Articles List

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.. Web Design 10 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Designing a Website Web Design 10 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Designing a Website By Herman Drost (c) 2010 Many site owners make the mistake of building a website without laying out a clear plan for their online business. This is a sure set-up for failure. There are 1000s of abandoned sites on the web due to lack of careful planning. Before designing your website you should ask yourself some questions to avoid making mistakes down the road. 10 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About Designing a Website 1. What Are Your Business Goals? It's easy to say, "I want to make mon?" however, this is not a great motivator. Think of a deeper motivation that you feel passionate about e.g. "I want to have the financ? freedom to spend more time with my kids as they are growing up." 2. What's the Purpose of Your Website? This is the question most visitors will ask when accessing your website. Your home page must clearly explain the purpose and benefits of the products and/or services you are offering. 3. What Type of Products or Services Will You Sell? Research the marketability of your products or services by doing keyword research. Use the Google Keyword Tool to find out how many searches your main keywords receive every month. If there are no searches, it means there is not much demand and therefore not worth marketing. If it is a very competitive market (millions of searches per month), it may be difficult to stand out from your competitors and create a profitable online business. 4. How Many Products Will You Sell From Your Website? This will determine how many pages your website will have. If you're only selling one product or service, you may only need 4 web pages... more.. Is Domain Age a Significant Factor in Website Rankings? Is Domain Age a Significant Factor in Website Rankings? A SPN Exclusive Article By David Jackson (c) 2011 The debate is over - well, at least in my mind it is. What debate am I referring to? The debate over whether or not the age of a domain plays a significant factor in website rankings. Some SEO experts say it does, while others say it doesn't. Count me on the side of those who say it does matter. Frankly, I don't see why there's a debate about this at all. I mean it's hardly a secret that Google gives preferential treatment in the search engine results pages (SERP's) to long-established businesses because of the trust factor. Meaning, the longer a domain has been registered and active, the more trust it will be given by Google - provided, of course, the domain has a good reputation and quality inbound links. Just to be clear, I'm not talking about a domain that has been registered for 10 years, but has not actually been indexed by Google. Because in Google's mind, a domain that's been registered for 10 years, but has no actual website, is exactly the same as a domain that was purchased yesterday. It has no juice. No, I'm referring to domains that are both registered and indexed - active domains. Does Domain Age Really Matter? Two years ago I wrote an article titled Domain Age: Does It Really Matter When It Comes to Rankings? In the article, I talked about how I conducted an experiment with hundreds and hundreds of domains in dozens of different categories...... 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.. 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.. Search Engine Positioning for the Weary Search Engine Positioning for the Weary By T. O' Donnell Do you want to get your site from page five to page one in Google? Here are a few tips to boost you on your way. 1. Clean Up Your HTML. Keep a beady eye on Dreamweaver and avoid CMS software. What, Dreamweaver, beloved program of pro webmasters everywhere? Yes! Dreamweaver adds lots of extra blank space to HTML code, and breaks lines. This is especially irritating in meta tags. Use EditPad's 'Find and Replace' function to get rid of newlines and double blank spaces in your pages. Content Management Systems are a great time saver. An amateur can set up a professional-looking site in a few hours. The problem is they contain lots of code that's irrelevant to search engines. The top of a CMS page may contain only a few words relevant to its subject matter. Then there's the duplicate content problem. Blogs have duplicate copies of their own content; sometimes exact, sometimes excerpts. Thousands of people are using the same CMS as you. A search engine spider sees the same header, sidebar and footer content in every page in your site. Result? Your page is down the SERPs for any competitive keyword. Assuming it's indexed at all. These programs are written by geeks. Their primary aim is to eliminate code errors and add features. Your marketing comes a very poor second. They're also posting security updates every few months. More hassle. For you. Drastic solution: 1. Type your documents in a text editor like Editpad, then 2. Use a Text to HTML converter, then 3. (Use Dreamweaver to add formatting,... 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.. 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.. organic cosmetic brushes organic cosmetic brushes Why should females choose organic cosmetic brushes instead of the ones that they are currently using? The answer can be found in the amount of changes that are brought by the cosmetic products that have a mineral foundation. There are still many who aren?t aware of the benefits that can be experienced when using the products that have natural components. The natural side of the organic cosmetic brushes People need to take into consideration that there are so many alternatives to the things that they are used to. The only requirement there is refers to having a little interest into discovering which is the best perspective in the matter that interests them. The very same goes for the cosmetics industries and the females who would rather choose something they are acquainted to and not the organic cosmetic brushes. The very first thing that females should know when talking about the products that have a mineral foundation is the matter of durability. This is an aspect that surely changes some perspectives as the products that are currently available on the market don?t last very long. The reason for this aspect is that the nonorganic products don?t focus on fixing the problems as they are fixated on dealing with the surface and the effects. That is the main reason why most of the products don?t last more than a couple of hours. The organic cosmetic brushes and other products which have the same basis, are a little... 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.. Facebook Business Pages Demystified for Business Owners  Facebook Business Pages Demystified for Business Owners By Nancy McCord (c) 2010 Facebook is so popular that business owners can simply no longer consider it a site only appropriate for socializing and game playing. In fact, in September 2010, Facebook surpassed Google in regards to the amount of time users spent on their site. Facebook states that users spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook! With 500 million active users, Facebook is the new behemoth on the Web. With its popularity across diverse age groups, integrated email application, and new Bing search integration, a Facebook user may simply no longer need to visit Google for Web searches or log off to use an email application. They may be able to experience the Web fully all from inside Facebook. With more than 50% of the active users logging into Facebook every day, according to Facebook, Facebook is now so important to your potential customers' lives that it makes sense for you as a business owner to have a presence where your prospects are hanging out on a daily basis. Let's clear up a few things that have confused business owners about Facebook. First, a Business Page is not to be confused with a personal profile. They are two separate entities and provide different options and ways to interact with friends and colleagues. Are Business Pages Also Called Fan Pages? Many of you who have been using Facebook for a while will remember that Facebook used to call Business Pages - Fan Pages. Additionally, it used to be that someone "fanned you." Now they "like you." Don't get confused in thinking that a Fan Page is a different product than... more.. Search Engine Optimization for Universal Search - Back to Square One? Search Engine Optimization for Universal Search - Back to Square One? By Scott Buresh (c) 2007 Organic search engine optimization, until recently, had been a fairly straightforward endeavor. The goal was to optimize the content on a website so that it would show up in the organic results on one or more of the major search engines - results that were comprised of nothing but other websites. However, in the middle of May 2007, Google began rolling out its new "Universal Search," something it had been working on behind the scenes for several years. This new search option may have long-term repercussions for every search engine optimization company in the industry if it is something that is preferred by the public at large and if it becomes the standard going forward. What Is Universal Search? Someone using Google's Universal Search will find that a query brings back results that encompass not only web pages, but also videos, blogs, images, news articles, and other media available online. While Google already had in place options for searching each of these areas individually, many searchers did not notice those options or did not know how to use them, a phenomenon that became known as "invisible tabs." With Universal Search, there's no need to select a separate menu item - the search will return results that encompass many different types of media. For example, a search for "breakdancing" might bring up not only web pages about breakdancing, but also blog posts about it, videos showing technique, and news articles about it. It would not, however, give you the reason why you were wearing parachute pants and trapped in the eighties. However, Universal... more.. 8 Methods Of Adding More Content To Your Site 8 Methods Of Adding More Content To Your Site By Matt Jackson (c) 2007 Content is king and your content site is your kingdom. When the adage "content is king" was first coined, the web was, in many respects, a simpler place for Webmasters. Creating a website with ten to twenty pages of keyword rich content would generate excellent search engine results and a mass of traff?as a result. Note that keyword rich has now been replaced by keyword optimized ? a subtle difference, but a difference nevertheless. However, the web evolved (difficult to imagine that it's only now considered web 2.0). With the evolution of the web came a much greater demand from web users. Where the static content site was once the epitome of everything good about the Internet, that is less true of the most recent incarnation of the World Wide Web. Your website visitors demand more, but are you able to provide it? We look at various methods of including more content on your website.   More Pages OK, we'll deal with the most obvious method first. Add more pages. It's simple and it might be considered old school to many, but it still has a place. The more pages of content you have, the more information you can provide and the more keywords you can target. The math is simple and the technique is devastatingly simple. Try to add new pages for new topics and, if a particular topic looks like being too verbose, split the page down into several parts. Host? plans usually allow for a lot of disk space so you should have no problems with space limitations in this respect. Content Management Systems... more.. How search engine marketing tools can work for you: or, searching is really all about finding How search engine marketing tools can work for you: or, searching is really all about finding Summary This is the second of three articles. Part 1 appeared in the August issue of Information Outlook. Search engine optimization and marketing covers a wide range of activities, many of which are similar to what a reference librarian, systems librarian, or market researcher does. Although the focus is the World Wide Web, many of the tools that are used have broader applications for special librarians. Internal corporate processes. Web analytics tools measure and analyze corporate sales, customer preferences and problems, viable products and channels, and other issues that may provide answers for questions received by special librarians. Competitive intelligence/market research. Keyword research, Web site saturation and popularity tools can provide information on a company's competitors: how they are marketing on the Internet, what they are spending on online marketing campaigns, how they are pricing their products. Legal issues. Who Is tools can provide valuable information relating to copyright and trademark issues. Link Popularity tools can show who is deep-linking to your site. Log files, in conjunction with Who Is tools, can tell you who may be committing click fraud on your paid placement campaigns or spamming your e-mail servers. Back end knowledge of how Web sites work. These tools can show you what may be keeping search engines from indexing your site and can highlight customer service issues. SECOND OF THREE ARTICLES Web site saturation and popularity tools show how much presence a Web site has on search engines through the number of pages of the site that are indexed on each search engine (saturation) and how many times the site is linked to by other sites (popularity). more.. Eleven Steps to SEO Heaven Part 1 Eleven Steps to SEO Heaven Part 1 By Tim Meadows-Smith in Featured Are you fed up with feeling baffled by search engine optimization (SEO) because of jargon and poor practitioners? Do you feel you have been charged too much for less than you were promised? This two part article sets out to explain the process and put you back in control. If you have focused objectives and a clear online strategy then SEO will almost always be a good cost effective addition to the marketing tool set. The first thing to understand is that search engine businesses, like Google, Yahoo and Bing, have customers to satisfy too. Their customers are searching and they expect to see the ?best and most relevant? search results. I expect like me, you get frustrated if your searches bring irrelevant results first. No surprise then, that the methods used by the search engine operators are designed to deliver customer satisfaction. They work hard to eliminate bogus SEO services that aim to cheat. It is possible for you to make your website ?the best and most relevant? for certain searches and to convince the search engine operator you are just that too. That is SEO. Each of my 11 steps to SEO heaven is necessary. I assume that you will be committed to a long term marketing strategy, and to measuring results with a view to adjusting your activity. The steps include those of preparation as well of those of continuous repeated activities. The early preparatory steps are perhaps the most important as errors here will frustrate the effectiveness of the later ones. Armed with our clear objectives and online strategy: Step 1 to SEO Heaven ? Keyword Research A vital first step that should not... more.. Rethinking Website Content Content That Entertains Rethinking Website Content Content That Entertains By Jerry Bader (c) 2007 In case you've missed it, the Web has changed; it seems like just yesterday it was good enough to take all your brochures and advertising collaterals and convert them to digital format, add a little search engine optimization, throw-in a little PHP programming and bingo, you've got a website. And if you wanted to show how cutting edge your company was, maybe you'd add a little dash of Flash animation, or some royalty fr?music. Well here's a bulletin from the frontlines, that isn't going to cut-it in the new multimedia Web-business environment. If you are looking for a mantra to begin any new website initiative or to correct an existing website disaster: Think Audience Not Customers. Almost daily I receive emails from people asking me to review their websites and tell them why they can't convert visitors to customers even when they are attracting significant numbers of visitors on a regular basis to their sites. The answer is both simple and complex: simple, because these websites fail to communicate the company's message in a meaningful manner to their visitors, which means no dialog is opened, and without a dialog, no business can be done; and complex, because the implementation of the solution requires a new way of thinking about communicating with your audience using sophisticated presentation techniques that put a higher premium on creativity than they do on facts, figures and old-school direct marketing tactics. New Words For A New Web-Business Environment In the past while I've run across three newly coined words or phrases (Communitainment, Branded Entertainment, and Snack-o-tainment) that attempt to capture the... more.. Using Images for SEO Using Images for SEO By John Case (c) 2006 Humans vs. Search Engines Human visitors and search engine robots that visit websites and index information about them look for different things in a page. People like to see an attractive layout with nice pictures and graphics, animation, easy-to-locate navigation, and friendly greetings like "Welcome to Annie's Online Shop" at the top of a page. Search engines, on the other hand, like sites that have lots of textual content, good site structure (sitemaps, consistent linking style), and a meaningful phrase such as "Chicago Area Florist" as the heading of a page. While search engines can read the "alt image" tags of graphics, they cannot "look at" pictures the way a human visitor can, and far prefer text. Replacing Text with Images One way to work around this paradox is to shift some of the text that search engines have no interest in over to graphics. For example friendly greetings like "Welcome to Our Site" or "Annie's Online Shop" work best as header graphics. Creating a header graphic in a graphic editing program like Photoshop, Illustrator, or Fireworks has the advantage of letting you know exactly what that part of your site will look like to visitors. If you create a header or navigation bar with text, you are limited to a common set of fonts. If you use a fancy font that is installed on your computer, your page will look great to you, but when a visitor who does not have that font on their computer visits your site, their browser's default font will be used and that nice aspect of your... more.. 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.. Future Of Social Media Sites Future Of Social Media Sites By Mikhail Tuknov (c) 2008 The current proliferation of social media sites is the most pervasive phenomenon on the Internet today. Not since the dot.com explosion has the there been an Internet trend that is so widespread in its popularity. The comparison with the dot.com growth is in fact one that is made by many industry observers, and while there are a number of clear similarities, there are also some important differences. It is expected that by early 2008, all the various social media sites will have more than 230 million members. That number is predicted to grow until 2009, with a leveling off on the number of new members expected by 2012. The combined revenue from these sites, which in 2007 reached almost $970 million, is estimated to balloon to a whopping $2.4 billion by 2012. Membership growth in social media sites varies greatly from region to region. The Asia Pacific region accounts for the lion's share of users, with 35% of the total users expected by the end of 2007. EMEA accounts for about 28% of all users, North America follows closely with 25% percent, and the Caribbean and Latin America trails behind with 12% of all users. With the inevitable crowding of the social media site industry, many observers feel that consolidation of the market is a sure thing. This has given rise to some predictions that the smaller individual social media sites will be swallowed up by the bigger players in the field. Some experts feel however that this is not necessarily the case. In particular, social media sites with a focus on special interests... 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.. 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.. 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.. Blog Flipping: 10 Important Factors When Selling Your Weblog Or Website Blog Flipping: 10 Important Factors When Selling Your Weblog Or Website By Chuck Crawford (c) 2009 The market for blogs has exploded. Many companies do not want to invest the time in developing a blog in their respective niche, which has given rise to a whole new cottage industry, blog flipping. Blog flipping is done in a few different ways. Some flippers buy an existing blog that has potential, but is not currently producing. They take that blog and build the traffic and sales up to a level productive enough to reap a profit from their investment, and then sell it. Or, more common in today's blog flipping market, is to research a specific niche, develop a domain / blog, and then sell it. But what does "developed" really mean? It depends on the flipper. So buyers really need to do their homework (read due diligence) before investing in an "established" blog or website. Because "established" is in the eyes of the beholder, and means many different things depending upon who you consult. In my opinion, established means that the site, or blog, is profitable. Now profitable can be defined very differently for different companies. It doesn't mean that the site has to be mak? money, though it does help justify the investment when purchasing the blog. It can mean to a prospective company only that the site has traffic that company believes it can convert into sales. Not everyone can convert website traffic in the same way. So there are companies out there looking to buy blogs that have a certain, specific reader demographic that fits their market. However, these types of sales are few and far between. Companies that are buying blogs normally want to see one... more.. 19 Effective Offline Advertising Methods for Your Website  19 Effective Offline Advertising Methods for Your Website By David Jackson (c) 2011 With the advent of the Internet and the worldwide dominance and prominence of Google, Facebook and Twitter, one could reasonably assume the whole world revolves around the Internet. It doesn't. There's a great big offline universe out there with nearly 6 billion people in it that was here long before the Internet. And if you don't have an offline marketing strategy to reach those billions of people, and complement your online marketing strategy, you're missing out on a significant amount of traffic and income. Following are 19 affordable and effective offline advertising methods that generate traffic to your website: 1. Bookmarks Everybody has books in their home - some more than others. But I think that you'll agree, just about everybody owns books. And what better way to get your marketing message in front of readers, than with a bookmark with your company name and website address printed on it? And distribution couldn't be more easy! Simply get a bunch of bookmarks printed up and hand them out to everybody you meet. You can purchase bookmarks imprinted with your company name from Branders.com. 2. College Newspapers Why market to college students? Because the college market consists of about 15 million people who spend over 120 billion annually. In addition, more than 79% of college students go online at least once a day and over 95% of college students have access to the Internet. (Source: NationwideAdvertising.com) You can put your marketing message in front of tens of thousands of college students at an affordable price. You can get started by contacting 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.. 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.. How & Why You Should Perform An SEO Audit On Your Website How & Why You Should Perform An SEO Audit On Your Website By Mike Tekula (c) 2009 What makes or break an SEO campaign is knowing where to start, what is important and what is simply not worth the time. Resources are never infinite. If you're not careful you can spend them spinning wheels and tweaking things that will have no real effect on your search traffic. Plan effectively, and you'll achieve true growth and a positive return on your investment. The difference lies in understanding how search engines work - how they crawl the web and how they use that data to rank web pages - and how your website does or doesn't meet these criteria. The Technical Audit The first order of action is the technical audit of your site. Tackle these issues first because this represents the foundation of your site. Some technical problems can render web pages invisible to search engines. Identifying and resolving these issues upfront is critical. A technical audit should include: Code cleanliness / content visibility      ? Does the site use JavaScript heavily?      ? Is the code bloated?      ? Is content generated by JavaScript or otherwise not SEO-friendly? File size / page load time Navigation structure      ? Is the navigation Flash or JavaScript driven? If so, does it degrade gracefully for browsers        that don't support these technologies (like a search crawler)? URL structure      ? Are there session ID's in the page URLs?      ? Are the URLs long and do they include multiple variables and parameters?      ? Do the URLs contain keywords? Title tag / headlines      ? Does the site have unique titles and... more.. Ins and Outs of Local Search Ins and Outs of Local Search By Scott Van Achte (c) 2009, Senior SEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.   As the population with internet access explodes, and more and more people are using search engines to find what they need, the usage of local search also continues to rise. For any sites servicing a local or specific geographic audience, submission to local search based engines is becoming more and more important. What is it? In a nutshell local search involves the use of specialized search engines specifically created to focus on a selected geographic region to find local businesses and websites focused on your area. Local search is commonly utilized as a directory, where users select their location, and narrow their search by categories till they find the list? they want. In many cases local search engines also guess at the users' location by using their IP, so when you visit the site and search, for example, "Chinese restaurants" you automatically see results specific to your location.   