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15 types of people on Facebook !! are you ??

2012-02-04T01:26:00.000-08:00

1. TheLurker - Never posts anything or comments on your post, but reads everything.

2. TheHyena - Doesn't ever really say anything. Just “LOL” and “LMAO” at everything.

3. Mr/Ms Popular- Has 4367 friends for no reason

4. TheGamer - Plays words with friends, Mafia Wars, Bakes virtual cakes and stuff,etc. All Day.. :)

5. The Spiritualist- Each post makes reference to God

6. The Robber- Steals status updates & will maybe steal this one.

7. TheCynic - Hates their life and all in it. As evidenced by the serious attitude inall of their status updates.

8. TheCollector - Never posts anything either, but joins every group and becomes fansof the most random stuff.

9. The Advertiser- Always sends event invitations to things that you ultimately delete orignore.

10. TheLiker - Never actually says anything, but always clicks "Like"button.

11. TheHater - Every post revolves around someone hating them and they swear peopleare trying to ruin their life.

12. TheAnti-Proofreader - This person would gain very much from Spell-Check andsometimes you feel bad for them since you don’t know if they were typing fastor actually cant spell.

13. DramaKing/Queen - This person always posts stuff like "I can't believethis!", or "They going to make me snap today!” in the hopes that youwill ask what happened, or what's wrong...but then they never finish tellingthe story.

14. TheRooster – Feels that it is their job to notify Facebook "GoodMorning" daily.

15. TheNews – All the time updates you on what they are doing and who they are doingit with, no matter how illogical..

Blogger Change Blogspot.com to Blogspot.in

2012-01-31T00:11:00.000-08:00

Today i just check Facebook and got information from SEOLeaks about blogspot.com is changed. I saw there is one post from Ashvin Patel about recent change in Blogspot.com to blogspot.in, then i check Google but i am unable to find out.

I think there may be a change from Google that they will change all blogspot.com domain to their country domain. I am not sure, but this is the main reason for the change.

Share your comments on the same its beneficial for us or not.

Google Will No Longer Support Older Browsers after from 1st August

2011-06-05T09:47:00.000-07:00

Google apps has decided to drop support for the older versions of browsers from 1st August. So all the users which are using IE 7 , Mozilla Firefox 3.5 , Safari 3 or their older version can not access some functions or ma be the entire service of the Gmail, Google Docs , Google Calender, Google Talk, Google Sites.

Google has taken this step to stop the usage of outdated and older browsers that are insecure and lacking the latest features. Whenever the latest version of any browser will released Google will drop support for third oldest version.

So if you are using the older version of any browser mentioned above then you need to update your browser to the latest versions of these browsers. Here are the download links for latest browsers.
Mozilla Firefox
Google Chrome
Safari
Internet Explorer

Google has made these changes because whenever they will start any service or make any compatibility test then they will test only for the latest versions of Browsers.

On the other hand the Mozilla Firefox , Microsoft and Apple has started the campaigns to stop the usage of Older versions of browsers.

Google get ready to launch social circles

2011-03-14T07:48:00.000-07:00

Google is ready to make another attempt to break the social networking market called 'Google Circles'.

According to ReadWriteWeb, Google plans to unveil a new product called Google social circles in the South by Southwest interactive conference later today. It will allow users to share links; photos and video mash like Twitter and Facebook, except with more attention to various social people, hence the name.

ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick explains, it will allow people to share pictures, videos and status messages with people in their social circle. Google's site will be unique; the speculation goes, as it seeks to understand how our relations with our different friend’s social networking decide how truly close to them that we are, so adjust the amount of content that we share with these people.

Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks have broken down all the settings in a large bucket. We talked to our "friends" at once, regardless of what you might say a group of people or another. And so often feel less comfortable as they say nothing at all.

Google's preceding attempt on a social network, Google Buzz, was a PR disaster, revealing users' Gmail contact lists to each one they had ever matched with. Google then created a fund to help groups of private education. Buzz still exists, but its early problems meant he did not have the market penetration of its other products.

Google Introduces Google Instant For Faster Searches

2010-09-10T01:36:00.000-07:00

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.

The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way.
Benefits

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.

Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.

Read More..

5 tips for using Priority Inbox

2010-09-10T01:30:00.000-07:00

Gmail has recently introduce the priority inbox where you can have a separate inbox only for VIP emails. Here are 5 ways to make the maximum out of it. You will able to save lot of time you waste to read all the email.

1. Customize your selection
By default, Priority Inbox has three sections: "Important and Unread," "Starred" and "Everything Else.” But that doesn't mean you have to leave them that way. You can make a section show messages from a particular label (like your “Action” or “To-do” label), add a fourth section, or change the maximum size of any section. Visit the Priority Inbox tab under Settings to customize your sections, or do it right from the inline menus.

2. Train the system
If Gmail makes a mistake, you can help it learn to better categorize your messages. Select the misclassified message, then use the importance buttons at the top of your inbox to correctly mark it as important or not important.

3. See the best of your filtered messages
You can set up Priority Inbox to show you not just the best of your inbox, but also the best of messages you filter out of your inbox and might otherwise miss. Just change your Priority Inbox settings to “Override filters” and Gmail will surface any important messages that would otherwise skip your inbox.

4. Use filters to guarantee certain messages get marked important (or not)
If you read and reply to a lot of messages from your mom, Gmail should automatically put incoming messages from her in the “Important and unread” section. But if you want to be 100% sure that all messages from your mom (or your boss, boyfriend, client, landlord, etc.) are marked important, you can create a filter for messages from that sender and select “Always mark as important.” Similarly, if you regularly read messages from your favorite magazine, they should automatically get marked as important. If you’d rather they end up in the “Everything else” section, you can create a filter to never mark them as important.

5. Archive unimportant messages quickly
One of the features that can help make you more efficient is the ability to archive all of the visible messages in the "Everything Else" section at once. Just click on the down arrow next to "Everything Else" and select the "Archive all visible items" option. If you want to be able to archive even more messages at once, you can increase the maximum number of messages that show in that section from the same drop-down.

Read More...

Google Updates Webmaster Tools Verification & Adds Analytics Code Option

2010-08-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

Google has introduced a new method of verifying your web site in Google Webmaster Tools. The new method is to use the Google Analytics asynchronous code to verify your site in Google Webmaster Tools.

It must be the newer asynchronous code, but if you use that code, you can quickly gain access to the site in Google Webmaster Tools. You must be the administrator of the site in Google Analytics to verify the site using this method. But once it is verified, you can then quickly share the data with others.

In addition, Google “improved interface for verification” by adding more information about each verification method, including step-by-step instructions for some verification methods. The last time Google revamped the verification page was in October 2009.

The new Analytics verification method now gives you four ways to verify you site in Google Webmaster Tools. They include:

* Add a DNS record to your domain’s configuration
* Add a meta tag to your site’s home page
* Upload an HTML file to your server
* Link to your Google Analytics account

Read More..

Google News changes reflect your feedback

2010-07-16T20:24:00.000-07:00

Just two weeks after launching a new version of its Google News site, the web giant has changed the design in response to complaints from users. While the recent redesign is still the default — with a single main column containing “top news,” along with a customized stream of content called “news for you” — users now have the ability to change back to something more like the previous grid-style layout, which includes sections for each main news topic spread over two columns.

The main focus of the Google News redesign was the introduction of the customized “news for you” section, which expanded on the customization features that the site had before and brought them to the forefront. Many other news sites and services have been making similar changes, including Digg, which is working on its own major redesign aimed at making the service more social and allowing users to customize their sources of news. And the Washington Post earlier this week acquired a startup called iCurrent, which allows users to create a kind of personalized newspaper based on their favorite topics.

It’s worth noting, however, that some users didn’t like the personalized “news for you” feature much, judging by some of the comments in a Google News support forum on the topic, as well as comments on a Nieman Journalism Lab story on the new redesign. Whether the latest changes that Google has made will pacify some of those critics remains to be seen. Personalization may be the future of news, but the reality is that some people just don’t like change, period.

Read More...

Web Analytics Wednesday Ahmedabad (WAW)

2010-03-30T23:08:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends,

As you all know, I am here to share with you all my research and new facts that I come across related to SEO, Web Analytics, SEO Tips And Techniques, Internet Marketing Industry Updates and such others. So, in this post I would like to draw your attention towards a Grand Event that is going to be organized especially for Web Analytics Lovers. Many of you might be knowing that, there is an International Event called WAW (Web Analytics Wednesday) which has been started by a very well known Web Analytcis Practitioner “Eric T. Peterson”. Normally, these kind of events used to be held at US, UK & Canada, but since last 2 years, We were fortunate enough to get this Event at India. Last year, the same kind of events were organized at Banglore, Chennai & Hyderabad.

And, NOW, With Lot Of Cheers, I am happy to announce that, We got got an opportunity to get this event to our own “Ahmedabad”. This event is hosted and managed by IMJ-Internet Marketing Journal which is usually maintained and handled by the combined efforts of industry experts. Credits goes to my industry friends(Dipali, Kaushal & Jaydip). It will be for the first time in North-West India where such kind of events are going to be held. The agenda of this event is to share and discussion about the Role of Web Analytics Insights in the Business.

Yup, WAW- Ahmedabad sounds so good isn't it...

I would like to invite all of you people to attend this event. We will have a great presentations during this event (Might be few speakers who have presented their knowledge in Google India seminars last year will going to speak in this event)

Please visit the below URL to send your RSVP

http://www.internetmarketingjournal.org/web-analytics-wednesday-ahmedabad/

Finaly Team of Internet Marketing Journal brings Web Analytics Wednesday Day to Ahmedabad. Internet Marketing Journal (IMJ) was founded by Jaydip Parikh, Kaushal Shah and Dipali Thakkar. They really work hard and now we are going to enjoy Web Analytics Wednesday to our own Ahmedabad.

Lead Speaker

Ravi Pathak,

Founder & Business Head, Tatvic (Bangalore)

Tatvic is official Google Analytics Authorized Consultant in India and having clients like Make My Trip, Cardekho and other leading portal and some prestigious International clients too.

Venue - Date & Time
14th. April, 2010, 7.00 PM Onwards
Gloria Banquet Hall
1st. Floor, Regency Tower,
Nr. Rahul Tower,Anand Nagar – Prahlad Nagar 100 ft. Road,
Satellite, Ahmadabad.

Sponsors for this Event

Lead Sponsor :

YASH Infotech (Business Partner TATA Communications Ltd.)

Diamond Partners :

InvestPlus : InvestPlus is Personal Finance Software specially Design for Individuals needs.
Datatech Media : Web Development, Design & Internet Marketing Solutions Provider
Byte Technosys Pvt. Ltd. : RIMS, On Site Support, Microsoft Solutions, Web Solutions Provider

Merchandiser Partner :

Infibeam.com : Infibeam.com is a premier online shopping portal of India portal carrying 50 Lac products including Books, DVDs, Cars, Bikes, Mobiles, Cameras, Gifts and many more

Global Supporter : Eric Peterson Founder of webanalyticsdemystified.com

Feel free to get updates of Web Analytics Wednesday Ahmedabad event on LinkedIn & Facebook.

Hoping to meet you at Web Analytics Wednesday – Ahmedabad...

Facebook begins rollout of new design

2010-02-04T21:50:00.000-08:00

Facebook was testing their new design with a selected group of users. Today, Facebook has begun rolling out their new design to all 350 million users. The changes bring a new design to the end user, re-arranging their original layout and adding new features on the main news feed.

One improvement to the layout is the positioning of the new requests, messages and notifications from friends. Positioned right beside the logo and in between the new position of the search box. Facebook also moved the home, profile and account tabs, giving users a new account information drop down box for quick and easy access to your settings.

Facebook also added minor adjustments to the news feed, messages, events, photos and more on the left sidebar. Your games and applications have been moved from the bottom taskbar to your sidebar for quick and easy access. A quick online user list is also positioned on the left sidebar, for quick access to chat to.

Your reminders for birthdays and events have been readjusted onto the right sidebar, along with suggestions and requests. Pop-up notifications now appear on the left hand side of Facebook instead of on the right. One of the bigger changes is to the taskbar which has almost been completely eliminated from the design, now only functioning as your personal chats.

Get Twitter Followers Without Mass-Following

2010-02-03T21:55:00.000-08:00

The same mentality should apply on Twitter, it will take longer but a good foundation will give you a solid following that grows on its own. Here is a list of things you can do to organically grow your following on Twitter:

1. Know Your Niche
I’m talking about listening and learning how your community moves on Twitter. Who are the true leaders, what kind of content is shared, the popular blogs, the lingo, etc. Now, think of ways to participate, add value and improve the current conversation. In other words, get attention by kicking ass in your industry, aim to become a leader.

2. Write Content People Can Share
Make it easy for people to share your content, think of why somebody would be happy to put that piece of content in front of his/her own network. If you write great posts that are providing real insights and answers in your industry, people will love to share it because they are also trying to be resourceful to their network AND, if your post gets to be shared by a rockstar in your niche, it would probably spin like there’s no tomorrow (you thought I was going to use the word “viral”…). People that shares your content are likely to follow you and sometimes even “list” you.

3. Be Resourceful
It’s pretty clear that you should share other content more than your own but besides that, I think what’s important is to share valuable content that is really adding something to your network. Don’t just throw links in there because they are related. If you’re posting trash, people will stop clicking on your links. Posting great stuff will result in retweets and that my friend, puts you in front of other networks.

4. Stay In Your Field
How much value can you add in a niche that’s not yours? Stay in your field, where your expertise can be of value to others. Retweeting everything Mashable says is not that valuable to your tribe if you are a Yoga instructor, I’m sure there are a couple of stories that might apply but don’t make it a daily thing. You are just making it hard for people to share what you say and soon you will be invisible to them.

5. Follow Less But Follow Smart
Random following is not gonna get you anywhere, I don’t care if you’re just trying to generate some traffic back to your site, these people couldn’t care less about you. Instead, identify the right people, look for existing conversations, answer questions been asked out there. Of course the process is slow but you have the chance to connect with people that relates to who you are or what you do birds.

6. Introduce Yourself
Are you the kind of person that goes to a convention collecting a thousand business cards? Don’t you think is more productive to go and meet some key individuals that you might actually end up doing something. When you do this, you don’t just get the card and run away, you at least introduce yourself. What if you do the same thing on Twitter? Follow this individual (a prospect, colleague, competitor, vendor, whatever you want…) and introduce yourself. That person will most likely want to stay in touch with you.

7. Engage In Conversations
Now that you have followed some interesting people, go talk to them, you didn’t just hand out your business card to run away. You must be active in starting conversations, don’t wait for people to talk to you. If you engage in smart conversations about your topic and add your 2 cents, not only you will be followed by those involved but also by the spectators.

8. Manage Your Tweets
So what’s the right number of tweets per day? What are the best times to tweet? I don’t think there is an answer for this, at least not from me. I think you need to find a balance that only your experience will dictate. To start, don’t go to the extremes, not too much to annoy people and not too little that you will be forgotten. Be consistent and have an idea of how you want to handle it.

9. Email Signatures
Just think about how many people gets emails from you every day. Add your Twitter link to your signature, you can use a tool like WiseStamp, a very easy to install plugin for your browser, to make it more professional. This tool generates a html signature so you can add other elements like RSS and other networks.

10. Invite People To Follow You On Your Blog
A no brainer. Have a Twitter icon on your blog and add a little call to action like “Follow me on Twitter“. A good placement could be right next to your subscriptions. You can also display the feed on the sidebar, just go to Twitter and grab the code from there.

11. Offline Promotion
Add your Twitter URL to anything you print, business cards, flyers or any promotional items you run in your business. If you own a Cafe or a small restaurant and you post your daily specials, have something on the counter to remind your customers to “follow our daily specials on Twitter”. You get the picture…

12. Don’t Use Auto-Responders
Maybe is my personal opinion but I prefer you don’t send me anything before you send a robot. It is a touchy subject for a lot of people. I would suggest to write a personal response but I’m not really sure if anybody reads the DM’s (Maybe you can comment on this, thank you).

Read More...

Google Toolbar Pagerank Update Running - October 2009

2009-10-29T23:05:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys, Good news here !! :)

Google is updating !!

My blog moved to PR2 from PR3 http://gujaratishayri.wordpress.com
another got PR0 from PR3 http://muzicofindia.wordpress.com

October 2009 Google pagerank update is running so, you can also check your website Pagerank update at the end of october,2009 on google toolbar.

I was Waiting for this Google Pagerank Update since a long..!!

Google has made a page rank update, the changes are starting to show in Last Week of October 2009. It has been a long wait for this update, the last update was in 23rd of June. Until now only a few site have been affected by the PR update. Tomorrow we will see clearly what are the effects of this October PR update.

Although page rank doesn’t determine your position in results, it shows your site social status and power. A site with PR 7 has more back links and more weight, when this site publishes an article it will get quickly on the first page of Google Search, even if it doesn’t have backlinks.

Other micro sites too got indexed with PR4 etc m still checking exact details buss felt like sharing with you people :)
so you too check and share the information here...

Google PageRank Update : June 2009

2009-06-26T00:04:00.000-07:00

Google PageRank (the visible toolbar PageRank that is) was updated around the web on the 23rd and 24th of June, changing the visible PageRank scores which appear on the toolbars of Google users all over the globe. Lots of publishers tend to use PageRank as a metric for judging the quality of their site, which I do not agree with, but toolbar PageRank is still relevant to many website owners and bloggers, so any update is still a big deal.

The last Google PageRank update I remember was during IM Spring Break in early April, and according to those tracking the Google Toolbar update frequencies, this update comes a bit early.

Google Profiles - Great for Reputation and SEO

2009-04-28T23:08:00.000-07:00

Have you seen Google Profiles yet? If not, go set up you profile at http://www.google.com/profiles/

It's no secret that from time to time many of us have searched on Google for our name or someone else's. When searching for yourself to see what others would find, results can be varied and aren't always what you want people to see — whether it's someone else with your name, or the finishing time from that 5K you ran back in 2002. We want to make that better and give you more of a voice.

To give you greater control over what people find when they search for your name, we've begun to show Google profile results at the bottom of U.S. name-query search pages. These results offer abbreviated information from user-created Google profiles and a link to the full profiles. We've also added links so it's easy to search for the same name on MySpace, Facebook, Classmates and LinkedIn.

Read MOre...

Happy Birthday Gmail - Google’s Gmail now 5 years Old !!

2009-04-02T23:13:00.000-07:00

Five years ago yesterday, Gmail starting giving people a gig. What started as an internal tool for Google employees is now used by tens of millions of people around the world in 52 languages.

In honor of the occasion, you may have noticed a little cake on the Gmail homepage today.

Read MOre..

Google PageRank Update for March 2009

2009-04-01T23:29:00.000-07:00

The latest Google PageRank (PR) update is around the corner or it is just a rumor. Over the weekend, there are tons and tons of threads in several forums with webmasters and SEOs complaining that their PageRank score in the Google Toolbar took a dive. There are hot threads at DigitalPoint Forums and Google Webmaster Help talking about the ongoing Google PR updates. One thing for sure is that a lot of people are not happy with the new PageRank score they received.

Lots of SEO's (Search Engine Optimizers) have sworn off checking Pagerank and waiting around for updates, but I think we all know that these updates are still very interesting, and the numbers are still a very important part of SEO.

They can give us a peek at what kind of progress we are making with our SEO campaigns in Google, THE most important Search Engine for SEO, since a high ranking in Google is much more valuable than all of the other search engines combined.

Google PageRank (PR) and Back Links (BL) was last updated on 10th January 2009. This time no importance for Reciprocal link Building, sites Page Rank is changed. I think Google changed algorithm again.

2009 Jan 10 TBPR & BL Updated
2008 Dec 31 TBPR & BL Updated
2008 Dec 11 BL Updated
2008 Dec 4 TBPR & BL Updated
2008 Nov 12 TBPR & BL Updated
2008 Sept 27 TBPR & BL Updated
2008 Aug 23 TBPR & BL Updated
2008 july26 TBPR & BL Updated
2008 jun 25 TBPR & BL Export Expected date
2008 may 12 TBPR & BL Export
2008 Feb 26 TBPR & BL Export 47/47
2008 Jan 10 TBPR & BL Export 74/74

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Don't Over-Think It! Yes, You Too Can Do SEO

2009-02-17T23:15:00.000-08:00

As someone who sells SEO as a service it is often not in my best interest to tell people they can do SEO on their own. But it's true. Just as changing the car's oil, fixing clogged pipes, or painting a house are all relatively easy, most business owners can SEO their website on their own. All it takes is some knowledge and time.

Knowledge can be found easily enough for free, and time, well, that's not something you likely have an excess of. Fortunately, SEO doesn't all have to be done at once, it can be implemented a little at a time, as you have time.

If you want to optimize your site yourself then you need to simplify. A lot of what you'll learn about SEO can be complicated. Especially when you start reading about .htaccess, robots.txt, 301 redirects, absolute links, and so on. This is all good information to have but you don't always have to start there.

If you're doing it yourself then start with the things that you can do yourself. Don't get caught up in all the complicated issues that go beyond your knowledge or ability to implement. The more difficult technical tasks may still be necessary down the road, but for now, do what you can with what you have.

Here are some things that you can often do easily enough on your own:

1) Customize all your title tags. If your site is big this may take some time. If its dynamically generated then you may want to have your programmers implement a template that pulls in and inserts keywords based on the page.

2) Customize your content. This can be especially important if you sell products. Don't settle for stock descriptions, and take the time needed to write somethign different for each of the 20 products you have that are simply different versions of the same thing. This customized content is essential.

3) Get content on all of your pages. If you have category pages that link to products or other information pages, put at least a paragraph of text on each page.

