Internet Marketing Blog

Internet Marketing - Google Ratings Guidelines

2011-12-07T11:29:00.000+08:00

SEOMoz modestly states "If you're looking for SEO 'secrets', you'll be disappointed by this post." Oh, we beg to differ. While it isn't exactly Earth-shattering or surprising, we found this list of 16 Google Ratings Guidelines to be worth passing along, just because it's obvious that many of you out there do not know them.

Take for example:

Generic Queries Are Never Vital - So why are there so many web entrepreneurs out there fighting tooth and nail over domains like "beer.com" and "vacations.org"? Sorry to break this to you, but most of us expect to find a rather unhelpful domain at a generic.com address, and we're usually right.

Copied Content Can Be Relevant - That's startling! We've had so much bad press about copied content drilled into our skulls that we're going to avoid it anyway.

Ads Without Value Are Spam - Not news to you and I, but breaking headlines to a ton of landing pages out there. We're guessing they're all owned by people in third-world countries who haven't gotten the news.

Google Raters Use Firefox - Yay! Not only our favorite browser, but our favorite add-on gets a plug too!

Strange Search Engine Ruling By United States Judge

2011-11-27T11:35:00.001+08:00

In Nevada, USA, a judge has made an unusual ruling regarding search engines. To say the least.

See, Chanel (a fashion and beauty company) was in a fit because counterfeit websites are ripping off their good name. Fair enough. Then they had a court ruling to seize all of the domains (raising an eyebrow here, but possibly justified). But then the judge also ordered "all Internet search engines including, but not limited to, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and all social media websites including, but not limited to, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter" to remove any index listings for the counterfeit pages.

Uh, your Honour? I'm sure your desk in Nevada doesn't have jurisdiction outside the USA, so what good will this do at all? You've heard of a little company called "Yandex"? It's kind of in Russia...

Is Google Getting Blamed More Than It Should?

2011-10-03T13:59:00.002+08:00

It's hard to believe that we're still hearing about Panda. It seems as old as Y2K now. Yet here we are looking at another story about a webmaster sore at Google over it. Search Engine Watch gives us a refreshing reality check: Maybe a site drops in Google's SERPS just because its junk?

There's also, at the bottom of the article, a handy list of things to check when your site's rankings drop. It's good to keep in mind that sometimes webmasters throw themselves into a panic when they don't have to. We've seen web-workers at lunch with a laptop: They order lunch, hit F5, pay the cashier, hit F5, take a seat, hit F5, and they go "Whoa! We dropped three places!" and out the door they run while we watch their sandwich get cold, or until somebody eats it.

Website Marketing Perth

Will Google+ Lead The Way For Erasing Anonymity On The Web?

2011-09-03T09:15:00.000+08:00

Search Engine Land reports on Google's latest move in its attempt to horn into the social networking banquet, where they're going to start verifying an account identity. The chatter about this one is, surprisingly, more positive than you'd expect. While there are still concerns about privacy, it seems that web users are sick of something else even more:

Trolls, scams, spammers, sock-puppets, and general fools using the whole wide world for their personal playground.

It is true that the state of the web as we know it does lend itself to a hostile environment. Take the case of David Mabus, a Canadian who made a career out of sending thousands of threatening emails and IMs to everyone he saw on the web for more than ten years. He has just now been arrested. If you were on any side of an issue opposite him, chances are you were threatened under one of his many accounts.

Or take Sanford Wallace, the notorious "spam king" of Facebook, who's now in US authority custody and looking to serve about 40 years.

Can we really measure how much human misery these people cause? Making everybody online have to carry an ID badge may not be the perfect solution, but we just might be ready to sit back and give it a try.

How Google+ Could Change The Rules Of the SEO Game

2011-08-10T17:10:00.002+08:00

In the film Minority Report, we see that advertising in the future is triggered by iris scanners who identify you by eye pattern and use that to have talking billboards address you by name. Our present is getting closer and closer to that science fiction scenario!

The latest musing on Google+ is over at SEOChat, which asks How Google Plus Could Change SEO. There's a list of features which Google+ adds, each of which have the handy side effect of offering more targeted advertising. Briefly, the list is:

circles - tracks influencers

+1 button - tells user's likes

sparks - shares interests

profile data - nothing new there

hangouts - group chats, could be targeted for more keyword focus

location data - get to know the potential customers in your area, anyone?

photos - soon to be crawled with facial recognition software

It's coming! We can almost hear the hologram billboards at the subway terminal: "Jon Anderton! You could use a Guinness right now!" Web Designers Perth

Have You Felt The Wrath Of The Panda Yet?

2011-06-27T19:53:00.000+08:00

SEO bloggers were abuzz only a few months ago about the mighty Google update. Nicknamed "Panda", this was the update that was to limit the ranking of low-quality text-farm type sites that clog search results. The new update valid about June of 2011 is Panda 2.2, and Search Engine Roundtable has the dirt on that.

Now, they didn't specifically come out and say content farms... but it's pretty clear that they were looking in their direction.

This is actually good news for those of us who work to be both legitimate and high-quality. When we mean "content farms", we mean the typical empty keyword-stuffing filler content that most of us knew better than to keep using past 1998. All that and more is explained by Search Engine Land, which also goes on to mention 'scraper' sites that steal your content and repost it without even bothering to write their own!

Another kind of content is the "article spinner" variety. In this method, there's an attempt to make robots write like humans. You can spot spinner content a mile away, if you're a functional English speaker: "This is was good contents method and our are happy to provides it to you to use in or health." It's done by scraping content and then implementing an algorithm that changes one word for another. Nice try, guys, but - with a sigh of relief from those of us who write for a living - the tech's not there yet.

More recently, SEOBook also asked whether that update worked or not. You're still seeing some farmed content come up in SERPs, of course, but maybe not as much as there was a year ago.

Don't Panic - Whether You're Hitch-hiking the Galaxy or Optimizing a Website

2011-06-01T09:19:00.001+08:00

We love posts like this that explore the human side of computer-human interactions. In Clients Who Panic – Tips on Calming Their Nerves, some deep Zen is offered to combat the nervous feeling that search engine spiders and other websites are plotting against you.

Because, they are, you know! While you sleep, other webmasters around the globe are spending the night whittling away at your PageRank... they wants it for themselves, the greedy hobbitses...

Those sudden drops in the rankings especially leave an acid pit in your stomach. But the fact is, Google keeps its algorithms secret, and as long as the process is closed, there's going to be some anxiety. Anyway, changing site rankings are just a fact of life in the SEO game. That's kind of also why it's such a fascinating business. Web Designers Perth

Internet Marketing - Are Good Guys Destined to Finish Last?

2011-04-01T09:23:00.001+08:00

A very sobering blog post up at SearchEngineWatch, White Hats: This is Why You're Getting Beaten, about how the bad guys are mopping the floor with the good guys.

(and is anybody else getting tired of the hat metaphor?)

Anyway, as good a point as is made there, we'd like to ask, "Is it really that way?" Because here's the thing: attracting traffic to your website is all about converting sellers, via ads and point of sale. No matter what, that's the goal.

Now, no matter how many search engines you fool, the search engine isn't the one spending the money; a person is. And the person who gets to your site after you've rigged the search engine to come up as a false result in order to throw a page full of spam in their face is going to leave angry without spending any money and go someplace else anyway. So really, the ones doing blatant black hat SEO are actually just piddling away time and money anyway.

Kind of like spammers, there's always the few sites that will never go straight. But they're getting a lot of false hits and a few legit but very dumb users. Remember, all traffic is not created equal. We'd rather get 5,000 visits a month from the cream of the intellect market than 500,000 a month from bots and dopes.

If You Were Google's CEO For A Day...

2010-11-30T08:28:00.000+08:00

A fun bit of engagement over at Matt Cutt's pad, asking What would you do if you were CEO of Google?. Cutts admits that he'd think in terms of big projects - starry eyed dreamer, and hey, nothing wrong with that. The comments also have a ball with this bit of day-dreaming.

But we're the boring old practical idealist. In Eric Schmidt's shoes, we'd either (a) put even more guns into Android than it has already, or (b) modify a Linux into a desktop OS and push it to compete head-to-head with Microsoft.

Seriously, we're tired of Microsoft owning the world with a small pocket for Apple and the rest is brave, tiny mites like Linux and BSD up against the Redmond Sauron. We'd just like to see somebody stand up to MS, just so we know its possible. Even if we still use Windows anyway, it would be nice knowing an alternative was ready.

Thinking Like a Google Engineer

2010-11-24T08:20:00.000+08:00

How often we, in the web SEO business, chase down every rumor and scrap of information about search engine optimization, especially for Google. How seldom we get it straight from the horse's mouth. Ok so most SEO consultants will know him, but for those that don't - may we introduce Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO, a blog by a bona-fide Google engineer.

Chock-full of SEO wisdom, this candid blog should be mandatory reading for every budding web entrepreneur. A great example is the glossary section, with some down-and-dirty dirt on breaking a URL into its component parts, and busting some jargon on algorithms. And note, he doesn't burble on about meta-tag voodoo and link-exchange witchcraft, he just tells you what's going on!

Why can't all SEO experts be like this?

What's in a Domain Name? Maybe Less Than Meets the Eye?

2010-11-06T19:48:00.000+08:00

It's interesting to see Marketing Vox's reaction to the sale of the domain sex.com. $13 million may sound like a sexy price, but is it really worth it? Vox says maybe so. We're going to have to go with "maybe not."

Now, for a unique brand name, yes. That's expected. Pepsi had better control pepsi.com, and all the other possible pepsi-dot-anythings out there. Ditto for Microsoft, Walmart, Disney, and so on. We expect that a company that big can afford to control its own brand name, at least that far.

But when you get to generic domain nouns, not so much. Being in the candy business and owning "candy.com" at first sounds like a great idea... in 1998. But who, these days, actually blindly types domains into the address bar? We'd bet nine out of ten users today couldn't tell us where the address bar is. Hoping to hit Google searches is the next bid, but Google searches don't always blindly follow the domain name either.