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.. EMR EMR The medical industry has greatly developed in the last couple of years, fact that has lead to many improvements to the systems that were designed to help doctors and patients alike. The EMR is such a system and its benefits are very important to the needs of the patients. The great thing about the EMR system First of all, modern hospitals need to take into consideration the fact that they need to serve the patient?s needs with efficiency and great response. This means that the system that they use need to be adjusted to those qualities. The EMR system brings forth the idea that, by using the technology in favor of the patients. One of the great benefits of such an implementation is the amount of space that is save when it comes to storing information on the patients. Think about how hospitals used to store data on patients 5 years ago. There were huge drawers holding too many files and often they got lost and valuable information was lost with them as well. By implementing an EMR system, you are basically avoiding all the problems that might occur when it comes to trying to find a piece of information in a very small amount of time. Another great idea in this matter is the amount of time that is being spared when accessing the system. Here you are encouraged to think about how long it took the clerk to dig through various files and come across... more.. Using Google Local, Yahoo Local and MSN Local Using Google Local, Yahoo Local and MSN Local   Considering that a listing in Yahoo costs $299 per year, there exists 3 excellent opprtunities that are 100% free!   Those opportunities offer you a great way to get your local business to the top of the search engine results pages. It will take you about 1 hour of your time, and just 30 minutes in planning, but yields an amazing amount of long-term search results. Every business owner should perform this. If you have a physical address, adding your business to Google, Yahoo, & MSN local will help your current and potential customers easily find your company.   How To List Your Business On Local Business Centers Google Local Business Start by setting up a Google Maps account here. Then make sure to be as descriptive as possible about your business can be. Use your keyword phrases, separated with a comma, in the Description field. This will help increase the odds of your local business ad showing up when people are searching. Make sure and include all hours and payment information. Google local business ad?s will have the most power of the three and can really generate a lot of results within Google. Many times it will simple be people searching for your specific business but there is a lot to be said for making things easy on them. Also, remember to use an image, such as a logo.   MSN Local Business To add your local business to the MSN local business center you will follow a similar procedure except it?s faster. Go to this link and start signing up. As with Google local business you will want to be as detailed as possible and take the... more.. 5 Ways to Manage Your Online Reputation 5 Ways to Manage Your Online Reputation A SPN Exclusive Article By Nick Stamoulis (c) 2011 In the online world, your reputation is one of your most valuable business assets. A good reputation instills confidence in your consumers and business partners, and can also help carry your company though bad press if/when it arises. Much of your online success is related to your online reputation, so that reputation needs to be carefully protected and maintained. The maturation of social media has taken the control of a brand and placed it squarely in the hands of the consumer. It doesn't matter how you define your brand, it all comes down to what your audience says. One negative comment on a social networking site can spread like wildfire in a matter of seconds and companies have to be prepared to deal with any related fall-out. Here are 5 ways you can better manage your online reputation: Set up e-mail alerts All you need is a Gmail account. An e-mail alert is Google's attempt to condense web activity around a given keyword or search phrase into a daily e-mail. While it doesn't show you the entire buzz about your company and related keywords, it is a good way to get a snapshot every day of what is going on online. Keep an eye on industry forums Forums are like the hybrid cousin of blogging and social networking, and they are a ripe breeding ground for consumer complaints and grievances. Many consumers turn to forums when they have troubleshooting questions about a product. They are looking to their... 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.. Is Article Marketing Still Effective In 2010? Is Article Marketing Still Effective In 2010? By Titus Hoskins (c) 2010 Don't exactly know what it is about starting a new year of marketing online, but I always stop and take a hard look at all my marketing tactics and methods. Article marketing is always at the top of my list, mainly because it is and has always been the cornerstone of everything I do on the web. By cornerstone I mean it is the key to basically all of my online earnings. Without article marketing I wouldn't be a full-time online marketer - it's as simple as that. No articles, no income. Articles bring in the targeted traff? Articles build those all important one-way backlinks. Articles build those even more important top rankings in Google for your chosen keywords. Articles build your online reputation and credibility in the eyes of your visitors. I was struggling on the web for around three years before I wrote my first article. "10 Reasons To Put RSS On Your Site" which is still on around 8,000 sites around the web. Writing was always a passion of mine, but it was more on the creative side, although I did work briefly as a reporter for a very small community newspaper. Looking back on it, I believe (perhaps falsely) that I had to gain all those years of experience before I could start writing articles about it. Which was the totally wrong attitude to take since anyone can research a favorite subject or topic and write a short informative article on it. Most of us have been doing that since grade school - it is the same as writing a report or an essay. Only with article writing you... 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.. 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.. Texas Land Sales Texas Land Sales The famous idea of the Texas Land Sales is no longer a mystery. Many people have discovered the great benefits that the real estate industry has right now and most of them have chosen those opportunities because they saw fit with their own expectations. The idea is that now it's the perfect time to think about an investment in this area as there are great benefits that come with this decision. The benefits that arrive with the Texas Land Sales First of all, people need to take into account that this is an opportunity that implies a long term investment and a lot of patience. There are many solutions that can be implemented in the times that the world is living today, but the Texas Land Sales come for the ones that really want to make a solid profit. The only requirement there is here is to have a little patience when it comes to choosing the perfect moment. There are several reasons why people should start buying land in the present moment. A first idea here refers to the fact that the recession has made some drastic changes in the real estate industry: many companies have stopped expanding, others have had troubles paying their debts and so on. Those situations have generated the downfall of the real estate market and have made it possible for the value of the land to drop at its lowest point in the past 20 years. That's why the Texas Land Sales sound very promising for many people. The next idea here... 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.. 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.. 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.. Top 5 Reasons Most Internet Businesses Fail Top 5 Reasons Most Internet Businesses Fail By Mark Yarrobino (c) 2009   If you've been online for any amount of time, then I'm sure you've heard many of the success stories about internet entrepreneurs, and how they're making millions every year, and you've probably heard how easy it is for you to do it, too. And the truth is, it actually is kind of easy, but not as easy as most salesmen would have you believe. There is a little bit of work involved, and anyone who's really been successful has put in the time and effort to get there. And they've managed to avoid the pitfalls on this list. If you're trying to start your online business and things haven't gone as well as you've hoped so far, then hopefully, these suggestions will help. Here are the five most common reasons that most internet businesses fail that I've seen, in no particular order: 1. Information Overload You've probably already been inundated with emails explaining how some new money mak? scheme is the hottest thing on the planet and you need to get in now so that you're on the cutting edge of internet marketing. The problem is that you haven't finished working on the previous hot new thing yet, and as soon as you start this one, yet another hot idea will hit, and so on, and so on. In every valid email you get, there should be an "unsubscribe" link at the bottom. Start clicking on it, and just stick with a few of the people who you know are giving you good information about building your business from start to finish in the right order without any distractions. And make sure that you see every task through to... more.. An Informal Look at Writing Online Content An Informal Look at Writing Online Content By Jamie Lyons (c) 2010 I get many questions about my job as a copywriter and SEO practitioner, and for the most part they follow a similar theme- 'what do you do?' and 'could I do it?' In an attempt to address these questions once and for all and possibly also give an insight into the life of an internet marketer I've put together an article: this article. A large portion of my day is spent writing. From articles to press releases, website content to blogs: countless hours are spent staring at a blank page, frantically scrambling for inspiration or that perfectly sculpted sentence. The phrase 'writer's block' is an often derided cliche, but there is no denying that sometimes you just can't quite work out exactly what you're trying to say, or even more infuriatingly, the best way to say it. Some will go for a walk to clear their mind, others to their cigarette packet or porcelain throne in an attempt to find clarity. In the realm of content writing and SEO based copywriting in general there is a very simple reason why these personal catalysts are turned to with persistent regularity: it can be boring. There, I said it and to emphasise my conviction will say it again: Writing For Seo Purposes Can Be Boring. Now hopefully you'll grant me enough time to justify this outburst before reporting me to the various authorities, oh, and please forgive my reliance on personal experience in portraying a more universal point. I go into work every day knowing that I am required to write intelligently and enthusiastically on topics which I may have very limited previous knowledge of,... more.. Click Fraud, Six Things You Should Be Aware Of Before You Buy Click Fraud - Six Things You Should Be Aware Of Before You Buy "Guaranteed Traff? By John Young (c) 2006 Bill was getting frustrated and desperate. He'd being trying to promote his website for months with little or no success. Adwords didn't seem to be working. He'd devised the most fiendish ads he could think of and set them up on Google only to find that nobody clicked on them. He had written several articles and, using an automatic article submitter, had placed them on hundreds of Article Barns across the web. There had been an increase in his Alexa Ratings, but that was it. Maybe there was a slight flurry of hits when he first placed the article, then nothing. He'd set up a blog, made a press release announcement, and done everything except don a Shaman costume and dance around his computer. He'd purchased ebooks on increasing his traff? and tried every idea he ran across. His budget was beginning to show the effects, and he had the chilling realization that if he didn't come across something that worked, he was simply going to run out of mon?and go bankrupt. In other words, he was about to become one of the 90 per cent of the Info Marketers on the web who fail. That was when he ran across a site that guaranteed traff? Little did Bill know he was about to become a victim of cl? fraud. Cl? Fraud and Big Business Cl? fraud has been discussed in a recent issue of Newsweek (Oct 6, 2006) as one of the most serious issues that faces online advertising. It has cast doubt on at least... 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.. organic cosmetic brushes organic cosmetic brushes Have you heard about the organic cosmetic brushes and its benefits? Do you think that it's just another form of advertising or have you seen some real changes here? The media has its way of influencing the life of many in the tiniest of details. This is why people are a little bit skeptical when they hear something about a new product or type of product. The reality of the organic cosmetic brushes First of all, people should get familiar with the term organic in the matter of cosmetics. Many would say that this is a detail that isn't that important because they aren't interested in the chemistry of the products. Those people need to sit down and listen to what this material has to say because it's really important to understand this aspect. Basic cosmetics are designed to help the skin look better for a limited amount of time. This means that a person can hope for a timeframe of a half a day when it comes to the durability of some products. The organic cosmetic brushes or any of the products that are from the same type are designed a little bit different. This is because of the fact that the primary focus is different. The normal cosmetics focus on making the skin better now and not fixing whatever problems it might have. The mineral foundation products are designed a little bit different. Their primary focus is to identify the problem that the skin has and try to handle it as best as possible. In this way, the skin will be able to look as natural as it can be without having the need to wear makeup on a daily basis. The great... 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.. Controlling Search Engine Spiders for Improved Rankings Controlling Search Engine Spiders for Improved Rankings By Eric Johnson (c) 2009 When it comes to getting your website listed at the top of the search engines keyword search rankings, it is essential for you to gain a deeper understanding of the search engine spiders that crawl over your website. After all, it is the spiders that determine the relevance of your website and decide where your site will land in the search engine results page. Therefore, by learning how to control the direction of the spiders, you can be certain your website will rise in rankings. Gaining Control with the Help of Robots.txt You may think that gaining control of search engine spiders is an impossible task, but it is actually easier than you might think when you take advantage of a handy little tool called the robots.txt file. With the robots.txt file, you can give the spiders the direction they need to locate the most important pages on your website while preventing them from wasting time on the more obscure pages such as your About Us and Privacy Policy pages. After all, these pages won't do much to improve your search engine ranking and won't help your target market find your website, so why should the spiders waste their time exploring these pages when ranking your site? Another positive aspect to using a robot.txt file is the fact that it prevents the spiders from indexing duplicate pages. This is beneficial because having duplicate content can actually reduce your search engine ranking. So, while you are making changes to your website or working on an area that isn't fully developed yet, you can instruct the spiders to leave those pages alone until you are ready... 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.. 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.. Medical Billing Software Medical Billing Software Imagine having to use the pencil and pen to do the entire math that is involved when working with numbers. It might be overwhelming and give you a big headache. That's why the invention of systems like the Medical Billing Software and many more are owed some appreciation. The development of technology has helped people in their daily routines and has changed their lives for the better. The way that the Medical Billing Software works Medical facilities are the ones that need the development of technology the most. This is because of the fact that people's lives are at stake and nobody can play with that. This goes not only for the equipment that is used in surgeries but to the Medical Billing Software and the other systems that are designed to keep track of the patients, their needs and the changes that occurs in their state. Those systems have an important role in the wellbeing of the patient as well. Imagine that you as a doctor are in need of a specific information here and now. It would have taken you a lot of time to find the information, if not for those systems. Your patient's live is involved here and that is one motivator that cannot be ignored. Another issue that can be developed on the matter of the need for Medical Billing Software is related to the idea of drug abusers. There are many people who think that they can fool a computer just by lying about their prescriptions. This system is well organized and it keeps track of everything that has been allowed by a doctor for a patient. In this way, overdoses can be avoided and the ones that have a certain addiction to a pill won't fool the medical facility. Working with... 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.. 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.. Birthday gift ideas Birthday gift ideas What is to be said about the best Birthday gift ideas? What makes them the best and why doesn't everybody know what to choose when it comes to celebrating the birthday of a friend, family member or any other person? The difficulty with the Birthday gift ideas People find it very hard to cope with this aspect and they end up being frustrated that they've lost several hours while trying to find the perfect gift. There are some details that can be minded when it comes to Birthday gift ideas, that will surely spear you the trouble of being frustrated. First of all, there is the aspect of linking the gift with some of the hobbies, pleasures or other activities that your friend has. There has to be something that he or she enjoys doing and that's your gate towards finding the perfect gift for that person. It can be something related to sports, music, movies, books, anything that he or she might enjoy. In this way, you can actually show, that you are paying attention and you basically know that person pretty well. The issue that arises here refers to the idea of having the obligation to pick out a gift for a person who isn't close to you. There are some social situations that might occur and might demand you this approach. The way with the Birthday gift ideas here is to actually try and find out more about the one who... 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.. 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.. 2010 Resolution - Give Your Website a Legal Check-Up 2010 Resolution - Give Your Website a Legal Check-Up By Chip Cooper (c) 2010 We all make New Year's resolutions - some are personal, some are business or professional in nature. Even if we don't actually make New Year's resolutions, we engage in formal and informal "planning" as we look ahead to the new year. If you operate a website, you're probably aware that your website operations are now highly regulated. And the pace of legal regulations continues to accelerate. Which means that you face an increasing risk of legal liability. So, it's a good idea to give your website a legal check-up and to update your site before it's too late. General Issue Checklist The general checklist below covers issues that are not new issues which arose in 2009. These issues have been around for a while, but some may be new to you, particularly if your website or marketing activities changed recently. ? Copyright Notice. These are the basic elements of a copyright notice: the word "copyright" or copyright symbol (c in a circle) followed by the year of first publication followed by the name of the copyright owner followed by "All rights reserved worldwide." Here's an example taken from my digicontracts.com website: Copyright 1996-2010 Digital Contracts, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. ? Blogs. If you've recently added a blog to your site, or if your site is a blog site, it's possible that a visitor could post infringing materials (e.g. text, video links, images). Under the strict principles of copyright law, you'd be a copyright infringer even if you were unaware of the posting. Your liability could be significant. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides a "safe harbor" from liability provided you publish... more.. The Biggest Web Design Trends of 2011  The Biggest Web Design Trends of 2011 By Stephen Loates (c) 2011 Since we are over seven months into the year I decided it was time to give my take on what may happen in web design in 2011. (At least I thought I should probably write it before the year was over.) So, over the past several weeks I have read a number of my favourite web design magazines, web design blogs and articles and viewed a number of cutting edge websites, particularly outside of North America, so that I could share some thoughts about what appears to be some of the major trends in website design for 2011. There is nothing scientific contained here, just some observations. 1. Less Use of Flash It is not the fact that Flash is not a great technology...(when used appropriately it is)...but in the past year or so it has been over used, misused, abused to the point that it has developed a bad reputation. Certainly, the ongoing shenanigans between Adobe (creator of Flash) and Apple (iPhone and iPad) are not helping the situation. Today, websites need to have a clean, uncluttered design, fast loading and above all must be Search Engine friendly. This is a problem for Flash and now with the coming of the new web coding languages of HTML5 and CSS3, together with the explosive growth of web surfing on mobile devices perhaps it is the beginning of the end of Flash in web design. 2. Simpler and Cleaner Design Simple. Minimal. Uncluttered. There's nothing quite as "attention grabbing" as an honest, straightforward message on a... more.. 4 Quick Ways to Build Quality One-Way Links 4 Quick Ways to Build Quality One-Way Links By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009 Obtaining one-way quality links is often cited as the "Holy Grail" of online success. Especially if you take the SEO route for getting high rankings for all your profitable keywords in the search engines. It's no wonder then, achieving top spots for valuable and popular keywords should be the ultimate goal of any webmaster or online marketer. How well you do in this "link quest" will largely determine the success or failure of your site or online business. Assuming of course, you're going after free organic traffic from the search engines and not using Pay Per Click or other means of succeeding online. Link building and achieving top placements in the search engines (especially Google) has been my main objective for over ten years of online market?. Over the years, I have tried hundreds, if not thousands of link building methods in order to get those links. I would like to discuss briefly some of those methods and then explain in full detail my four favorite and most effective proven ways to get quality one-way links. First, some general tips on how you should approach your link building from the get-go. You must realize the web is based on content; web surfers/users are looking for quality content. If you can supply valuable content that surfers want, you will build your links naturally. People will see your content and want to link to it. This process is often referred to as link baiting - you make your... more.. Anniversary gift ideas Anniversary gift ideas What is the first idea that comes to mind when talking about Anniversary gift ideas? Many would say that it really depends on what is the anniversary and the people who are celebrating it, but there is the concept that each anniversary is special and the gifts that are exchanged should really mean something. The way with Anniversary gift ideas First of all, people need to take into account that just going into a store and grabbing the first thing that comes to mind isn?t necessary the perfect way to come up with the best Anniversary gift ideas. This is because of the fact that an anniversary marks a special date alongside someone and that special date requires some attention and care. The idea here is that any gift should be personal rather than just the very first thing that comes in your hands while walking in a mall. This is because it needs to send out a message that you really care for the person that is sitting next to you, regardless of the status of your relationship. Many people have the tendency to choose certain gifts because they are too comfortable to make a little effort and discover certain items that will surely impress the one sitting... 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.. ready to assemble cabinets Ventura ready to assemble cabinets Ventura The ready to assemble cabinets Ventura services come to respond to one basic need that any customer might have: to have things done and ready to be used. That's why so many industries have changed their way of doing things and handling services and that's why so many people are so comfortable with anything that is done rapidly and without any lost time. Why should you choose the ready to assemble cabinets Ventura services? There are many reasons why this type of service needs to be provided in a small amount of time and without any problems. One of these reasons refers to the idea that people don't like to waste time and energy on assembling themselves the cabinets that they've ordered. Even though, they might be required to pay a higher sum of money, they are contempt with the idea that everything is done quickly and they don't have to worry about a thing. That is one of the reasons why the ready to assemble cabinets Ventura services are so appreciated. Another great reason that is worth to be mentioned here is the way you make the order. Think about one of the days when you are required to go out for shopping. Think about the time you lose in traffic and most importantly think about the time you lose in stores and at the cash registers. The ready to assemble cabinets Ventura options come with the idea that an online order... more.. 20 Must-Have Tools to Automate an Online Business 20 Must-Have Tools to Automate an Online Business By Donna Gunter (c) 2007 With all the information online about tools and techniques available to help someone effectively manage and run an online business, how do you ever decide which ones are truly useful to have in your business management toolkit? Here's my listing of the 20 indispensable tools that I cannot live without: 1. Article Marketing: SubmitYourArticle.com automates the article submission process by allowing you to submit up to eight articles each month and then distributes the articles to hundreds of web sites, article directories and ezine publishers. Without a doubt, this has been my most effective online marketing tool that has produced tremendous results for my business. 2. Audio Recording/Podcasting: AudioAcrobat.com makes audio streaming fast and simple, whether you want to add an audio greeting, audio testimonials, podcast or videos to your website or send out an audio postcard or record a teleclass. 