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Remember to Tip Your Server... And Your SEO

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 08:18:15 GMT

It's been an interesting trip. And a huge change. Working in a restaurant with prep cooks threatening to beat me up in the parking lot. Exploding ovens, missing eyebrows. Old women yelling at me, "How hard is your job?!" Sliced off fingers (saved on ice). Dumping grease.

Restaurants are never a bad gig. It's mostly good money, and an excellent jumping off point for kids. But I don't really feel like asking if you'd like a refill on your ice tea forever. I also didn't dig myself into student debt to make kiddie cocktails for children who are just going to throw their mac-n-cheeze on the floor anyway.

SEO and web marketing in any aspect is a brand new concept for me. I had no idea men and women of an entire company work to position websites through keywords and relevant linking. And those were the same folks behind a vast majority of websites that are returned when I search for movie theaters or hair spray potato cannons. The concept, new to me remember, is both horribly obvious and incredibly ingenious. Thanks SEO for letting me find the Potato Pulverizer at the top of my SERP!

Yet search engine optimization isn't too different than waiting tables, cooking food, or folding and packing cardboard boxes at a cucumber factory for ten hours a day at 5.25/hr (my first job, I was 14, the only one who spoke English, I lasted 5 days).

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Do you want a Web presence for your business?

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 06:43:29 GMT

Even if people shop at real stores, they use the Web first to research products, find service providers or stores and get directions. Without a Web site, you miss out on this traffic.

But finding someone to design your Web site can be a challenge — especially when bids on the same specifications can range from $500 to $15,000 (and some of the worst sites cost the most to create).

Before thinking Web, think results. An online store isn't separate from your "real" business, it's your cyber storefront, and it's open for business all the time. Just as you wouldn't expect a great store on a back road to generate much business if you never mentioned it or visited it, you can't expect automatic sales just because you've opened an outlet on the Web.

The fundamentals of online and offline marketing are the same. You still need a plan, good products, great service and the ability to communicate all this to potential customers. Remember those e-commerce sites you've visited only to abandon your cart without buying anything? Or the marketing agency whose site was so creative you couldn't find out what they did or how to call them? You don't want to make the same mistakes.

Know your customers. Don't assume one size fits all. If you're marketing to women, don't assume that all women like pink and have children. Online marketing must be just as focused as offline marketing. In fact, the Web allows you to fine-tune your focus for a market that's much larger than the community where you're based. If you want to sell feather boas for dogs, the Web lets you do it.

Get a little technical. Rather than abdicate responsibility for your online-marketing success to a Web techie, make sure the site designer includes a content-management system so you can manage your own content, including images and document uploads. If you can type and use Word, you can manage the content of your Web site. And the more you learn about Web technology, the more empowered you are in negotiations with Web designers, because you'll know what you're paying for and why.

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Search Engine Optimization Tips for Your Website, Susan Nefzger explains

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 04:57:07 GMT

One of the most important aspects of web page design is to make your page easy to navigate by the search engines. Search engines heavily favor text over graphics, and HTML over other editing formats.

Use text heavily, especially in your navigation bar.
Avoid placing text in graphic format since the search engines won’t be able to read it.
Search engines have trouble following frames, so it’s best not to use them, and they may index only the framed content page and not the navigation frame.
Avoid Flash and JavaScript: search engines don’t follow either one.
Create a Site Map that includes all the pages in your site, and place a Site Map link close to the top of the homepage. When the search engine follows the site map link, it will find and index all the pages in your site.

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Thu, 22 May 2008 08:01:31 GMT

Google questioned over privacy practices

The top Republican on the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee asked Google chief executive Eric Schmidt on Wednesday to detail the search engine's privacy practices since it acquired rival DoubleClick.

"It is critical that Google's and DoubleClick's policies and procedures for handling this information be transparent, and that every effort is made to protect consumers' data," Texas Rep. Joe Barton wrote in a letter to the company dated May 21.

In the letter, Barton asked if and how data collected by Google and DoubleClick about computer users would be merged and how the data would be used, and if Google planned to continue allowing users to opt out of ad-serving cookies.

Privacy advocates have expressed concern that a wave of consolidation in online advertising would lead to a concentration of personal information in the hands of a few powerful companies.