4) Link, link, link. Add links throughout your content to other pages and products of your site. Link back and forth between pages, add links to related products, link to your blog and from your blog.

5) Blog. Write content that your visitors will love. Don't just use your blog to pimp your products or services. Write helpful tips and tutorials or provide insight that your readers can use.

Read More...

Yahoo! to Launch New, Comprehensive Mobile Portal

2009-02-17T22:54:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! will launch a new mobile experience called, wait for it, Yahoo! Mobile. It will be available via mobile web and downloadable mobile applications for the iPhone as well as smartphones powered Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola. An app will also be available for smartphones with the Windows Mobile operating system.

Yahoo! Mobile will feature a ton of stuff including:
Yahoo! oneSearch - Yahoo!'s award-winning mobile search service providing the most current, relevant answers you need.
Today - The most interesting stories buzzing on the Internet right now, selected by Yahoo!'s editorial team.
Yahoo! oneConnect - Yahoo!'s service designed to provide consumers everything they need to stay in touch with the people about whom they care:
Email - Access to Yahoo! Mail and other popular email service providers, including Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail and AOL Mail.
Pulse - Access totheir social networks, including Bebo, Dopplr, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, Last.fm, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube.
Yahoo! Messenger - An upgraded version of Yahoo!'s popular mobile instant messaging service.
Yahoo! Address Book - Keeps consumers' contacts always handy and in sync.
Yahoo! Calendar - View, add and edit appointments when users are away from their PCs.
Yahoo! News - Breaking headlines across popular topics.
Yahoo! onePlace - Access and manage your favorite content, all from one location including news topics and sources, RSS feeds, weather conditions, sports scores, stock quotes, websites/blogs, horoscopes and movie theaters.

Smartphone apps will include:
Yahoo! oneSearch with Voice - Allowing users to launch searches by simply speaking.
Maps - Powerful improved tools that let consumers locate, learn about and get directions to points of interest.
Opera Mini 4.2 - An integrated version of the world's most popular mobile web browser, with easy return to the Yahoo! Mobile app, that launches when web site access is needed.
Widgets - Enhanced mobile-optimized experiences for services from Yahoo! and other brands. Users can browse, add and remove these at anytime according to their tastes.

Read More...

Timing of SEO in the Web Design Process

2009-02-09T00:40:00.000-08:00

If you’re just starting to build your website now is the best time to start planning your search engine optimization and search engine marketing strategy. The best time to introduce the SEO planning of a website is when the site design is ready and the site is ready to be launched but there is no content yet for the site. Just before the site launches is the time to bring in an SEO consultant to provide some SEO services.

After the design of the website is done an SEO consultant can give you suggestions about what keywords and key phrases you need to add into the site HTML as Meta tags and where those tags should go. Once the site is tagged and the design and navigation has been tested it’s time to add in content. Having SEO content on your site from the start will give your web site a big advantage over older websites that might already have a bit of a following but haven’t had any SEO services by a professional SEO consultant.

For a new site where that site ends up on the search engine results pages can be critical to its success. In order for the site to get a high ranking on the search engine results pages it’s imperative that a professional and experienced SEO consultant creates search engine optimized content that is ready to be part of a broad search engine marketing campaign. It just makes more sense to get all your ducks in a row before you launch the site doesn’t it? Bring in an SEO consultant when you’re ready to start putting content on the site so that when the site launches your site will be instantly indexed by the search engine spiders and can start drawing traffic from search engines immediately.

If you have an existing site that is due for an overhaul or a design revamping then you should also consult a professional SEO consultant before the site is redone so that you will have a good idea of what SEO services that you need. Cosmetic work on the site is important so that your site doesn’t look outdated but changing up the content on the site will be very important. Most of the traffic that websites get comes from searches done by people who use Google or another search engine to look for website dealing with a particular topic.

You want your site to be at the top of or at least near the top every search that is done by a search engine for the topic that your site is about. In order to achieve that you need an SEO professional to write great search engine optimized content before the site launches. If your existing site has had the same content on it for more than six months you should get an SEO professional to write new content. Changing the content is a great search engine marketing strategy to draw new web site traffic and improve your search engine ranking.

Read MOre..

What You Need To Know About Directory Submission?

2009-02-03T22:15:00.000-08:00

Do you own a website? Have you tried all the methods to generate traffic to your website. One of the methods which used by webmasters to increase the credibility of their website is directory submission. A web directory is a website which is divided into different categories and sub-categories. Webmasters submit their website to the directory for the purpose building backlinks pointing to their website. Number of quality one way links is one of the criteria which is used by search engines to rank their websites. Greater will be number of the backlinks pointing towards the website better will be the rank on the search engine result page.

There are two types of methods which people use to submit their website to the web directories. The first method is automatic submission with the help of software. This method is fast and does not need so much time and effort. The second method is manual submission. This method is bit difficult and needs time but this method is preferred by webmasters and SEO experts.

Building backlinks is a slow process. If you will try to fasten this process your website can be banned by the search engines. Nowadays you can also find many SEO firms which offer directory submission at reasonable prices. A good SEO firm can save lot of money and time for you. Always remember that the benefits of directory submission are long lasting. If you want to generate more traffic to your website then you have to use different techniques in proper way.

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Google toolbar adds adds Chrome's speed dial to Firefox

2009-02-02T04:09:00.000-08:00

If you like Chrome but miss your Google toolbar, you might just want to keep using Firefox (or switch back). The latest version of the Google Toolbar for Firefox adds features mimicking Chrome's start page to newly-opened tabs in Firefox.

In addition to your 9 most frequently visited sites, the page also displays recent bookmarks and recently closed tabs. The update also boasts an array of new buttons and the ability to add Gadgets as buttons.

Here's a shocker for you: the new version has been labeled a "second beta" by Google. We'll wait with bated breath to see if the label changes at some point in the next 8 years.

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Long Tail Keywords And Its Search Engine Optimization Usage

2009-01-29T00:49:00.000-08:00

Many Search Engine Optimization experts have used Long Tail Keywords and basically what they are, are search phrases consisting of several words. A simple example of this would be if a general keyword were ‘SEO’ then the long tail keyword phrase would be ‘How to incorporate SEO’.

Experts say that the reason behind using long tail keywords on a website is that your marketing is more effective. This is achieved through the ability of targeting specific markets. When searching for a particular topic it is more likely that searches will type in a short keyword of one or two words. However, by typing in long tail key phrases, one is able to get more specific and relevant results. This will drive these visitors to click on your website as they know precisely that your sites content contains the information they require.

Another great advantage of using longtail keywords is that there is less competition for your phrases. Most online businesses in your field will more likely use one worded keywords during search engine optimization which ultimately benefits you. However, do not fully rely on this. It is always best you do Keyword Research for long tail phrases just as you would do for keywords. This can take time but is vital.

The Long Tail Of SEO
Targeting traffic through SEO begins with keywords and key phrases, which gives you better ranking. Top ranking cannot however be achieved by all websites and it usually takes strategy and time and sometimes lots of money. In Search Engine Optimization, long tail keywords are very useful even if they generate fewer searches but receive sufficient traffic. They will not always guarantee high ranking, which is what you hope to achieve through Search Engine Optimization but you will get a good traffic flow to your website.

The best ways that long tail keywords can be incorporated onto your website so that your Search Engine Optimization can be effective is by including it in the page title and tags. Also ensure that these long tail phrases are used abundantly throughout your websites content but do not overcrowd it – all key phrases should be relevant and befitting.

Longtail Keywords Research
Selecting appropriate keywords on its own and trying to decipher what searchers are looking for is a hard enough task that requires great research. When choosing long tail keyword, in order to gain great profits, research is too required.

How one goes about researching potential long tail keywords is by using the following tools. Start by employing free services such as Wordtracker and Google’s free keyword aid. Look specifically for long tail Niche Keywords that receive ok traffic and have low competition but use quality phrases that you know people will actually search for. Little competition means that you have a better chance of entering into your niche market and although long tail key phrases is not going to instantly make you a millionaire it will get your foot in the door.

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How to Start SEO and Increase Web Traffic - Using Keywords

2009-01-28T22:09:00.000-08:00

Submissions & Keywords

Many small business owners know that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps generate traffic to their websites. They even know that they need to start doing it for their own website. But how?

You can always hire someone to do optimization for you but what if you don't have the budget for it? What if you want to do something yourself? Below are some basic tips of how to get started. Unfortunately, SEO takes time, spanning weeks and months. It's something you have to keep working at. Some of these tips will get you started but some should be worked on every week. Set aside an hour or two each week on your calendar. Pick a day you know won't be filled with constant interruptions, maybe even on a weekend.

If your website is up and running you need to make sure you have the following in place. Some may have already been done by your web designer so check with him or her first so you don't duplicate steps.

1. Submit your Web site name to Google, Yahoo Search and MSN
2. Submit to directories DMOZ, Yahoo Directory (Yahoo requires a fee)

There are many ways to increase your traffic and get the search engines to give you better placement, for now I will stick to the essentials.
Keywords

Keywords are used to categorize your site by search engines. Then the search engines share your site when those words or phrases are searched. You want to make sure you are using the right keywords on your site's copy and in its meta tags. Meta Tags are a a few lines of html code that explain your site's title, description and keywords to the search engines.

First you need to figure out which keywords or keyword phrases are relevant to your business and searched often by people. Many you may be able to guess. Think about what you would type into Google if you were going to look for your products or services. Start creating a list of these words and phrases.

If your site has been up for a while and gets a regular stream of traffic you can use the traffic reports from your site. Better yet use an analytics tool, some are free like Google Analytics, to see what keywords are bringing in the most traffic for your site. Setting it up is easy. You sign up with Google and it gives you a tracking code. Then either you or your web designer just need to paste the code into the website. If you have access to a content management system or are using a system like Wordpress this shouldn't be too hard. Just follow Google's instructions. Once active see what keywords bring in the most traffic.

Another way is to use Google AdWords' new Search-based Keyword Tool (also free). After you sign up with Google and sign-in you can type in your Website address, add a few words that you think would work and Google will give you more suggestions. They will also tell you how many people search for those words per month, if your competition is buying those words for search engine marketing (SEM, or paid search marketing) advertising and how much it costs.This is helpful to determine what will work for you.

Since you are a small business you may not be able to compete with large companies that are always optimizing their site's keywords and appear at the top of searches for popular phrases. Instead you want to find your niche, an area that isn't extremely popular or competitive and then you want to be strong with those keywords.

Look for words that have:

* A high volume of searches on it
* A high relevance to your site
* Low competition

Add these words to your list, to the copy on your site and to your meta tags to help optimize it for search engines. This will help build traffic. Remember it takes time for you to do all of this and time before the search engines go through all your new keywords, sometimes a few months. So be patient. But remember you'll save in the end by not having to pay someone.

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10 Ways to Use Facebook for Increasing Web Traffic to Your Site

2009-01-27T22:04:00.000-08:00

1. Build a Facebook network. Before you start implementing any of the techniques discussed here, you need to develop a network of Facebook friends. To do that, join a few groups that are related to your business and a few groups that you are passionate about.

Ask people in the groups to add you as their friend. Facebook also has nifty tool that suggest people you would like to know. Send request to these people to add you as their friend. Send a short note explaining why you want to be their friend. If send 20 requests a day, you will have a network of more than 1,000 friends in two months.

2. Update your status every day. Login every day and update your status. Don’t use status messages like “I am sleeping now”, “Just came from work”. These types of status messages are not interesting. Use quotes from famous people about a specific niche, for example love, dedication, work ethics, peace, war, etc. You can also use jokes. Your aim is to draw people’s attention to your messages so that they would click on your profile to know more about you.

3. Wish birthday wishes everyday. Facebook also shows upcoming birthdays of all friends in your network. Every day send birthday wishes to friends whose birthdays are due. Read their profiles to know more about them and write a nice personal message on their walls. Don’t use canned birthday messages for everybody.

When you write on a friend’s wall in Facebook, everybody in the network gets updated news feed. You need to write something that get attention. You may craft a 10 to 20 attention grabbing birthday messages and than personalize them slightly for each friend.

4. Create a business page. Besides your personal page, you should also create a business page. Creating a business page is similar to creating a personal page in Facebook. Design a nice logo and use it for your business page picture.

Next, become a fan of your business page. You can use your business page to launch targeted Facebook ad campaign. Promote your Facebook business page using blogs, blog comments, etc. and ask people to become a fan of your business. Use some promotional materials, like free t-shirts, free eBooks etc as incentives for becoming a fan.

5. Tag promotional photos using friends’ names. Upload all promotional photos to your business page. Some people tag these photos with the names of their most influential friends in the network. Your promotional photos will show up in your friends’ news feeds. Once you setup a network of friends, make a list of friends with high number of friends, preferably more than 1000. Setup your mini network to tag each others names in promotional photos.

6. Change your relationship status regularly if it is possible. One of the least frequent activity in Facebook is changing the relationship. Because people don’t change their relationship frequently, Facebook places a great deal of importance to relationship change and send the news feeds to everybody in your network whenever there is a change in your relationship status.

People have explored this loop hole to attract attention to their profiles. They change their relationship almost weekly and try to attract visitors to their profiles. It is up to you to adopt this technique because it may not reflect your true relationship status. If you do adopt this technique, don’t forget to publish some promotional materials in your personal feed.

7. Attend Multiple Events. True to its college root, Facebook is all about friends gathering at some place for an event. Facebook gives high priority to events in the news feed. Your goal is to RSVP all the events in your network even if you miss a few of them.

When your friends see you as a frequent event attendee, they consider you as an event resource. The trick is to show your name in all the places you can. As your friends see your name multiple times, some will be curious to check your profile.

8. Import your blog post. If you have a blog, import your blog’s RSS feed into Facebook. Facebook will publish the articles in the feed as Facebook notes automatically. Encourage your friends to comments on your articles in Facebook notes. You can also tag friends in the articles but don’t overdo it.

9. Post comments on popular groups. Visit popular Facebook groups that you have joined regularly and post comments. Just like blog comments or forum posting, Facebook comments on popular groups will attract attention to your name and profile. Add something valuable or post a link that adds value to the topic under discussions.

10. Start your own events. Events are very popular in Facebook and if you can promote it properly, it will have viral effects and thousands will register for the event. Send invitation to your network friends who have thousands of friends in their networks and also to attractive female friends in your network who may not have a large number of friends.

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11 FREE Ways How To Explode Your Website Traffic Hit Counter

2009-01-26T22:40:00.000-08:00

1) Start an affiliate program. Its the #1 way how to get high quality traffic to your website. Almost every successful online business has an affiliate program.

2) Build an opt in list. This is the most important factor of any internet business. With an opt in list you can get massive high-quality traffic to any website instantly. Every successful internet marketer has an opt in list. Learn how to build a massive opt in list by sending a blank email to affila@aweber.com

3) Use a tool such as Traffic Equalizer. This tool instantly creates thousands of search engine friendly pages for your website. Each page is targeted for one keyphrase and gets traffic from search engines. Get the tool at trafficequalizer.com

4) Write articles and submit them to article directories and ezine publishers. Collect a list of ezine publishers and submit your articles to them. Also submit your articles to article directories.

5) Exchange links with other websites. Exchanging links with hundreds of other websites can bring heavy traffic to your website. You can exchange links very fast using ARELIS link exchange tool at axandra-link-popularity-tool.com

6) Create a brandable viral ebook that promotes your website. Give this ebook to marketers with large opt in lists. Let them customize it with their affiliate links that point to your website and give it away to their subscribers for free. This will bring steady, non stop traffic to your website.

7) Submit your website to directories and other websites that accept submissions. You can find such websites by visiting search engine such as Google, and searching for add url your keywords, add site your keywords, your keywords directory. There are hundreds of other variations you can search for.

8) Post at forums. Participate in forum discussions and leave a link to your website in your signature line. Make the title of the link catchy by stating a benefit to get more people click on it.

9) Go to http://www.affila.com/ and learn about website traffic and opt in list building methods that work today. Visit the website and use your first name and email to subscribe to the course that it offers.

10) Make your website viral. In your website offer content that literally forces your visitors to tell their friends about your website. Add tell-a-friend functionality to your website. An excellent example of viral website is http://www.themeatrix.com. This website gets tons of viral traffic.

11) Write testimonials. Write testimonials for products that you like and that you have used. If youre lucky, your testimonial can be on the product sales page that has hundreds of visitors every day. That would mean your website link in testimonial clicked many times.

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Search Engine Optimization SEO Ranking for 5 Proven Ways to Find Link Exchange Partners

2009-01-26T01:59:00.000-08:00

If you're like most small business websites on the internet today, you use link exchanges to market your website. But sometimes finding websites to exchange links with can be a time consuming task. Here are a few proven methods for finding websites to exchange links with.

1: Search Engines Queries

Using Google or Yahoo, perform the following searches, replacing “keyword” with a keyword related to your site.

Keyword add URL
Keyword add site
Keyword add link
Keyword submit URL
Keyword submit site
Keyword submit link
Keyword link exchange
Keyword link swap
Keyword reciprocal link
Keyword related sites
Keyword links directory

2: Find out who's linking to your competitor's.

If you can find out who is linking to your competitors, you can try to acquire a link to your site ob each site that already links to your competitors. Just search for link:http://www.competitors-url-here.com

3: Other link directories

Find sites that relate to your site that have link exchange directories. Visit each site in their link directories and attempt to exchange links with each site.

4: Link exchange tools

There are several excellent websites that match webmasters with related sites that are interested in exchanging links. Two of the best are Link alizer and Site Sell’s Value Exchange. In general, you'll want to stay away from sites that completely automate the link exchange process. I have used some of them, but the search engines do not like these sites, and may penalize your site if you use them.

5: Software

There is also software available that searches for and automatically emails sites to see if they will link exchange with you. I have used and like higradeworld if you decide to use this method, ensure that you comply with all spam laws and the search engine's guidelines.

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12 Useful Online Marketing Resources for Small Business Owners - A self check

2009-01-25T22:44:00.000-08:00

In this post small business owners can find list of Webmaster resources and tools that can help to track and improve existing SEO work performed in Business website or Blog

But don’t forget to leave SEO work to experts :) and suggest your thoughts on your type of business and customers using below Webmaster resources and tools

(1) Google Webmaster Tools to improve traffic
(2) Analyze your visitors, search engine visibility and keyword search through Google Analytics
(3) Find pages that link to your site and competitor site using Site Explorer
(4) Track search engine result placement for your keyword and URL
(5) Check your web page in different screen resolutions
(6) Type out your domain or keywords in search box to find relationship between linking sites and topics, a Visual Meta search engine
(7) Check you site load time and fix if it is too slow. This will help search engine spiders to crawl easily
(8) Find out how search engine spiders look at your site
(9) Find how your website is targeted in local search engines
(10) Find insight of your website keyword search terms and location; target your business accordingly
(11) Get quick traffic and cost estimates on your keywords for sponsored listings
(12) Measure your ROI from SEO, PPC and conversion rate optimization

The above Online marketing resources and tools are easy to use by Small Business Owners and using this you can support web site promotion work performed by an individual or SEO company.

The 7 Best Ways To Get Traffic

2009-01-22T23:15:00.000-08:00

There is a myth that traffic is hard to get. It is not. Traffic is traffic. It is just a click on a computer. However, good web traffic is hard to get, good web traffic that has a fair proportion of credit card wielding, want what you have got, eager buyers, well that's another story. Here are my top 7 ways to attract some of those eager beavers over to your place:

1. Advertise - No surprises here, but the opportunities on the net are pretty much limitless. Get some expert help if you don't know what you're doing, but Google Adwords is a great place to start.

Then there's banner advertising, classified ads, ads on blog networks, ads on individual sites and blogs, offline advertising in newspapers and magazines, ebay classifieds, trust me, I could on and on. This is another good place to start your advertising campaign.

The important thing to remember when buying advertising is to 'buy relevant' i.e. it is far better to have 1 visitor who wants what you have against 100 visitors who just drift on by, without so much as clicking on one of your 'call to actions' (such as your newsletter sign up, buy button etc.)

2. Buy traffic - Yep, you can buy traffic. 100,000 visitors for so much. Buyer beware. Pop under traffic needs specific offers to make it work and a lot of other 'network' traffic is a lot of rubbish.

As always, when purchasing traffic or advertising, make sure that you have adequate tracking codes in place to make sure you know where your visitors and revenue are coming from (otherwise you will make some bad judgment calls later on).

The other big tip is to buy small and test. Then if it works and only then, scale up. Last word of advice (I promise): Visitor numbers are vanity, profit is sanity.

3. Forums, comments, articles, Press releases, newsletters, tell a friend - I think I've covered most of these options elsewhere but do not underestimate the power of these strategies.

If you have Google Analytics or Fruity Plugins installed you will soon see where your traffic is coming from. One well placed forum post can do wonders for your sagging washing line of a visitor graph! Get someone to sign up to your weekly newsletter and you've got 52 opportunities to get them back to your site.

Give them a reason to do so. Don't forget one of my personal favorites, the tell a friend option. Do you have one on your site?

4. Buy existing website - Too simple really. Buy an existing web-site or a recently expired domain. Make sure they have PR, back links and existing visitors. Then either add a mini site with a link to your target site or put a 301 (permanent redirect) to your target site.

5. Recruit the best SEO expertise you can afford - Search engine optimization is a maze. A big one. Unless you're going to make a career out of it, hire someone in. It will be a heap cheaper in the long run, especially when you put your learning and 'making mistakes' time, along with the lost opportunity costs into the overall equation.

6. Build and or join a blog network - Yep, they are out there. The long way is to build your own, effectively a group of niche related blogs, all making incestuous link love to each other. Their sole purpose in life is to target your 'money site'.

Shorter routes including a buying a blog network and or joining a group of like minded blog owners, who will happily swap semi automated posts with each other.