3. Backup: Carbonite.com offers an unlimited amount of data storage for $50 per year. Carbonite is very intuitive and went directly to my email files and Roboform files to back them up without me having to manually select the backup files. I frequently use this service to find the original version of a file that I've accidentally overwritten, as well. 4. Blogging: Typepad.com is both simple to use and powerful. You can set up as many blogs as you desire with a Pro account, and you can customize your blog in an infinite number of ways. Once it's set up, the online interface makes... more.. Web Development Los Angeles Web Development Los Angeles Does a 50 year company need a Web Development Los Angeles service in order to expand the approach in the online environment? Or it's a simple fad that has come with the new businesses and the traditional ones don't actually need it? The reality is that the internet opens up a lot of gates and the power that comes with mastering this environment is quite incomparable. There is a need for the Web Development Los Angeles services First of all, let's talk about how a business promotes itself on the internet. It really depends on the business and the profile that it has. Another factor that is of great importance here refers to the idea of reaching out to your potential target without having to go door to door. These are only the basics of the internet and the reasons why a business should choose this environment in order to make real profit. But where does the Web Development Los Angeles services come in? Why do people need them and not handle things on their own? There are still many subtle details that can be handled when promoting a business here. That's why there is need for the expertise of such a service and that's why the new businesses have so much success. They use the knowledge and the resources that they have in order to have a head start and be in the spotlight before the other businesses. People need to take into consideration that if they are able to sell their brand in the online environment they are basically hitting it everywhere. There have been many businesses... more.. 10 Most Valuable Free Google Marketing Tools 10 Most Valuable Free Google Marketing Tools By Titus Hoskins (c) 2006 Google has become the dominant search engine on the Internet. It would be hard to imagine a web without Google. For that matter, it would now be hard to imagine a world without Google. As frightening as that may seem to many people, it is none the less true. For better or worse, Google has permeated into almost every aspect of our everyday life. Being Googled is now a common expression and an act carried out by mill?s of users around the world each day. New Google products and services are coming on stream at a frightening pace, further increasing Google's impact on our lives. Despite this dominating presence, many people still don't realize Google offers some excellent fr?marketing tools for marketers and webmasters. Marketing tools which can prove extremely valuable to any webmaster or marketer trying to promote their sites or products online. Useful tools that will make your promotions easier and much more profitable. Don't be fooled by the 'fr? label, these marketing tools might be fr? but they are also valuable. One even wonders why Google would be giving away these tools and services for fr? It probably makes good business sense in the long run, by providing these fr?tools Google is fostering a lot of company good-will and building up the Google brand name in the process. Good PR is good business. Every marketer and webmaster should be taking advantage of Google's good-will and snapping up these professionally run services and marketing tools. Here's a quick run-down of the 10 most valuable fr?Google Internet marketing tools: 1. Google... more.. Reciprocal Lnking Strategy Reciprocal Lnking Strategy By BizAtomic If you want to get serious about driving more traff?to your website and improving your search engine rankings you need to develop a linking strategy. There are three primary linking strategies: 1. Reciprocal Linking 2. Purchasing text links 3. Employing a link finding service This month's issue of BizAtomic Advisor focuses on Reciprocal Linking ? How it can help. When a trusted site links to yours, people follow that recommendation. Reciprocal link means your website links to another website and that website links back to you. Search engines use link popularity to rank websites. Exchanging reciprocal links with other sites will build a great link directory that will motivate visitors to bookmark your website to get access to your link directory. One of the factors search engines use to determine your relevancy to a search term is the number of websites linking to your website. This is an effective way to increase your search engine rankings. Three key success factors for a reciprocal linking strategy are: 1. Quality of links should outweigh quantity 2. Link partners must relate to your site content 3. Partners should link to you from pages listing as few links as possible Linking is what the web is all about. It helps you move from one document to another and from site to site while maintaining your focus on a particular subject. The ideal situation is to have one way links from related sites without you pointing back to them. However, you would have to have a lot of valuable information, tips, tools, articles, resources, etc. in order to motivate people to link to your website. Unfortunately most sites don't fall into this category and reciprocal linking... more.. Land in Texas Land in Texas Imagine the most peaceful place that you can think of. Imagine how the peace and quiet feel like, how all the worries and the problems that wonder off in your head, simply fade away. Imagine how your life would be like in such a place, how would you feel to be surrounded by those feelings on a daily basis. That's what a Land in Texas brings to the table. Many other things about a Land in Texas There are people who complain about the shallowness of the world, about the fact that most of us simply forget about our dreams, desired and focus on the daily routines that we have, the problems that are in our lives. That's the description of a typical middle class person that struggles to find his path in life. That person will be the one that disclaims the idea of a Land in Texas because he or she doesn't think that this is the perfect time to act on this matter. There are so many studies, opinions and arguments why now is the perfect moment to think about an investment in this area. Little do people know that the recession has made a lot of changes in the real estate industry in ways that aren't quite visible. The common opinion is that a land in Texas is very expensive and not everyone affords making an investment due to the high prices. The reality can be seen as a shock, but the prices have changed considerable over the years. A Land in Texas can easily be quoted at less than a half of the price that was given in 2007 or 2009.... more.. On-Page Optimization Tactics You Don't Hear About On-Page Optimization Tactics You Don't Hear About A SPN Exclusive Article By Ben Jackson (c) 2011 Backlinking, backlinking, backlinking - it seems to be the only part of SEO anyone ever talks about these days! Let's get our noses out of everybody else's sites and back into ours. On-page optimization is often overlooked and neglected, but your on-page SEO builds the foundation for all of your off-page optimization efforts. We're going to cover some of the basics here: domain names and title tags, but we're also going to get to topics less discussed when dealing with on-page optimization. I'm talking about things like stemming, your outbound links, your use of synonyms and more. Let's get to it! Domain Name Your domain name has a powerful effect on how you rank. Having an EMD (exact match domain) for your keyword is going to do a lot for your ranking. However, this is not crucial to your ranking success. Many people, such as myself, choose to have a domain name that they can brand. It depends on what you're looking to do with your site. If you want to make a small niche site targeting a single keyword, then clearly you will want to get an EMD. But what if the EMD is not available? This is a very common problem for internet marketers. From a SEO standpoint, you want to choose an EMD with a non-.com extension first if available. If none are available, then tack another word onto the end of your domain name. You will still have your keyword in your domain and receive SEO benefits from this.... more.. How I Got 70,000 Useless Visitors To My Site In One Day! How I Got 70,000 Useless Visitors To My Site In One Day! (An Analysis of Social Bookmark Traffic) By Titus Hoskins (c) 2007 Recently, a page on one of my websites was bookmarked or listed on Digg, a popular social bookmark site. It gave me the perfect opportunity to study and analyze the traffic coming from these social media sites. Read to discover the advantages and disadvantages of social bookmark traffic and how it can be applied to your own online market? or site.   Is Social BookMark Traffic Useless? First, we must make the distinction that no traffic is useless. Any visitor to your site is a good thing and should be welcomed. However, all traffic is not created equally, there are great differences in the sources of your traffic. This article takes a close analytical look at social bookmark traffic from an internet marketing perspective. In case you haven't noticed, right now social bookmark and media sites are all the rage on the web. Social bookmark traffic comes from such popular sites as Slashdot, Digg, Stumbleupon... basically these sites are driven by their users - that is, users or members pick and bookmark the content they want to view and discuss. These social bookmark sites are extremely popular; they command the high traffic numbers most ordinary sites can only dream about obtaining. But is this social bookmark traffic useful? Is it worth your time? Should you be actively promoting to these social media sites? Should you concentrate your online market? efforts on these types of sites? More importantly, what are the benefits and disadvantages of getting a front page listing on a site like... more.. Electronic Medical Records Electronic Medical Records   Is it safer to entrust the patient's files to one of the Electronic Medical Records? There are still many opinions who don't agree to the computerized system when people's life is at stake. Those people can be a little too traditional, but they need to see that this is a system that is designed to perform the actions that are already been done but with a much higher efficiency. The great thing with the Electronic Medical Records First of all, people need to observe how technology helps in their daily routines. There are so many examples that can be shared on this aspect that it is really hard to think of one that isn't affected by technology. The medical field is one of the best examples to prove how technology is the perfect assistant. Of course, there is the surgery room where all the equipment is so precise and it really helps people, but it can be spotted at the front desk as well. Many people don't actually know how the Electronic Medical Records really helps the doctors do their job without having another worry on their hands. One of the best benefits that can be illustrated here refer to the spearing a lot of time and space with the use of computers. All the information on a certain patient is being held in a computer and this means that the drawers and the files... more.. Land For Sale in TX Land For Sale in TX When trying to understand what the Land For Sale in TX opportunities offer to the people who are in need of a change in their lives, several arguments come to mind. First of all, the stress and all the craziness that people have in their life contribute to a daily routine. All of these factors negatively influence the way that people think and that's why they are so skeptical all the time. The positive of the Land For Sale in TX opportunities First of all, people need to take into consideration that this isn't a way to change their mentality, but this is a way to make them understand that there are solutions to the problems that they have and those solutions are worth to be checked out. One of the solutions that are being brought up here is to actually consider the Land For Sale in TX offers as a way of changing ones perspective of their current reality. The idea here is to view the entire palette of opportunities and choose the best ones that fit your current situation. Let's take an example. You are in need of a change in your life, due to the stressful problems and other issue that may influence your wellbeing. How can the Land For Sale in TX offers help? The answer can come in various forms, but the main point here is to evade from this environment to a place where you will find peace and quiet. It's... 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.. Marketing Mastery Series: 5 Steps to Powerful Article Marketing  Marketing Mastery Series: 5 Steps to Powerful Article Marketing   Today, article marketing is probably one of the most powerful and inexpensive forms of marketing online available to small business owners and non-prof?. For those not savvy with the term "article marketing," here is a quick definition: In exchange for a little sweat and focus, an article author (you) shares their wisdom and experience with the world by posting their short article of advice or insight to blogs, social media, and article publication sites. Within those articles are one-way links leading back to the author's own website, raising the website's "authority" karma with the search engines and increasing qualified traff? You Are the Expert Here is a little mental preparation for you. I want to make sure you are looking at article marketing - and yourself - through the proper lens. When you produce articles, it is your goal to encapsulate gems of experience-hardened wisdom and share them with the online community. In doing so, you: 1. Help to advise those who are seeking that knowledge, and you 2. Position yourself as an expert on the topic. (Important!) Warning: Don't get caught up on the term "expert." Many humble folks who are vastly knowledgeable about their industry wouldn't refer to themselves as experts because they are also aware there is much they don't know. You don't have to know it all. You just need to know more than your customers and then know where to find the answers when you are stumped. Your Mission: Inspire, Inform, Entertain Your primary goal in business is to help, right? Businesses and nonprofit organizations provide products and services with the intent of helping people. (Naive? Maybe. Choosing 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.. 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.. 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.. The Meta Description Tag  The Meta Description Tag   By Jill Whalen (c) 2011 The keywords and phrases you use in your Meta description tag may not affect your page's ranking in the search engines, but this tag can still come in handy in your overall SEO and social media marketing campaigns. What Is the Meta Description Tag? It's a snippet of HTML code that belongs inside the <Head> </Head> section of a web page. It is usually placed after the Title tag and before the Meta keywords tag (if you use one), although the order is not important. The proper syntax for this HTML tag is: <META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Your descriptive sentence or two goes here."> If you're using a content management system (CMS), look for a field to fill out that's called Meta Description, or possibly just "Description." Many years ago, the information contained in a Meta description could slightly help a page rank highly for the words that were contained within it. Today, neither Google, Bing, nor Yahoo! use it as a ranking signal. In other words, whether you use your important keyword phrases in your Meta description tag or not, the position of your page in the search engine results will not be affected. So in terms of rankings, you could easily leave it out altogether. But should you? There are 3 important ways that Meta descriptions are being used today that make them an important part of your SEO and overall onl? marketing strategy:    1. They can be used as the description (or part of the description) of your page if it shows up in the search results.    2. They are often used as part of the descriptive information for your pages when Google shows... 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.. 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.. 6 Ongoing Link Building 6 Ongoing Link Building Techniques You Should Be Employing A SPN Exclusive Article By Matt Jackson (c) 2011 Finding effective and sustainable methods of building links to your website can prove challenging. However, with some effort or investment on your part, it is possible to enjoy an boost in direct traffic as well as a boost to your link profile and search engine rankings through an ongoing link building strategy. There are tried and tested techniques that have been used for years that help build links in volume, as well as techniques that aim to build a smaller number of links but of much higher value - the perfect combination for a natural looking and effective search engine link profile.   1 - Directory Submissions Directory submissions should be considered a staple part of your link building campaign. While directory links provide less value than they did several years ago, they do still provide benefit. What's more, while there is a finite number of directories online the number is massive and you can subm?to one or two hundred director? a month for at least the first year or so of your link building strategy. There are location and topic specific directories as well as general category ones. There are also those that will only accept home page links and those that will take deep links to other pages of your site. Combining these and using them accordingly will help generate the best results. 2 - Article Marketing Article marketing is another age old link building technique and while directory submissions provide finite, albeit extensive, opportunities, article marketing offers infinite possibilities. There are hundreds of article directories, including a good number... more.. Landing Pages. What You Need to Explain to your Website Design Company Landing Pages. What You Need to Explain to your Website Design Company By Colette Mason (c) 2010 The definition of a landing page is simply "the first page that visitors hit on your site," so it is not strictly a certain page but any page that a user "lands" on. All websites have landing pages, whether they like it or not, even if it was not specifically designed as such. Landing pages can have a substantial impact on your e- commerce website. A poorly-developed one can hasten its breakdown just as an effective landing page can drive traffic to your site, respond to calls to action and make your business website a success. One vital measure of the effectiveness of your website is the "bounce rate," or the percentage of visitors who immediately leave your site without making any other click. The bounce rate is inversely proportional to the effectiveness of the landing page. Basically, this means that a high bounce rate indicates that your landing page isn't compelling enough for the visitor to pursue his interest or take some other action. Normally, the home page is the primary landing page of most typical websites. But more and more, site owners are designing landing pages outside of the home page, and for good reason. Most users prefer to skip information which is irrelevant to their needs. They want to get directly to their search, hence the need for a landing page that delivers just that. They can avoid the delays caused by having to click through pages and pages of information when they already have something in mind. Landing pages serve their purpose when the site owner knows the kind of visitor they are targeting. This is... more.. SEO Web Design Secrets, Search Engine Optimization Tips for Beginners SEO Web Design Secrets, Search Engine Optimization Tips for Beginners By Peter Nisbet (c) 2008 SEO web design is a skill that can be learned, though most search engine optimization for beginners courses dwell too much on linking strategy as opposed to web site design per se. There are many ways for most normal people to get an improved search engine ranking, and secure a high search engine listing, and while linking is important, good on-site SEO is also necessary. Although it might not seem like it, getting a good listing on Google or any of the other search engines is not as difficult as many like to claim. There are rules to follow, and if you play the game properly then the outcome should be in your favour. The tips provided in this article are not really secrets as such; although many people offer to divulge marvelous secrets to you, all they are giving you is stuff that people have been using for years. So you won't get any secrets here. I have nothing hidden away that I don't want anybody to know, and if I had I wouldn't tell you about it! Would you? If you had some secrets that were so valuable that they were making you money, would you give them away free in an article like this one? Of course you wouldn't! So here are my not-so-secret tips on getting a good list? in Google and improving your search engine ranking. You likely know a fair bit about meta tags, and have been informed that most are not used by search engines. Well let me tell you something.... more.. Conversion Rate Optimization Part 1, Google Takes the Leading Role Conversion Rate Optimization Part 1, Google Takes the Leading Role By Frederick Townes (c) 2007 Within the e-commerce sphere, the "mind games" between site owners and search engine designers have focused on search engine optimization (SEO). After all, you can't make a sale if visitors aren't reaching your site. However, as the web marketplace grows exponentially more competitive, attention among webmasters and site owners has turned to conversion optimization ? converting site visitors to buyers. Conversion optimization has nothing to do with SEO. SEO is designed for spiders and bots. Conversion optimization is based on two factors only: the needs and motivations of human site visitors and persuasive site content and design to encourage humans to make a purchase or perform some other action. Any other considerations are sub-sets of these two factors in conversion optimization strategies. Measuring Human Motivations and Site Effectiveness SEO is based on the development of numbers (metrics) that are immutable. Numbers are numbers, there's no debating that. The interpretation of site metrics, on the other hand, is a true combination of art, science and testing. Assessing conversion rate optimization must apply a completely different approach to data gathering and the accurate, actionable assessment of the cold hard facts (percentages and such) that are the basis of SEO. The Google Website Optimizer (GWO) Google owns SEO (sorry Yahoo). It is now moving into eyeball optimization (EBO) to help site owners improve conversion rates. It's got lots of features, it's totally flexible in designing useful tests for human reactions and it provides data using simple to read and understand charts showing what's working and what... more.. 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.. 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.. The FTC Needs to Shut Up! The FTC Needs to Shut Up! By Pace Lattin (c) 2010 The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is one of the most unique parts of our government. It has a wide range of powers given by law, which encompass among other things the ability to pass rules and regulations against unfair and deceptive acts or practices. The FTC often issues "guidelines which are no more than notices that they will push for prosecution or civil action against individuals in violation their guidelines. Although these guidelines are often up for public debate, they are not passed by any governing body such as Congress, yet affect us often more than any newly passed law would. While many people see that the FTC is a consumer rights entity within the government, a growing number of people see that the FTC is a part of a growing, overreaching government that is interfering with the ability of businesses and often individuals to conduct business in this market economy. I'm not claiming that the FTC should NOT prosecute obvious fraud, where consumers are clearly being scammed - such as not delivering a product as promised or the mass distribution of unsafe toys. That being said, the FTC's guidelines and civil actions are quickly crossing the border of infringing not only on our ability to do business, but our First Amendment Rights to Free Speech. The Right to express one's self and opinions, whether it is political or business related is an inherent part of our society and the foundations of our business community. The courts have ruled that advertising is a form of free speech, which cannot be infringed upon anymore than any other opinion, written or spoken. Recently the... 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.. Birthday gift ideas Birthday gift ideas The birthday gift ideas are considered to be one of the hardest things to do because of a single and yet confusing aspect: it's hard to find something that will surely be seen as a great gift. Many people find it difficult to please their friends or family because they don't seem to find the best gift for a birthday. How easy it is to find some great birthday gift ideas There are no golden rules that can be applied to these situations, there are some guidelines and things to be careful with in order to send out the perfect gift. First of all, people should consider that the best birthday gift ideas are the ones that are personal. This means that the gift needs to send out a message to the one that receives it. There are many people who go into the first convenient store and pick up the very first thing that comes to their attention. They put the thing in a wrapping bag and that's that. This is an example of an impersonal gift as it sends out a message that the person doesn't know much about you and that's why he felt the need to buy something that hasn't got a personal touch. Another aspect that should be minded here when it comes to one of the best ways to have great birthday gift ideas is to think of other ways to offer the gift rather than just putting it on a table or wrapping it in a certain way. The key here is to come up with a method that will surely impress the ones that will be receiving your gifts. It's like coming up with a proposal method that will surely impress the one at the other hand only... more.. Size Really Does Matter - At Least When it Comes to Twitter Size Really Does Matter - At Least When it Comes to Twitter By Merle (c) 2009 MerlesWorld.com Back in the days when newsletters first hit the Internet, they were usually published in text format because many email clients did not support HTML email just yet. One of the problems many publishers faced was long URL's being split in half and not being clickable to the reader. To solve this problem, shortening services started to spring up that would take a long URL and cut it down to a reasonable size. With the popularity of Twitter and the confines of 140 characters, URL (link) shortening services are in high demand once again. When you have such a small amount of space to work with, no one wants a long URL cutting into that precious real estate. There are a variety of shortening services to choose from, each having their own specific features and benefits. Most of them do work hand in hand with Twitter, allowing you to Tweet the link once it's been shortened. If you're an avid Twitter user this is a useful feature to have. Some only provide a basic shortening service, but many allow you to view stats and metrics on your newly shortened links if you register. If you're doing any form of social media marketing, it's nice to be able to see if anyone's actually clicking on all the links you're sending out to the "Twitosphere", or posting on Facebook and other sites. Tracking will give you an indication that you're being heard and that people are actually paying attention to what you have to say. Another important thing to look for is whether or not the shortening service uses... 