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Wed, 21 May 2008 08:53:29 GMT

Getting Started with Silverlight

Despite all the wonderful things you can say about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, I think most people doing a lot of web-based development would agree that they form a pretty poor environment for developing modern sites and applications. If you care about your content working on most web browsers (or even just Internet Explorer and Firefox), accommodating their differences can be maddening. Many techniques and JavaScript libraries have been developed and shared over the years that can reduce this frustration, but none of them are silver bullets.

In addition to browser differences, the graphical capabilities of HTML are too limiting for many user experiences that people want to create. Drawing a simple line, incorporating video, and a number of other things are extremely difficult or impossible with HTML alone. It's not that these technologies were poorly designed, but simply that they were designed for hyperlinked documents rather than the extremely rich presentations that most people want to create on the Web these days.

Considering these issues, it's no wonder that Adobe Flash has been so successful. Whether someone wants to create a professionally designed website, an online game (or any number of other applications), or even a simple advertisement, Flash has been a natural choice for escaping the limitations of HTML. If you doubt the pervasiveness of Flash, try this experiment: Think of a brand of food you eat, and then navigate to the brand's website. Chances are you'll find Flash content at your destination. (I just tried pepsi.com, doritos.com, and oscarmayer.com, and all three are using Flash at the time of writing.) The Flash development experience leaves much to be desired, however. Flash (the runtime environment, as well as the tool) suffers from the same basic problem as HTML: Many people are trying to use it for creating rich applications, but it was originally designed for something else (in this case, simple animations).

This is why the introduction of Silverlight is so exciting. A promising alternative to Flash, Silverlight enables the creation of rich web content and applications using a lightweight add-on that is friendly to both designers and developers. Yes, the first version of Silverlight is primitive in areas, but it's a true development platform based on concepts and APIs introduced with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) in 2006 and in development for many years prior. And, unlike just about any software that has come out of Microsoft, Silverlight is a small download! Version 1.0 is less than 1.5MB, so users who don't have it can get it pretty quickly when browsing to Silverlight content. (By default, Silverlight also automatically updates to later versions when they are available.) Silverlight might just be the silver bullet many designers and developers have been waiting for.

Silverlight 1.0 applications are created with a mixture of XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language), HTML, and JavaScript, so they are easy to integrate into existing web content and compatible with popular Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) libraries and techniques. XAML is an XML-based declarative language described in depth in the next chapter. In typical Silverlight applications, a XAML file contains a hierarchy of visual elements that must be rendered on the screen. Silverlight parses the XAML content on initialization, and then renders the content as appropriate.

Digging Deeper

A Note for Those Afraid of JavaScript

A few readers might be excited at the idea of using JavaScript to create Silverlight content or applications. If you're like most developers I know, however, you're disappointed to be "forced" to use it in version 1.0. However, programming in JavaScript isn't the worst thing in the world. JavaScript is a very powerful dynamic language, and you can even use it in an object-oriented way if you follow clever patterns that people have devised over the years. (Note that JavaScript really has nothing to do with Java.)

In addition, now that Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) is all the rage, there are a number of useful tools and libraries to help you be productive with JavaScript, and they keep getting better. Visual Studio 2008 boasts a number of improvements for JavaScript develop-ment, especially related to debugging and IntelliSense.

The pain of programming in JavaScript (when used as part of a website) is often not because of the language itself but rather differences in the HTML Document Object Model (DOM) provided by various web browsers. Fortunately, writing JavaScript that interacts solely with Silverlight objects doesn't have this issue because the Silverlight object model remains the same regardless of the host browser. Most Silverlight applications still require JavaScript that interacts with the HTML DOM, but your exposure to the DOM can be much more limited. And for those cases, ASP. NET AJAX (or other popular AJAX libraries) is a good fit for hiding browser differences.

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Tue, 20 May 2008 10:22:03 GMT

Most Search Engine Optimized (SEO) Press Release Ever: Tips for Building the Perfect SEO Press Release

Summaries for Search Engine Optimized (SEO) press releases should include keywords early and Search Engine Optimized press releases should repeat their most important keywords.

To create the most Searched Engine Optimized press release ever, Bill Balderaz of Webbed Marketing, the Columbus, Ohio Search Engine Optimization agency, recommends using your most important keywords in the first sentence of the press release.

"In creating the most Search Engine Optimized press release ever, we focused on creating a release with our most important keyword phrase-- 'most Search Engine Optimized press release ever' into the copy. We also make use of related phrases, like 'tips for creating SEO news releases' and 'how to write a Search Engine Optimized media release.'"

