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All That You Need To Know About RSS All That You Need To Know About RSS By Jo Han Mok (c) 2007 You probably have seen this three-letter acronym called RSS in the course of your internet surfing. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary; syndicating means republishing an article that comes from another source such as a website. An RSS is a means of publicizing updates about websites. It may or may not include a summary and photos of the latest posting. But those that provide summaries (thus Rich Site Summary) allow users to skim through the article so that they can decide later on if they want to access the website source. The RSS feed usually contains the title of the update originating from the website. It is also usually the link to the website source. What are the benefits of RSS? RSS has benefits for both readers (users) and web publishers.   1. It gives you the latest updates. Whether it is about the weather, new music, software upgrade, local news, or a new posting from a rarely-updated site you learn about the latest as soon as it comes out.   2. It saves on surfing time. Since a RSS feed provides a summary of the related article, it saves the user's time by helping s/he decide on which items to prioritize when reading or browsing the net.   3. It gives the power of subscription to the user. Users are given a free-hand on which websites to subscribe in their RSS aggregators which they can change at any time they decide differently.   4. It lessens the clutter in your inbox. Although your email address will be required to enjoy the services of online... 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.. How to Optimize for Google: Part 3 of 3 How to Optimize for Google: Part 3 of 3 By Scott Van Achte, Senior SEO, StepForth (c) 2008 In Part 1 and Part 2 I discussed general website optimization, links, and Google webmaster tools. In Part 3 we will look at a number of other considerations which play a role in successful rankings in Google, and also touch on some tactics which are best avoided. Completing Optimization: Other Considerations Redirects If you need to use redirects on your site, it is very important to use the correct one. If a page is moving to a new location, or being removed all together, it is very important to have this page redirected to either the new location or the next closest page using a Permanent 301 Redirect. While rare, if a page is being moved to a new location for a short term, with the intent of it returning to the original location, then and only then, will you want to use a Temporary 302 redirect. Non WWW Redirects To help eliminate page rank split, and provide your site with a little extra value, implement a non-www redirect. What this redirect will do is change the URL to include the "www" whenever a URL is accessed that does not include it. This can help to consolidate links to the correct page and give your site some additional strength. For more help on Non WWW redirects please see: How to 301 Redirect Non-WWW to WWW URL's HTTP Headers Check your page headers! If you have implemented any form of redirect on your site including mod rewrites, check your HTTP headers.... more.. SEO Or Page Rank Which Is The More Important? SEO Or Page Rank Which Is The More Important? By Peter Nisbet (c) 2007 Whether you believe in SEO or Page Rank and wonder which is more important, your thinking is irrelevant. You are wasting your time in wondering what is the correct answer to that question, since even if you knew it, there is little you could do to use that information. Why do I say that? Because SEO, or search engine optimization, is a way of designing your website, and placing content in it, to satisfy search engine algorithms. Search engines are so sophisticated today that if you achieve that, then you will also satisfy visitors to your website. If you satisfy visitors to your website, then they will stay on the page they landed on and read it. They will then cl? to read other pages on your website and might even make a purchase. Sure, some will leave right away, but if the search engines feel that your content is good enough for a high placement in their indices for the search term, or keyword, that your visitor used to get to your web page, then it is more likely that you will achieve a relatively high stick rate of people to your site than a lower one. Now, consider if you thought Google PageRank more important (and PageRank is correct, not Page Rank). You would then spend more of your time trying to get links back to your website than you would properly optimizing your site and filling it with good content. If you were successful in that difficult job, then Google, and possibly other search engines, would l? you a bit higher in their indices, not because... more.. Google: Judge, Jury and Executioner? Google: Judge, Jury and Executioner? By Sasch Mayer (c) 2007 Your website has gone from being in the Google search results for several years to not even being included in Google's index. What Happened to My Site? As another user quite rightly pointed out, this is by far the most commonly asked question in the Google webmaster help group. Which is to say; "My web site was ranking very well up until recently, but has now dropped in the results or disappeared from the Google index altogether." Although the comment about this question's frequency was initially made as part of a post highlighting the need for a properly structured FAQ section, it eventually prompted a heated debate regarding Google's sp@m report and penalty system which raised a few interesting points of its own. What happened? I generally spend a few hours a week taking part in discussions and lending the occasional helping hand at the Google Webmaster Help group, a forum set up to help address the problems and technical queries of frustrated webmasters, designers and SEOs with regards to anything from site verification to indexing & crawling; in fact, just about any Google related issue imaginable. Populated by a colourful mix of regular characters and part-time contributors from across the globe as well as more than a few of Google's own staff, it acts as a kind of front-line support forum which has thus far attracted a membership of over 16,000. Indeed, this article is the result of one particular discussion thread which caught my eye this afternoon. Persecuted by... more.. How to Optimize for Google I How to Optimize for Google: Part 1 of 3 By Scott Van Achte, Senior SEO, StepForth (c) 2008 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. If you are interested in reading more, please see Keyword Research for Organic SEO. 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... 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.. 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.. Understanding Search Engines So You Can Get a High Ranking Understanding Search Engines So You Can Get a High Ranking By Rusty Ford (c) 2007 Just 5 years ago getting a high ranking in the search engines was easy. As search engines have gotten smarter it has become impossible to get a high ranking in the search engines with gimmicks. Now the only way is to have one of the best pages about your topic and lots of people agreeing that it is one of the best by linking to it. Before explaining how to get high rankings in the search engines it is important to understand some basics about search engines. If you were to run a search engine what would be your number one goal. This one is simple; you would want to be the most used search engine on the Internet. The only way to become the most used search engine is accuracy. People use a search engine for one reason and that is to find what they are looking for. When I first started using the Internet 12 years ago, it was difficult to find anything in a search engine. You would type in baby toys and get hundreds of sex toy sites with a few baby toys sites mixed in. Now you type in baby toys and you get baby toys. The reason Google became number one was that for several years they had the most accurate results. So if you want to get a high ranking in a search engine for the terms your pages are about, then you must give the search engine what it is looking for. The search engines became more accurate because now they look primarily at one thing. That one thing is... more.. Best 3 SEO Tips of 2008 Best 3 SEO Tips of 2008 By Scott Jason (c) 2008 Each year I spend the first three months looking for the best and most innovative SEO tips of the previous year's end. This year I have what I believe to be the best 3 SEO tips in a decade! SEO Tip #1: Make Google Alerts Your Personal Online Spy Google Alerts is a great way to let the world's biggest search engine be your personal online investigator. This takes search engine optimization insider info to a whole new level. Here's an excerpt straight from Google.... "Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic." Some handy uses of Google Alerts include: monitoring a developing news story keeping current on a competitor or industry getting the latest on a celebrity or event keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams" As you probably guessed, it's the second one we care about most, "keeping current on a competitor or industry." Here's how it works... Each time Google finds a reference to the query or topic you request you will be sent an email with the details. This is like having an online agent to make sure competitors are not using your protected keywords (trademarked names, company names, etc.) It's also an instant identifier to know when your site or product is mentioned in a news story or even when a topic is hot so you can take advantage of the situation. It's the easiest way in the world to stop competitors' dirty... more.. Is Your Business Website Old School - 5 Reasons To Redesign With CSS Is Your Business Website Old School - 5 Reasons To Redesign With CSS By Linda Bustos Many small business owners have a hard time seeing the value of a website redesign. They believe "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." And this is understandable. Unless you are eating, breathing and sleeping technology and staying up to date with the moving target of Internet business, you're not likely to know intuitively if your site needs a redesign. And as a small business owner, you may be concerned about the up-front costs of a website redesign. But once you understand how a redesign can help you drive traff?to your site, convert more users and even save mon? you'll feel more positive about making the ?estment in your business. Old School Web Design - Tables-Based HTML Not long ago, fax machines were the best way to deliver business documents fast. But now it's so easy to scan and email documents, and even capture digital signatures through email, the fax machine is quickly going the way of the typewriter. With email, recipients can choose to read and archive the message online, or print it out themselves on their own desktop printer. No need for individual telephone lines for the fax machine, taking up desk space, replacing toner, uncurling fax paper and listening to screeching fax machine tones! Tables-based HTML websites are like the fax machine. At one time tables were the best way to render information on the Web. But like curled paper and fading ink, tables left something to be desired. Designers were constrained by tables that allowed data to be rendered only in tabular f? The clean, professional and... more.. The 4 Points of Do-It-Yourself SEO The 4 Points of Do-It-Yourself SEO  by: Gordon Goodfellow Ever felt intimidated at the convoluted, jargon-ridden information about Internet marketing for small businesses available on the Net? Ever been horrified by the huge fees the experts charge, putting search engine optimization beyond your own means? Ever thought: What exactly is search engine optimization anyway, and can I do it myself? The answer is: Yes, you can! The basics of search engine optimisation in applied web marketing are simple. It's all to do with the keyword content of your text copy, and can be summarised in seven points. 1. Register a good domain name which reflects what your site is about. Even if you are an established business, don't register www.FredJones.com if you make widgets. Rather, you want to register something like www.BestWidgets.com because that would inspire confidence in people looking for quality widgets who would not necessarily have heard of Fred Jones the widget-maker. 2. Name your page URLs based on reasons similar to the above for your web promotion, except now you can be more specific. Search engines like to know what your page is about. Name a page after a product (BigYellowWidgets.htm) or a service or action (Buy-Widgets-by-Post.htm) on one of the sales pages. 3. The text in the title tag is crucial in letting search engines know what each page is about. Put your important keywords in your title tags, using both the singular and plural versions (people will search for both) and make these tags different and specific for each page. For example, "Widgets and After Sales Widget Services". Whatever you do, don't call the home page "Index", but treat it almost as a mini-description. 4. The other tags (at the top of the html page) between the two... 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.. The Law of Dissatisfaction How To Motivate Prospects The Law of Dissatisfaction How To Motivate Prospects By Jerry Bader (c) 2007 The 7%-38%-55% Communication Rule Dr. Albert Mehrabian, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, UCLA is best known for his 7%-38%-55% Rule that states 55% of communication is attributable to non-verbal behaviors like body language and facial expressions; that 38% of communication is attributable to voice including volume, tone, pitch, cadence, and quality; and only 7% of communication is attributable to the words used. Despite this persuasive evidence, companies continue to pile on the Web-text in the vain hope that search engines will index it and that someone might actually read it, even though the reality is 70% of website visitors merely scan for headlines, bulleted points and captions. The evidence is clear, the most effective way to deliver a marketing message is a Web-video using a professional performer who knows how to use his or her voice, expression, and body language to drive the point home. "But Wait, There's More ..." I have noticed a proliferation on the Web of the sad old d?ct marketing formula that you see in sal?pitches for magazine subscriptions. Can you really expect people to take you seriously when you adopt this 'Barnum and Bailey' approach to marketing? It is a formula that flies in the face of Dr. Mehrabian's research and every other usability study that warns against over-burdening website visitors with too much text. Your search engine optimizer may think it's great for driving traff?to your landing page, but I'll bet if you ch? your logs, 50% of that traff?disappears in under 5 seconds. This format is an outdated sal?technique that doesn't work in a Web... more.. The Myth of W3C Compliance? The Myth of W3C Compliance? By Sasch Mayer (c) 2007 The past few years have seen a huge ?rease in the number of search engine optimisers preaching about the vital importance of W3C Compliance as part of any effective web promotion effort. But is compliant code really the 'Magic SEO Potion' so many promoters make it out to be? For those of you not familiar with the term; a W3C compliant web site is one which adheres to the coding standards laid down by the World Wide Web Consortium, an organisation comprising of over 400 members including all the major search engines and global corporations such as AT&T, HP and Toshiba amongst many others. Headed by Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, the inventor of the internet as we know it today, the W3C has been working to provide a set of standards designed to keep the web's continuing evolution on a single, coherent track since the Consortium's inception in 1994. Whilst the W3C has been a fact of life on the web since this time, general industry awareness of the benchmarks set down by the Consortium has taken some time to filter through to all quarters. Indeed, it is only within the past 24 to 36 months that the term W3C Compliance has emerged from general obscurity to become a major buzzword in the web design and SEO industries. Although personally, I have been a staunch supporter of the Consortium's standards for a long time, I cannot help but feel that their importance has been somewhat overplayed by a certain faction within the SEO sector, who are praising code compliance as a 'cure-all' for poor search engine performance. Is standards compliance really the universal... 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.. 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.. Six Steps to Writing Offers Inspiring Customers to Act Six Steps to Writing Offers Inspiring Customers to Act By Judy Murdoch (c) 2008 Highly Contagious Marketing Until fairly recently, writing marketing copy was a strange and mysterious undertaking to me. It's funny because when I was doing advertising research, I often worked closely with copywriters. I would interview customers to learn how they responded to different messages and report back to the creative team. Sometimes the copywriter or art director would have questions they wanted me to ask my focus groups. So I got to know the writers and their work pretty well. Yet, when they went back to their desk to actually create the message, I had no idea how they came up with the words that moved customers to action. Customer-Focused Story to the Rescue! Turns out like any professional, copywriters have systems. One such system that has made my writing life infinitely easier is the Customer Focused Story: A six step process that helps you develop a message that inspires action on the part of your readers. [ Note: I am grateful to marketer/copywriter extraordinaire, Mark Silver, who developed the Customer Focused Story process and taught me how to use it. Learn more about Mark at www.heartofbusiness.com ] The power behind the Customer Focus Story is this: before people are ready to take action, it is absolutely critical that they feel safe to do so. By "safe" I mean your copy addresses two, usually unarticulated questions: (1.) Do they feel that the business making the offer understands the problem they're struggling with? (2.) Can the business help THEM? If your copy helps them answer "yes" to those two questions,... 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.. 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.. Backlinks - How To Get High Quality One Way Links To Your Websites Backlinks - How To Get High Quality One Way Links To Your Websites By Matt Garrett (c) 2007 There are basically two aspects to SEO, "on page" & "off page" optimization. "On Page" SEO is easy because it's totally under your control. It's simply a case of making sure you have optimized your web pages correctly. OK, so there is a bit more to it than that, like keyword research, keyword density & frequency, which html tags to use, making sure your site/pages are W3 Compliant, using relative/absolute internal linking structures to feed the pagerank where it's most effective, using titles and descriptions that encourage people to cl? through from the SERP's etc. But essentially, once you know how to do all that, it's not difficult to get it right for all your pages/sites. It's also less important in the long run than getting sufficient links to your site/pages from other sites. Getting links to your site is fundamental to getting visitors, and without visitors all the time, effort and money invested in getting your site up and running, and looking "nice", is irrelevant. No Visitors = No Point! So links are essential to the health of your site, and indeed your business, but all links are not equal in value to your site. Reciprocal links will help, but they are far less effective than one way backlinks, i.e. links from another site where you don't have to link back to them. These "One Way" backlinks will give your site a far greater boost in the search engine results and bring you more traff? providing of course that you have chosen good (relevant) keywords for your links. There... 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.. 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.. 