Lastly, ask yourself, when you want candy (and you're using the web to get it), are you seriously going to type in "candy?" No, you're going to type "Hershey's," "Reeses," "M&Ms," "licorice whips," or whatever your specific desire is. Likewise, ask yourself how many people type "sex" into a search box and hope for the best? No, they'll type in whatever their specific interest is; "hot coeds," "online personals dating," "videos of..." whatever their interest is.

A few more hits for owning the domain "sex.com?" Sure, maybe that's worth some extra change. We just doubt that it's worth the extra $13 mills.

When Idealism Trumps Profit - In the Wrong Direction

2010-10-01T12:37:00.001+08:00

California may be far away geographically, but there's an issue right there that hits home for every web marketer. It's really quite simple: Californians are going to vote soon on "proposition 19," a resolution to de-criminalize marizuana for personal use. Note, we're not talking about medical marijuana any more, we're talking about lifting prohibition altogether.

Who cares? Well, apparently some major websites do. And the way they care is by refusing to run ads supporting Proposition 19. Yes, you heard that right. Not for any amount of money!

Facebook, for starters. They recently forbade even displaying an image of a marijuana leaf in an ad. And it's quite ironic that we have to link to Wired to report this story, because Wired belongs to Conde-Nast Media, which also owns Reddit.com... And guess who else won't run a pro-Prop-19 ad?

The Reddit reaction is amusing. Reddit users responded to the ad ban by submitting story after story about Prop-19 - with marijuana leaves festooned - until the entire front page consists of nothing but support for Prop 19. We haven't seen a social-news-site rebellion like this since the great HD-DVD encryption key code backlash of 2007.

Well, anyway, file this under "know your market." The web audience is a feisty little critter some days, isn't it?

Webite SEO Optimization Strategies You're Probably Forgetting

2010-09-13T12:33:00.000+08:00

We all see dozens of articles targeted at the basic SEO strategies for daily use, but there's a second set of techniques which we rarely see addressed: the needs of a mature website. If your site is five, ten, fifteen years old or older, and regularly publishes content, chances are good that you have pages on your own website that you haven't even checked on in years.

You might want to blow the dust off of some of those. After all, you're paying for the server space to host them and they're all very well-indexed by the spiders by now. As time goes on, various little instances of webpage rot begin to creep in. here's some thing to keep in mind if you do revisit those back-roads off the beaten brush:

Dead links. The page was there five years ago, but now it isn't. This is especially frustrating in the case of dynamic content, blogs, and just active websites. In some cases, the content is still there, but the website you're linking to might have gone through a major overhaul since then and changed the way it serves old articles, such as changing the URL's arguments (the parts that come after the question mark). Even a difference of one character can break a link.

Links to blacklisted sites. This is the case where not only is the content you used to link to not there any more, but the whole domain has gone expired and been bought up by a new party, who now hosts adult, spammy, or illegal content. That causes the search engine spiders such as Googlebot to come along and penalize you for linking to it - and here you had no idea! Check your old blog posts for these ticking time bomb links.

Promoting your greatest hits. Remember that great post you made in 2007 that got you to the front page of Digg.com and bumped your traffic? How about a follow-up? You're probably still getting the occasional visitor from that. You could drop in an update on that post encouraging visitors to check out other content on your site, you could see about making a static URL page there so it's more prominent, you could revisit the subject to see if lightning strikes again, and you could post your most-visited content in the sidebar throughout your site. Capitalizing on past work beats having to do new work.

Managing comments on old threads. Anyplace where visitors can leave feedback is a potential place for both profit and trouble. You might want to consider instituting a policy of closing comment threads that are more than two years old, if your content is time-sensitive. At least, you should check the links left in comments to make sure they're not dead or linking to blacklisted content, or making 'no-follow' tags for comment URLs. Some comments can also be harming your page by listing irrelevant keywords or gibberish.

Changing needs. Did you post a review of some kind of media, such as movies or games? Did you have a blog post comment on a news story? That content might be so old and irrelevant now that you'd be better off removing it, or updating it for the times. Or you might have keywords optimized right for 2003, but since then the relevant keywords for your target topic have changed. You might even need to update the web page code itself for the changing browser standards.

Now all we need is for Discovery channel to start a show called "This Old Website!"

Are Good Guys Destined to Finish Last?

2010-09-09T17:07:00.001+08:00

A very sobering blog post up at SearchEngineWatch, White Hats: This is Why You're Getting Beaten, about how the bad guys are mopping the floor with the good guys.

(and is anybody else getting tired of the hat metaphor?)

Anyway, as good a point as is made there, we'd like to ask, "Is it really that way?" Because here's the thing: attracting traffic to your website is all about converting sellers, via ads and point of sale. No matter what, that's the goal. Now, no matter how many search engines you fool, the search engine isn't the one spending the money; a person is. And the person who gets to your site after you've rigged the search engine to come up as a false result in order to throw a page full of spam in their face is going to leave angry without spending any money and go someplace else anyway. So really, the ones doing blatant black hat SEO are actually just piddling away time and money anyway.

Kind of like spammers, there's always the few sites that will never go straight. But they're getting a lot of false hits and a few legit but very dumb users. Remember, all traffic is not created equal. We'd rather get 50,000 visits a month from the cream of the intellect market than 500,000 a month from bots and dopes.

Google Beat - A Video Log For Hot search Topics

2010-09-01T12:36:00.000+08:00

In a move that comments on just how important search trends have become in our modern world, Google has launched Google Beat, a video blog reporting on weekly search trends and what they mean.

This is quite an awesome little development, and we'll be watching the Google Beat YouTube channel to see where this goes.

This is one of those defining moments when it really hits you that you're living in the 21st century. Twenty years ago, web searches were barely an explored concept. Sixteen years ago, the Google search engine launched. Four years ago, the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary added the word "google" to their listings. And this year, we have a hostess doing a video segment on the week's most popular searches, available through a streaming video site.

It's a pity that we don't have an international version - so far they only cover trends in the US. However, Google does eventually get around to including the rest of the world. We could see this going to television. Certainly it is more newsworthy than some of the other technology-related content that makes it onto the telly.

Search Engines That Show You A New Way To Think About Search Engines

2010-08-17T08:57:00.001+08:00

Have you tried an alternative search engine lately? I know, as an SEO marketer or search engine marketing consultant, you probably groan every time somebody suggests it. Yes, these other have ridiculously small market share. But just remember, the one to watch in the future isn't Google. The one to watch is the one who's going to beat Google. It's only a matter of time. No monopoly stands forever...

Duck Duck Go - The latest little star in the arena. Uses crowd-sourcing from sites like Wikipedia to gain relevance. They've also gotten some ink for using Perl on Linux Apache, the classic old-school LAMP in an age of PHP bandwidth-hogs.

Stumble Upon Search - Don't look now, but Stumble Upon has been in business for a good five years now, and their archive of crowd-sourced voted links is starting to become a reliable place to search.

The Wayback Machine - If it's media you're looking for, don't forget to make this your first stop. As time marches on, the archive gets more content every year.

Banana Slug - An off-beat idea: What if we combine your search term with a random keyword from a category you select? These are where the experiments are happening. Try it out, and you'll find out just how unexpected your results can be.

Yandex - Never heard of it? It's Russia's biggest search engine!

Yoozilla - Actually, this one's up for sale. Their whole point in the first place was to be a "Web 2.0" search.

Addict-O-Matic - A must-have for buzz marketers, this engine checks the hottest word-of-mouth as fast as it can.

Michael Arrington Thinks That Reputation Isn't Going To Matter Anymore

2010-04-07T21:03:00.005+08:00

Of course, this sounds like both irony and wishful thinking. Arrington both rides a wave of reputation to the bank each month (Techcrunch), being the only technology news source regularly quoted by Reuters and Associated Press, and dies a little on the sword of reputation each night, with the ugly rumours about his behaviour, his controversy for conflict-of-interest situations, and his abominable accuracy record.

But anyway, in "Reputation is Dead", he makes a case that since it will be possible to find dirt on anyone, then that will mean that dirt won't matter anymore. That's the web of Facebook, Twitter, your old blog, what-have-you preventing you from getting that next marketing job. The counter-argument is that everyone will need to buy reputation-insurance.

But in fact, what about a third option... one that has already been happening for years? Selective application of standards. Do you have friends in high places? Then we can sweep a few photos of you in a bikini under the rug. Whoops, did you just anger the powers that be? Well, let's trot out that bikini photo shoot... suddenly we're scandalized!

Gasp! We cannot allow someone of your standards to occupy this position.

For years, they've been doing this. Celebrity news, political news, and in the absence of an actual scandal they'll just make something up. Won't they? After all, this is the primary argument against a surveillance society.

Internet Marketing - Microsoft Can Now Sic The Law On Its Competitors

2010-03-11T01:49:00.002+08:00

We're really trying not to sound like an end-of-the-world conspiracy blog this week, but there's just been so many stories of dirty dealings by giant web companies that its difficult to avoid. Now there's new complaints against Google in Europe, by three companies, two of which have ties to Microsoft.

The Google spokes-lawyer responds: "They were a long-time AdSense partner of Google’s, with whom we always had a good relationship. However, after Microsoft acquired Ciao! … we started receiving complaints about our standard terms and conditions." Well, yeah, Microsoft does like its puppetry.

Meanwhile the same article goes on to mention the Italian case against Google for hosting a video showing a school bullying incident. Google responded to the complaint, took the video down, and got sued anyway. Not the company, mind you. Instead four Google employees in Italy got criminally prosecuted, personally - and they had nothing to do with the video! We can not, repeat, not find any Microsoft involvement with this one.

Really, it seems these days that all the tech news boils down to Microsoft, Adobe, Google, and Apple all at each other's throats. Can somebody find some other kind of story to cover?