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.. How To Use Twitter for SEO How To Use Twitter for SEO By Kristina Weis (c) 2011 Links Tweeted on Twitter Matter for SEO It's official. Google and Bing include social signals - namely, links that get tweeted on Twitter - when determining rankings in their search results. This was confirmed by Danny Sullivan in his December 1, 2010 post on Search Engine Land, and it was likely a factor for a while before that. To put this new factor in perspective, Google uses hundreds of signals to determine how it should rank a website. These include inbound links to the site, the title tag of a web page, and site speed. Getting people to link to your site is really all about having great content that people want to share, whether on their blogs or websites, or on Twitter. As Google and other search engines increasingly take note of social activity and the links shared on sites like Twitter, having a good social media presence will become increasingly important for ranking well in search results. Many companies have been employing social media as a part of their marketing strategy, and for good reason. Now that social activity has so much impact on search engine optimization (SEO), companies that take SEO seriously know they must use social media as part of their strategy for getting onto the first page of search results. Note for those who are not familiar with Twitter: "tweets" are the 140-character (or less) messages that people post on... more.. Website Traffic Generation and the Love of the Traffic Fairy Website Traffic Generation and the Love of the Traffic Fairy By Bill Platt (c) 2010 the Phantom Writers For a number of years, many online marketers honestly thought that the only thing they needed to do to be successful online was to build a website, and the buyers would come to them. They heard all of the success stories from people who claimed that they had simply built a website, and people just started to arrive in huge numbers. The story, as it is told, is: These folks built a website, then the search engines found their websites and started showing people the link to their website. And the people using the search engines saw the link to their websites and saw that it was good. Search engine users saw the link and, as if it were the only link in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), they clicked the link by the thousands. And hoards of people came to the website with fists full of money, ready to purchase what the website was selling. Some people still believe this is how the search engines work. They have built their websites, and they are waiting anxiously for the "Traffic Fairy" to sprinkle his magic dust on their websites too, so that they can also make lots of money. Are YOU Still Waiting For The Traffic Fairy? I hope not. Those who are "waiting" for anything may wait until they realize they are flushing good money down the proverbial toilet, month after month. When they realize that they still have more money going out... more.. Could New Generic Domains Spell Trouble for Google & Webmasters?  Could New Generic Domains Spell Trouble for Google & Webmasters? By Titus Hoskins (c) 2011 ICANN, the governing body for all Internet addresses, has announced new changes on how domains will be named in the future, which could definitely spell trouble for not only Google but all the other search engines as well. But they won't be the only ones. Small webmasters and online marketers should be more concerned and troubled by the introduction of these new "generic" or "dot anything" domains. Why? Mainly because these new ICANN changes will transform and alter the web forever. The impact and range of this transformation will largely depend upon two factors. First, how wide or liberal will ICANN be in their interpretation and implementation of these new domain naming changes? Second, how quickly Internet users adjust to these changes and for that matter, whether or not, they will even use these new generic domains. However, if human nature stays true and previous Internet usage stays firm, web users will want the fastest and easiest way to find what they're looking for on the web. This is where the new "generic" domains could change the whole playing field. It could even possibly transform the web as we know it today. Starting next year - between January 2012 to April 2012 - companies can apply to ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) for a "generic" or "dot anything" domain. Instead of using say a ".com" ".net" ".biz"... a company will be able to buy a domain such as "www.hotels" or "www.hotel" for a price tag of $185,000 and a $25,000 annual fee, which will probably mean anyone searching on the... more.. How to Optimize for Yahoo! How to Optimize for Yahoo! By Ross Dunn (c) 2007 With a reported 22.1% of search traff?Yahoo is second only to Google's 64.4% (src: Hitwise ) for search user volume so it is extremely important not to forget that attaining a top ranking in Yahoo can be a big boon to the bottom line. As a result, I decided to write this update on how to attain superior rankings in Yahoo using today's useful tools and tactics. Overview: Optimizing for Yahoo! Algorithmically Yahoo is Google's much younger sibling. I say this because many of the requirements for a successful ranking mirror Google's requirement about 4 years ago and they sum up to one distinct fact; optimize your content boldly on Yahoo and you will be rewarded. When I say "boldly" I do not mean use sp@m; by nature sp@m and optimization do not mix... they are two entirely separate concepts (black and white in fact). The following are the current generalized specifications for achieving solid rankings in Yahoo. Web Site Optimization SEO tactics have not changed a great deal over the past 10 years I have been an SEO. In general terms the only effect time has had on SEO is to vary the intensity of the optimization for particular page elements. That is the rub of course; some search engines appreciate the optimization of particular page elements over others. In the case of Yahoo, this old property with a relatively young algorithm tends to favour the following elements: Title Tag: Keep your title tag as short as 5 small-medium sized words and include one complete incidence of your keyphrase. Yahoo! blatantly favours sites that include the keyphrase in... more.. How Marketers Can Use Yahoo Pipes to Increase Their Online Sales How Marketers Can Use Yahoo Pipes to Increase Their Online Sales By Rok Hrastnik While RSS end-user adoption has been relatively slow, marketers have jumped at the chance to use this new internet channel ?rease their online sal? If you're new to the world of RSS --- RSS is a simple technology that allows you to deliver your online content directly to your subscribers, other websites and the search engines. It helps you improve your content delivery, as well as ?rease your online traff?and reach, and even conduct business intelligence more easily. RSS content is delivered through so-called RSS feeds, which are just simple files that carry your online content. Each of these simple files containts multiple "stories" that you may want to deliver to your audiences, called "content items". A content item can be anything ? an article, a blog post, a whole newsletter issue, a sal?letter and so on. But there is more to RSS than simply getting your content out. One of the fields of RSS marketing is also NewsMastering, which allows you to: [a] take multiple third-party RSS feeds, [b] mix them together, [c] filter your new mix using various keywords that you're interested in, [d] use the mix and your filters to create a new stream of content, pulling together all the content items from dozens or hundreds of other RSS feeds ? but only the content items that match your filters. You can now take this stream of content and either subscribe to it yourself, if for example you want to find out immediately what the market is saying about you, what it's saying about your competitors, and what your competitors are doing themselves.... more.. kitchen cabinets Los Angeles kitchen cabinets Los Angeles The kitchen cabinets Los Angeles service has become quite famous for the way it approaches their potential clients and the way it provides the service. Many companies are interested into catching their clients in a net, but there are others who are interested into building up a relationship with their clients in order for both to best benefit from this relationship. What's new with the kitchen cabinets Los Angeles services? People are always comfortable with their lives and that is why many companies and businesses develop services and items that don't take the clients out of their comfort zone. In this way, both sides are quite happy. When talking about the kitchen cabinets Los Angeles services and why are they so famous, this is the most relevant argument that comes to mind: the fact that the cabinets are designed and transported right at the doorstep of the client. This means that he or she won't lose much of his time running around from store to store in order to find what is needed. Furthermore, the service is designed in such a way, that the user can place the order on the internet and simply wait for the magic to take place. It might seem a little bit ordinary for a company to be in the online environment alongside with the "offline" one. This is because of the fact that many businesses have discovered the benefits of using the internet for their business. Why are the kitchen cabinets Los Angeles services so special? They answer to the needs of the clients as they bring the products right at their homes. This means that all the worries, frustrations and the stress is... more.. How To Effective Link Building through Link Baiting How To Effective Link Building through Link Baiting By Rob Sullivan (c) 2006 There is a tactic out there embraced by bloggers but rarely used by typical websites. It is called Link Baiting. In this article I explain what link baiting is and how everyone, not just bloggers, can use it to build quality links. This is a topic that's been around for a while but I don't think a lot of people know what it is, or how to use it to their advantage. I think the name "Link Baiting" could be considered a black hat technique which is why most people wouldn't consider it as a legit?te organic tactic. However link baiting is merely link building with a twist: Rather than hunting out links, you are bringing the links to you through unique and popular site content. So how does Link Baiting work?more.. Caffeine, Google's Mild Stimulus Caffeine, Google's Mild Stimulus By John Sylvester (c) 2009 Although denying it has anything to do with the recent launch of Bing, Google's Matt Cutts unveiled their "secret project", one of the biggest behind-the-scenes updates to Google search in three years and is now testing the next-generation architecture of web search, called Caffeine. In fairness to Matt Cutts, he said changes to Google search have been in progress for a number of months and hence, by implication, that the launch of Bing had nothing to do with the development of Caffeine. Moreover, I would hesitate to guess, it has far more to do with speed in real-time, so as to address its place in step with the social networking giants. Although initially unavailable for testing because of "system maintenance", Matt Cutts, Google's enforcer of the Google Webmaster Guidelines and the man who cracked down on link spam, has invited us all to test it. He said Google hasn't made an update of this magnitude since 2006 and that it will make internet search much faster and more accurate than ever before, although "currently, even power users won't notice much of a difference at all". He went on to say: "The new infrastructure sits 'under the hood' of Google's search engine, which means that most users won't notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we're opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback." The new architecture is said to include size, indexing, speed, accuracy and ranking changes and Google is asking searchers to give it a try it and report their feedback. While the version is still a pre-beta release at http://www2.sandbox.google.com, you... more.. Medical Billing Software Medical Billing Software   When talking about the advantages of the Medical Billing Software, there are several that come to mind. The most relevant of them all refers to the improvements that it brings to the table in terms of proficiency and efficiency. There are many doctors who thing that this is a reliable too, especially when it comes to a busy day at work. The proficient work of the Medical Billing Software First of all, the first thing that people need to take into consideration is how the medical field did improve with the latest systems. Right until recent years, the systems that were used didn't imply the use of computers and things were a little bit complicated as the clerk was required to go through various pieces of information before actually reaching the ones that were of interest for that particular situation. This is an aspect that took a lot of time and especially a lot of energy and this wasn't something that could be afforded then. The Medical Billing Software and the system that implied a structure in the patient's files were just what was needed in order to rise the level of efficiency that the medical system needed. Another great aspect that was changed here was related to the idea of patient control. Many people managed to change their prescription by saying that the files were wrong and they were given other dosages. By implementing... more.. What Makes a Website Design a Good One? What Makes a Website Design a Good One? By Laura MacPherson (c) 2009 A lot of people can recognize good design when they see it on the web. But most people don't really know what makes that design good. How do you define "good design?" Is it subjective, like your favorite flavor of ice cream? Although there is some subjectivity within good design, there are artistic principles that good design is built from. Here are a few that form the foundation of good design. 1. Proximity Because items that are in close proximity to one another become one visual unit, items that are related to one another should be grouped together. Laying out related items on a website page this way helps the eye associate the information and enables the viewer to mentally categorize the information easily. The flip side of this principle is that items that are not related should not be placed in close proximity to one another. The purpose of the principle of proximity is to organize information in a way that enables viewers to quickly and easily comprehend. When information is organized, people are more likely to read it and respond. People are also more likely to remember information that is organized. How can you determine if items form a visual unit? Squint your eyes and look at the page on a website. Now count the number of times your eye stops as it views the page. On a page that is using the principle of proximity well, your eye will stop three to five times. In other words, there will be three to five groups of information for the eye to comprehend separately. 2. Alignment You've seen website page layouts where the text and graphics... 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.. 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.. Google Instant Previews - SEO & Marketing  Google Instant Previews - SEO & Marketing Article By Titus Hoskins (c) 2010 Google wasn't satisfied with just having Instant Search, now it has introduced something called Instant Previews. Searchers and web users can now browse a large instant "preview" of a site's content by placing the cursor over the small magnifying glass displayed beside each listing. These previews are large and Google sometimes highlights a major paragraph or quote from each displayed site. Searchers can get a general look at the layout and design of a site, onpage graphics and bold headlines can usually be seen from the preview. However, small print and the general content of the page can't be read, so searchers will have to click through to your site if they want to read your information. Assuming of course, they don't find what they're looking for in the headlines or bold print. Whether searchers will use this new feature remains to be seen, but these instant previews could have some ramifications on who gets the "click through" to their site. One would also reason that getting the top spot in the rankings have diminished somewhat, if searchers can quickly preview all of the top 10 listings and then make their decision. So they might not click the top listing, but decide one lower down is worth clicking. This could make any listing on the first page more worth having, not just the top one. This doesn't really affect any of your SEO strategies and you should be optimizing for the search engines as usual. After all, getting those top rankings for your targeted keywords in the major search engines is what brings in the quality traffic 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.. Black Hat, White Hat and Big G Black Hat, White Hat and Big G By Peter Adamson (c) 2009 I read a lot of articles and postings regarding Internet marketing, SEO and the like. One frequently recurring theme is the distinction between black hat, grey hat and white hat methods. Interlaced with the use and abuse of these terms is the notion of what is "ethical" and what is not. It seems to be generally assumed that anything black hat is somehow unethical. More disconcerting yet, anything that Google frowns upon is often deemed unethical as well. I would like to clear the air about these terms which seem to mean all things to all men. First of all, let's put to one side for a moment the recently coined terms which euphemistically refer to SEO techniques under hats of various colors. These are not dictionary terms, and anyone can make them mean whatever they want. However, the words "ethical" and "unethical" have very strict meanings, have had for generations and their misuse can call into question the personal integrity of individuals. So what does ethical mean anyway? According to dictionary.com: 1. pertaining to or dealing with morals or the principles of morality; pertaining to right and wrong in conduct. 2. being in accordance with the rules or standards for right conduct or practice, esp. the standards of a profession: It was not considered ethical for physicians to advertise. So doing something unethical is first and foremost immoral and wrong. Additionally, it may be implicitly wrong because it violates an accepted code of conduct adopted by a recognized professional body, whose moral judgement is above reproach. Given these definitions, when would Internet marketing cross the line into the realm of... 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.. Mineral Foundation mineral foundation People are obsessed with their outside image because it is an icon that represents them in the world, just like a business card. That is the main reason why most of them choose to use different cosmetic products or items, so that they have a better image and be seen as great persons. The interesting part of them all here is that not all the products work the same for all the people. The solution brought up by the mineral foundation products First of all, people are designed to be different. Their entire structure is different from the experiences that the have, to their psychological structure and finally to their physical structure as well. That's why various products work different for diverse people and that's why some of them are better than others. One such great example in this area are the mineral foundation products that are designed to be in the best interest of the user. Many people are acquainted with the regular products and they are so used with them that it might seem hard to listen about others. The fact is that these products are designed to come and help the user with his problems, rather than just hide them. They are made to solve whatever the skin has in order to prevent various things to appear on it. Many of people around the world have been using mineral foundation to hide certain imperfections on their face and they were surprised to find out that the problems were simply eradicated. This is due to the natural process from which the products are made and that is why this type of products are worth looking into. It sounds, great but what about the price? There would be some who would say that this is an expensive process and that's... 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.. Top 10 Tools to TurboCharge Your Marketing Top 10 Tools to TurboCharge Your Marketing By Donna Gunter (c) 2005  Most business owners hate the entire marketing process. I find marketing to be an energizing exercise to showcase my creativity, however, and enjoy it -- when I do it. However, I fall into the same trap as mill?s of other small business owners -- I'm so busy with clients (my profit-generating days) that I often push aside my marketing (my business development days). So, to aid me in my marketing efforts, I try and "get the most bang for the buck" out of what I actually end up doing -- and try to do that with a minimal amount of effort. These are 10 tools that I use in my marketing efforts that help me turbocharge my marketing: 1. Assessment Generator: Like to create an interactive survey or assessment that will help your visitor learn something about his/her life or business? With Assessment Generator, you can create online assessments that you can post to your website to increase your traff?and attract more clients. 2. AudioAcrobat: AudioAcrobat makes audio streaming fast and simple, whether you want to add an audio greeting or audio test?nials to your website or send out an audio postcard or record a teleclass. 3. Ezine Director: Ezine Director is a great service for creating, mailing and reporting back on the success of yournewsletter. I love to be able to see how many readers opened my newsletter, who opened the newsletter, and what links they clicked on from the newsletters. EzineDirector offers the service fr?of charge if you send out less than 249 emails per month. 4. FreeAudioConferencing.com: Ever need to meet with colleagues, associates or even family members at a distance but don't want to do it... more.. Website Speed Penalty - Google is Testing Your Load Time! Website Speed Penalty - Google is Testing Your Load Time! By Aaron Steinheinkel (c) 2010   After Google started using website speed as a parameter in their ranking algorithms every webmaster has a good reason to keep an eye on the page load speed of their website. Google's bending over backwards to spread the word about this new speed penalty is proof in itself since big G is usually very secretive about pending algorithm changes. From the announcement we learn that the speed penalty was introduced following experiments by Google that revealed the impact website speed has on Internet users. But the results of the experiment come as no surprise even for someone that has started to use the Internet recently; users prefer websites that load faster and tend to spend more time on such websites. However, the search engine giant has been careful to state that even though website speed is now a factor, it is not the primary parameter for determining results. The quality and relevance of information is still the determining factor, but if your website speed is slow, you will receive a Google penalty. This implies that it is important for you as a webmaster start to assess the speed of your website to determine whether you are moving further down the search engine results pages (SERPs) because your website is slower than your direct competitors. How Can Google Know Your Page Speed? It is vital that you understand the basics of how Google's algorithm determines your website speed and thus your SERP ranking. The search engine uses two main factors when it comes to speed assessment. First, your website will receive a higher speed ranking if it responds... 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.. All You Need to Know About YouTube's Promoted Videos All You Need to Know About YouTube's Promoted Videos By Merle (c) 2010 MerlesWorld.com Way back in 2006, Google purchased YouTube.com for an alleged reported figure of 1.65 bill? dollars. And, like with everything Google does, they've added their own special "Google Touches" over the last several years, turning it into one of the most popular video destination websites online today. Need proof? According to Comscore.com's December 2009 "Videos Viewed Report", YouTube was ranked as the top U.S. video site serving up 13.2 billion of the total 33.2 billion videos that were viewed online in the U.S. for that month alone. That's a lot of people watching mega videos. For more stats see tinyurl.com/y8jbnqh. Furthermore, according to Google, YouTube has twenty hours of new video uploaded every minute and 420 million unique visitors per month. Watching online videos and sharing them with others has become an Internet obsession. People really love watching videos. Remember the old song "Video Killed the Radio Star"? In today's marketplace, it should be called "Video Killed the Television Set". What if I told you there's a way to harness that huge audience in your onl? marketing campaign? Now you can with YouTube's new advertising program called "Promoted Videos". YouTube and its other site, Google Adwords, have partnered together in this latest ad serving project. When promoting your videos on YouTube, they'll also be shown across Google's Content Network, aka sites running Google Adsense on them. The purpose of "Promoted Videos" is to help your videos stand out from the millions of others on the site. At the time of this writing, they're available in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada,... more.. 3 Fast and Simple Ways to Dominate Google Rankings! 