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.. The Most Common Reason for Dropped Rankings - Duplication The Most Common Reason for Dropped Rankings: Duplication By Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. Repeatedly my sal?and consulting staff find themselves explaining that using duplicate content can and will negatively affect search engine rankings and it is heartbreaking to see clients having to rebuild rankings due to such a simple mistake. As a result, I felt it was time to write this article and hopefully dispel many misled website owners. Why write an entire article on something as simple as duplicate content? Well probably because it is not as simple as it sounds and many website owners find themselves in the grey area of duplication; where they don't know for sure whether they are risking rankings or not. The following is a sectional breakdown of the most common duplicate content issues we see defined from the standpoint of a question ? hopefully making this article a little easier to read. After all, I have no illusions that reading up on duplicate content rules is exciting. Duplicate Websites Definition: a duplicate website is a website that has many if not all of the same pages as another live website. Note: the following quest?s are based on a person who owns two websites that are duplicates. Q: "Why is a duplicate website such a bad idea?" A: The major search engines are constantly trying to improve the quality of their search engine results in an effort to provide the best quality content for users. When duplicate content is indexed by search engine spiders, valuable time and processing power is wasted. As a result, search engines have blocked sites that used duplicate content from... 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.. Why You Should Use Article Directories to Promote Your Website Why You Should Use Article Directories to Promote Your Website By Jay Gaulard (c) 2009 If you are online and are not already using article directories to promote your website, you are missing out on a free and highly effective marketing option. Article directories are great ways to draw traffic to your site without paying for advertising. However, to get real traffic to your site using an article directory, you must know how to use them correctly. What Article Directories Are Before you can use an article directory, you have to know what one is. Article directories are websites where thousands upon thousands of articles on just about any subject are posted. They are generally categorized to make it easier for readers to find information they want. They are also linked together, so a reader reading about "Hawaii travel" will naturally go from article to article on that topic. People can use the articles they find in the directories on their own websites, either for free or for a small fee. Authors pay nothing to subm?to article directories. How Article Directories Benefit Online Businesses You are probably thinking, "Sure, that's great. But how does an article directory help me promote my business? Doesn't giving away free content defeat my purpose as an online business?" These are great questions. When you subm?an article to an article directory, it will contain a bio with a link to your website. Since you are the author of the article, you are allowed to include this information. This means that anyone who is searching online and comes across the article directory will see a link to your site. Not only that, but the people who use the content on their own websites... 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.. New Internet Marketing Tools New Internet Marketing Tools By Titus Hoskins (c) 2008 New Internet marketing tools are coming online each and every day. Why should you care? Mainly because these new marketing tools can have a dramatic impact on your online traffic, leads and sales. So much so, your online competitiveness can greatly depend on you finding and using these new marketing tools before everyone else does. And as Internet marketing grows more and more lucrative, it is becoming more competitive each day, so staying aware of what's happening has become vital to your online success. More importantly, if you're a full-time marketer like me, your livelihood will largely depend upon you being able to keep on top of all the new ways of marketing on the web. With these considerations in mind, I would like to l? some new or relatively new marketing tools that have been effective for me in my online market?. Some of these are marketing software, others are SEO strategies, marketing tips and the like... all have helped me achieve my online goals. Here are some new marketing tools you can try: 1. Real Link Finder Neil Shearing's "RealLinkFinder" is a handy little link-building tool you can use to increase your link popularity and SE rankings. It lets you find targeted blogs that don't have the "nofollow" attribute tag so your links will count in all the search engines. Great way to build targeted links related to your site's main keywords or keyword phrases. This is one "No C? link-building tool you should try. 2. Peel Away Ads Simple ads which sit at the corner of any webpage, when a cursor hovers... more.. How To Make Your Website Structurally Sound How To Make Your Website Structurally Sound By Erin Ferree (c) 2008 You've decided to build a website. Great! Your first step is to determine its structure - the pages you want to include and the information you want provide to visitors. But how to begin? Your first instinct may be to make your site different from everyone else's. After all, trying to differentiate your business is what you've been doing throughout your branding process. Building a Website is Like Building a Custom Home When you create a custom house, you can arrange your floor plan however you want, paint the walls as you please and fill the house with furniture you love. Your goal is to create a unique space that stands out from everyone else's. In the same vein, there are elements of your website where standing out makes sense. For example, the overall look of your site and your copy should be different from other sites - especially those of your competitors. Differentiating your website is good for your small business - to a point. What you don't want to do is reengineer its basic structure. Standing Out Isn't Always the Stable Way to Build Underneath it all, even the most unique custom home has the same foundation and spacing between studs in the wall as every other house on the block. By following underlying principles of construction, builders help ensure that the house is structurally sound. Why not use the same approach when it comes to your website? That way, your site is far more likely to work well for you. To use site building rules, of course, you need to know what they are. 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.. 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.. How to Make a Website Successful How to Make a Website Successful By Shelley Lowery (c) 2009 When doing business on the Internet, there are many ways in which you can make a website successful. Although the look of your website is important, fancy websites don't make sales. There is much more to creating a quality website. To make a website successful, you must create a website that will be of interest to your target market and make them want to visit your website over and over again. In addition, your website should lead your visitors to take the action you desire, such as joining your mailing list, or making a purchase. Selecting a Website's Niche The first step toward how to make a website successful, will be to target your website for one specific niche. For example, if you are designing a website about wine, everything within your website should relate to wine. Selecting a Website's Keyword Phrase You must also select the most relevant keyword phrase for each webpage. A keyword phrase is two or more words that best describe your webpage. For example, if your webpage is about 'making wine,' your best keyword phrase would be 'wine making.' You should use your keyword phrase a few times within your webpage, as this will enable the search engines to determine what the website is about. This is a very important step to make a website successful. Using HTML Heading Tags When you begin writing your content, it is very important that you use the HTML H1 heading tag with your main title at the top of your webpage. In addition, use the HTML H2 tags for your sub-titles. This is very important, as some search engines place relevance on the text... more.. Web Communication, "Sign, Sign, Everywhere A Sign" Web Communication, "Sign, Sign, Everywhere A Sign" By Jerry Bader (c) 2007 Your business success depends on your ability to communicate effectively to an interested audience. Driving appropriate traff?to your site is important, but the tactics that generate visitors are not the same tactics that get visitors to stay on your site. Web-communication is a series of elaborate multi-sensory sign languages; signs being the words, images, audio and videos that constitute the range of presentation vehicles that like all forms of communication have their own grammar, context, and relevance as interpreted from personal experience by each member of your customer-audience. Websites that consistently under perform and that don't meet business expectations generally suffer because they are not designed to hold viewers attention long enough to communicate a clear concise marketing message. When Words Lose Their Meaning Marketing is one of those words that has lost its currency because it has been tossed about with little respect for its meaning. To many, it's merely just another word for advertising, which of course it is not. To the more sophisticated it takes in all the disciplines of branding, positioning, identity, advertising, and more. Above all marketing implies a strategic approach to implementing these tactics. For companies interested in using the Web to further their business objectives, Web-marketing is the execution of a communication strategy through the creative implementation of multi-sensory signature presentations. Semiotics: The Study of Signs "Sign, Sign, everywhere a sign, Blocking out the scenery breaking my mind, Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign." - Five Man Electrical Band Like the lyrics of the song, 'Signs,' by the Five Man Electrical Band' suggests, we... 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. What Your S.E.O. Strategist Won't Tell You What Your S.E.O. Strategist Won't Tell You By Jerry Bader (c) 2007 Maybe you own your own business, or perhaps you're a critical cog in the corporate machinery responsible for marketing your company, brand, product or service. If that describes you, here's eighteen things you need to know about Web-marketing but were afraid to believe. 1. Time To Be Heard Your mother told you 'children should be seen and not heard,' but you're not a kid anymore. So why are you listening to all those guys telling you not to use audio on your website. If you want to deliver a lot of content that people will remember, try letting your website do the talking. 2. There's Nothing Like the Real Thing In a world of virtual everything there's nothing like the real thing. The sound and image of real people delivering your marketing message makes it a believable, memorable presentation. 3. Unlock the Conventional Wisdom Straightjacket Driving traff?to your site is great, if those visitors stay long enough to find out why they should be doing business with you. If your website traff?is leaving as fast as it's arriving, maybe search engine optimization isn't the answer you've been looking for. 4. Linking Your Way To Obscurity You know the reciprocal linking strategy everyone is talking about as a way to generate leads? Did you ever consider that each link to another website is an invitation to leave your site? Is that really what you want - to invite people to leave? I think not! 5. Your Company's Voice... 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. 20 Things You Need to Know Before Optimizing a Web Site 20 Things You Need to Know Before Optimizing a Web Site By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007 One of the most important aspects of a search engine optimization project is also one of the most overlooked ? preparation! There are some important steps to take in advance of optimizing your site that will make sure your SEO is successful. Before You Start Before you start any search engine optimization campaign, whether it's for your site or that belonging to a client, you need to answer the following quest?s: 1) What is the overall motivation for optimizing this site? What do I/they hope to achieve? e.g. more sales, more subscribers, more traff? more publicity etc. 2) What is the time-frame for this project? 3) What is the budget for this project? 4) Who will be responsible for this project? Will it be a joint or solo effort? Will it be run entirely in-house or outsourced? Answering these quest?s will help you to build a framework for your SEO project and establish limitations for the size and scope of the campaign. Ready: How Search Engine-Compatible is the Site Currently? Something I find very useful before quoting on any SEO project is to produce what I call a Search Engine Compatibility Review. This is where I carry out a detailed overview and analysis of a site's search engine compatibility in terms of HTML design, page extensions, link popularity, title and META tags, body text, target keywords, ALT IMG tags, page load time and other design elements that can impact search engine indexing. I then provide a detailed report to potential clients with recommendations based on my findings. It just helps sort out in... 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.. 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.. Is Your Web Site Missing These Crucial Conversion Factors? Is Your Web Site Missing These Crucial Conversion Factors? By Kim Roach of UnleashTheTraffic.com Smart online marketers nev?guess. They base their decisions on precise testing. Unfortunately, 90% of online marketers nev?test at all. However, for those that take the time to test properly, they can quickly rise above the competition. Want to know how to increase your prof? without increasing your web site traff? Proper testing and tracking is the key. You should test all of your sal?letters, landing pages, order forms, and web designs. Here are some of the crucial elements that you should test on every page along with some advice on best practices. Keep in mind that nothing beats your own testing because different market segments will respond differently to your sal?copy. Headline Simple changes to the headline have been known to produce up to a 1,900% increase in conversion rates. The headline is the single most important part of your sal?letter. If they don't read past your headline, they will nev?reach the order button. An effective headline will capture your visitors' attention and draw them into your sal?copy. You only have about 8 - 10 seconds to capture your visitors' attention. To do so, your headline must hit your visitors deepest needs and desires. One of the most powerful headlines is a question. Why? Because quest?s irritate the brain and make your grey cells go haywire. Psychologically, quest?s are extremely powerful. Here are 3 quick tips for writing effective headlines: Ask a question that begs to be answered. Create curiosity. ( Our brains our naturally curious) Embellish your visitors deepest problem. If you are not... 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.. 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.. 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.. Google Reveals More Linking Secrets To Webmasters Google Reveals More Linking Secrets To Webmasters By Titus Hoskins (c) 2008 One of the most problematic and confusing issues most webmasters have with Google concerns linking. How your links are ranked? How you should link out? How you should construct your internal links? How you should get more inbound links? How many links should you have on a page? And the l? of questions goes on... Perhaps, the most annoying aspect for the struggling webmaster, has been Google's secrecy in how it actually ranks links and pages. Google's whole PageRank and Ranking Algorithm is so complex that no one can fully boast they understand how the whole system works. Google's ranking secrecy and complexity has probably been well-planned mainly because there are mill?s of webmasters who would like to "game" the Google Algorithm and achieve high keyword rankings through manipulation with so-called "black-hat" SEO techniques and reverse engineering. Wouldn't it be ironic if this whole secrecy and complexity is more of a smokescreen rather than an actual deception on Google's part. What if the keys to the kingdom are actually yours for the taking? What if the solution is hiding in plain sight for everyone to see? What if the secret to high rankings in Google is not a secret at all? Wouldn't that be a hoot! Actually, that's not a far-fetched assumption to make, mainly because many of Google's linking policies and recommendations are freely given by Google. Whether you can believe Google is actually giving you the goods is another issue that we'll put on the back-burner for another day; but for now, Google's advice on link building is rather generous... more.. Dispelling Fears About The GoogleBomb Algorithm Update Dispelling Fears About The GoogleBomb Algorithm Update By Bill Platt (c) 2007 Google algorithm updates always bring the fears of webmasters to a boiling point. In the aftermath of an algorithm update, some people come out swinging, making claims that Google is trying to put them out of business. Others look at their Google rankings and pat themselves on the back for having survived another "algo" update. It has been known in search engine optimization (SEO) circles for quite some time that one could successfully implement what is referred to as a GoogleBomb. The best example was a search on the phrase "miserable failure". A search on those words within Google would show George W. Bush's biography at the White House website, in the top three or four results of the search results. This would occur, despite the fact that neither word in the search criteria resides on the White House website. At one time, Bush's biography had been in the Number 1 spot, but counter-bombing campaigns moved Bush's listing down the page a bit. Many people have written about this phenomenon in time's past. I have even written about it myself. When I wrote about it, my point was to show the importance of anchor text in a link to build the value of a web page in the Google search engine result pages (SERPS). The "miserable failure" GoogleBomb came to exist within a loophole within the Google algorithms. Google puts a lot of value on the anchor text that points to a particular web page. It is part of their "one link ? one vote" philosophy as to the value of a web page. Bloggers joined forces to create thousands of... more.. Google's SEO Advice For Your Website Content Google's SEO Advice For Your Website Content By Joel Walsh The web pages actually at the top of Google have only one thing clearly in common: good writing. Don't get so caught up in the usual SEO sacred cows and bugbears, such as PageRank, frames, and JavaScr?, that you forget your site's content. I was recently struck by the fact that the top-ranking web pages on Google are consistently much better written than the vast majority of what one reads on the web. Of course, that shouldn't be a surprise, considering how often officials at Google proclaim the importance of good content. Yet traditional SEO wisdom has little to say about good writing. Does Google, the world's wealthiest media company, really ignore traditional standards of quality in the publishing world? Does Google, like so many website owners, really get so caught up in the process of the algorithm that it misses the whole point? Apparently not. Most Common On-the-Page Website Content Success Features Whatever the technical mechanism, Google is doing a pretty good job of identifying websites with good content and rewarding them... more.. Simple Twitter Tips that Attract Clients and Partners Simple Twitter Tips that Attract Clients and Partners By Meredith Liepelt (c) 2009 According to Mashable.com, a leading authority on social media, there are currently over 12 million users on Twitter. Another resource called istrategylabs.com reports that 46% of Twitter users are college grads, and another 17% have post graduate degrees. Furthermore, 47% are between age 18 and 34, and another 31% are between 35 and 49. Males and females are evenly ranked, with women accounting for 53% of users and men 47%. If your target market falls within these demographics, actively participating on Twitter is probably worth your while. Twitter is simply a micro blogging service. What does that mean? It means that you write short updates (140 characters maximum) called "tweets" and send them out to your followers. And it is a marketer's dream come true - it's an easy way to stay in front of your target market and showcase your authority for free. The myth around Twitter is that Twitter users (called tweeple or tweeps) tweet about useless information such as what kind of coffee they had with breakfast. Yes, some of that exists and it is actually important as you'll see below, but once you understand the power of connecting on Twitter, you may become a Twitter convert, just like me. So, if you're on Twitter or considering starting, the question becomes, "what do I tweet about that will make this a useful tool for me?" Here are some categories you can consider for your tweets. There are others but these will get you started: Industry Tips This is a big one. You are on Twitter to showcase your expertise, so industry tips act as your credibility builders. Here's how to do it:... more.. Killer Campaigns, Making Emotional Connections Killer Campaigns, Making Emotional Connections By Jerry Bader (c) 2009 We live in an age of clones: somebody makes a very profitable movie about vampires, and the next thing you know we're all inundated with movies, television shows, books, blogs, websites, and every form of blood-sucking permutation you can imagine. CSI begets CSI Miami, which begets CSI New York, which begets NCIS, which begets NCIS Los Angeles, which is just about as much as anyone can take. If something is successful, you can be sure more of the same will follow. Despite the occasional success story, most clones either fail completely, or never live up to the success of their groundbreaking predecessors. Most of the copycats fail because the clone-masters behind them don't understand why the original worked, and as a consequence, they clone all the wrong elements. This is as true of commercial presentations as it is with broadcast programming. Cloning a successful format is not the same as Slipstreaming. Clone marketing is just rote copying of technical elements without any reference to why the original worked, whereas Slipstream marketing takes a familiar idea and plays off it like a great jazz musician reinterprets an old standard. Kleenex "Let It Out" Campaign: Recognizing The Emotional Value Proposition What is more generic than facial tissue? A consumable paper product that you use once and discard; it is the very definition of a commodity, and as we all know commodity-sales are primarily based on price. Enter Kimberly Clark, one company that has managed to turn their commodity product into the industry standard to the extent that the commodity itself has become known by Kimberly Clark's designated brand name - Kleenex. The Kleenex, "Let It Out"... 