7. Distribute link bait - This is very powerful and when done right will create riches from rags. The simple concept is to create (or buy) an ebook or piece of software that other people are then incentivized to distribute on your behalf, usually through an affiliate scheme such as Clickbank or the like.

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Search Engine Optimization For Internet Videos

2009-01-21T21:20:00.000-08:00

Research firm Forrester has taken a look at the state of search engine optimization of Internet videos, and have found that less than 20% of marketers insert keywords into the filenames of the videos on their site, and even fewer use more advanced tactics like writing keyword-rich captions and annotations, or creating online video libraries.

“If you’re not optimizing your videos, you should start,” says Forrester’s Nate Elliot. “Optimizing video content to take advantage of blended search is by far the easiest way to get a first-page organic ranking on Google.”

Here are the steps that Forrester recommends:
- Insert keywords into your video filenames.
- Host your videos on YouTube, and embed those YouTube videos into your own site. - Google says its algorithms consider how many times a video is viewed, and any views embedded videos receive on your own site get added to the ‘views’ tally on YouTube. (And yes, nearly every video we saw Google blend into its results came from YouTube.)
- Optimize your YouTube videos by writing keywords into your videos’ titles, descriptions, and tags.
- Embed videos into relevant text pages on your site. The context provided by the text on those pages (which is hopefully already optimized for search as well) will help the search engines figure out what your videos are about.
- Also create a video library on your site, so Google knows where to find your video content. (Google Video Sitemaps can help with this too.) Write keyword-rich annotations for each video in the library.

In addition to the suggestions Forrester offers, you should consider using keywords related to your video within the video itself. Some search engines are beginning to index the audio of your videos - so including your keywords in your script may help you optimize your videos for future search engine technology.

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Pay Per Click Internet Marketing: 6 Steps to Succeed

2009-01-20T23:01:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, many wide accepted online business marketing guides do not distinguish very well between ppc ads and organic search engine optimization. On one side, pay per click internet marketing involves the appearance of relevant ads on the sponsored links of the search results lists. Online advertisers pay a certain amount of money, defined as ppc bid, if any only if one of the visitors clicked on your ad.

On the other hand, SEO is a legal process of marketing your affiliate website by analyzing and modifying it to make your website search engine friendly aims to target the top search engine position. This process aims to dramatically improve the visibility of your business in the organic results obtained when a user tries to find information relevant to your website.

Are you Ready to Skyrocket Your Success using 6 Factors?

1. The first key to succeed in online marketing is to invest a reasonable time and effort to choose good keywords, which do not involve high competition and at the same time searched by the users in often enough. Otherwise, without ppc optimization, your business marketing campaign will be too expensive to achieve any profits for you.

2. Your second key element is to periodically enrich your pay per click internet marketing campaign with quite huge list of keywords and the sky is your limit. Be careful, do not do it like crazy! Here again, choose the keywords that enjoy decent demand and do not suffer form high competition.

3. The third element in your campaign to drive targeted traffic to your website is to properly choose the text of your ad. This alone can either skyrocket your sales, or simply destroy all your efforts. Make the objective of your ad quite clear and as much specific as usual so that only targeted visitors would click your ad.

4. The fourth key factor to conduct a smart pay per click internet marketing is to apply a consistent monitoring plan to your cost per click. Keep in mind that the search results in huge search engines like Google would appear too on other search engines like ask.com

5. The fifth and one of the most essential keys to succeed is to not only monitoring your cost per click, but also the analysis of the visitors behavior can produce invaluable knowledge about consumer motivation, habits, and trends. Expert monitoring and consumer analysis is essential to your overall online business needs.

6. The last key factor can dramatically increase your profits using pay per click internet marketing. It is in deed amazing to see the highest bid is $1.2 and the next highest bid is $0.75. The guy who bids for $1.2 per click could also bid for the same keyword with $0.8 and he would have got the top position as well in addition to saving $0.4 per click. So, do not bid much more than you have to.

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5 Tips to Make the Most of Your SEO Investment

2009-01-20T22:52:00.000-08:00

Whether you’re a marketer at a large Fortune 500 company or a small business, search engine optimization (SEO) can be one of the most cost-effective tools for reaching a broader audience and increasing online sales. A solid and persistent search engine optimization program can increase search visibility for many types of content affecting the bottom line: sales, customer service, recruiting, public and investor relations.

These are challenging economic times calling for prudent marketing decisions. Search industry, business and analyst publications agree: search marketing is recission proof, or at least recession resistant. To make sure your SEO program investment yields effective and efficient marketing results, keep the following tips in mind:

Planning: A solid plan of action is a necessary component to any successful SEO program. Before beginning an effort to optimize content for better search visibility, be sure you have clarified specific goals and expectations. This will help you to decide which SEO tactics will be most effective, what internal resources will be necessary and what metrics will be used to measure success.

Resources: Assess your resources to ensure you can actually implement your SEO program. The most common reason for an unsuccessful SEO effort is failure of implementation. Take stock of available budget (yours or another department that will be affected) talent pool and any existing media assets that can be leveraged. You will need to determine if you have the resources to complete your ideal SEO plan on your own, or if you will need to enlist the services of a SEO agency (like TopRank.

Measurement: Organize a process to measure the results of your program. You will want to be able to tie your measurements of success directly back to your SEO tactics. If increasing leads was the initial goal for your program, this may mean using an analytics package to determine the origin of your online leads. If you choose to work with an agency, be sure to select one with a strong record of measurable SEO success.

Promotion: A well-optimized website will increase your search engine rankings and help your target audience find your services over that of competitors. However, a solid SEO program does not end there. Make the most of search engine optimization by promoting useful content. Place your URL on your business card, in your email signature, and promote it online beyond the search engines in social networks, blogs, forums and anywhere that it can be useful. It will be passed along and linked to, sending traffic and further increasing search visibility.

Innovation: Don’t rely on what has always worked, or assume that your initial optimization will last forever. The online world is constantly changing, and this extends to optimization best practices. A solid SEO program is an ongoing investment that requires you to adapt and innovate to ensure your website stays at the top of the rankings and top of mind with your consumers.

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4 Key Components to Search Engine Optimization

2009-01-20T22:36:00.000-08:00

Search engine optimization is an absolute necessity if you want your site to be easily found on the internet. By properly preparing your site you will make it easier to be located thru a search by anyone looking for the type of information, service, or product your site offers.

In order for you to best optimize your site there are 4 areas you'll need to pay special attention to. This optimization process basically involves the correct use of keywords, site labeling, content, and linking with other sites.

Let's have a look at 4 key components you'll need to address to optimize your site for the search engines:

1 - TITLE TAG
This field should be kept short (55 - 60 characters) and should describe the main theme, intention, or content of what the site is all about. What you put here is what will show in the top bar of the window when the site is displayed. It is also the 'title' that appears when it is displayed in any search engine results.

It is important to accurately describe the site content in your title so as to not confuse the search engines. If inaccurate the title may cause you to not be listed at all in any search results.

2 - KEYWORD USE
The use of keywords throughout the text of your site content is important so that the search engines can easily locate your site. These keywords will act as 'guiding lights' for search engine spiders when seeking particular content. If your keywords are not relevant to the site content you again risk a lower search ranking or not one at all.

Be sure your keyword selection reflects your sites content. Also take time to research the popularity of the keywords selected since the most searched upon keywords will not only bring you more traffic but will also boost your search engine ranking.

3 - KEYWORD DENSITY
Once you've selected the keywords you want to build your site around it is best to utilize them within the content in a natural and flowing way. You DO NOT want to overuse any words or phrases since it won't sound right to anyone reading the content. In addition any deliberate overuse will get you penalized by the search engines for 'keyword stuffing' resulting in lower rankings. It's best to stay within a 2% to 3 % range of keyword use within your content.

4 - INBOUND LINKS
These links also referred to as link popularity reflects links that come from other websites. This generally is an indication of the relevancy and quality your site content may have to the other websites. Think of this as your online list of references that will vouch for your websites legitimacy.

These links will appear over time or as a result of particular marketing techniques you may utilize. Social tagging, article marketing, and leaving comments at forums or blogs will accelerate your link creation efforts. The more links you develop the bigger boost your search engine ranking will receive.

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How Bookmarking Can Save Your Online Business

2009-01-18T22:54:00.000-08:00

Search Engine Optimization is latest trend in improving the coverage of your online business; putting up a website alone doesn’t necessarily result in a successful venture -- same with putting keywords to increase its search engine coverage. You need to think outside the box and consider using links to your advantage to increase your site's traffic -- like bookmarking.

How Bookmarking Increases Your Online Traffic?

One of the concepts of SEO is to increase your page rank through the use of links. To put it simply, keywords alone will not determine your placement in search engine results. In fact, you need to consider increasing your page rank as well to make sure that you get to the top of the list and stay there to have the edge in the competition.

Publishing articles with links and submitting to Web directories are just some of strategies you can use to propagate your links on the Internet to increase your page rank. But there is another way to do it that doesn't really take all that much effort to pull off.

Bookmarking, or social bookmarking, is one way to increase the number of links you have on the Net. Bookmarking involves saving your site on a bookmarking site that can be accessed by anyone on the World Wide Web. Web spiders, search engines, networking, or even the bookmarking community are always on the lookout for feeds they can save to their own collection to increase popularity.

To put it simply, the more people who have access to your bookmarking list, the higher the possibility that they will save it on their own site -- which in turn, increase your page rank without even lifting a finger.

Start Bookmaring

When you want to try out bookmarking as an Internet marketing strategy to boost your implementation of SEO, then you might want to take it slow at first and plan it out carefully.

Start it out by checking bookmarking services on the Web. In some ways, the more bookmarking site you subscribe to and publish your links, then the bigger the possibility that your page rank will soar to amazing heights. Check each of the services offered on the Net and try to find out how to upload your links, tools you can use to simply the task, and so on.

While you're at it, you might want to publish articles that will market your products and services; and bookmark them on these sites. That way, you increase your page rank, and at the same time, appeal to the interest of your potential customers.

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Google still dominating search engine marketing

2009-01-16T21:43:00.000-08:00

Google is still the dominant player in the global search engine marketing sector, according to a new report from AdGooRoo.

The research firm said that Google held 80.9 per cent of the pay-per-click advertising market at the end of December, with Yahoo! taking a 19.4 per cent share and Live Search 16.4 per cent, Silicon Alley Insider reports.

Overall, Yahoo! saw its share of search advertisers fall in the last three months of 2008, while Live Search experienced a significant increase.

The average number of ads that Google displayed on its first page of search results for each keyword rose by 58 per cent in the fourth quarter compared with the previous three months, with Live Search seeing 42.3 per cent growth and Yahoo! 8.8 per cent, according to Information Week.

AdGooRoo said that should Microsoft acquire Yahoo!, Live Search would see the number of large advertisers in its network rise by 157 per cent, which could "have a dramatic effect on network costs-per-click".

According to Nielsen Online, Google accounted for 64.1 per cent of all US searches in November.

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You are NoWhere on the Search Engines Why?

2009-01-15T21:50:00.000-08:00

Let us analyze one by one as to what the probable and top reasons could be:

• First and foremost thing to start with is to choose URLs that are keyword driven, so that users land exactly on your website when they type those keywords!

• The first best thing would be to check if your website has been listed in the search engines or not. This can be checked by typing out the website URL in the search engines and checking out if the result is showing your website as a result or not. It should ideally show a result of your own website, thereby proving that your site is actually listed.

• Getting search engine visibility takes time. It does not happen just like that. You need to spend more of your time and effort on it, just like it takes time to build up a new business and establish it. Though the results are not SO long to be seen, still it done need to have some time for itself too, to get established and familiar for the search engines. Give it more of time and consideration and hard work, and am sure it’ll pay off. So don’t be lazy start off right away

• Another essential thing to be noticed is to have more of written and relevant content in your website. Now this does not mean you just fill your website with keywords, just for the sake of getting listed in search engines. You must write articles in such a way that are meaningful, relevant to your website at the same time uses important keywords that your visitors might search for in search engines.

• Title tag title tag title tag!!! Get this phrase embedded in your brain! The area in the HTML pages that asks for page title is where you must include keyword or keyword phrases, in order to get attention of the search engines.

• Next thing would be to include ALT tags to the images in the website. This also helps in the images in your website to participate and contribute its share to search engine optimization.

• How popular is your website among the search engines? This is the next question that you must be asking yourself. Popularity of a website increases with more of quality inbound links. The more other websites would link to your website, the more your website’s popularity increases among the net, thereby the search engines. This is done by link building, wherein you submit your website links to other quality and related websites, in order to develop site popularity.

• Finally create a business blog and update your current key services, products or any value added information which can help your business as well as your visitor. This can boost your search engine visibility and traffic

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Helpful Tips for Corporate Blogging

2009-01-12T21:33:00.000-08:00

Blogs are massive resources of information from both and outside companies. Businessmen survive the world of blogging because they know how and where to dig information while protecting their own secrets. Although blogging can be risky world for businesses, there are several helpful tips that can help bring success to corporate blogging.

The Important of Training:

It is important to make sure the members of the communications team. In the past, this team was composed of a small group. However, with the advent of blogging, everyone who blogs at the company is spreading a specific message about the company. People who handle the blogging for the company must be trained to avoid any spill of unnecessary information.

If by accident, important information regarding the company has been disclosed, this can put the company under the watchful eyes of the regulators. More so, inappropriate leaks can provide competitors with leverage and may lead to embarrassing revelations about the inner workings of the company and its staff.

Although the usual action to be taken is to restrict employees from blogging, this can be a shortsighted decision. Bloggers from within the company can easily relate and make contact with potential clients and even enhance the brand of the company.

The Fake Blogs:

Several, if not all, companies are eager to establish one-on-one links with their consumers, though they are
often hesitant to venture in the world of blogging. As a result, they set up fake blogs. Fake blogs are those that are created by marketing departments of the company in order to promote a product, brand or service using a fake name or character.

These kinds of blogs are risky since several bloggers who are passionate about what they do view them as an insult to the blogging community and no one can deny the fact that these blogs are very visible to the public.

Although there are no rules prohibiting a company from making pseudo-blogs, the subject of creating one is always welcome. Always keep in mind that you can choose to create fake blogs but remember all the risks
involved.

Blog Tracking:

Tracking blogs is one of the easiest and most important tips to remember. Firstly, the company can look around online and search for the most influential blogger who writes about their products or services. Remember to read the blogger’s updates everyday and perform an automated tracking of discussions.

Tracking blogs is important because even those postings from small-time bloggers can be selected by search engines, strengthened by a well-known blogger and ultimately hit the mainstream.

The Public Relations:

Blogs have the ability to break down barriers between the company and its customers. It is important for businesses to take that into consideration and adjust. There are several companies that start blog in order to attain customer loyalty and address the customers’ concerns and comments. Relating to the customers is a vital factor in the survival of a business. Knowing what the customers think about the products or services can help enhance the company’s services.

The Company’s Secrets:

Take into consideration one secret or secrets that you have kept at your company. Be it a list of projects for the following year or information about scandalous activities, there are several things that you must learn no to leak to your competitors.

In blogging, there is a certainty that you must rethink about something that you are trying to avoid, for that fact that other companies are increasingly sharing information to win new partners and generate new ideas. Although this does not mean that they are not keeping any secrets from you or that you must not keep any from them, it is important to reevaluate whether you can gain more out of sharing details than keep them to yourself.

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Ethical tips regarding on-page SEO optimization for SEO services

2009-01-12T21:12:00.000-08:00

These are few ethical SEO tips to get stable search engine rankings.

1. Firstly we need a unique design with foremost features. Google always pay their faith to unique web designs, obviously those designs should be very search engine friendly with different kinds of search engine bots.

2. Then we need to concentrate about the age of that site. If the site is very new into the market then you have to face problems to get ranked in top competitive keywords else you can proceed for those keywords.

3. Before starting SEO work we need a quality keyword research for that site. On-page optimization is the base of any SEO optimization and keyword research is the foundation of any on-page optimization.

4. Search engine rankings are mainly depending upon the Meta title and description of every page of that website. Smart use of keywords within the title tag and Meta description is denoted as the professionalism of any SEO services.

5. Then we need to shuffle our targeted keywords with our content and that content should be fresh, catchy as well as unique for the business market.

6. We need to make modifications at our content in a regular interval to maintain the uniqueness of that content.

7. Fixing the canonical issue of that website for better result as well as optimize all images with appropriate alt tags.

8. It is better to rotate internal links of that website through that catchy content with the help of targeted keywords, because search engine crawlers as well as viewers are traveling through the links only.

9. If it is possible then place a brief description within H2 tag of that website with smart punching of targeted keywords at the header part.

10. Placing text links for internal pages is denoted as good SEO services at the footer section. We can use our targeted keywords within those texts while interlinking our important pages.

11. Never ever concentrating on any kind of black hat techniques such as placing hiding content, corking, vast use of targeted keywords within the content etc.

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7 Ways To Get Traffic

2009-01-11T21:26:00.000-08:00

Using Tutorials to drive traffic
Creating tutorials for popular software such as Adobe Photoshop is an easy way to drive traffic. Where should your tutorials for Adobe Photoshop be submitted.

Using Stumbleupon to drive traffic
Signing up is fast and easy, and its free. It brings in a bit of traffic over time, but not a lot. It will however help to bring in new visitors, and the benefit of getting visitors from Stumbleupon is that people who are “stumbling” are interested in finding new content, and unless your site design is totally hopeless, most “stumblers” will hang around for a minute or two, trying to discover what exactly your homepage is about.

Using RSS feeds to drive traffic
A classic approach has always been to publish your RSS to drive traffic, but there are created thousands of new blogs each day, and your content will immediately disappear in the mass of information published. Submit to every one of them.

Using niche sites to drive traffic
Posting to specific sites containing your topic will increase traffic, for a while. Several sites have the option where you can submit news items to their front page, but mostly people would complain if you are simply self-promoting without your information being particular new or interesting. www.stylegala.com drove a lot of traffic to my site early on, but their policies changed, so I stopped posting to that homepage.

Using Digg to drive traffic
A common known effect of Digg is known as the Digg Effect (also known as the Slashdot effect). This is what happens if a particular site is submitted to Digg, Slashdot or Fark or any similar type of site, and receive so much traffic their server simply gives up. This rarely happens for minor sites, but the overall effect of submitting interesting tidbits cannot be underestimated. You will receive a least a little amount of visitors if your submission is at least a little bit interesting, and you will also gain a backlink to your homepage.

Using forums /BBS’s to drive traffic
A quick way to drive traffic to your homepage is to become engaged in various forums regarding your specific niche. Do a search on Google for your particular area in which your homepage refers to, and become a member of the first 10 forums you encounter. Here you sign up and create a signature for every post you make, with a nice description and link back your homepage. Only make relevant comments, or you might be considered a spammer.

Also, most forums (at least the most well visited) have a high PR (Google PageRank) since many people link to their site, and unless they have added the “link red=nofollow” to external links, your site will gain PR from those pages. They share their high PR with all other external links, and the benefits from a SEO perspective might be limited, but the traffic driven will be very targeted and relevant and should convert a lot better.

Using link directories to drive traffic
Now, this is not in any way a new nor novel idea to drive traffic. It might not bring traffic except from random referrals from search engines
. It will take some time, and it is important to remember every link counts for the quest for the #1 spot.

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Google, Yahoo! look to boost search engine marketing

2009-01-09T23:20:00.000-08:00

The two biggest search engines on the web are attempting to encourage more companies to integrate their offline campaigns with search engine marketing.

This is according to new media age (nma), which reports that Google and Yahoo! have recently stepped up talks with agencies and brands to persuade them to include calls to action in campaigns that ask consumers to search the web for specific terms.

Mobile operator Orange recently saw success with this tactic by asking TV viewers to "search online for I Am online" in its broadcast ads, prompting a 15 per cent surge in web traffic.

Nick Gill, head of account management at Yahoo UK, told nma that integrating search with offline campaigns in this way "makes sense" as search engines tend to be the starting point on the internet for most people.

"It's easier for consumers to remember a search call to action than a phone number or specific URL," he added.

Last year, a report from MultiMedia Intelligence suggested that call to action advertising will boom on the mobile platform as web TV becomes more popular on mobile phones.

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New search engine marketing report looks at PPC technology

2009-01-09T20:45:00.000-08:00

A new report exploring the market for paid search bid management technology has been published by Econsultancy.

The marketing resource's study suggested that the market is becoming more competitive as search marketing uptake continues to rise in the UK.

Some of the trends explored in the publication include the growing focus on making the most of pay per click services amid the economic downturn and the need for a balance between automation and manual optimisation when it comes to bid management.

One benefit of bid management technology is its capability to make marketing campaigns more efficient, particularly when a large organisation needs to manage ads for thousands of keywords, Econsultancy suggested.

"This market will continue to prosper because online advertisers can use pay per click optimisation software to make their budgets stretch even further in a tougher economic climate," the report said.

Online marketers spent £981 million on pay per click services in the first six months of last year, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau.

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SEO predicted to boom in 2009

2009-01-08T21:33:00.000-08:00

More businesses may place greater importance on search engine optimisation (SEO) this year as the downturn means marketers will look for strategies with high return on investment (ROI).

This is according to William Flaiz, vice-president of SEO and web analytics at Razorfish, who wrote in a Search Engine Watch article that while traffic generated through SEO is not technically free, it tends to offer a greater ROI than paid search.

"Organic search marketing just might become the bread winner as cash-strapped clients become wary of increased media costs in traditional space and an upturn in bid competition in paid search," he explained.

The expert went on to predict that local search will also gain in importance over the course of 2009, particularly as mobile search continues to rise in popularity among consumers.

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Search engine marketing to become less keyword-based?