Balderaz explained that he also included photos of his dogs, chickens and children in the release. "Uploading pictures greatly increases pickups of Search Engine Optimized press releases," added Balderaz. "Cute kids and animals are some of the best pictures to include," he said.

"In addition to focusing on the content and photos, we released the most Search Engine Optimized press release ever on PRWeb, although we have also used Webwire," he said. He also mentioned ClickPress, 24-7 PressRelease.com, and PRLeap, in case there is anything to the concept of latent semantic association. He mentioned that all of the above online newswires were useful in getting Search Engine Optimized press releases indexed in Google News and Yahoo! News.

"Search Engine Optimized press releases are things that should be written in the passive voice," Balderaz added.

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Mon, 19 May 2008 11:01:01 GMT

Branded Content: Not a Good Idea

Compromising art for marketing goals could really bite us in the ass

Branded content. It sounds awesome, doesn't it? After all, our industry is married to the content industry.

TV commercials keep the lights on at every broadcast network, and indirectly keep the cable bill low enough that HBO can exist. Content producers make their cool shows and make it worth brands' money to put commercials on the air. Magazines and newspapers know they can write all the cool articles and do all the cool photo spreads because of the ads. And we can all aspire to be directors.

But most of the time, something that's going to make a perfect TV or Web show, proper video game or film is going to be an idea that doesn't inherently play directly in line with the brand story (like, let's say, insurance.) Because, what makes a great show, game or film? Artistic merit, humanity, story, talent. These occasionally overlap with marketing demographic, industry sector and brand penetration, but more often than not, they do not. God, that's sad. We're sort of in denial about that, aren't we? But I think perhaps it's best that we accept it: Great art does not necessarily have a brand angle. So there's going to be some compromise to make the content and the brand story align with each other, and if the brand is footing the bill, guess who's going to win that argument every time?

The problem with the notion of branded content being a sort of "direction we should all go in" is that it will end up hurting content, which in the end is going to hurt the industry.

So here is the real, immediate problem with content right now that we should be working to solve: It's a giant pain in the ass to buy media online. Say you are a car company and you want to budget $50 million to TV media and $50 million to online media, for people who watch Lost. For TV, it's dead easy: You make an ad and make one call and, bam, your ad is on the show, money spent, eyeballs zapped. For online media, it's not so simple;there's not actually $50 million worth of media to be bought online for the people who watch Lost, and certainly not with one phone call. But the interesting thing is that all those people who watch that show on TV (and that show in particular) are spending a crap load of time on the Internet, doing all sorts of interesting things. There's no one way to capture audience yet. Every time we undertake a marketing gig, along with whatever banners we might be able to buy, we usually have to also build a custom solution from scratch.

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Fri, 16 May 2008 10:32:29 GMT

Increase Profits Online By Using SEO Copywriting

For people who own stores online or even websites optimized for Google adsense, success really depends on traffic.

The easiest and fastest way to get traffic, of course, is by using Pay Per Click with programs like Google Adwords. The disadvantage of using this method however is that, if you don't know what you are doing, you will get burned and lose a lot of money without making it all back.

The best way, which is free, is optimizing your pages in order to rank well in the Search Engine Results Pages.

In fact, you should always optimize your pages even if you are paying for traffic via PPC.

So how do you get this free traffic?

Generally, in order to get free traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN, you have to do two things - optimize your pages for your keywords and then get enough backlinks to those pages in order to get a higher page rank than your competition.

The higher your page ranks - the higher Google will place you in the search results.

What type of backlinks are there?

This happens when two websites exchange links with each other. As good as this sounds, when you exchange backlinks with another site, you reduce the strength of your link.

You have to share "Google juice" with the site that you're trading links with, and most of the times the site is your competition or fighting for the same niche as you are.

What you really want is:

One-way Backlinks

A one way backlink is when another site posts a link pointing to your site. The advantage of this is that it informs Google, Yahoo!, MSN and the other search engines that that particular page is important because other sites are linking and sending traffic to you.

REMEMBER: You should always stay away from link farms since this is spamming and might lead to your site getting de-indexed by the search engines.

You can also submit your site to directories.

This is usually free and takes a lot of work and most directories insist that you add a link back to them.

This then becomes a two-way backlink. Try to stay away from this as it dilutes the strength of your link.

You can also sign up with forums and join in on the discussions there. This enables you to leave your link either in your signature or in the post. This is an advantage since you optimize the anchor text in your link.