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.. 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.. How To "Big Brother" Your Own Website How To "Big Brother" Your Own Website (12 Handy Webmaster Site Checking Tools & Sites) By Titus Hoskins (c) 2007   How Well Do You Really Know Your Website? If you're like most webmasters, you have probably spent years building your site. You have spent years adding content, building links and cultivating traff?- but how well do you really know your website? How well do you know the intricate details of your website's traff? Where do your site's visitors come from? How long do they stay on your site? Just where do they go to on your site and how well do they convert into buyers or subscribers? Do you know your site's rankings in the major search engines? What are your site's top keywords? What's your site's Google PageRank? Who are your IP neighbors? What your site looks like in other browsers? How much is your site worth? These are just some of the quest?s you should know, mainly because the more knowledge you possess about your site, the better equipped you will be at improving it. So here's a simple l? of free site checking tools/sites that will let you "Big Brother" (monitor and watch) your site.   1. Google Analytics Perhaps one of the most helpful analytical tools you can use on your site. Google Analytics will give you a wealth of information about your site's traff? Where it comes from, how long it stays on your site, where it goes on your site, how well your content converts... invaluable information every webmaster should have in their possession.   2. NetMechanic Toolbox Review your site's mechanics - find... more.. How to Control Your Listing Text in Google's Search Results How to Control Your Listing Text in Google's Search Results By John Metzler (c) 2009 A Google Webmaster Help video from Matt Cutts released on Nov. 10, 2009 got me thinking how the listing text in Google's search results can easily be overlooked by some webmasters in their SEO efforts. SEO is all about extending the reach of your web site content to your target market using online search platforms. You can tell when this has been achieved, and to what degree, by using web analytics software to monitor referral and visitor data. But what that data won't tell you is how your site appears to users in a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Sure, you're getting traffic but perhaps you're missing out on a lot more because your listing text is weak. You wouldn't take out a newspaper advertisement without looking at the final proof first. So don't be in the dark over how your site appears to people who use Google. Poor page titles, visible copy, and description meta data can result in a weak listing. Webmasters have a lot of control over what text is displayed in a SERP, but in the end, Google reserves the right to modify result snippets if it feels the original isn't up to par. It's important to remember that this decision by Google is based on a highly refined algorithm and is ultimately for the benefit of people searching for your content. That said, I'm willing to bet most webmasters still prefer to retain control over how their web site is shown in Google. By ensuring your on-page content is the best it can be, you're greatly... 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.. 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.. 10 Key Things to Look for in a Good Web Designer 10 Key Things to Look for in a Good Web Designer By Gary Klingsheim (c) 2008 The pace of business today is positively supersonic. There doesn't seem to be enough time for anything anymore, and businesses of all sizes are working harder and faster all the time. It's important to work smarter, too. And that means when you have to choose an important vendor for an essential service, you need to slow down and make a deliberate, careful decision. This is particularly important when you are getting ready to put your company's face on the World Wide Web in a new or newly-refurbished web site. Before listing the ten key things to look for in a good web designer, let's define a few terms. Even though you may encounter variants on the name ? like web developer, web artist, webmaster and so forth - we're talking about an individual who, alone or with some assistance, is going to "get you up and running." This means more than simple design. You may need someone who can help you conceive and write copy. You may need someone who can plan smart site structure. You may need help getting a domain registered, files uploaded, e-mail accounts set up, and other technical details. You will definitely need someone who can do just about anything, or quickly find out how, or have an associate who can at the ready. With these caveats, and serious encouragement to shop around for price and professionalism, here are the ten things to look for, in rough order of importance: 1) Experience You will need someone with all the techniques, tools and tricks that... more.. Web 2.0, Are We Bowing To A False Messiah? Web 2.0, Are We Bowing To A False Messiah? By Barry Densa (c) 2007 Are you absolutely beside yourself ? giddy with delight because Web 2.0 has finally arrived to help you sell more, sell faster, make you richer, smarter, sexier, and lower your triglyceride levels? Whoops, I'm sorry... do you even know what Web 2.0 is? Web 2.0, in a nut shell, is the latest evolution in the online experience. The World Wide Web is now... ready... here it is: a tad more interactive, technologically speaking. Where does Web 1.0 end and Web 2.0 begin? Beats the heck out of me! I'm basically your average techno-phobe ? the proverbial anti-Geek, if you will. Nevertheless, Web 2.0 typically refers to an assortment of internet-based communication tools and services ? such as social networking sites, wikis, and "new and improved" chat functionalities. Writing a book review on Amazon.com is apparently considered Web 1.0 technology. I know all of this is a big whoop for some of you, but for others it's equivalent to the coming of the messiah (for either the first or second time, depending on which operating system you're laboring under). Is Web 2.0 a Boon or a Bane for Consumers and Countries? For most marketers, their company's website has been a rather static billboard of sorts. But now, thanks to Web 2.0, a website can provide visitors, prospects, customers and selected victims, with a certain degree of "give and take". You can talk to them, they can talk to you; you can learn more about them, they can learn more about you; they can "experience" you, you can "experience them" ? in short, the level of... more.. Top 10 AdSense Tricks To Boost Your Commission Top 10 AdSense Tricks To Boost Your Commission By Kalena Jordan Google AdSense - http://www.google.com/adsense - is fast becoming the preferred way for people to earn an income online. Forget eBay and multiple aff?ate programs. Whether you are a work-at-home mom trying to make a little extra c? or an Internet entrepreneur with hundreds of monetized websites, AdSense is truly the easiest way to earn mon? Simply sign up for a fr?account, grab your ad code and paste it in your site. But here's the amazing thing - no matter how much mon?AdSense is making for you right now, a few simple tweaks can increase that amount considerably. And I should know, after learning about these tricks, I more than doubled my AdSense commissions! The self-proclaimed AdSense gurus and experts are sharing this insider knowledge, for a fee. Editorial Note: Some of the website AdSense examples provided below by the author may have changed since the article was written. You can learn all these secrets from them, as long as you... more.. Signs It's TimeTo Redesign Your Website Signs It's TimeTo Redesign Your Website By Erin Ferree (c) 2007 Designing your first website is a stressful undertaking. It requires you to dig deep into your business in order to write the copy for your site. You need to work with a designer and go through the process of creating a site that looks unique and works well. Plus you'll end up investing a lot of time, energy and money. And finally, after all that, you're finished and it's time for the site to go live. What a relief! Many business owners go through this same process. By the time the process is finished, many entrepreneurs are very glad that it's over - and don't want to do it again anytime soon. Unfortunately, websites don't last forever. Even if you plan your site to work for the current vision for your business, you can't accurately account for the entire future of your business. Eventually you'll have to make some changes to your website. Some of these changes can be accomplished with simple maintenance, and by making updates to your site. But there's only so far that patching and revising your current site can go. If your site is particularly outdated, or if it's not working well for you, it's probably time to consider a full-scale site redesign. Some signs that it's time to redesign your site include: Your Business Has Changed or Grown If your business is no longer the same as it was when you designed your site, chances are that you should redesign your website to reflect that. If you've only had a few small changes, you might be able to just update your current website. But, if... 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.. Gear Up Your Site For Social Media Marketing Gear Up Your Site For Social Media Marketing By Deepak Dutta The year 2006 saw the emergence of social media. If you are engaged in operating a website, you must realign your site to exploit the popular social media sites for increased traff? You should also introduce social media components to your site because web users are experiencing these new forms of interactions on more and more sites and they may have an expectation of the same from your site also. The first step is to declare who you are to the online community. People should be able to relate to you. Unless they know more about you, you will be just an unknown identity and most people don't like to deal with unknowns. Create an About Us page and l? your achievements and skills. Create a MySpace page and link your bio in the About Us page to the MySpace page. Also provide a link back from the MySpace page to your website. Spend an hour every week to develop your online social network in MySpace. Invite a few of these new friends to write blog articles at your site about your products or services. If you want to attract repeat visitors and want them to stay longer, your focus this year should be on the social aspects of your site. Social media uses technologies like RSS, blogging, podcasting, tagging, etc. and offers social networking (MySpace, Facebook), social video and picture sharing (YouTube, Flickr), and community-based content ranking (Digg, MiniClip) features. The central theme of these sites is user generated content used for sharing among the end-users. The social aspects of these sites are to allow users to setup social communities,... 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.. 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.. The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites By Mark Daoust Ugliness has nev?looked better. I have spent the last few days examining a surprising trend in web design that has made ugly websites look absolutely irresistible. No, it's not the bolded, 18 point Times New Roman font shouting at me as I access the page that has me excited, nor is it the harsh colors that have actually managed to make my eyes hurt and distort my vision. In fact, it's not even that logo which is so pixelated from being processed, resized, saved, and edited so many times that it appears to be blurred to protect the identity of the company who owns the website that has me singing the praises of ugly websites. What is it? Ugly sells. That's right ? ugly websites are surprisingly effective in making mon? As a person who puts business before technology, a profitable website is a website that is an unbelievably attractive website to me. The Case of Plenty of Fish I was struck by an example of just how... more.. The Web of Tomorrow The Web of Tomorrow By Jason OConnor (c) 2007 Oak Web Works, LLC A woman switches on a tiny wireless chip that has been surgically implanted behind her ear, which then synchs up with the Web wherever she is in the world. The simple thought of logging on to the Internet triggers the system to turn on and connect to the Web. She could be on a bus or at the beach and from all outward appearances she's just staring off into space. But she sees a three dimensional artificial world before her that she can manipulate any way she chooses by mere thought alone. By looking at the trends of today we can begin to develop a image of what the Web of the future will look like. I believe the Web will improve and grow in a way that will dwarf its present existence and will improve and enrich everyone's lives way beyond what we can imagine today. The Net will become as integrated into everyone's everyday lives as much as, and even more so, than the television or telephone (in developed nations first, then everywhere). Television, communications and the Internet will merge. The Web will become increasingly realistic, interactive, and three dimensional. Two dimensional displays will evolve into three dimensional displays. And the Web will probably incorporate more than just the two senses of seeing and hearing. It will first be incorporated into all other electronics found in household appliances, copy machines, automobiles, and anything else with a microchip. Then it will be integrated directly into our brains. I also envisage this new Web creating an unimaginably sophisticated data sphere that surrounds and envelops the world like a warm... more.. Your Website Does not Need A Traditional Call To Action Your Website Does not Need A Traditional Call To Action By Jerry Bader (c) 2008 The other day I received two emails, both with the same question, why didn't we have a direct call to action on our website? Sales people are taught, you always need 'a call to action,' a request to act or lose the opportun? of a lifetime. I'm sure you've seen the infomercials, website presentations, online direct market? come-ons, and even high-pressure seminar and tradeshow presentations that will never be repeated, so you better act now. You're familiar with the language used: "act now and we'll send you two pieces of junk you don't need, but wait there's more, call in the next ten minutes and we'll add a third useless item." Does any intelligent person really respond to this kind of pitch, and what self-respecting business would actually behave in this manner? The fact is, if you sell something of value at a reasonable price, and you treat your customers with some respect, you will get your share of business. You may not get all the business, nobody does, but the business you do get, will result in more satisfied customers, more word-of-mouth referrals, and ultimately more sales. High-pressure tactics, and demands for instant commitment, frighten off as many potential clients as they ensnare. Lies and Statistics Statistically it may be true that if someone leaves your website without ordering, the chances of them returning to order are low, but as Shakespeare's Cassius said, "the fault, dear Brutus lies not in the stars, but in ourselves." The problem is NOT the customer; it's what you're saying, how... 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.. SEO For The New Google SEO For The New Google Dave Davies For those whose businesses rely on the Internet to produce revenue the latest Google update, nicknamed Jagger, was one of the biggest events in the past couple years (probably since the Florida Update of 2003). With this 3-part update Google has essentially changed many of the rules and have thrown the SEO community for a loop. In this update there are a few key areas that have impacted the way sites rank and how an SEO (or a business owner optimizing their own site) needs to approach and address the various components. The key areas that have been affected with this update are: The history of your web pages The way backlinks are counted Site content & structure In short, the way everything about your site is calculated has changed however if we pay attention to what has changed in each area we'll quickly see how to optimize a site and equally important, we'll see what Google is trying to accomplish with this update. I state that this as equally important in that understanding what Google is hoping to accomplish will help us take measures now to protect our rankings during future updates. We will cover this further below in the conclusion. The History Of Your Web Pages The history of your website and in fact, the individual pages within it are playing an increasingly important role in your site's ability to rank well. The longer your site has been online the better your chances of ranking highly. Further, the longer a specific internal page has been live the better it will rank for additional phrases.   What this means to you is that you will have to take... 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.. 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.. 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.. How to Optimize for Google: Part 2 How to Optimize for Google: Part 2 By Scott Van Achte, Senior SEO, StepForth (c) 2008 Optimizing for top Google rankings includes a number of factors. In Part 1 of 3 we discussed onsite optimization. In Part 2 we will touch on incoming links as well as using Google Webmaster Tools. LINKS Links are very important in today's Google rankings, but just how many links you need will depend on both the competitiveness of your target phrases, and the quality of the incoming links themselves. Essentially the number one rule of links is to keep it relevant! Topical relevance is very important in order for inbound links to give your site the most value. If the page that links to you is relevant that is good, if the entire site linking to you is relevant, that is better. First to get an idea of how many links you may need, take a look at the top 10 ranking sites in Google and record how many links Yahoo is noting for each site. (This is because Google does not display anywhere near all the links they have noted). The average of this count is often a good indication of how many links your site may need. There are many different ways to get links to your site including the age old reciprocal link trade, directory links, article based links, and links from press releases. Reciprocal Links Reciprocal linking has seen its value drop considerably over the past few years, however, if the site you are trading with is relevant you can still receive value from these links. Paid Links Google... more.. The Top 10 Tools for Monitoring the Success of Your Website The Top 10 Tools for Monitoring the Success of Your Website By Steven Snell (c) 2007 One of the most important aspects of running a website is monitoring the site and its progress. By monitoring your website you will be able to see how it is performing and how it can be improved. This article covers 10 fr?tools that can help you to optimize your site for maximum results. 