It's not just about writing a press release. It's about getting to know the journalists. Find out what kind of stories they're working on and see what you can do to help them. PR is really about listening and engaging key influencer's. You need to connect. Connect with journalists who are writing about stories in your industry. Send them a quick note to tell them what you like about their writing. Provide them with story ideas within your industry. Provide them with value and they will have open ears whenever you want to pitch your story. But remember, a journalist is extremely busy. You must respect their time. Keep everything short and sweet. Get to the point quickly and concisely. Most journalists can be easily contacted through email, which can be found on their website, in their byline, or within the publication they write for. However, many writers and journalists can also be found on a number of different social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These social media platforms are another great way to connect with bloggers and mainstream media... more.. Using Social Media Marketing to Promote Your Specialist Information Website Using Social Media Marketing to Promote Your Specialist Information Website By Miles Galliford (c) 2007 Before I get started, it is worth defining social media. It has become a widely used and abused term that means different things to different people. My definition of social media is: 'online technologies and practices that people use to share their opinions, insights and experiences with each other. Information can be shared as text, images, audio or video via blogs, message boards, wikis, RSS, podcasts and social networking sites'. At the heart of social media is the ability of individuals to interact with other people so that they feel involved and part of a community. A big part of this phenomenon is the activity of finding, sharing and recommending products, services, events and experiences to like-minded people. This is where social media crosses over with marketing. Social media can be a great way to have your website promoted by word-of-mouth. If you can get people to talk about and recommend your services to their peers, it is more powerful than any marketing you can buy. So how can you get started? How Can You Make Social Media Work for You? The good news is it is easy to start the process of using social media to promote your website. 1) Create a MySpace Page MySpace (www.myspace.com) is the largest and best-known social network. Individuals create profiles about themselves and then invite similarly minded people to become their online friends. When someone becomes a friend, you can communicate with them and subtly direct them towards your own website. Setting up your own page is simple and fr?... more.. Using Google Alerts to Help Your Business Using Google Alerts to Help Your Business By Adam McFarland of iPrioritize.com At times it seems that Google releases more new products and services than we can keep track of. From Google Calendar and Google Video, to Google Base, Google Finance, and Google Trends, it can be overwhelming just to remember what each one does. One of the oft overlooked hidden gems in Google's enormous offering is Google Alerts. Within minutes, you can be signed up for email alerts that can give you and your business a leg up on the competition. Alerts can be used to spy on competitors, keep track of what people are saying about your business, or follow an important news story. How Does It Work Google Alerts sends you an email each time a new page for your chosen term makes it in the top twenty results on Google's web search. You can also have the alert ch? Google News and/or Google Groups. To sign up for a Google Alert, all that you need to do is visit the Google Alerts homepage, enter the search term, type of alert (search Google News, Google Groups, or the web), frequency of emails (daily, as it happens, or weekly), and your email address. You can set up alerts for as many terms as you like using a Google Account. So why would you want an unl?ted amount of alerts? Because as a business owner, you have a lot to keep track of and very limited time to do it. Spy on Your Competitors Every business has a competitor. More likely, you have several direct competitors and several more... more.. Cache's Web-Marketing Manifesto Cache's Web-Marketing Manifesto By Jerry Bader (c) 2008 Who is Cache Closed and what can he do for you? Cache is a digital construct created to inform, enlighten, and entertain Web-marketers interested in learning how best to market on the Web. Now don't be alarmed, Cache isn't interested in selling you anything, no e-books, no DVDs, no magic elixirs or potions, no sir, just a pixelated-paranoid, pied-piper of ideas and concepts designed to improve your Web-business. The Cache-man has put a little something together he modestly calls, 'Cache's Web-Marketing Manifesto:' ten things every marketing manager, business owner, and sales executive needs to know about business websites. Cache's Web-Marketing Manifesto 1. If it isn't working, stop tweaking and blow it up. If what you're doing isn't working, or if it's working about as well as a 1973 Yugo, then it's time to start over. You can only make so many modifications and adjustments until your site gets a bad case of digital disconnect: a cyber version of Capgras Delusion where the brain can't connect the content to the emotional context. 2. If you're relevant, search engines will find you, it's their job. Isn't it time you stopped chasing the imaginary pot of gold at the end of the Google rainbow, and start thinking of practical ways to connect to your audience. Search engines are supposed to find you, it's their job, it's what they do, what they get pa?for. All this stuff about you can't do this or you can't do that because it's not search engine friendly is so yesterday. If you have something to say worth listening to whether it's text, audio, or video,... more.. How Much Face-Time Does Your Website Need? How Much Face-Time Does Your Website Need? By Jerry Bader (c) 2009 How much time does it take your website to deliver your marketing message? Assuming the site traffic you generate is the least bit interested in what you have to say, how much of what you're saying do they remember, or more to the point, how much do they need to remember? Have you ever thought about, or even considered, how much face-time your website needs to be effective? It is probably the last thing many business website operators ever think about, let alone do anything about. The notion of 'stickiness' has been around for as long as the Web has been used as a commercial vehicle, and stickiness is a vital website ingredient. Developers, designers, and marketing experts are continuously coming up with ways to keep people on their clients' websites. Many of these sticky methods do work and keep people on sites for hours, but are they effective; just because someone stays on your site for hours doesn't necessarily mean they have any intention of doing business with you, especially if these so called sticky ingredients are implemented without any commercial purpose. Sticky Doesn't Necessarily Mean Effective Many sticky concepts were developed for sites whose financial model was based on advertising, which makes sense; the longer people stay on a site the more chance they will see the ads presented, and the more likely they will click on one of them. But for sites that are in business to sell something and are not just advertising vehicles, stickiness takes on a whole different purpose. The challenge is to make what you have to say engaging so that it attracts attention, informative so that it explains the offering, AND entertaining so... more.. How to Optimize for Yahoo! How to Optimize for Yahoo! By Ross Dunn (c) 2007 With a reported 22.1% of search traff?Yahoo is second only to Google's 64.4% (src: Hitwise ) for search user volume so it is extremely important not to forget that attaining a top ranking in Yahoo can be a big boon to the bottom line. As a result, I decided to write this update on how to attain superior rankings in Yahoo using today's useful tools and tactics. Overview: Optimizing for Yahoo! Algorithmically Yahoo is Google's much younger sibling. I say this because many of the requirements for a successful ranking mirror Google's requirement about 4 years ago and they sum up to one distinct fact; optimize your content boldly on Yahoo and you will be rewarded. When I say "boldly" I do not mean use sp@m; by nature sp@m and optimization do not mix... they are two entirely separate concepts (black and white in fact). The following are the current generalized specifications for achieving solid rankings in Yahoo. Web Site Optimization SEO tactics have not changed a great deal over the past 10 years I have been an SEO. In general terms the only effect time has had on SEO is to vary the intensity of the optimization for particular page elements. That is the rub of course; some search engines appreciate the optimization of particular page elements over others. In the case of Yahoo, this old property with a relatively young algorithm tends to favour the following elements: Title Tag: Keep your title tag as short as 5 small-medium sized words and include one complete incidence of your keyphrase. Yahoo! blatantly favours sites that include the keyphrase in... more.. Dominate Google Rankings Quick and Easy! Dominate Google Rankings Quick and Easy! By Michael Small (c) 2008 Does dominating Google rankings quick and easy sound too good to be true? It really isn't. Following are a bunch of surefire SEO tips that have kept hundreds of my clients' sites on top of Google for years, with new ones every month. There's a lot to cover and I hate long articles that drone on so I'll keep the info short and sweet. Let's start with the domain name. Domain Names Age:Make sure your domain name is at least six months old. If it's more than a year old, that's even better. Google often (but not always) likes domains to be at least six months old before indexing the site. How do they know? They use a "whois" database like the one at: http://www.AllWhoIs.com Go there and enter your domain if you want to see what Google (and anyone else in the world) can instantly know about your site. TLD Type: TLD stands for Top Level Domain, which is to say the letters after the dot. The best ones to have are ".com, .net. .org and .edu." These get the most play in Google's top 3 rankings for just about every keyword you can imagine, with ".com" and ".edu" being the best. Embedded Keywords: If you have your main keyword (and ONLY your main keyword) as a dotcom domain name with even just halfway decent page text and some good inbound links you can usually nail number one on Google for that keyword. I've done it dozens of times. It's a no brainer. Dashes: Having a dash in your domain... more.. Small Budget Promotion Techniques for Web Designers Small Budget Promotion Techniques for Web Designers: Direct mail: Direct mail is still one of the cheapest ways of getting your message out to a large audience. The cost of a well presented direct mail piece is easily justifiable given the almost guaranteed results if you target your audience correctly. Make sure you copy is done by a professional direct mail copywriter ? it's worth hiring their services for a one page letter. Most people think they can write good copy but most cannot ? even people who draft marketing copy frequently do not know how to write good direct mail copy.   Chamber of Commerce membership: Joining a chamber introduces you to other businesses and other businesses to your talents. An advertising listing is often included in most chamber memberships and a majority of businesses belong to local chambers. Do not assume that because you are small a chamber can not help you or has no role for you to play. Offer to do a class on web design. Connect with other IT professionals.   Rotary membership: Rotaries are good places to meet business leaders and introduce yourself and your company to the local economy. Also, because rotaries focus on issues affecting the business community, you will get a good idea of how the local economy succeeds and what it is facing. Involving yourself in a rotary also says a lot about you as a community member. Remember that most successful businesses start local and ?go global? after they have established themselves as viable.   Sponsor local education programs: These are different than high school sponsored adult learning in that they are usually sponsored by local organizations or charity groups. They help teach adults new skills. Getting involved in these types of classes will give you... more.. Blog Flipping: 10 Important Factors When Selling Your Weblog Or Website Blog Flipping: 10 Important Factors When Selling Your Weblog Or Website By Chuck Crawford (c) 2009 The market for blogs has exploded. Many companies do not want to invest the time in developing a blog in their respective niche, which has given rise to a whole new cottage industry, blog flipping. Blog flipping is done in a few different ways. Some flippers buy an existing blog that has potential, but is not currently producing. They take that blog and build the traffic and sales up to a level productive enough to reap a profit from their investment, and then sell it. Or, more common in today's blog flipping market, is to research a specific niche, develop a domain / blog, and then sell it. But what does "developed" really mean? It depends on the flipper. So buyers really need to do their homework (read due diligence) before investing in an "established" blog or website. Because "established" is in the eyes of the beholder, and means many different things depending upon who you consult. In my opinion, established means that the site, or blog, is profitable. Now profitable can be defined very differently for different companies. It doesn't mean that the site has to be mak? money, though it does help justify the investment when purchasing the blog. It can mean to a prospective company only that the site has traffic that company believes it can convert into sales. Not everyone can convert website traffic in the same way. So there are companies out there looking to buy blogs that have a certain, specific reader demographic that fits their market. However, these types of sales are few and far between. Companies that are buying blogs normally want to see one... more.. Dreaming of Pay Per Cl? Sausage Dreaming of Pay Per Cl? Sausage By Jim Hedger (c) 2007 The problem might have been that Jeffrey had heard the same set of quest?s once too often or it could just be the night noises one hears when traveling in strange cities. It could have been an undigested slice of deep-dish pizza from the evening before or a phantom blues-riff floating in his head. Whatever it was, it was 4AM on the morning of the last day of the Chicago Search Engine Strategies conference and Jeffrey K. Rohrs was wide awake. At 9:00AM he was scheduled to moderate a panel titled In House: Big SEO. Two hours after that he was to moderate another panel, the one that was keeping him up at night, In House: Big PPC panel. Five hours before presiding over two long sessions, and Jeffrey wasn't able to sleep. He wasn't nervous. Jeffrey is an SES veteran having appeared on or moderated large-attendance sessions for several years. The day before he had moderated for panels: Search Arbitrage, Dealing with Affiliates, Auditing Paid Listings and Cl? Fraud, and Search and Regulated Industries. So what could be running through his head at a time when he clearly should have been fast asleep? Jeffrey was thinking about PPC, Von Bismarck, Garlinghouse and sausages in that lucid but dream like state that comes when you wake from your sleep with a start. Jeffrey had had a revelation that jolted him awake so he pulled up his laptop and started writing what would become known as The Sausage Manifesto. As legend has it, nineteenth century German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck once remarked, "Laws are like sausages. It is better not to see... more.. Promoting Your New Website Promoting Your New Website By Scott Van Achte (c) 2008 A few weeks ago I wrote about building your website from the ground up. This article did not dive into great detail on any specific topics, but rather touched on the key points you will want to address. In this article I will place most of the focus on the promot? aspect of this previous article. Image of bullhorn saying 'Promoting Your New Website' While at times new websites can experience organic search rankings in a matter of months, for the most part, it can take well over a year before you start to see any progress, and that is if you start promoting right away! SEO If your new website has not been properly optimized for the search engines, then this is a necessary first step you must take. Ensure that your new site has integrated the appropriate keywords into all the fundamental areas of the site. Without this critical step of optimizing your site, in many cases no level of promot? will help you get those search rankings. Note: Extreme numbers of inbound links can sometimes cause an un-optimized site to rank, but an optimized website will seriously reduce the number of links needed, and its associated cost. This varies from industry to industry, but is true as a general rule. Ideally the optimization of your site occurred during the planning and building stages, but if it did not be sure to get this completed as soon as possible. Press Releases The first thing you should do when your site goes live is issue a press release. Be sure to... more.. Where's Your Social Responsibility Google? Where's Your Social Responsibility Google? By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007 Unless you've been living on a desert island with no Internet access, you've probably seen the recent blog fallout from Google's latest crack down on alleged link brokers. This week it seems that Google made some type of manual Toolbar PageRank reduction on a handful of major blogs and portal sites like the Washington Post, ProBlogger, CopyBlogger and Forbes.com. Some of these sites had PageRank scores of 7 which have now dropped to 5, scores of 6 which have now dropped to 4 and so on. The blog buzz is that the sites have been singled out by Google as using their high PageRank scores to sell links and have been punished by the world's most popular search engine as a result. There is currently no proof of this and no public statement by Google acknowledging or denying the situation. A lot of bloggers have weighed in with commentary, observations and opinions. Every time I read a new post about the so called smack-down I imagine some Googlers at Mountain View laughing hysterically and high-fiving each other for turning the tables on the SEO industry yet again. The situation has even got the SEOs turning on each other. One of the world's best known SEOs, Jill Whalen, made a post in response to the situation that included a comment about one of the affected sites, Search Engine Guide. Jill's post has been interpreted in some circles as a type of attack. Here's the comment Jill made in her post: "Even my very good friends at Search Engine Guide were smacked down. I hadn't been to their... more.. 8 Useful SEO Techniques Every Webmaster Should Know 8 Useful SEO Techniques Every Webmaster Should Know By Titus Hoskins (c) 2008 Every webmaster should have some basic understanding of these simple SEO techniques if they want to achieve Top Rankings for their site. The more you know about these Search Engine Optimization techniques; the better your web pages will fare in the different search engines, especially Google. Optimizing your pages for the search engines should be your main priority because conquering and dominating your chosen keywords is often cited as one of the major determining factors in the success of your online site or business. You must have a rudimentary grasp of how SEO can work for you and your site. These simple SEO Tips will help you understand the basics and help you reach your online goals. 