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Thu, 15 May 2008 07:06:48 GMT

Study suggests that Google could be the best choice for search advertising

A new study has suggested Google may have potential benefits for businesses planning to use search engine advertising alongside direct marketing.

Research by Efficient Frontier found that the website was dominating the field in the UK, with it claiming around 85 per cent of search engine spending in the first few months of this year.

It was also revealed that the website's return on investment had increased by 14 per cent since the end of 2007,

David White, the general manager of Efficient Frontier Europe, said: "We are seeing an increasingly strong front runner in Google in the UK and broader European markets.

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Tue, 13 May 2008 05:59:03 GMT

Facebook, Google Join Data Portability

Major social networking Web sites are beginning to bridge the exclusivity gap by giving their users an option to make their profile content available on third-party Web sites through Data Portability. Social networking addicts welcome this feature as it'll spare them the trouble of typing out information about themselves and building connections on different Web sites.

MySpace on Thursday announced Data Availability that would allow its users to share their profile information with partner Web sites namely, Yahoo!, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter. Two other players -- Facebook and Google -- seem to have been working at the same time on a similar model.

Facebook is expected to announce "Facebook Connect" today, a facility that would allow users to share their profile data on other Web sites. According to speculations by Techcrunch, even Google is expected to announce "Friend Connect," which it defines as a set of APIs for Open Social participants to pull profile information from social networks into third-party Web sites.

Facebook has been the stingiest in this regard so far. It has a history of blocking a user for sharing his/her Facebook information on a third-party Web site. Adopting data portability comes as a major step for the company.

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Tue, 13 May 2008 04:23:39 GMT

Google 'Salts' Web With Social Networking

Google, which lost out to Microsoft in October for a share of Facebook, Monday began rolling out a Friend Connect service designed to seed social-networking features throughout the Web.

Google’s service, in “preview release,” is designed to let non-programmers add a “snippet of code” and get features on their Web sites like user registration, invitations, members gallery and message posting.

Google Friend Connect could be an early step toward decoupling such features from popular social-networking destination sites like Facebook, backed by Accel Partners and Greylock Partners, and MySpace, acquired by News Corp. for $580 million in 2005. But in a conference call Monday, David Glazer, Google’s director of engineering, said the service would not detract from “the value” of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and its own Orkut, whose businesses are based on attracting and monetizing millions of users.

Mr. Glazer said the initiative would extend social networking to “the long tail” of small, specialized Web sites that will be able to carry social networking data along with the major sites.

As the move toward a socially networked Web gains momentum, major social network destinations—in danger of becoming walled gardens in an open environment—are beginning to free the data planted by users. Last week MySpace, Yahoo, Twitter and eBay announced a data portability initiative to let users share their profile data with outside Web sites. That was followed within days by the announcement of pending “Facebook Connect” data portability features.

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Mon, 12 May 2008 10:41:08 GMT

Link baiting is latest happening thing in SEO which normally every SEO guy is doing.

What is Link Bait?

Link bait is content on your site to which other sites link because they want to, not because you ask them to. Traditionally, links are tough to get, at least link back, which nullifies their value in some search engines. But with link bait, you "bait" your content and sit back and wait. However, the new twist in link baiting is in social bookmarking. Whether you use Digg or del.icio.us or you've got pictures (so you're using Flickr), you should tag any great content you have.

So, how does link bait help your SEO?

• It creates more links to your site, which really do help you in the search engines. If you don't believe that, try a search on "click here." Furthermore, the links come to you -- you don't have to get on your knees and beg for the links.
• It creates more links to your site, which send potential customers your way. After all, the whole purpose of SEO - coming up high in the search engines - is about reaching more people.

No Doubt link baiting can provide us alot of links in no time but shouldnt we have to do it daily.
As on digg.com every second home page stories are shifted down.
But at what point does the time and effort and money cost more than the links you acquire? You see, I am giving someone an excuse to create some funky AJAX tool that enables you to enter a number of hours or dollars spent. The tool should then spit out a figure in links by PageRank score or something, detailing the number and quality of links required in return for that link bait investment. If you come up with that tool, I'll link to it. The question is, is the development of that tool worth the link?

7 Ways to Promote Your Content as Link Bait

Below are seven ways to promote content while stimulating conversation. Some are focused on your most important brand advocates – your current customers. Other methods are about getting the attention of influential and trusted individuals who can help spread the word.