2009-01-08T21:12:00.000-08:00

Search engine optimisation may become less focused on keywords in the future, if the comments of one Google executive are anything to go by.

According to Marissa Mayer, vice-president of search products and user experience at Google, the search engine is looking at the possibility of returning results based on user questions rather than keywords.

She told .net magazine that this is one development that may become increasingly important over time, as will making web-based data easy to access from mobile phones.

Ms Mayer also pointed to the opportunities posed by utilising a user's friend list to return highly relevant results.

"We really need to harness people's friends better to understand which news to direct them to, which local events to direct them to ... These are all things that we think are intriguing," she commented.

Last year, Google experimented with a new feature in its Google News service allowing users to create a local news section for their own city or zip code.

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How to Get Your Site Listed in Google in 24 Hours or Less

2009-01-07T20:45:00.000-08:00

Wouldn't it be nice to start seeing your site in Google's search engine results in 24 hours or less? It should be first noted that if a site is crawled but not yet indexed, the results aren't visible to search users. For example, if you enter the full domain of your site with the "http://www." and your site hasn't been listed yet, it won't show up in Google's results. When your site does get indexed, if you enter the full URL, you'll see your site listed. This listing contains the URL, the title of your website, and a description.

To get your site indexed quickly, you won't use Google's submission form (google.com/addurl.html). Using this method may take 2–6 weeks to get your site indexed.

So, what do you need to do to get your website indexed in 24 hours or less? The first step is to visit Google and enter a broad, generic keyword that's relevant to your site. This is the rare time that the broader the keyword, the better. Don't worry about trying to go for niche markets with this step, because you're going to want to have access to sites with the highest level of traffic. Once you enter the keyword, you see the Google listings. Use the "Page Rank" indicator on the Google toolbar to see what the page rank is (or you could use SEO Elite or linkVendor, but doing it right from the browser is faster).

To refresh your memory, the higher your page rank, the more websites that are linking to you. Keep an eye out for sites that have a page rank of 5 or higher (with the higher ranking being the better one). Visit each of these sites to see if they offer a link exchange. Remember, if they do they'll advertise it in the same way you did yours, through a "link to Us" web page or something similar. Look for the contact information if it's listed. If it's not listed, use the Whois utility found through domain name services or SEO Elite to find their e-mail address. Use the same methods of e-mail etiquette you learned about before and send them an e-mail asking if they're interested in a link exchange. Remember to post their links on your site first before you send out the e-mail. And don't forget that you can still purchase advertising on the resources given throughout this book.

Just make sure the site you choose has a page rank of over 5. If you advertise your site on a site with a page rank of 5, your site will get indexed in three days or less. If you advertise your site on a site with a page rank of 6, you can get your site indexed in less than 24 hours.

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New SEO and email marketing blog launched

2009-01-06T22:13:00.000-08:00

A new blog featuring expert guidance and advice about email marketing, search engine optimisation (SEO), social networking and Web 2.0 strategies has been launched.

Dr. Scott's Cool Marketing and Business Blog is the brainchild of Philadelphia marketing professor Dr Scott Testa who is hoping he can use his 20 years of experience and the knowledge of a number of guest writers to help educate people about the internet marketing sector.

Predicting what the next 12 months could have in store for the industry, he remarked: "I am really looking forward to 2009.

"Unique and inexpensive marketing techniques are going to be at the forefront."

As well as containing more than four dozen educational articles, the blog also acts as a hub for several other websites and blogs, linking to over 20 in total.

Email marketing, SEO and paid search should be at the heart of any online marketing strategy, according to Straight Up Search.

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'Do not underestimate the value of keywords in SEO'

2009-01-06T22:10:00.000-08:00

Businesses using search engine optimisation (SEO) to improve their websites should ensure they do not overlook keywords that seem to be less used by consumers.

This is according to Gary Reid of .net magazine, who said that marketers should consider every step of consumers' journeys from the initial search to the final transaction.

He gave the example of a website where most traffic appears to come from searches for the company's name - while this suggests that the firm's name is the main keyword to focus on, customers are likely to have conducted informational searches involving other keywords a short while previously.

"The key to SEO success is to ensure you have visibility at each point of the user's journey, so understanding the sections of the journey is essential," Mr Reid explained.

"Blindly optimising for a set of keywords you think is appropriate is a quick way to waste time and money."

According to a Search Engine Watch column by Carrie Hill of marketing firm Blizzard, small businesses should consider using keyword research tools such as Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery to pinpoint the most relevant key terms.

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Search Shifts and Predictions for 2009

2009-01-06T01:00:00.000-08:00

Google has seen a significant drop in its stock price; Yahoo continues to tread water and await a buyer to save them; MSN continues to plod along at 5 percent market share with the industry questioning why Microsoft is even playing in the space; and Cuil, well, let's just hope they get to see 2010.

Consolidation:
Speaking of Yahoo, my first prediction isn't much of a stretch. There will be consolidation within the search engine market space in 2009. The jury's still out on who's buying who, but if you've followed the news over the past six months, it's a good bet that someone will buy Yahoo.

Yahoo's not the only acquisition target. Ask.com may not have the market share, but the floundering search engine offers a good product line that could enhance someone's capabilities portfolio. Perhaps there's a buyer out there that's looking to build an application backline to challenge Google. Ask.com could prove a huge asset in that case.

Recession Boost:
"Free" gets the attention of many people, including marketers. With the cost of paid search terms going up, the organic search folks may see a lot more attention in 2009.

Although organic search traffic is often touted as "free traffic," it truly isn't. Developing rankings for key terms in an industry requires an investment in all the elements that go into building a Web site: content, coding, design, and strategy. Though the traffic isn't free, the ROI tends to be better.

Organic search marketing just might become the bread winner as cash-strapped client become wary of increased media costs in traditional space and an up-turn in bid competition in paid search.

ROI on the Prize for SEO:
It's about time! ROI will no longer be a "nice to have" for those who practice SEO in 2009.

Again, the economy will dictate scrutiny of every marketing dollar spent, and clients are going to want to know ahead of time what they can expect from their SEO programs. ROI models, all with their own flaws, will control the landscape of organic search programs as search marketers hope to woo marketing dollars away from less successful or measurable competing tactics.

As part of a global agency, I welcome a shift to focusing on client returns. This may help the SEO profession gain acceptance and operate at a higher standard.

Local All Over Globe:
In the coming year, if you own brick-and-mortar locations you better get familiar with local search and put a program in place. Local search will be the big thing in 2009 for search.

Local search is far more measurable than a traditional organic listing and, therefore, lends itself better to demonstrated ROI benefits. Additionally, the number of mobile searches will only increase as mobile phones become more sophisticated. Marketers must make sure they show up in these results.

A Paid Inclusion Rebound:
If there's one paid search service that can thrive on '09, it's paid inclusion. Yahoo offers a unique PPC program called Search Submit Pro, which provides marketers with the ability to feed results directly into the organic listings. As organic results become more important than ever, marketers will try to get into the listing by any means necessary.

So far Yahoo is the only engine to offer this service, but I predict that we'll see similar offerings as other engines look for new revenue streams in 2009. These may not be straight text search results, but I don't think we've seen the last of paid inclusion.

The Year of Monetization:
This year will be interesting for search engines. As factors from recession to emerging technologies convene, engines will have to create new revenue. Only time will tell whether that revenue comes from acquisition and increased market share or new programs like Yahoo's SSP.

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Search engine marketing 'should target all e-commerce stages'

2009-01-06T00:42:00.001-08:00

Marketers must ensure their company is present in search results at all stages of the buying process, an expert has indicated.

While data might point to one particular keyword as being the most used by consumers when visiting a company's website, the user could have started the process of searching for that company some time ago, using different keywords, according to .net magazine's Gary Reid.

Companies should therefore carry out the proper research and ensure their search engine optimisation (SEO) strategies use the most relevant keywords at each stage of the buying cycle, he said.

"Blindly optimising for a set of keywords you think is appropriate is a quick way to waste time and money," Mr Reid stated.

"You really need to work smart to get the best from your efforts."

Search marketing strategies such as SEO and pay-per-click accounts for half of all spending on internet advertising globally, according to MarketingSherpa.

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Keyword Research Is A Great Seo Strategy

2009-01-05T02:19:00.000-08:00

As you will see all over the internet and on many forums, keyword research is very important if you want your site to rank well and be successful. Keyword research is the key to identifying the needs of your prospects. Keyword research is the first task in optimizing your web site and pay-per-click campaign. One of the best places to perform keyword research is the search engines themselves.

Two of the best-known keyword research tools are Word tracker and Overture. Well, there are many tools on the internet that record the phrases that people are typing and these tools are available online. The best tools to use for keyword research is paid for tools, the free tools just don't have the features. Using free keyword tools are for those marketers that are just starting out and playing around with internet marketing. Use keyword tools that you pay for or the free keyword tool good keywords to do the keyword research.

Tools like word tracker will help you to find that how many times keywords have been searched and how much competition there is for that particular keyword phrases.

When choosing the keywords and keyword phrases you need to have tools that can help identifying the words you will need. Once you find the keywords you are going to target you need to start using these keywords on your pages and on your links that point back to your site.

To maximize the profitability of your online venture, it has become a must that you should concentrate on a particular niche. A niche is a specialized segment of the market that is often overlooked. Determining a niche should be the first step of a sound business plan. Fortunately, deciding on which keywords encompass the entire niche is relatively easy if you have done your keyword research. Advertiser is paying - the higher the cost per click the more lucrative that particular niche is likely to be. This will tell you if people are buying and whether the niche is likely to be profitable.

Try not to choose keywords that all the other sites are using, find keywords that are searched on in a limited fashion this way you will establish a niche. So, finding the right words are important. When doing keyword research make sure you keep a record of the keywords that you researched and those words that have less competition and high searches. Domain names by themselves are no longer the most valuable location on the internet keywords are. Thus choosing the keywords is of the utmost importance. It has been said again and again, you need to have content that is keyword rich on your site to help with the search engine rankings. Keywords are the search words that people use when searching for information on the internet.

The first thing you need to do before you start your keyword research is to choose the words you would like to research on. How do you identify the keyword? The first step is to understand what the theme of your site is going to be. If your site is about cars then all of your keywords should revolve around cars. Research these keywords and find out how many times they have searched on, what is the competition like of these words is there a high demand of people looking for the particular keyword.

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Seven deadly SEO sins you must avoid

2009-01-05T02:01:00.000-08:00

1. Putting search engines before users
Optimisation is the process your website undergoes in order to help it achieve the best possible listings. The reason for hankering after a number one ranking? To attract targeted traffic. It's therefore surprising how many websites forget about their human users in the quest for search engine success.

Cramming as many keywords as possible into each page may yield short-term SEO results but is guaranteed to turn off human eyes. Well-written content is much more likely to result in a sale and win over the search engine web bots.

2. Link spamming
Link spamming sees the website chasing after as many links as possible, often using spurious excuses to answer forum questions or social media discussions in order to build external links. The reality here is that the links gathered are of little relevant use and no commercial value. Search engines rate links based on the authority of the sites they come from, so using link-spamming techniques actually devalues the site's authority.

A much better policy is to use time that would have been spent harvesting poor quality links for a more strategic campaign. By focusing link-building efforts on relevant sites, optimisation activities will also target the desired demographic.

3. Disregarding link text
The anchor text of the link should be written as carefully as possible. Search engines such as Google can use anchor text as an indicator of internal links (links from one page of the site to another). Unimaginative anchor text such as 'click here' also does little to add value to the user experience.

4. Not tracking progress
It's impossible to assess just how effective SEO activity is if there's no record of the starting point. Tracking is an often forgotten stage of SEO, with many people thinking the best measure of progress is simply improved organic listings. Not so. The number of sales and new search inclusions are all-important metrics indicating the success (or otherwise) of the SEO strategy. A reliable and regular report detailing these factors can be used to decide on any necessary changes in direction and assess the impact of such new activity.

5. Choosing the wrong keywords
Some SEO companies propose guaranteed listings for obscure keywords, showing just how easy it is to generate page one rankings for terms with little competition. But keywords involving product names and numbers are of little use in a strategic optimisation programme. Optimisation for 'flatscreen TV' would be a good goal for a company selling flatscreen TVs. Optimisation for 'Sony Flat Screen AB 123356BBBB' would not.

6. Overlooking accessibility
Website accessibility is a critical consideration – making your website navigable to all users regardless of disability or visual impairment. The Disability Discrimination Act 2004 is an essential guideline for any UK-based website. Making link text as descriptive as possible is a part of this, but accessibility goes much further with actions such as introducing relevant Alt and Title tags compliant with WC3 guidelines.

7. Not planning your SEO strategy
Planning a useful campaign is very much like planning a journey. One of the common mistakes made by newcomers is to be overtaken by enthusiasm and neglect to map out points of interest along the way. Rather than focusing on the end goal, set short-term objectives that are signposts towards the elusive page one ranking.

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New SEO and email marketing blog launched

2009-01-05T01:58:00.000-08:00

4 Reasons Why PPC Is The Best Online Marketing Channel

2009-01-05T01:52:00.000-08:00

PPC is one of the most profitable advertising and marketing channels. This view is shared by most online marketers, who in 2007, according to Marketing Sherpa, ranked PPC and email marketing as the two channels with the highest ROI.

1. Pay Per Click Yields a High Return on Investment

If you had to choose one, PPC or email, which would it be? Email marketing works best with house (not purchased) lists. Those take time to build, and one major way to build them is via PPC. Unless you have a strong house list and don’t want new customers, PPC is better.

We just went through the year-end agency/client review process of what did and didn’t work in 2008. We assessed the ROI of each marketing channel and helped them plan their 2009 budgets accordingly.

One of our biggest clients is planning a six to seven-figure AdWords spend in 2009. This is because their ROI from AdWords was, on average, five times stronger than other online advertising and marketing channels. In 2008 we helped this company increase its revenues by 36% in a vertical hurt by our recessionary economy.

2. Pay Per Click Gives You Instant Targeted Traffic
We frequently recommend PPC for new websites. SEO has long-term benefits and is a great investment in your site’s future value, but the big bottom-line results take months or years. PPC gets immediate traffic and can help generate significant sales within weeks. We recommend both strategies in parallel because of their complimentary pros and cons.

3. Pay Per Click Helps You Find Problems With Your Offering, Promos, or Website
As soon as you have traffic, you can see what your site does and doesn’t do well. At what rate is it converting sales or leads? If highly targeted traffic converts poorly, you need conversion optimization or a usability reassessment. Sometimes an uncaught programming error or design oversight obstructs critical site functionality. Noticeable lack of conversions or low conversion rate spurs PPC managers to investigate what’s wrong.

The disadvantage of starting a site with SEO but without PPC is that traffic can take months to ramp up to significant levels. If you have a usability or conversion problem in those first three to six months, you may not have enough data to detect it or to fix it quickly with conversion optimization.

4. Pay Per Click Brands Your Company While Selling Its Offerings
Some of our clients occasionally ask about branding with PPC. I won’t belittle branding because it really is an important strategy and discipline.

Sometimes what clients mean by branding is simply increasing their exposure to new prospects. Whenever I hear “We also want to do some branding,” I ask “What do you mean by branding? What are your ultimate goals? Leads? Sales? Email list building?” After three to six months of PPC, if the client doesn’t have the leads or sales that bring in the revenue, branding won’t seem like such a good idea anymore. If you went along just to make them happy or avoid the work of educating them, you won’t look so smart or effective at this point and you may lose the client.

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The Future Of Search Marketing In 2009

2009-01-03T00:30:00.000-08:00

The experts are gazing into their crystal balls and sharing their visions for 2009 in terms of search, social, online, mobile and marketing in general.

Google will cull non-revenue generating services in an effort to exceed analyst expectations. The share price will not recover to its $600USD high.
Google will also face a massive legal challenge in 2009 from a non US country regarding its business practices.

The Web 2.0 bubble will burst with many companies entering the "dead pool". The only companies which will survive will be those who have a sustainable business model.
Twitter will be bought by a major internet player and whilst will remain free to use for basic version, a premium service offering will emerge. Will continue to be plagued by reliability issues whilst seriously challenging mainstream media and blogs in breaking news.

Yahoo! value will drop considerably, forcing even further reduction in forces worldwide. Their search market share will continue to decline at the benefit of Google and Microsoft. Microsoft will over take Yahoo! in terms of search share within the US, forcing Yahoo! to reconsider its search options.

Search spending growth will slow considerably in the first half of the year but still grow (single digits). Growth will accelerate to double digits by end of 2009.

2009 will be known as the year that SaaS becomes mainstream, with fortune 500 companies adopting it to reduce costs. Amazon will loose its place as the number one provider of cloud services to start ups, with major IT vendors all offering competiting products but with a far superior development interface i.e. merging of cloud services into traditional desktop development tools.

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101 Blogging Tips I’ve Learned in 2008

2009-01-02T23:46:00.000-08:00

1. Choose WordPress
2. If you use blogspot, get your own domain
3. Choose the right hosting provider
4. If possible, have keywords on your domain
5. Use dashes for long domain name
6. Opt for .com or .net and avoid the rest
7. Have the post-install checklist
8. Optimize your permalink
9. Plugins does wonder to your blog
10. Choose the right plugins
11. Too many plug-ins will slow down your blog
12. Pick your niche carefully and stick with it
13. Be passionate about what you write
14. Aim to be an expert in your niche
15. Don’t lose your credibility by faking it
16. Be accountable to what you say write
17. Posting frequency is over-rated
18. Read more than you write. Organize your RSS subscription
19. Avoid chunk of long article. Break it down into paragraph
20. Use bold headings
21. Use list
22. Write long article to get traffic
23. Picture speaks a thousand words. Use images
24. Start and end with questions whenever possible
25. Proofread twice before you publish
26. Focus on keywords in post title
27. Write for both readers and search engines
28. Your readers come first, everything else second
29. Learn the importance of keyword research
30. Being #1 on Google doesn’t necessarily brings in the traffic
31. Keywords must be searchable. Check its average search volume.
32. Don’t be afraid to link out
33. To get attention, link out to inner pages and not homepage
34. Explain What is RSS? Not everyone is tech-savvy
35. Use feedburner
36. Offer email subscription
37. Don’t display your subscribership too early
38. The first 100 is the hardest. The next 100 is easier to achieve
39. Back up your blog
40. Speed up your blog
41. Optimize your blog
42. Design matters, first impression counts
43. Get a premium theme
44. If budget isn’t an issue, get a custom theme
45. Unclutter your sidebar
46. Have an “About Me” page. It makes it more personal
47. Don’t hide behind your blog
48. Mascot is the trend but real picture improves your credibility
49. Always have a “Contact Me” page
50. Dofollow your blog to get your community off the ground
51. Promote your blog via commenting
52. Leave relevant comments. One-line comments are frowned upon
53. Get yourself a gravatar and see #48
54. Link to inner pages when commenting
55. Use Fast Blog Finder
56. Be the first to comment
57. Avoid A-list blogs when you are new as
58. No one cares about your opinion unless you are John Chow
59. Moderate your comments. Use Akismet.
60. Always reply to comments
61. Don’t underestimate the use of keywords on your comment
62. Visit your commenters’ sites. Reciprocal commenting is the key
63. Activate top commentator plugin
64. Enable “Subscribe to Comment“
65. Join my PageRank list
66. Learn the art of pin-point commenting
67. Reward your top active commenters
68. Don’t monetize too early
69. Adsense isn’t going to make you rich overnight
70. Adsense works best with organic traffic
71. Cost-Per-Click (CPC) is higher on niche sites
72. Subscribers don’t click ads
73. Learn the art of affiliate marketing
74. Write product review
75. Check your stats
76. Study your popular pages and
77. Monetize those pages
78. Optimize your old articles for search traffic
79. Learn basic SEO
80. Make use of SEO tools
81. Duplicate content is a myth
82. Google sandbox is real
83. Focus on one-way link building
84. Have keywords on footer
85. Write a guest post and invite guest posters
86. Promote your blog site with article marketing
87. Learn the power of outsourcing
88. Use signature links on “dofollow” forums
89. Join Twitter and use it creatively.
90. Digg is useless
91. Use Squidoo and promote with Knol
92. Join Technorati and claim your blog
93. Make into 45n5 Top 100 list
94. Be patient. There isn’t any shortcut to blogging success.
95. Have perseverance. Your passion is your passport to success.
96. Find out what people want and help them get it.
97. For blogging tips, read ProBlogger
98. For copywriting tips, read CopyBlogger
99. For personal development tips, read Steve Pavlina
100. The ‘gurus’ are not always right
101. Create a 101 list

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Blog Tips for SEO

2009-01-01T00:38:00.000-08:00

Blogs are the current rage, and many webmasters have blogs but fail to use their blog to it's full potential. Blogs provide a steady stream of fresh content, and if this content is written and managed properly, blogs have the ability to increase a website's ranking in the search engines.

1. Host Your Own Blog
In order to prosper from a blog, be sure to host it on your own domain. Hosting the blog on your own server will maximize the links to your website. Link popularity is one of the factors search engines use to rank websites. Resist the urge to use free hosting services, do not give away your link popularity!

2. RSS Feeds
All blogs should have an RSS feed. An RSS feed will allow for your blog posts to be easily syndicated. The syndication will result in links back to your blog from RSS directories or others who display the feed. Blog entries should be available via an RSS feed. Website visitors who subscribe to the feed will receive notification when new blog posts are added. If the title is of interest, they will click through to your website. This gives subscribers an easy way to know when a blog has been updated.

3. Use White Space
Be sure to make your content scannable. Few website visitors actually read blog posts; most web visitors simply scan a blog entry to determine its relevance or point. With that in mind, the blog posts should be displayed in short paragraphs. Overly long posts should be segmented into concise paragraphs or broken into bulleted lists to make scanning easier. Avoid the urge to "clutter" the post.