1. Title Tag The Title Tag is located at the top of your html page and it tells the search engines what your page is about. When you open your page in a browser these are the words at the very top of the screen. Despite its simplicity, the title tag is crucial to 'on-page optimization'; it should include your main keywords and it should be 63 characters or less if you want your title to appear in full on Google. Many SEO experts create web pages in a three-prong approach. They place the title in:   - the title tag - on the webpage itself - and in the URL for that page Sometimes they will just pick the main keywords from the title and place them in the anchor url instead. For example: www.yourwebsite.com/keywords.html 2. Meta Description Tag The Meta Tag contains the... more.. Images are the Natural Evolution of Search Images are the Natural Evolution of Search By Ross Dunn (c) 2008 Over the past couple years it has been impossible to avoid the buzz about images and their increasing role in search; such as universal search which is becoming commonplace among the major search engines. But universal search is only the most prevalent news and only the baby-steps of a new format of search that is about to take over the Internet. Do I have your interest piqued? I will now lay the foundation of my statement to hopefully get you as excited as I am about this unstoppable search evolution. Evidence 1) Photosynth If you have any technology mavens as friends it is likely you saw this incredible video presented by Microsoft at the TED conference last year discussing Photosynth. To quote Microsoft Lab's Photosynth home page this software "takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next. In our collections, you can access gigabytes of photos in seconds, view a scene from nearly any angle, find similar photos with a single click, and zoom in to make the smallest detail as big as your monitor." My jaw still hurts from hitting the ground after my first viewing of Photosynth many months ago. This software made a massive impression on me that has led me to many interesting ideas on the applications for this software; I will leave these thoughts to another time. For now, however, lets just say that... more.. BigDaddy Means Big Changes at Google BigDaddy Means Big Changes at Google Jan 25, 2006 11:19 AM , By Brian Quinton   One of the most popular forms of exercise among many search engine optimizers?both the third-party firms that do it for others and the advertisers who spiff up their own Web pages for better natural search rankings?is a periodic workout called ?chasing the algorithm?. The race begins when Google or Yahoo! updates some portion of the software that determines how they look at Web pages and decide which are most relevant and valuable to a searcher. The engine makes that change; Web operators see their rankings rise or fall as a result; and they, or their outside search engine optimization (SEO) firm, scramble to get back the old rank by providing the new elements the search engine now needs. After a few months, the engines make another change, and it?s off to the races again. Well, optimizers on Google are lacing up their running shoes for another race. Only this one promises to be more a marathon than the usual sprint. Google is testing a new data center infrastructure, a feat much bigger and comprehensive than an algorithm change. Dubbed ?Big Daddy? both in the search marketing blogs and forums and by the friendly folks at Google, this new data center?still in shakedown mode?will reportedly add new ground-level capabilities into the Google search function and drive those powers deep into all the algorithms with which Google searches, studies and indexes the Web. First, a bit of big-picture talk. Google?s examination of the Web relies on a global network of data centers with different IP addresses. These decentralized servers speed the job of sending specialized Google services to users in different regions; they also share the workload of spidering the Web and... more.. The New SEO - Let's Get Real The New SEO - Let's Get Real By Jack Strawman (c) 2008 Once upon a time, onsite optimization was the most crucial factor in search engine ranking. Webmasters and SEO experts spent ample time ensuring keywords were used in all relevant tags, and that the keyword concentration on each page was just right (usually 5-7%). Then came all the spamming and keyword stuffing, as webmasters and SEO experts fought viciously to usurp one another in the ranks. Search engines took notice, and adjusted their scoring algorithms accordingly. Onsite optimization lost its footing. Nowadays, onsite optimization is becoming less and less significant, overshadowed by the all powerful offsite optimization. Where keyword concentration was once god, now links have become the mighty ruler of the search engines. The fact of the matter is, onsite optimization counts for almost nothing these days (I did say "almost"). So why are webmasters and SEO experts still spewing all this nonsense about the importance of building great content. I really wish it were about building great content. The sad truth, however, is it's all about the links. Search engines want you to believe that ranking well is all about building a great website with great content. Build a site for your users, keep your users happy, and you will do just fine in their eyes. After all, isn't this the main principle behind organic search results; let's keep it real, honest, and user-friendly. Boy, I wish that were so. What I don't understand is why all these so-called experts and webmasters are spouting the same foolish nonsense all over the Internet. Perhaps it's because they don't want us to work on improving our own... more.. The Seven Deadly Sins of Website Copy The Seven Deadly Sins of Website Copy By Michel Fortin (c) 2009 Throughout my research, I'm always surprised when I stumble onto websites that are professionally designed and seem to provide great products and services, but lack or fail in certain important elements. Elements that, with just a few short changes, can help multiply the results almost instantaneously. Generally, I have found that there are seven common mistakes. I call them the "Seven Deadly Sins." Is your website committing any one of these? 1) They Fail to Connect Traffic has been long touted to be the key to online success, but that's not true. If your site is not pulling sales, inquiries or results, then why would it need more traffic? The key is to turn curious browsers into serious buyers. Aside from the quality of the copy, the number one reason why a website doesn't convert is that the copy is targeting the wrong audience or fails to connect with them. First, create a "perfect prospect profile." List all the attributes, characteristics and qualities of your most profitable and accessible market. Don't just stick with things like demographics and psychographics. Try to get to know them. Who are they, really? What are their most pressing problems? What keeps them up at night? How do they talk about their problems? Where do they hang out? Then, target your market by centering on a major theme, benefit or outcome so that, when you generate pre-qualified traffic, your hit ratio and your sales will improve dramatically. Finally, ensure that your copy connects with them. Intimately. It speaks their language, talks about their problems, and tells stories they can easily appreciate and relate to. Since this is the most common error that marketers and... more.. Do You Pay Per Click Fraud? Do You Pay Per Cl? Fraud? By Kim Roach (c) 2006 The world of pay-per-click marketing started in 1997 with GoTo.com. Today they are known as Yahoo Search Marketing. What started in 1997 as a way to quickly get listed in the top of the search engines has turned into a 5.6 billion dollar industry in 2005. In fact, about 99% of Google's revenue comes from advertising. However, this multi-billion dollar search industry is under attack and has been for quite a while. Cl? fraud has become the greatest threat to the rapid growth of the paid search marketing sector. The Interactive Advertising Bureau estimates that 20 to 35 percent of ad clicks are fraudulent. Who's to blame? Cl? fraud can come from a variety of sources, including competitors, bots that simulate the human behavior of clicking on ads in web pages, or even friends of the publisher who want to "help" the publisher gain some additional cl? revenue. However, the major search engines have received the majority of the blame, even though they are not necessarily responsible. Yahoo has recently settled a class-action cl? fraud settlement. Under the settlement, Yahoo advertisers will be allowed to submit cl? fraud claims dating back to January 2004. Yahoo will reimburse any confirmed fraudulent clicks in c?, with no set limit on the amount of claims it will cover. This year, Google has been burdened with its own cl? fraud case to the tune of 90 million dollars. Currently, the court is deciding whether to accept the search giant's proposed $90 million settlement while roughly 50 plaintiffs are voicing their dissatisfaction with it. Cl? fraud is certainly no small... more.. Web Standards, Browsers and Designing For The Future Web Standards, Browsers and Designing For The Future By James Opiko (c) 2006 At present, a vast majority of webmasters are designing for IE (Internet Explorer) 6, which is not as W3C standards compliant as is FireFox, Netscape, Safari and Opera. In my article - "The importance of sound website design & search spiders to Internet Marketers," I mentioned the importance of a designer being cognizant of the fact that web browser standards are not yet fully harmonized - a web page that looks great in Internet Explorer (6) might look hideous in a Mozilla based browser like FireFox or Netscape. I also noted that with the explosion of devices with which to serve Internet applications, compliance with W3C standards has become critical. When the final release for IE 7 for Windows XP, Server 2003 & Vista is launched, hopefully before the end of 2006, the tables will be turned, so to speak. Internet Explorer 7 will be more standards compliant and your HTML code will be subject to much more rigorous interpretation than is the case with IE 6, consequently some web pages that look fine in IE 6 might not look the same IE 7. In IE 7 Microsoft has made a solemn effort to fix the browsers acquiescence to W3C standards and CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) compatibility. CSS interpretation as recommended by W3C has been improved tremendously giving designers and developers more leverage in functionality for cross-browser design. Microsoft asserts that they are taking W3C compatibility issues seriously. Concisely what this means is that IE 7 will tend to interpret your web page code more scrupulously than before. Therefore, if you have been designing your pages and have not... more.. Internet Marketing Tactics For These Tough Times Internet Marketing Tactics For These Tough Times By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009 As we enter into what many enlightened souls are calling the most dire economic times since the Great Depression, online marketers need all the help they can get - regardless of the source. You have probably heard of Google; but chances are almost 100% certain, you have never heard of me. Lucky you! Actually, the only thing you need to know about me is that I am a full-time online affiliate marketer and I make a very comfortable living from the web. Last year (2008), was my best year online so far, which left me scratching my head and saying what recession? But that may be something of a false positive, as I will never know how much I could have made if the economic times had been good instead of bad. Plus, judging from my own limited experience, selling and marketing online may not have been hit as hard as those businesses in the real world in 2008, since consumers are doing everything to save a penny and shopping online has become a much cheaper alternative for many. As we enter into these uncertain times, online marketers and webmasters need all the help they can get. Recently, Google mailed a small booklet to its Adsense users; in it Google gives "6 Top Tactics For Tough Times." It is obviously referring to its Adwords PPC (Pay Per Click) program and clients but Google's advice can be applied to your general online market?. These tactics include: (quoting directly from the Google mail-out) 1. Focus your ads on low prices and sav?s. 2. Use Value-related keywords. 3.... more.. The Art of Website Maintenance The Art of Website Maintenance By Erin Ferree (c) 2007 Now that you've designed and launched your website, you have a powerful marketing tool for your business. But, your website is only as useful as the content is current. The process of keeping the content on your site current is called website maintenance, and it's important to keep both visitors and search engines supplied with new information. Just like regular maintenance on your car, you have to make changes on your website every few months to make sure that things run smoothly. If you update the content on your website on a regular basis, potential clients will be drawn back to your site to find out "what's new". The search engines pay visits to websites in their queue regularly. The catch is that you'll stay in the queue only if you update your site regularly. If the search engines visit your site several times in a row, and don't find anything new, they may decide not to come back-which can be a blow to your search engine rankings. So, when is it appropriate to update your website? You don't want to waste time and mon?nitpicking at your site if you don't have updates of real value to add. You should update your site if you've: - Grown your skills. Have you gotten a new accreditation? New licensing? Improved your skills? Any change in your skill set is a great reason to update your website - and your potential clients - with your new capabilities. - Expanded your products or services. Do you have a new offering? Add it to your website and start making new sales in that area. - Completed a... more.. Google's 0.02% Spin Solution Google's 0.02% Spin Solution By Jim Hedger (c) 2007 Last week, Google made a startling claim, one that begs explanation even after close examination. Faced with lingering quest?s about cl? fraud, Google released a blog post stating actual cl? fraud charges are ridiculously lower than those projected by third party analysts from the search marketing community. According to Google, actual cl? fraud only accounts for 0.02% of all cl? activity found when Google's team is asked to audit an advertiser's account. If correct, Google's 0.02% assertion places the perceived dollar value of actual cl? fraud in their system somewhere in the range of $2,100,000. In a post to the Inside AdWords blog, "Invalid Clicks - Google's Overall Numbers", Google gave a brief outline of how it claims AdWords' 100+ data-point cl? detection system works to filter out 99.98% of the nearly 10% of overall clicks Google determines to be invalid. Other industry analysts have pegged the number between 15% and 20% with the cl? fraud index maintained by Cl? Forensics suggesting, "The average cl? fraud rate of Pay Per Cl? advertisements appearing on search engine content networks was 19.2 percent for Q4." Google has nev?given specific figures citing how much of the PPC-traffic they filter is caught and disregarded as invalid cl? activity saying it fluctuates from month to month but is below 10%. Though evidence of these clicks might appear in server logs or be noted as cl? fraud by third party analysts, Google says it does not charge for them. In the absence of a fee charged to an advertiser, the most such invalid cl? activity can be called is attempted fraud. On one... more.. Top 5 Ways To Benefit From Universal Search Top 5 Ways To Benefit From Universal Search By Jennifer Horowitz (c) 2008 What is Universal Search and Why Should You Care? Universal Search combines all the information within its Vertical engines/databases into one index to serve a single set of SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). An example of Vertical engines/databases are Google News, Google Video, Google Images etc. What this means is when you go to www.google.com, (their most highly trafficked domain) and do a search, rather than just getting websites from their main index, you will also get results from the News, Images, Video, etc databases as well. It is a