1 ? Google Analytics Google Analytics has become the preferred option among fr?statistics programs. Like any other stats program, Google Analytics provides data on the number of visitors, and page views, referral sources, entry and exit pages, and more. Unlike most other programs, Google Analytics includes the ability to track and monitor pay-per-cl? (PPC) campaigns. Other useful information includes the geographic location of your visitors, their internet connection speed, and their screen resolutions. You can sign up for Google Analytics at: http://bizsolutions.google.com/services/ 2 ? Google Webmaster Tools Want to know how the largest search engine in the world sees your website? Google's Webmaster Tools will give you loads of information such as the pages that are indexed, errors found by the Googlebot (dead links), your search engine rankings for specific search phrases, your anchor text on inbound links, internal and external link data, and robots.txt and sitemap data. By knowing how Google sees your site you will find some basic items that you'll need to change in order to reach your maximum potential in search engine traff? You can sign up for Google Webmaster Tools at: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ 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.. 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.. 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 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.. 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 REAL Death of Email Marketing The REAL Death of Email Marketing By Willie Crawford (c) 2009 For many online marketers, conversions rates are a mere fraction of what they use to be. At the same time, there are a few marketers that I've chatted with who have experienced no significant drop in conversions. These are all marketers who have built incredible subscriber loyalty over the years. For many online marketers, the biggest problem is email deliverability. Their email is simply not getting through. Email is being filtered so heavily today that often less than 20% of a large ezine mailing gets delivered. There are things you can do to improve your email deliverability, such as run it through a spam checker prior to sending it out. Top mailing list management systems, such as ProfitAutomation.com, have built in systems that allow you to grade an email against the Spam Assassin database prior to sending it. If your email scores higher than a 2, I personally would revise it to lower the score. I've talked to friends over a year ago, who often confided in me that they sometimes sent out emails and got absolutely NO response. They wondered if anyone even got the emails or read them. Many savvy marketers also realized that a business totally dependent upon email was not a very solid business. They realized that what they really needed was a database that contained not only names and email addresses, but physical mailing addresses. That way, if something dramatic ever did happen in the world of email, they could just shift their marketing to direct ma? and still be in business. This is one of the reasons that you started seeing some online marketers offering loss... 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.. Should Small Businesses Invest In SEO During A Recession? Should Small Businesses Invest In SEO During A Recession? By Mike Tekula (c) 2008 These are tough times, no doubt. The pinch is on every business to cut unnecessary costs and improve efficiency. Those businesses that were squeaking by to begin with are now in danger of closing their doors. Advertising is usually one of the first items on the chopping block (though it shouldn't be). You've got to cut costs, and you certainly don't want to lay off any employees if you can help it, so you start looking a bit more closely at your marketing budget to see where you can rein in ad spending. It's a natural reaction to a tightening budget, and there is a good reason for it. Most business owners know that you need to advertise. Sure, word of mouth is great - there's nothing like a referral from a happy client to instill trust in a prospect - but you still need to be proactive in getting the word out. The trouble with advertising in the traditional sense is that it is difficult to know whether your efforts are working and what is generating the best value for your dollar. The uncertainty makes it hard to keep throwing money into your ad spend. When your budget tightens it is even harder to justify the cost when the benefits are fuzzy at best. But marketing on the web is different. The costs are lower, return on investment can be much higher and traffic data allows you to chop out the dead wood and optimize your budget. Search engines are a primary driver of traffic on the web... more.. 7 Simple Ways To Build Traffic To A New Website 7 Simple Ways To Build Traffic To A New Website By Mike Tekula (c) 2008 Got a brand new website? That's great, but nobody cares. OK, maybe that's a little harsh. The truth, however, is that just having a website doesn't get you much. Editor's Note: Publication of the SiteProNews newsletter will be intermittent during the next 2 weeks. Visit SiteProNews.com for the latest articles, webmaster news and blog posts. We wish all of our loyal readers a happy holiday season. Many business owners I meet are surprised to find, once we look at the numbers, that the shiny new site they had built not too long ago gets little to no traffic on a daily basis. Many newcomers to the web make the mistake of thinking that just by buying a domain name and putting up your site, visitors are going to happen by - something like when you buy property and build a storefront in a busy part of town. It just doesn't work that way. The web is harsh. You can have the best looking site in the world with great resources and content and go entirely ignored or unnoticed. It happens. It's happening right now. Somewhere out there in the ether is a brand new gorgeous website loaded with great content, and nobody cares. Poor little lonely site. But there is hope. Every website had its early days. Even sites that get hundreds of thousands of visitors a day started out with none. Here are 7 simple things you can start doing right now to help drive traffic to your site. 1. Get Some Quick Links From Trusted Directories Link building is a long-term process with... 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.. 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.. 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.. How You Use Social Media Can Kill Your Business How You Use Social Media Can Kill Your Business By Nicole Hernandez (c) 2009 The social media movement has expanded the number of people we can reach and connect with on a personal level. The new relationships and connections we create with people all over the world can have a profound effect on our personal and business growth. We learn about cultures and nations that we were, perhaps, previously ignorant of. None of this is a new concept, but what may be is how quickly you can destroy your business by using social media incorrectly. Transparency is a Utopian Concept Not too long ago, Michael Fortin wrote an article titled Don't Be Transparent, Be Authentic Instead. That article is an important read for any social media wrangling business blogger and you can search for it online. That article is the tip of the iceberg in the concept of 'transparency' being too Utopian to work within the jaded confines of our society. Of course, true transparency is ideal. Many things about a perfect world are. Unfortunately, as a group, most of the world isn't ready or willing to accept true transparency without penalty. When Transparency Fails Let me give you a couple of examples of transparency failure we've seen. Failure 1: We had a copywriter who was posting on Twitter about the work he was doing. He made several posts within a few hours which were ugly complaints about a client and how 'stupid' he felt that client was. We obviously considered this unacceptable and immediately removed him from our list of subcontractors, but think about this: If he was hoping to use Twitter to get more client work -... more.. Back to the Future SEO Back to the Future SEO By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007 Recently I took on a new SEO client who had a major problem. They had a very popular portal site in a competitive industry but for 3 months running, their Top 10 search engine rankings for major keywords had taken a consistent dive. The position drops ranged from 1 or 2 places up to 20 places. They hired me to try and address the issue quickly because their advertising revenue relied on the top 10 visibility of their brand in the SERPs. I looked for the usual suspects, a Google penalty, dodgy code, hidden text, new competitors, 404 errors, keyword stuffing, fast acquisition of links, domain issues, major host? outages, over-optimization and code bloat. Nothing - the site checked out clean. There had been a major Google algorithm update in the past 6 months, but that had occurred weeks earlier to the downward trend. So then I asked about the design history and if any major changes had been made a week or so prior to the sudden ranking drop. The client couldn't recall any major changes so I went about the business of improving the site as best I could and integrating a link building campaign to obtain links from high quality sites in the same industry. But I couldn't shake the idea that there must have been some major change to the site that impacted its previously ideal search engine compatibility. So I asked for the site's log files for the past 6 months and imported them into ClickTracks for a closer look. I discovered that the site showed a solid growth in traff?starting in February and continuing until April.... 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.. 7 Tactical Reasons To Use Mini Campaign Websites 7 Tactical Reasons To Use Mini Campaign Websites By Jerry Bader (c) 2008 How many websites should your company have? That's a question that comes up often in discussions with clients, but perhaps the idea hasn't crossed your mind. Why would any company need more than one website? Not to be glib but the answer is as many as you need, but how many is that? If you're a large corporation, it is fairly obvious that you need a separate site for each brand you offer, and a separate site for corporate background material and perhaps investor information. But what if you're a small or medium-sized company with a limited number of products or services? Then the question becomes, do your products relate to one another? Does one item flow into the next? Is your audience for each product or service the same? And what about totally different audiences for the same product: audiences that need to be approached with totally different tactics? And then there are special circumstances like new product launches, time sensitive marketing campaigns, and limited availability offers? Mini Campaign Websites and Alternative Marketing Websites are an effective method of enhancing your marketing efforts and targeting optional audiences you wouldn't have otherwise reached using your traditional sales marketing approach. 7 Tactical Reasons To Use Campaign Websites 1. Focus Your Presentation: eliminate distraction and non relevant clutter. It is human nature to want to get your money's worth, but when it comes to website marketing this can be counter-productive. Wanting to cram everything you provide into one website aimed, or more to the point not aimed, at every interested audience only... more.. How To Start A Social Marketing Campaign How To Start A Social Marketing Campaign By Jack Humphrey (c) 2008    Social marketing is a relatively new, often misunderstood form of online marketing that is reaping huge rewards for website owners who incorporate it into their marketing plans. I work with clients and customers who, while being very new to social marketing, are seeing results in the following areas: 1. Higher search engine rankings for their top keywords. 2. More rankings of additional keywords or "long tail" keyword phrases. 3. More link popularity from sites linking on their own accord. 4. More link popularity from social media sites. 5. More activity on their blogs, such as more commenting and interaction. 6. Direct traffic from incoming links on social media sites (One good StumbleUpon.com submission can net thousands of visitors alone.) 7. Fast traffic increases and steady growth in unique visitors month after month. 8. An increase in subscribers and sales. Social traffic, properly acquired, is very warm to your message and products. The problem for most people when thinking about social marketing, after getting a taste of all the hundreds of sites there are to interact with, is becoming overwhelmed and paralyzed into inaction. They assume established social marketers gained their "social authority" in a short period of time. This is simply not true. Although the opportunities for driving serious traffic and rankings from hundreds of social sites exists, it is an embarrassment of riches. And it cannot be conquered over night. It is a gradual process you manage with all your other responsibilities and grow as time allows. What I encourage my clients to do is set aside enough time each day to get one more link, participate in... more.. Site Content and Copy Writing Site Content and Copy Writing By Michel Fortin (c) 2008 An interesting debate is raging among copy writers, web designers and content developers about the differences, if any, between writing copy for the web versus writing content. According to prolific copywriter Nick Usborne of Excess Voice, a recent survey conducted among the readers of his newsletter of the same name offers some interesting results. They seem to be split almost three ways: one-third consists of copywriters, another content writers and the final third both. But it's wrong. This is an important debate, I believe, since all online copy is content but not all content is copy. And that's a real problem. Most web designers, webmasters and content writers develop text for websites in a way to educate visitors. They also write it with the notion that "content is king," "content increases search engine rankings," "content makes a website sticky" and so on. That's all fine and good. But I believe content fails when it strives only at informing the reader, and thus lacks important elements that take her "by the hand" and compels her to do something - anything, including the simple act of reading. In other words, while some websites may compel our attention, others fail to propel our actions, too. And their owners often end up screaming, "Why is my website not producing any sales," "why am I getting a lot of traffic but such a poor response" or "why are people leaving so quickly?" Well, if content is king, copy is the castle. The Internet is not a traditional medium ? at least not in the broadcast sense. It is intimate,... more.. The Impact of Personalization on SEO The Impact of Personalization on SEO By Claudia Bruemmer    Personalization of seek has been a growing topic of interest for a while, but has stayed under the radar for most people until now. By using Google\'s widespread integration of personalization into standard search results, seek marketers\' attention has lastly been firmly riveted on the issue. Up until recently, Google provided two personalization selections: You could customize your Google Personalized Homepage for quick access to information of your choice (email messages, news headlines, etc.). You could get automatic personalization from your search history.   Major Changes at SiteProNews: The SpotProNews webplace no longer reflects the content of the SpotProNews newsletter. The webarea has a completely new look, provides keyword and category search and proposals more article content as well as dynamically changing webmaster blog and news feeds. New features and sections will be increased in the coming weeks. Be sure to visit and bookmark the new AreaProNews webplace.  Recently, Google begined combining the above two choices for users who become associated for services through their Google accounts. When you sign in, you can get access to tailored results utilizing information from your seek history and your Google home page. If you don\'t wish to see results based on your past seekes, you simply sign out of your Google Account or turn the choice to track your history off in your Account settings. To quote Danny Sullivan, \"...anyone who signs-up for any Google service using a Google Account (such as Gmail, AdSense, Google Analytics among others) will automatically be enrolled into three additional Google product or services: Search History -- Personalized Search -- Personalized Homepage.\" In the past, Google Accounts required you to manually enable Search History. However, by using the recent change, personalized search has been enabled for all accounts, new and old alike. All... more.. Video Microsites - The Brand Story Campaign Solution Video Microsites - The Brand Story Campaign Solution By Jerry Bader (c) 2009 Everybody wants to do more business. Everybody occasionally runs a promo, a new marketing initiative, a product launch, or a new seasonal lineup. Everybody has a website stuffed with all kinds of content ranging from the important to the useless. But only the truly smart business minds understand that campaigns require their own space and identity if they are to succeed. And when it comes to using the Web as your vehicle for such a campaign, the obvious solution is a Video Campaign Microsite. What's A Video Campaign Microsite? Video Campaign Microsites are websites that employ a series of highly focused video presentations designed specifically for the purpose of promoting a single marketing initiative aimed at a highly targeted audience. Video Campaign Microsites are dedicated to delivering an engaging online experience that compels an audience to act by taking advantage of the marketing initiative's pitch. These sites benefit from removing all the corporate clutter and irrelevant information that inhabits most business websites and generally gets in the way of an effective marketing presentation. Video Microsites are often implemented by means of a direct ema?campaign or depending on the budget, magazine, television, or radio advertising. You can also channel corporate site traffic by means of a graphical home page link. There are different styles of video Microsites that you can employ depending on your brand personality and the goals of the campaign. 1. New Product Launch Video Microsites The launch of a new product or a seasonal line should be an event, and there is no better way to attract attention and generate public and media interest than to create a brand... more.. 5 Reasons Why Most Internet Marketers Fail 5 Reasons Why Most Internet Marketers Fail By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009 When it comes to starting any endeavor, whether it be learning a new hobby or starting an online business, we all have to start at ground zero. We all have to start at the very beginning from the very same place. Granted, we each bring different skills and backgrounds into the mix, but for the most part we are all on equal footing at the starting line. If this is the case, then we really have to ponder why is it only a choice few go on to succeed, while most people don't. Just what are the reasons why most online marketers fail? This is the core question that has to be answered if you want to fully understand Internet marketing and how it works. What are these basic reasons? What are the causes or stumbling blocks that hold many marketers and webmasters from reaching their full online potential? If we know these factors, we can learn how to avoid them and even overcome them in our own online marketing. These reasons can be a solid reference point or even a source of inspiration for any online marketer just starting out. Speaking from the viewpoint of someone who has started from the very beginning with little to no knowledge of computers or even marketing for that matter, I can honestly relate to the beginning marketer. I even had to learn HTML from scratch in order to construct my own webpages. Probably my only advantage, I did have a background in art but designing webpages was completely different from anything I had done previously to starting in online market?. But from my own experiences I have drawn some general... more.. A Beginner's Guide to Google Website Optimizer A Beginner's Guide to Google Website Optimizer By Kalena Jordan (c) 2008 We all know that the most effective Pay Per Click advertising campaigns use landing pages that are matched perfectly to your target search keywords and designed to follow through with the idea or theme that your PPC ad has hinted at. But how do you determine the effectiveness of those landing pages? How do you know what design or page features will trigger a better response in your audience and lead to more conversions? The answer is that you don't, unless you test. Benefits of Landing Page Testing Whether they are a part of a PPC campaign or not, there are countless benefits to testing your web site pages, including: Improve the effectiveness of landing pages Increase conversions / sales Attract more leads / sign-ups Increase time spent on your site by visitors Reduce the Cost Per Acquisition of new customers Eliminate guesswork. Improve your site design via information from your site's end users Avoid staff disputes ? let your customers decide what design elements should be changed Google Website Optimizer The Website Optimizer is a tool that allows marketers and webmasters to test variations of pages on site visitors automatically, to see which pages or variations of pages perform the best (i.e. lead to the most conversions). In April 2007, Google took their Website Optimizer tool out of BETA and made it available to the general public. I had been wanting to use Google Website Optimizer to test our landing pages on Search Engine College for some... 