Internet Marketing - A Blog Marketer's Checklist

2010-02-27T11:38:00.004+08:00

Setting up a blog to promote your marketing presence on the web is just half the battle. Once you get going, you have to keep going. But while you're at it, be sure you aren't just filling up space without attracting visitors. A few tips:

Fulfill the visitor's expectations. - Posting regularly is important, as is keeping the content consistent. You want to draw the kind of audience who make best customers, and tailor your content that way.

Make the most of your traffic. - Social bookmarking icons, RSS feed icons within easy reach, and links to the rest of your site will help turn those one-time visitors into regulars.

Archive. - The worst thing you can do to a blog is make the past content difficult to access. Live Journal, we're looking at YOU! Ditch the clumsy calendar and - Blogger.com, you too - maybe even the year-month-day tree structure too. Lists are your friend.

Watch the analytics. - Learn and adapt new strategies from watching the way visitors access your site. For instance, you might have a very popular image that appears in image search results. How about adding your website name to that image?

Keep your friends close. - Once you start linking to other blogs in your sidebar, be sure to visit them yourself regularly. Just drop by once a week. They'll see your traffic and be likewise motivated to visit you more.

Cut it up once in a while. - Every now and then, surprise your regular readers. Post a silly joke post, vary your usual topic, and certainly, blog about what interests you the most, because then it will interest others.

Peter Brittain
Search Engine Optimisation

Could September Finally Be Over Soon?

2009-11-15T16:19:00.000+08:00

Once upon a time, the web was a frontier of exciting possibilities and intelligent conversation. Then America Online (AOL!) started up.

The influx of American kids logging in from Windows 3.1 machines completely swamped online culture, and it hasn't recovered since. And long past the time when you thought AOL should have died, it keeps going, like a possessed Energizer Bunny.

Those of you who count on American customers for your web business, you know you have to allow for AOL users in your digital strategy. They still make up a tiny percentage of the web traffic!

Now Time-Warner is going to spin off AOL after having absorbed it 8 years ago. Amongst other ballast they're dumping, they're selling off... wait for it!... ICQ.

It takes a special kind of chutzpah to put a $300 million price tag on ICQ, in these days of Twitter hype. Yeah, sure, ICQ will come back any day now! But for a company that got its start as a game subscription service running on the Atari 2600, and has since survived not only the video game crash but the dot-com crash too, chutzpah is its middle name.

Peter Brittain

Blogging: Seven Dead Blog Tropes

2009-11-09T15:51:00.004+08:00

Of course, every website owner with even a passing interest in search engine optimization has had the word "blog" pounded into them until they can't take it anymore and started a blog. Now, when blogs were first starting up yonder 'bout a decade ago, these tropes were excusable. but now, many of the things that people were doing with them are now tired cliches. Check your blog to see if it's suffering from any of those symptoms - if so, it might be time for a scraping!

1. Replying to every comment.
You are right that sometimes you want to engage your public. Appending more of your bright, witty banter to the tail of a good, solid gem of linkbait is the sensible thing, especially while you're soaking up all this adoration. But when you're responding to every single comment, even if it's only as brief as "hey thanks!", you're saying two things: (1) You have nothing to do. You're not that busy. Your whole life is this blog. (2) Your ego is so starved that you're gobbling up every crumb of attention as if it were the last human interaction you'd ever get.

2. Echo! Echo! Echo!
Too many blogs do this. They take the top story of the day and repeat it, with a link and a couple lines of commentary. Remember the "Balloon Boy?" No? Good, this means you have a life. But the day that the Balloon Boy dominated every screen of every TV news channel for 36 hours before everybody got sick and tired of it is commemorated forever in your blog, post #147, a one-paragraph link that contributes nothing and nobody reads. Or searches for it.

3. I'm sorry for not blogging.
Wow, it's been so long since you updated that when your site popped up in our RSS aggregators, we had to puzzle a moment to remember who you were. Oh, yeah, that site! Oh, so you just brought us back to tell us how sorry you are for not having anything to say. Well, rest assured that your link is now deleted from our browser so you don't have to worry about letting us down again.

4. The tag stew.
They're called 'tag clouds', and for a while they looked like they'd be the fad that never went away. But over time, tag clouds have shown their failing: they tend to have two, maybe three really big tags standing out like a brass gong in church, and the rest are all the same-size tiny text links. What's the chef specialty of the day? SEO BLOGGING on a bed of rice.

5. The Blogroll That Links To The Entire Internet.
We know, you love your friends. And your sidebar gives a shout-out to your homies. And you make mates really, really easily. In fact, you're such a link slut that you don't even read most of these yourself any more. If you go clicking through your blogroll and find more than five dead sites, just consider scrapping the whole thing.

6. The image that makes no sense.
Somewhere, somehow, a certain demographic of bloggers came along at exactly the right time in history to get it ingrained into their head that they must have an image in every blog post. It's in Leviticus somewhere. Even if they make no sense. That text looks so lonely by itself, let's add this cute rubber duckie to spice up our rant about subway fare hires. Oh, stock images! Accompany a post about SEO scoring algorithms with this wildly smiling woman skipping through a field, apparently wafted to blissful nirvana by it all. And what does this set of stairs have to do with your website management post? You could at least toss in a stair metaphor.

7. The calendar gizmo.
Can we be frank? Calendar gizmos all look ugly and blocky. In addition, nobody uses them. Seriously, put a Javascript redirect in there to log a hit every time somebody clicks the calendar gizmo. You'll get the occasional hit from a confused indexing spider, and that's it.

Peter Brittain

An SEO Expert's Garden Of Lost Search Engines

2009-11-09T15:16:00.001+08:00

Who cares about any other search engine but Google? Oh, OK, maybe Yahoo or Bing. But seriously, every single time you read a website marketing blog, it's Google, Google, Google. It's as if it were the only search engine in the world, as far as search engine optimization is concerned.

But what could we learn from optimizing for other search engines? And furthermore, what would the SEO world look like right now if we had one of these companies as the king of search instead of Big-Daddy-G?

Cuil
You'd expect better from former Google employees, wouldn't you? From its baffling name to its almost-random results to its various sundry failings, Cuil has so far been the Hindenburg of search engine disasters. The reviews have gone beyond mere "bad" to inspiring words like "tragic," "wretched," and "bile inducing." It's still kicking, but over a year after launch you can still type in the most leading possible query and get back results from the Twilight Zone.

Inktomi
This one could have gone somewhere. Started by a UC Berkeley alumnus and professor and having had actual success for a couple of years on its college-campus testing ground, Inktomi just could have been a contender. It was robustly acquiring other companies and even partnering with AOL at one point with their Traffic Server product. But lo, came the dot-com-bust, and Inktomi ended its days as a Yahoo! acquisition.

Go.com
Probably the greatest search engine name of all time, the URL is still registered with Disney and still acting as a portal. But after Disney announced in 2000 that Go.com would be closing down and laying off approximately 400 employees and even retiring the stock, it was clear that it was not meant to be. Today if you type a search query into Go.com, you're actually using Yahoo!'s rented technology. Go's search engine was another victim of the dot-com-bust, coupled with the fact that they were trying to be more of a portal whereas the rest of the world wanted a pure search.

Lycos
Technically still kicking, but everybody can smell the charcoal stacking on its pyre. Lycos was once the hottest search destination on the web. In 1999, it was the most visited online destination in the world! They had a great TV campaign with a friendly trained dog who raced off to fetch your results, usually directed at shopping online. But Google handed them their head. Today Lycos is bought and sold and swapped around like a pile of poker chips. They've dropped much of their former subsidiaries. Let us not forget that Lycos was once responsible for Angelfire.com and Tripod.com, making them the Earnest and Julio Gallo of the search world (to use a bum-wines metaphor).

Teoma
Another idea that seemed like it could have gone somewhere in an alternate universe. Teoma was launched in 2000 by a team at Rutgers University, New Jersey. It had one secret-sauce ingredient that gave it a chance alongside Google: a ranking algorithm. Originally called "Subject-Specific Popularity," this algorithm measured not only a page's topic, but the topic of the pages linking to it as well, to give it increased relevance in that topic. Teoma just basically ran out of steam and got bought out; its algorithm today survives as Ask.com's ExpertRank algorithm.

Peter Brittain

Getting to Know a Niche Market

2009-04-02T11:33:00.006+08:00

One of the prime goals for an Internet marketer who wants to market within a specific niche is to get to know that niche.

A specific market demographic is likely to have a whole culture around it, and you run into trouble if you get the culture wrong when composing your marketing materials. Leather, metal, motorcycles, and lager will go over big with marketing to bikers, but will flop with selling needlepoint kits to grannies.

One of the most important demographics is the youth market. Billion-dollar advertising companies exhaust years of research into study groups of kids and young people aged 14 to 21, to find out what they listen to, what they eat, where they go, and what their current slang is.

By all means, it's necessary to become a part of this culture if you intend to market to it. Your best bet is to join Twitter groups, social bookmarking sites, and mailing lists devoted to your target culture and then remain very quiet about it. Spend more time listening than you do talking. Every time you see an unfamiliar term, look it up in Wikipedia or some other source to get the origin of the phrase.

For example: You've seen a meme going around with Photoshopped images with the caption "Madness? This is SPARTA!" It's useful to know that this line comes from the movie 300 based on the graphic novel of the same name, written and illustrated by Frank Miller. So if you're composing an ad aimed at young comic book fans, you might advertise your web start-up with "This is a START-UP!" accompanied by a Greek warrior. I know, that's a lame slogan, but it illustrates the point.

One site which does this right is Reddit.com. Their staff is outrageously meme-hip, and when they market, they know their audience like nobody else. The ad in the corner urging you to create your own sub-Reddit category randomly includes lines like: "...do it for the children" (a popular satire of social causes), "...for your WoW guild" (World of Warcraft is a very popular game there), "...sudo create your own reddit" (referencing both Linux and the XKCD comic, both with a huge following on Reddit), and "...for a fringe political candidate" (The US presidential election brought these out in droves).