more comprehensive results page. Google Vice President of Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer said the company's goal for universal search is to create "a seamless, integrated experience to get users the best answers." Sometimes the information you are looking for is best delivered by video, or images or a news story. Currently, you would have to search each of the Vertical engines/databases to get all the information. Google is planning to integrate it into one search engine. As a searcher this means easier access to various forms of information with only one search. It seems like a good thing, as long as the results are easily organized on the page. It could mean more scrolling to get to the different areas of results, depending how they lay it out. What To Do and Why Changes with the search engines can sometimes be confusing. There is a lot of information to evaluate and some decisions to be made. Before you decide anything, you need to understand what your options are. If your site isn't already properly optimized... more.. Video Marketing - Its Different Manifestations Video Marketing - Its Different Manifestations By Punam Parab (c) 2007 Just go through these facts and figures: ? "This [online video ads] could very well become the dominant form of online advertising... probably within the next 18 to 24 months" - Bob Hanna, senor vice president of sales with Burst Media-a group that offers publisher sites to advertisers. ? "Online video ad spend is to surge by 89% in 2007 and is poised to grow and in 2010 will be worth around $2.9 billion". - marketing vox. ? "At some time early in 2010, one in 10 dollars devoted to internet advertising will go for video placements" - David Hallerman, a senior analyst with eMarketer and author of the report 'Internet Video: Advertising Experiments & Exploding Content' Well, if you have a sharp mind [and even if you don't], you cannot but notice the rising fortunes of video marketing. Video marketing is the next big thing in the world of Internet marketing. Video marketing entails the use of video for conveying your message to the audience. Most experts believe that videos are more effective when it boils down to establishing an engaging and interactive platform to communicate with the target audience. If you too are interested in entering into the world of 'online video marketing', then it will augur well if you are aware about the various forms of video marketing. Video advertising is one of the basic forms of video marketing. In case of video advertising, the advertiser makes use of the video that is already being run across television channels. Usually, the video is edited to shorten the duration. This also makes the video more appealing to the online audience.... more.. 20 Best Blog Post Ideas for Small Business Blogging 20 Best Blog Post Ideas for Small Business Blogging By Donna Gunter (c) 2009 "So, what do I blog about each time?" is a question I often get from clients. To keep your blog active and healthy, I recommend blogging at least 3 times per week. However, that notion is overwhelming for many. Even though you may be an expert in a topic, your mind may go completely blank when it comes time to blog, and then at other times when you're not blogging, your idea cup runneth over. The primary thing to remember is that blog posts don't have to be long and complicated. You're not writing an article, a report or a thesis. Many times a blog post is only a paragraph consisting of a few sentences that contain your thoughts about something. Now, doesn't that sound easier than composing a 600-word post each time you sit down to blog? Here are 20 ideas you can use to help you create a blog post when you're stuck for an idea: 1. Current events. Can you link what you do in your business to a current event? Open up your daily newspaper or your RSS news reader and see what's happening in the world, your country, your state, or your city. Give your opinion about the event and a solution, if you have it, and relate that to your business if you can. 2. Trends in your industry. I read constantly and subscribe to more industry publications than I have time to review. However, there are a handful that I do regularly read, and it's to those that... more.. What You Need to Know About IP Addresses What You Need to Know About IP Addresses By John Buchanan (c) 2007 If you are new to the internet, often times things can seem quite overwhelming. People throw around terms like IP addresses, name servers, host?, ftp, etc. In this article we are going to cover IP Addresses. You'll learn exactly what they are and how they apply to search engine optimization (SEO). IP Address stands for Internet Protocol Address and is currently made up of four "octets" or numbers separated by a period. Each octet can be a number from 0 to 255 . Some examples of valid IP addresses are - 1.123.150.243, 35.35.36.10, 240.216.1.80 There is also a new standard for IP addresses that is slowly being launched called IPV6 (IP version 6). IPV6 numbers look quite different from our current IP addresses. An example of an IPV6 IP address is - 2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334 You will notice each is much longer with MANY more possible variations. The new IP system is designed to give us enough IP addresses so that we will not run out of unique IP addresses any time in the foreseeable future. So why do we need IP addresses? Quite simply, an IP address is like your physical home address. It designates a specific computer that is connected to the internet. Every computer connected to the internet has an IP address. This is necessary for it to send and receive information. When you type in a website name, for example mine, http://www.sesecrets.com, that name is translated into an IP address that is then used to "find" my site. In the current set of IP addresses, going from left to right, the first "octet" is the most broad, with each... more.. 10 Best Strategies to Massively Increase Your Visibility Online 10 Best Strategies to Massively Increase Your Visibility Online By Donna Gunter (c) 2009 Increasing online visibility is the goal of most online business owners. After all, without visibility, you have no traffic and thus no business. However, when you start to research how to improve your online visibility, you discover many options, but find that there is little time for research and implementation. Where does an online entrepreneur turn first to get the visibility (and traffic) to promote an online venture? New tricks and gimmicks come out every day, but unfortunately, most of them are like so many recording artists and become one-hit wonders. In my business, I've discovered that there are a handful that are able to stand the test of time. Some have been around for as long as websites have been around, while others are newer kids on the block. Here are my 10 most effective strategies to massively boost your visibility online: 1. Press releases. Press releases are a well-known marketing strategy that have worked for years with print and broadcast media. In recent years they have found new life as an online visibility tool. Just like in the old days, your release should carry some newsworthy angle that has been optimized with a select few keywords by which you want your business to be found. Don't waste your time submitting your release to the free press release sites -- the release simply sits on the site and goes no where else. Instead, invest in a fee-based service (I prefer PRWeb.com), which will ensure your release gets the recognition it deserves. 2. Social... more.. How To Create A Video Campaign Concept How To Create A Video Campaign Concept By Jerry Bader (c) 2007 Have you ever had a good idea, maybe a great idea, only to find that someone else already ready did it? Frustrating. You want to be a success and who doesn't? It's why you do what you do, why you put-up with what you put-up with? But it all gets so frustrating. As much as you'd like to believe otherwise, there just aren't any secr?methods, special potions, or motivational DVDs that are going to make you a success in thirty days, but there are things you can do that will help. Sure working hard helps but working smart is even better. So how do you work smart? Well you can start with presenting your core, marketing message to your targeted audience in a way that engages the spirit, informs the intellect, and embeds in the mind. And if you want to be cutting edge, the way to do it is with audio and video. What A Difference A Difference Makes Anybody who has ever tried to raise mon?for a project from a bank, or contacted an ad agency for help has heard the question, "What makes your company different?" If you don't have a different product, different process, or different way of doing or presenting what you do, you are nev?going to raise a cent or make an impact on the market. Yet most companies blindly continue to follow the market leader, and wonder why they nev?attain the level of success they hope to achieve. If you want to be a success, you have to reinvent your company as something unique,... more.. Creating Widgets for Your Websites and Blogs Creating Widgets for Your Websites and Blogs By Doran Roggio (c) 2007 With a widget you can place the current information from your blogs and or/websites on other webpages, and your personal pages on social networks like myspace, ning.com and your private clubs. This is not only fun and informative, but an excellent promotional tool. What is a widget? According to Wikipedia a "web widget is anything that can be embedded within a page of HTML, i.e. a web page. A widget adds some content to that page that is not static. Generally widgets are third party originated... Widgets are also known as modules, snippets, and plug-ins. Widgets can be written in HTML, but also in javascr?, flash and other scripting languages..." Applications can be integrated within a third party website by the placement of a small snippet of code. This is becoming a distribution or marketing channel for many companies. The code brings in 'live' content - advertisements, links, images - from a third party site without the web site owner having to update." You have probably seen widgets on web sites you have visited. When clicked on the widget will take you to the source of the information. Although widgets have been around since the late nineties, they are becoming increasing more popular especially with the rise of social networking. I first started playing around with widgets as a way to promote my own AC published content. While widgets are not that difficult, they can be a little tricky at first if unfamiliar to you. It took me several tries to perfect my own widgets and place them on my blog and social networking sites. They now work perfectly without any... more.. Blogging Your Way to the Top Blogging Your Way to the Top By Scott Van Achte (c) 2009 It is no real secret that a well written topical blog can significantly help out your website - so why aren't you doing it? The most common reasons I hear for not starting a blog involve a lack of time to write posts, and limited ideas to write about, but taking that extra time to get some useful content out there can do wonders for your search rankings among other things. An established blog that is updated regularly gets spidered by Google often, and increases the chances of new search rankings considerably. I have seen multiple situations where regularly updated blogs wind up ranking #1 in Google for relevant phrases literally within a couple hours of posting. It usually takes a well established website and blog to make this happen, but there is big potential if you do things the right way. While blogs work best if updated multiple times per week, even those with a new post every week or two have advantages. Blogs don't have to be a major undertaking, spending only an hour or so a week on posting can have you seeing results in no time. There are many advantages to adding a blog to your website. Here are a few. Increased Rankings By boosting your topical content, you increase the value and relevance of your site. The more new stuff you add, the more of an authority you make your site, and this helps to improve your overall search rankings. It can also help you obtain rankings for "long tailed search phrases". Long tailed search phrases are those that are less commonly searched,... more.. How To Achieve Top Google Rankings How To Achieve Top Google Rankings By Bill Platt (c) 2009 Links and Traffic For years, it has been well known that Google's search algorithm is driven by the number and quality of links pointing to a particular URL. And as a result, it was all the rage for some time to buy links on web pages that had a high Google PageRank (PR). But in March of 2007, Google's mouthpiece Matt Cutts declared that Google was going to fight back against Paid Links. Google put a shot across the bow of many online marketers, letting them know that the days of easily buying links from high PageRank pages in order to influence a website's ranking in Google were over. The Shot Heard Around The World With Matt Cutts declaration, a world full of online marketers began to cry foul. It was said that "They can't do that!" But the truth was and is that the Google Search Algorithm is Google's intellectual property, and therefore, Google can do anything they want within their algorithms - no matter who those changes might hurt or help.   By the end of the Summer of 2007, the people crying foul had quieted down a bit and got back to the business of trying to find new ways to manipulate their website's rankings inside of the Google search results. That is the way it has always... more.. The Role of Memory In Website Content and Advertising The Role of Memory In Website Content and Advertising By Jerry Bader (c) 2007 The primary goal of all advertising, including website content is to be remembered. No matter what other marketing goal you want to achieve, if your audience doesn't remember your presentation, it is a wasted effort and lost opportun?. All the mon?spent on attracting people to your website goes right down the drain if your content is instantly forgettable. With that in mind it is hard to believe how little thought is put into creating content that people will remember. In order to create content or advertising that people will remember, we have to understand a little about how memory works. Professor Daniel Schacter of Harvard University is an expert in the study of human memory and has written numerous books on the subject, including 'The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers'. In this book Schacter describes seven characteristics of human memory that all marketing people need to be aware of in order to construct content and advertising that website audiences will retain. Transience Transience refers to the fact that memory degrades over time, our recollections become generic and what we are left with is a sense of expectation rather than specific features. If you overload your website visitors with a shopping l? of features or a series of b-school banalities, you are giving up the opportun? to make a singular impression on your audience, especially if the features you are so proud of are mere duplicates of features offered by your competitors. You may not remember the specifics of the latest Volvo automobile advertising campaign but you most likely regard... more.. How to Build a Better Website Without Building a Website How to Build a Better Website Without Building a Website By Richard D S Hill (c) 2007 The most important thing to consider, when first thinking about any website, is the user. Like so much marketing, websites are, unfortunately, too often developed 'inside out' (company focused) rather than 'outside in' (customer focused). All website users have their own reasons and objectives for visiting a site. No matter how targeted, any website has to communicate with a wide range of individual users. To be successful, therefore, every site has to give each and every user a thorough but simple presentation of the site's content so that the site achieves your objectives e.g. registrations, leads, sales. To do this successfully, users want: Simple Navigation Navigation that is clear and consistent. Probably the worst issue is 'lost visitors' ? those who are in a maze and don't know where they are in the site. The site should always allow users to easily return to the home page and preferably get to any page with one cl?. Studies have shown that users want to find things fast, and this means that they prefer menus with intuitive ranking, organization and multiple choices to many layers of simplified menus. The menu links should be placed in a consistent position on every page. Clarity Users do not appreciate an over-designed site. A website should be consistent and predictable. For maximum clarity, your site design should be built on a consistent pattern of modular units that all share the same basic layout, graphics etc. Designing Websites That Meet Their Objectives Everything above... more.. How Marketers Can Use Yahoo Pipes to Increase Their Online Sales How Marketers Can Use Yahoo Pipes to Increase Their Online Sales By Rok Hrastnik While RSS end-user adoption has been relatively slow, marketers have jumped at the chance to use this new internet channel ?rease their online sal? If you're new to the world of RSS --- RSS is a simple technology that allows you to deliver your online content directly to your subscribers, other websites and the search engines. It helps you improve your content delivery, as well as ?rease your online traff?and reach, and even conduct business intelligence more easily. RSS content is delivered through so-called RSS feeds, which are just simple files that carry your online content. Each of these simple files containts multiple "stories" that you may want to deliver to your audiences, called "content items". A content item can be anything ? an article, a blog post, a whole newsletter issue, a sal?letter and so on. But there is more to RSS than simply getting your content out. One of the fields of RSS marketing is also NewsMastering, which allows you to: [a] take multiple third-party RSS feeds, [b] mix them together, [c] filter your new mix using various keywords that you're interested in, [d] use the mix and your filters