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.. Top 5 Signs That Your Website Sucks Top 5 Signs That Your Website Sucks By John Metzler (c) 2009   Small business owners may not have the resources to invest heavily in their web presence and finding solutions to problems can be like finding a needle in a haystack. You know something's wrong but don't have the faintest idea how to fix it. Is it a technical issue? Are your ads not performing well? Don't know what kind of traffic you're getting? Website problems can fall into a myriad of categories. So if you think your website sucks, a) it probably does, and b) you should read on. 1. You Aren't Getting Traffic You're excited about the big, expensive job the design team just finished on your site. It looks like a million bucks! Well it's a shame it isn't making you a darn cent. Just because it exists doesn't mean people know about it. Announce it to the world by submitt? it to reputable directories and sharing your useful content with others on social bookmarking sites (you do have useful content, don't you? If not, I'll cover this later). You can even do some link exchanges -- provided the sites you exchange with are reputable -- just to get your site crawled early on. Further optimize it for search engines by following good SEO practices, building quality content and generating inbound links from other sites. Once you do that, you'll need to monitor progress with web analytics software. Google Analytics is free and it has a slick interface. And we know you like pretty things seeing as how you broke the bank on your web site design. If you're looking for high ROI, invest your time in learning search engine marketing. Better... more.. 4 Stealthy Sources Of Powerful Internet Marketing Intelligence 4 Stealthy Sources Of Powerful Internet Marketing Intelligence By Willie Crawford (c) 2009 In online market? it is critical that you keep up with what is going on in your industry. You do need to know who is doing what - and why they are doing it. You do need to take the time to research potential joint venture partners, products, and competing businesses. Here are four excellent tools and how to use them. 1) Internet Archive - Also known as "The Way Back Machine". There are actually many facets to this amaz? site but the feature that I use most is the ability to look at a historical snapshot of a website/domain. There is a box on the site where you can enter any url, and it will show you "snapshots" taken of that website over time. For example, if your were to enter my domain "williecrawford.com" you'd be able to sift through actual archived pages from my website between December 1998 and today. Every week or two a new snapshot of the site was taken and stored in the Archive.org database. That lets you confirm how long a website has been online (provided it was archived), lets you see how a business evolved over time, and will even reveal to you things a marketer may have been testing that perhaps didn't work out. I use this tool to confirm how long a site/person has been in business. I also use it to confirm how long a person has actually been in a particular niche or discipline. I use it in deciding who to actually form business relationships with. If you discover... 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.. 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.. 7 Basics of Good Web Design 7 Basics of Good Web Design By George Peirson (c) 2009 Whether you are just starting a web design project, looking at revamping an existing site, or just wanting to double check the usability of your current web site you should consider these 7 Basics of Good Web Design. These basics are aimed at new visitors/customers; your repeat customers will be judging your web site on different values. Just like wearing the appropriate clothes for a job interview, these basics will help you pick out the "look" of your web site so that you make a good first impression. 1. Fast Loading Web Site - Any way you look at it, a fast loading page should be your number 1 concern. The web is all about speed, fast searches, fast purchases, fast information. You can't have any of that with a slow loading page. Ask yourself this question - have you ever been on Google doing a search for something important and a link you clicked on didn't open up immediately? What did you do? Patiently wait for the page to open or move onto the next link on the page? My favorite sites open almost immediately. So, a few suggestions: Make sure that your images are properly optimized. Don't use very many large images, save those for a different page. Keep any auto-running multimedia to a minimum, provide links to run media instead. Check your code for anything else that could affect your page loading times. Since text loads almost instantly go ahead and use all the text you want, just keep everything else under control. 2. No... more.. Content is Dead. Community is King Now Content is Dead. Community is King Now By Stoney DeGeyter (c) 2007 I can hardly bring myself to say the old cliche about content being... well, you know. I think it's one of the original cliche's in the SEO industry. And as redundant as it has become, for whatever reason we keep hearing it over and over again. And every now and then a new study pops up seemingly proving, once again, that content is... uh, good. But much like a TV producer suggesting "video is king" or a radio advertiser demanding that "audio is king", so goes the SEO demanding the same about content. Content has its role--and an important one at that, but it's not the be-all, end-all of online marketing. Not even close. But the roots of the "content is" movement are important for our industry. The mantra was first heard in the early days of the search engine optimization industry when SEOs were doing nothing more than throwing a bunch of keywords on a page and hoping they ranked well. Little or no thought or consideration was given to the readability of the web page. After all, it's only rankings that matter, right? But those of us who learned to game search engines slowly began to learn something that those in the marketing industry have known for years. Words sell. Or turn people off, depending on what's written and how it's written. So the movement to developing good content--real content--was an important one for our industry. But to get there we had to have the content mantra beat into our head over and over (and over). We got it. We know. The King is Losing His Grip... 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.. Top Ten Ways to Use Twitter for Marketing Top Ten Ways to Use Twitter for Marketing By Jason OConnor (c) 2009 Twitter is a micro-blogging site that asks you a basic question, "What are you doing?" It allows anyone with an account to write up to 140 characters in a text field as a means to update, comment, promote or communicate to others who are "following" you. When people follow you, they see what you've recently contributed when they login. They see your "tweets", which are the messages you leave. And of course you can follow others who tweet about the things that interest you. As an Internet marketer you may want to follow other Internet marketers, for example. Like anything, and this is especially true of working with social media, the more you give, the more you get. In other words, the more often you tweet the more activity you'll generate. Some suggest that you tweet a few times a day, every day. Not every tweet needs to be profound. But they should all be useful. It's important that you don't abuse Twitter for marketing and promoting your products, services or affiliate links. Most of your tweets ought to be about offering your followers useful and valuable information. Only once in a while should you try to use Twitter to promote something. Otherwise you'll be perceived as a spammer, and no one wants that tag. Imagine if you had a large number of people following your tweets? Some people have tens of thousands following them. If you had something to promote and you had a large following, you could quickly and efficiently alert a lot of people of your promo. It acts sort of like a mass email? blast to your house... more.. Becoming The Spider, Next Generation SEO Tactics Becoming The Spider, Next Generation SEO Tactics By Titus Hoskins (c) 2007 Web 2.0 changes the whole ballgame. It not only places the Internet user squarely in the middle of things, but it gives that user the means and power to create and manipulate data. Web 2.0 dramatically changes how we view and use the web. Actually, in many respects, it creates a whole new Internet. Just when you believed you had all your SEO tactics figured out, the web goes and changes on you. Not just the rules of the game but it takes the whole web platform right out from under your feet and changes it. What's a poor webmaster to do? What Is Web 2.0? Just what exactly is Web 2.0? What does it mean? Is there a precise definition that all webmasters can get their heads around and understand? Not really, many believe Web 2.0 is just another one of those contrived buzzwords, signifying mostly marketing hype! However, perhaps the simple definition can be found in the word "you"! Time magazine probably summed it up best by making reference to the "you" in user generated content. Web 2.0 is basically all the platforms that give us this brave new user-powered interactive Internet, generally referred to as 'social media'. Web 2.0 can be seen or manifested in such sites as YouTube, MySpace, Del.icio.us, Digg, Squidoo... Web 2.0 uses scripting languages such as Python, Perl PHP, RSS... to construct interactive platforms that websites can use to create all this user-generated content. Many refer to these evolving formats and scripting platforms under the name AJAX and no this does not refer to the popular cleaning agent under... more.. 7 Words That Will Make Your Website Worth Viewing 7 Words That Will Make Your Website Worth Viewing By Jerry Bader (c) 2009 Seven. It's just a number like any other, but it does seem to come up on a fairly regular basis. There's the Seven Wonders of the World, The Seven Deadly Sins, and the Seven Dwarfs: Happy, Sneezy, Sleepy, Bashful, Doc, Dopey, and my personal favorite, Grumpy. Phone numbers are seven digits, and they say the optimum brand name should be no more than seven letters long. Seven it seems is a magical number, as the average human brain can only grasp seven things at a time. Interesting, my wife says I've got trouble with two, never mind seven, but that's another story. So I've been thinking, what are the seven most important words associated with Web-marketing. I'll give you a hint: Search, Engine, and Optimization don't make the cut. So what words do make the l?? What are the seven words that will make your website worth viewing? Words Can Move You By someone's count there are 171,476 entries in the Oxford English Dictionary, plus another 47,156 words that have fallen out of favor. This of course doesn't count the 9,500 additional permutations, that don't deserve their own special attention. Fifty percent of these words are nouns, twenty-five percent are adjectives, and 14.285% are verbs, with the rest made up of all those other things, the purpose of which most of us have long since forgotten. Others may find fault with these numbers, but no matter what the total, it's a lot of words. Of the several hundred thousand words to choose from, the average person recognizes less... more.. How Google Applies Science to Search 1 How Google Applies Science to Search 1 By Kalena Jordan (c) 2008 Dr. Craig Nevill-Manning is a New Zealander who joined Google in 2000 as a Senior Research Scientist to develop more precise search techniques. Previously, Craig was an assistant professor at the Computer Science Department of Rutgers University, where he conducted research in data compression, information retrieval and computational biology. Before that, he was a post-doctoral fellow in the Biochemistry Department of Stanford University, where he developed a software suite used by pharmaceutical research laboratories to identify the role of particular proteins within cells. A scientist at heart, Craig is probably best known as the developer of Froogle (recently re-named Google Product Search) and the founder of Google's software engineering center in New York City. This article is a summary of his presentation at Webstock 2008. Google's Spelling Bee Craig started his presentation by talking about one of his first challenges in his job at Google: the spelling correction tool. As the popularity of the search engine grew, Google needed to be able to spell-correct lots of obscure words. So his solution was to take a sampling of content from the entire web. Craig's team came up with a algorithmic model and ran it over the web. He discovered that there were several correct answers to the same question. For example, words like "kofee" could mean either the searcher is seeking a cup of java or information about Kofee/Kofi Anan. To combat this, Craig came up with an interesting solution: the "Did you mean?" alternative spelling option, based on predictive examples of searcher spelling patterns. You can see this in action if you type in "kofee anan"... more.. Multiply Your Marketing Like a Virus Multiply Your Marketing Like a Virus By Michel Fortin (c) 2009 In today's Internet, conversations are cropping up all over the place. People are talking. They are talking about products. They are talking about businesses. And they are certainly talking about their experiences. When you look at how blogs, forums and social networking sites have exploded in the last few years, you can see how powerful word-of-mouth is. But the question is, is it all really important? Can it really help your business? Yes. And I'm not talking about traffic. And you don't need to be controversial, either. I'm talking creating systems to leverage, manage and profit from the "buzz." Word-of-mouth is one of the most powerful lead and business generation processes there is. Online, some people call it "word-of-mouse." But we know it more as viral marketing. Viral marketing is the process of implementing means or tools through which the knowledge of your existence self- propagates. Like a virus, your visibility spreads throughout a network of people who refer you to each other. Notwithstanding the power of backlinking, traffic and SEO, viral marketing is key for a number of reasons. Success in the offline world is "location, location, location." The Internet is no different. Your success depends highly on the number of locations you appear online - places on which your site, link, company or product name exist. In essence, to expand your reach, you need to be in as many places as possible, talked about by as many people as possible and be in front of as many eyeballs as possible. With viral marketing, there are three ways of doing it:     Create content     Create applications     Create systems The first is self-explanatory. Your content may be controversial or buzzworthy. It may create raging... 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. Everyone Is All A-Twitter About Twitter Everyone Is All A-Twitter About Twitter By Jennifer Horowitz (c) 2008 I personally have been Tweeting for a few months. But I use the phrase "tweeting for a few months" loosely. I haven't been all that consistent with it, and I definitely didn't have a strategy. I just thought it was kind of cool. Recently I've started paying more attention to it for a few reasons; my mother-in-law was at a librarian conference recently and attended a session on Twitter. I got into a conversation with her about it, and then the next day I saw John Reese's email about Twitter. It seems like there is a lot of twittering about Twitter going on. What is Twitter? According to the Twitter FAQ, "Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you're doing." Wikipedia says, "Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates via SMS, instant messaging, email, to the Twitter website, or any one of the multitude of Twitter applications now available". Basically Twitter asks the question, "What are you doing?" and allows you to send a short update (your tweets are limited to 140 characters) to your followers (family, friends, colleagues, customers, potential customers etc). Twitter allows you to send and receive updates (also called tweets) via your browser, email, instant messaging clients and SMS (using your cell phone). No matter where you are, you can tweet! I haven't been following Twitter since day 1, so I'm not going to comment on it's evolution but I will speculate that as its popularity grows, as more and more marketers... more.. 10 Free and Easy Ways to Improve Your Alexa Ranking 10 Free and Easy Ways to Improve Your Alexa Ranking By Darrell Howell (c) 2008 Alexa, which is owned by Amazon.com, gives away a free toolbar that you can download and install in your browser. Alexa is then able to keep track of the sites you visit and compute the traffic ranking of those websites, with a rank of "1" being the assigned to the most visited site. If you want a more technical definition, Alexa explains it like this: "The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on a value derived from these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users)." http://www.alexa.com/site/help/traffic_learn_more In April 2008 Alexa revised its methodology so as to "aggregate data from multiple sources to give you a better indication of website popularity among the entire population of Internet users". http://awis.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html How accurately this method reflects the actual surfing patterns of all Internet users is open to question. However, if you bear in mind that by the end of 2005 the toolbar had been downloaded well over 10 million times you will realize why many people still think... more.. 10 Steps to Testing the Viability of Your Online Business 10 Steps to Testing the Viability of Your Online Business By Donna Gunter (c) 2009 The economic recession is pushing more and more people to consider self-employment. Starting an online business is a very low-risk way to put your toe in the entrepreneurial pond because the start up costs are minimal, the overhead is low, and the returns can be high. Despite these benefits, however, an online business is just like any other and needs to be thoroughly researched before starting to determine if there's a need in the marketplace and how viable the business idea is. The Internet is rife with exorbitant claims of how much money can be made as an online entrepreneur and that you can be rolling in the dough by next week. Remember, most "overnight" successes are 1, 2, or more years in the making, and online businesses are no exception to this rule.      Make Your Monthly Google AdSense Check Bigger! Algorithm figures out the ideal ad unit sizes, formats, shapes, and colors. No guesswork! Works w/Google AdSense and other popular ad networks. Up to 200% revenue lifts typical. Easy, one-time setup. Easier to install than AdSense. No ongoing tweaking and maintenance.     Profiled on TechCrunch, John Chow, and Search Engine Journal.... more.. How to Write Articles for Improved Search Engine Rank How to Write Articles for Improved Search Engine Rank By Peter Nisbet (c) 2008 If you are looking for improved search engine rank for any page on your website, you have to learn how to write articles in order to make use of one of the major and most useful resources online: article directories. Just as website directories can be used to promote your website online, article directories can be used to publish your articles. These articles can in turn be used to promote a specific page on your website, and in this respect are more useful than a website directory listing that promotes only your home page. You have few opportunities to direct search engine spiders directly to a page of your choice, and when one arises it should be made good use of. In fact, other than article directories and links on your website, you are unlikely to find such an opportun?, and it should be seized whenever it arises. However, very few people actually know how to make best use of such an opportun? and to use their articles intelligently to drive masses of traffic to their site. You can use your Author's Resource to achieve that, but in order to get the Resource read, you have to get the article read. For that to happen, you have to write a good article and then make people read it. To do that your title must be good enough to persuade people to read it. To achieve that you must be able to write a good title. So how do you achieve all of these things? That is the purpose of... more.. How search engine marketing tools can work for you: or, searching is really all about finding, first of three articles How search engine marketing tools can work for you: or, searching is really all about finding, first of three articles   How does one go from being a librarian and independent information professional to a specialist in search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing? In my case, it was almost inevitable. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As the Internet became more and more of a repository for crucial information, an increasing amount of my work involved sifting through hundreds of Web sites, searching for pertinent information on a wide variety of projects in a very short time. Because it was so hard to find the information on many of those Web sites, my frustration kept growing. I knew there were Web sites out there with great information--I just couldn't find them. When I did find a Web site, I couldn't find the information I was looking for in it. I'm a searcher. I know how to search and where to find information. I understand how search engines work. The problem? The companies and organizations behind these Web sites didn't understand how to have their information found by the people who were looking for it. Shortly after this realization, I started working on search engine promotion and optimization. So what does a search engine optimization specialist do? I am currently the SEO specialist at EBSCO Subsidiary Web Services (ESWS), a department within EBSCO Industries Inc. that provides Web design, development, maintenance, and Internet marketing for the company's 20-plus subsidiary divisions. These Web sites include businesses involved in real estate, hunting and fishing supplies, office and retail products, promotional displays, and publishing. My responsibility is to develop the sites into search-engine-friendly, easily indexed, highly ranked resources. I am also responsible for making sure the Web sites easily convert... 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.. For SEO Beginners - Twelve Definitions You Need To Know For SEO Beginners - Twelve Definitions You Need To Know By Mike Tekula (c) 2007 SEO is a trade that exists solely on the internet, and even then it is comprised almost entirely of the hot air of so-called "expert opinion." Plenty of it blowing around these days as search maintains position as one of the most important marketplaces in the modern business world. Many DIY webmasters will end up searching for blog entries, articles, informational web sites, etc to help get them up to speed. The problem is that in most cases certain key terms are flung around like household names while the people doing the flinging are way out of touch with the average web browser. What some of us don't realize is that not everyone knows even the basics of SEO. This l? of twelve SEO-related definitions in alphabetical order (with notes) serves as a great companion for your initial SEO reading. Read alone it will get you up to speed on some key terminology that you'll need to know to intelligently engage the ever-changing world of SEO. ? Algorithms. A search algorithm is, in short, the incredibly complex mathematical formula that a search engine uses to "rank" web sites for keywords. Based on a huge number of variables and calculations, algorithms are among the most closely-guarded secrets on the internet. Why? Imagine if they were leaked - suddenly the less-than-honest would have a very specific guideline to follow in climbing to the top of search results in a less-than-organic way, ruining the quality of Google's search results and their entire competitive advantage with it. ? Bot or Bots. See... more.. Google Caffeine - A Taste Test Google Caffeine - A Taste Test By Kalena Jordan (c) 2009 Earlier this month, Google invited the public to take their next generation of web search, code named Caffeine, for a test drive. The new search infrastructure is the beginning of Google's advance towards improving indexing speed and scale as the size of the web grows increasingly cumbersome. Google is seeking feedback on the changes from experienced users and web developers by making Caffeine available via a web developer preview. From the official blog post: "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." What Is It? According to Matt Cutts of Google, Caffeine is essentially a rewrite of the search index and it roughly compares with the Big Daddy index of late 2005 / 2006. In other words, it's a BIG change to Google search. Here's a couple of grabs from Mike McDonald's video interview with Matt Cutts on the subject: "We're shooting to get results identical to previous version. We'll open up a few datacenters with it first and then roll it out." "Caffeine will be more powerful, flexible and robust - allowing Google to index faster." "(Caffeine) builds a powerful foundation for including any changes we want to do with indexing. Not so much for taking advantage of semantic, real-time indexing, but for getting good infrastructure in place for growth and unlock more power." "Webmasters shouldn't be concerned. Caffeine does not affect your... 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.. Current and Future Search Trends: Search Trends, What the Top Internet Search Engines Are Doing By Scott Buresh (c) 2007 Medium Blue The future of search is unclear ? what is clear is that change is rapidly happening for all of the top Internet search engines. Google as always is the frontrunner for many of these search trends, but even little guys like Ask.com are making waves. In this article, I will attempt to cover some of the more interesting search trends that are occurring today with the top Internet search engines ? but I am by no means being comprehensive about the subject. Things are changing on a weekly, or sometimes even daily, basis, and future articles will cover additional developments in depth.  Universal Search In May 2007, Google ? the leader among top Internet search engines -- got people talking (again) when it rolled out its latest search concept, Universal Search. Universal Search was Google's attempt to create a single page of search results, rather than separate pages for types of results, such as videos, images, maps, and websites. When it was first introduced, many search engine optimization firms raced around exclaiming that this was one of those search trends that would change everything and that new optimization rules should be created and followed immediately. I published an article in early 2007 in which I noted, "The problem with Universal Search is that it can muddy the results, and it can also introduce irrelevant results that a searcher cannot use."[1] I also wrote, "Clearly, Universal Search will change how an SEO campaign is run if it catches on. But this is a real if - users' search habits are hard to... more.. Why RSS May Be an Email Killer Why RSS May Be an Email Killer By Peter Lenkefi (c) 2008 According to online statistics from eMarketer, less than 20% of internet users intentionally read content with the aid of an RSS reader. Indeed, even frequent internet users have no idea what that little orange RSS square represents and certainly don't realize that there is a big shift brewing in the bowels of online publishing and marketing. But, that may change more quickly than we all used to think for 3 very potent reasons. There are advantages to RSS that will compel most, if not all, internet users and content consumers to "learn" to use an RSS reader and start managing RSS subscriptions. In the same way email eclipsed snail mail for content delivery, RSS will eclipse email as the consumer's choice for opt-in messaging. If you are an email marketer, the time for you to get engaged to RSS has come, because, whether you like it or not, the wedding bells will be ringing soon. Here's why... RSS = Embedded Video (and audio) I recently was asked to help a small business embed video into emails they wanted to send to established clients. Their vision was clear: 1. Create a quick video email with a webcam, stick it right into their corporate Outlook email with a Youtube style preview. 2. The customer gets the email, clicks the Youtube-looking video preview and the video starts playing. 3. No landing page, they wanted everthing to happen right there inside the email client, whether it was Outlook, AOL, Gmail, Yahoo or otherwise. Simple right? Nope... This is simply not possible with email. Many brilliant companies have tried... 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.. 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.. 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.. Which Website Visitors Are Potential Clients? Which Website Visitors Are Potential Clients? By Jerry Bader (c) 2009 With today's website tracking software and services you can find out a lot about the people who visit your website. You can learn where they're from, what kind of browser they're using, how long they stayed on your site, and a whole lot more. But what all this high tech intelligence won't tell you is what kind of people they are, and how likely they are to be transformed by your Web presentation from viewers to customers. Your ability to convert website visitors into clients depends on your ability to find the soft underbelly of their subconscious desire. After all, if someone is happy with what they've already got, they don't need you, but if they were truly one hundred percent happy, they wouldn't bother coming to your website. Therefore every visitor that comes to your site is a potential client whether they know it or not. The Setup's The Thing Your website presentation has to find that annoying little subconscious scab just under the surface and pick at it until it becomes a full blown irritation that fosters discontent and a desire for change. That discontent is your opening to make your value statement. We refer to this process as The Setup. Like any good presentation you cannot, or rather should not, just blurt out how great you are, but rather you have to set the scene. Like any good story, the punch line, moral, or payoff only works if it is properly setup. Far too many website presentations suffer from premature pitch climax. The ability to transform viewers into customers requires patience. Entrepreneurial companies tend to view the setup as a waste of time, and... 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.. 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.. 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.. Google's Orion -The Next Shining Star or a Burnt Ember? Google's Orion -The Next Shining Star or a Burnt Ember? By Rob Sullivan (c) 2006 By now you have probably heard that Google bought a new algorithm developed by a university student down under. Many in the industry have speculated on what this could mean. Will this transform Google yet again? Or, will it merely be just another piece of technology they buy but don't appear to use. In this article, I look at the implications of Orion and what it could mean to the future of search. In order to understand the issues at play, we must first understand just what the heck Google bought. Orion is a new algorithm which in a nutshell works like Ask or Clusty in that it will not only match results based on keywords but also similar results based on concepts around those keywords. For example, if you were to search for "Canada" you may get not only the... more.. Using Blog PR to Promote Your Site Using Blog PR to Promote Your Site By Adam McFarland of iPrioritize The recent trend of using the press release to promote an online business has emerged with good reason ? good press costs very little and can do more for a business than thousands of dollars of marketing. Most businesses use press distribution services like PR Web or PRFree to get the word out about their news. While distribution services certainly can be effective, they tend to miss out on arguably the most influential group of the press ? bloggers. Bloggers mold and shape the opinions of their readers, who are normally the most important in their particular industry, many of whom are also bloggers. Not long after a post from an influential blogger, your news has been picked up by several other bloggers and within days you are all over the blogsphere. Before you know it your site is getting more attention than it would if a story ran in the local newspaper! So how do you get the influential bloggers in your industry to run a story about your business? Why Would Anyone Do a Story About Your Business? Are you a new company? Did you just launch a new product that they could review? Did your business w?an award? Are you a group of college kids who started a company on savings from your summer jobs? You get the idea. There needs to be a reason that someone would want to read about you. Bloggers take pride in the content they feed their readers. You don't stand a chance of getting a blogger to write about you if you don't have... more.. How To Keep Your Website Fresh With RSS How To Keep Your Website Fresh With RSS By Jason OConnor (c) 2006, Oak Web Works, LLC One of the biggest reasons people visit websites is to get information. If you can regularly provide fresh, quality content on your website you can expect to be rewarded by visitors and return visitors. What's more, you will be rewarded by the search engines. I recommend that you add new and original content to your site as often as possible, ideally once a day. Regularly adding fresh and original content: Keeps your site visitors coming back Continually adds value to your website Makes people more comfortable buying from your site Establishes yourself as an authority in your industry Greatly helps your site rank higher in search engines All of the above factors translate into revenue. We all know how hard adding original and fresh content is, especially if you're the business owner. You have to be original, creative, organized, thoughtful and motivated, and above all, able to write. So what's a website owner or business owner supposed to do? RSS may be the answer. What Is RSS? Here's the Wikipedia definition of RSS: RSS is a family of web feed formats specified in XML (a generic specification for data formats) and used for Web syndication. RSS delivers its information as an XML file called an "RSS feed", "webfeed", "RSS stream", or "RSS channel". These RSS feeds provide a way for users to passively receive newly released content (such as text, web pages, sound files, or other media); this might be the full content itself or just a link to it, possibly with a summary or other metadata (data describing the... 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.. Website Content By Jerry Bader (c) 2008 Website Content By Jerry Bader (c) 2008 Every week I get asked to look at business websites and tell the owners why they're not getting the results they want. Some of these sites are straightforward brochures, others are e-commerce catalogs, and some are those direct-mail-style pitches reminiscent of old mail-order magazine subscription schemes ported-over to the Web. Some have incorporated do-it-yourself audio and video and some even had this media professionally produced; still the results stink. Why? 'The Close' Is Always Found In 'The Why' Certainly part of the problem stems from a very narrow definition of what a website is: by casting your site in terms of a brochure, catalog, e-commerce-site, blog, or portal, you are falling into the trap of concentrating on 'The What' rather than on 'The Why'. This focus on 'The What' is exacerbated by some search engine optimization techniques intended to drive traffic, not to brand product, sell services, or convert traffic into customers. Don't get me wrong, traffic is important, but converting that traffic into paying customers is more important. Even the best and brightest search engine optimizers will tell you that their job is to deliver traffic not orders - closing the deal is your job, and anybody who tells you that closing can be done by means of some automatic never-touched-by-human-hands method is just plain nuts. What you want to be careful of is search engine tactics and second rate media that actually gets in the way of effectively delivering your marketing message, of telling your business story, of creating a memorable brand image, and above all of generating... 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.. 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.. 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.. New Search Engines - Can Anyone Beat Google? New Search Engines - Can Anyone Beat Google? By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009 Can any new search engine beat Google, probably not, mainly because Google isn't going anywhere but up. It is the dominant search engine with around 72 percent of U.S. online searches and its percentages are much higher in other parts of the world. (Source: Hitwise) However, there are some serious new competitors that may just take a bite out of Google's rosy search numbers. Never know, one or several of them, may just give Google a run for those all important search engine dollars. Recently, there has been a whole army of new search engines debuting on the web. If you're a full-time online marketer like me, you really have to keep your eyes open to what is happening on the web, especially relating to search engines which deliver most of your quality traffic. Also keep in mind, this piece may be fairly biased since Google is directly or indirectly responsible for around 80% of my online revenue, so any opinions may be slanted in Google's favor, not that they need any favors from me or anyone. But as an online marketer you have to try to remain objective and examine all angles in regards to these new search engines. Despite this, in marketing and webmaster circles, everyone will know even if you have the number one ranking for a certain keyword in all three major engines Google, Yahoo! and MSN - Google supplies the most traffic, hands down. Despite its obvious dominance, Google is still basically the new kid on the block. We have to remember, there have been many search engines before Google and there will be many more search engines after Google.... more.. Does Google PageRank Count Anymore? Does Google PageRank Count Anymore? By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009 Being a full-time SEM (Search Engine Marketer) I have been conditioned like Pavlov's dog (not a pretty picture) to jump every time Google twitches. Lately Google has been doing a lot of twitching. Specifically, the rather startling news from Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa that Google has ditched PageRank from Webmaster Tools. "We've been telling people for a long time that they shouldn't focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true," states Moskwa. "We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it." (Source: WebProNews) Now, for SEO reasons or for ranking in Google's index, PageRank has long been eunuchified by Google. However, even missing a few dangling bits, history has shown us, eunuchs still wheel tremendous power. PageRank is no different. Regardless of what Google wants to happen, PageRank is still extremely important to anyone marketing on the web, especially if you're selling SEO services or operating a web business. Try selling SEO services when that little green bar on your site is pointing to PR0 or worst yet, pointing to a solid gray bar. Obtaining a high PR7 or PR8 simply means more business and revenues... regardless of how Google is or is not using PageRank. People know how to count and they learned long ago, a ten is a lot more than a big fat zero. Placed against a PR1 site, a PR8 will win more respect in the eyes of potential clients and can... 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.. 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.. 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.. Your Logfiles May Be Missing Important Data Your Logfiles May Be Missing Important Data By Ross Dunn (c) 2007 In this article I am going to explain logfiles and their importance in website analytics from my perspective as a ClickTracks user. Before I begin, however, I want you to know that although I provide essential analytic consulting, I am a certified ClickTracks Analytics Professional and have dabbled in books on analytics, I don't consider myself to be an analytics expert. In fact, I constantly find myself humbled by how much more there is to know. That said, I do know more than the average site owner and I hope that this article can shine a little light on this often confusing subject and save you some future headaches. As many of you may know I am a huge fan of the logfile version of ClickTracks Professional, a website analytics package that I find indispensable for myself and my clientele. ClickTracks can do a lot to determine what is or is not working on a website; much more than expected in most cases. The one thing, however, that ClickTracks or any other logfile-based analytics tool cannot do is interpret information in your logfiles if it is not recorded. Unfortunately this is a common occurrence and many site owners have no idea that their hosting company is not saving information that could help them now or later when they find they need it. The reality is that over ninety percent of the hosting companies I have dealt with have not been saving the vital data that a higher level analytics program needs; to work at peak performance if... 