When you use a culture's own in-jokes and memes to communicate with it, you're sending them a little wink: "We understand you! We know what's important to you!" And then you build up a level of trust with the potential customer.

Peter Brittain
Slinky is an SEO Company based in Perth, Western Australia

Analyzing the Latest Most Profitable Google AdSense Words

2009-03-14T11:47:00.005+09:00

Handy little list for all users of Google AdSense, this is a list of some AdSense keywords, and this is the list of the highest-paying AdSense keywords.

Talk about any of these subjects on a blog with a Google ad in the sidebar, get the listed dollar amount every time somebody clicks the ad.

Well, as the site explains elsewhere, it's not that simple! You have to have original content, be a site in good standing, etc. You can't just post the list and expect it to do anything.

We ran some data-crunching on the list just to see what the top-ten most expensive words are by frequency:

118 mesothelioma
71 attorney
62 removal
62 hair
52 lawyer
44 laser
43 insurance
43 google
42 life
42 hosting

Clearly, our new word for the day is "mesothelioma", a cancer commonly caused by asbestos. Construction workers and others exposed to asbestos the world over are suing the pants off their former employers, and lawyers apparently consider it money in the bank. This is no laughing matter; asbestos is nasty stuff and mesothelioma's primary symptom is shortness of breath.

Laser hair removal surgery is also a big business. With more countries of the world becoming more liberal and posing in a swimsuit for their photo on MySpace, it stands to reason.

Google itself has a cottage industry around it, with experts all over the web who can't wait to tell you all about Google's products and services and how they can improve your life.

That leaves 'hosting' in the top ten, followed by 'web', #11 at 38 hits. Even though web hosting itself is pretty cheap these days, it's a high-profit business because of the huge volume. Other honorable mention goes to home mortgage refinancing and loans.

There it all is! Now, how to make all of that become stimulating, relevant, and useful content?

Peter Brittain

Five Recipes For Linkbait

2009-02-26T21:45:00.008+09:00

Linkbait is the social web's term for the kind of content that regularly gets linked from social bookmarking and news-sharing sites. Think Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Metafilter, Yahoo Buzz, and even just plain blogs. The best link-bait is something that appeals to the lazy nature in all of us. After watching the social web for a few years now, here are the kinds of things you might post to your blog to more frequently get visitors from social sites:

Video - Number one with a bullet. Video content is extremely popular, especially if it's under five minutes. Consider it for your next tutorial of handy tips.

Images - Especially a funny one. Even a vaguely amusing one. Heck, any picture at all. I've followed links to a picture of somebody's shoes - regular ordinary shoes. But I had to click, because I just couldn't believe that somebody would just post a picture of their shoes!

Anything funny - Humor goes over big with the web audience, and then they have to share it with everyone they know. Have you gotten the requisite 25 forwarded jokes from your co-workers in your inbox today?

"Breaking" news - You really have to have the scoop on this one. Anything that happens in your local area, and hence gets to you first through local media, and which you think might have world impact, could go here. But this is all luck.

Numbered lists - It got you here, didn't it? Numbered lists work for the same reason that images and videos do - they're easy to scan.

ALT Image Tags in Web Marketing

2009-02-13T21:22:00.012+09:00

The "alt" tag as alternative text for an image placed on a web page, has a curiously evolved history.

It started out being the fix for web browsers that couldn't display images - yes, they weren't a given for the early web browsers. Just when we thought we could get rid of alt-text, the blind and visually-impaired community spoke up, "Whoa! We need those to read what the picture's about!" and so now using alt-tags became a matter of accessibility.

And now search engines use them to index images. So alt-text is here to stay. To use it, you would put:

< img src="http://mysite/image.jpg" alt="our company logo" / >

And you can go one further and use a title tag, which makes text pop up when the user mouses over it. To see a title tag in action, visit XKCD and hover your mouse over a comic strip. Sometimes it adds to the joke, sometimes it explains it, and sometimes it's a secret message!

So what do you do with it? Boost your SEO! To see how that works, try searching Google images for any not-too-obvious word. Let's try antiseptic. We get to about the eighth result after seven bottles of mouthwash and such, and then... a wallpaper image of a blob-person on a blue background. It really doesn't have anything to do with what we were thinking of, does it? How did that happen? That's the name of the wallpaper file, and it's included in the alt-text.

That's how powerful alt text can be! Just be careful to use this for good and not evil - this is also how pornography gets mixed in with search results for innocent keywords.

Peter Brittain

Need a Perth Website Hosting Company?

What if We Had a Global Economic Meltdown and the World Didn't End Anyway?

2009-01-26T19:42:00.004+09:00

Our reigning web entrepreneur guru, Paul Graham, is questioning how this recession will affect start-up markets. We've seen a ton of hand-wringing going on over the state of the world market lately.

Here's the thing that I'll say which is different from what everybody else says: We're going to survive.

Yes, believe it or not, we'll make it! We've seen this before during the Web Bubble. Lots of web companies died off in a hurry, but did you ever notice that these were companies which weren't based on a very good idea to begin with? The hardy companies that knew how to really make money kept going; they even got richer during the worst of the Web Bubble!

Similarly, this recession is hitting some people hard - but it's mainly hitting the people who were being foolish with their money to start with. Yes, I said it! The millionaires have lost their shirts in the stock market, and the people who treat houses like horses at a race-track, buying them just to flip them, are now out of their investment. But the working Joe and Jane are just going on the same way they always did.

If your income is derived from an online source, you have an advantage that few possess. Your income is not tied to any one country's economy! You can work with companies and individuals all over the world. Even if the economy in the United States is tanking, you can find a booming market in Canada, and there's a customer or client. So it is also true for business between Australia and Great Britain. Or between India and Romania.

There's a lot of panic going on, and that's causing some job loss. That's a shame, because it really is more panic than it is anything else.

Peter Brittain

Lessons Learned From Twitter Hacking

2009-01-20T14:49:00.008+09:00

It's the kind of story that really gets your attention: Twitter, by any measure the most buzzed about network of 2008, got hacked by an 18-year-old!

With absolutely no skill or finesse involved, either. Anybody reading this could have done the same. You just download a free password-cracker program like Crack, John the Ripper, L0phtCrack, or Cain, point it at a log-in page, and leave it run for a couple of days. It's that simple.

Dictionary attacks have been used since at least the 1980s, before the World Wide Web even came along. System admins have been scolding users for keeping easily guessed passwords around for almost that long. So the fact that you can be on the staff of a hip, trendy 'Web 2.OH' company and not know better just goes to show that this problem is never going away.

Jeff gives an interesting solution on the article: making an incrementally increased delay between each log-in attempt. Not too punishing for the legitimate user, but too much of a hurdle for a cracker. Even better are the forms you see here and there on the web, which check your password for a security level when you sign up.

Finally, if OpenID catches on, we just might be able to get all of the problems with user passwords in one spot, where at least they'll be easier to kill.

Hits and Misses on Predictions for the Social Web in 2009

2009-01-10T15:29:00.011+09:00

Over at Search Engine Watch, I just saw the 7 Social Media Predictions for 2009.

Now, you know we're all just bloggers here, and my swami turban is just as pretty as SEW's, so I figured I'd see if I can refine the list by picking which predictions will hit and which will miss.

1. Social Media Continues its Rapid Growth - Hit! Hey, like this is hard to predict?

2. Business Networks Surge as Economic Crisis Continues - Miss. I've been on the web since it started, and I haven't seen walled gardens disappear yet. Companies like Yahoo and Apple tighten their grip, if anything. And do you think MSN Spaces will just help you pack when you move to Google's Blogger?

3. Many Free Services Will Become Defunct - Miss! The thing is, web server space and tools are so cheap, you basically can run them out of your closet. And Open Source software has been with us since the 1970s. People can afford to keep doing it for a hobby. I can see more aggressive marketing, though.

4. More Traditional Broadcast Television Moves Online - Hit! We keep seeing a lot of this already. Just in the past couple of years, I've been surprised when I discover TV episodes, full films, and even sports and entertainment specials being webcasted. Growing trend. My TV is gathering more dust every day.

5. Social Media Changes Off-line Behaviour - Meh. Maybe, but we've seen some of this (employers Googling for applicant's blogs) and some not (anonymity is still pretty easy).

6. More Social Media Searches for Products and Services - Miss. Social searching is overrated. Look at StumbleUpon: It was a gold mine when it first started, now it's a spammer network. When any social web system gets too big, it loses its social appeal and becomes one more noisy place where you don't know anybody.

7. Marketing Budgets will Continue Shrinking - Hit. This wasn't too hard a prediction to make, either.

Peter Brittain

Thinking Of Doing Black Hat SEO, Think Again!

2008-12-22T14:01:00.008+09:00

SEO is necessary to achieve high rankings. But, there are certain ethics and guidelines that most of the webmasters must keep in mind. Though there is no specific definition for black hat SEO, yet there are some things that may be considered inappropriate for websites of different categories. Something may be allowed for a gambling site, but may not be allowed for a health care site. Black hat SEO techniques are mostly those, which may break search engine rules or are a poor user experience or may have unethical presentation of content.

Some of the things considered as Black Hat SEO may even have been considered as legitimate ones earlier, but after being taken a bit too far by some, these were blacklisted. Generally, the black hat SEO practices may offer short term gains, but they may be limited to the rankings. If you are caught using techniques that are considered spam, you may find your site penalized and banned by search engines. Short cuts or cheating your way to the top of the search engine rankings is nothing, but deceiving them, which may not go well with search engine and may even lead to your being banned.

More On Black Hat SEO

2008-12-21T14:04:00.008+09:00

Avoid SEO techniques like keyword stuffing, using invisible text etc that are considered black hat SEO.

Keyword stuffing is nothing, but packing your keywords onto the website. If you have a list of keywords to use, do not make liberal use of them in you website. Use tools, which can help you to find the keyword density. Maintain a standard of around 3% to 7% keyword density. Make use of synonyms and make yourself aware of LSI to ensure that you have a good page developed within limits of acceptable use of keywords.