to create a new stream of content, pulling together all the content items from dozens or hundreds of other RSS feeds ? but only the content items that match your filters. You can now take this stream of content and either subscribe to it yourself, if for example you want to find out immediately what the market is saying about you, what it's saying about your competitors, and what your competitors are doing themselves.... more.. What?s worse? The spam itself? Or how anti-spam solutions block legitimate mail? What?s worse? The spam itself? Or how anti-spam solutions block legitimate mail? Posted by David Berlind After being in New York City last week and being busy almost the entire time, I spent a good part of the weekend catching up on e-mail. I have more inboxes than I care to admit and use more technologies than I should be using to see access them (Via the Web, Thunderbird, Outlook, etc). Somewhere on my to-do list is a day or two?s worth of purging and consolidation. These e-mail marathons usually include the tedious job of searching junk mail and spam folders for any legitimate e-mails. When it comes to e-mail, most of us (e-mail users and the e-mail solutions providers that serve them) have lost our sensibilities. The facts that (a) legitimate e-mail finds its way into our junk mail folders, (b) we must spend our time searching through junk mail folders for that legitimate e-mail, and (c) we somehow think this is normal, is proof that we?re gluttons for punishment. So, let me make this abundantly clear: the very second you must access your junk e-mail folder to make sure there?s no legitimate e-mail in it is the very second in which your anti-spam technology has become entirely useless to you. After all, the whole idea of anti-spam technology is to make it so that you don?t have to wade through illegitimate e-mail in order to read your legitimate e-mail ? all of your legitimate e-mail. One statistic that anti-spam solution providers pride themselves on is the fewest number of false positives. That is, they?ll boast that their systems make the fewest number of mistakes when it comes to misclassifying a legitimate e-mail as spam (and dumping that legit mail into your... more.. Countdown to Google Page One and Search Engine Optimization Company Nightmares Countdown to Google Page One and Search Engine Optimization Company Nightmares In August, Google announced the upcoming roll out of the Google Caffeine infrastructure. Google was quick to point out that they would not launch the new infrastructure until after the Christmas holiday shopping season -- giving many online retail stores confidence for the upcoming Christmas shopping season. In the August announcement, Google described Caffeine this way: "For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google's web search. It's the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits "under the hood" of Google's search engine, which means that most users won't notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences..." After Thanksgiving, Google said that they had taken Caffeine out of its "sandbox" phase, and that it launched Caffeine on only one of its Data Centers. Search Engine Land was able to confirm that Google had launched Caffeine on the IP address 209.85.225.103, and it was running on this IP address for at least half of its searches. However, the full roll out of Caffeine continues to remain in holding pattern, until after the Christmas season. Analyzing Google's Search Engine Result Pages... Several online publishers and SEO companies jumped into testing the Google Caffeine search results in August, when the original announcement was made public. The results of testing were somewhat mixed... ? Everyone pretty much agreed that the Caffeine infrastructure was faster than the original Google... more.. Using Google Local, Yahoo Local and MSN Local Using Google Local, Yahoo Local and MSN Local   Considering that a listing in Yahoo costs $299 per year, there exists 3 excellent opprtunities that are 100% free!   Those opportunities offer you a great way to get your local business to the top of the search engine results pages. It will take you about 1 hour of your time, and just 30 minutes in planning, but yields an amazing amount of long-term search results. Every business owner should perform this. If you have a physical address, adding your business to Google, Yahoo, & MSN local will help your current and potential customers easily find your company.   How To List Your Business On Local Business Centers Google Local Business Start by setting up a Google Maps account here. Then make sure to be as descriptive as possible about your business can be. Use your keyword phrases, separated with a comma, in the Description field. This will help increase the odds of your local business ad showing up when people are searching. Make sure and include all hours and payment information. Google local business ad?s will have the most power of the three and can really generate a lot of results within Google. Many times it will simple be people searching for your specific business but there is a lot to be said for making things easy on them. Also, remember to use an image, such as a logo.   MSN Local Business To add your local business to the MSN local business center you will follow a similar procedure except it?s faster. Go to this link and start signing up. As with Google local business you will want to be as detailed as possible and take the... more.. Embracing Cascading Style Sheets Makes Good Sense Embracing Cascading Style Sheets Makes Good Sense By Fred Black Why do I like Cascading Styles Sheets (CSS) and what makes CSS so great. The answer only makes sense if you know what CSS is. The Holy Grail of CSS is to separate the content of a web page from the instructions that control what it looks like. This makes it much easier for various devices to display the web page correctly. The same page would display correctly on all standard web browsers (Internet Explorer, FireFox, Opera, Netscape, etc.), and devices used by persons with a handicap, cell phones, other devices, and yet-to-be-developed interfaces. The web site designer would not have to make separate pages for these devices. However, reality is different and here in the real world CSS does not do all these things. It does have enough positive points to make it worthwhile to learn and incorporate it into your web pages. There are multiple ways to control how something looks on a web page. The color, size, and font used for a headline or for a paragraph of text can be defined with in-line styles and tags. The term "in-line" means that the commands for controlling the color, size, and font are mixed in with the content. This makes the source code for the page cluttered and hard to read and edit when you want to update it or fix something. Also, because you're repeating the same commands over and over throughout the page, the file size of the page gets larg?and hence slower for those browsing your site. As opposed to in-line styles, CSS is not repeated throughout the page. CSS can be defined in the head... more.. Shaping Web Audience Preference Shaping Web Audience Preference By Jerry Bader (c) 2009 Wouldn't it be wonderful if you had the power to convince people that your product or service was exactly what they needed, and as a consequence your in-box was filled with inquiries and your e-commerce site was stuffed with orders. Wouldn't that be great? And isn't that exactly what you want to achieve with your website? The problem is you are part of a giant online bazaar called The Web; and just like your local weekend flea market The Web is filled with crap, conmen, and contraband. Without understanding some of the underlying psychological principles involved in shaping audience preference you are in danger of being regarded as just another mangy flea market hustler, even if what you offer is the greatest thing since sliced bread. The subject of shaping public perception, or in our case Web audience preference, is complex and convoluted but there are basic principles that if followed will help you achieve your business objectives, no matter how you define them. The Four E-Essentials of Website Presentation All the Google ads, search engine optimization, linking strategies, social networking, and Twitter twirping will be for naught if you don't implement four essential marketing communication techniques: engage, enlighten, embed, and re-enforce. These four website presentation elements are easy to grasp but not always easy to implement. If you've read any of our other articles you will know that we think Web-video is the most effective way to implement these elements on your website and in your Web marketing. But just because you use video on your website, doesn't mean it's going to be effective unless you understand the psychology behind the e-essentials. Perhaps the best way to illustrate how... more.. Search Engine Keywords Selection Search Engine Keywords Selection By Rajkumar Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination - your website - you need to provide them with specific and effective signs that will direct them right to your site. You do this by creating carefully chosen keywords. Think of the right keywords as the Open Sesame! of the Internet. Find the exactly right words or phrases, and presto! hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are too general or too over-used, the possibility of visitors actually making it all the way to your site - or of seeing any real profits from the visitors that do arrive - decreases dramatically. Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases. You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven't followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It's hard to be objective when you are right in the center of your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source. Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list... more.. Google Street View Continues to Raise Privacy Concerns Google Street View Continues to Raise Privacy Concerns By Brian Cooper (c) 2009 Medium Blue Google Street View, a Google Maps feature that lets users see images of streets and the surrounding areas, continues to generate controversy. Since its launch in May 2007, the feature has prompted questions about whether it constitutes an invasion of privacy, complaints about inappropriate images, and even a lawsuit. Aaron and Christine Boring vs. Google The lawsuit came from a Pittsburgh couple in April 2008. The couple lives on a private road. However, Google's Street View team travelled down the road and continued taking images all the way up to the couple's home. The images were then posted to Google Maps and included close-ups of the couple's home, swimming pool, and outbuildings. Google's response? "Complete privacy does not exist in this world except in a desert, and anyone who is not a hermit must expect and endure the ordinary incidents of the community life of which he (or she) is a part."(1) While Google's assertion that its Street View imaging team is an "ordinary incident of community life" is far-fetched, Google does make some good points in its response. Namely, that the plaintiffs could have simply requested that Google delete the offending images from Street View via a form available on Google Maps. Instead, the couple filed suit and in doing so have made the matter public record and ensured that the images will be viewed by even more people. Since the lawsuit, Google has removed the images in question, but the suit remains open. The Borings' Neighbors On Goldenbrook Lane, a nearby street, some... more.. SEO - Then, Now, and Tomorrow. SEO history based on my experience - a very late at night post. 1999 SEO - Creating 18 doorway pages for 18 major search engines. Looking at the sites in the top results and analyzing keyword density of each area of the pages, and repeating it with just a little more keyword density. Regularly submitting pages to the Search Engines. 2000 SEO - PPC at 1 cent per click at GoTo (later Overture/Yahoo). Yahoo owns 1/3 of the internet, MSN (Looksmart) owns ~15%, and another 15 engines share the rest. Google who? 2001 SEO - 3 major directories control much of the Internet. Yahoo Directory (~35% SE traffic), Looksmart Directory (top of MSN results), DMOZ (Helped in several search engines (including Google)). Being an editor for Zeal (Looksmart non ecommerce Editors - showed at top of MSN) and becoming a DMOZ Editor could control your listing. and with directory editor experience, then submitting to Yahoo with urls like www.car-parts-auto-part-cheap-discount.com. Back then you could have #1 rankings in 1-3 days accross 90% of the internet. 2002 SEO - Refining Keyword density and stuffing in 1 more keyword on your pages than the top guys have. By the end of the year Google?s taken over King, and the other search engines are fading fast, and the days of SEO link building are Priorty #1, trade them and buy them. 2003 SEO - With Yahoo now defaulting search results to Google, Google now controls 79% of all searches. MSN is a far cry #2 with ~13%. With Google ruling, he with the highest PageRank and most backlinks, and focused anchor text links wins monthly rankings in the Monthly Google Dance. By the end of the year almost everyone will feel the effects of a search update gone wrong with an updated called "Florida". 2004 SEO - After Florida... more.. New Website? It's Time To Think Links New Website? It's Time To Think Links By Matt Jackson (c) 2007 Link building has long been the staple dietary topic for SEO and Internet marketing experts, but with good reason. This is hardly ground breaking news but having a powerful link profile will help you to rank well in the search engines. Having an especially powerful link profile will also drive traffic directly to your website. As the webmaster of a new site, there are several things you must do. First, you need to create a genuinely useful website filled with equally useful and informative content. You need to ready yourself to add fresh content on a frequent basis, in order to retain existing site visitors and to attract the search engine spiders. You also need to start building links ? a good link profile takes time to develop so it is essential that you start as soon as possible. Below are some of the more and less effective methods of building quality inbound links to your new website. Create Quality Content OK, we've already mentioned this in passing, but it's important. Linkable content will get linked to (eventually). You may not have the traffic base to command links organically in this way yet, but you will do soon. Unique, informative, and even controversial content will ultimately see other sites willing to link to your own. Video marketing has become especially popular because of its viral nature. You can create a good video clip, embed it into a page of your site and include "email to a friend" links. Also ensure that it is well branded so that everybody knows where the video first came from. Free Directory... more.. 3 Top Tools and Services for an Effective Internet Marketing Solut? 3 Top Tools and Services for an Effective Internet Marketing Solution By Sydney Nelson (c) 2007 Everyone knows the Internet is growing exponentially and continually evolving. The major players in the continual evolution of the Internet are the major search engines and consumer generated media such as blogs. Because of the continual changes, a well rounded Internet marketing strategy must include a variety of proven marketing options to ensure success. I will outline 3 of the most effective Internet marketing solutions available and how they relate to your marketing strategy. SEO Optimization Search engine optimization (SEO) is the first because the free advertising afforded by the search engines is partly determined by on-page optimization techniques. With thousands of new Websites being created daily, the competition for a listing on the first search result page is increasingly saturated for the popular keywords. Statistics show better than 90% of people only look at the first search result page, and a similar percentage only click on the top search listing. In order to compete effectively, a Web page must be designed around a keyword or more effectively, a keyword phrase. The keywords must be included in the page's title, keyword META tag, page's description, the first heading (using the H1 HTML tag), throughout the body of the page and within the last 25 words on the page. These are just a few of the basic SEO on-page options that, although will not guarantee a first page listing, are definitely required as a starting point in an effective Internet marketing strategy. In most cases, there is too much competition for certain keywords such as "golf clubs". A better strategy would be to... more.. Article Marketing Success Secret: Give Them What They Want Article Marketing Success Secret: Give Them What They Want By Bill Platt (c) 2008 the Phantom Writers Some people find great success with article marketing, while others think its proponents are full of bull. The difference between the winners and the losers in article marketing is most frequently defined when the writer sits down and begins to write. That is right. Success and failure is most often determined by the writers' motivation, and more importantly, by the writers' commitment to the reader. Flawed Strategies In 2005, a few of the Internet Marketing gurus took notice of the success people were having with article marketing, and they passed this news to the Internet Marketing newbies of the world. But, there was something missing from the advice given. In a lot of cases, the people preaching the power of article marketing hadn't used the technique themselves. Even today, few of my article distribution competitors utilize reprint articles to promote their own businesses. Most of my competitors rely upon affiliate marketing to promote their websites. Unfortunately, the Internet Marketing newbies of the world were given a lot of bad advice. It was said that: The only purpose of article marketing was to build links, and link popularity for search engine rankings; The writer only needed to write enough words to meet the minimum word count requirements of publishers; It wasn't necessary for the content to be well-written, since the publishers do not read the articles they approve for publication; Anything that can be done to reduce the time/cost of article writing would benefit the marketer. The only suggestion... more.. 16 Tools for Twitter Users 16 Tools for Twitter Users By Kalena Jordan (c) 2008 Hands up if you're a Twitterholic. Yes, my hand's up too. If you love the micro-blogging platform Twitter as much as I do, then keep reading. I've put together a l? of the coolest plug-ins and apps designed for us Twitterholics and scored each out of five on the *must have* scale. Twitter Specific Tools: 1) TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends' status on Twitter and lets you make posts from your browser status bar. It also allows you to switch between multiple Twitter accounts in one click. This is my #1 must-have, deal-breaker, cannot live without Twitter plug-in. 2) Retweet This is an application designed for use with the Greasemonkey Firefox plug-in. It allows you to append a retweet button to the end of each Twitter entry to encourage your followers to retweet your posts. 