1. Hire a Consultant with Influence
From the start of the project, hire a consultant or company that shows off and promotes its creative projects. Examples of this could range from cartoonists to designers to ad agencies. Getting them involved in your content creation will ensure your project gets promoted on the consultant's Web site, blog, column or newsletter, creating word-of-mouth (WOM). The added benefit is you can use the consultant's name and reputation in your press releases and other promotional activities. This will draw more attention and credibility to your project.

2. Mailing List – Email and Postal
Send an email or direct mail to people on your mailing list letting them know about your new content. One never knows whom your current customers have connections with. It could be a major publication, blog, or even Web site they may manage. To increase the results, offer an incentive enticing people to view the content. One way to persuade people is with a discount coupon code.
Hilarious Gardening Cartoons
www.example.com/Cartoons
"Save 20% Off Your Next Order"
Coupon Code: www.example.com/Cartoons

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Thu, 08 May 2008 16:50:02 GMT

IE-only marketing campaign skewed Firefox, Safari numbers

A Web measurement firm Wednesday blamed a massive online marketing campaign aimed only at Internet Explorer (IE) users for skewing its April data, which said Mozilla's Firefox and Apple's Safari had lost significant amounts of market share.

A Web measurement firm Wednesday blamed a massive online marketing campaign aimed only at Internet Explorer (IE) users for skewing its April data, which said Mozilla's Firefox and Apple's Safari had lost significant amounts of market share.

The company, Net Applications of Aliso Viejo, Calif., has posted revised data on its Web site that shows Firefox and Safari still dropping in share, but by much smaller increments.

An "extremely large" marketing campaign among a small number of sites that targeted only users of IE was responsible for the aberrant numbers, said Vince Vizzaccaro, the executive vice president of marketing at Net Applications.

The additional IE traffic skewed the month's results in the Microsoft browser's favor; at the same time, it depressed the market share of Firefox, Safari and Opera Software's flagship browser, Opera.

Vizzaccaro would not name the company that owns the sites that ran the IE-only marketing campaign, but did say that it was "totally unrelated to anything with Vista, Microsoft or Windows."

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Wed, 07 May 2008 09:22:03 GMT

HP introduces “extreme” storage for online and digital media businesses

HP today announced a highly scalable storage system designed to simplify the management of multiple petabytes⁽¹⁾ of data at an affordable cost, making it ideal for online and digital media businesses.

New business services offered by Web 2.0 and digital media firms - such as photo sharing, streaming media, video-on-demand and social networking - generate massive amounts of file-based data that needs to be stored, managed and retrieved in an instant. Large enterprises in sectors such as oil and gas, security and surveillance, and genetic research have similar demands.

The HP StorageWorks 9100 Extreme Data Storage System (ExDS9100) addresses these requirements by offering vast storage capacity and simplified, integrated management. No other file-based network-attached storage (NAS) system on the market today offers a single management interface while scaling to the multi-petabyte level.

For the first time, administrators can easily manage petabytes of storage instead of just terabytes. This reduces the number of administrators and the cost necessary to manage these highly demanding data storage environments.

The ExDS9100 is the first in a series of HP offerings for scale-out environments such as cloud computing, which is an emerging category where services are delivered via the Internet. With an architecture that cost-effectively manages these environments, the ExDS9100 enables customers to deliver new online services or enhance existing offerings to drive new revenue streams.

"Many companies are struggling with file-based growth - not only how to cope with the sheer growth, but also how to leverage their digital and static media to create additional revenue by delivering online services," said Mark Peters, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.

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Mon, 05 May 2008 19:53:20 GMT

ForeSee Results Unveils CS SiteManager 3.0

ForeSee Results, the market leader in online customer satisfaction measurement and management, today unveiled an enhanced online customer satisfaction analytics service called CS SiteManager 3.0.

Introduced at the 2008 eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in San Francisco, CS SiteManager 3.0 has multiple upgrades and enhanced capabilities that will continue to help clients reliably measure satisfaction and identify user-centric site improvements that will have the greatest impact on future sales (online and offline), positive word of mouth recommendations, brand engagement and other key metrics.