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.. 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.. 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.. 5 Google Tools For Researching Your Market 5 Google Tools For Researching Your Market By Pete Moore (c) 2009 Internet marketers and webmasters have always had a love/ hate relationship with Google. Whatever you think of them they do provide website owners with some great market research tools. No matter what market you are in or plan to be in, you will find these free tools provided by Google very useful when researching your market. You should be researching your market constantly, NOT just when setting up your site. The internet is ever changing and, if you're not keeping up with those changes, you will be left behind. Market Research Tool 1 - Related Searches And Wonder Wheel When you start typing in the main Google search box you should see a drop down box appear giving you some alternative search terms related to the word you typed. Note these phrases down in a notepad file or write them on a piece of paper. They will be useful as part of your keyword list used in the next tool. You will also see more related search phrases after you click search. Scroll to the bottom of the results page and you will see "searches related to:" Note down any new phrases shown there. Recently Google has released Wonder Wheel which is also a related keywords tool but is shown in a mind map format. You can also click on the related phrases to find more useful search terms. To access wonder wheel: enter your keyword in the standard search screen, then at the top of the results on the left you should see a show options link. Select that and it will reveal a menu. Near the bottom of the menu you should see wonder... more.. How to Use Web Analytics to Grow Your Business How to Use Web Analytics to Grow Your Business By Mike Tekula (c) 2009 If you own a business, chances are you do. But don't pat yourself on the back too quickly. By now it's widely-accepted that if you have a business card you should probably have a website. It doesn't matter what your company is selling - a website, however modest, has become a standard. The real question is: what is your website doing for your business? As a web marketer I often put this question to the business owners I meet. Not because I'm trying to lead into my sales pitch, but because I'm intrigued to hear the answer. Most people get a certain "deer in the headlights" look in their eyes when I ask this question. To be fair, it's not a question we're used to hearing. But that's not all that's going on here. Traditional advertising mediums - print, TV, radio, etc - are notoriously difficult to track. Sure, you'll know how often the phone is ringing or how many people come in with a coupon clipped from the Sunday paper, but what you don't know is how many people saw/heard your ad and whether they were interested, oblivious or, worse, annoyed. Business owners are used to this. We all know we need to advertise - it's a necessary cost of doing business - so we buy that half-page ad in the Yellow Pages or the local newspaper, we sponsor an event or a little league team, we have a radio commercial written (maybe even with a jingle) and we hope for the best. This has been a given in marketing since... more.. Link Popularity and Press Releases Link Popularity and Press Releases By Gary Sims The quantity of links to your site is used by the search engines (like Google) to calculate the importance of your site. This measure of incoming links is called "Link Popularity". Press releases are a powerful way in which you can promote your site, service or product while at the same time increasing your link popularity.   Search Engine Optimization Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process of fine tuning your website to get higher rankings on Internet Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. Broadly speaking there are two types of optimization, "on-page" and "off-page". On-page optimization deals with the layout and format of a web page to make it attractive to a search engine. Off-page optimization deals with external factors like the number of people linking to your page. Let's look at off-page first. Off-Page Optimization In trying to quantify the importance of a website, search engines have developed sophisticated algorithms that rank web pages for their quality. The largest factor in determining quality is the number of links to a web page. Links are an almost impartial method of determining how popular a website or a web... 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.. Internet Marketing Tips for Small Businesses Internet Marketing Tips for Small Businesses By Stephen Nelson (c) 2009 In this economy, any marketing tool you can use to find new customers is worth considering. But perhaps the best marketing tool available to many small businesses is a yellow-pages-style web site. Such a site means prospective local customers looking for a business like yours know that you're in business and ready for their patronage. But a word or two of explanation... While the traffic statistics of the typical small business web site may not impress Google, eBay or Amazon.com, many small business web sites do generate significant numbers of prospects compared to the other marketing tools available. Commonly, for example, small business web sites can attract anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred new unique visitors on a daily basis. And that's a lot! What's more, setting up one of these Internet marketing web sites just doesn't have to be that complicated or expensive. Often times, employing the following half a dozen tips lets you enjoy surprising success: Internet Business Marketing Tip #1: Evaluate Your Competition A first and very simple tip is this: Start out by sizing up your competition. Do see what the other guy or other guys in town are doing. Look at the information they're providing. And check out the number of links that point to their site. In a nutshell, you need a better site than your competitors in order to beat them at the Internet marketing game. You need more pages of on-topic content. And you need more inbound links pointing to your pages. You can check the number of inbound links pointing... 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.. The HSA allows you to Take Control of Your Health Care Plan The HSA allows you to Take Control of Your Health Care Plan Benefits of the H S A utilize the Consumer Driven Concept The H S A grew from the concept of consumer driven health insurance. To define what a consumer driven health product is, we need to look back years ago, before health insurance.  A patient visited a doctor; he or she then paid the doctor what they could afford and what the doctor would accept in payment.  It could be something as simple as a chicken.    Today our system design is completely different.  CMS is the acronym for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS has standardized everything within the medical environment.  There are now CPT codes (CPT which is the acronym for Current Procedural Terminology) has to be assigned to each procedure a physician performs.  Each code is attached to an ICD 9 code which identifies the type of sickness or injury.   The insurance industry and medical providers now use these codes. A mistake or mismatch of a code which is improperly reported to an insurance company can slow or cause a claim to be denied.  Physicians and hospitals are in the business to be caretakers, but they are forced to spend much of their time and resources making sure they are properly compensated.  The payer is now the government or the insurance companies.    The system has become so complex that that the physician is compelled to hire personnel who understand procedures and mechanisms mandated before they are properly compensated.    This system has separated any monetary interaction... more.. In the click: want all the right people to notice your business? You Need SEO! In the click: want all the right people to notice your business? You Need SEO! You can't resist the temptation. Fixated on your computer screen, you anxiously type keywords relevant to your business into your favorite search engine. A list of search results appears. You cringe as you spot several competitors, then grumble because your company's Web site is nowhere to be seen. Where is it? That depends. Where is your search engine marketing strategy? Gone are the days when adding keywords in meta tags to your site produced rankings. Search engine marketing has evolved into a complex and competitive program. It's also profitable--according to a March 2003 report by Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Safa Rashtchy, online search is the most cost-effective direct-marketing method. The average cost per lead from search is 29 cents, far less than e-mail (50 cents), the Yellow Pages ($1.18), banner ads ($2.00) and direct mail ($9.94). Gather your Web design and marketing staff; both teams are required. Understanding search engine marketing basics will help your team execute a strategy in-house or outsource it to specialists. The sooner your site is visible for relevant keywords, the sooner future customers will find your company. HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES WORK? Many business owners are unaware that search engines feed their results to each other. For example, if you type a keyword into MSN Search on Microsoft's consumer information and entertainment site (www.msn.com), the Web site listings displayed could be from Inktomi, Microsoft or Overture. Overture provides search results not only to MSN Search, but also to AltaVista and Yahoo! Could a top site on Overture then appear as a top site on a distribution partner's site? Yes. Unfortunately, these distribution relationships change frequently, making it difficult to... more.. Court Orders Google to Turn Over YouTube Data Court Orders Google to Turn Over YouTube Data By Donald P. Schweitzer (c) 2008 A federal court has ordered the giant of all Internet companies - Google, to hand over documents concerning YouTube's viewing data to another media monster - Viacom. Viacom and Google are currently entangled in a no-holds barred lawsuit, concerning allegations of infringement of intellectual property rights. Viacom wanted the viewing data to help it determine the extent to which YouTube's success was built on the popularity of copyrighted clips that were illegally posted to the site. Google contended that YouTube's viewing data should be kept from Viacom to protect the privacy of its users. Unfortunately for the millions of people who view YouTube videos, the judge granted Viacom's request. The court's ruling has caused many advocates of privacy rights to cry foul. For the following reasons, I believe the federal judge was correct in ruling against Google. The Court's Powers To Access Records Cannot Be Denied Like millions of Americans and other people around the world I love Google. I can say without a doubt that Google has been very good to me and my family law practice. And if Google wants to be viewed by it's customers as the champion of privacy rights, so be it. But, let's get real... , the court's access to private records under appropriate circumstances cannot be denied. We cannot let people hide behind their computers to commit crimes or torts. It would be absurd, for example, to give a child molester safe haven to either post or view child pornography. It would be equally absurd to give a person safe... more.. The Roller Coaster of Link Popularity The Roller Coaster of Link Popularity By Bill Platt (c) 2007 Most webmasters are in a constant state of confusion about how to create link popularity and how to rank well in the search engine results. Three of the top four search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN calculate link popularity as one part of their search algorithms. So, for all intents and purposes, building link popularity is an important part of getting recognition and strong placement in the search engine result pages (SERPs). Link popularity, in essence, is a count of how many web pages point to one of your web pages. The Google PageRank Version of Link Popularity PageRank (PR) is a Google tool that expands on the simplest link popularity calculation. PageRank is a value given to every web page on the Internet, with 12 possible rankings. * The Gray Bar in the PageRank tool indicates that a web page has not been added to the Google PageRank database, or Google has banned the website. (If any page on a particular domain has its own PageRank, or if any pages are shown in the Google search results when someone searches "site:www.yourdomainurl.com", then the website in question has not been banned by Google.) * PR0 to PR10. PR0 indicates that the web page has been added to the Google database, but it does not yet have any PageRank assigned to it, generally because there are not any PR value pages that link to it at this time. If one is tracking PageRank from the Google toolbar, then it needs to be understood that the database that stores PageRank values is only updated about once every 3-4... 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.. 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.txt file. In essence search engines are now able to discover your sitemap via a link in the following format: Sitemap: <sitemap_location>, where <sitemap_location> is the complete URL of your Sitemap Index File (or your sitemap file, if you don't have an index file). Controlled Access to Your Content With a robots.txt... 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.. Six Quick and Simple Ways to Dominate Google Rankings! Six Quick and Simple Ways to Dominate Google Rankings! By Mike Small (c) 2008 The reason Google is the most successful search engine in the world is because they provide the best search results; pages ranked by tangible value. That tangible value is a combination of content and links, with links being the more important factor (they assume any pages linking in will only link to good content or risk their own ranking.) Here are a few tips that will help you take full advantage of Google's love of linking... 1.) Link Deep and with Relevance So why is deeper better and what's this about relevance? Google figured out that a link to a homepage is only good if that homepage has the information the visitor needs. If a person clicks a link for "amaz? chocolate chip cookie recipe" and ends up on the home page, which has nothing of the sort, Google discounts it as a wasted link. On the other hand, if the link leads to the page containing info on the "Amaz? Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe," even five levels deep, the link has huge value to the visitor and to Google. Want some proof? You already have it if you've ever used Google's AdWords pay per cl? service. They will not even accept PAID links to pages that are not the most relevant for their visitors, regardless of what you are willing to pay per cl?. Now that's saying something! 2.) Use Absolute Links Internally It sounds complicated but it's not. Absolute links are those with a fixed full URL. There's another kind, called "relative" links that skip the... more.. Social Media the Instant Brand Killer Social Media - the Instant Brand Killer By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007 With the increasing uptake of social media sites such as Digg, Technorati, Slashdot, YouTube and MySpace, together with community bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, Reddit and Ma.gnolia, companies the world over can reach their target markets via a whole new channel. Social networking is like viral marketing on steroids. Companies can release a new product in the morning and have it talked about by mill?s of users on thousands of sites by the afternoon. The good news is that social media is user driven. The bad news is that social media is user driven. Yes, there's the rub. Users are fickle creatures - they can love a product one minute and then drop it like a lead balloon the next, depending on their experience with the product, a rumor, or whether they have had their morning coffee yet. And if their experience is bad, the noise is generally louder. To protect their reputations it's not just journalists that companies have to impress these days. It's anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Love it or hate it, the user community now has enormous power over the online reputation of a company or brand. Not surprisingly, businesses and individuals alike clamor for the attention and mostly enjoy the limelight that social media can bring. Others hate the intense scrutiny that often accompanies the popularity. An example is usability blogger Kim Krause Berg's unpleasant first experience of Digg - I Don't Digg Being Dugg. Online communities can even bring a site to its knees. Marketers are calling it the "Digg Effect" or the "Slashdot Effect". Buzz for a site... 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.. The Benefits of a Solid Content Management System The Benefits of a Solid Content Management System By Mike Tekula (c) 2008 In the early days of the web most sites consisted of a handful of HTML pages. For smaller sites, it made sense for webmasters to use programs like Microsoft Front Page and Macromedia (now Adobe Dreamweaver) to edit their site templates, which usually contained the navigation, header and footer (the "shell" of the site), and individual pages. Editor's Note: On Dec. 29/08, we published an article by Kalena Jordan entitled "A Beginner's Guide to Google Website Optimizer (Part 1)". The entire article which includes Part 2 can be found at SiteProNews.com. The problems? Messy code These so-called What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWIG) editors didn't always get the code right. Webmasters almost always had to get into the back-end and tweak the HTML source code. This took time. Tedious site updates Edits to a site template meant every page had to be updated and reuploaded to the web server. This took time and used resources - especially before the days of broadband. Painstaking SEO Optimizing for search engines meant going through every page and manually making sure your H1 (header) and Title tags were well optimized. Risk of data loss Forgetting to download the most recent version of a site when working with multiple site editors or from multiple locations made it easy for editors to overwrite site updates - sometimes losing hundreds of hours of work with one ill-advised click of the "upload" button. While Adobe Dreamweaver has certainly come a long way over the years (messy code... more.. The Top 10 Dumbest Web Site Decisions The Top 10 Dumbest Web Site Decisions By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007 Having worked with web sites for the past eleven years, I've seen a LOT of errors, poor judgment and embarrassing gaffs on the web. Sometimes they are the fault of the client, the web designer, the IT Manager, or the SEO, but human error is always to blame. The saddest thing is that the problems are usually preventable. Here is a l? of what I consider to be the Top 10 dumbest web site decisions ever, in reverse order, David Letterman style : 10) Misspelling a Domain Back in the glory days of the late 1990's when I was working for a large Internet agency, the web designers had responsibility for the registration of domain names on behalf of clients. One particular designer had a face to face meeting with a major client, during which the client asked him to register CarTuneCentral.com (or so he thought!). The staffer did a check and was delighted to see the domain available. He made the purchase and proudly emailed the client. An hour later his boss called him in to his office to say that he'd had a call from a very frustrated client who *actually* wanted him to register CartoonCentral.com. Needless to say the desired domain wasn't available and the whole office dined on his mistake for months. 9) Letting the Domain Name Expire Now what type of company would allow their domain to expire a month after site launch? A very large one, that's who. I'll save the company some embarrassment and won't reveal their name but the site was offline... 