4. Titles Matter
You only have seconds to grab the attention of scanners browsing your blog. Use keywords and catchy titles to draw readers in. Blog post titles can be bolded for emphasis and white space should be used to buffer the content.

5. Grammar Matters
You will be judged by your knowledge and use of the English language. Search engines will make note of blog entries that lack proper punctuation or capitalization. If a blog post does not respect the rules of grammar and punctuation, it is possible search engines will make the assumption that a bot cobbled together the posts leading to a potential ban.

6. Legibility
As with any web design select fonts carefully, do not use micro or macro-fonts. Colors should be web safe, making it easy to discern and read. The background and background color should not obscure the text.

7. Navigate
Give readers somewhere to go, include links to additional information resources or extended information in the blog post. Including links in the actual blog post will ensure back links should the RSS feed be syndicated.

8. Communicate
If you create a post about someone, let them know, they might surprise you and link back or they might blog about your blog post, essentially creating a virtual dialogue. This is an easy way to build link popularity. Be warned however, simply mentioning a popular blogger on a blog will rarely result in a link back, the content of the blog post must "grab" their interest.

9. Incorporate SEO
Blog posts should be written as you would write a web copy. Posts should be natural and make sense while still incorporating keywords and keyword phrases that relate to the content.

10. Speed Matters
Web pages that are slow to load will frustrate users, be sure to use reliable web hosting. Compress graphics to maximize load time.
Use your blog to help your website attract traffic. Attention to search engine optimization details could mean the difference between popular and unpopular.

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Natural Writing vs. SEO Copywriting

2009-01-01T00:35:00.000-08:00

While it’s well known that someone has to write the copy, there’s always been a question of whether SEO copywriting or natural writing is more effective in getting conversions. I, for one, am torn between the two, and I say that as a confident SEO copywriter and specialist.

The problem is that SEO is theory – not fact; witness the many conflicting tips, tricks, hints and information on the subject. For instance, one SEO guru may extol the virtues of keywords in the Meta tags, while another may tell you to forget the keyword tags all together.

In copywriting for SEO purposes, keywords “seem” to be the most important thing about the content. As you read articles on the Internet, you’ll find keywords that jump out at you; unnaturally placed, redundant, oddly written, some misspelled. Is this natural writing, written badly? No – it’s SEO.

Now, we in the optimization game know that SEO works. We prove it when our clients reach the first page of Google on a strong search term and their traffic and conversion numbers rise. What often happens, however, is what I call the “vitamin” effect. You take a lot of vitamins and you feel better, but you don’t know which ones are working and which ones aren’t so you keep taking them all.

While we may not know everything that works versus everything that doesn’t, we do know that key words and phrases are effective. So perhaps it isn’t the use of the keywords; perhaps it’s our implementation of them.

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Nine SEO Tips for 2009

2008-12-31T22:54:00.000-08:00

Don't Take Down That Holiday Sale Page
Every year your site probably has a special holiday sale page, gift idea pages, a white sale page, or a year-end clearance page and the like. Don't make the mistake of reinventing these types of promotional pages year after year. Go static with the URLs and keep the pages alive all through the year. That way, when you need it, refresh the content, kick the page out of its suspended site map retirement, and promote the heck out of it from your home page and site navigation.

Go ahead and take down your Christmas tree and holiday trimmings, but don't take down your holiday promotional pages. Start reverse-archiving your holiday sales and promotions in 2009 to annualized, canonicalized URLs and watch the rankings improve for sales related pages year after year.

Make the Most of Your Metrics
Resolve to study and understand your search engine referrals in the new year. When you bind branded and unbranded keywords and phrases to search engine referrals, you can begin to open up new opportunities for higher rankings all through the year. Compare and contrast your site's paid performance with non-paid referrals. You can fine tune your PPC (define) budget with natural search performance to attain highly economical results. And you can also begin to exploit "long tail" opportunities, too.

Wag Your Tail
The theory behind the long tail of search remains unchanged, except it tends to be much longer than first estimated. Branded search referrals generally comprise the head and torso of search engine referrals. And just about everything else usually makes up the tail. Head terms can comprise as little as 5 percent of your total search-referred traffic. Most folks miss out on opportunities to wag their tail on the Web, which can comprise as much as 95 percent of their search engine referrals.

When you understand the relationship between your site's head and tail, you don't need to flip a coin to improve your site's performance. Themes become obvious and opportunities appear to be limitless when you focus on growing your long tail of search results.

Make It a Picture Perfect Year
Image search engines are driving more traffic than ever before. Don't miss out on this growing portion of search engine referrals for your site. Make it a goal in the new year to optimize all of the alternative attributes used in the photos and images that make up your Web site. Adding a little context to imagery can really help drive new-to-file customers and conversations your way.

Play a Game of Tag
Supplemental site navigation doesn't need to be complex. Sometimes, it can be as simple as adding a tagging structure to your site. You'd be amazed at how well tags can help identify key areas of your Web site that are missing out in the SERPs (define), especially if you focus on those parts of your site that are generally found on page two of results. So go ahead and use that flashy introduction to core categories within your Web site. Just supplement the situation with a handful of visible text links in the form of tags to make the most of a navigationally challenged situation.

Feed the Need
XML site maps remain one of the best ways to get every part of your Web site crawled by the search engines. Why wait for the engines to discover your new content? Set your site maps up for auto-discovery and update them frequently with all of the engines. Authenticate your feeds with Google, Yahoo, and MSN for greater insight into crawl rates and indexation levels to unleash all the great content your site contains.

Break out the Blender
While a frosty margarita might make for a great toast to the New Year, focusing on improving your blended search results may actually provides greater satisfaction. Why not make the most of your photos, press releases, videos, blogging, and such? It's one of the easiest ways to get more than two results on page one of the SERPs. There's no need to settle for a spattering of listings in the search engines when you can take your content universal and blend more results into page one.

Think Globally, Link Locally
Some of the best backlinks are sitting in your Web site's backyard. Growing inbound links for all your storefronts or offices is easy if you focus on finding high-quality backlinks on a local basis. Make certain you are getting linkable credit for your charitable contributions and local press coverage. There are a multitude of local and regional backlinks just waiting to be connected to your site if you focus on building a little local buzz.

Get Socially Aware
There have never been so many opportunities to tap into new traffic drivers for your Web site. All you have to do is reach out and embrace a few social media venues. Sure, YouTube's great for videos and Flickr makes a great home for photo ops. Yet Twitter can't be ignored as a way to reach out and micro-blog with loyal customers who are talking about your goods and services right now. Just don't fall into the trappings of blatant self-promotion. Resolve to be more socially aware in the new year by embracing social media venues as part of your overall online marketing plan.

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Pharma sector to invest more in internet marketing

2008-12-30T22:53:00.000-08:00

New research has suggested that pharmaceutical businesses will spend more on web-based marketing in the next two years.

MarketBridge and Pharmaceutical Executive magazine surveyed about 220 executives within the industry and found that the majority of firms spend up to ten per cent of their marketing budgets on the internet, while 32 per cent spend between ten and 20 per cent.

It is likely that the proportion of companies spending up to 20 per cent on digital marketing will rise in the next two years, mirroring trends seen in other industries, the report said.

The survey also found that search marketing tactics such as search engine optimisation were viewed as being among the most effective online marketing campaigns.

"Digital marketing spend is expected to rise and digital has at least 'some influence' in hiring, as organisations move more towards digital marketing adoption," the report said.

Search engine marketing spending reached £981 million in the first six months of this year, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau.

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Why Blogs are Effective Internet Marketing Tools

2008-12-30T22:35:00.000-08:00

Marketing blogs are ones that are kept strictly for marketing a person or a business. Many business blogs are written to advertise existing businesses like dental practices, hotels and local shops.

Writing a Business Blog
A business blog can be one that tells customers more about the business and why they are a trustworthy company. This often gives a personal face to the company and instills confidence in both the business and the employees and services that are featured in the business blog. The blog should be kept regularly in order to attract regular readers who want to find out more about the business and any news that occurs within that business.

Update the blog as often as possible. A business blog needs to have the latest information about the business as well as the industry it operates in. The more often the blog is updates, the better more information it will have and the more readers it will attract.

Keeping a Marketing Blog
A business blog may be a marketing blog that simply gets the name out there in order to get name recognition or to build up a readership of potential clients. This is a good practice if the company is new or if the product or service is not yet well known.

Internet Marketing Blogs
Using an Internet marketing blog is a good practice because search engines love blogs and rank them highly. Search engine generally favor sites that are updated often, and the nature of a blog requires that new content be added frequently. This makes blogs the perfect platform to advertise a product, company or a service.

Blogs are also a type of social interaction, with comments being left and a group of readers springing up around them. This can make marketing efforts far more personal and accessible to potential customers. Readers can subscribe to theInternet marketing blog both for the interaction between the writer and readers as well as the information they get from the marketing blog.

Free Blog Layouts
Even a small business with little start-up cash can create a marketing blog. There are many free blog layouts to choose from among the reputable free blogging sites. Any of these layouts is acceptable for a business blog, or the business blogger can buy a domain name and use WordPress or a similar free blog layout on their own website.

SEO for Marketing Blogs
Just like an article or other piece of Web content, a marketing blog needs search engine optimization. To make the blog easier for people to find, choose keywords that best describe what the blog is advertising. These should be words that people will type into search engines to find this type of information. Use those keywords in each post in order to get the blog indexed by search engines for those terms.

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Top 5 SEO Mistakes you should avoid doing

2008-12-30T21:59:00.000-08:00

1.Ignoring the Keywords:
This is one of the most common mistakes most people do when building a website/blog. What this will do is..to end you up creating a site with keywords that nobody searches on the web or you could create a site with most searched (competitive) keywords on the net which will make you wait forever to see any results.

So, you should do a quick research on the keywords that most people search...You can use the Google Adwords tool to check whether the keywords you choose have a good amount of searches per month.Also, type your keywords in google search and make sure that you feel confident reaching the first page.

2. Spamming the Keywords:
Some people create web pages just repeating the keywords hundreds of times or blending the font text color with the background color (hidden text)..but, this won't help you increase your search engine rankings.

Also, remember that you are making the content for your visitors, not just for the search engines. Don't repeat the keyword too many times in the article...it doesn't sound right when you read it back.

3. Javascript Menus:
Now a days, lot of people are using Javascript menus for navigation,but search engines can't read javascript.So, you have to build your site accordingly and make sure that the search engines and visitors to your site can quickly navigate the pages. You should consider building an xml/html sitemap, so that all your links are easily crawlable by the search engines.

4. Bad Linking:
You have to be careful on the outgoing links. Linking to irrelevant sites (bad neighborhoods),and sites that have been penalized by Google can seriously effect your own rankings. Also, make sure that you don't have too many outgoing links on a single page. According to Google Webmaster tools, you shouldn't have more than 100 outgoing links on a single web page.

5.Forgetting about Off site optimization:
Lot of people optimize their site well, but they forget about off site optimization...ie, building good and quality backlinks from relevant sites. It is a good way to increase your search engine rankings quickly... Get links from strong sites with your main keywords in the anchor text. Build backlinks by submitting articles, participating in related forums,etc.

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Tips on Search Engine Optimization

2008-12-30T04:07:00.000-08:00

1. Quality Content is and always will be your number one factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. You must understand search engines are simply businesses who supply a product like any other company. That product is information. They must offer quality results to anyone using their service to solve a problem, answer a question or to buy a product. The more relevant, the more targeted the search solution they return, the higher the overall quality of their product and the more popular their search engine will become. Providing quality content is vital for SEO success.

2. Keywords are your number one tools for achieving high rankings. You must understand keywords and how they work on the web. You must know how many searches are made each day for your chosen keywords. Sites like Wordtracker and SEObook will give you a rudimentary number of searches. Design your pages around your targeted keywords and don’t forget to do some deep-linking to these pages on your site. Find and build backlinks to these interior keyword pages and not just to your home page or domain URL. Picking keywords with medium to low competition has worked out well for me. So too has using the more targeted and higher converting “long-tail” keywords been very beneficial for me.

3. Onpage Factors and site design will play a major role in the spidering and indexing of your site/content. Make sure all your pages are SEO friendly, made sure all your pages can be reached from your homepage and no pages should be no more than three levels away from it - keeping a sitemap listing all your major pages makes the search engines happy. Make sure you have all your meta tags such as title, description, keywords… are all optimized. (Title = around 65 characters, Description = around 160 characters) Remember, your title and description should not only be keyword targeted but these are the first contact/impression anyone will see of your site — make sure you use them to draw and entice interested visitors to your site and content. Also make sure your title and URL are keyword matched for maximum effect. Having your major keyword in your Domain Name also helps, using a pike | to separate different elements of your title has helped my rankings, so too does having your keyword in the first and last 25 words on your pages.

4. Google will send you the most qualified traffic so concentrate the majority of your SEO efforts on Google. Don’t ignore Yahoo! or MSN but Google is king of search so give it the respect it deserves. With its new browser, Google’s influence will only grow stronger so you must optimize your pages for Google. Use Google’s Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to fine-tune your pages/content for Google. I also use Google Alerts to keep up on my niche keywords and for comment link-building on the newly created pages Google is indexing.

5. Link Building is still the most effective way to boost your search rankings. Make sure you get backlinks from relevant sites related to your niche market and make sure the ‘anchor text’ is related to your keywords but don’t ignore the text and overall quality of the content linking to you. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion of a link. Don’t forget linking is a two-way street, make sure you link out to high quality, high ranked relevant sites in your niche.

6. Article Marketing is a well established method of getting quality backlinks and it still works. Writing short 500 - 700 word informative and helpful articles with your backlinks in the resource box is still very effective for getting targeted traffic and backlinks. Longer articles have also worked for me and I use an extensive network of distribution including SubmitYourArticle, Isnare, Thephantomwriters… plus other major online sites. Don’t forget the whole element of blogging and RSS feeds in your article distribution. And always remember you’re also using these articles to pre-sale your content or products. Don’t forget to leverage sites like Squidoo, Hubpages… to increase your rankings and traffic.

7. Onsite Traffic Hubs have worked extremely well for me. These traffic hubs are whole sections of your site devoted to one sub-division of your major theme. For example, if you have a site on Gifts, then wedding gifts could be a separate section. This would be fully fleshed out with extensive pages covering everything dealing with wedding gifts — a self-contained keyword rich portion of your site on wedding gifts. Works similar as a sub-domain but I prefer using a directory to divide it up, such as yourdomain/wedding_gifts. (Most experts suggest always using a hyphen in your urls but underscores have worked fine for me.) Search engines love these keyword/content rich hubs but keep in mind you’re creating content to first satisfy your visitors.

8. WordPress blog software is extremely effective for SEO purposes. WordPress software is easy to install on your site even if you have no experience with installing server-side scripts. Besides search engines love these highly SEO friendly blogs with their well structured content and keyword tagging. I have at least one of these on all my sites to draw in the search engines and get my content indexed and ranked. I also use Blogger (owned by Google), Bloglines and other free blogs to help distribute my content.

9. Social Bookmark/Media Sites are becoming very important on the web. These include a whole range of social sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter… media news sites like Digg, SlashDot, Technorati… you must get your content into this whole mix if you want to take full SEO advantage of Web 2.0 sites. You should be joining these sites and using them. It’s time consuming but it will keep you in the swing of things. One simple thing you must do is to put social bookmark buttons on all your pages so that your visitors can easily bookmark your content for you. You can use a WordPress plug-in or I like using a simple free site/service from Addthis.com which gives me a simple button to put on all my content.

10. Masterplan! Many webmasters and site owners forget to develop or have an overall masterplan/strategy when it comes to SEO. You must have an understanding of what SEO is and what it can do for you and your site. More importantly, you just don’t want SEO; you want effective SEO.

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Getting ready to get indexed by Google

2008-12-30T04:02:00.000-08:00

This goes out to all the new websites out there waiting to get indexed. While many prefer to believe that all the major SEO is done after the site is launched, I would hint that if you’re able to get indexed while in the best shape, that’s quarter battle won.

We all know that there are more than one way of getting indexed on Google. So while you are getting indexed, is there anything in particular that you got to watch out for ? Indeed yes.

A couple of things.
1 – Be in good shape while you get indexed.
Page Titles, Onsite optimization and Keyword highlights – if you’re able to get it all ready in good shape even before getting indexed, it’s better. So when the Google bots enter your virgin territory, they have a good first impression. I’ve seen that rather than making changes later, it’s better if you can get them convinced in the very first place.

2 – Get the best guy to link to you.
Forget the cheap directories. They’re no good. Instead, try out a link building strategy, or device your own and bait the suitable guy in your domain to link to you. (Guy with a decent PR, Authority etc)

3 – Get the sitemap ready.
Make sure you don’t miss to publish the sitemap. Both HTML and the XML one. If they are available to welcome the robots, nothing like it, a great indexing ensured.

4 – Get the links fixed.
Make sure you leave no broken links. They’re so amateurish. Run a link checker program, and make sure you plug those holes before the bots are here.

Basically the idea is to get all the metrics to be in good shape, ready to welcome the bots and leave no room for loose ends.

SEO tips for Online Video Content

2008-12-30T03:35:00.000-08:00

1) All SEO specialists know that the search engines are built to index and rank text. Being that it is more difficult for the search engines to understand the content within a video (though they are working on it), it is a good idea to include as much text surrounding the video itself if possible. One excellent way to do this is to include a text transcript of your video alongside your video with keyword rich title and descriptions.

2) Don't forget to encode the keywords you are targeting into your video. Try to use the word "video" as much as possible, make sure the word "video" is used in your title, description, meta data etc.

3) Search engine crawlers rely a lot on the link texts to figure out what the video is all about as they are not capable to figure out the contents of the video otherwise. Therefore it is advisable to get as many back links as possible for your video.

4) Create a video sitemap exclusively for your online video content so that engines can find all of your videos and understand the structure of your site more easily. This helps the web crawlers to locate your video files speedily and effortlessly.

5) If you are hosting the video on your own site, it is advisable to do your best to utilize a player that is not flash as search engines have difficulty understanding flash content. That being said, it will be difficult to empower video on your site without a simple flash player. If you can not get around it, do your best to take advantage of the other SEO techniques since search engines cant understand the flash technology.

6) Create search engine friendly keyword URLs for your video pages. To do this, you can use mod-rewrite function or htaccess file so that the URLs are freely assessable and readable by the search engines.

7) Various video search engines use to capture thumbnails of your in different manner. Some of them take the first frame of your video, while others try to take from the middle or end. It is better to experiment with each site individually to make sure they are displaying the right thumbnail for your video. A video thumbnail is always crucial when it comes to decide for a viewer which video to watch.

8) When hosting videos on your own site, keep your videos one per page and put all the pages with videos into one directory. This combined with a video sitemap will help search engines find and index all of your important videos.

In addition to the specific optimization techniques listed above, make sure that you also follow some common guidelines for online video content:

9) With any SEO that you do online, choose keywords that you know users are searching for. Use keyword research tools to discover keywords and phrases that are most often searched for when looking for the information that you are creating.

10) Viewers who offer feedback are most likely to take the desired action on your video. This could be a good opportunity for you to submit fresh content, if the most popular videos were included months ago, it really helps.

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Ethical tips regarding on-page SEO optimization for SEO services

2008-12-26T22:10:00.000-08:00

Why SEO Services Drive Better Traffic to Your Website!

2008-12-26T21:42:00.000-08:00

There are various SEO techniques to attract targeted traffic to your website. Principally, they target the ideal audience by using specific keywords in key points. On the other hand, once SEO services begin to bring you the targeted traffic, they will continue this influx of visitors for a long time. Here are some of those techniques:

1) SEO services optimize a website's content using keywords. If the content of all pages are related, the main keywords of the website will be repeated in many pages. This adds to the content relevancy of the site as well as general keyword weight throughout your website. As a result, only targeted traffic will be attracted to your website.

2)SEO services include your keywords in title tags. While optimizing a website, a professional SEO service provider will consider using your keywords in the title tags of your pages. Search engines pay lots of attention to the title tags of your web pages.

3)Careful SEO services use your keywords in internal links. The navigation theme and as well as text links of your website should contain your keywords. This is an important factor considered by search engines.

4)Professional SEO services will use your keywords at the URL at the file names of your webpages. Search engines give such pages higher score while listing them for your keywords. This will end up in attracting more targeted traffic to your site.

5) You can even find out that SEO services will add your keywords to the folder names of at your website. This will add to the search engine ranking of your webpages. On the other hand a page optimized with the keywords found even at the folder names, will be more likely to obtain a higher ranking and attract more targeted traffic.

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5 Mistake Can Kill Your SEO Process

2008-12-26T21:38:00.000-08:00

1) Screwing up Robots.txt file.
Make sure your text is like the one written as User-agent:* Disallow:
It should not be like the one written as: User-agent:* Disallow: /
This mistake can drop your organic rankings drastically.

2) Too many variables or parameters in your URLs
Although Search Engines are getting better and better in means of
crawling long and ugly looking links but still they don’t like them.
Short URL’s also do get clicked more often in the result pages and
they are good for crawlabilty and clickabilty.

3) Session ID’s in your URL’s
Search Engines straight away do not like session ID’s in URL’s. If you
are using Session ID’s then just store them in cookies rather than
including them in your URL’s. Session ID’s can cause a single page
content to be visible at multiple URL’s and thus obstructing the
SERP’s.

4) Your site suffers from code bloat
Even though Spiders are normally good at sorting out code from
content, but that doesn’t mean you should make it more complex by
having so much code that the content is tough to find.