The new features in CS SiteManager 3.0 include:

Enhanced Satisfaction Insight Reviews from an expert team of satisfaction research analysts
Usability Audit Reviews designed to provide a prescription for specific improvements once problem areas have been identified by satisfaction data
A new, user-friendly online portal that allows clients new self-directed options for accessing both aggregate and segmented data, and for generating ad hoc reports at their convenience
Comment Clustering , a proprietary technology which allows clients to continuously review open-ended comments, within the context of satisfaction
Extensive subscription-based reporting capabilities providing summary and detailed views across various audience segments

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Sat, 03 May 2008 14:01:48 GMT

Top Internet Marketing specialist & Global Resorts trainer Derrick Harper reveals ALL

Derrick Harper, a thirteen year veteran of Internet Marketing technologies and top ranked Global Resorts Network educator reveals secrets to launching and growing your own GRN home based travel business.

Recently Derrick Harper was invited to speak along side of Al Morales, Tina Lorenz, and Mark Hoverson at the first ever Global Summit Conference for TOP Global Resorts sales reps. Mr. Harper spoke to a sold out conference crowd of the top GRN Earners in the home based travel business industry. His presentation and question & answer session revolved around uncovering the insider methods and tactics utilized by the best Internet Marketing earners to achieving higher ranked page placements and raising the over exposure through natural "organic" search rankings in each members targeted markets.

Through over thirteen years of web technology experience as an online marketing specialist developing marketing strategies and brand awareness campaigns for such large fortune 500 companies such as Pfizer, Wyeth, Merk, Johnson & Johnson, MTV Networks, Weber Grills, and many other highly recognized brands. Since his departure from his corporate career Mr. Harper has started multiple online automated business systems that currently provide over seventeen streams of monthly residual income.

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Thu, 01 May 2008 22:30:34 GMT

9 Tips to Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

With search engines ranking as a top traffic driver for many blogs and content sites, optimizing a site for search engine exposure is an increasingly critical component of any online marketing effort. Search engine optimization, or “SEO,” means using technical and not-so-technical techniques to make sure that people searching for topics you write about will find your site.

Over the next few months, I’ll be redesigning MediaShift in conjunction with adding new video and audio features. One of my goals for the redesign is, not surprisingly, to increase traffic; and with nearly 50% of MediaShift traffic coming from Google, getting more traffic means doing more SEO. So I did some online research and contacted Aaron Wall, a young SEO expert who wrote SEO Book and consults for websites that want to improve their search optimization. Plus, I queried Poynter’s Online News email discussion list, and received some great tips from other site managers.

Wall agreed to give me advice on how I could improve the SEO for MediaShift, and I’ve distilled those tips into some basics that are relevant to any content site that wants more search engine traffic. There are a few caveats, however. As Wall told me, MediaShift is not typical of new sites or blogs because it already has a strong PageRank (authority) with Google, and has built up “social trust” by getting so many links from other sites. Many sites just starting up would have to focus more than I do on getting incoming links, which is how Google ranks sites (more inbound links = more authority). Another caveat: I noticed that SEO experts often recommend certain writing styles including particular ways of writing headlines and captions. I’d personally caution against writing for search engines at the expense of writing for people, since people are the real reason you are doing what you do, and they are more apt to return and become loyal readers if the writing suits them. Of course, different publishers have different goals for running their site, so they should consider balancing business and advertising needs with keeping readers happy.

Finally, it’s important that in seeking increased traffic, you don’t go overboard with SEO-motivated site changes: For example, if you create dummy pages and links just to increase your site’s exposure for a particular keyword, Google will catch on and lower your ranking.

With these caveats in mind, here are nine SEO tips to consider:

Tips on Improving SEO

1. Get inbound links and link out as well.
As I mentioned above, Google ranks your site according to the amount of inbound links it has from other sites — and gives more weight to links from other authoritative sites. I don’t have as much of a problem with this at MediaShift, but it is important for new blogs or news sites. “One of the things that drives Google rank is links, both internal and external,” said Kevin Anderson, blogs editor at the Guardian. “Blogging is all about linking, although any good web journalism should be. When I’m being honest, as a journalist and blogger, I’ll admit that blogs have higher Google rank than sites with similar traffic based on the high level of linking…It’s one of those slightly counter-intuitive things that traditional journalists and media managers don’t seem to understand. Linking is not only good web journalism, it’s also good for SEO, hence site visibility.”

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Wed, 30 Apr 2008 02:18:20 GMT

Mary Claypool: Use online and off-line advertising

I used to be an avid shopper — never missed a sale. But since retirement, I don't have the same need to buy clothes and jewelry.