3 Fast and Simple Ways to Dominate Google Rankings! By Michael Small (c) 2008 I got into search engine optimization back in 1998. Of course back then SEO was a lot simpler than today. All the tricks like keyword spamming and invisible key phrases worked like a charm. Better still, little tricks like these were acceptable. Not anymore. In fact, most old-school tricks don't work today and many can get your pages banned. This is great news for you. Over the next few minutes I'll show you how to make Google absolutely LOVE your web pages and help you jump to the top! This is all you need to know... Search engines today place 90% or more of their ranking priorities on content and links. Keywords are still important, but more so in the text of your pages than in any sort of META tags. Simple, right? It really is. The first step is to find the best keywords and place them just right in your web page text. Next you need to get great inbound links. And finally, you need to monitor your progress closely (and that of your competition.) Part 1: How to Find the Best Keywords Google gets more searches than any other search engine so let's peek into their database. Check out https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and type in any keyword or phrase you can think of that you believe your target audience is looking for. Not only will it give you tons of data on that and related keywords, it will also provide "Additional Keywords to Consider", which is a section at the bottom of the page. BIG TIP: Try to... more.. Texas Hill Country Land for Sale Texas Hill Country Land for Sale The Texas Hill Country Land for Sale offers come for the ones that really have a thing for making a smart investment. There are so many things that one can do with the real estate industry as it's a matter of time to actually earn real money from this investment. The single rule there is here refers to having a little bit of patience. The golden rule of the Texas Hill Country Land for Sale opportunities Firstly, people find it very interesting that now is the perfect time to make an investment here, rather than waiting fir the recession to pass. Many would take up the second choice as it is much safer and it is much comfortable for them. The first one implies making a risk, but so do the businesses and the investments that bring money to the table. The only difference there is when it comes to the Texas Hill Country Land for Sale opportunities and how they bring a certain amount of profit to the investor and other types of investments is based in simple logic. The recession is currently making some devastation in most of the fields of the world, leading to some dramatic changes in the homes of many. But the recession is the one factor that has helped the value of the land to drop considerably in the last couple of years. This means that the ones that are interested in buying a piece of land now, should follow their instinct and go for it. The second point of view here refers to how much one is willing to make out of the investment in the real estate industry. There are some who are... more.. SEO Tips: Get More Traffic with these 10 Important Inbound Links SEO Tips: Get More Traffic with these 10 Important Inbound Links By Donna Gunter (c) 2010 Don't overlook your inbound linking strategy as you think about search engine optimization for your site. An inbound link is a hyperlink back to your site from another web site. The one constant and reliable strategy in search engine optimization is that sites with a variety of high quality backlinks rank higher in the search engine results pages. Why are these links to your site important? They can can...     ? bring potential customers to your site when they click on the link     ? boost the number of visitors to your web site     ? dramatically improve your search engine rankings Even though there are software packages on the market that help automate the linking process, use them sparingly, if at all. The only way to succeed in linking strategies is (aside from creating useful content that will encourage inbound links) by manually creating the links. That's a hard fact to swallow, given how I like to automate as much of my marketing as I can. Here are the 10 most important inbound links you must have to your site: 1. Directory Links Directories are indexes of online sites, typically organized by category. Links back to your site from directories like Yahoo Directory and DMOZ.org are very valuable. DMOZ.org is edited by human editors, and while it's free, it may take awhile for your site to be added. Getting added to Yahoo's Directory costs $299/year. 2. Press Releases If you're writing press releases, make sure they are optimized for keywords that someone would use to find a business like yours and include links back to your site, as well. Once written, you can have your press... 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.. 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.. Dreaming of Pay Per Cl? Sausage Dreaming of Pay Per Cl? Sausage By Jim Hedger (c) 2007 The problem might have been that Jeffrey had heard the same set of quest?s once too often or it could just be the night noises one hears when traveling in strange cities. It could have been an undigested slice of deep-dish pizza from the evening before or a phantom blues-riff floating in his head. Whatever it was, it was 4AM on the morning of the last day of the Chicago Search Engine Strategies conference and Jeffrey K. Rohrs was wide awake. At 9:00AM he was scheduled to moderate a panel titled In House: Big SEO. Two hours after that he was to moderate another panel, the one that was keeping him up at night, In House: Big PPC panel. Five hours before presiding over two long sessions, and Jeffrey wasn't able to sleep. He wasn't nervous. Jeffrey is an SES veteran having appeared on or moderated large-attendance sessions for several years. The day before he had moderated for panels: Search Arbitrage, Dealing with Affiliates, Auditing Paid Listings and Cl? Fraud, and Search and Regulated Industries. So what could be running through his head at a time when he clearly should have been fast asleep? Jeffrey was thinking about PPC, Von Bismarck, Garlinghouse and sausages in that lucid but dream like state that comes when you wake from your sleep with a start. Jeffrey had had a revelation that jolted him awake so he pulled up his laptop and started writing what would become known as The Sausage Manifesto. As legend has it, nineteenth century German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck once remarked, "Laws are like sausages. It is better not to see... more.. Hidden Content Sources for Your Website Hidden Content Sources for Your Website By Kim Roach (c) 2006 As I travel through the Google search engine, there is one element that defines almost all of the top-ranking websites. It's great content. People come online for information and those that offer the best content reap the greatest rewards. Unfortunately, this type of content is hard to come by. In most cases, you either have to spend hours in front of the keyboard or outsource the job to others. Both of these options are very costly. One requires your valuable time and the other requires an ?estment of around $10 - $20 per article. That's why I have scoured the net in search of valuable fr?content sources. I'm still not quite sure why I'm revealing my treasured piles of fr?content, but I certainly hope you enjoy them. One of my favorite sources of content is public domain. This comprises the body of knowledge without a copyright. Anyone can use this material for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Below are some excellent sources for public domain material. Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg is a library of 18,000 fr?ebooks whose copyright has expired. "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", "Pride and Prejudice", "The Time Machine", "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and "The Canterbury Tales" have all passed into the public domain. This means that you can put these on your website or even sell them in electronic or book format. Explore a wealth of fr?content at Gutenberg.org. Archive.org At Archive.org you can find th?nds of works that are currently in the public domain. Want to put some cartoons on... more.. The Evolution / Revolution of The Abrasive Flap Disc The Evolution / Revolution of The Abrasive Flap Disc        The object of the invention of the abrasive flap disc was to increase life and efficiency of the abrasive material used in the surface preparation of fabricated metal. Up until the mid 1990?s, the most common method was the use of resin bonded abrasive grinding wheels and resin fibre sanding discs. With the invention of the abrasive flap disc, all that has changed.          The design of a rotary abrasive disc requires balancing the operational life of the disc against the ?aggressiveness? (how much surface material is removed) of the abrasive. The old method required a grinding wheel to ?knock? the weld down and a resin fibre disc to sand the weld so as to blend the two pieces of metal together. Aside from the inefficiency of the two-step process, resin fibre discs proved to have to glaring weakness:  glazing and loading.        A resin fibre disc has large and small abrasive particles bonded to a fibre substrate. During use, the large abrasive particles, which are first to contact the work surface, begin to wear and become dull. This leads to flat spots on the disc. The flattened particles, too dull to... 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.. Google's New Page Layout Algorithm Penalizes  Google's New Page Layout Algorithm Penalizes "Above-The-Fold" Advertising A SPN Exclusive Article By David Jackson (c) 2012 On Wednesday, February 23, 2011, a category 5 hurricane named "Panda" swept through the Gulf of Google devastating businesses large and small alike. The hurricane was reportedly named after one of Google's engineers. So what was the reason for this catastrophic and "game-changing" update? Well, according to Google: "This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites - sites which are low-value, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites - sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on. It is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that's exactly what this change does." (Source: Google Blog) Mission accomplished. Anyway, in the aftermath of the Panda update, there are 11 important SEO facts I've learned based on my own personal experiences, the experiences of my clients, and from listening to top SEO professionals across the Internet. The above passages are from an article I wrote last July titled, Google Panda Update: 11 Important SEO Facts You Should Know. In item #7 of the 11 SEO facts I wrote: 7. Avoid Excessive Advertisements or Images "Be mindful of having too many advertisements on any of your pages, in relation to "meaningful" content. There seems to be a direct correlation between the number of advertisements on a page (especially above the fold advertising), and the overall ranking of a page. Make sure you have plenty of... 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.. Does Your Marketing Stop When Your Content Starts? Does Your Marketing Stop When Your Content Starts? By Mark Nunney (c) 2010 Your website's content will get noticed, get read, and get customers if you use your headline and first paragraph to let readers know what is in it for them. Here, I'll introduce you to some techniques you can use to make that happen. This article is an edited version of a chapter of Wordtracker's The Website Content Recipe Book - 21 irresistible content ideas to wow visitors and boost your search engine optimization. Don't Stop Marketing - Every Page is a Marketing Page Visitors may first enter your site through almost any page. And for various reasons no matter what you do, many will not read more than one page. Therefore, to maximize response you must treat every page as a marketing page. So add adverts to where they will be seen - a subject I plan to write about next week (look for 'How to make your articles sell'). But only a small percentage of readers will respond when first seeing even quality adverts. You'll have to work a bit harder for the rest of your readers. You'll have to use your pages' content to make them consider a marketing proposal (perhaps another day). You must prove that you (and your brand) are expert at delivering what's wanted, and can be trusted. To do that, your page must first be read. Who is Your Site for... and What Do They Want? When you're busy creating content, it's easy to forget that your website exists to sell your products and services to particular groups of people. And even if you wouldn't forget such a thing - can... more.. 3 Simple Tips to Make Your Website User-Friendly 3 Simple Tips to Make Your Website User-Friendly By Lindsay Glass (c) 2008 The one assumption you need to make to follow along with me in this article is "People Buy People." It can be a hard concept for many people to understand and agree with. However, millions of spent dollars have proven this premise to me, so I consider it more of a law than a theory. If you understand the rule that people buy people, then your website MUST have a pleasant atmosphere that allows the visitor to connect with you, your company and your products. By now, you've heard me talk about our Celebrity Branding philosophies, and the fact that you need your picture on your website goes without saying. But, there are some smaller, often overlooked, areas that shouldn't be forgotten. Here are three simple tip to make your website user-friendly: 1. Navigation The navigation on your site is probably its most important element. If visitors find your site confusing or cannot successfully navigate through it, they will leave. Make your navigation bar as simple as possible. One of the worst mistakes is using an expanding navigation bar that makes the visitor scroll over it in order for the menu to reveal their options. Most often, this type of navigation bar has too many choices; your visitor doesn't know where to go, so they get flustered and leave. Navigation on your site is an art, and you should direct your visitors through a logical path to where YOU want them to go (not to where they think they want to go). One way to do this is through call to... 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.. Putting The "Ad" Into Adwords Putting The "Ad" Into Adwords By Peter Astley-Sparke (c) 2008 When you're new to AdWords, it's tempting to devote far too much time and energy in trying to craft that "killer" ad. But the truth is that writing ads is a science, not an art. Here are a few of the rules. 1) Don't Fly Blind... In over five years developing AdWords campaigns, we've haven't ever seen a profitable example that didn't track conversions. AdWords Conversion Tracking is simple to install and a "must" for measuring ad performance. Remember, by itself the Cl?-Through- Rate (CTR) of an ad tells you nothing about the ROI it's delivering. We've seen many examples of ads with a lower CTR, but higher conversion rate. Google Analytics obviously adds a great deal more data, but takes time to master. However, one feature worth using immediately is its ability to tell you which ad position yields the best results. Finally, don't forget the AdWords Reports section. This has improved significantly over the past year, and the Search Query Performance report is a real asset in optimizing keywords and ad copy. 2) Cut out the Middle Man... In this case, the "middle man" is Google. When developing and testing your ads, it's vital to put yourself in control as far as possible: Delivery Method: By default, Google spreads the delivery of your ads evenly throughout the day, ensuring you don't exhaust your daily budget (and they get to spend as much of it as possible). However, it also serves to mask the true demand for your product or service. We have seen many cases where ads are more profitable at certain... more.. Small Events Spell Seismic Shifts in Search Small Events Spell Seismic Shifts in Search By Jim Hedger (c) 2006 I am going to step way out on a limb. I suspect, and am willing to propose; this short period is a major transition point in the history of search. I'm marking it in my archive, if only because a niece or nephew of mine might study economics and ask about it one day. A number of events over the past three weeks have set in motion a chain of events that will unfold over the remaining months of 2006, setting the stage for a bizarre and highly fluid 2007. On or about November 1, 2006, three interesting press releases found their ways into my inbox. While meditating over them with Hypertext The Cat (she who watches like vulture) and a cup of coffee, it occurred to me that Nov 1 was a watershed day in the history of online advertising. The first news item is extremely important for organic search and for information distribution in general. Ask and Lycos announced an alliance with Ask providing the organic, image and sponsored search results for Lycos users and Lycos pushing Ask search products. While the vast majority of search analysts will likely see this as the least important development in the first week of November, the combination of up-and-coming Ask with the old but still popular property Lycos signals a small shift in the search engine landscape. "We selected Ask.com over other providers because of its great search technology and tools like Zoom related search, which cannot be found on other engines," said Brian Kalinowski, CEO of Lycos, in a press statement. "By partnering with Ask.com, we aim to deliver... more.. Ten Ways To Get Web Traffic Fast - And Free Ten Ways To Get Web Traffic Fast - And Free By James Gladwin (c) 2009   There are several ways to get website traffic fast and free, and I'm going to share ten niche ways with you. Article Submission You don't need to be an award winning expert on the topic you are writing about - just pick an area that is related to the theme of your website, do a bit of research using a search engine and before you know it you will have more knowledge on that subject than most. Write in a relaxed, straightforward way. And, of course, when you add your details at the end of your article, make certain that you include your web address as well.   URL Submission This sounds so obvious, yet so many people overlook it. Website URL submission is about getting more links to your website to help your website get ranked high on major search engines, thus getting more visitor traffic by, well, submitt? your website URL to the major search engines. You can buy or... more.. Getting Your Site's SEO Right Getting Your Site's SEO Right By Titus Hoskins (c) 2010 You simply must get the SEO part right. Mainly because proper SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will boost your chances of obtaining those all important top rankings in the search engines. Besides, a well optimized site or page, will go a long way in weathering any abrupt changes on the web. Google Instant is a perfect example of how things can change overnight. While it didn't change SEO per se, it did change how people use Google and how the results are shown. Searchers don't get the same chance to type in their long-tail keyword phrases because they are constantly and instantly being bombarded by suggested links... so much so that getting those top positions for shorter root keywords has gotten more important and this has increased everybody's competition because those popular shorter keywords have always been the most competitive. Probably every webmaster or online marketer knows that in order to get top rankings in the search engines you have to have quality one-way backlinks from other high ranked keyword-related sites. This will more than likely be the main determining ranking factor for most search engines, especially the all important Google. You simply need good quality one-way links and plenty of them to rank high. However, there are many more SEO factors which come into play, especially if you're in a very competitive niche and targeting highly cherished lucrative keyword phrases which bring in the revenue. Then in these competitive situations, you must get all your SEO ducks lined up proper, if you want to be a player. Some of... more.. Organic SEO or Pay-Per-Click Advertising... Which Should You Choose? Organic SEO or Pay-Per-Click Advertising... Which Should You Choose? By Scott Buresh (c) 2006 When people hear about online marketing, they often think of two of the more popular methods that a company can use to enhance its visibility on the Web: organic search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising. In an ideal world, you would use both strategically to maximize your site's profile. However, budgetary constraints often make this impossible, and trying to do both on a limited budget or with minimal resources can result in neither campaign producing ideal results. In this case, it's usually better to focus on one or the other. But which is best for you? Organic Search Engine Optimization Organic search engine optimization campaigns offer several distinct advantages over pay-per-click advertising campaigns, as many recent studies have shown. What follows is a brief listing of some of the findings. Propensity to Cl? Study after study indicates people are less likely to cl? on paid search ads rather than on results from organic search engine optimization. For example, one study found that search users are up t?x times more likely to cl? on the first few organic results than they are to choose any of the paid results [1], while an eye tracking study [2] showed that 50 percent of users begin their search by scanning the top organic results. Other studies have shown that only 30 percent of search engine users cl? on paid listings, leaving an overwhelming 70 percent who are clicking the organic listings. [3] And a 2003 study found that 85 percent of searchers report clicking on paid links in less than 40 percent of all of their searches, and... more.. Social Media Marketing is Dying  Social Media Marketing is Dying By Duncan Wierman (c) 2010 If nothing is certain, one thing is - social media is losing its magic. What once was a new and improved way to keep in touch with your closest loved ones has become just another sales pitch to convince you to sign up to another dreadful business prospect, newsletter, product, or service. There is no opening or closing - simply raw advertisements that lack sincerity. The people advertising their products don't care about you or your general interests. They're too set on the idea that you're going to sign up and turn them into a success. What's wrong with this picture? Could it be that the advertisements lack taste and real value, or could it be that the people who want your business care less about who you are and what you are interested in? What business entrepreneurs are forgetting is that they are on the other side of the fence of social media. They are on the advertising end, which means without a real connection to the "the people," they are getting nowhere. At some point, a real connection needs to be established or otherwise all efforts to make a sale or spread the word are pointless. The truth? No one cares about you unless you care about them, particularly when it comes to social media. Let's say that you've got an account with Facebook. Each day when you see those tiny red notifications, you're dead sure that they signify a message from your friends or family. Unfortunately, you open your inbox and all you see are loud advertisements. What do you do? You delete them, and you do so... 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. 12 Simple Steps to Explode Your Site Traffic Using Online Social Media 12 Simple Steps to Explode Your Site Traffic Using Online Social Media By Dave Foster (c) 2007 Last year saw the arrival of online social media. If you operate a website or blog, you would be well advised to realign your site to exploit the popular social media sites for increased traffic. You should also introduce social media components to your site because web users are experiencing these new forms of interaction on more and more sites and they will have an expectation of the same from your site too. If you want to attract repeat visitors and want them to stay longer, your focus for the next few months 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 amongst other users. The social aspects of these sites allow users to setup social communities, invite friends and share common interests. You don't have to change your site immediately to take advantage of these new technologies. Introduce small changes incrementally and you will be well on your way to measure up to your visitors' new expectations. Step 1. 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 people they don't know. Create an About Me page to l? your achievements, skills and aspirations. 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.. 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.. 10 Tips For Creating a Brilliant Landing Page 10 Tips For Creating a Brilliant Landing Page By Joanna Colek (c) 2009 Building a great landing page should be on top of your priority list if you want your website visitors transformed into customers. While a great looking website can grab the attention of your visitors, a strong landing page will keep them involved and get them to buy your products/services. Wikipedia defines a landing page as: The page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, and that is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines. Wikipedia's definition sums it up nicely but there is certainly more to a great landing page then relevant and keyword rich content. Here are 10 things that you should be looking at when optimizing a landing page: - Relevant Content A landing page's content should be directly related to organic search results, PPC campaign, anchor text in inbound links and any other targeted inbound advertising, online and offline. If people don't get what they expect, they will be more likely to leave. - Multiple Landing Pages A landing page shouldn't necessarily be your homepage. In many instances a homepage is a good landing page. However, for more targeted traff?and better results, you want a landing page to be focused on a specific offering and specific call for action. To accomplish this, a given website should have multiple landing pages. Create some deep link landing pages that will focus on a specific proposition and your conversion rate will be higher. - Focus on Functionality More and more visitors seem to judge the professionalism and... more.. How To Make Your Backlinks Count (Part I) How To Make Your Backlinks Count (Part I) By Serge Botans I think that we all know now how important backlinks are for the search engine ranking success of our web site. I also think that we all know now that one way to get these backlinks is by doing link exchanges with other sites. (For the uninitiated, backlinks are links on other web sites that point to ours.) But do we know that there are various things we need to ch? before agreeing to exchanging links with another web site? After all, the whole point of exchanging links with others is to benefit from the ranking of their web sites. It is therefore imperative that we investigate ahead of time as to whether exchanging links with another site is to our advantage or not. I have thought about this whole idea of link exchange preparation and came up with a 3-step process that involves an analysis of 3 pages of the web site we want to exchange links with. The 3 pages are: the home page where we will need to ch? 7 things about that page, the directory page: this is the page that contains a list of categories that the site has put together in a bid to organize its link exchanges. We need to ch? 7 things here, the backlink page: this is the page that will contain our backlink. We also need to ch? 7 things here. Note that in some cases, the 'target' web site will not have a directory page. In that case, our analysis will be a 2-step one rather than a 3-step one. In this first article, of maybe 2 or 3,... 