Invisible text is another technique that some SEO try using. It is nothing, but putting a list of keywords in white text on a white background. What it does is that it cannot be seen by readers, but attracts more search engine spiders. This can help get higher ranking for usage of keyword, but again it is unethical to use it. Even the search engine algorithms may consider it, as spamming. Similarly, there is a concept some refer to, as doorway pages. It is basically a fake page that may not be ever seen by the user. It is just created for tracking search engine spiders in an attempt to give them content to index you higher.

It is better to practice white hat SEO, rather than using black hat SEO to score over a competitor, who may be on the top using black hat SEO techniques. Wouldn’t using ethical techniques to rank high be better, than using black hat SEO techniques, which can always keep you under a scanner? Unethical means can surely see your earnings skyrocket in a short term, but may get you banned in the long run. Your aim would be to earn for a long time and there are many ethical techniques out there, which can help you immensely. Be alert to news about the search engine criteria and ensure that you do not end up using black hat SEO. So, if you are thinking of using black hat SEO, to gain that last bit, needed to boost your rankings, think again.
I am sure, you do not want to end up penalized.

Tips To Write A Good Pay Per Click Ad

2008-12-05T14:11:00.003+09:00

Pay per click is among the most popular and successful methods of advertising your online business. Although pay per click is known to be an effective advertising tool, it has to be used accurately, in order to get the desired results. With numerous entrepreneurs using pay per click Ad technique, you really need to think of creative and innovative ways of putting up your Ad. Your pay per click Ad has to be good, in order to turn huge traffic to your website.

Pay per click Ad is the first step of pay per click campaigns. You need to understand that a browser will choose to visit your site, purely on the basis of the text in the advertisement. At this point, they don’t really know, what your product or service is all about and how would they benefit from it. The Ad has to be eye catching, so that the browsers are tempted to click on it.

Thus making of a pay per click Ad is a crucial stage and requires uniqueness along with creativity.

Here are a few tips to write a good Pay Per Click Ad.

• The title or the headline has to be catchy and attractive. It should speak about the product in a smart and quickest way. The title should not be misleading, but should spell out the truth. The title can have upto 25 characters and you need to use them in a descriptive manner.

• The pay per click Ad should be able to show, how it can benefit the visitors. Most people will get back to the website, when they learn about, how the product can benefit them. The Ad has to be attractive and tempting to lure the visitors to your website.

• Make sure that the URL makes sense to the visitors. Use appropriate keywords in the URL to attract more clicks. To make the most, you can capitalize the first letter of your keyword. For example www. yummycookies.com, instead of this you can use http://www.yummycookies.com/ . It is effective, when you place keywords in your domain name.

• Use proper font size and colors that look decent to the eyes. You can use boxes and borders to make your Ad visible. However make sure, you don’t do too much of it or it could spoil the appearance.

• Make a good research, when it comes to using keywords in your pay per click Ad.

• Make sure that the Ad looks great on sites. Before you finalize the Ad, it is best to preview it on the website, so that you know, if it can attract the potential customers.

• To be on a safer side, it is best to create two pay per click Ads. You can upload both the Ads and check, which one is yielding better results. If both the Ads are giving good results, you are sure to benefit and if not you can only stick to the Ad that is attracting huge traffic.

Taking care of these tips will surely help you to create an appealing and traffic generating Ad. Let there be proper planning, so that you take the right steps at the right time. A well-designed Pay Per Click Ad can make a huge difference to your online business.

How To Make The Most Of Latent Semantic Indexing-LSI

2008-11-08T15:40:00.003+09:00

Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI is a very significant technique used by search engines like Google to determine the topic of your website by looking at all the keywords and seeing how they relate.

LSI became popular with its use by Google, mainly for the purpose of detection of spam and for detection of excessive use of keywords to fool the search engines, to get a high listing. Earlier people have used it, to make use of rotating synonyms into which keywords could be multiple inserted. You can make good use of this technology, to get better rankings.

Web masters can make use of this technology, while developing content for their websites and ensure that they use keywords and terms, which are interpreted as expert and relevant content by search engines and the site given a high ranking. Using synonyms is preferable today, rather than using the same keyword to achieve certain keyword density.

Search engines like Google prefer quality expert writing and you may achieve this by wisely using related terms and synonyms throughout the page. Another benefit of using different keywords is that it allows you also to consider rankings for different keywords.

More On How To Make The Most Of Latent Semantic Indexing

2008-11-07T17:44:00.003+09:00

Tools like Adwords from Google are freely available. It can be used to understand, what Google considers as synonyms. You may enter a keyword and check the “use synonyms” box and click on “Get more keywords”.

You can get a list of synonyms for the keyword. This way, you get some very relevant list of keywords. You can use these in your content without repetition of the same keywords. This can help you get good rankings.

Another use of this tool is that it determines the true meaning of words on the basis of various factors. It is used to determine heteronyms, polysemes and homonyms. Homonyms are spelt and pronounced the same way, but have different meanings. Heteronyms are spelt the same way, but pronunciations are different.

Polysemes are spelt the same way, but they come from the same root and are used in different context. When you are developing content, you have to keep this in mind, so that you are clear about what keywords you are using and what it is related to.

If it is written with keywords being placed multiple times, but other matter providing no link to its meaning, then your readers would find it difficult to understand what you are saying and would skip your site. Similarly, search engines would find it difficult and would not give you any rankings. You can simply use the thesaurus.com to find alternative words and make use of them in the content, which helps to explain the meaning of that keyword correctly.

LSI makes SEO very simple. If you consider, how it works, you will see that it is simply a matter of writing naturally, keeping in mind keywords to be used, as well as words and phrases related or meaning the same. You can ensure that you do not have keywords of high density that will lead to your indexing getting harmed. If the search engines find meaningful words related to each other, then it can surely get you some good rankings.

The benefit of LSI is that it gives you the freedom to write freely and simply as you can. It would make it easy for your readers, as well as search engines. By being preferred by search engines, you can get more readers, which in turn helps in conversion of leads to sales.

Analyzing Your Competitors Website

2008-11-07T16:19:00.003+09:00

When you develop your website to promote your products and reach out to relevant customers, you have to give due consideration to your competitors’ websites.

You should make a careful study of your competitors’ websites. It can give you an informative insight on strategies used by them to attract customers. You can form your own strategy based on relevant information to help you score over your competitors.

You have to know the value of competition.

Identify the leaders in your field. You can use Yahoo directory, which can provide you with a view of the major players in the field related to your own industry.

You may find some big companies at the top, but you have to study their innovative approaches and products. You may also use websites like Media Metrix 500 to find out, which companies get the most traffic. Similarly, you may check out the number of relevant traffic that they get using sites like Alexa. They are free add-ons to browser and can give you an idea of the rankings of the websites. You may get a rough idea, as to where your competitors stand in the rankings.

It is a good idea to study the competitors’ websites very closely. You can find out right from the start, what products they offer, how they offer, or if they are offering anything better than what you are offering. Get an idea about the plus points of your competitors concerning their outlook, functionality etc. You would also be able to find out the niche link building strategy, they use.

Using plug-ins like SEO quake, you can find out the most powerful pages linked to your competitors. You would know, where the incoming links are from that give your competitors higher rankings. There are sites like Spyfu, which enable you to spy on these websites and understand what keywords prove to be helpful to your competitors to have traffic and prospective customers and how much they are spending on Adwords.

Analyzing Your Competitors Website 2

2008-11-06T16:24:00.006+09:00

You may also find it useful to analyze the advertising campaigns they run and what they offer their visitors. There may be freebies, contest etc, which they may have arranged to keep the customers hooked to their websites.

There is also a site named compete.com that can be used to see your competitors’ marketing strategies, keywords used, quantity of traffic etc. At the same time, also analyze the keywords being used to good effect. Are they using Meta title tag, description tag, keywords tag, Alt tags etc?

Check the keyword density and their placement. Find out, if they are getting good rankings with the keywords, they are using. Find out, if they are involved in keyword spamming, using keywords or key phrases.

As you check out all these features you should also take a look at the website design and layout.

Find out if they are using search engine friendly web design basic HTML or ASP. Check how much and where they use flash content to make their site attractive. Are their sites easy to navigate and have they used a site map to enable improved indexing and page ranking?

Using the collected information analyze, what are their strengths and weaknesses of each one and note down strategies that can prove to be useful to counter this competition. Make a marketing plan based on this data. With proper analysis and planning, you can design a good website, which can help you rank higher in search engine listings.

Things Web Analytics Can Teach You

2008-10-07T23:30:00.004+08:00

For the purpose of SEO, you need to always be on the look out for the keywords that can bring in lots of traffic. However, it does not end there. What you also need to understand is, which keywords bring in more traffic, as well as conversions for you?

Unless you get visitors to become customers, to get huge traffic would be of no use. You should analyze, what gets you more visitors and also ensure that your sales are completed with them. This is where web analytics can be of immense help to you. You can literally listen to what your customers are saying by using web analytics tools, which are available.

The analytical tools and test can give you the most valuable information about visitors. You can get a peek at their browsing and searching behavior.

The most frequent keyword phrases and the traffic changes as a result of the use of these keywords, which are very constructive to learn from reading your analytics. From these, you also learn to understand the information retrieval algorithms, as well as the heuristics process of qualifying for a search engine. You can make use of this information, as you develop content for your website.

You should be able to accommodate direct, as well as semi direct search behavior, as a result of usage of different metrics.

More On Things Web Analytics Can Teach You

2008-10-06T23:34:00.003+08:00

A very important piece of information that you achieve from web analytics is the amount of words and phrases that people type as search queries, to find a web page. You can find this useful to receive specific target visitors, which can be useful to improve the chances of conversion.

Similarly, search engines generated traffic can be reported using web analytics tool with some other details, which can be very useful in understanding, if your return on investments have been of any profit. You can know the traffic that comes from paid listings from amongst the total list retrieved by search engines. This way you can understand the effectiveness of your SEO efforts. There are some higher end analytic tools that can generate reports from outcomes of organic search engines.