I'm not alone — I know firsthand that consumers are changing their shopping habits, and small businesses are experiencing fewer customers, which means fewer purchases and, ultimately, a decrease in the bottom line. Even large companies are seeing a decrease in traffic and are looking at new ways to retain existing customers while targeting new ones.

To survive, businesses must attract new customers by filling a need or creating a niche and marketing to targeted customers. The question becomes, can you offer a product or service that will appeal to the changing or growing market? Of course, you must first determine the market for your product or service, then implement a marketing strategy.

According to the Media Audit, affluent working women with family incomes of $75,000 or more are growing, and 94.3 percent of them use the Internet during an average month.

Another study, by the Kelsey group, showed that only 28 percent of teens said they would turn to print to find a local business, product or service, while 47 percent said their first choice would be search engines. This is a good reason to use more than one form of media marketing.

In 2008, you can expect major marketing trends to include a shift from traditional to "alternative" media. Advertising in newspapers, magazines, on radio and TV will continue to be marketing staples, but spending in new media will show the biggest growth as advertisers move money into online, mobile and alternative out-of-home advertising.

There's no longer such a thing as a captive media audience — consumers are frequently participating in more than one form of media at any one time.

Seventy percent of Web users, for instance, watch TV occasionally to regularly while online, according to BIGresearch's "Simultaneous Media Survey." It also found that nearly 65 percent watch TV while they read, and 51 percent of radio listeners read the newspaper while listening. The rise in multitasking among consumers mandates an integrated media approach.

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Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:04:12 GMT

Complete application for multi-channel e-commerce

Trademart.in, a complete B2B and B2C product solution is coming up with new and innovative products for the SME sector.

A product of the Netherland based Eperium Business Solutions, Trademart.in is adding multidimensional characters to the decade old B2B marketplace concept in India. Trademart.in is offering a complete application for multi-channel e-commerce in the market with the help of world’s most appreciated e-commerce solution provider.

The application will enable the small and medium level business enterprise to manage all sales, marketing and e-commerce domains on a single platform, by professionally channelising the relationships with customers, business associates and suppliers.

With its high-end technology backing by world’s leading B2B and B2C platform - Intershop Enfinity Suite, Trademart.in is aimed to empower the global SME community with the trading tool that is yet to regulate the global B2B marketplace.

The SME community is expanding fiercely in India. In the last 2 decades SME sector has shown a tremendous growth – that is immensely appreciated all over the world. One can’t deny the fact that SMEs are the strong pillars of any developing nation’s economy.

One major reason behind that rapid growth is the influence of Internet and Online Marketing that has broken all the barriers of traditional form of business communication between the global traders.

The instant upsurge in the SME sector is due to the high-end fast and sophisticated technology orientation of the market that is equally smartened up by the concept of 90’s Globalisation.

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Torrance Website Designer

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 01:55:24 GMT

Revamped Web site next step in The Advocate's evolution

That's a message we've been trying to convey to readers and advertisers for six years now through the dramatic growth in NewarkAdvocate.com readership, development of new print products such as Trend magazine and recent launch of Buckeye Moms.com.

Now, I'm here to tell you we're not offering just a newspaper Web site any more. The launch of the new NewarkAdvocate.com in May will harness much more than the reporting of our award-winning staff. It will equally include the collective reporting of our community, giving any registered user the ability to comment on stories, write blogs, share photos and even network with other users accepted as friends and our journalists.

As the slogan on the right side of the new homepage says, "powered by you and The Advocate."

Some of you might be saying we already allow comments on stories and reader-initiated discussions in our forums, and that's certainly true. Our new system takes it a step further, though.

A few examples:

Public officials considering a new proposal or desiring public feedback on an issue could begin a blog where they explain the topic under consideration. They would then invite the public or perhaps just other users they trust to comment on the topic. Even personal blogs on any topic are allowed and likely to get more local reader visits than those on other sites.

A small club has a Web site but no real way to attract new members or even communicate amongst existing members. They might want to swap tips, post calendar items or just network. Our site, especially after an upgrade coming this summer, will enable a group to organize, share information and make themselves known to a big local audience that, by coming to our site, already is interested in the local community.

Our reporters want to investigate a tip but without further information cannot really proceed with anticipated success. By posting a request for information, a reader can respond privately to the reporter and assist in the fact-gathering process. We view this as a vital tool in meeting your expectations for watchdog reporting.
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Music List: Music list

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:06:46 GMT

Book List: Book List

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Movie List: Movie List

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