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.. Baby Gift Ideas Baby gift ideas When trying to discover what is that people are searching when it comes to Baby gift ideas, there is an interesting aspect that arises and intrigues some people. Many of them don't actually know what to buy, due to the fact that it is hard to determine what a baby might need. There are certain things that can be minded in order to actually come up with a gift that will surely hit its target. The details you should know about Baby gift ideas The very first aspect that needs to be taken into account is the gender of the child. This is very important as studies have proven the impact that certain things have on a baby's perspective on life from its early age. This means that one of the best ways to approach this aspect is to know whatever the baby is a boy or a girl. There are many Baby gift ideas that are suitable for a boy rather than a girl and the other way around. General gifts can be an option, but they will be seen as something with a lack of a personal touch. The other aspect that can be taken into account refers to the idea of taking to the parents to see what they need in order to raise the baby. A proper conversation will lead to one of the best Baby gift ideas that you can come up with. The parents don't need to know exactly what your intentions are as this may lead to an awkward situation, but you can easily establish what the baby needs after... more.. How Blogs Can Break or Make Your SEO Strategy How Blogs Can Break or Make Your SEO Strategy By Jon Rognerud Blogs are a great way to get started authoring content and sharing your knowledge and insights with other people. Plus, mix work and play - and you can get rich doing this. You don't have to be an MBA-accredited author by any means. However, there are some rules to play by, and I'll break those out below. We will talk about the top blogs, practicalities around blogs and creative ways to get started, including how you could possibly ruin your good-standing ranking and having to change your Search Engine Optimization strategy. Blogs - Structure and Layout I work in the field of Search Engine Optimization. It has a wide range of options, from the technical to the more strategic. Tons of discussions are found on off-page and on-page factors, latent semantic analysis, content scope, quality, HTML/CSS development, site navigational structure, spamdexing, 301 redirects, plagiarism, link strategies, directories, blogs, search engine news, email marketing tips & online (internet) marketing. Most all of the top 10 SEO firms out there agree that blogs are a "must" for driving traff?and to get established in the Internet community. There is a right way, and a wrong way. We'll discuss these below. Be warned - too many folks out there are thinking about "how to outbeat the search engines" and use the latest-and-greatest (blogs) to elevate their rankings, essentially via content and blog sp@m. Blogs are a powerful way to get seen by the search bots. Blogger (Google's own) is an important key to the puzzle, but there are many. The Un-Official Top 7... 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.. Small Budget Promotion Techniques for Web Designers Small Budget Promotion Techniques for Web Designers: Direct mail: Direct mail is still one of the cheapest ways of getting your message out to a large audience. The cost of a well presented direct mail piece is easily justifiable given the almost guaranteed results if you target your audience correctly. Make sure you copy is done by a professional direct mail copywriter ? it's worth hiring their services for a one page letter. Most people think they can write good copy but most cannot ? even people who draft marketing copy frequently do not know how to write good direct mail copy.   Chamber of Commerce membership: Joining a chamber introduces you to other businesses and other businesses to your talents. An advertising listing is often included in most chamber memberships and a majority of businesses belong to local chambers. Do not assume that because you are small a chamber can not help you or has no role for you to play. Offer to do a class on web design. Connect with other IT professionals.   Rotary membership: Rotaries are good places to meet business leaders and introduce yourself and your company to the local economy. Also, because rotaries focus on issues affecting the business community, you will get a good idea of how the local economy succeeds and what it is facing. Involving yourself in a rotary also says a lot about you as a community member. Remember that most successful businesses start local and ?go global? after they have established themselves as viable.   Sponsor local education programs: These are different than high school sponsored adult learning in that they are usually sponsored by local organizations or charity groups. They help teach adults new skills. Getting involved in these types of classes will give you... more.. 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.. A Blog Could Revitalize Your Website A Blog Could Revitalize Your Website By Raymond Carr (c) 2010 O.K. so you think you have an idea or even a product to sell through your brand new internet business. Internet marketing is a brilliant business to be in. There are boundless opportunities to run online businesses which can make incredible amounts of money, if you have established that there is a market for your chosen niche or product, and have done the necessary research. All set, ready to go? Er, not quite. You should establish a presence in your market before you unleash your product to the world. If you are about to start an internet business, then you should be wondering about attracting traffic to your site. There are many advertising options available, but if money is tight, some of these options may not seem practical. Advertising can be expensive especially if you are not too sure what you are doing. Money can be swallowed up very quickly if you do not study advertising techniques. Promotion can take many weeks or even months to show results, and then may not be effective. Many courses and books sold by some of the gurus are sometimes out of date. Outdated material and tactics which you pay for then find they just do not work. You may have an excellent website, but bear in mind blogging is now probably more effective than a static site. Of course, the most traditional way of running an online business over the last few years has been websites, and is still a very successful method. However, blogging has moved to the fore because search engines seem to favor blogs over the standard static website. For those who can constantly add to or update their... 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.. How to Troubleshoot Dropped Search Engine Rankings How to Troubleshoot Dropped Search Engine Rankings By Ross Dunn (c) 2008 Are you baffled about a recent drop in your search engine rankings? Do you know where to start and get a handle on what the problem might be and how to remedy it? One option to consider is using search engine forums as a resource. They are full of questions from people who have experienced similar situations and are great resources for an answer or two. But let's say you really want to get to the bottom of the problem and you want to do it yourself. The following are some of the beginning steps StepForth takes when evaluating dropped rankings. Retrace Your Steps Write a list of everything that anyone has done to your site within the past 3 weeks. Now look for anything that could have negatively impacted your content, site structure, or the reliability of your URLs. Once you write down the course of events the answer might pop right out at you. Here are some common situational culprits: You just moved your website to a different hosting provider: did your site experience much, if any, downtime during the switch over? Quality hosting companies will allow you to setup your site on their servers before the switch takes place so that downtime is minimized if not removed entirely. If a search engine happened to visit your site while it was down, there is a small chance your rankings would be negatively affected, but it will only happen for a short period. Once the search engine re-indexes your website everything should be back in order. The... more.. 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.. 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.. Five Crucial Components of Web Design Five Crucial Components of Web Design By Woody Longacre (c) 2009 Professional website developers know the importance of web design and the role it plays in making a website successful. Designing a successful website is no easy task, especially for someone who is new to the world of web development. With the help of web development applications many people can and do create decent websites. But decent in most cases is not good enough to make a site successful from a traffic or financial standpoint. There are five crucial components of web design that you must focus on in order to make a site valuable to its visitors and successful for you.     ? SEO - Getting free traffic to your site.     ? Usability - Ease of navigating around the site and finding desired information quickly.     ? Aesthetics - Visual appeal.     ? Content - Valid, up-to-date, relevant information.     ? Graphics - Eye candy that relays relevant visual information to the visitor. SEO Before you ever lay down a byte of HTML code for a site, you have to know and understand at least the basics of SEO and how it fits into the design. SEO is the art of designing a site in a fashion that gives the site an advantage for obtaining free and abundant traffic. The number one aspect of SEO is selecting keywords relevant to your site. The keywords you select should be based on high usage, low competition and relevancy to your topic. Once you select keywords you can then begin the development of your site. Keep in mind keywords are a critical aspect of the design. The keywords you choose will be applied within the design in strategic fashion to benefit the flow of traffic to... more.. cabinetry Ventura cabinetry Ventura When talking with the satisfied clients of the cabinetry Ventura services, there are several aspects that pop up and are quite relevant to this material. One of the main qualities of this service is the fact that they put the interest and the desire of the client first. This means that if an order has been placed now and here, the results are soon to arrive at your doorstep. The flash of the cabinetry Ventura services One of the first ideas in this material refers to the efficiency of the system that was developed by the cabinetry Ventura services. Basically, it uses the online system in order to help the customer be as comfortable as he can. This means that he can make his choices right from his favorite chair, without having the need to go into the shops and spend endless hours there. Anything that he or she might like is available in the online shop and can be chosen from there. Many people say that the online possibilities are limited and people don't have that many choices, but when it comes to finding the perfect cabinets, things are a little bit different. There is a certain diversity present here as the focus of the company is to satisfy as many of the client's tastes as possible. Of course, there will always be someone that is not satisfied with the available merchandise, but for the rest of them, there are plenty of choices. Another great aspect here is that the cabinetry Ventura models really respond well with the other features of the house. This means that if you have a Victorian... 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.. Upgrading Your Company Website Upgrading Your Company Website By Jerry Bader (c) 2008 Dealing with website development issues can be an overwhelming task. There are many things your marketing team must consider, in fact, there are so many things to bear in mind that many of the most important ones never get dealt with, or are buried under competing interests. To avoid project paralysis you should focus on certain key areas of concern from which all other issues flow. Whether upgrading your existing website or developing a new webmedia initiative from scratch, consider these four vital questions that need to be answered: 1. What content should be included? 2. How should content be delivered? 3. How is your website going to be marketed? 4. What will visitors remember? What Content Should Be Included? Content is a function of purpose. Unfortunately many websites don't have a clearly thought-out realistic purpose; and orders alone, is not an adequate website objective. Obviously every company needs sales, that's a given, but sales are a result of all the marketing elements you put in place, and the degree to which your presentation distinguishes you from your competition. There is a prevailing view that traffic translates into sales; this viewpoint may be valid for websites whose economic model is commodity or advertising-based, but businesses that don't compete on price alone, or are more than an excuse to deliver advertising, must be structured around a purpose that is more meaningful, and far more compelling than 'give me an order or don't bother me.' An over-emphasis on search engine friendly site design ignores the fact that when someone does a search for what you... more.. How to Get Great Copy Without Hiring a Copywriter  How to Get Great Copy Without Hiring a Copywriter By Ken Hoffman (c) 2010   Most business owners now understand the importance of strong copy. What many business owners don't realize is there are other alternatives to paying a fortune for great copy. Most of these do require a nominal investm?. But nothing compared to the huge fees for copywriting. A big part of the value a copywriter brings to the table (aside from marketing knowledge and being a wordsmith) is a fresh perspective. It's that second set of eyes from a new perspective that can catch mistakes and provide more successful approaches. Unfortunately, copywriting is deceptively simple. Almost anyone that can write to any degree thinks they can write great copy. Creating a piece of copy that causes the reader to take the action of spending their dollars simply from reading words on a page is no easy task. 1) How a Simple Copy Critique Can Improve Your Copy Perhaps the simplest way to improve your copy is getting a copy critique. In the direct marketing industry this is a common term. Professional copywriters use copy critiques to sharpen each other's skills and copy. You can either hire someone to do this for a few hundred dollars typically, or you might be able to find someone to do it for free. Just be careful that you are getting someone who knows what they are talking about. The biggest value here is having things pointed out to you that you missed. It could be a headline that's unclear. Or a part of the copy that causes the reader to stop or bail out. Even your... more.. Search in Internet Marketing The Importance of Search in Internet Marketing By Claudia Bruemmer (c) 2007 For long-time search marketers it will come as no surprise that search has become a media darling. Pay-per-click advertising is the most popular online marketing strategy, and organic search engine optimization provides top click-through and conversion performance. Search is more popular than display ads and ema?marketing because of its excellent performance and ROI. Internet marketers should take note of the development in the search marketplace in order to better focus their advertising budgets. Search is Evolving As the Web grows exponentially, search engine databases suffer from information overload. As a result, technology and consumer search behavior adapts and changes. One of the early attempts to make search easier was the use of metadata in search. The search engine, Clusty came out in 2004 to "deliver groups or clusters of similar results rather that mill?s of search results in one long l?." The clusters were supposed to help users see search results by topic so they could more easily find what they were looking for. Another of the early changes to search was the development of multiple databases within general search. Whether you go to Google or Yahoo, you'll see category choices such as Web, video, images, local, news, etc. These are all different databases that can help you target specific queries. Google aptly named this concept its OneBox solution; you could access many different databases from one box. Along with the development of multiple databases on niche products or subjects came the vertical search engines. These verticals are particularly useful for B2B companies. The latest trend in the evolution of the market is... more.. Texas Land Sales Texas Land Sales It's really interesting how people see the real estate industry these days. There are so many opinions and experiences here that's really hard to be objective when it comes to deciding if investing in this area is such a good idea. Some are scared, some are eager, some understand and others don't. But one thing stands clear, this is a field that has a lot to say, if properly heard. The idea of the Texas Land Sales Many people would think that it's suicide to invest in a field so heavily affected by the recession and its repercussions. But, things are a little bit different if properly observed. In terms of money, the prices have gone way down. The Texas Land Sales are considered to be very profitable now, than that were given in the year of 2008 or 2009. This is due to the differences between the financial periods and most importantly, this is due to the low rate of demands when it comes to lands. Companies don't have money to develop their business, individuals don't have money as well to try and have a business approach in this direction. The developers in the real estate industry need to make something in order for the things to actually work and that's why the value of the land is currently standing at the down side of the line. This means that the Texas Land Sales are just the opportunities that one will be searching when it comes to making an investment now. How can it bring money in the future? The answer lies in a basic logical answer: there are many indicators that point to the healing of the world from the recession and all of its... more.. Land Texas Land Texas The contempt that can be seen on people's faces after they've understood the Land Texas offers and what they bring to the table is quite remarkable. Most of them state that they had a little bit of skepticism and they weren't sure about what this offers imply, but after a closer look, they've understood the benefits implied here. What are the Land Texas offers talking about? This is one of the most common mistakes that people make when it comes to a subject that they are not very familiar with: they believe every little aspect they hear about it. This can easily be solved with a research on the topic at hand in order to personally come across information and form an opinion. The very same things can be said about the real estate industry. There are many people who disclaim one of the Land Texas opportunities on the premises that the offers are designed for other people and not for them. Most of the persons that are being asked, don't even wait to be informed on why they should think about those opportunities. One of the greatest things that can be said about buying a land in Texas is the fact that now normal people can actually afford it. This means that there is no need for a huge loan, just to cover the costs of a land. The reason for this aspect is because the recession has made a lot of devastations in the real estate market. That's why the Land Texas opportunities come to respond to dreams that people have when it comes to building their own home. Many would argue that buying... 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.. Search for secret millions + Google Search for secret millions + Google Ori Allon ? the 26-year-old UNSW student who promise to change web searches. IT IS the hush-hush deal that could be worth millions - many, many millions. Google, the world's biggest player in the internet search business, has paid the University of NSW an undisclosed sum for the rights to a mathematical process that promises to change the way we explore the web. But it is unclear how rich it will make Ori Allon, the 26-year-old doctoral student at the university who developed the algorithm, or formula, at the heart of the process. It could become the basis for the next generation of search engines, improving the relevance of responses to a search - and displaying a more detailed taste of each file so users can better decide if it is what they need. But having won a tussle against its two main competitors - Yahoo! and Microsoft - to secure the rights, Google has gagged Mr Allon and UNSW from saying too much. What we know is this: Mr Allon came to Sydney in March 2005 to work on a project run by Dr Eric Martin, of the university's computer science department, to develop a better search engine. Six months later, the team announced it had developed Orion - named after Mr Allon - which the university said would "revolutionise existing search engines". "I provided the spark," Dr Martin said last year, "but it is Ori who developed this through his amazing creati-vity and sheer hard work." Yesterday, he said: "What others would have taken two to three years to do, he did in six months." The university took the formula to the US, and now Mr Allon is working out of Google's head office in California. But because of confidentiality agreements, all the university can do is confirm that Mr Allon is... more.. Blogs, WordPress and Google Blogs, WordPress and Google By Scott Van Achte (c) 2009 It's no secret that a continually updated website with new content being added regularly stands a good chance of doing well in Google. One of the long standing methods to regularly expand a site's content is through the use of a blog. While there are numerous platforms to choose from for managing a blog, few can compare with the immense flexibility offered with WordPress, and at a cost of free, the price can't be beat either. Google likes fresh new content, and setting up a blog on your site, assuming it is updated often with interesting and relevant material, can be one of the best things you can do to help out your search rankings. The beauty behind WordPress is that there is a wide array of totally free plug-ins you can easily install that will make your blog totally search engine friendly. The following are some basic guidelines and essential plug-ins you should consider when you install your WordPress blog. Template Design The first configuration you need to do is work on customizing the design template to match your existing site. I suggest finding a template that matches as closely as possible to the look you are going for then work on tweaking its graphics, colors, and other particulars till you achieve the desired appearance. Most of your changes will occur in the header.php, footer.php, index.php, and page.php files in the theme editor, however, the theme you install will dictate which files actually need to be updated. You will also need to make some adjustments to your CSS file. These changes all involve working with code and graphics, and are most likely left to a professional. Once you have your... more.. SEO Benefits of Blogging SEO Benefits of Blogging By Kristin Page (c) 2011 Adding a blog to your website is a big decision, but it is something that every company should consider. A regularly updated blog can give people a reason to visit your website more often, and there are also SEO (search engine optimization) benefits to keeping a company blog. Perhaps you've thought about starting a blog for your company, but you're not sure it will be worth the extra work. Here's a rundown of the SEO benefits to help you decide. More Content for Search Engines Most websites have a fairly limited number of pages, and a limited number of words per page. Adding a blog means you can regularly create rich content, and include the keywords you're trying to rank well for in search results. You'll be giving search engines more pages and content to crawl on your site, and more opportun? to see your important keywords. For every blog post you write, you are giving yourself the chance to add content containing five to 10 new keywords. Some of these keywords could actually be longer phrases containing keywords you're already trying to rank well for in search results. These longer phrases - called "long tail keywords" by SEO professionals - can be easier for you to rank well for. That's because, as a keyword phrase gets longer, there are fewer instances of it in search engine indexes. In effect, there's less competition for top rankings in results for searches on those keywords. For example, a gardening supplies website could add a blog that offers... more.. How to Build a Profitable Twitter Profile How to Build a Profitable Twitter Profile By Harold Hemmings (c) 2009   Twitter is one of the fastest growing marketplaces on the Internet. The reason why so many people like Twitter is because it is actually the perfect communication tool for people who don't understand and don't want to learn about Internet technology and the technological geek-speak that goes along with it. A few years back, I asked someone for his dad's email address. The son replied telling me that you just email his name. The son was clueless that there was an actual email address behind the shortcut for his dad's name. He did not understand email, and he did not care that he did not understand it. He was able to use it in a manner that was easy for him, and that is all that really mattered. What makes Twitter so popular to the masses is that one does not have to be tech-savvy to use the service. The new user simply needs to locate the profile of the person he or she wants to follow, and then the user simply clicks "Follow". From that day forward, anytime the person "Followed" posts (tweets) new information to his or her micro-blog, Followers will be notified about the message in the Twitter Timeline. The only thing that is really difficult about Twitter is that new people seldom understand that they must "Follow" someone, before they start to receive messages from others. But once someone has chosen to follow a few people, they get the idea behind Twitter very quickly. With its' system of 140 character micro-posts (referred to as "tweets"), users are able to communicate information to other users. Sometimes the tweeted info is a random comment, but... more.. How Many Links Does It Take to Get to the Middle of Google Page One? How Many Links Does It Take to Get to the Middle of Google Page One? By Bill Platt (c) 2009 911 Reputation Management Everyday it seems, people are asking me about the optimum number of inbound links they need to acquire for their website in order to rank well in Google. My answer is going to seem a little flip, but it is the honest, best answer. Answer: You need more inbound links - of equal or higher quality - than what your competitors have. When people wonder how many inbound links they need to acquire to rank in the Top 4 of Google's search results or even the Top 10 of Google's SERPs, they are generally hoping that someone will be able to give them a numeric answer, so that they know whether they can afford to undertake the process or not. I understand the WHY of the question, but there is no canned answer that will work for everyone. Remember, your competitor may be asking the same question and undertaking the same processes as you are, trying to accomplish the same goal. You can't truly begin to understand the answer to this question, until you have taken the time to do an Inbound Link Comparison Analysis of all of your competitors in the Top 10 spots of Google's SERPs. ? You need to look at the Top 10 listings in Google for a particular keyword. ? You need to do backlink checks for all ten URLs in Google's search listings, and you need to check those numbers across a variety of sources, including Google, Yahoo and any other tool you can find to do a check. (Google and Yahoo... more.. How Should Webmasters React to Google Fresh?  