You can also make use of such analytical tools for the purpose of copywriting. It helps you to understand, what and how to write for target audience. Use of keywords is important, but developing content, keeping in mind the LSI can be even better. You can understand from such tools the different keywords and their synonyms that can help develop content without putting in the same keywords, too many times.

Using semantically right terms, you will find your rankings go high. Web analytic tools provide you with overall information about the amount of time users spend on your website, the keywords that are most useful and even learn, where they exit your site. This is useful to understand, where the problem lies in your website. If they do not come to your website from the landing page, then you should know, what is to be improved.

You need to measure effectiveness of your efforts to bring in traffic, as well as sales. By monitoring the information related to sales, you can use it to suggest the most effective keywords and make changes wherever necessary. This helps in reducing gaps, in what the customers require and what you actually provide. Web analytical tools are a must to improve conversion rates for your website.

The Importance Of Web Copy In Internet Marketing

2008-09-18T23:29:00.006+08:00

Sales copy is part of traditional marketing and advertising activities and can be sent out to prospective buyers with the aim of informing them of a product or service.

It can inform them about how the product or service will benefit the prospective buyer and to provide relevant information in a way that may induce them to buy the product or service.

Similarly web copy is either long or short text in the form of web literature generally used for selling something over the internet.

However, despite the similarity of purpose, web copy differs a lot from a traditional sales copy sent by, say direct mail.

Though web marketing continues to apply the basic principles of traditional marketing it should use copy writing to successfully do the selling.

One of the main differences between traditional sales copy and web copy is that the former is considered more effective when it is short and targeted.

It is used for drawing the attention of an audience.

If interested the prospective buyer will either place an order over the phone or go to a store for making a purchase, where the sales staff can close the deal.

Web copy on the other hand integrates the process of advertising with sales. In other words, it needs to open and close the deal to be successful.

As part of a fully automated e-commerce solution, web copy does much more than traditional sales copy in as much as it works like a full-fledged sales person. It introduces the internet visitor to a whole range of products and services offered, highlighting their features and benefits, handling potential objections, motivating the visitor to act (call-to action) and finally closing the sale.

Continued next post...

More About The Importance Of Web Copy In Internet Marketing

2008-09-17T23:29:00.003+08:00

While drafting and preparing your sales copy you need to be sensitive to the unique features of internet lingo. This will help you create effective web copy that readers will find exciting - and thus compel them to make a purchase.

Foremost among them is the style of writing. Netizens are more comfortable with information that is presented in a relaxed and informal way - unlike the type used in the usual direct mail sales material which tends to use hyperbole.

The writing style of web copy needs to be engaging and friendly with a soft-sell approach.

Web copy should describe the products with a personal touch creating a relaxed feeling in the reader. It shouldn't sound like thrusting a product on a reader.

Internet users prefer a softer approach.

Make sure that while reading your web copy the readers feel as if someone is talking to them and providing them with information they have been looking for. Even when the purpose is to secure a sale the tone should be more laid back.

You should provide the latest relevant information from the beginning aiming at conveying your message directly and clearly.

Once your message gets through to the reader, your 'call to action' should have them immediately act by going to your sales order form page or your 'request a quote' form.

Peter Brittain

All You Need To Know About Affiliate Internet Marketing

2008-09-13T23:29:00.003+08:00

Affiliate marketing has gained popularity with the rising demand of online Internet marketing. It is an Internet based marketing that involves three parties:

- A merchant creator
- An affiliate of a particular merchant and
- The buyers

Affiliate marketing uses regular advertising methods, which include search engine optimization, email marketing, paid search engine marketing and display advertising. In affiliate marketing when one website is used to drive the traffic to another, it is known as online marketing. So, the key to success in Internet marketing is innovation. You have to make changes and create new ideas to earn profits and success in affiliate marketing.

How does affiliate marketing work?

Whether you start your own website or with a blog, you need to advertise the product. Whenever a visitor comes to your website and clicks on your product, they are sent to another website and if they purchase from that website, you are being paid. So the bottom line is you are being paid for the promotion of a product created by somebody else. And you can make money ranging from 10 to 400 dollars. This is how it works.

Affiliate marketing has proved to be one of the best ways to earn profits within a short span of time. There are various benefits associated with affiliate marketing. Some of these, we will look into and discuss on my next post below.

More About Affiliate Internet Marketing

2008-09-12T23:29:00.002+08:00

It is better to promote products through affiliate marketing than selling products on your own.

- You don’t need to look after the customers’ complaints and queries.
- You can earn benefits from an established brand in the market.
- Billing and delivery of product can be taken care of by the affiliate program.
- You need not invest in stock.
- Usually refunds are absorbed by the program.

So, an affiliate marketer doesn’t have a product of his own because he starts affiliating by selling products for the merchant. Later on, he may start selling his own products. Affiliate marketing can be easily started with low investment. They don’t have to pay rent or hire utilities. Most of the affiliates start their business at their home as a one man operation. They outsource the projects, where they need help such as web design. Affiliate marketers also don’t need any kind of license or fees because it is free to become associated with merchants. They don’t have to keep any kind of inventory of products in their garages. You don’t need any kind of sales experience. There is nothing like face-to-face interaction in this kind of business. The merchant takes concern in matters, such as accepting payment, customer’s services that may include complaints, refunds and many more.

Thus the affiliate marketer has low financial risk and at the same time, he has the potential for earning high profits. Another benefit, being an affiliate marketer is to run his business in any part of the world. He just needs to have an Internet connection. Once he starts with his business set up and his business runs smoothly, it becomes easy to earn money, even if you were relaxing.

The Internet world has given innumerable options to various people to make money with less investment.

Google Chrome Browser

2008-09-10T12:50:00.004+08:00

By Sean Michael Kerner
September 2, 2008

Google's goals for its new Chrome Web browser are simple: Make the Web experience faster and, by extension, make more money for Google.

Google's Chrome browser is now officially available as a beta, offering the promise of increased speed, security and usability. During a conference call and Webcast with the press today from the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., Google trotted out a line-up of engineers to explain what is new for Web users and what Google hopes to gain with Chrome.

Read more here

Article Marketing - A Major Internet Marketing Strategy

2008-09-08T20:48:00.006+08:00

Article marketing forms the foundation of all effective Internet marketing campaigns these days. Having attained the position to be of the industry standard among web marketing strategies, article marketing is the best way to vastly increase the level of natural search engine rankings of your website.

Article marketing depends on a variety of factors, including correct placement of keywords, comprehensive syndication and one-way links to text among several other vital practices that work together to make a site interesting to someone searching the web for specific information.

To be really successful, article marketing should form the core of your regular efforts for tackling competition.

There are several ways in which article marketing can benefit your website. The most potent among them all is by providing greater visibility to the site. In article marketing, you provide the articles you have written to several ezines, websites and blogs free of cost. Your payout is that you are allowed to include a brief bio at the end of the article in the resource box with links to your website.

Article Marketing - A Major Internet Marketing Strategy 2

2008-09-07T20:52:00.006+08:00

Article marketing will let you establish yourself as an expert in your field, provide your site with increased traffic and lead to better search engine ranking for your site. Whatever be your area of expertise, you can be sure that there exists an audience, who is interested to learn more from you and there are many publishers, who are on the look out for low cost or free content.

However, simply writing and submitting articles that lack quality content is a waste of time and effort. Your articles provide you with an opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in your field. You therefore need to write like an expert. It is the best articles that fetch the best results. Your articles need to be focused, presentation should be lucid, the contents easily understandable and useful to the reader with correct grammar, punctuation and sequence of thoughts. Make sure that you do not use the article as means to promote your products. It may have adverse effects. Also avoid using too many links in the text. If there are many links with most of them pointing to your website, it may make the publisher remove the links other than those in the resource box.

Internal Linking

2008-08-28T17:31:00.008+08:00

Here's a great example of how you can enhance your Web site's usability and assist your SEO efforts.

Too often, you may have created a lot of Web pages but they don't "speak" to each other. If a visitor is on my company's internet marketing services page, then they might also be interested in our web analytics services or our search engine marketing services.

So, we've added links to those pages on the Internet Marketing Services page. Simple stuff.

Linking like this creates great internal linking, which is great for the user experience. These internal links provide an opportunity to use a keyword-rich anchor text link to that page.

Internet Usage Up

2008-08-19T02:08:00.005+08:00

Almost half of all internet users now use search engines on a typical day

The percentage of internet users who use search engines on a typical day has been steadily rising from about one-third of all users in 2002, to a new high of just under onehalf (49%).

With this increase, the number of those using a search engine on a typical day is pulling ever closer to the 60% of internet users who use email, arguably the internet’s all-time killer app, on a typical day.

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project

Broadband use

2008-08-18T02:14:00.004+08:00

Those who use broadband connections at home are significantly more likely than those who use dial-up to have ever tried using search engines at all, by 94% to 80%.

They are dramatically more likely to search on a typical day, and this difference persists when other factors, such as age and education, are held constant.

These are the percentages according to type of internet connections for those who search on a typical day: Broadband at home 58% | Dial-up at home 26%

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project

Usability and SEO

2008-08-10T17:39:00.001+08:00

The search engine's job is to deliver the most relevant result against a given search query. In order to be seen as "relevant" to the search engines, you must first be relevant to a user of your web site.

There are no shortcuts here.

You need quality content and pages upon pages of supporting content.

Too often, people redesign their web sites to make them more "user friendly." They believe this is accomplished by having fewer pages with less verbiage and more graphics.

If you think about it, though, people use search to read and research when they're looking for your business.

Tracking seo results

2008-08-05T17:38:00.006+08:00

Tracking the online traffic to your website is called - Website Analytics.

This should be given the upmost importance, after you have completed the search engine optimization process.

You have to be able to determine, which keywords and search items are helping you enhance the traffic to your website.

One tip for all you webmasters would be that search engine optimisation process does take time - so don't be discouraged, if you don’t see any immediate results.