5) Your navigation and internal linking
Designers and developers can be pretty creative while designing a web
site but this creativity may come in the way Search Engine Crawlers.
Your site’s navigation build in complicated DHTML, java script code,
flash or Ajax based can stop a crawler in its track.

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Steps to Successful Search Engine Optimization

2008-12-25T22:05:00.000-08:00

Submitting your website to search engines does not get your webpage better ranking. That is a misconception about SEO that has been going around for quite sometime. It does no harm by submitting your site to them but it does no good as well. Just submitting your site to the search engines doesn’t give you a good spot on their pages. In order to be eligible and indexed by search engine crawlers you need to optimize your site. Search engine optimization is an on-going process. You need to invest enough time to get the desired success. Compared to other forms online marketing, SEO offers higher return on investment (ROI). With the growing number of users relying on search engines to find their pages, it has become essential to optimize websites and make them search engine friendly. Here are few steps you need to follow for the search engine spiders to crawl and index your site.

Theme:
It is important to choose a theme for the pages of your website. Each page should be able to convey a message or fulfill a purpose.

Keywords Selection:
Choosing the right keywords is an important and crucial step of search engine optimization. You need to list the relevant and searched keywords and key phrases for each of the pages. Choosing the most competitive keywords can get really frustrating hence as a beginner you can focus on less competitive, yet searched words. You can make a list of relevant keywords and use tools like wordtracker and overture keyword analysis tool to know the search frequency.

Know your Competitors:
It is important to keep an eye on your competitors. You can study what keywords they are emphasizing on, know what websites are linking to them and where they rank. The less competition you have the better it is.

Optimize your Page Content with Phrases:
When you select the relevant keywords for your web page, you can rank them according to their importance. You can revise the existing pages and optimize your page content starting with your top key phrases. Optimizing your site includes alteration of the meta tags i.e. title, description, keywords, headings, image alt, link and the content of the site. You can also have robot.txt file to help the spiders to crawl the pages you want them to.

Linking Strategies:
As mentioned earlier link building is one of the important part of SEO. There are

1. two linking strategies:
Internal Linking: In your page content you can refer to other important pages of your website. You can make use of the keywords of the landing page for your hyperlink text. You can even use keywords in navigation structure.

2. External Linking:
You can build external links by various means. You can start your own blog or write articles so that other websites interested will link to you. You can ask other webpages to place your link on their websites for placing their link on your site. This is known as reciprocal linking. You can advertise your sites on directories like dmoz, yahoo directories etc. Getting backlinks from these popular sites will help you get better ranking. There are various other ways to increase your inbound links.

Traffic and Revenue Tracking:
After your website is optimized you need to track the sales and the traffic it is receiving. You need to focus more on traffic and revenue than the page ranking. There are many software which gives you the report on your revenues by keywords, search engine, advertising campaigns etc.

Analysis:
You need to analyze your website and make necessary changes. Search engines keep changing their algorithm, hence it is important you be updated and try the new marketing strategies. You also need to keep track of your rankings and reoptimize the pages if you need to. You can then wait for the results.

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2009 'to bring search engine marketing changes'

2008-12-25T22:00:00.000-08:00

Search engine marketing professionals are likely to see significant changes within the industry in the next year, according to Search Insider's David Berkowitz.

The expert said that those making use of search engine optimisation (SEO) and marketing will need to consider their rankings in terms of social media as well as their own company website.

Those taking advantage of SEO services should think about how consumers find their organisations, as a growing number of web users do so via sites like Twitter and Wikipedia, as well as photo-sharing sites and blogs, Mr Berkowitz suggested.

"SEO is shifting from a focus of entirely maximising a site's rank in the engines to maximising a site's reach across all the top-ranked listings on a search engine's results page," he remarked.

Search marketing spending has increased by 30 per cent this year, according to the 2009 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide from advertising blog and resource provider MarketingSherpa.

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Discover How To Use Analytics To Improve Web Conversions

2008-12-25T21:52:00.000-08:00

The goal of any web presence should be to improve the business as a whole and complement its offline marketing and sales efforts. In other words, to help it achieve maximum profitability. In order to do this, your online strategy must: Drive targeted traffic to your site, persuade site visitors to take the desired actions you want them to take, and use Web metrics to analyze and measure user behavior. Performing these objectives correctly will ensure that you have an effective marketing campaign and increased sales for your business.

Driving targeted traffic begins with a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign including pay-per-click advertising (PPC) and a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. It's important to determine which keywords are worth pursuing in your PPC and SEO efforts. Determine how frequently each phrase is searched for, and evaluate which are feasible enough to put efforts into by checking how steep the competition is. Make your selections and test them out in your PPC and SEO campaigns Researching and selecting effective keywords is extremely important. Be sure to select keywords that your target market would use to find you.

With web metrics and analysis in place, you will be able to tell where people are coming from, what keywords they used to find you, and whether they are taking the desired actions on your site. If the wrong keywords are chosen, you may find that you have high rankings, but the wrong audience is visiting. Whether you are selling a product or service, obtaining newsletter subscribers, or enticing people to download a software demo, your ultimate goal is getting your site visitors to take a desired action. In order to do this you must have a compelling site that draws the visitor in, and then guides them to the goal. Design and site architecture factors such as usability, navigation, content, and ad copy all come into play here.

The key is to monitor how well these factors work at persuading your visitors into taking action. With web metrics you can monitor everything and see what's working and what's not. Armed with this knowledge, you can make the appropriate changes to your site; continue monitoring, and repeat the process until you get an increase in the desired outcome.

The area of web metrics and analysis is new and evolving. Compared to traditional offline marketing, the Internet provides an unparalleled opportunity to specifically measure how a customer interacts with a business. Web metrics and analysis will help you to monitor and improve objectives. This is done by paying close attention to where visitors are coming from, learning what keywords were used to find your site, seeing how they navigated through it, and what actions they took along the way. This information becomes a powerful tool in growing your business.

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5 tips for internet marketing and SEO

2008-12-25T21:22:00.000-08:00

It’s become quite common on the web to talk about SEO; one can corroborate this by having a look at the umpteen websites and posts on SEO. A common mistake or rather miss-out seen in these posts is the shoving away of internet marketing. Yes, indeed SEO is a major part of internet marketing, but SEO alone isn’t internet marketing! Very less is spoken about other ways that take a broader approach into internet marketing and effectively market a website.

1. Affiliation to good products/services : Affiliation to good products or services may not fetch you great returns on the SEO front but it is bound to give you lifelong income from the product or services, given in you crack up a fair deal with the company/website. All you need to do is to select a product or services related to your website and write an article on it. Yes, you are promoting it, and hence, do not bluff about a product/ service you have no idea about. Let authenticity prevail!

2. In-house email newsletter: Marketingsherpa surveys proclaim that house email gives more return-on-investment than SEO! Is anything left to say? But play the game smartly- Give a sign-up option on every webpage. Further, do not forget to declare that ‘this isn’t spam’ and ‘none of your information will be used publicly’, ‘no products or services will be endorsed i.e. no trade’ etc (promotional mails have become synonymous to headache on the internet). You could even try adding incentives for signup.

3. Subscription of RSS via other ways: Don’t constrain your readers to just RSS. Users today love to be given more flexibility to services, so try out other options to subscribe to your feed like email, twitter etc. This can also be seen as a long term strategy as by doing so, you are providing more channels to promote your website and express yourself online. Techcrunch is one of the exemplary to this method; they have around 4 links to subscribe to their RSS feeds. Their twitter account, which they use for sending out updates on their website, has around 33K keen followers and IE and FF plug-in is another option of theirs that gave them a huge increase in the number of readers.

4. A simple ‘share this’ link: This is undoubtedly one of the most underrated of all the tactics. The logic is simple- if someone likes a page they would love it to share it with their friends, peers, colleagues etc. So, just facilitate them with a simple option!! Don’t suffice yourself with a ‘share this’ word widget, use an additional link in each page with a more convincing title like ‘tell a friend’, ‘let your friend love this page too’ etc. Say, 50K people visit your webpage and 2% of them share the link and it still accounts for 1000 more visits!

5. PPC link and brand recall: PPC is used widely for a variety of purposes in relation with SEO. One of them is brand recall i.e. the usage of PPC when your page is ranking in Google for a short-tail keyword rank. You just need to bid for the top sponsored listing for the high volume keywords you are leading in.

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10 Reasons Why Your Website Looks Like Spam

2008-12-24T00:35:00.000-08:00

1. You use the default WordPress theme.

It’s not illegal or anything, but using the default WordPress theme shows the sort of laziness generally displayed by MFA spammers with dirty, dirty splogs. Because they buy up hundreds of domains that do nothing but scrape content and slap on some AdWords, they don’t care what the pages actually look like. In fact, they want to be so unattractive that people want to click on ads just to get away from the ugliness. You’re not a dirty splogger? Congratulate yourself for not being sleazy! Then kick yourself for not taking more pride in your website, and take five minutes to find and install a free WordPress theme that doesn’t suck.

2. Too. Many. Ads.

Okay, I can’t fault you for wanting to monetize your website. My own sites are monetized. But seriously, when you have more ads than content, you put the MFA sites to shame. And people like me might be looking extra hard to make sure you have some sort of valuable content that separates you from the real spammers. It’s a fine line, so you have to be very careful you don’t cross it and actually become a spam site.

3. The spammiest-domain-in-the-world.com

You can have a beautiful website that is easy to navigate and is very user friendly, but people may not ever get there if they see you’ve got five keywords in your domain name separated by hyphens. Sure, hyphens are not inherently evil. But too many hyphens makes you look cheap and untrustworthy. And that’s before you even get off the SERP. Just don’t do it. If the good non-spammy keyword rich domain names are taken, then find a brandable domain name. (Think Zillow. Expedia.)

4. Link Pages

You may call it your “resource page.” How many of those are resources are affiliate links or reciprocal links you traded back in 2003? Link pages tend to be suspect even if you’re really just trying to give your visitors a list of resources for which you receive no form of compensation. It’s really looks better to make your links contextual, interwoven throughout your site content. If you absolutely must have a link page, you need to be absolutely sure it has real value for your users, relevant to your site content.

5. You don’t look “real.”

Do you have an About Us page? Contact page? Copyright notice? Privacy policy? If you sell stuff, do you have a shopping cart? Customer service information? Shipping info? If you don’t, you look suspiciously like a thin affiliate site.

6. Too many redirects.

It’s good to use a redirect when you shake up your site navigation, so that users following otherwise dead incoming links can be led to the new home of the proper landing page. But have you ever clicked on a link and seen more than three URLs switch out in the address bar before ending up on an actual page? If you’ve moved things around several times, you need to tidy up your redirects, or else people (your competitors, who are going to be trigger happy on the spam report button) might wonder what you were cloaking and hiding on those interim pages that never loaded.

7. You bought the .info

It’s unfair, but so many spammers have bought up the .info domains that it’s truly unusual to find a legitimate .info page. That’s all I have to say about that.

8. Your title tags look like

Your title tag should be readable. You can be descriptive without a comma separated list of your targeted keywords. The title tag is what people see on the SERP. Make it user friendly. A list of keywords is not user friendly. You look like you have nothing better to offer than a list of keywords, and that’s not good. Pick a keyword phrase or two and put it in sentence form.

9. Barely unique content

As the head of the WBP writing team, it makes me sad to see barely unique content out there. The less-evil cousin of the MFA site doesn’t scrape content from other sources. The articles you read there will pass Copyscape. Why? Because they paid someone (likely overseas) a dollar or two to re-write someone else’s content to become “unique,” even when the resulting rephrasing leads to some awkward reading. So okay, they may pass a cursory plagiarism test, but these sites have a “look,” very similar to the default WP theme sites.

10. RSS Feeds

If you have a web page essentially one big blog or news feed, you have the burden of proof that says your feed is valuable to users. If you have ads on that feed, you may not be able to avoid the spam label for scraping. Make sure you add value to the feed by adding some form of narrative or editorial. You need to provide some kind of unique content, or else you’re no better than the sploggers.

11. Sales letter sites

You’ve got this AMAZING product with PROVEN results and TRUSTED testimonials. See the pictures of these happy customers? You have a LIMITED TIME offer to get the SPECIAL price. You use lots of BOLD TEXT in PRETTY COLORS to drive the point home. Users have to scroll down the page for 45 seconds to find the obligatory lead generator contact form where they must provide their email address to LEARN MORE. Affiliate site? Legitimate offer? You be the judge, but it sure looks like spam to me.

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Worst SEO Mistakes

2008-12-24T00:27:00.000-08:00

Worst SEO Mistakes

In this article we cover some of the worst SEO mistakes. Some of these will cause the search engines to ignore you; others will cause potential visitors to ignore you; still others may make your site disappear from the search engine results pages entirely. We'll go over each practice and explain why you shouldn't do it. We'll even tell you what you should be doing.

Flash

If you're making a new website and thinking of using Flash - stop. Though Adobe made Flash crawlable and shared technology with Google and Yahoo (leaving out Microsoft), Flash is still a bad choice.

If you don't show much content to the search engines, you will have to invest more in links. Not only does a Flash site cost more to make, but you'll need more money to optimize it. If there is no real reason to use Flash, don't. If you want cool movies and features, consider embedding Flash videos and using cool CSS styles.

No Use of Title Tags

"The most powerful HTML tag you have at your disposal" - Ross Jones, Search Engine Ranking Factors. Put keywords you target the page for into the tag. This is the part that shows up in search results as a big blue link, so make it count.

Another mistake webmasters make is to put something like "Welcome To...." in the title tag. Aaron Wall calls this "Welcome to low rankings."

Title Tag Duplication

Many designers create a site design without much regard for SEO, using one title tag for an entire website. Make sure to vary the title tags on your pages.

Messed up Robots.txt

It's a good idea to have a file to keep your error log clean of robot.txt requests, but if you can mess up a lot if you use it incorrectly. Here's how it looks, assuming you don't want to block ANY pages:

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Search Trends To Watch In 2009

2008-12-24T00:19:00.000-08:00

Between the economy affecting stock prices and the potential mergers and acquisitions discussed among several of the major search engines, there is a lot of uncertainty as we head into 2009. Yet we can anticipate several shifts in search based on what we've seen over the past decade and other signs in the media ecosystem. Here are some major changes to anticipate:

Holistic -- In Every Sense

The word "holistic" should play out in a number of ways:

First, any significant media campaign or offline event drives search volume, so marketers must capture that demand by integrating search with other media planning.

Next, paid search and SEO should be planned in tandem for the best results. Several studies show that by integrating search engine marketing with search engine optimization, results are greater than the sum of its parts.

Lastly, expect the major search engines and others to push forward with new ways to infuse paid search listings with display and video media. This will make search also about engagement and not just clicks and conversions. To some degree, these new search engine offerings will be motivated by more concentrated efforts to attract large brand marketers . Additionally, given how effective search engine marketing is, the engines and portals will want to have a steady stream of upsell options. In the coming year, consumers may experience the most dramatic shift in the format of search engine results pages since the basic template was established roughly a decade ago.

Search Fragmentation

While the search engine landscape continues to be dominated by one player, new complexities keep emerging as search migrates far beyond the traditional engines.

This fall, comScore and Ad Age reported that YouTube surpassed Yahoo as the second-largest search engine; within days, YouTube announced its new search advertising platform. What's more, MySpace (563 million U.S. queries in October 2008, according to comScore) is a bigger search engine than both AOL (424 million) and Ask.com (362 million). Queries on eBay, Craigslist, and Amazon combined (980 million) nearly rival MSN.com (1.04 billion).

What does all of this mean for marketers?

It's true that not all queries are created equally. A searcher on a social network or video sharing site often wants something different than what they’re looking for on a standard search engine. But given the volume of consumer search activity (among other interactions) on these nontraditional search sources, it's important for marketers to be positioned the best way possible where those searches are happening.

New Models for SEO

These other search sources don't just operate in a vacuum; they impact the major search engines, too. Search engine optimization is shifting, from a focus of entirely maximizing a site's rank in the engines, to maximizing a site's reach across all the top-ranked listings on a search engine's results page. While many consumers go directly to a marketers' site, which should be positioned as prominently as possible in search engine results pages, many more consumers reach marketers through intermediary properties. These include blogs, social networks, photo sharing sites, Twitter, Wikipedia, and countless other social sites that tend to rank increasingly well in search engines. That means marketers have to shift their mindset from optimizing their Web site to optimizing their Web presence.

Your Car Engine's Your Search Engine

The biggest change in 2009 and beyond is that the device consumers search from will start to matter even more than which engine they use.

The most obvious manifestation of this is mobile consumption. New mobile devices and platforms such as the iPhone and Google Android are focused on improving the search and Web experience. This will fuel searches from mobile devices; iPhone users enter a disproportionate number of mobile search queries, though other devices are catching up.

Marketers need to adapt their strategies to reach their target audiences on these devices, such as by optimizing messaging and landing pages, and providing more consumer value by leveraging the unique features of these devices. For instance, mobile devices support integration with SMS (text messaging), click-to-call, mobile couponing, and location-based services, all of which take advantage of the mobile platform in ways that aren't as natural for PC-based Web advertising.

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Tips for SEO on Your Blog

2008-12-23T22:42:00.000-08:00

Blogs Get Scraped
You may have noticed that on each blog entry I do, I have a signature at the bottom that includes links to my website and details about me. I do this for a reason. There are robots out there in the world that will take and "scrape" your blog for articles relevant to what the site is that they are searching for content for. They will then (without permission) post your blog on their site so as to drive traffic to their site.

Google Alerts
Now, I have a Google Alerts that keeps track of when my name, my company name, or the name of my book comes up on the web. So when I get scraped (and it happens often), I can find out where it went. And, if they didn't maintain my links intact, then I can comment on the post and ask that they reinstate the links.

Let Them Have the Post
Notice I DIDN'T say that I could ask them to remove the posting. Because I don't want them to. Sure, they stole my content. But they could have had it for the asking if they kept the links in place. I am perfectly happy to have my stuff show up everywhere - with my links in place. Why? Two reasons.

Driving Traffic Directly From Scraping Site
Perhaps someone will find my site as a result of reading the article on their site. After all, they're scraping all sorts of relevant content - they should reach some of my target market too.

Driving Up Your SEO
And, more importantly, each incoming link to my site increases my SEO. A link about real estate training to my real estate training web page. A link about real estate products to my real estate product page. A link for real estate coaching to my real estate coaching page. A link about internet training, to my Web 2.0 Training for Realtors (sign up before the end of December and save $100.) web page. How great is that? (And did you notice the little trick I just did with putting all of those links in? Now when this post gets scraped, my SEO will go up even more.)

While We're On The Subject
Don't forget to put a copyright notice in the footer of your pages to protect you. And, if you have one already, remember that you need to change it to 2009 in a few days. We want to be accurate.

Conversion Tools
Remember also that your blog is advertising. Use it to convert lurkers into leads. Add a conversion tool like the one I have below. It references a free training program I have available online. All you have to do is tell me who you are and give me a valid email address. If you have a white paper or recorded class you can trade to buyers or sellers in exchange for their email address, then you're styling too.

Include a Share, Digg, or Delicious Button
You want people to be able to tell others about the cool things they read on your blog. Make it easy for them to do so using a simple button. Getting your posts included in these directories also does wonders for your SEO.

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Why Use BlackHat SEO Techniques?

2008-12-23T22:05:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer* These are my personal views on Blackhat Search Engine Optimization Techniques. If you disagree please feel free to express yourself in the comment section bellow.

Blackhat SEO exploits weaknesses in the search engine algorithm by breaking rules and manipulating search results. Blackhat SEO is also about misrepresenting content to search engines through cloaking and other dirty techniques.

Blackhat SEO is mainly focused on fully automatic processes like comment spamming and they also take advantage of automatic directory submitters or they will slightly change/steal peoples content to submit to article directories with links to their own pages.

Blackhat SEO focuses on earning money without even trying to provide any value to the visitors! Often times you will see websites that are covered with affiliate advertisements and/or Adsence ads that will be listed high in the SERPs “Search Engine Results Pages” for keywords they are not related to in anyway.

Blackhat = Fast but short lived search engine love and Whitehat or Greyhat= A long-term process that will have great benefits over a longer stretch of time and the benefits will normally last for years as long as you never stop creating content, building links, and offering your visitors something to remember!

But not everything that Google says should be considered the law! There is a difference between flat out Blackhat manipulations and Greyhat SEO.

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Organic Search Vs Pay Per Click (ppc)

2008-12-22T22:24:00.000-08:00

One of the age old SEO questions that is frequently asked is, "Should I spend the time and money to improve my organic search ranking or foot the bill for an extensive PPC campaign?" In this article I will explore both of these options and discover which one seems to be a more viable option for most webmasters.

Organic Optimization -

One major advantage to organic search is that it could cost absolutely nothing. I was always told "There is no such thing as a free lunch." Well, that may be so but as long as webmasters are willing to put in the time and effort to build a best online courses Organic search campaign, then there is such thing as free SEO. With organic optimization, you can develop a longer term marketing strategy. Organic search has results that last for years as opposed to PPC that lasts only as long as your bank account does. Organic optimization has been around about as long as the web itself. Like the web, organic search has evolved with the times. However, the constant evolution can make Organic optimization difficult and confusing.

Pay Per Click (PPC) -

Pay Per Click is the search engine's bread and butter. If we were to break down the earnings of all the major search engines best online courses top of the list of revenue drivers you almost always see PPC. The numbers speak for themselves; people would not continue to purchase PPC ads if they didn't convert into sales.

If you are a new business to the web and would like to see immediate results, PPC is the only way to go. PPC is the only search engine optimization strategy that can yield immediate first-page placement. Another benefit to using the PPC campaign is that you can set you own fixed budget. If you want to only spend $100 dollars a month, no problem, $10,000, go for it. Another advantage to PPC online history courses you can instantly track your conversion, and success rates through Google Analytics and other PPC management soft wares. Another advantage to PPC is that if you find a particular keyword or phrase is not working, all you need to do is make a few minor tweaks and your new target phrase has changed. In Organic search, changes could take months to take effect.