3) Classify Twitter Users is a script that allows you to classify Twitter users and decide whether they are worth following based on their friends, followers and post ratios. Another Greasemonkey app, it's a great tool to help you weed out the Twitter spammers and fan boys from the socially healthy. You can set the script to use your Twitter user scales (e.g. spammer, social climber, social rock star) or just gather more information about people you are following. Must Have Scale (4): ? ? ? ? 4) TwittAd allows Twitter users to monetize their account by accepting advertising on the background image of their Twitter user profile. You decide the duration and price advertisers pay for... more.. How to Create Search Engine Friendly Title and META Tags (Part 2) How to Create Search Engine Friendly Title and META Tags (Part 2) By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007 In Part 1 of this article, I defined Title Elements and META Tags and took you step-by-step through how to create an optimized Title Element. Now it's time to create your optimized META Description Tag. Create Your META Description Tag Take your l? of target keywords and phrases and open another text file. Again, you can use an existing sample META Description Tag as your template. Let's say our existing description is: <META name="description" content="Miami Florists create beautiful floral bouquets, arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions, including weddings, Valentines Day, parties and corporate events. Deliveries throughout Florida."> You can make your META Description Tag as long as you like, but only a certain portion of it will get indexed and displayed by search engines. According to Danny Sullivan in his (old but still relevant) article How to Use HTML Meta Tags, 200 to 250 characters of the META Description gets indexed but less than that gets displayed, depending on the search engine. So you want to make sure all your important keywords are listed towards the start of the tag. Now take your l? of keywords for the home page in order of importance. For our fictional florist these were: - florists Miami - florists Florida - wedding bouquets Now you need to create a readable sentence or two describing your web site and incorporating these keywords so they make the best use of the keyword real estate available. Because search engines often display the contents of... more.. Do This and OWN Google's Top Spots! Do This and OWN Google's Top Spots! By Michael Small (c) 2008 Ranking well on Google takes two things, good content and great links. But it's not an even split. Because Google assumes only a page with good content would get great inbound links it puts about 70% of the importance for ranking on links and only about 30% on content. That little tidbit alone will put you head and shoulders above all those competitors still messing with META tags and spamming keywords. But if you want a huge advantage over the rest of your competition, keep reading. I'm about to show you how the pros do it and win every time. Part 1: Perfect Your Anchor Text So just what is anchor text and why is it important? Anchor text is the clickable word or words that make up the hyperlink. You've seen anchor text a million times (the underlined words that are typically blue.) Google figures any words special enough to be used as a guide in a link are extra valuable, which makes anchor text extremely important for you to use properly. Just how powerful is anchor text? More than most people dream. Try an experiment. Go to Google and search for "cl? here" (without quotes.) The top match for years has been a page for Adobe Acrobat Reader. So does that Adobe page have "cl? here" copied 50 times in the text? No. In fact "cl? here" does not even appear on the page a single time! Does it have "cl? here" embedded in its META tags. No; again, not even once. So how can it possibly rank... more.. Caffeine, Google's Mild Stimulus Caffeine, Google's Mild Stimulus By John Sylvester (c) 2009 Although denying it has anything to do with the recent launch of Bing, Google's Matt Cutts unveiled their "secret project", one of the biggest behind-the-scenes updates to Google search in three years and is now testing the next-generation architecture of web search, called Caffeine. In fairness to Matt Cutts, he said changes to Google search have been in progress for a number of months and hence, by implication, that the launch of Bing had nothing to do with the development of Caffeine. Moreover, I would hesitate to guess, it has far more to do with speed in real-time, so as to address its place in step with the social networking giants. Although initially unavailable for testing because of "system maintenance", Matt Cutts, Google's enforcer of the Google Webmaster Guidelines and the man who cracked down on link spam, has invited us all to test it. He said Google hasn't made an update of this magnitude since 2006 and that it will make internet search much faster and more accurate than ever before, although "currently, even power users won't notice much of a difference at all". He went on to say: "The new infrastructure sits 'under the hood' of Google's search engine, which means that most users won't notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we're opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback." The new architecture is said to include size, indexing, speed, accuracy and ranking changes and Google is asking searchers to give it a try it and report their feedback. While the version is still a pre-beta release at http://www2.sandbox.google.com, you... more.. Six Proven Secrets to Writing a Trash-Proof Press Release Six Proven Secrets to Writing a Trash-Proof Press Release By Bill Stoller (c) 2008 PublicityInsider.com In baseball, it's said that you know an umpire is top-notch when you never notice his presence. If he's doing his job, he won't call attention to himself in any way. It's much the same for the writer of a press release. When the recipient of a press release focuses only on its content -- and not on its creation -- the writer has succeeded. With that in mind, here's how to develop a style that can help give you a big edge in placing your press releases. 1) Master News Style By Reading News Stories The folks who write wire copy for the Associated Press are masters at presenting information without calling attention to themselves. Read all the AP wire copy you can and get a sense of the rhythm and flow of their writing. Examine their choice of words and sentence structure (typically, they choose the simplest way of saying things) and their overall tone of solid objectivity. This is the style to which you should aspire. 2) Write a Great Lead The lead paragraph in a press release should, theoretically, be able to stand alone as a news item. A standard news lead answers the Five W's -- Who? What? Where? When? Why? Successfully answer those five questions in one paragraph and you've summarized everything beautifully. Bad lead: The new Acme X100 is drawing raves from customers, who call it the best thing to happen to the flanging industry since the X99. Good lead: Philadelphia, August 15, 2007-- Calling... more.. Debunking the Top 10 Search Engine Myths Debunking the Top 10 Search Engine Myths By Marc D. Ensign (c) 2009 We've all done it at some point in our professional lives. We search a keyword that describes our business only to scratch our head as to how our competitor's website shows up on the top of the l? instead of ours. If you've gone one step further and read about Search Engine Optimization, then surely you have come across the conflicting information online. One article tells you to do one thing while another tells you to do the opposite. Which one should you believe? This gray area of what you should or should not do is much like the modern day "Bat Cave." If you are lucky enough to stumble upon it, chances are you don't quite know how you got there and if you had to go back one day you would probably just find yourself lost in the woods. So what should you believe? The general rule is to combine what you read or heard with what you have experienced and somewhere in there lies the truth. To get you started, let's debunk some of the more commonly used myths floating around. 1) Use a Keyword Rich Domain Name: It is widely believed that if you include your keywords in your domain name like www.professional-website-design-in-nj.com it will greatly improve your rankings. This is not true. It is best to choose a domain name that is short, easy to remember and if possible includes your company name. 2) Google Partnership: If you are ever approached by a company claiming to have a partnership with Google, run in the... more.. Does Your Website Need an Extreme Makeover? Does Your Website Need an Extreme Makeover? By Ivana Katz (c) 2009 It was Friday night and I was enjoying a quiet dinner at home, when suddenly CRACK! - part of my tooth broke off! "Damn" I thought, "Now what?" I immediately went online to see if I could find a dentist that is open on Saturday morning. So I searched and searched. The good news was there were plenty of dentists in my area ... the bad news was that I couldn't find whether they were open on Saturdays. After looking through various websites for about an hour, I narrowed it down to three dentists, who were open on the weekend. But in the end there was no competition as only one of the dentists had a professional looking website! Don't get me wrong the website wasn't flash, but it was clean, easy to navigate and most of all, provided me with the information I was looking for. I phoned the next morning, made an appointment and even got to see a dentist that day! After that experience, it really hit home ... what a difference a professional looking website makes! I am sure most of the dentists in my area are great at what they do, but none of their websites portrayed that. As a result they lost a customer who will spend hundreds, possibly even thousands of dollars on their services. So if you have a website... more.. How Important is Alexa Ranking? How Important is Alexa Ranking? By Adriana Iordan (c) 2007 Alexa Ranking - A Web Site Monetization Strategy? All businesses that employ online marketing, strive to improve their conversion rate. Now, there are different ways of attracting targeted traff? Some try to achieve a good ranking in the SERPs, while others are satisfied with heavier traffic. Either way, everybody has the goal of achieving financial success. But, while scoring high with Google may seem to certain business people the only way to make themselves known and thus reach their goal, there are others that think that a good position in the Alexa ranking system might benefit them just as well. What is Alexa Ranking? This is a ranking system set by alexa.com (a subsidiary of amazon.com ) that basically audits and makes public the frequency of visits to various Web sites. The algorithm by which Alexa traff?ranking is calculated, is simple. It is based on the amount of traffic recorded over a period of three months from users that have the Alexa toolbar installed. This traff?is based on such parameters as reach and page views. The reach refers to the number of Alexa users who visit a particular site in one day. Page view, as the name indicates, is the number of times a particular page (URL) is viewed by Alexa users. Alexa.com makes it clear though that, if a particular user visits the same URL multiple times on the same day, all those visits will be counted as one. The first step of the ranking process is calculating the reach and number of page views for all the sites on the Web on a daily... more.. What's Wrong With E-Commerce Websites? What's Wrong With E-Commerce Websites? By Jerry Bader (c) 2008 What is going on with e-commerce websites? It appears that online entrepreneurs spend so much time worrying about website traffic that they ignore the customers who actually want to buy something. Recently, I tried to order a product we spotted at a trade show. It was perfect for our application so we did a Google search to find the manufacturer and a l? of dealers who sold the item. Almost all the websites that distributed the product had proper contact information and invited people to call, which we did. After six frustrating phone calls to dealers we still hadn't found anyone willing to answer the telephone. Since we had to leave a message almost everywhere we called, we decided to try California even though we are located in the east, and it was far too early for any reasonable person to be at work. We finally got in touch with a friendly salesperson in Boston, who was very helpful but unfortunately the company was out of stock. Despite not being able to fill the order, we kept their information on file because they were friendly, accommodating, and dealt with all our questions. They tried their best to meet our needs but if we would have ordered using their online system and found out later that the product was back-ordered we would have been very upset since we had a deadline to meet. Next we reached the manufacturer who told us he was too busy to check if he had any stock, and maybe he could get back to us by four o'clock. Just as... more.. Relationship Marketing for the 21st Century Relationship Marketing for the 21st Century By Karen Saunders (c) 2010 Quick! Answer this question: What do you think of when you hear the term "relationship marketing"? If the only things that came to mind were your local business networking group, local chamber of commerce, or service club, you might not be aware of new strategies in 21st century relationship marketing. There is nothing wrong with any of these organizations, but if your relationship marketing efforts begin and end with them, you are not only operating under the old rules of relationship marketing, you are stuck in the 20th century. 21st century relationship marketing makes active use of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 and Social Media Only a few years ago, social media was something most people thought of as a tool for teenagers and college students. That has changed. Facebook now has more than 80 million active users and the fastest growing demographic of Facebook users is the over-25 age group. If that didn't make you sit up and take note, it should have. Your customers and potential customers probably have a computer and probably have high speed Internet access. And if they are not already using social media of some kind, just give it a few months. They will be. Think you are immune? How did you access this article? There is a good chance you came to it online. The communication mogul of the 21st century is the World Wide Web and the tools that make it work have advanced so much in such a short time that the buzz is now about Web 2.0. What is Web 2.0? No, you don't need to throw out your year-old computer or buy new software. Web... more.. How Many Links Does It Take to Get to the Middle of Google Page One? How Many Links Does It Take to Get to the Middle of Google Page One? By Bill Platt (c) 2009 911 Reputation Management Everyday it seems, people are asking me about the optimum number of inbound links they need to acquire for their website in order to rank well in Google. My answer is going to seem a little flip, but it is the honest, best answer. Answer: You need more inbound links - of equal or higher quality - than what your competitors have. When people wonder how many inbound links they need to acquire to rank in the Top 4 of Google's search results or even the Top 10 of Google's SERPs, they are generally hoping that someone will be able to give them a numeric answer, so that they know whether they can afford to undertake the process or not. I understand the WHY of the question, but there is no canned answer that will work for everyone. Remember, your competitor may be asking the same question and undertaking the same processes as you are, trying to accomplish the same goal. You can't truly begin to understand the answer to this question, until you have taken the time to do an Inbound Link Comparison Analysis of all of your competitors in the Top 10 spots of Google's SERPs. ? You need to look at the Top 10 listings in Google for a particular keyword. ? You need to do backlink checks for all ten URLs in Google's search listings, and you need to check those numbers across a variety of sources, including Google, Yahoo and any other tool you can find to do a check. (Google and Yahoo... more.. Webmaster Tool Box Webmaster Tool Box By Sharon Housley (c) 2009 Here is a collection of what we consider "must have" tools for webmasters. These tools will benefit any webmaster, both novices and experts alike. Arm yourself with these tools in order to achieve a more professional online presence. 1. Custom 404 Page Use a custom 404 page, so that if a user incorrectly types a webpage URL, they will still retain navigational options within your site and be provided alternative solutions. When a domain is correctly entered, but a specific webpage's URL is entered incorrectly, it is possible to display your custom error page to the visitor. By providing users with a navigational bar and further assistance, rather than leaving them with a generic "page not found" error screen, you can often keep prospective customers on your site by providing them with navigation alternatives.   