If done correctly, you will slowly be on your way to climbing up the search engine results page of major search engines like Google, Yahoo & Live.

Effective Pay Per Click landing pages

2008-07-29T21:50:00.006+08:00

A landing page is the first page on your website that a potential customer will see when they click on your Google or Yahoo pay per click ad.

This page needs to be designed to convert the maximum number of visitors/leads.

Your landing pages should be professionally designed and should immediately confirm for the visitor that they will find what they came looking for by including the query term in the title and heading of the page.

Your page should have a clear call to action for your visitors to be able to either fill out a form, order a trial, buy a product, request a brochure or subscribe to a service.

The page needs to be succinct and not too heavy on text.

Peter Brittain
Northland Digital Agency

Effective Pay Per Click landing pages - Part 2

2008-07-28T21:12:00.002+08:00

You should have at least one nice image - remember what they say about first impressions!

Your PPC landing page should include the price of the product or a price range for services, and provide a clear incentive to buy - either a discount, product comparison, service guarantee, support etc.

Your landing page should improve visitor retention rates and convert more visitors into leads or customers for your business.

If you have a product or service that is expensive in relative terms - my advice would be not to attempt to sell someone a car or apartment with their first visit - rather get a lead with their name, email address etc - and then plan the next step in your sales strategy - which could be a member of your sales team to send a brochure etc and follow up with a phone call or email.

For general tips and web design strategies - have a look at my web design blog.

Peter Brittain

Effective Link Building Strategies

2008-07-18T01:47:00.006+08:00

Link building is an important search engine optimization technique that helps bloggers or web masters get more traffic to their websites. Link building is popular among net marketers, and can result in a lot of traffic to their websites or blogs.

Even with a well designed site, you may find visitors can't find you. Therefore, they will never see what you are actually selling. All your efforts will be in vain.

At Slinky Internet Marketing we believe that Link building is important for many reasons.

Link building works on the SEO technique. SEO is a service that helps to make the websites or blogs rank up the top on the search engines natural search results.

The ranking is important, since a website that is ranked highly on the search engines will attract more traffic to it. This is the way people look at link building. When the results are displayed on the search engines, people normally click on the first page of links that are displayed.

Link building has so far emerged as a great way to enable a website to rank better on the search engines.

These links are commonly called the back links. These are the links, which are found on other websites and direct people to your website.

You should use your main keywords in the text anchor links.

Peter Brittain

Effective Link Building Strategies - Part 2

2008-07-17T21:09:00.001+08:00

One strategy you can use for link building, is to include a link exchange program. Along with submitting your main page to various web page directories and writing and submitting articles to article directories online, the link exchange program is among the most popular form of link building techniques.

What link exchange does is that two sites exchange their links, so that they can have an exchange of the traffic flow. This can also be done as a 3 way link - which is the recommended way to proceed in my opinion.

You should target web partners with high page ranks (PR).

It is also important to target link partners with sites that have similarities with yours. This will bring you more relevance to your links.

Peter Brittain

Effective Link Building Strategies - Part 3

2008-07-16T10:46:00.003+08:00

By submitting your website to directories you have a good chance of being better ranked, since most of these directories have very high ranks on search engines. The only problem is when directories have more than 30 or so links on each page - which then reduces the PR that is passed on to your website, or when your site is listed on page 20 of your category and the PR doesn't reach that deep.

To submit articles to article directories on the other hand is a very effective strategy, since you will also include some links at the bottom of these articles - in the authors BIO. Some directories allow inline linking in the article, but usually it is best to leave for the authors BIO.

By producing original quality content and telling the reader where they can find more of the same (ie: your website) this will lead Google and potential customers to your website - which is a good thing!

Peter Brittain

Google algorithm and your SEO

2008-07-09T10:29:00.004+08:00

Google is continually tweaking its algorithm. Often changes to the algorithm will change the position of search engine rankings.

It might be that one of the latest changes affected your website.

In 2007, Google released more than 450 changes of the ranking algorithm. That's more than 1 per day!

Peter Brittain
Northland Digital

SEO Shopping carts to rank in the search engines

2008-07-02T18:01:00.012+08:00

The objective of any shopping cart is to allow visitors to shop at a website for products they want. Not all search engines have the same capabilities.

Some search engines are able to navigate through dynamic sites while others are not. Sometimes the search engines that are able to navigate through dynamic sites have problems indexing and navigating through the entire site.

These factors eliminate many shopping websites from the search engine result pages or limit the possibility of their advancement by SEO to the top of the search engine result pages. For a business to be competitive on the WWW, all of its pages need to be indexed and developed correctly.

Many website owners in the past have had to find a company that could optimize their site, create landing pages that focused upon a product or category, or use any number of other means to elevate the shopping cart site in the search engines. These tactics have worked successfully, but the search engines want pages that are of unique value to present to their clients. Dynamic sites impede the model search engines desire.

More on SEO Shopping carts ranking in search engines

2008-07-01T21:16:00.001+08:00

In order to meet the demands of the search engines and be indexed by all search engines, new techniques must be employed. These new seo techniques can make a shopping cart more search engine friendly if they are developed correctly. Some systems will never be search engine friendly and result in poor placement in search engine results.

There are many factors that come into play when attempting to determine if a shopping cart system is not search engine friendly. These factors are important to understand and can help you determine if the system is right for you.

I will attempt to explain some great tips for search engine placement for your shopping cart in some of my following posts.

Peter Brittain
Northland Digital Agency

Mod Rewrite shopping carts for SEO

2008-06-30T10:00:00.004+08:00

Many websites use URL rewrite technologies to make the URL's friendly to the search engines.

Also known as a mod_rewrite, it has been described as "the Swiss Army Knife of URL manipulation"!

However, not all rewritten URL's are the same. Some people rewrite URL's to simply remove the (?) and (&) from the resulting URL. However, this does not provide the best form of rewritten URL.

URL rewrites are programming techniques that allow the returned URL to be more search engine friendly by removing the (?) and (&) from the returned URL found in the location or address bar. This enables the search engines to index the page without having variables or session id's interlaced into the URL.

Peter Brittain
Northland Digital Agency

Expanding on Mod Rewrite shopping carts for SEO

2008-06-29T21:21:00.002+08:00

There are two types of mod rewrites. Each meet the same purpose, but the advanced URL rewrite is more search engine friendly. The following examples will give you an idea of the important factors.

Non-URL Rewrite URL

http://www.yoursportsshop.com/shop.php?cat_id=1&item_id=2

The above URL indicates to the database that the returned information should be from the category with id equal to 1 and the item id equal to 2. This works fine for the system because it understands the variables. Many search engines however do not understand this form of URL.

Simple.

http://www.yoursportsshop.com/shop/1/2.html

The simple URL rewrite will take the URL and modify it so that it appears without the (?) and (&). This enables all search engines to index your all of your pages, but still lacks in some important areas.

Advanced.

http://www.yoursportsshop.com/tennis/wilson-tennis-racquets.html

The advanced URL rewrite enables your URLs to include your keywords. This is another location search engines look for important information about your pages. Being able to include keywords in your URL helps elevate your page to the top of the search engine result pages.

If you require more technical information you can go here or contact us at Slinky Internet Marketing.

Peter Brittain

Social Media & Viral Marketing

2008-06-25T14:45:00.007+08:00

Social media marketing is the method for generating publicity through social media and online community websites.

It is important to know what social networks are.

While online dating websites could be considered the new 'night clubs', social networks are the new malls…places to hang out.

The malls are built by the users and not many rules prevail and without any rules users are connecting with each other and creating content for other people.

People are putting their personal lives online for public display in exchange for human connection.

They're sharing their favourite movies, music & even friends…this is what they used to pin up inside their lockers.

How can this benefit your website?

Social media marketing can include adding RSS feeds and dig buttons, creating and contributing to blogs and incorporating applications like photo slides, galleries and/or YouTube or Metacafe videos with the focus on driving traffic and links from sources other than search engines.

Social media marketing is in many ways connected to viral marketing.

What is viral marketing?

2008-06-24T21:25:00.000+08:00

What is viral marketing?

It's Simple.

Viral Marketing is marketing consumers transport for you.

It's unique content or functionality they can’t get elsewhere and exploits the natural desire to be the first one around with something cool!

This is done through the use of networking in social book marking, video and photo sharing websites.

In a similar way the engagement with blogs achieves the same by sharing content.

Peter Brittain

Heading Tags

2008-06-20T18:21:00.001+08:00

Heading tags are those tags that identify the importance of a piece of content and elevate it above the remaining content. For example, an h1 heading tag is the most important of all heading tags.

When a page uses the h1 tag it announces to the search engines that the enclosed text is of vital importance and it is usually the topic of the page.

For example, a page about Web Design that uses an h1 tag enclosing the words Web Design identifies to the search engine that the main topic of the page is, in fact, Web Design. This can elevate your page above all others that talk about Web Design if they do not utilize the h1 tag.

Over use of the h1 tag on a single page can be considered spam by the SE's. This can get the page banned and may even get the site banned.

We find it is usually better to use the h1, h2 & h3 tags in a methodical procedure down the page leaving the most important juice line for the h1 tag.

Peter Brittain

Search Engine Marketing Strategy

2008-06-16T16:08:00.012+08:00

With growing technology, it has become easier to find any and everything on the Internet and the search engines play a vital role in helping people find relevant information.

Most Businesses have set up their websites and try to have their sites ranked high in the natural results of searches that are displayed to searchers.

This will bring the maximum exposure possible, and the ability to attract plenty of potential customers/clients.

The SEO's job as we all know is to determine the keywords frequently used by visitors, but SEO alone is not enough. You need to conduct marketing efforts online that are aimed at increasing the traffic and conversion.

SEM or search engine marketing encompasses search engine optimization, social marketing, pay per click campaigns and online visibility, which increase branding and recognition.

So in brief, the work of SEM is to promote your website in all the many other areas of website marketing other than SEO.