How Should Webmasters React to Google Fresh? A SPN Exclusive Article By Titus Hoskins (c) 2011 It's been an extremely busy year for the good folks at Google, not only did they roll out the game-changing Panda Updates, but now they have increased the stakes by implementing Google Fresh. This recent algorithm update is based on the Caffeine architecture introduced by Google a year ago and supposedly makes Google's listings much fresher. On the Official Google Blog where this new Update was announced, Amit Singhal states: "We completed our Caffeine web indexing system last year, which allows us to crawl and index the web for fresh content quickly on an enormous scale. Building upon the momentum from Caffeine, today we're making a significant improvement to our ranking algorithm that impacts roughly 35 percent of searches and better determines when to give you more up-to-date relevant results for these varying degrees of freshness." However, in an update, Singhal explains this measurement of 35% only applies to where at least one result was affected by the changes. In reality, this update only "noticeably" impacts 6 to 10% of searches. "Update 11/7/11: To clarify, when we say this algorithm impacted 35% of searches, we mean at least one result on the page was affected, as opposed to when we've said noticeably impacted in the past, which means changes that are significant enough that an average user would notice. Using that same scale, this change noticeably impacts 6 - 10% of searches, depending on the language and domain you're searching on." Regardless, Google Fresh will be influencing what sites/pages get listed in the top spots in Google. Already, these fresher listings are... more.. Clicking into the Future Predictions for 2007 Clicking into the Future Predictions for 2007 By Jim Hedger (c) 2006 While 2006 was a great year for webmasters it was a time of great change and challenge in the search engine sector. The most notable trend from 2006 was the continued advancement of Google against natural rivals Yahoo, MSN and Ask, as well as its persistent movement towards other, less obvious advertising venues. Next week we will look back at the ghosts of 2006 but as the New Year approaches, thoughts turn towards the spirits of things to come. Predictions for 2007 1/ Google's early entry to radio advertising will bear fruit prompting Google to start examining television advertising. When it comes to the allocation of advertising dollars, Google fundamentally altered the rules of the game. In the past, mass market advertisers would gamble on a shotgun approach to ad-spending. The options consisted of newspaper, magazine, telephone directory, radio or television. While each medium could provide statistics showing their print-run and audience, tracking the success or failure of these types of advertising has always posed a problem for manufacturers and retailers. When Google popularized the pay-per-click model in which advertisers only pay when a person actually views the ad, a new model was born. Google's billing model will have to alter slightly to meet the radio and video formats however, as digital radio and television becomes the norm, tracking will become far easier. Google will be able to charge by the listener or viewer though it remains to be seen if listeners or viewers will actually listen to or view advertisements on digital radio or television. 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.. 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.. 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.. 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.. All Optimized and Going Nowhere? All Optimized and Going Nowhere? By Jennifer Horowitz (c) 2008 It happens sometimes. Here are some of the common reasons you may not be indexed: Index Time: It hasn't been indexed yet. The amount of time before the engine indexes your site should be listed on the search engine's submission page, but these aren't always accurate or may be out of date. On the average, index times range from one to eight weeks depending on the engine. Some engines like AltaVista and Inktomi provide paid options if you wish to be indexed more quickly. TIP! Time frame and expectations: Allow up to 4 months, if you are number 10 and want to be number 1, then it may just be time that is needed - but if you aren't showing up at all, then you need to look at keywords, content, title, description and keyword tags. Already Indexed: The major engines won't tell you if you're listed; it's up to you to find out. The method to discover if a page or domain has been indexed varies from one engine to another. Don't assume you're not indexed just because you searched through keywords and you didn't come up in the first few pages of results. You could still be indexed and end up at the bottom of the heap. Roadmap from Home Page: Some engines have been known to drop pages that cannot be traveled to from the home page. HotBot has been rumored to do this. Think of your site links as a series of roads from one page to another. If there's no road from your... more.. Avoid These 5 Useless Website Promotion Techniques Avoid These 5 Useless Website Promotion Techniques A SPN Exclusive Article By Tremel Ennis (c) 2010 Every owner of a website on planet Earth knows that getting a constant flow of traffic is the key to making money online. The world wide web attracts such a massive number of buyers that regardless of what you sell, you will make some really good money when you have lots of traffic. Internet marketers are constantly coming up with newer ways to expand their reach across the Internet because no website can survive without enough specific traffic. In their quest to obtain more of the elusive traffic, the website marketers have come up with some rather creative ways to bring in greater amounts of traffic in a short period of time and with little effort. My email inbox has been flooded with sales letters promoting some automated software or seldom used secret that promises an explosion of website visitors within 30 days. The disturbing part of all this is that it goes against the teaching of our early years; that nothing good comes easy and there is no quick path to building a successful business. As a result of these promises of abundant website traffic and exploding sales figures, many have abandoned those time tested methods of attracting real targeted website visitors that are prepared to take some kind of action. Keep in mind that website traffic isn't something that you can just get, but visitors will come to your website when you have something to provide, enticing them to click on your link. Too many people are cashing in on... more.. Simple SEO Truths Simple SEO Truths By Kim Roach of UnleashTheTraffic.com According to the 1998 Georgia Tech GVU User Survey, 85 percent of respondents found Web pages from search engines. Since then, other studies have reported 50 to 80 percent of Web site traff?comes from search engines. Searching is second only to email as the most popular online activity. Unfortunately, there are many marketers who simply do not put enough effort into preparing their web site for the search engines. The following guidelines will help you to start seeing results in the search engines. Your first step is simply choosing the right keywords. Choosing the Right Keywords Often times, people make the mistake of optimizing for very general keywords like used cars or online marketing. Although these terms get lots of traff? it is very unlikely that you will be able to rank highly for them. Then, even if you do, this type of traff?produces very low conversion rates because they are not targeted prospects. For example, if you are selling hiking backpacks, it would be much more beneficial for you to target the phrase 'hiking backpacks' rather than the extremely competitive keyword 'backpacks'. It would be even better to target the phrase 'camelbak commander'. This is a specific type of backpack and therefore will attract more buyers than searchers. In fact, according to Jupiter Media Metrix, 28 percent of searchers will type a product name into a search engine. Nine percent type in a brand name and 5 percent type in company names. The more targeted your keyword phrase, the more likely they are to buy. A person who types in 'backpacks' may be looking for... more.. 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.. Kitchen Cabinets Los Angeles kitchen cabinets Los Angeles The kitchen cabinets Los Angeles are one of the best in this industry due to the fact that they prioritize themselves accordingly to the customer. This means that they put the needs of the client first and that is one of the best qualities there is when it comes to any service that is provided for someone. That's why they are so popular and that's why people choose it. The very first choice is the kitchen cabinets Los Angeles service People are currently so obsessed with living their lives at a very high speed that it has become a rule to have everything done in a split of a second. That's why many businesses provide home service and home delivery and that's why they are so appreciated. When it comes to the kitchen cabinets Los Angeles services things go as fast as any other business. The user can easily long on to the website and browse throughout the available models until he or she reaches one that best suits the taste that one has for furniture. An important aspect to be minded here refers to the idea that the choice needs to be made according to the other features of the house as well. In this way, you will be sending out a message that you know what you are doing and you have a great taste in matters of interior design. After you have picked out the 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.. Twitter Under Assault Twitter Under Assault By John Sylvester (c) 2009 A new micro-blogging website, Yahoo Meme, similar in style and functionality to Twitter, was soft-launched in Portuguese in May. They have now launched a Spanish version. But what is unusual is that the word "meme" was first introduced by controversial British ethologist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene to discuss "elements of cultural ideas, symbols or practices that are transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena..." That doesn't sound a bit like Yahoo. Just as in the 19th century, when Thomas Huxley was known as "Darwin's bulldog" for his tenacious defence of Darwinism, Richard Dawkins has played a similar, modern-day role when talking about evolutionary principles and explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Analogous with the above, you may have noticed that Yahoo's Meme closely follows the etymology of the Greek word "mimema" for "something imitated" and that instead of a sweet little bird tweeting, it has a dog - admittedly not quite the image of Huxley the bulldog, but a dog nevertheless - barking "wow" in Spanish. A dog? Don't you think it would have been more appropriate to have used a cat that could have ruffled Twitter's feathers a little, like Yahoo Sucatash? According to Wiki, examples of memes are tunes, ideas and catch-phrases. But now, microblogging? Yes, Yahoo has introduced its own version in Spanish and Portuguese offering similar features to Twitter. At first glance it seems like another clone where users can populate with text posts, music, videos, photos and links to MP3 files, and with a repost rather than retweet button, but is it really an exact clone? According to readwriteweb.com,... more.. 10 Questions for New SEO Clients  10 Questions for New SEO Clients By Jill Whalen (c) 2011 Hello Jill, If you could only ask 10 general (non-industry-specific) questions of your new SEO customers, what would they be and why would their answers help you help them? Thank you, Andrew ++Jill's Response++ Hi Andrew, Great question! I have a variety of different questionnaires that I send to clients, depending on the type of 'SEO consulting' (http://www.highrankings.com/seo-services) that I'll be doing with them. For any SEO service, the more information I get from the client about their business and website, the better I can help them with their SEO. Here's a selection of some of the questions I ask and why they're important to the overall SEO process: 1. What Web Analytics Program Do You Use, and Can We Have Access to It? Web analytics are the key to measuring the current level of SEO success (or lack thereof). They're also the key to determining whether any future SEO implementation is helping to bring more targ?d traffic. Therefore, it's critical for me to have access to this information regardless of the level of SEO service I'm providing. If you use Google Analytics (GoAn), it's very simple to add new users to the account and in most cases it's fine to provide report-only access (rather than admin). Along with GoAn, I also ask for access to the client's Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT) account. These days, if you have GoAn access, you can usually add the same website to your GWMT account as well, which makes the process easier. 2. What's the Purpose of Your Site and who is Your Target Audience? This is a seemingly simple question, yet... more.. Success Strategies for Optimizing Online Press Release Campaigns Success Strategies for Optimizing Online Press Release Campaigns By Craig Cannings Before I outline the key steps we took in our own online PR endeavors, let's first review the key benefits of an optimized Press Release campaign: I was recently having breakfast with a good friend of mine who is in management with a large Brick and Mortar Company and the topic of Press Releases came up in our conversation. My friend questioned the real value of this medium and pointed out that Press Releases, while certainly apart of his company's communication strategy seemed to have little impact or value on their business as a whole and were rarely picked up by major news publications. Well, in my last online press release campaign, I can honestly say we did not receive an enthusiastic call from the Business editor of USA Today or the New York Times or even the Grand Forks Herald for that matter! However, this recent Press Release campaign did result in a top 5 listing for one of my keywords in Google, multiple top 20 listings, strong placement in Yahoo and Google News, many new quality in-bound links and a significant ?rease in our overall web visibility. The campaign proved to be a roaring success in driving quality traff?and gaining great exposure for our site, even though we were largely ignored by all of the mainstream news publications. So, how did we do it?   ? High Quality One-Way Links to Your Website A well-constructed Press Release campaign can result in multiple in-bound links from various sources such as industry-related websites, news and media sites, many of which have a decent Google Page Rank. Given that our business was launching a... more.. 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.. How SPNbabble Can Help Web Professionals How SPNbabble Can Help Web Professionals By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009 SiteProNews, a well established website geared towards webmasters, has recently introduced a new micro-blogging service called SPNbabble. Describing itself as "Micro-Blogging For Web Professionals" - SPNbabble.com lets you share your ideas with friends and colleagues. It also incorporates such popular services as Twitter and Facebook. To find out more about this interesting new platform, Bizwaremagic.com did an interview with Mel Strocen, CEO of the Jayde Online Network, which runs numerous websites, including SiteProNews and SPNbabble. 1. Lets cut to the chase, why should anyone use your micro-blogging program, SPNbabble? The main reason, and the reason we created SPNBabble, is that it provides social media marketers with a means to post to multiple micro-blogging sites simultaneously. Currently, SPNbabble members can configure their accounts so that a post on SPNbabble will also appear on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Plurk, Tumblr and 5 other micro-blogging sites. If time is a factor in your marketing endeavors, then using SPNbabble is a no-brainer. 2. Not everyone is familiar with micro-blogging, could you go into more detail and fully explain how your program works or functions? Well, anyone who uses Twitter will find SPNbabble very similar in features and functionality. For those unfamiliar with micro-blogging, it's basically a concise form of blogging. Most micro-blogging sites, including SPNbabble, restrict blog posts to 140 characters. It takes some practice to get your message across in shortened form, but for busy web professionals less is more. Micro-blogging is ideal for getting short snippets of useful information out to a potential audience of millions of micro-bloggers. Short blog posts can be about news, articles, products, services, programs, links to interesting sites, what... 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.. Real-Time Search - 5 Reasons Why Real-Time Search - 5 Reasons Why By Ben Behrouzi (c) 2009 If you don't understand why the Real Time Web is huge, you will soon. Thanks to micro-blogging sites like Twitter, a constant stream of human-posted content has infiltrated the Web. This growing infiltration has created a bottoms up approach to content creation that via the progressive support of rapidly developing applications has and will continue to empower every individual to co-create what is deemed as "important" on the Web. The Real Time Web serves as both the database that informs us of what is happening right "Now" and the human touch to the content that will compete with the traditional algorithms for what is deemed as "valuable" content to us all. Its challenges lie in the filtration and mass integration of both the content and the act of sharing to the Real Time Web. There remain major aspects of the Web that have not yet integrated "searching" and "sharing" of the Real Time Web, including traditional search. But as filtration and integration progress the Web will take the form of a living breathing database. Here are 5 reasons why Real Time Search will help the Real Time movement change the Web and your experience forever. 1. The "Now" Factor We saw it with Michael Jackson's passing. We saw it with the Iran Protests and we see it more and more everyday -- the Real Time web provides us with what is happening right "Now" and with vivid detail from around the globe. "We" is driving the "Now" factor. 2. We Become Co-Creators The Real-Time web offers us the ability to become co-creators in not only content but also in what is deemed important. Why? Because... more.. Google Place Search Changes How Local Searches are Displayed Google Place Search Changes How Local Searches are Displayed By Peter Bowen (c) 2010 Google Local and Map have become a big influence on how people search and get results. We can demonstrate this by searching for 'accountant' and the search result returns a broad list of 'accountants', but perhaps too broad so we tend to search again by narrowing the result - adding a location to the search - 'accountant in city' and the results we see are now closer to home. So it's no surprise that Google should be taking a closer look at how we search and attempt to refine the process and provide a more meaningful search result by changing the Google Local search algorithm to make it easier for us to find what or who we are searching for locally. Today, November 8, 2010 we see searches that reference local business and all the relevant places in that location in a new clustered visual display located in the upper right corner of a search result page. The now familiar map displays each business with red lettered pins, and links to each business. And as you scroll down the page the Google Places Map will scroll with the page so that it is always visible. In addition to the way we see businesses displayed on Google Places, a new product is being launched - Google Boost. Google Boost is a Google AdWords product that allows local businesses to feature more prominently in local searches. It allows small to medium size businesses the ability to feature more highly in searches, and concentrates much more on the... more.. Why Your Website Needs Inbound Links Why Your Website Needs Inbound Links By Rick Hendershot Most web-savvy people quickly learn why they need "links" from other sites pointing at theirs. Your inbound links are one of the most important ways of getting yourself known in your field, generating traff?to your website, and influencing the search engines to notice your site. "Traff? is what linking is all about. Without traff?your website is useless as a tool for selling your products or communicating your ideas. Getting links from other websites is not the only way to generate traff? but it is probably the most important one. Learn the Secrets of the Top 10 Have you ever done a web search on your targeted keyword only to find the same 10 websites at the top of the rankings? How can they do it? What is their secret? Take an inside look into the workings of top ranked websites But how do links generate traff? **Direct traff?.. 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.. Web Design Los Angeles Web Design Los Angeles   There are so many things that can be said about the Web Design Los Angeles services when talking about benefits and what they bring to the table. Sadly, there are still many businesses which aren?t aware of the huge impact that the online environment has on a company and how it can really help with ones reputation. The reality of the Web Design Los Angeles services First of all, people need to take into consideration the fact that the having a branch in the online environment is an aspect that should be considered by all of the companies out there, regardless of the filed they are activating in. The Web Design Los Angeles services bring forth the idea that by having a very powerful website, you will not only speak to your desired targeted audience, but you will be seen as a reputable and respected company. This is an aspect that is very crucial due to the fact that it is connected with the image of the firm. That?s the main priority of any business and that?s the very first thing that your potential clients will be looking at. The second thing that should be taken into account when talking about the Web Design Los Angeles services is their focus. Many people have the tendency to dress up their websites in various ways in order to make it as appealing as it can be to the general public, but they forget one important... 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.. 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.. 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.. Local Search Marketing with Google Places  Local Search Marketing with Google Places   By Scott Harvey (c) 2011 If you want better search engine results (and more clicks, and more business), and you haven't paid attention to "Google Places," you need to do so right away. Why You Need to Claim Your Spot on Google Places * Google has stated that one out of five searches on Google is related to location. That translates to 2.6 billion "local" searches a month, and that number is increasing 50% per year. (Yes, that's "Billion"-with a "B.")   * If you're a family law or divorce attorney in Irvine, CA for example, you want to show up when someone does a Google search for "divorce attorney orange county," or some variant of that - which happened over 56,000 times last month. Maybe your niche or location can't boast that kind of volume, but when you get your Places page set up and positioned correctly, it can still have a dramatic effect. * A good Google Places list? can provide a valuable bump in your search engine ranking and in your ability to reach and interact with prospects and customers. You can even post real-time updates to your Places page to promote a sale or seminar or other event, put up a coupon, or communicate anything else. * Google Places has become so important that it has become a marketing niche all on its own, with "local marketing SEO" consultants that do nothing but help businesses use it properly. Now, that you know why you need to be on Google Places - how can... 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.. 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.. Web Development Los Angeles Web Development Los Angeles   What are the Web Development Los Angeles services and how can they help a business in these harsh times that the world is living today. There are many different opinions on this matter, as some agree to the use of such services, others think that it's a waste of time. The reality is that, with the proper knowledge, things can only go up. The rise of the Web Development Los Angeles services First of all, people need to take into consideration two aspects. One refers to the idea that the online environment is one of the most powerful tools there is when it comes to reaching your potential audience. The other one refers to the fact that it's a lot cheaper to invest in this area rather than use any other forms of publicity. These aspects cannot be contested by anyone. This is one of the best arguments in favor of the Web Development Los Angeles services. Another great issue in this matter here is linked with the idea of being unique. Such services encourage their clients to be as unique as possible when it comes to showing off on the market. There are so many competitors available out there, that it makes it hard for one to come up with other concepts in their business. The Web Development Los Angeles services talk about... more.. Inbound Links Inbound Links By Andy MacDonald (c) 2008 Inbound links are now so important in the constant battle to achieve top search engine rankings, that tons of people are using every tactic under the sun to gain that one additional link. You must be careful when it comes to linking though. You could jeopardize your whole linking plan by getting links in a shady manner which could have an adverse affect on your search rankings. These inbound links are seen by search engines as votes for your site within a particular community of sites. Anytime you're being voted for, you want to have as many votes as possible. However you want to be using tactics which are going to pay dividends in your linking strategy, not do more harm then good. Below I l? some of the best and safest methods around for generating inbound links for your website. Some can be more effective than others: Requesting Links: The oldest method of gaining inbound links is to request them. This requires that you study your market to find out who the players involved in the market are. Then, you contact each one of the sites and ask them to link to your site. In most cases, the person you contact receives your request, but providing links to other sites is the least of their worries, so you may never hear from them. If you do, it can sometimes be months later. So, you put a lot of time into requesting links from other sites for a relatively small return on your efforts. For more on requesting links, I recommend you checkout The Do's &... 