2. UrlTrends UrlTrends is a service that shows historical trends, so that webmasters can see how their SEO efforts are affecting websites in the search engines. UrlTrends should be used in conjunction with web-logging software. UrlTrends - www.urltrends.com 3. Favicon Polish your website by adding a Favorite Icon. When a "favicon" is available on your site, and the site URL is entered in the user's web browser URL box, the favicon will be displayed beside the URL. This gives the website a more professional and polished look. Favicon HTMLKit - www.htmlkit.com 4. Color Matching Match the primary web colors with those used in your logo. Simply choose a preferred color using the ColorBlender service below, and a 6-color matching palette and blend will be automatically calculated for you. ColorBlender - www.colorblender.com 5. Online WYSIWYG Editing Online webpage editing allows for collaboration, so that different users can log in and edit web pages. Edit - www.edit.com 6. RSS... more.. 12 Ways to Use Twitter for Social Media Marketing 12 Ways to Use Twitter for Social Media Marketing By Ron Knight (c) 2009 Twitter is a wildly popular microblogging service. It involves writing Tweets, which are short updates of a maximum of 140 characters that tell your followers what you are up to. Although your Tweets are technically supposed to answer the question, "What are you doing?" Twitter has moved far beyond that. Tweets are used to share stories, link to photos, promote content, break news, and a whole lot more. Twitter has also become an incredibly important tool for social media marketing professionals. Here are 12 ways in which Twitter can be used in your social media marketing campaign. 1. Sharing Links to Items of Interest As soon as you read something online that you think is interesting, it is easy to share it on Twitter with all of your followers. Twitter is highly effective in this manner because it is such a quick way to be able to reach a large group of people. You can also get a lot of great ideas for blog posts from Twitter since many new ideas and stories are floating around that haven?t even made it to the blogosphere and definitely not to mainstream media. 2. Building Your Network Using Twitter is a great way to build your network because it allows you to find and follow people with similar interests. You can use Steeple to find people who live in your geographical area. You can also use other tools that help you find new people to follow based upon who your Twitter friends follow. 3. Build Relationships within Your Current Network People in different networks often use Twitter to connect with their contacts... more.. 20 Must-Have Tools to Automate an Online Business 20 Must-Have Tools to Automate an Online Business By Donna Gunter (c) 2007 With all the information online about tools and techniques available to help someone effectively manage and run an online business, how do you ever decide which ones are truly useful to have in your business management toolkit? Here's my listing of the 20 indispensable tools that I cannot live without: 1. Article Marketing: SubmitYourArticle.com automates the article submission process by allowing you to submit up to eight articles each month and then distributes the articles to hundreds of web sites, article directories and ezine publishers. Without a doubt, this has been my most effective online marketing tool that has produced tremendous results for my business. 2. Audio Recording/Podcasting: AudioAcrobat.com makes audio streaming fast and simple, whether you want to add an audio greeting, audio testimonials, podcast or videos to your website or send out an audio postcard or record a teleclass. 3. Backup: Carbonite.com offers an unlimited amount of data storage for $50 per year. Carbonite is very intuitive and went directly to my email files and Roboform files to back them up without me having to manually select the backup files. I frequently use this service to find the original version of a file that I've accidentally overwritten, as well. 4. Blogging: Typepad.com is both simple to use and powerful. You can set up as many blogs as you desire with a Pro account, and you can customize your blog in an infinite number of ways. Once it's set up, the online interface makes... more.. Website Branding ? Establishing Your Web Brand Website Branding ? Establishing Your Web Brand By Matt Jackson (c) 2008 Any form of branding essentially means being recognized. A positive website brand image means that your potential customers will recognize your brand and begin to associate that brand with a particular product or range of products. In achieving this, those same customers will begin to turn to your brand when they need the product you sell or require information that you provide. Branding Is More Than A Pretty Logo A lot of websites and website owners mistakenly believe that creating a brand means a compelling and relevant name, and well designed logos and web pages. While these are a part of website branding, they are far from being the whole story. In fact, every aspect of your website and online business needs to convey your brand image. This includes design, narrative voice, advertising, and marketing. Customer communication is equally as important, and provides the opportun? to strengthen your brand even further. Your Target Market Branding needs to concentrate on the target market you are aiming to attract. Market research and some competitor analysis will usually garner you with relevant information regarding the people you are aiming to attract. What products and services are they looking for? What information do they want access to? Do they expect to be able to interact with you or other members of your online community? These are all important questions that you not only need to ask but answer as well. The most effective branding will also consider the demographics of a target market. Age, sex, nationality, religion, and disposable income bracket are important... more.. How to Write a Media Release How to Write a Media Release By Sue Currie (c) 2007 Did you know that publicity is supposedly seven times more effective than advertising? And it is free ? that is if you do it yourself. If you know the elements of writing a good media release to capture the attention of journalists, you can benefit from free editorial coverage. Here's a few tips to help you write a media release. The Beginning The first and most important thing is to have something interesting to say. Consider your USP ? just like in sales. It's your unique selling proposition. After all publicity is "selling". You are selling a story idea to the media. I like to call it the unique shining point. It really needs to stand out, shine, be compelling ? not an advertisement, not a boring product plug. Another element that will really hook the journalist in is to consider the ESP the emotional selling point. Often it is the human element in the story that will capture the reader's attention therefore the attention of the media. Think about what your story is. What is your background? Have you overcome any obstacles to get where you are today? Any achievements or milestones? Where is the human interest? What's more compelling? An announcement about a wedding limousine service, or the 30th anniversary both in marriage and business of the couple who run the service? This is a story I helped someone uncover in a seminar I conducted. The couple later went on to get a full page colour photo and editorial story in a wedding supplement in their local paper ? for free, just by working out the human element... more.. The Search Landscape Reflected In Paid Results The Search Landscape Reflected In Paid Results By Dave Davies (c) 2008 Heart Of Business It's important to note that the writing of this article occurred on July 17, 2008. I mention this only to insure that you can put it into context and also so that those who read this article in a day or week or month from now aren't confused by my noting of Q2 reports and references to "today". Any of you who have read some of my past articles or who have visited Beanstalk's services pages will know - I'm not a PPC guy. Quite honestly, it's not in my primary skill set and it's something I would definitely prefer to leave to the experts. Now that said, following Google and it's health (which is tied directly to AdWords and AdSense) is something I'm keenly interested in. To this end, recent changes in Google's paid search display and ranking systems will have huge impacts on advertisers and, more important for the purpose of this article, on Google itself. A couple weeks ago a friend of mine, Richard Stokes from AdGooroo sent me a PDF entitled, "Search Engine Advertiser Update - Q208" . With this document they outline the changing trends in the paid search marketplace and many of the stats are surprising. If you're a PPC manager they're obviously directly important. For those of us in the organic optimization world they are still both interesting and important. They're interesting for reasons which will become clear below and they're important because anything that affects the economic health of the search engines affects the search landscape both... more.. Top Six Internal Linking Tactics To Get Top Google Rankings Top Six Internal Linking Tactics To Get Top Google Rankings By Jason O'Connor (c) 2008 If you own or run a website and are not following these six tactics for properly linking your website together then you're losing Google traffic as you read this. First some definitions. Internal linking is the links on your website that point to other pages within your same website. External linking is when you link to another website. Tactics are specific things to do to achieve desired results, or any mode of procedure for gaining advantage or success. There are things you can do when developing or refining your internal linking structure. If you carry out the following tactics, you're going to achieve two things. One, you'll make your website better from a user's perspective. Two, you'll rank better in Google. And it's no coincidence that Google rewards you for doing things that make the website user's experience easier and better. In fact, the most important thing I can recommend is that you create, design and link your website together in a way that benefits the visitor first. Your visitors are most important, not Google rankings. One last thing before I get to the tactics. Have you heard that links from other websites that point back to your website are essential in getting top search engine rankings, especially with Google? It's true. These links vary in their effectiveness and value depending on the website from which they're coming. But did you also know that internal links often can have similar effectiveness and value as external links? So bear this in mind as you read on. 1)... more.. Search Engine Tools Not Just For SEO Search Engine Tools Not Just For SEO By Gennady Lager (c) 2007 Sadly, not everyone in the world knows everything about search engine optimization. In fact, very few people know anything about SEO or even what it is. Even fewer know any search offerings that may help your experience as a search engine user, a website navigator, a webmaster or researcher. I have compiled a l? of free search engine and internet tools handy for everyone to use and improve their experience with some useful resources. Please note that if you are an SEO practitioner, none of these are news to you and you are well aware of these resources. For everyone else, this is a nice little database of handy stuff. Google Products Google has developed a smorgasbord of handy tools and products offered for fr?use to everyone. You can bet that they have developed something to almost everyone's interest. Some of the products I frequently use are Alerts, Blog Search, Earth, Analytics, Toolbar, Image Search, Trends, Page Creator, Maps, Gmail, Talk, and YouTube. These are only some of the products ? Google offers many more! Search Engine Commands Most often used by search engine professionals such as search engine optimizers - very few others know about these search engine commands. Knowing them can really bring information about a specific site and its standing in the World Wide Web to light. Here are some of the most important and generally supported commands: Site: - Displays all of the pages indexed by the engine of the site. Link: - Locates some links pointing to the site. Cache: - Shows the last indexed and cached version of a site. Info: - Displays general info about a site with other search commands. Related: - Shows websites that may be semantically or directly related to... more.. Killer Campaigns Volume Four: The Color of Branding Killer Campaigns Volume Four: The Color of Branding By Jerry Bader (c) 2010 Web video is a communication technique that provides a viewer-experience that delivers several big advantages over broadcast: first, the length of your presentation is for the most part a non issue other than the degree to which your content and delivery holds your audience's attention; second, the cost to produce and present professional online video is far more affordable than broadcast; and third, Web video provides the chance to intellectually and emotionally engage your audience with a memorable viewing experience, and involve them physically by prompting direct-response action. On the other hand, broadcast does provide a mass audience, but not necessarily an attentive one like your website. As we have seen in previous installments of Killer Campaigns, the commercial broadcast industry, despite its economic and time constraints, has plenty of good examples of techniques that can be used effectively in Web video campaigns, if you understand how certain elements affect an audience. It's easy to misread a commercial's true marketing effectiveness and assume the big flashy special effects and grandiose production stunts are what makes a commercial work, but in fact those kinds of things generally only make a commercial more expensive. True the big-deal aspects of a production may attract attention, but it's the small things that are the most important, the most effective and the most affordable. It's the things you hardly notice like writing, casting, music, performance, and campaign consistency that have the most impact on a presentation's ability to communicate, influence and persuade. It's the production techniques to which the audience pays little attention that maximizes sale-conversions and increases the... more.. Top Ten SEO Myths Top Ten SEO Myths By Andy MacDonald Ever wonder what the biggest SEO myths are? I have taken the most prevalent myths that seem to be constantly resurfacing and examined them for you. This is a must read for anyone looking to hire an SEO firm or someone looking to do SEO for themselves. Myth # 1: All Meta Tags Are Of Equal Importance Some Meta tags are useful while others are not. I have stated this many times. Search engines are relying more and more about what is on the website than what the tags are telling them. The description tag is used by some (but not all) search engines. The same goes for the keyword tag. Keyword tags are used more by spammers and people using software to find you as a link partner than the search engines. In my opinion, the only tags you should concentrate your efforts on are the robot tag and the description tags. Myth # 2: You Should Submit Your Site to Search Engines Weekly or Monthly Honestly, I nev?submit any site more than 1 time and sometimes I don't even do that. If you submit your site once, you're good. The engines will come back on their own. You can sometimes speed up the process of getting your site indexed by linking it to a high traff?or high PR site. The search engines will find the URL to your site and index it automatically. Myth # 3: SEO is Too Expensive Actually, SEO is probably the most cost effective f?of online marketing. Organic SEO is cheaper... more.. Keywords Are It! Seven Powerful & Useful Keyword Marketing Tools Keywords Are It! Seven Powerful & Useful Keyword Marketing Tools By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009 After years of running websites and earning a full-time online income, I am constantly reminded that it all comes down to keywords. Actually, it all comes down to obtaining top rankings for your profitable keywords in the search engines, mainly Google. And that statement has to be refined even further, it's all about obtaining top keyword rankings and keeping them at the top. You must consistently keep your keywords in the top spots on that all important first page of SERPs since your keyword rankings can make or break your online marketing. If you're targeting extremely competitive and profitable keywords you will have your work cut out for you; unless you have tons of money to buy your way (links) into the top spots, expect to spend months if not years, getting to those top listings. Google has frowned upon link buying and has taken steps to fight it, but this practice is still widespread throughout the web. Most beginning and honest webmasters want to take the proper route and earn those top rankings by providing good quality content that web users will actually find helpful and useful. They build those links the natural way by offering viral link bait in the form of videos, ebooks, articles, reports... all branded with backlinks to their sites. Gradually over time, these links will build up and your keyword rankings will go up in the search engines. People will find your content and bookmark it in all the social bookmark sites like Digg, Facebook, MySpace... and your rankings will climb even faster. However, since keyword marketing has become extremely competitive, you do need a little help with... more.. Microsoft Going After Google Microsoft Going After Google By Jim Hedger, Step Forth News Editor, Step Forth Placement Inc. "This is hypercompetition, make no mistake," Bill Gates, November 2005. Gates is worried about Google and has been for a while. For years, observers have watched Microsoft, imagining the frantic pacing behind closed office doors in the executive suites, waiting for something major to happen. There have been articles about the rearrangement of furniture around the board table and the flinging of furniture across Steve Ballmer's office but, for the most part, very little of substance has been written about Microsoft's plans to deal with Google. That's because, until recently, the moves Microsoft has made have appeared to be either cosmetic and internal, or clumsily executed and easily thwarted. This week, work that's been happening in the background is showing fruit. For Microsoft, the month of May has come in like a triumphant lion. When you are used to being the king of the pride, nothing says success like taking big chunks of business from the competition and over the past few days, Microsoft has scored big gains in its fight against Google. These gains, coupled with today's rumors of a Microsoft/Yahoo... more.. The Google Goal Of Indexing 100 Billion Web Pages The Google Goal Of Indexing 100 Billion Web Pages By Danny Wirken Google's Goal of Quality Search In their paper 'The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine' it is very evident that Google's goal has always been to be one of the best search engines there is in terms of the quality of the results it gives. Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, however knew that in order to do this, Google needed to be able to store information efficiently and cost effectively and to have excellent crawling, indexing, and sorting methods or techniques. Google not only aimed to give quality results but to produce the results as fast as possible. Google started as a high quality search engine and continues to be the best search engine today. It has managed to stay true to its original intent to be a search engine that not only crawls and indexes the web efficiently but also a search engine that produces more satisfying results in comparison to other existing search engines. To stay true to the goal of providing the best search results, Google knew right from the start that it had to be designed so that the search engine could catch up with the web's growth. According to Brin and Page "In designing Google we have considered both the rate of growth of the Web and technological changes. Google is designed to scale well to extremely large data sets. It makes efficient use of storage space to store the index". They knew that they needed much space to store an ever growing index. Google's index size, which started out as 24 million web pages, was large for its... more.. Improve Every Aspect of Your Business With Twitter! Improve Every Aspect of Your Business With Twitter! By Abe Cherian (c) 2009 You've seen countless articles and e-books written about it, but do you know how to market online with Twitter? If you don't, you're not alone. Most marketers are still boggled when it comes to using Twitter in their promot? efforts. The main reason is because marketers don't realize the sheer ingenuity of our favorite microblog's 140-character limit communication. The reality is that the internet is information overload for most people. The genius of Twitter is that communication is forced into small chunks of information which most people can willingly digest. Presented with the option, people are more inclined to read a sentence or two as opposed to a long, involved blog entry or email! In this article, I will demonstrate how Twitter can not only be used by your business for marketing purposes, but also for customer service, product development, free publicity, and valuable access to experts! Twitter for Marketing If marketing entails everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of potential customers, including all communication, relationship building, and brand recognition - Twitter makes it instant. For this reason, it is the perfect social networking platform for announcing sales, specials, and promotions. Many larger companies, such as Dell, have a Twitter account to announce sales as soon as they become available. As a small business owner, you can harness the power of Twitter this way too! If you can get hundreds, or even thousands of people interested in your niche to follow your company's tweets, you have a targeted l? of prospects at... more.. The Brand Story Web Marketing Process The Brand Story Web Marketing Process By Jerry Bader (c) 2009 If websites have one overarching goal it is to create confidence in whatever the website is promoting and who's promoting it. It doesn't matter if it's a product, a service, a sales campaign, or an idea, if the presentation is not minimally credible or optimally motivational, then it fails as a means of marketing communication. Communicate to the Subconscious Mind Branding is often thought of as a marketing strategy reserved for major consumer product companies, but the fact is all businesses are brands that are either cultivated so they blossom, or let go-to-seed like a garden full of weeds. Marketing neophytes often think of branding only in terms of some physical manifestation, like a logo, but a brand is the full complement of residual impressions resulting from all the experiences associated with a product, service or company. And today, the online experience is a vital venue for creating those experiences. By using video, the marketer has the opportunity to tap into the audiences' subconscious mind, the buried remnants of both remembered and forgotten experiences; the kind of experiences that form attitudes, prejudices, and preferences that inform our decisions, most importantly our buying decisions. Where Businesses Go Wrong Where businesses go wrong is settling for only the obvious, the logical, and the rational. Brands are formed in the subconscious, so if your marketing communication doesn't reach the subconscious mind then it is not establishing or enhancing the brand in any meaningful, effective long-term way. What video does, when done right, is communicate on both the obvious and subconscious levels, making it the ideal Web-communication vehicle for creating a powerful brand experience, but only if you understand how to use the... more.. Does Your Website Need a Magic Act? Does Your Website Need a Magic Act? By Jerry Bader (c) 2008 In preparation for an initial meeting with a new client, we were asked to preview their website to see if we could come-up with some ideas for re-branding the company, and invigorating product sales. The client was suitably impressed with our thoughts but there was one problem, the product line that we stressed was not the focus of the company. The client explained that despite the fact most of their current website was devoted to a particular product line, it was not the product that differentiated them from the competition, nor was it the product that made them the most money. Once this was explained our entire focus shifted, and we were able to develop a website concept, and webmedia presentation that focused attention where it belonged. The experience drove home the fact that many websites confuse potential customers by inadvertently leading audiences down the wrong path, hindering profitable sales rather than promoting them. Pick A Card, Any Card Most companies sell a variety of products or services, but they are not all created equal, some are more important, and more profitable than others. At the heart of any website design project is the underlying goal of attracting attention, and directing that attention to the product, service, or concept that is being marketed. In that regard, an effective website sales presentation is a lot like a magic act. The PsyBlog, Understand Your Mind, recently published an article entitled, "Psychology of Magic: 3 Critical Techniques," in which they reported that the Association for Scientific Study of Consciousness held a conference called... more.. Top 5 Ways To Use Web 2.0 for Web Marketing Top 5 Ways To Use Web 2.0 for Web Marketing By Jason OConnor (c) 2008 Net Gazette Web 2.0 and Web marketing is a match made in heaven. There are many ways to create traffic to your website using the power of Web 2.0. Below I am going to examine what I consider to be the top five. Jack Humphrey, a well-known Web 2.0 expert, defines it this way in his Authority Black Book: Generally speaking, if people can submit links to content, submit content, make comments and vote good/bad content up/down thus affecting the amount of traffic that content can generate, it's Web 2.0. Blogs, wikis, file sharing sites, content rating systems, book-marking sites, and social networking sites are all examples of Web 2.0. Some of the more well-known Web 2.0 sites are YouTube (file sharing), Facebook and MySpace (social networking), Wikipedia (wiki), del.icio.us (book-marking) and Digg (content rating system). The l? is almost endless, and the traffic that these websites generate is absolutely staggering. So how can you harness some of this traffic? 1) Create original, quality and compelling content and submit them to Web 2.0 websites. For example, if you write an original and compelling article, you can submit it to content sharing and content rating system websites such as Digg, Propeller, Newsvine, MarkTD or Reddit. Sometimes content sharing and content rating system websites specialize in a particular industry. MarkTD specializes in marketing, for example. When you submit your article to these sites, people will give it a vote, and each vote moves the article up where it can be seen by more and more people. This has the potential of... more.. 10 Steps To Top 10 Rankings In Google 10 Steps To Top 10 Rankings In Google By Titus Hoskins (c) 2007 Most webmasters go totally "gaga" for top 10 rankings in Google. And for good reason, Google is the most dominant search engine on the net and will deliver the largest amount of traff? More importantly, those same webmasters will also inform you, getting top 10 rankings in Google often means your site will prove profitable. Mainly because obtaining targeted traff?is usually your first obstacle in creating a viable online business. In other words, if you get top ten listings in Google for good searchable keywords, it is almost impossible not to earn money. How To Proceed? First, you must know the rudimentary basics of how keywords work. Keywords and keyword phrases are the exact words someone types into a search engine to find what they're looking for online. If you have a site on "dog training" then your goal is to get a top 10 ranking for the keywords "dog training". Now if no one searches for "dog training" it would be a useless keyword, you would get no traff?no matter how perfectly your site is optimized for that keyword. How Do You Know If A Keyword Is Good? To find out, you have to do some keyword research on your particular keywords. Many professional online marketers use keyword research software like Brad Callen's Keyword Elite. However, you can also use the keyword suggestion tools supplied by Google Adwords or Overture. Try here: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ Now if you ch? "dog training", you will find it receives around 4,469 searches each day. That's a lot... more.. Does Google Have A Golden Rule? Does Google Have A Golden Rule? By Titus Hoskins (c) 2008 As a full-time webmaster and site owner, figuring out just what Google wants has been the most challenging aspect of running an online business. For many webmasters Google is the eight ton elephant in the room and you only have two options: upset the elephant and get trampled or quickly find out what it likes to consume and try to feed it. In order to keep Google fed, webmasters have to jump through more than one set of hoops. When it comes to getting top rankings in Google's Index or SERPs, there are 200 of these hoops or ranking factors. And if you want to play in Google's ballpark, you have to try and master the majority of them. For years, frustrated webmasters have been guessing and searching for these ranking factors. Asking what does Google want? How does Google rank pages and keywords? How does Google want you to build your site? Ten years ago it wouldn't have mattered what Google thought of your site for it wasn't even in the picture, but now when it comes to online search, Google is king of the hill. And as we all know, kings get whatever they want. Besides, any webmaster worth his salt, knows Google is what counts when it comes to organic traffic - you can achieve #1 spots for a keyword in all three top search engines (Yahoo and MSN being the other two light-weight contenders) but Google will simply deliver the most traffic to your site. Google doesn't as yet have a monopoly on web search, but it's getting close to... more.. A Slippery Slope: Google Owns a Search Engine Optimization Company A Slippery Slope: Google Owns a Search Engine Optimization Company By Scott Buresh (c) 2007 Medium Blue If you own or work with a search engine optimization company, or even if you're just hoping to better your search engine placement, then you are probably aware of the recent acquisition frenzy that took hold among the major search engines. Google paid $3.1 billion for DoubleClick, Microsoft paid $6 billion for Aquantive, and Yahoo paid $680 million for the 80 percent of Right Media that it did not already own and another $300 million for BlueLithium. The companies purchased are all intended to help widen the advertising range of each of the engines in question, and to take advantage of increasingly sophisticated behavioral-based ad-serving technologies that the acquired companies owned. What many people failed to realize was that when Google purchased DoubleClick, it now was also the owner of a very large search engine optimization company called Performics, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of DoubleClick. This fact is of course raising some eyebrows in the industry. Google has consistently maintained that there is no way that people can pay for better search engine placement in the organic index, a stance that the company still claims applies despite this recent purchase. In fact, a portion of Google's published guidelines about SEO says, "While Google doesn't have relationships with any SEOs and doesn't offer recommendations..." In another portion, Google says "While Google nev?sells better ranking in our search results..." However, anyone who hires search engine optimization company Performics is of course now paying Google for better search engine placement. It seems like a pretty black and white issue, but Google would obviously prefer... more.. 7 Tricks to Get a Goooooooooooogle of Links 7 Tricks to Get a Goooooooooooogle of Links By Richard Gilmore (c) 2009 SEO is a race. And in any race learning from your competitors makes you a better runner. Even when you're running first it's sometimes good to look back and check the runner-ups. And if you're not the yellow jersey guy, you absolutely should examine the leaders: their gear, their training, their strategy. In SEO the most interesting thing about your competition are their links. Whether you like it or not SEO is still pretty much about links. Good link profile can make up for almost any lack of optimized content and other onpage flaws. Love or hate, the best thing you can do about it is embrace the fact and run with it. So let's go through some tricks that will enable you to look deeper into your competition's link profile granting you access to the restricted areas: their locker room, dirty laundry and even the briefing hall where they plan their link building strategies. Let's Talk Competitive Link Research Finding out where your competitors' links come from is not all that hard. You just go to Yahoo! or Google and type in link:www.your-competitor.com to get a list of inbound links to the site. Yahoo's much better in that respect as it tends to give more extensive and accurate data. The problem here is that there's a limit of 1,000 links per website which is often not enough as the fattest link sources get left behind the limit fence. Here're some tips to break through to the other side. Note: If you're lazy like me skip to the end of the article where I'll share a tool that does it all much quicker. more.. Social Networking with Training Wheels Social Networking with Training Wheels By John Jantsch (c) 2008 Look, I don't really think that the mySpaces and Facebooks of the world are that important for the typical small business as they stand today. There may be very practical business reasons for some to actually use these and other, what are called social networks, for business gain, but most people that have jumped on the social network bandwagon have found themselves left with a "is this all there is" kind of feeling. To those, I say this, the value of the current public social networks for business folks is not what you can get out of them for gain today, but what you can learn by using them for practical gain tomorrow. That's why SpacebookedIn makes sense for you now. The Facebooks of the world are busy teaching millions and millions of business folks how social networks work, how social networking works, how shared applications can be viral and ever-present. The real payoff in my opinion is that the wave to come after the Facebook bubble bursts is the "personalized business network." Once everyone of your customers and prospects knows how to use what are easily replicatable social networking tools, like building profiles, sharing video and connecting based on mutual interests, your job of building your own social business network around your own very specific community of niche will get a whole lot easier. 