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How to Increase Your Search Efficiency

2008-12-22T22:20:00.000-08:00

Everyone feels the need to stretch every extra penny in these tough economic times. Even the most profitable company isn't immune to cutbacks and budget tightening.

Search marketing tends to be very cost effective, and can exhibit high ROI (define) as it is, but you still can't rest on your laurels. With less budget for traditional media and more going into online media, marketers are realizing that even though online is the "measurable" and "cheap" sister, it must be optimized to maximize results.

That means revisiting your search strategies to make sure you're fully exploiting every dollar you invest.

Let's review some quick tips for optimizing your search efforts (both paid and organic) to stretch your dollar further:

Measure Twice, Cut Once

Ensure you have an appropriate measurement and reporting framework in place so you can clearly see what is and isn't working. Your Web site analytics should show you which search engines are driving traffic, leads, sales, etc., and exactly which ads and keywords are performing.

Schedule regular internal analytics reviews or request reports from your search vendor so you can isolate areas of opportunity and items that aren't performing. Reallocate your dollars where the investment is paying off, but base your decisions on accurate, factual data.

Check Your List, and Check It Twice

Consider revisiting your keyword list to determine "must haves" and what keywords are unrealistic to keep. While a term like "online gaming" may be relevant to your business, it will cost you a lot of time and effort to get a top ranking.

With paid search, you'll pay an astronomical amount per click. If you're doing SEO (define), the odds of your business rising to the top of the rankings are slim, if not impossible. Seek out niche, long-tail (define) terms (three or more words) that have a higher probability of getting your business to appear higher in the results.

Go Free or Go Home

Don't buy directory listings or links on third-party sites. Instead, develop interesting content or tools to offer on your site that people will want to link to naturally.

Also, consider distributing limited content on a third-party Web site to procure a multitude of inbound links. Try building links the old-fashioned way -- prowl the Internet for potential partners, provide a strong rationale, and ask very nicely if they'll link to you.

Relevance is Bliss

In paid search, most search engines don't just base your position (or ranking) on your maximum bid -- they also take your quality score into account. Your quality score gets assigned to you at a keyword level and is based on how relevant a user experience you create (how well your ad copy matches the query, whether the landing page reflects the query, etc.). The more relevant the experience, the less you pay for a click.

You might want to revisit your paid search strategy to ensure your quality scores are top notch and you're paying the minimum possible for each keyword.

Stop The Love Affair With Google

While Google has the highest market share, it also likely has the most advertisers vying for high placement. More competition usually means higher cost.

While you might still want to have some presence on Google, test out other engines to see if you can extract improved efficiencies. Consider looking into smaller or niche engines -- and I'm not just talking Yahoo or MSN.

Does your industry have specialty engines that your audience might use? For example, in the healthcare industry, healthline.com is a health information engine.

Do you offer audio or video content on your site? You might try BlinkX, a TV search engine.

Do you have a corporate blog? How does your site fair in Technorati?

You get the picture.

First-Timers, Just Say No to DIY

You've seen those TV shows on home renovation disasters, right? That's exactly why you should call a professional to do a job that isn't your area of expertise. You'll only end up paying more to correct your mistakes.

Consider enlisting a search marketing expert. Even though a search professional will cost you more upfront, the long-term reward will actually more than likely save you money, reaping a higher ROI than trying to do it in-house.

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Google increases US search engine market share

2008-12-22T22:03:00.000-08:00

Google's share of the US search market rose by 0.4 per cent in November compared with the previous month, new figures have shown.

According to comScore, Google accounted for 63.5 per cent of all search queries made last month, with AOL being the only other search engine in the top five to also increase its market share.

Yahoo!, Microsoft and Ask.com, which were in second, third and fourth place respectively, each saw their share of the 12.3 billion core searches made by US web users fall by either 0.1 or 0.2 per cent in November.

Overall, 7.78 billion searches were made on Google, compared with 2.5 billion on Yahoo! sites and 1.01 billion on Microsoft sites, search engine marketing executives may be interested to read.

Meanwhile, recent figures from Attributor showed that Google's DoubleClick and AdSense programs accounted for the bulk of the ad server market in October, followed by Yahoo! and Revenue Science.

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Tips for Search Engine Optimization For Websites

2008-12-22T20:57:00.000-08:00

Below are the basic Tags and points to be considered for Search Engine Optimization so to get website listed in major search engines. It is necessary to follow under mentioned steps for search engine optimization, as to catch the eyes of the “ROBOT” of search engines

Firstly, two or three main keywords are to be decided for each page (the words that users will most commonly users type to find the page or the product). These words are to be used in the Page Title, Description Meta tag, Links and Page Body

Page Title -
The title of the page is one of the most important elements for site optimization. The tag must contain keyword rich phrases, place name and company name respectively. It should be unique for individual pages and limited to 62-64 characters.

Meta Description-
The Meta description tag consists of 160 to 180 characters including spaces. It should describe what the page is about in descriptive manner with the main key phrases in it. It has to be written in an appealing manner, as this will appear as a description in the listing.

Meta Keywords-
The tag includes the keywords and key phrases from title, description and some other phrases (believed to be typed by search engine users in order to track the page) but to 1000 characters. It must contain company and place name. The phrase must not be repeated thrice. The keywords can be modified in different phrases and placed in the tag.

Heading-
Each page should have at least one heading tag at the top of the page with primary keywords/key phrases and subsections of the page with h2 tags, and so forth. all the heading tags have to be relevant to the title and content of the page. The tag should be short and descriptive.

Alt-
The tag is used for images along with img src tag. When the cursor is placed over an image a text called as alt text is highlighted. The text has be corresponding to the image and must contain key phrases. The tag should limit to 70 characters.

Content-
The main keyword should be placed in the first 25 words of the visible content as they're given more importance than other areas in a balanced ratio (keywords: Total text). Density for keywords should lay under 3% to 5% to the text of the page, excluding stop words (words which search engine automatically ignores). The last few lines also hold considerable weight, though it's less than the former.

Navigation-
The navigation tab must contain Keyword rich anchor text on the top of the page. It should have title tag indicating summary of the page. HTML hyperlinks that lead to major pages inside the website are to be added to the home page. It should include a sitemap on the home page, so Search engines can crawl all the links.

Domain Name-
Short Domain name having keywords and phrases of the website separated with hyphens along with the company name should be chosen. As, search engines do give importance to key word rich domain names. Though it can go to 67 characters max. Choose domains starting with A, B or C as some directories do alphabetical placement. Avoid "1" or 1st, since the Open Directory considers only the meaningful part of a domain.

Directories & Search Engines-
The next step is to submit website to directories. Directories powered by human beings, it compile the list of website in respective categories. Select the required category for the website and submit it to "add site" page with the required data information.

Getting listed with the important directories is very important, as crawler based search engines are more likely to find your site and add it to their listings for free.

Similar to directories search engine are also collection of website, but they are
powered by ROBOTS. These Robots crawl automatically web pages to compile their listings.

Submit only home page, as search engine will follow the links from the index page. Submit website to major search engine manually, don't rely on software; it may result in over submission. There are many affiliated search engines. Thus, before submitting you should be aware of which search engine is powered by whom.

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Email marketing 'should be integrated with other channels'

2008-12-22T20:50:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest mistakes a company can make in terms of promotional strategy is to limit itself to just using email marketing to reach customers.

This is according to Larry Golden, one of the chief executives of RSVP Publications, who explained that it is important to integrate email campaigns with other marketing platforms to maximise success.

"To increase the response rate, research a targeted audience to find an exact fit for the particular message and consider combining email marketing with other web-based marketing as well as direct mail," he advised.

Mr Golden went on to cite a study by International Communication Research showing that almost three-quarters of respondents preferred to receive announcements of new products by direct mail.

The advice could also be extended to other forms of online advertising. Almost half of marketers do not integrate their search marketing campaigns with offline channels, according to a report published by iProspect earlier this year.

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Pay Per Click Optimization VS. Search Engine Optimization

2008-12-21T22:41:00.000-08:00

A little over a decade ago Search Engine Optimization was still in the embryo stage, it did not even have a name yet. Some people happily wandered around the Internet and are excited at the interesting things they could find, while others became increasingly frustrated at wasting time in trying to find what they were looking for.

Now SEO is ‘the’ buzzword on everyone’s lips and over time Pay per click Optimization came along to fight for a piece of this lucrative business that has turned into a multi-billion dollar industry. For the man on the street it can be bewildering when you want to promote your own website as you can easily be drowned under the mountain of conflicting advice thrown to you constantly.

Pay per Click is fast and hot

To understand why PPC and SEO both work, you must understand how they work. Basically you sign up for the service and you pay x-amount every time someone clicks on your site. This is the ‘push’ method; your site is pushed to the top of the search listings, so people see it straight away. This is the ideal way to go if you want to promote your website very fast for a limited time period for you will burn money fast.

The trick is to convert those website hits into paying customers that in turn generate income for you, otherwise you will be paying for thousands of clicks that bring in no money. PPC is excellent if you need to promote a campaign fast, have a promotion that is going to last only for a limited period of time or for those businesses that are seasonal, so they have to get the word out fast, get their customers interested in the minimum of time, thereby generate their own income before the season is over.

Search Engine Optimization the steadily growing tree

Natural Search Engine Optimization is most definitely alive and growing. Going with this means that your ranking depends on the pulling together of certain criteria, the type of website you have, the content of your website and your marketing strategy.

You want your website to appear on the first two pages when someone does a search. Search Engine Optimization works through what is called the ‘pull’ method; people come look for you, you don’t push your product into their faces. Above all, you get this ranking for free. It takes time to build natural SEO, but you lay a solid foundation that will keep on growing in time.

What website owners must remember is that searchers are not stupid, they know sponsored sites involve money and often they mistrust that. They also know that a free ranked website is placed in that spot because for instance Google deemed them worthy of that place and this is something most people can identify with. It is really up to each website owner; do they want to push and go in like a fast burning rocket, or do they want to go in free, build their rating slowly on a strong foundation, in the end it comes down to your circumstances, needs and budget.

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How to Use CSS for Search Engine Optimization

2008-12-21T22:37:00.000-08:00

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a language that permits Web designers to attach styles such as spacing, color, font, etc. to HTML documents. Cascading style sheets are similar to a template, permitting Web developers to label styles for an HTML element and then apply it to the number of Web pages required. Thus, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are collections of formatting rules, which control the appearance of content in a Web page. With CSS styles you have great flexibility and control of the exact page appearance; from precise positioning of the layout to specific fonts and styles.

There are many benefits of using CSS. Maintenance of a Web site made with CSS is much easier compared to the ones which are table based. Aside from being able to make extensive changes with one CSS file, the code it generates makes it simpler to update. With CSS, when you decide to craft a change, you simply alter the style and that element is updated automatically anywhere it appears in the site, saving you an enormous amount of time. Without CSS you'd have edit each page independently. CSS generally requires less code compared to a table based layout, making your code lighter, cleaner and easier to maintain.

Cascading Style Sheets Benefits and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Another major benefit of CSS is that it makes your Web site SEO friendly. The reason behind this is simple. Search engines spiders are actually lethargic. They don't go through the bundles of HTML code to get to the indexed codes. Font tags and tables make HTML code cumbersome, and thus reduce the accuracy of the results. If you use external CSS files to determine the design attributes, the HTML code will be clean and will create better search engine rankings. With some knowledge of CSS you can change the code without destroying the visual layout. For instance, you could easily make the main content of your site to show up above the header or navigation menu in the code of your Web site; this will help to show search engine crawlers the importance of your content. I personally saw a huge boost in rankings in fully functional CSS Web sites. When I look at someone’s Web site that was built using old school HTML code with tags such as: TABLES, TD, TR, FONT and so on, I convert that site to a CSS layout. There are many tools on the Internet that shows the actual code over text ratio weight of your site. Modern search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN love light-weighted Web sites. They want to see your content; the text, not the code. With CSS everything is possible. You can place excessive code into an external file, thus leaving the actual page clean and simple.

Web Site Accessibility

CSS makes your Web site more accessible. By 2008, it's estimated that one-third of the world’s population will be using hand held devices to access theInternet. It's important that your site is accessible to them also. You can make an additional CSS document particularly for handheld devices like cell phones, which will be called up in place of the regular CSS document; which is not achievable with a tabular layout. CSS benefits accessibility chiefly by separating document structure from presentation.

Increases Download Speed of Your Website

CSS code downloads faster than tables. Browsers read through tables twice prior to exhibiting their contents; first to work out their structure and then to determine their content. Moreover, tables are shown on the screen as a whole, no part of the table will be displayed until the entire table is downloaded and rendered. Tables support the use of spaced images to assist with positioning. CSS generally requires less code than tables. All layout code can be placed in an external CSS document, which will be called up just once and then stored on the user’s computer; while the table layout stored in each HTML document must be loaded up each time a new page downloads. Also with CSS, you can manage the order of the items downloaded. You have the control to make the content appear prior to images, which tend to load slower than text.

Cross Browser Compatibility

To summarize, CSS makes your Web sites load faster, it saves on time and labor, links can be more attractive and dynamic, and you can add rollovers without using JavaScript. Currently all the major browsers ( Firefox, Explorer and Netscape) recognize CSS. - Web Design,Website Designing,Web Designers.

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Search Engine Optimization Tips

2008-12-21T22:11:00.000-08:00

Search engine optimization (SEO) poses many challenges for solo entrepreneurs. Professional search engine optimization services are often beyond the solo entrepreneur's budget; but learning all the tools and tricks, not to mention the ever-changing "rules", would take time most solo entrepreneurs don't have. The following search engine optimization tips will help you focus your SEO activities effectively.

Search Engine Optimization Tips: Start with the Basics

- Research your keyword phrases. What words would people use to find you? This is the most important SEO activity you'll need to do, particularly for solo entrepreneurs. You'll want to look for keyword phrases that are unique, not just single words. Google offers a great keyword tool that helps you find synonyms and compare which keyword phrases are searched for more often. If keyword research seems daunting, invest in a course that teaches you the basics.

- But, don't let keyword phrases dictate how you write. Write your copy for your audience, not the search engines! Make your copy relevant to your readers and easy to read, then see where you can incorporate keyword optimization. Hire a copywriter if you aren't a naturally good writer; it may be expensive but is a high-return investment for solo entrepreneurs. Ultimately, search engines want to serve high quality content. If your readers love your website, search engines will too.

Search Engine Optimization Tips: Shortcuts to Avoid

Be skeptical of search engine optimization services' promises. Avoid high-priced services that promise to put your website on the top of the rankings for any particular keyword phrase. If it is a highly-sought-after phrase, it's unlikely to be a successful project; and by the time you get the results, it's too late -- you've already paid them. Plus, you’ve put all your SEO eggs in one basket! Look for search engine optimization services that offer more reasonable, well-rounded solutions.

Beware of "secrets" and "tricks" that claim some hidden advantage. Tools or techniques that "game" the system may work for a short time, but they will ultimately become useless...and may earn you a long-term black mark from search engines. Known as "black hat SEO", they often appear in ebooks or are offered through various membership services. If they involve formulas, special linking programs, or automated content-pushing, among other suspect methodologies, don't be fooled.

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Internet Marketing Optimization Factors: 7 Optimization ...

2008-12-21T21:53:00.000-08:00

Internet marketing optimization - more commonly called search engine optimization (or SEO) - is a set of techniques, tools and methodologies you can leverage to get your site noticed by the people who matter most to you or your business. Whether you are looking for would-be buyers of your product or service or just have something wonderful to share with the world from your website, SEO is the only way to get people there short of paying for advertising.

Here are 7 of the most important internet marketing optimization factors:

1. Start by clarifying the true goals of your website:

Many days, weeks or years ago, you or someone in your organization set out to build a website. Whether the site is new or was built long ago, you now face the a question that is of utmost urgency: why do we have this website and what do we want to do with it? You would be surprised to learn how many firms and individuals never sufficiently answer this question for themselves. You must define the goals of your website so that you can determine exactly what it is you want visitors to do once they arrive. If you don’t know what you site represents, how can you expect search engines to find it and classify it properly?

2.Identify the keywords for which you should optimize your site:

Think about it from a search engine’s perspective: its job is to connect the right content with the right searcher, serving up the content it finds in order of priority from best/most relevant to worst/least relevant. The way they do this is to first use “bots” (automated agents) to constantly scour most of the site on the Internet. So, when the bots get to your site, what will they see? How will they know how to classify your site? The only way is to make your site rich in the keywords most relative to what you do. So, short of “stuffing” your site (an SEO no-no) with keywords, pack your site with plenty of well-written, keyword-rich content that tells bots how to classify your site.

3. Fortify your site with the right meta tags:

Meta tags are, in essence, information about your site that only search engines see but that humans do not. There are many types of meta tags, but the ones you need to make sure you have properly covered in your internet marketing optimization efforts are: meta description, meta title, and meta keyword tags. Make sure that each of these is under the maximum character length and that each strategically includes your target keywords.

4. Submit your site to top search engines and directories:

One of the easiest ways to cut your teeth in search engine-optimizing your site is to submit it directly to top search engines and directories. Google, Yahoo! and the other major search engines have FREE services for submitting your URL/web address. (See my blog for details on how). The Open Directory Project and Yahoo! Directory also allow you to apply for consideration for inclusion in their directory services.

5. Add fresh content to your site regularly:

Search engines love fresh, quality content that is updated regularly. I suggest making a space on your site for recent articles, blog entries or news blurbs. Then, update that content frequently. Search engines will reward you with more frequent visits and better rankings. Also, having fresh content on your site also encourages Webmaster of other sites to link to your site (i.e., to form backlinks).

6. Get more backlinks to your site:

Speaking of backlinks: you can never have too many! Backlinks are merely links to your site from other sites. Backlinks are more valuable when: 1. you have lots of them; 2. the links themselves include keywords for which you are optimizing your site;. 3. the sites that are linking to your site are themselves well-regarded by search engines (e.g., have a high Google PageRank).

7. Have a compelling call to action:

Once you do all of this work to get people to your site via better search traffic, make sure you offer them something compelling to do once they get there. This is often referred to by marketers as a “call to action,” and your site needs one. So, make sure you make it clear to visitors what you most want them to do once they reach your site. Then, make that call-to-action so compelling that they will not be able to resist taking it.

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11 Internet Marketing Trends To Ignore in 2009

2008-12-19T21:09:00.000-08:00

Analytics. Yeah, you heard me. I love analytics. But they're gonna flop big-time in 2009 when everyone looks at everyone else and says "Holy crap. There's no standards!" If a pageview on Google Analytics isn't a pageview in Omniture, how the hell can anyone compare anything? Look for 2010 to be the Year of the Standards, and for someone to make millions of dollars talking about "Analytics 2.0". At which point I'll take out a contract on their worthless lives.

Vertical Search. I hate to kick that dead dog again, but it sucked in 2007, it sucked in 2008, and it'll continue to suck wind in 2009, assuming anyone actually bothers to try and start another vertical search service.

Google Searchwiki. Actually, this service will do well. But spammers will abuse it. After 1 million people bury the #1 listing for "bailout" and it throws Google's results on their ear, Google will implement new, undocumented policies that render Searchwiki utterly random.

Mobile Advertising. Someone else called this a trend, saying it'll "flourish". I love the StrangeCorp blog, but flourish? I don't think so. Maybe among us snobby elites, but it takes more than 10,000 to make a serious advertising market.

The average web user will continue to refuse to even sniff curiously at RSS.

Internet Explorer 8. Everyone's talking about it. I don't care. Google Chrome and FireFox will continue to take big bites out of IE, which will be released on December 31 2009 so Microsoft can keep their promise.

Content marketing. 2008 was the Year of Crappy Content. Everyone who thought they could write slapped together an ebook (cough) and threw it on the web for sale. 2009 will be The Year We Go Broke, when we realize spending 4 days to write a 30 page booklet that earns a total of $300 a month isn't worth it.

Social Media Conferences. In 2008 these things sprang up like zits on my forehead when I was 14. In 2009 layoffs, travel costs and the utter horror of air travel in the US will thin things out a bit.

Nofollow. The concept of pagerank sculpting will die a horrific death when Matt Cutts reveals it never existed, and he was just messing with us.
Twitter monetization. OK, I'm addicted to Twitter, I admit it. But how the hell will Twitter make money?

Yahoo!'s Downfall. Further indication the world has gone insane: The banking system has collapsed, the Big 3 are bankrupt, we lost 500,000 jobs in November 2008, and we're bitching about Yahoo!'s "decline". Why are we mourning the 'failure' of the #2 search company on the planet? A company that is profitable?!

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Share Your Content with Tell-A-Friend

2008-12-19T21:01:00.000-08:00

pretty slick way for my readers to share content via email, instant messenger, social networks and bookmarks.

SocialTwist supports numerous platforms, so the implementation was pretty simple - it even worked for Classic Blogger (which is what I use on my personal blog).

The Tell-a-Friend service works in most blogging platforms and popular Content Management Systems (CMS). Currently supported platforms are: Wordpress engine, Wordpress.com (free accounts as well), Blogger/Blogspot, TextPattern, JRoller, TypePad, Movable Type, Drupal, Joomla, Pligg, Mambo, and OSCommerce.