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.. Social Networks - Search Engine Marketing for Web2.0 Social Networks - Search Engine Marketing for Web2.0 By Warren Pattison Social networks are getting a lot of attention these days including Wikipedia, del.icio.us and MySpace. Along with the buzz, these sites are also generating a lot of traff? How can you integrate links for these types of social network sites into your search engine marketing program? While there are an increasing number of social networks, this article will stick to the above as they are kings of their domains so to speak. I recently had the opportun? to attend Search Engine Strategies in New York City this past February, 2006. While attending a session in regards to community marketing tactics using both Wikipedia and tagging, the panel asked the audience, "Who here knows what Wikipedia and tagging are?" - less than half the room raised their hands. Let me give you an overview of these concepts. Wikipedia is a fr?community content driven encyclopedia. I have included an excerpt about Wikipedia from their about section located at About Wikipedia. "Begun in 2001, Wikipedia has rapidly grown into the largest reference website on the Internet. The content of Wikipedia is fr? written collaboratively by people from all around the world. This website is a wiki, which means that anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit, correct, or improve information throughout the encyclopedia, simply by clicking the edit this page link (with a few minor exceptions such as protected articles)." Your benefits of using Wikipedia as an online marketing strategy are various. To begin with, your submitted content about your product or company may be very short and simple to begin with. As your content ages and more members view and contribute... more.. Do You Pay Per Click Fraud? Do You Pay Per Cl? Fraud? By Kim Roach (c) 2006 The world of pay-per-click marketing started in 1997 with GoTo.com. Today they are known as Yahoo Search Marketing. What started in 1997 as a way to quickly get listed in the top of the search engines has turned into a 5.6 billion dollar industry in 2005. In fact, about 99% of Google's revenue comes from advertising. However, this multi-billion dollar search industry is under attack and has been for quite a while. Cl? fraud has become the greatest threat to the rapid growth of the paid search marketing sector. The Interactive Advertising Bureau estimates that 20 to 35 percent of ad clicks are fraudulent. Who's to blame? Cl? fraud can come from a variety of sources, including competitors, bots that simulate the human behavior of clicking on ads in web pages, or even friends of the publisher who want to "help" the publisher gain some additional cl? revenue. However, the major search engines have received the majority of the blame, even though they are not necessarily responsible. Yahoo has recently settled a class-action cl? fraud settlement. Under the settlement, Yahoo advertisers will be allowed to submit cl? fraud claims dating back to January 2004. Yahoo will reimburse any confirmed fraudulent clicks in c?, with no set limit on the amount of claims it will cover. This year, Google has been burdened with its own cl? fraud case to the tune of 90 million dollars. Currently, the court is deciding whether to accept the search giant's proposed $90 million settlement while roughly 50 plaintiffs are voicing their dissatisfaction with it. Cl? fraud is certainly no small... more.. Why Directories Still Have SEO Benefits Why Directories Still Have SEO Benefits By David Lopez (c) 2010 Web directories have been around since the beginning of the World Wide Web in the early 1990's and are still recognized as an important channel for advertising businesses online. People often get web directories and search engines mixed up. The difference between a search engine like Google and web directories is that Google uses a web crawler to automatically index websites to show up in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), while a web directory organizes links under various categories and sub-categories. How Can Submitting to Director? Help Your Website? Here are some tips: Get Indexed Quicker in the Search Engines When search engines crawl directory websites any new entries within those directories also get crawled and indexed. Directories that are deemed authoritative by search engines like Google are crawled regularly, finding new website links to index which are then ranked to appear in the search results. If you are launching a new website, you should seriously consider submitting to website director? to speed up the process of getting indexed into Google. Raise Your Positions in Google As many website owners should know the more quality links to your website that you obtain, the more favorably Google will rank your website. Website Directories are a great source for one-way or reciprocal links. Well maintained directories will place your link in an appropriate category or sub-category, meaning that the directory's human moderators agree that your website is about what your website claims to be about and is useful to human beings. Drive Traffic to Your Website Having a listing on a popular, high traffic website directory can also... 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.. How Important is Alexa Ranking? How Important is Alexa Ranking? By Adriana Iordan (c) 2007 Alexa Ranking - A Web Site Monetization Strategy? All businesses that employ online marketing, strive to improve their conversion rate. Now, there are different ways of attracting targeted traff? Some try to achieve a good ranking in the SERPs, while others are satisfied with heavier traffic. Either way, everybody has the goal of achieving financial success. But, while scoring high with Google may seem to certain business people the only way to make themselves known and thus reach their goal, there are others that think that a good position in the Alexa ranking system might benefit them just as well. What is Alexa Ranking? This is a ranking system set by alexa.com (a subsidiary of amazon.com ) that basically audits and makes public the frequency of visits to various Web sites. The algorithm by which Alexa traff?ranking is calculated, is simple. It is based on the amount of traffic recorded over a period of three months from users that have the Alexa toolbar installed. This traff?is based on such parameters as reach and page views. The reach refers to the number of Alexa users who visit a particular site in one day. Page view, as the name indicates, is the number of times a particular page (URL) is viewed by Alexa users. Alexa.com makes it clear though that, if a particular user visits the same URL multiple times on the same day, all those visits will be counted as one. The first step of the ranking process is calculating the reach and number of page views for all the sites on the Web on a daily... more.. Link Building Best Practices - A Guide to Effective Link Building Methods Link Building Best Practices - A Guide to Effective Link Building Methods By SEOFocused.com (c) 2010 Just to cover the ground, lets go over what link building is quickly. Link building is the process of building backlinks to your site. The more backlinks (links from other sites to your site) a site has, the higher it ranks on the search engines. Link building therefore is a mission of all money mak? webmasters. Link building methods have changed from time to time and a specific method that worked yesterday may not work today. This is due to changes in the industry over time and in some cases extreme abuse. If a specific link building method has been abused too much, then that method will not work anymore. It is therefore very important to know which link building method works today so that you can spend your time in a most productive way. There are many link building methods out there today that work with some working better than others. Below are some of the today's popular links building methods: Article Submission If you are reading this article, then you know that you can publish your article in article directories. Not only do you gain backlinks to your site from your published articles (see bottom of this article), you will get some traffic as a bonus. Think of you reading this article. There might be many reading your published articles as well. Article submission is a great way of building backlinks as it provides you with 100% relevant contextual backlinks that Google loves. Directory submission used to work lot better before, but it is still a popular link building method that still works if done properly.... more.. Website Development Strategy That Will Drive Customers  Website Development Strategy That Will Drive Customers By John Carroll (c) 2010 Take this one question quiz: What should be the first step in developing a website? 1. Creating a design to use as a basis, 2. Deciding how the content needs to be integrated and managed, 3. Gathering content from corporate collateral, 4. Developing a strategic plan for your specific needs, or 5. Choose the most cost-effective hosting plan. In just about any profession other than website development, your answer would be choice 4. After all, you couldn't build a house without considering the layout, number of bathrooms, and features of the home. You wouldn't create a design for a major advertisement and then plan the content and message of the ad. Yet, when it comes to website design, often the design comes first and the strategic plan for the site comes last. Being a veteran of about 20 years in marketing and design, this issue has perplexed me for years. It seems to me that the development process should be: 1. Discover the reason a business needs a website and the expectations of the business. 2. Understand your typical customer and what influences their purchasing decision. 3. Have a clear understanding of how the website fits into the marketing plan. 4. Research to find what customers are searching for in Google, Yahoo in relation to the business (keywords). 5. Carefully plan a site architecture which is best for the demographic, online search trends, and have a site that's easy for search engines to follow, is designed with the target market in mind, and has clear definitions of conversion goals. 6. Create a design which speaks to the target demographic. 7. Launch the site and begin... more.. Google+ Reviewed  Google+ Reviewed     By Jacob S Strandlien (c) 2011 Social networking has grown steadily in scope and importance over the last decade, and over the past few years, Facebook's position as the top dog of social networking services has been solid and unquestioned. Enter Google+. Google's attempts to step into the realm of social networking have been plentiful and almost undeniable failures, but Google+ is undoubtedly their strongest showing yet, and has the best chance of success. It is growing steadily in popularity, but how well does it work and what sets it apart from its competitors? Read on. Social Networking, Google Style Google has a long, tumultuous, and mostly unknown and ignored history with social networking. The following is a rundown of their previous attempts.   Orkut: As far as I am aware, this is Google's earliest and (until now) most successful attempt at a social networking platform. It didn't ever gained much popularity in the United States, but it is huge in Brazil to this day, and it also has a following in India and other various countries. Open Social: Launched in 2007, it's not technically a social network in and of itself. Open Social is Google and MySpace's attempt to create a common programming interface that can be applied across several social networks, allowing programmers to easily integrate these networks into websites and other applications. This has largely been drowned out by Facebook. Friend Connect: Launched in 2008, Friend Connect was Google's next attempt at a Facebook or MySpace style social network, but it took the approach of using various open standards (including Open Social) to create this network across different types... more.. A Perfect Link A Perfect Link By Sharon Housley (c) 2008 Webmasters are given the advice that they must attract links, but the key is not just to attract links... they need to attract good links. But what is the perfect link? The search for the perfect link need not be a quest in vain. Consider the following when attempting to attract links... 1. Related The best links should come from related websites which contain similar and related content but not the same type of material or content. For example: A link for baby clothing would benefit from a link that discusses baby care. 2. Anchor The anchor text (the "text" that is used in the link) should include keywords that relate to the topic covered on the web page that is being linked to. Anchor text should be varied; links that all have the same anchor text will appear manipulated and contrived to the search engines. Therefore, the text links should contain a variety of related words. 3. Deep Link The links should direct visitors to a related page within the website. Do not make the mistake of directing all of the web links to a website's home page. Deep linking, and directing visitors to material that corresponds to content that is closely related to the text link is key. Deep linking appears more natural to search engines, whereas links directing all visitors to a single page or the home page seem unnatural, and could be interpreted as an effort to manipulate search engine ranking. 4. Domain And Page Authority Search engines trust some websites more than others. Links from "authority" websites... 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.. baby gift ideas baby gift ideas The thing with the Baby gift ideas is that people are always so obsessed with coming up with something new. The gifts industry is quite helpful in this direction as it comes up with various models and choices in order to satisfy almost any tastes. The cute part of the baby gift ideas First of all, there are many different choices when it comes to picking up a gift, the only thing that needs to be done here is to have a little patience and think of the one that will be receiving the gift. The Baby gift ideas are a little bit tricky because the toddlers are a little bit too young to value a specific gift. Another rule applies here and many people go by it, because it's helpful for the parents: buying specific gifts that are designed to help the child develop and expand. There are many great choices that can be made in this direction as the market is really resourceful. The very first category that comes to mind when taking about which Baby gift ideas are really great for the little ones, refers to the issue of toys. Many different psychologists have proven that it is important for the children o develop certain skills when they are that young. The industries have developed several ones that are designed to educate and expand certain abilities and skills in order for the toddler to develop and understand the world a little bit better. Another great benefit here is that the child can actually have fun in the process. This is the time of his life, when he gets to do everything that he wants so it's normal to... more.. RTA Cabinets Ventura RTA Cabinets Ventura What are the RTA Cabinets Ventura services and why is it important for home owners to be aware of them? The answer to these questions lies in the need that people have to search for kitchen furniture. There are many choices that are available out there and some of these choices are designed to be in the best interest of the customer. The interest of the RTA Cabinets Ventura services First of all, people need to get acquainted with what RTA means. It is an acronym for the words: ready to assemble. This means that the RTA cabinets Ventura models are designed to help the client with the order that he has placed and not waste valuable time on crafting the cabinets on his own. The process is quite simple and it takes a small amount of time for a client to admire the newly bought cabinets in his own kitchen. The very first thing that one should do if interested in the RTA cabinets Ventura models is to log online and find the best model that suits his needs, his style and taste and his pockets. There are models which are designed to go with futuristic styles and there are some which are available for the houses that have a more antique design. It really depends on the tastes of the clients and on what he or she wants for his home. After figuring out which is the best choice for his kitchen, the client needs to... 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.. Top 10 Google Search Features for Your Business Top 10 Google Search Features for Your Business By George Muha (c) 2010 The people at Google are truly inspired! They are evolving their search engine into something that can be an incredibly powerful tool for business. There are a zillion things that Google can do for different parts of your business and in this post, I will highlight the top 10 Google search tools that will help your supply chain. Since Google is just a click away, I think it's a very useful for everybody involved in the supply chain to be aware of how much easier it can make their lives. Everybody from traffic managers, to purchasing people, to accounting people and customer service will likely need to reference what Google can do during the course of the week. There are a lot of people who don't even know all of Google's capabilities. So without further ado, here is your: Top 10 Google Search Tools That Will Help Your Supply Chain 1. Package Tracking - You can track packages by typing the tracking number for your UPS, Fedex or USPS package directly into the search box. Some of the LTL and motor carriers also allow for you to plug in their pro numbers as well. Google will return results that include quick links to easily track the status of your shipment. Example of what to search for: "1Z9999W9999999999" 2. Time - This is huge when dealing with vendors or customers overseas or across the country. To see the time in many cities world wide, type in "time" and the name of the city. Example of what to search for: "time London" 3. Currency Conversion - This is cool! To... more.. 5 Steps to Qualify for Your Business Black Belt 5 Steps to Qualify for Your Business Black Belt By Karl Walinskas (c) 2011 Many small businesses fail today without the process or discipline to succeed. When all the excuse-making is said and done, do you have the will and the skill to survive and thrive? A few weeks ago I watched the culmination of 4 years worth of work that started at the ripe old age of six. Huh? As impossible as it seems, 4th graders can set a goal, focus on it (kind of), and progressively realize it one step at a time. I'm talking about my son Jack, who just achieved a black belt in Karate. This was a big deal to all the kids and adults in his class, reminding me of achieving my Eagle Scout as a teenager, and this dad was beaming! These guys were unbelievable, and on the grueling 6 hour day of final testing and ultimate celebration, it was great to see not only Jack but everybody in the class crackle with a precision you wouldn't think possible. So how's this apply to you as a business owner? Here are 5 Lessons in Black Belt Mastery for your business. Progressive, Manageable Goals Do you know how many colored belts you need to get through in order to get a black belt? 13 of them! Somewhere, one of Gary Larson's talking animals is saying "What the?!" There is white, white & yellow, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, purple & yellow, brown, brown & yellow, red, red & black (danbo), and finally, black belt. Each one of these is a little step along the... more.. ready to assemble cabinets Los Angeles ready to assemble cabinets Los Angeles   There are many different opinions regarding the ready to assemble cabinets Los Angeles models and how they are or aren't beneficial to the people. Some say that it's great to have things done and ready at your doorstep, but others contradict with the idea that the possibilities from which you can choose are quite limited. There are still other details that should be highlighted here in order to determine which side is right. The right side of the ready to assemble cabinets Los Angeles services First of all, the matter of tastes cannot be discussed: if someone likes something, he or she cannot be argued about his choice. It's just how the way things are and that's that. But the relevant part here is the fact that the ready to assemble cabinets Los Angeles models are designed to satisfy even the most extravagant of tastes. There are so many models, textures and colors that can be chosen for a kitchen, that it takes some serious hours to pick something up. Another great aspect about the ready to assemble cabinets Los Angeles models and its diversities is that they suite almost any style that the other side of the house might have. This means that if you have a futuristic influenced home, you can choose something that best fits with... 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.. 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.. 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 To Tap Into Massive Sources of Traff?With Virtually No Competition! How To Tap Into Massive Sources of Traff?With Virtually No Competition! By Jack Humphrey (c) 2006  Tale Chaser Publishing, Inc. Things haven't been this perfect for a long time. In fact, not since one of the big engines really started to take off, when those who were lucky enough to be already seated firmly in the Top 10 for their keywords, has there been such a plethora of new traff?opportunities. The internet marketing world has become multi-dimensional in ways that are surprising to most people who are still hooked on search engine marketing as their sole website promotion strategy. Here are the new avenues of traff?that most people are NOT taking advantage of outside of the big companies and a handful of savvy marketers: 1. Podcasting While it was "the word of the year" for 2005, most people still have no idea what Podcasting is really about outside of being able to download music at iTunes.com. And, frankly, it's because the... more.. Is Google PageRank Still A Valid Marketing Tool? Is Google PageRank Still A Valid Marketing Tool? By Titus Hoskins (c) 2007 The Google PageRank Toolbar in SEO circles is a hotly debated item, as are most issues dealing with Google. Some say it's useless, others say it gives you a general overview of your site's standing in Google. Regardless of who is right, this Toolbar shouldn't be ignored nor worshipped, just closely watched. The Google PR Toolbar is a simple tool you can download and place on your browser. When you surf the web, this toolbar will give you Google's PR or Page Rank for that particular site or page. Google ranks all web pages from a scale of 0 to 10. This Toolbar is more like the Richter scale than an ordinary scale. There's a big difference in the rankings as you go up and they are not proportional. You must also realize each of these ranking points are further divided and only Google knows the exact placement of your site or page within your shown PR number. For example, if you have a PR6 site your site could be at low end of the PR6 scale (closer to PR5) or at the top end which would make it more of a PR7 site. Big difference. ? PageRank Confusion Many suggest Google is not giving us the real value of the page in the first place and this toolbar is often out of date and more of a smokescreen than real information about a site. There could be some truth in this as Google nev?gives up all its secrets. Does any company? Certainly not the company that holds the keys to the most powerful... more.. You Are NOT George Clooney - So Get Your Social Networking Act In Gear! You Are NOT George Clooney - So Get Your Social Networking Act In Gear! By Adam Urbanski (c) 2009 When George Clooney was recently asked about his take on Facebook at the Toronto Film Festival, his response was short: "I'd rather have a prostate exam than a Facebook page." Now, that's probably understandable when movie studios (his potential clients) have his number on a speed dial, and pesky paparazzi (freebie seekers and unqualified prospects) chase after his every move. But unless you already have more prospects and high quality clients than you and your business can handle, your approach to Social Networking should be drastically different. Frankly, a little over a year ago I considered online networking a total waste of time. Fortunately, I was able to recognize how wrong I was. And I wasn't the only one that had a change of heart on this. After Dell revealed they generated a cool million dollars in extra sales in 2008, (ahm, make it a cool $3 million by June'09!), many other companies large and small started paying attention to this social networking "fad"! Just consider a few of these facts: ? Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks initially considered online hang-out places for kids and teenagers are now attracting a much more demographically diverse crowd. ? Big brand names, like Ford, WholeFoods, Comcast, IBM, Dell, Southwest Airlines, and many, many more are establishing a strong presence on social networking hubs like Twitter and Facebook. ? Facebook membership has just passed the 300 million mark (that's nearly the population of USA!) and Twitter is marching towards 18 million users by year's end! That's a lot of potential customers! ? Although, started with college kids... more.. 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.. Reciprocal Linking vs. Mutual Linking Reciprocal Linking vs. Mutual Linking By Scottie Claiborne  Some of the advice floating around regarding linking for your site can be pretty confusing, especially when it comes to reciprocal linking. Is it something you have to do? Can your site succeed without reciprocal links? Will you be penalized for reciprocal linking? There are so many conflicting theories. Let's try to clear the subject up a little. Link Popularity The founders of Google worked off a premise that has been active in academic papers for years: citation authority. They found that the more academic papers cited another's work, the more likely that cited work was to be an authority on the subject. Similarly, when a lot of sites link to one site, it's likely that site is an authority for the topic. The "topic" is whatever those links say it is. If 25 sites link to another site with the term "oak shelving," it's likely that page is an important page for oak shelving. Manipulation of Links It didn't take long for people who wanted to rank well for certain terms to figure out that they needed a lot of links with their chosen keyword phrases to improve their rankings in the search engines. Many schemes were born, including mini-sites, site networks, link farms, and reciprocal linking. Reciprocal Linking At the most basic level, reciprocal links are links you trade with other sites (you add their link, they add yours) in order to build link popularity. There are online services, group exchanges, and software available to help you link up with more like-minded webmasters, fast. As a result, many sites have grown sizeable directories on topics that have nothing to do with their area of exp