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.. Microsoft vs Google: Game On or Bing results too "Spammy"? Microsoft vs Google: Game On or Bing results too "Spammy"? By V9 Design & Build (c) 2009 It didn't look too promising at the launch but Bing has been constantly in the news ever since. Some say the results are better than Google, even going as far as suggesting Google is all but finished. I don't agree. On one of the search engine forums I often comment on, one of the moderators had this to say on the subject: "But overall this confirms my sense that Google, having abandoned the business model that got it to the top, viz. fast no frills search, in favour of added features and buying up other companies, is becoming increasingly fat and complacent, and along the way their search results are becoming less relevant." Now, I have to say that I had a small run-in with this guy as he supports everything Microsoft does, from its browser to its operating system and now to its new "decision engine". So when he writes - "I've been using Bing lately and I'm finding a lot of advantages over Google. These are early days yet but this is the first emerging search engine that may provide a real threat to Google's dominance - something I for one welcome," - I'm a little suspicious. There's plenty of supporters out there giving online commentaries on Bing's progress. TechCrunch.com, for example, analyses its early success by saying: "Microsoft sites' average daily penetration among US searchers reached 16.7 percent during the work week of June 8-12, up 3 percentage points from the May 25-29 period (which was prior to Bing's introduction) and up over 1 percentage point from its first week." However, on webpronews.com following its launch, Matt Cutts,... more.. 25 Ways to Add Quality Content to Your Web Site (Part 2) 25 Ways to Add Quality Content to Your Web Site (Part 2) . . . Using ideas that cover at least 25 different industries! By Robin Nobles Let's continue (from Part 1) with more ideas for ways to build quality content for your Web site. 13. Content that solves a problem. Why do people visit the Web? To look for information or to comparison shop. If you can solve problems for your visitors, you're giving them just what they're looking for online. For example, let's say that you sell Oriental rugs. Your potential customer might be looking for decorating ideas for her office. Her office is very small, and she's trying to think of a way to add color. Most of the wall space is taken up with windows and metal bookcases. You've created a series of content that shows pictures of problems/solutions that your oriental rugs have solved, including one with an Oriental runner. Not only does the content have pictures, it also has text describing each problem and the corresponding solution. Your potential customer found your page in the search engine results. 14. Historical data. Let's say that you sell steel pipes. What's the history of steel pipes? Creating a page outlining its history is quite appropriate. In fact, taking it a step further, creating pages that compare steel to copper and other types of piping; what causes rust; how strong is steel; how valuable steel piping really is (how steel piping is used in almost every building, etc.); how long will steel last; and on and on and on will create a whole section of extremely valuable content to a Web site. Here's the catch. Is this valuable to the... more.. Bootstrapping Basics Entrepreneurs Need To Know Bootstrapping Basics Entrepreneurs Need To Know By Ellisa Brenneman (c) 2009 Over the last five years approximately 600,000 entrepreneurs pitched first tier venture capital firms in North America and about 15,000 received funding. Your chances of getting funded are 2.5%. This is a fact. Many of those that were funded became quite wealthy and many more failed. Venture capital firms are looking for home runs not base hits. To begin, let's say you're having difficulties raising capital for one of a multitude of reasons. You lack an experienced management team with a track record of prior success, your product is still in development, the service you've created hasn't been market tested and you still haven't refined the sales process. Or, your company may simply not be a "VC deal" or a "home run", that is, something that will go public or be acquired for a bazillion dollars. Finally, your organization may be a non-profit with a cause like the environment or autism. Does this mean you should give up? Not at all. I could build a case that too much money is worse than too little for most organizations, not that I wouldn't want to buy a NBA franchise one day to emulate Mark Cuban. Until that day comes, the key to success is bootstrapping. Bootstrapping refers to a group of metaphors that share a common meaning, a self-sustaining process that proceeds without external help. The term is often attributed to Rudolf Erich Raspe's story The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen, where the main character pulls himself out of a swamp, though it's disputed whether it was done by his hair or by his bootstraps. Regardless bootstrapping sounds a lot more businesslike and appealing than hairstrapping. What follows... 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.. 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.. 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.. Google AdSense Tips Google AdSense Tips By Sharon Housley AdSense allows website publishers to display contextually relevant advertisements on their website. If a web visitor "clicks" on an advertisement, the web publisher will earn a percentage of the advertising revenue generated as a result of the cl?. Many webmasters have built content websites around the Google AdSense model. In many cases the specific intent of the webmaster is to prof?from Google AdSense. Other webmasters use Google AdSense to supplement their revenue. Regardless of the webmaster's intent, the following tips will help webmasters looking to prof?from AdSense. Top AdSense Tips: 1. Niche Sites Targeted niche sites that have a clear theme, tend to generate more advertising revenue simply because it is easier for these sites to achieve decent search engine placement. Be warned though, you want to choose a niche where there is a sufficient number of advertisements available. 2. Target Keywords When determining the site's focus, consider how much advertisers pay for the advertisements. If the site is focused on ringtones, like Ringtone Central http://www.ringtones-central.com the payout per-click is going to be very small because ringtones are... 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.. 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.. 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.. Four Reasons Why The Smaller Search Engines Matter Four Reasons Why The Smaller Search Engines Matter By Bill Platt These days, all search engine optimization gurus only seem to talk about Google, as if Google was the only search engine on the Internet. Of course, we all know that there really are hundreds of search engines and directories available to us, and we know that some of the smaller search engines serve a very t?t niche of users. Honestly, I can understand why there is a lot of press on Google, because after all, granddaddy Google is the biggest of the big. We know that mill?s of people use Google daily for their search activities, and we know that our websites receive a lot of traff?from Google. There are actually four reasons why you would want to extend your search engine marketing activities beyond Google. I will discuss each of those reasons here: Reason #1: Targeted Traff?/SPAN> Niche content search engines can be a very powerful force in your... more.. 10 Key Tips on Choosing the Best Hosting Package 10 Key Tips on Choosing the Best Hosting Package By Amy Armitage (c) 2008 This is not exactly a "top 10" l?, as all of the following things could easily be listed as the most important consideration. Individuals, small companies and big corporations all need to consider the same things when choosing a hosting package. The overall "tip" here is that you need to get accurate information to make comparisons among hosts. Therefore, each individual tip is another, separate aspect of the hosting relationship that you need to investigate. You should take them all seriously. 1. Traffic ("data transfer" or "bandwidth") - These terms refer to the amount of information, measured in bytes, that is delivered from your website to visitors. Although you will hear about "unl?ted bandwidth", check to see if the same terminology used for marketing purposes is reflected in the contract. In other words, read the contract before signing on the dotted line. Unless you will be uploading photo archives or using your site to swap large files, your small- to mid-size website should normally use no more than 3GB of bandwidth monthly. Watch out for "overage" charges (per additional GB, usually) and consider upgrading your account if the site traffic increases. 2. Disk space - Apply the same skeptical approach to the "unl?ted disk space" deals, as you did to the claims about traffic above. Again, the majority of small to mid-size sites need 10-20MB of web space at most, so unless 500MB or "unl?ted space" is part of the basic package, don't bite. You can easily determine how much storage you need by... 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.. 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.. Domain Hijacking Domain Hijacking By Douglas Miller (c) 2007 There's a frightening new batch of scams going around now that can damage your reputation as domain "squatters" steal your domain name. There are a number of ways the "game" is played. The first is entirely legal, if more than a little questionable. In this version, the name of a city or geographic area is grabbed by a domain squatter and pointed to... "sites that you wouldn't want your children visiting." (We chose that term to avoid getting caught in a lot of sp@m filters for the use of the word "p-o-rn.") A prominent notice is placed on the sites, offering them for sale at prices that range from $2500 to as much as $500,000! The idea here is that city officials will feel that enough damage is being done to the reputations of their towns that they'll pay to keep them from being associated with that type of material. It's obviously safe to say that it's not appropriate to pop those kinds of images into people's faces while they're looking for info on a completely different topic. That's where the pressure on the cities comes from, and why this is such a disgusting scheme. In essence, the domain squatter says: "Pay us, or continue to watch as your city's reputation suffers." Many would call this blackmail... The second variation on the theme is not always legal. When someone takes a trademarked name (or variation of the spelling of one) or a famous person's name, and does the same thing. For trademarks or close variations, there's a specific procedure for addressing the problem. (See the resource section at the end of this issue.) For the names... 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. Google is Much More Than a Search Engine Google is Much More Than a Search Engine By Rick Hendershot We all know that Google is the dominant search engine, and controls a large percentage of online advertising. But many of us -- even regular Google users -- are not aware of some of Google's other services. Most of them are presented as new ways of listing and categorizing the universe. However, consistent with Google's new status as a profit-first public corporation, what lies at the root of most of Google's expanding ventures is the need to become less dependent on context-based advertising revenue. In other words, the people at Google are desperately looking for new ways of making money. ** Froogle Still Looking for a Mission in Life Google's product search and comparison tool called Froogle, was launched in December 2002. It was developed in an attempt to cash in on the obvious market for online shopping that major sites like eBay and Amazon had so successfully exploited. 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. 4 Steps To A Website Brand 4 Steps To A Website Brand By Jerry Bader (c) 2009 Do you have a plan? Most companies spend a considerable amount of time, energy, and money planning what to do and how to do it. Let's say you need a website, so you develop a plan, present it to a bunch of website designers, and get quotes or proposals. You're not going to get caught with your pants down like the last time by some nerdy geek, you know the skinny kid with the scraggly beard, whose techno-babble gave you a headache, or the bizarre young lady dressed in gothic chic with the black lipstick and tattoo to match - yikes, no thanks, not this time, this time you got a plan. Human Motivational Optimization You read all the blogs on website design, you know all the ins-and-outs of search engine optimization, and Google Adwords. No one is going to pull a fast one on you. You know your business, your market, and your needs. Or do you? How much do you really know about how real people interact with your website? How much do you really know about what we call Human Motivational Optimization? All the stats, logs, and number crunching analysis that forms the basis of many website development plans does not truly give you the visceral understanding of how to connect to an audience, and isn't that what you want your website to do? So maybe your plan is the wrong plan; it's like planning a trip to Home Depot to buy a cabbage; it just doesn't make sense. So how about a plan that does... more.. How to Increase Your Search Engine Rankings How to Increase Your Search Engine Rankings By Trent Brownrigg When talking about search engine rankings many people ask themselves quest?s like; how many keywords should I put in my anchor text? What is the keyword density that I should have on the page? Should I use short copy or should I use long copy? Can I use flash or not? How many keywords should I put in my "alt" text? Etc... A general statement to answer the above quest?s is that "magic numbers do not exist." The most important thing you can understand as a search engine optimization expert is that algorithms change. Just when you think you understand what is going to make you number one for a keyphrase in a search engine, something could easily change, and you might have to spend months or even years trying to figure the new algorithm. It is better not to try to reverse engineer the algorithm, do something much easier instead... observe your top competitors. All you need to do is to understand what elements your competitors are using to make them rank in the top positions. The main elements to getting top search engines rankings are: 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. Going Broke on Google Adwords? Going Broke on Google Adwords? By Kim Roach (c) 2006 You've heard the stories. Cl? fraud has run rampant on Google, Yahoo, and MSN. This is evidenced by the numerous law suits that have been filed. One of the most notable cases occurred this year when Google settled their own cl? fraud case to the tune of 90 million dollars. In fact, Google and Yahoo have each settled a class action lawsuit filed by marketers. Cl? Fraud - What It Is So, what is cl? fraud and how does it occur? Wikipedia provides us with a definition: "Cl? fraud occurs in pay per cl? online advertising when a person, automated scr?, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating an improper charge per cl?. Cl? fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud whether they like it or not." However, I would like to simplify this definition. Cl? fraud is a crime, plain and simple. Cybercrime, however, is hard to track. Law enforcement has only just recently started focusing on the threat of cl? fraud. Cl? fraud is now being targeted by some of the industry's biggest names. This movement has both the American court and government system involved. Business Week recently announced that major brands including Expedia.com and mortg? broker LendingTree.com planned to go public with their disputes over cl? fraud in late September. Who can blame them? When it's your mon?that's going out the door, you need to be asking quest?s. Unfortunately, Google and Yahoo haven't... more.. Link Popularity for the Unpopular, a Quick Primer for Today's Search Engine Landscape... Link Popularity for the Unpopular, a Quick Primer for Today's Search Engine Landscape... By Casey Markee So tell the truth, were you popular in high school? Did you have a lot of friends, and a wide social circle? Were you an athlete? Did your accomplishments extend far outside the halls of your alma mater to neighboring schools and counties? If so, then congratulations; you're probably in the minority of those reading this article. What does this example have to do with link popularity you ask; more than you think. Just as in high school, on the World Wide Web, your website is known by the company it keeps. Link to the wrong site or "hang with the wrong crowd" and you could be ostracized by the search engine community before you even begin. Achieve quality inbound links from a wide range of popular kids on the internet, however, and watch your site's online profile soar. Sounds simple, and it is, if you know what to do to climb the online social ladder that is Link Popularity. But before we get to that, what exactly is Link Popularity? Simply defined, Link Popularity is a measure of the quantity and quality of other web sites that link to your site on the internet at any given time. It is considered an off-the-page criteria that is greatly utilized by search engines to determine... 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. Video Search Engine Optimization Video Search Engine Optimization By Randy Zlobec (c) 2008 Most of us know that a site that's well configured for search engine access is a major part of getting high traffic levels. However, you might not have thought about optimizing your video as well as the rest of your site. Since multimedia content is becoming a much more popular way of distributing information, correct video search engine optimization is important. For instance, on YouTube alone (which accounts for more than ninety-eight percent of the videos viewed via Google), more than eighty-two million people watched over four billion videos last year. That makes YouTube both the top video sharing site and the top video search engine. YouTube receives as much as thirteen hours of new user-submitted video every minute, and more than fifty percent of the people watching videos online share links with other people. So, getting a good YouTube ranking could be an important way to bring people to your site. For owners of video content, video search engine optimization is a good way to get exposure, ad income, and free traffic. Being discovered by the viewers has to happen before you can get lots of views. That means making sure that your data is rich in meta information, and that you use quality RSS or MRSS feeds that you update on a regular basis. Make sure that your meta data is well placed and relevant to the topic. A cleaner can help you remove distracting or irrelevant meta information from the file. Only after you produce well optimized content should you contact the search engines and submit your video. This places you in the... 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.. The Death of Google Adsense And Other Myths The Death of Google Adsense And Other Myths By Titus Hoskins (c) 2006 Recent changes in the Google Adsense program has many online website owners and marketers seriously concerned. Many have seen their Adsense prof? and income flatline... seen their four or five figure monthly Adsense income disappear overnight. For many the Google Adsense bubble has burst. What happened? First, Google made a change in its Adsense program, letting advertisers choose between putting their ads in the search results or on the content pages of Adsense publishers. Search won out and started to receive the higher bids. Search results convert better than content ads. Next, Google has cracked down on Junk Adsense sites, like they should. These sites consisted mainly of software generated re-hashed search engine links and were totally annoying to say the least. But Google also cracked down on 'squeeze pages' or 'affil?e landing pages' - a lucrative source of income for many online marketers, mainly because these pages helped marketers build an opt-?list or use permission based email. The results of these changes produced an Adsense meltdown for many online marketers. Some Internet marketers are speculating recent changes could even mean the death of Adsense. One online marketer, Scott Boulch even published a free report entitled 'The Death of Adsense". Many affil?e marketers would agree with Boulch on some of his points, especially the obvious fact that using Adsense on your web content is starting on the bottom rung of the online marketing ladder. Instead of receiving pennies per cl? with Adsense, alert marketers and webmasters have already discovered that by using CPA (Cost-Per-Action) and direct affil?e links, they can produce significantly more... more.. Powerful Press Release Distribution Tips Powerful Press Releas