2008 will be the year of the personalized social business network. So, if you've decided to take a pass on the whole social networking trend, I would suggest that you use this handy list to start learning... more.. Internet Marketing in the Age of Google Internet Marketing in the Age of Google By Titus Hoskins (c) 2008 Forget the Computer Age or the Internet Age, centuries from now our current time will probably be referred to as the Google Age. This assumption is not exactly a great leap of faith; Google has quickly permeated into mainstream culture to become an underlying factor of everyday life, a tightly woven backdrop to our lives. But never make the mistake of trying to define Google as just a search engine or you will miss the true calling of this little "Backrub", which was the original name used by its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1996. Google as we now know it debuted in 1998. The name Google is a twist on the word Googol, a number represented as 1 followed by 100 zeros. After everything is said and done, it will more than likely refer to Google's net worth - monetary or otherwise. But forget search engine, for regardless of the founders' intentions or company's objectives, Google is and has always been the ultimate marketing machine. A massive marketing machine that is just now gearing up and aiming for more and more lofty heights. These heights seem to increase each day as Google quietly rolls out program after program. All noble ambitions aside, Google is the perfect marketing machine. Google has no equals, and it is very close to getting a stranglehold on the real power behind all marketing, which is information. Marketing is information. Information is marketing. Great marketing is supplying the right information at the right time. Google more than any other entity on the web or in... more.. How Much SEO Do You Need To Get Top Rankings? How Much SEO Do You Need To Get Top Rankings? By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009 Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions, perpetuated by industry SEO experts, is that a website must follow perfect SEO strategies to get top rankings. While adhering to simple common SEO standards does help the search engines both find and index your site more quickly, it doesn't guarantee by any stretch of the imagination that following those SEO guidelines will propel your site to the top of the rankings. If only search engine optimization was that easy! No doubt, there are some SEO faux pas that will do harm to your site's rankings, especially in Google, the ultimate hall-monitor all puffed up and ready to pounce on any misbehaving webmaster. Things such as keyword stuffing, keyword spamming or linking out to bad neighborhoods such as link farms, pharmaceutical or gambling sites may get you blacklisted. But how much SEO do you need? How much search engine optimization do you need to get top rankings? Do you need a whole lot or do you need very little SEO? Actually, after 10 years of marketing online, the answer to that question varies depending upon what you're trying to accomplish with your SEO efforts? If you're operating an online business in a very competitive (read lucrative) market, SEO will be high on your agenda as you go about annihilating your competition. Even if... more.. How to Reduce the Pain of Switching Domains How to Reduce the Pain of Switching Domains By Ross Dunn (c) 2007 Transferring traff?and popularity to a new domain is a painstaking process that no one on the web appears to be immune to, or so Topix.net has realized. Topix.net is a leading news aggregation resource that has been in the news lately because they are planning to move their site from Topix.net to Topix.com after purchasing the .com for a cool million from a Canadian animation company. The Wall Street Journal wrote this article explaining how damaging a seemingly simple process of switching from .net to .com could be for Topix LLC. The author goes on to explain such a switch is usually fraught with ranking drops while the major search engines notice and respond to the changeover. The fact that switching addresses will cause problems is not news in the SEO world; however, I thought Topix.net's situation was a great opportun? to review what one might expect when switching domains. Switching Shingles Switching a domain is tantamount to changing physical locations and it should be treated just as seriously. The following are the steps to take and consider when switching domains: 1. You must install a site wide 301 (permanent redirect) on your old domain to forward all human traff?to the new domain and inform search engine spiders that your website has permanently moved to a new location. For information on how to implement a 301 redirect here is a great tutorial. 2. Google is the biggest player and likely the most significant driver of traff?to your website. Keeping that in mind you will want to notify Google of your... more.. You Are NOT George Clooney - So Get Your Social Networking Act In Gear! You Are NOT George Clooney - So Get Your Social Networking Act In Gear! By Adam Urbanski (c) 2009 When George Clooney was recently asked about his take on Facebook at the Toronto Film Festival, his response was short: "I'd rather have a prostate exam than a Facebook page." Now, that's probably understandable when movie studios (his potential clients) have his number on a speed dial, and pesky paparazzi (freebie seekers and unqualified prospects) chase after his every move. But unless you already have more prospects and high quality clients than you and your business can handle, your approach to Social Networking should be drastically different. Frankly, a little over a year ago I considered online networking a total waste of time. Fortunately, I was able to recognize how wrong I was. And I wasn't the only one that had a change of heart on this. After Dell revealed they generated a cool million dollars in extra sales in 2008, (ahm, make it a cool $3 million by June'09!), many other companies large and small started paying attention to this social networking "fad"! Just consider a few of these facts: ? Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks initially considered online hang-out places for kids and teenagers are now attracting a much more demographically diverse crowd. ? Big brand names, like Ford, WholeFoods, Comcast, IBM, Dell, Southwest Airlines, and many, many more are establishing a strong presence on social networking hubs like Twitter and Facebook. ? Facebook membership has just passed the 300 million mark (that's nearly the population of USA!) and Twitter is marching towards 18 million users by year's end! That's a lot of potential customers! ? Although, started with college kids... more.. Google cn The Internet As Beijing Sees It Google cn The Internet As Beijing Sees It By Joseph Pratt In November, I wrote an article and referenced a trip that ICMediaDirect.com's VP of Business Development, Diana Lee, took to China. She participated in Shanghai's inaugural ad:tech conference. It was a great trip and our company's ties with China are stronger because of it. Like most Western companies doing business in China, we're just doing business and there are no extenuating circumstances. Google, the giant search engine, cannot say the same. China is an economic giant warming up to the power of the Internet, but this hasn't been a perfect marriage so far. Centralized power and the decentralized nature of the Internet do not mesh well. Beijing feels compelled to exercise tight control over whatever flow of information they can in order to stifle potential dissent within Chinese society. A governmental missive from 2000 states plainly that Internet providers must restrict information that may "harm the dignity and interests of the... more.. Google Page Rank Uses Domain Age to Score Google Page Rank Uses Domain Age to Score As reported in my post on how Google ranks websites, Link Building Blog reports that Google does indeed pay close attention to the age of the domain.   It seems Google has intensified the ranking factor of one key data point that is very tough to manipulate: the age of your domain name. I have been keeping an eye on trends with Google?s search results and it seems that there is an increasing trend towards ?trusted sites? owning page one. A ?trusted site? is loosely defined by me as: an older domain, a nice mix of anchor text, links built over time, links coming in from all kinds of c class blocks, maybe a .edu snuck in there, etc.   The factor I want to focus in on and get your thoughts on though is the age of the domain. This seems to me to be a very important factor in top search rankings for Google in today?s climate.   I know a lot of people are worried about domain age playing a critical role in page ranking, but reports are that this isn?t the only criteria that goes into the pot to evaluate a website?s page rank. But the driving determination to eliminate spam and splog sites that open and close domains overnight lends more and more importance to domain age.   Just because you don?t have a 5 year old website, don?t give up. Concentrate on the content, building relationships and links, and making sure your audience knows you have the goods that are worth returning for. SEO and Domain Age Google?s patent application 20050071741 displays how they rank... more.. Protecting Your Search Engine Rankings Protecting Your Search Engine Rankings By Charles Preston Your website's ranking on search engines is a vital element of your overall marketing campaign, and there are ways to improve your link popularity through legitimate methods. Unfortunately, the Internet is populated by bands of dishonest webmasters seeking to improve their link popularity by faking out search engines. The good news is that search engines have figured this out, and are now on guard for "spam" pages and sites that have increased their rankings by artificial methods. When a search engines tracks down such a site, that site is demoted in ranking or completely removed from the search engine's index. The bad news is that some high quality, completely above-board sites are being mistaken for these web page criminals. Your page may be in danger of being caught up in the "spam" net and tossed from a search engine's index, even though you have done nothing to deserve such harsh treatment. But there are things you can do - and things you should be sure NOT to do - which will prevent this kind of misperception. Link popularity is mostly based on the quality of sites you are linked to. Google pioneered this criteria for assigning website ranking, and virtually all search engines on the Internet now use it. There are legitimate ways to go about increasing your link popularity, but at the same time, you must be scrupulously careful about which sites you choose to link to. Google frequently imposes penalties on sites that have linked to other sites solely for the purpose of artificially boosting their link popularity. They have actually labeled these links "bad neighborhoods." You can raise a toast to the fact that you cannot... more.. Top 10 Internet Marketing Tips for 2008 Top 10 Internet Marketing Tips for 2008 By Gillian Meier (c) 2008 Internet Marketing has grown phenomenally over the last few years but the shift has quite clearly moved to a market that is driven by the consumer and that is no longer dictated by journalists and corporates. Online consumers are responding more favourably to non-intrusive, relevant and socially attractive campaigns and have quite frankly had enough of intrusive, forced online advertising campaigns. The top 10 internet marketing tips for 2008 are: 1. Optimize your website's content 2. Create a content development strategy for your website 3. Invest in a paid search (pay-per-click) campaign 4. Publicize your website through article marketing 5. Develop a social media marketing strategy 6. Create a Company Blog 7. Experiment with video marketing 8. Engage your audiences with web widget marketing 9. Discover the benefits of mobile marketing 10. Create an effective email market? strategy Let's look at each of these in more detail:- 1. Optimize Your Website's Content: First and foremost, get your website content right. Make sure it is easily read by both humans and search engines. An essential variable applied by Search Engines in the way in which they rank websites is based on the relevancy of the content that the search engine is indexing. 2. Create a Content Development Strategy for Your Website: In addition to optimizing the existing content on your website, it is essential that you develop a strategy to continuously grow your website's content on an ongoing basis. All new content should be written specifically with the web reader in mind and should also be optimized for the search engines. 3. Invest in a Paid Search (Pay-Per-Click) Campaign: When you... more.. Web Site Makeover Live Checklist Web Site Makeover Live Checklist By Marcia Yudkin (c) 2009 The web designer shows you her final version of your long-in-the- making revamped site. You cl? around and can hardly believe how gorgeous and rich it is. "Love it! Launch it!" Oops, not so fast. Too many times I've seen that sentiment lead to frantic scrambling, even to disaster. Before making your revamped site live, use this checklist to make sure you've caught or prevented horrible new-site glitches. 1. Timing. Never, never launch your new web site on a holiday, weekend or even on a Friday. Why? Because chances are high you'll discover something weirdly wrong with your shopping cart, images, blog or regular web pages, and the tech support you need will be closed down or just skeletally staffed. Likewise, make sure your web designer or developer will be on hand for the next day or two to quickly fix any problems that become evident. 2. Test on as many computers as you can, and request feedback with the site parked in a test location. A colleague of mine (whose experience inspired this article) replaced her old site with the new one, then asked for feedback on a discussion board. Several people reported pages looking peculiar in their browsers or receiving an obnoxious warning message instead of simply seeing the home page. Too late, she learned she should have asked for this feedback before the site went public. What looked great and worked fine in her office had not-so-positive results in various browser and monitor combinations no one had tested the site on. 3. Match the new file... more.. Conversion Rate Optimization Part 1, Google Takes the Leading Role Conversion Rate Optimization Part 1, Google Takes the Leading Role By Frederick Townes (c) 2007 Within the e-commerce sphere, the "mind games" between site owners and search engine designers have focused on search engine optimization (SEO). After all, you can't make a sale if visitors aren't reaching your site. However, as the web marketplace grows exponentially more competitive, attention among webmasters and site owners has turned to conversion optimization ? converting site visitors to buyers. Conversion optimization has nothing to do with SEO. SEO is designed for spiders and bots. Conversion optimization is based on two factors only: the needs and motivations of human site visitors and persuasive site content and design to encourage humans to make a purchase or perform some other action. Any other considerations are sub-sets of these two factors in conversion optimization strategies. Measuring Human Motivations and Site Effectiveness SEO is based on the development of numbers (metrics) that are immutable. Numbers are numbers, there's no debating that. The interpretation of site metrics, on the other hand, is a true combination of art, science and testing. Assessing conversion rate optimization must apply a completely different approach to data gathering and the accurate, actionable assessment of the cold hard facts (percentages and such) that are the basis of SEO. The Google Website Optimizer (GWO) Google owns SEO (sorry Yahoo). It is now moving into eyeball optimization (EBO) to help site owners improve conversion rates. It's got lots of features, it's totally flexible in designing useful tests for human reactions and it provides data using simple to read and understand charts showing what's working and what... more.. Top 3 Google Linking Strategies of 2008 Top 3 Google Linking Strategies of 2008 By Michael Small (c) 2008 If you're serious about getting great ranking on Google you need to be serious about linking. Of course there are lots of ways to get links so we'll focus on just the methods that are fast, low cost or free and get the best results. Here are three that can put you on top of Google in no time flat! First let's start with getting inbound links from directories. A link from a directory gets a lot of weight from Google because they value it as a form of endorsement. You've probably used some directories yourself, like Yahoo. Or maybe you've used some without even knowing it, like The Open Directory Project (DMOZ.org) that powers many of the most popular search engines, including Google! Each directory is different and offers different options for obtaining links to your site. Here's a rundown of how different directories will link to your site... 1.) Free Submission: Just like it sounds. No charges for inclusion. DMOZ.org is the best one and powers Google, AOL and even Yahoo Search (not Yahoo directory.) Just be sure to follow their submission guidelines and pick the most appropriate sub category possible for inclusion. This is extremely important. 2.) Paid Submissions: They charge a fee to review the submitted link and possibly place the page. You might pay a few dollars one t?, a recurring annual fee or as much as the $300 that Yahoo charges for commercial site review. 3.) Reciprocal Link: These usually require you to link to the directory before they will even... more.. Use Robots.txt and Save the World Use Robots.txt and Save the World By Sante J. Achille (c) 2007 Robots.txt Help the Search Engines Learn All About Your Website There is a growing interest in the little known file that every website should have in the root directory: robots.txt It's a very simple text file you can find all about at the robotstxt.org website. Why should you use it ? Here are some good reasons for you to consider. The Growing Importance of Robots.Txt At SES New York a robots.txt summit was held where major search engines (Ask, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!) participated, sharing interesting information on this file. Here are some numbers. According to Keith Hogan from Ask: i) Less than 35% of websites have a robots.txt file ii) The majority of robots.txt files are copied from others found online iii) On many occasions robots.txt files are provided by your web host? service It looks like the majority of webmasters aren't familiar with this file. This is going to play a major role as the size of the web continues to grow: Spidering is a costly effort that search engines tend to optimize. Those web sites demonstrating optimal command (which in turn determines efficiency) will be rewarded. During the summit, all search engines announced they will identify (or autodiscover) sitemaps via the robots.tx