Here are the different methods you can share with your readers:

Email: GMail, Yahoo! Mail, MSN/Windows Live Mail, Type Email Address.
IM: Y! Messenger, GTalk, MSN/Windows Live Messenger, AIM.
Blogs: WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, MovableType, Xanga, Expression Engine, Joomla, Drupal, Textpattern
Social: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Indenti.ca, FriendFeed, MySpace
Bookmarks: Del.icio.us, Digg, Slashdot, Technorati, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Yahoo! Buzz, Google, Blinklist, Facebook, Newsvine, Furl, MySpace, LinkedIn, Propeller

Read More...pretty slick way for my readers to share content via email, instant messenger, social networks and bookmarks.

SocialTwist supports numerous platforms, so the implementation was pretty simple - it even worked for Classic Blogger (which is what I use on my personal blog).

The Tell-a-Friend service works in most blogging platforms and popular Content Management Systems (CMS). Currently supported platforms are: Wordpress engine, Wordpress.com (free accounts as well), Blogger/Blogspot, TextPattern, JRoller, TypePad, Movable Type, Drupal, Joomla, Pligg, Mambo, and OSCommerce.

Here are the different methods you can share with your readers:

Email: GMail, Yahoo! Mail, MSN/Windows Live Mail, Type Email Address.
IM: Y! Messenger, GTalk, MSN/Windows Live Messenger, AIM.
Blogs: WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, MovableType, Xanga, Expression Engine, Joomla, Drupal, Textpattern
Social: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Indenti.ca, FriendFeed, MySpace
Bookmarks: Del.icio.us, Digg, Slashdot, Technorati, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Yahoo! Buzz, Google, Blinklist, Facebook, Newsvine, Furl, MySpace, LinkedIn, Propeller

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Use Different Keyword Types for PPC Success

2008-12-19T20:57:00.000-08:00

These basic principles apply to most of the PPC programs out there, but today I’ll talk specifically about Google AdWords. With Google AdWords there are 4 types of keywords you can bid on. Different keywords types have different features so it’s very important that you understand the difference between them and how they can impact your PPC campaign. So here they are:

Broad Match

Sadly, this is the one that a lot of people are probably doing without even knowing it. If you just have the keyword phrase typed in normally on your keyword list, you’re doing a broad match. Let’s say for example that you’re bidding on the phrase apple developing online courses Your ad will show up whenever a searcher types in apple ipod, blue apple ipod, i want an ipod that’s blue, etc. Any phrase that has those two words in it will bring up your ad. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily, but you don’t know for sure unless you test it and find out if it’s doing you any good.

Phrase Match

To do a phrase match, you just have to put the phrase inside of quotation marks. So sticking with our last example it would be “apple ipod”. Now in order for your site to show up those two words developing online courses to be together. So in this example your ad would show up for apple ipod, blue apple ipod, but not for I want an ipod that’s blue because the two words are not together in the phrase. You’ll need to test these phrase types to see if they work for you or not as well.

Exact Match

To do an exact match, put the phrase inside square brackets like this: [apple ipod]. This will only allow your ad to show up on the phrase apple ipod. This is a third match type you’ll want to test with.

Negative Match

This is how you exclude words from your list. Maybe you don’t sell blue apple ipods. If so, then just add -blue to your list and you won’t show up for phrases with that word.

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Google Enables Cross-Language Search for Enterprise Search Appliance

2008-12-19T20:52:00.000-08:00

If your business is global, then you likely have many documents in foreign languages. In order to help employees find documents in languages other than their first, Google has enabled cross-language searching for enterprise customers using the Google Search Appliance.

Queries will be passed through a translation engine which will enable search in several languages. Users can choose the document to be returned to them in any of the available languages.

Google Mini and Google Search Appliance owners can head to this link at Enterprise Labs to check out the new feature.

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Yahoo! Finance is Market Leader in Business Information Sites

2008-12-19T03:45:00.000-08:00

One of our readers, Marc Jones, asked me to update a blog post that I wrote back on March 19, 2007, entitled, "Yahoo! Finance Market Share 52 times Bigger than Google Finance." Well, 'tis the season.

So, Marc, here's an update from Matt Tatham of Hitwise:

Business Information Sites Nov-08
Rank Website Domain Market Share
1 Yahoo! Finance finance.yahoo.com 29.63%
2 MSN Money moneycentral.msn.com 10.24%
3 CNN Money money.cnn.com 9.02%
4 Bloomberg www.bloomberg.com 3.81%
5 Market Watch www.marketwatch.com 3.44%
6 Reuters www.reuters.com 3.11%
7 Internal Revenue Service www.irs.gov 2.32%
8 Google Finance finance.google.com 2.31%
9 The Wall Street Journal www.wsj.com 2.29%
10 CNBC.com www.cnbc.com 2.26%

So, Yahoo! Finance is the leader of the pack -- by almost a three-to-one margin over MSN Money, which is in second place. But Yahoo! Finance is no longer 52 times bigger than Google Finance. Today, it is "merely" 12.8 times bigger.

Okay, that's still a "humongous" lead. (Humongous is a term that we bloggers use to mean extremely huge. We don't get to use it that often when talking about someone who competes with Google. But, we are talking about Google Finance and not Google.)

So, let me thank Marc for asking the question and thank Matt for answering it. And for all of you who are watching your 401K plans become 201K plans, may I suggest that you visit some of the top business information sites to see if one provides you with better insights than the others. And let me know what you find.

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Top 5 SEO Terms Any Beginner Should Be Familiar With

2008-12-19T03:35:00.000-08:00

A Wholistic Approach To Website promotion

The art of search engine optimization, in essence, has grown to become a more holistic approach to optimizing and promoting websites, taking into account not only website crawlability and search engine rankings and traffic, but also conversion rates, social marketing and customer retention rate.

Get More Targeted Search Engine Traffic

One unique thing about the approach of SEO is that every aspect of it aids the old art of website optimization. If you research your customers, you learn the words they use, when referring to your product, and you use the words on your site. Thus, you get more targeted search engine traffic.

By knowing how people view websites and what motivates them to buy, you will be able to reconfigure your pages and remove the useless clutter, thus increasing your sales from the same amount of visitors. In the end, you will not only be serving amount of people, but they will be able to make quicker decisions, enjoy buying online and being your customers. Happy customers are more likely to become your loyal clients and could also refer others to your online business.

Top Five SEO Terms A Beginner Should Take Note

- Keywords and keyphrases.

Keywords and keyphrases are the words you want your Web site to rank well for in a search engine results page, which are also called SERPs. Depending on your audience, yours can be one word, of words, or an entire phrase. To reduce word-bloat, let's use the term keywords to encompass the two types.

- PageRank.

A PageRank is a measurement that the those obsessed with Google use to test their rankings in Google. SEO and search engine marketing (SEM) also use the term to describe your ranking in the SERPs and the ranking algorithm points given to your site by Google. PageRank is an important part of your SEO success.

- Spamming.

Spamming is a method of SEO that attempts to trick a spider and dupe loopholes in the ranking algorithm to influence rankings for targeted keywords. Spamming can many forms, but the most simple definition for spam is any technique a Web site uses to misrepresent itself and influence ranking. The two methods of SEO are based on whether you want to spam or not.

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How To Build A Brand With SEO

2008-12-19T03:24:00.000-08:00

Online search marketing can play a powerful role in reinforcing your brand, according to Christopher Wallace. He reminds us that if potential customers can't find you, they'll surely find your competitors. And when they do, chances are they will think your competitors are more competent because they were found -- and not you.

Wallace offers tips on paid and organic search strategies. He also believes it's important to join the conversation on social media to drive relevant traffic to your site and manage the perception of your brand. It's no secret you are your best advocate. "Think of it as the PR of organic search," he writes. "Ultimately selling the value of your site to those who would be interested in your content will help strengthen your brand."

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Beginner's Guide to SEO: Quickie Dos and Don'ts

2008-12-19T02:55:00.000-08:00

SEO Dos:
Customize your title tags. Each page should have a title unique to that page alone.

Research your keywords thoroughly. You really cannot start optimizing until you have researched out your keywords and know how the optimization will play out.

Use keyword relevant filenames for each web page. If the page is about women's brown boots then your file name should be womens-brown-boots.xxx. Such as: yourdoman.com/womens-brown-boots.html.

Organize your directory structure. Don't throw all your pages into the root folder and don't use too many directories/sub directories. Keep it simple yet organized.

Plan out your internal links. Develop your navigation effectively, implement no follows sparingly, link content to other pages liberally and use absolute links.

Use content effectively. Make sure your content does the job of selling to your visitors but is also keyword rich. Don't go overboard on keyword usage, but only as it functions best for the visitors.

SEO Don'ts:

Don't junk up your code. Get rid of junk code such as on-page styles, JavaScripts and excessive tables. Keep your code lean and clean and validate if at all possible.

Don't add a bunch of junk links to the bottom of your pages. Footer links are great, but don't just add junk links to pages that serve no value to your visitors strictly for the SEO benefit.

Don't settle for stock content. Take the time to develop custom content for your site. Don't use manufacture descriptions unless you add your own descriptive content as well.

Don't junk up your URLs. Keep your URLs clean and tidy without a lot of excess variables or session IDs.

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Google Releases AdWords Editor Version 7.0

2008-12-19T02:45:00.000-08:00

Just two and half months after releasing Version 6.5, Google has launched the new version of AdWords Editor. Version 7.0 is now available for Windows and Mac. Be sure to back up your work before you upgrade. You can import your work into 7.0 once it's been deleted.

Here's what to expect with the new version:

First page bid estimates: AdWords Editor now uses first page bid estimates for your keywords. Minimum cost-per-click (CPC) bids are no longer used.

Keyword Quality Score: The Keywords tab now displays the Quality Score for your keywords.

Keyword Opportunities locale: Tailor your keyword suggestions to a particular language and location by changing your Keyword Opportunities locale.

Campaign targeting in the data view: You can view your targeting settings in the new 'Language' and 'Location' columns on the Campaigns tab. These columns are hidden by default, but you can select them with the column chooser.

Send feedback to Google: Help us improve AdWords Editor by enabling usage tracking in your AdWords Editor settings (Tools menu > Settings).

Other updates:

The 'Volume' column on the Keyword expansion tab of the Keyword Opportunities tool now shows absolute numbers (traffic for the last month) instead of scaled values.
The Keyword Opportunities tool isn't available for draft accounts.

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Microsoft Releases Critical Internet Explorer Patch

2008-12-17T22:30:00.000-08:00

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has released an out-of-band security update, MS08-078, to fix a vulnerability in its Internet Explorer Web browser that's being actively exploited.

"At this time, we are aware only of attacks that attempt to use this vulnerability against Windows Internet Explorer 7," said Christopher Budd, Microsoft security response communications lead, in an e-mailed statement. "Our investigation of these attacks so far has verified that they are not successful against customers who have applied the security update. MS08-078 has a maximum severity rating of Critical for all versions of Internet Explorer."

Nonetheless, Microsoft lists Internet Explorer 5.01, 6, and 7 as affected software in its Security Bulletin. It also says separately, in the FAQ section, that Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is affected.

The vulnerability can be exploited through JavaScript code posted on malicious Web sites. Internet Explorer users may be redirected to these sites through hacked legitimate sites. If the malicious code is successful, it silently downloads malware onto the victim's computer.

Microsoft typically releases software patches, referred to as Security Bulletins, on the second Tuesday of every month. When critical vulnerabilities emerge and are actively exploited, Microsoft often issues a patch as soon as it's ready.

The last such out-of-band patch, Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-067, was released on Oct. 23. It addressed a vulnerability in Windows Server service that affected all currently supported versions of Windows. That vulnerability allowed an attacker to take over affected computers remotely.

When Microsoft issued its out-of-band patch in October, it cited the vulnerability's potential "wormability" -- meaning the hole could be exploited on a massive scale using self-copying malware -- as a reason for its action.

But MS08-078 isn't wormable. "[That] shows that the wormability of a vulnerability is no longer a good indicator of the seriousness of a threat and that these Web-based threats are now much more dangerous than network worms," said Roel Schouwenberg, senior antivirus researcher for Kaspersky Lab, Americas, in an e-mailed statement.

Indeed, Microsoft security researchers estimated that as many as 1 in 500 users of Internet Explorer could have been exposed to malware attempting to exploit the flaw.

"The browser flaw had been disclosed roughly one week ago as a zero-day vulnerability, and active exploits have been around the Internet for that timeframe as well," Qualys CTO Wolfgang Kandek said in an e-mailed statement. "The workarounds provided by Microsoft were very technical and quite cumbersome to implement, making it imperative for Microsoft to release a fix as quickly as possible."

Kandek suggests that Microsoft is at a disadvantage in updating Internet Explorer because its browser doesn't have a built-in update mechanism like other browser makers. Mozilla, for instance, just released Firefox 3.05 to Firefox users through its auto-update system.

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Yahoo! Plays The Privacy Card

2008-12-17T22:01:00.000-08:00

Google has pummeled Yahoo! in the search market, but the struggling Web portal could take the lead in the race to know the least about its users.

Yahoo! announced Wednesday that it would begin deleting identifying details from the information it collects from Web surfers just three months after the data are collected. The new policy cuts the time that Yahoo! retains the identifying data of its search engine users by 10 months, and expands that data-privacy umbrella to the company's other online services, such as its media sites and e-mail.

More important, it trumps Google's own bid to reassure users of their privacy: In September, the search giant cut its data retention period from 18 months to nine months.

"We're really hoping to put a stake in the ground and take this issue, which has been the subject of debate for a long time, off the table altogether," says Yahoo!'s Vice President of Policy Anne Toth.

The race to cut data-retention times, however, may be largely a marketing tactic, according to some privacy advocates. More important, they say, is how identifying details are stripped from data after that time period. Google and Yahoo! both remove only the last group of eight numbers from users' IP addresses, a tactic that Jeff Chester, the director of the Center for Digital Democracy, calls "pseudo-anonymization." Given enough time, the data could still be used to piece together the identity of users, he argues.

"This claim that Yahoo! has taken a leading position in terms of privacy still needs to be examined," he says. "Yahoo! and other companies should be completely destroying these records. Even with partial anonymity there's always the danger that sensitive information could fall into the wrong hands."

Toth argues that the partially-anonymized remnants of Yahoo!'s data are only used for finding overall patterns in the company's user activity, not tracking individuals. But Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, argues that a better standard for the details of anonymization is needed. "I think this is progress," he says. "But we need provable anonymity, a technique that's public and can be examined and discussed."

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SEO For Yahoo Small Business - 3 Tips For Productive SEO Strategy

2008-12-17T21:36:00.000-08:00

SEO is one of the biggest phenomena to hit the world of online business in some time. It seems that many people who want to own a small business fail to realize how this single aspect of business can make or break you. If you use SEO for Yahoo small business then you can truly see a turn in profit that will keep you ahead of your competitors. You must implement some form of search engine optimization in order to ensure the profitability of your online business.

There are three things that can help you in your quest to establish a viable search engine presence.

1. Write articles an submit them to EzineArticles. You can also submit these articles to other directories, but this is by far the best in all market research that has been conducted. The great things about writing articles is that it creates high quality backlinks to your website, which will in turn produce better search engine rankings.

2. If you want to use SEO for Yahoo small business effectively, you will want to do some link exchanges with other websites in your niche. This is a vital aspect because the more links you exchange the more people will be visiting your website. If you have a great product or service to offer then this will results in a large amount of money going into your pocket. In addition, submit your website to social bookmarking sites such as Digg. This is in tune with the linking strategies, and will also improve your search engine rankings.

3. Make sure that your website is keyword rich for high traffic keywords in your niche. This means you will want to do some keyword research to make sure you are targeting keywords that have a lot of daily searches. You can do this easily by going to Google and typing in keyword tool. Google offers a free tool, and so does Wordtracker. These are both excellent tools to use and will give you an accurate forecast of the demand for a particular keyword.

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What Is BlackHat SEO? 5 Definitions

2008-12-17T21:19:00.000-08:00

Definitions focusing on cheating:

Blackhat SEO “exploits weaknesses in the algo by breaking the webmaster guidelines”. Blackhat SEO is primarily about “cheating” / “manipulating” search engines. It is also about “misrepresenting content to search engines”.

Definition focusing on people:

Blackhat SEO is focused on machine whereas Whitehat SEO is focused on an end user.

Definitions focusing on money:

Blackhat SEO focuses on earning “money without even trying to provide any value to the visitors”

Definitions focusing on search engine guidelines:

Black hat = search engine guidelines violations (White hat = no guidelines violations).

Too general / Definitions that basically mean nothing:

Blackhat SEO is about getting higher search rankings in an unethical manner. Further to this one: it envolves “questionable and sometimes illegal search engine techniques” (what’s ethical? which laws? - these questions remain unclear).

Blackhat SEO is about spamming.

So what’s the ultimate definition of black hat SEO? Do marketers who criticise it really know what they are against? How do you define blackhat SEO (versus whitehat SEO)?

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10 SEO Rules for Blog And Web Designers

2008-12-16T23:08:00.000-08:00

Rule One: Stick to Your Keywords
Pick a few keywords or phrases that describe your site. Use them, and
words related to them, whenever it’s natural to do so. Repeating them
uselessly is no good (rule Zero), use them in sentences, headlines,
and links.

Rule Two: Content is King
Users don’t search for design, they search for content. If your site
doesn’t have content people want, no one will look at it.

Every page on your site should follow the Inverted Pyramid. Each page
should lead with a relevant H1 tag with one of your keywords, and the
first paragraph of text should be a summary of the rest of the page.

Rule Three: Clean Code is Searchable Code
Build your sites in a text editor, and write clean, human-readable
HTML. The HTML should follow the conceptual structure of the page,
navigation first, followed by the H1 tag, then the first paragraph,
etc. Try to use descriptive tags when possible. Use UL for lists, P
for paragraphs, H tags for heads and subheads, and STRONG for bolded
text. Don’t overuse Divs.

Your site can still be artistic and cool, that’s what CSS is for.

Rule Four: The Home Page is the Most Important Page
Your home page is the key to your site being found by search engines.
It should summarize the rest of the site, and give a clear, compelling
reason for a user to look at the other pages in the site.

Rule Five: Links Have Meaning
Search engines pay a lot of attention to the links on your site, and
the words used in those links. Never use “click here” or “see more”
for a link. The link text should describe where the link will take the
user, such as “more examples of CSS web design” or “learn how we can
improve your SEO.”

The more relevant the links on a page, the more findable the page
becomes. Don’t go overboard, and don’t link to anything irrelevant. If
your page is focused on minimalist web design, a link to the Design
MeltDown page on minimalism will boost your SEO. A link to a hilarious
picture of a cat will not.

Rule Six: Title Tags for the Win
Every page in your site should have a title with the site name and a
short description of the page. About 60 letters total. Include a
keyword. Remember that the page title is what appears in search
results, it should give users a clear reason to click on it.

Your navigation links should have title attributes that match the
titles of your pages. It’s a small thing, but it will give you a
significant SEO improvement.

Rule Seven: Alt Tags Matter
Every image on your site should have an alt tag. Especially images
that are relevant to the page. If your page is focused on CSS tricks,
labelling a screenshot “example of rounded CSS corners” will improve
your page’s findability. Labelling it “screenshot” or “image” will do
the opposite.

Rule Eight: Ignore Most Meta Tags
A long time ago meta tags were the secret to SEO. Those days are gone.
The only meta tag that really matters now is the description tag.
Search engines may use it to provide the text under the link to your
page in their results. Make sure it describes the page in a way that
explains why a user searching for your content would want to look at
your page.

Rule Nine: Have a Site Map
Make sure you have a site map. This is an xml file that describes the
structure of your page. Make one, and give it to Google.

Rule Ten: Design for Humans
Search engines are designed to find what humans want. That means the
best way to make your site findable is to design it for humans. Your
job as a designer is to solve a problem, not make art, prove a point,
serve your ego or break a boundry. In this case, your problem is to
provide your users with a site that is easy to use and full of what
they’re looking for. If you can do that, the search engines will find
you.

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SEO for Your WordPress Blog

2008-12-16T22:17:00.000-08:00

The best thing about blogs is that they are naturally optimized for search engines. Pages are well linked. Content is fresh, due to the ease of posting. And search engines are automatically notified when new content has been added. However, given the number of other blogs on the web, many of which may be in direct competition with your blog, it is important to further optimize your blog to maximize and maintain search engine visibility.

Here are some tips and plugins to help you get the job done.

Tip #1: Stuffing Ain’t Only For Thanksgiving!

It is very important to do a bit of keyword stuffing. This means that keywords should be in your titles, your meta tags, and the content of your article. And while you do not want to overdo it, a healthy smattering of keywords will improve the likelihood that you will rank highly for them.

Tip #2: Take Advantage of Pretty Permalinks

By default, the link structure for WordPress websites is pretty ugly. Links, for example, generally contain question marks, ampersands, and numbers. Fortunately, WordPress has supplied an easy workaround. The link structure or permalink structure can be easily modified.

For maximum search engine optimization, we suggest a custom permalink structure which includes the name of the post. This way, you have one more place to stuff keywords.

For information on customizing your permalink structure see Using Permalinks in the WordPress Codex.

Tip #3: Don’t Create Orphans

Inlinks, as pointed out by Ajith, is a key point of search engine optimization. So when you create a post, don’t forget about it. Instead, be sure to create links between it and other posts of similar subject matter.

Tip #4: Choose Plugins With Care

All plugins are not created equal. Some, for example, insert a lot of useless markup within the source code of your blog. This can negatively affect your blog’s SEO. But there are some good SEO plugins which we suggest. These include:
- All-in-One SEO Pack. Enables you to create and manage your titles and meta tags for each page or post.
- Seo Slugs. Helps optimize your urls so that they only contain meaningful keywords.
- Nofollow Case By Case. Allows you to hold on to your pagerank by helping you selectively set nofollow links.

Tip #5: Don’t Let the Dust Settle

Blogs are meant to be updated regularly. By not doing this, you might find yourself losing search engine placement and traffic.

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