More about Search Engine Marketing Strategy

2008-06-15T21:28:00.000+08:00

Let’s see how SEM is one of the important strategies to make your online business successful.

SEM is one of the effective ways to maximize profits and make your online presence visible to every one. For this you ought to have the basic knowledge of search engine optimization so that you can apply the right techniques to your website. Otherwise you may find it difficult to cope with your competitors.

Create your website according to the requirements of the search engine. The website must have a theme and also be informative. If you can build a site that is search engine friendly, it will be easier to be indexed, giving it a higher ranking among the search engines. You can also research well before creating the content of the website. This will help you to determine your target market and audience.

Place the keywords in your website in a manner that makes sense when read. This is one of the important aspects of search engine optimization. The best keywords and phrases draw the attention of the visitors. However, don’t over stuff the website with keywords, use it in such a way so that search engine users don't reject your site due to over stuffing.

Always keep yourself updated and review your marketing strategies often, and then apply any changes, if required.

Hire an online professional search engine marketing company if the going gets tough. It would be the best option to handle a search engine marketing campaign. An experienced search engine marketing company will have the right expertise and knowledge to ensure that you have a viable marketing campaign in place. Good SEM uses headlines, sub headlines, short paragraphs and colored themes to help businesses achieve success and meet targets.

Search engine marketing is a great way to promote your website through search engines. So don’t waste time, try out some of the strategies and you may end up with the highest page ranks ever.

Peter Brittain

Effective Search Engine Marketing

2008-06-07T16:17:00.007+08:00

Search Engine Marketing is one thing that can promise your website the sales that you always dreamt of. For this, it is very important that you know a thing or two about the various aspects of search engine optimization. Now, it is not all that difficult that you thought it would be.

Simply follow a few steps and you’ll find that your website is already on the way in the top ten search engine results.

There are many steps or the so called “secrets” that you can advocate to drive more traffic to your website. But, before you can do all that, you should review your website first and find out, what should make it more appealing to your visitors? You can start off by simply studying your page for that matter, a sort of review one might say.

Check whether your main web page has a professional look or a more laid back, peppy kind of look.

Whatever the look may be, you have to think about the target audience and their age group, in order to make your page more appealing to them. The content in your page acts like a hallmark for your website. So, don’t forget to update the page, whenever required. Always remember that good content will always get you into the good books of the search engines.

Peter Brittain

Effective Search Engine Marketing Part 2

2008-06-06T21:31:00.001+08:00

The next step would be reviewing the usage of your keywords.

Try to use too many on anyone page and you could be accused of keyword stuffing. You need to get the page density - just right.

Keyword stuffing is basically spamming. This may lead your website to be blacklisted from the particular search engine.

May be you can use a little trick with the keyword, like including it in your domain name. Just don’t go anywhere beyond that. This will help rankings.

Peter Brittain

Your Search Engine Marketing Guide

2008-05-16T16:30:00.005+08:00

Advance and high technology has opened up opportunities to make our work easier.

But it has also brought some kind of bad effects with it. You can find lots of information on the Internet, some of them are truly useful and the rest is simply worthless information floating around the Internet.

The SEO (Search Engine Optimization) optimizes the ranking of each page and brings the relevant information to you. SEM or search engine marketing is a term, which encompasses all kind of efforts to generate leads.

Search engine marketing includes search engine optimization, pay per click management, and landing page optimization.

Usually the task of SEM is to promote websites by increasing the ranking in major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. There are few steps in search engine marketing, which can guide you in developing your own website.

Your Search Engine Marketing Guide 2

2008-05-15T21:35:00.002+08:00

At the outset, do a thorough market research. Most websites have a targeted audience, which has a large proportion of similar age group, gender and income bracket.

Initially, you may find a smaller proportion of audience focused for a particular segment. As a result you have to establish a target market for your site before you start working on the design or content of the market. For this you have to decide on how you can make your website more appealing.

The next step is to make your visibility on search engines and directories. It is essential to conduct a keyword research. While researching for keywords, you should keep in mind that every person browses the Internet in a different way and use different keywords. Hence, there is a variation of terminology and statements, which are determined by the age, profession, and the part of the world they come from.

Pick those keywords, which are relevant to your site. You can definitely discuss with your friends and colleagues as to who could belong to your target audience and get an idea of how they would go about in their search.

Peter Brittain

Your Search Engine Marketing Guide 3

2008-05-14T21:38:00.002+08:00

After you find good keywords, lay stress on the number of pages to be posted. You can assign different themes to the pages and make them more attractive and appealing.

Take the keyword research list and divide the phrases in between the pages to make sure that they match with the theme. Try to make 200 to 500 words of copy per page. Use the effective keywords in the first para, but make sure that they fit well in the sentences. Do not use hidden layers or spam tricks. You may be penalized or banned for this.

At Slinky we strategically and effectively use headlines, sub-headlines, short paragraphs, fonts and colored themes. Short snappy sales copy with keyword has also proved to be very effective and worthwhile. In case, you don’t want 200 to 500 keyword rich text page. You can create product info sheets or javascript links that expand or contract blocks of text, so that it can be read if necessary by the viewer - and can be crawled by Googlebot.

The main target of SEM is to increase the number of hits to your address. Increased customer calls, leads, and an increase in sales display the effectiveness of any SEM. So don’t wait. Start writing for websites and choose complimentary search engine marketing to attract traffic to your website.

How To Create A Successful Link-Baiting Post

2008-04-02T12:21:00.007+08:00

The easiest and probably the most cost-effective link baiting technique is to post unique blog articles that online users might find interesting to read. The trick here is to offer something truly and comprehensively unique, obviously because there will be thousands more like you trying to achieve the same thing.

So, how do you create one? Well, if you are creative enough, you can do it yourself, but in case you lack that ability to create something valuable out of nothing, then you might have to get help from professionals.

If you have the requisite funds, you can hire professional blog writers and give them the task to create truly and comprehensively unique blog articles for your website. However, just make sure that you own the copyrights, obviously because if you do not do so, other websites may stake their claims on that interesting piece of content that you might be planning to use as bait for generating the required back links.

Peter Brittain

Successful Link Baiting

2008-04-01T21:43:00.000+08:00

There are many variations that you can try while creating a link baiting blog article, but if you want to concentrate only on time-tested methods, I would recommend that you simply include something controversial in your blog article.

Everyone loves a bit of controversy in their lives and if you manage to include something controversial in your blog without ruffling too many feathers, you can rest assured that your blog will be a big hit amongst online users and you will get the desired number of back links for your website.

For example, instead of supporting the ongoing protests against global warming, what you can do is present your own unique views on the subject, backed up by facts and intelligent reasoning. As far as this example is concerned, you can find plenty of information on the Internet, which can be used for backing up your claims and views on the subject.

Peter Brittain

Successful Link Baiting Part 2

2008-03-30T21:44:00.000+08:00

Other popular variations that you can try out would deal with creating a list of something useful such as the top 100 horror movies, top 100 tacks for a particular year, or something like that.

You can also create the list of worst something’s in order to create your blog article even more interesting to read. The best thing about these variations is that here you can really be unique since the list compilations will be based on your personal tastes and preferences.

This will automatically help you attract those who might share your tastes and preferences. And with millions of online users, you can rest assured that there will be thousands like you.

The fan following your blog article generates can then be used for getting the desired number of back links from interested website owners.

Peter Brittain

Monitor Your Website Traffic - Search Engine Marketing

2008-03-27T02:28:00.008+09:00

An online business website that depends on promotion and sales needs a good search engine marketing strategy to be successful and profitable. Generating targeted traffic to the website is the main function of a search engine marketing strategy.

A variety of different traffic building methods and techniques can be used to attract traffic to a particular website. One such widely used methods of search engine marketing that is used by online businesses to generate traffic is “pay per click”. Pay per click is an acceptable method used to attract traffic to your websites, however it is important to monitor it frequently to determine its efficiency in generating traffic that is beneficial to the project.

There are many businesses find paid campaigns prohibitively expensive and a drain on their already scarce resources. Such companies can opt for free campaigns that work on targeted marketing. SEO or search engine optimization is a free traffic generating campaign that is a part of search engine marketing. However, it too requires a lot of research and constant monitoring to produce the desired results.

The keywords selected for SEO need to be relevant to the website concerned and also to the users queries. For search engine optimization to be effective in attracting traffic the websites should be listed in the first few pages.

Peter Brittain
Web Design Blog Search Marketing

More On Monitoring Your Search Engine Marketing

2008-03-26T21:48:00.001+09:00

Pay per click is more effective in pulling traffic as it lists websites on the first page of the SERP.

The quality of the traffic pulled is also of a high order. The only reason why businesses don't use it is because it's too expensive. However there are ways to reduce the cost of PPC so that businesses do not overshoot the budget. One way is to minimize the cost is to use less popular keywords. Although they generate relatively less traffic it is sufficient to meet the requirements of the website in question. Another smart way is to bid on misspelled keywords. It does sound strange but the fact is that too many visitors make typos on search engines. This weakness of visitors can be used to your advantage and attract some more traffic to your website.

Installing link exchange system is also recommended. In this system you have non-competitive websites link to your websites. This way you generate more traffic to your website from partner websites. Having professionally written articles related to your business also helps, the articles pose problems to visitors and offer your company's name as a solution thereby increasing the traffic.

Updating articles on a weekly basis makes your website rich with content encouraging visitors to come back again and again and also visitors are more likely to recommend your sites to their friends and associates, thus increasing the traffic to your website. Distributing your articles throughout the net helps as more and more people are aware of your company's product and thus increasing traffic to your website.

Only 3 – 6% of all the websites on the World Wide Web are correctly optimized, even though thousands of websites are launched by businesses and individuals every day. The only way to stay visible on the Internet is to have an effective SEO strategy.

Peter Brittain

Managing Search Engine Marketing Campaigns

2008-03-10T02:24:00.006+09:00

By Peter Brittain - Managing Director Northland Digital & Slinky Internet Marketing

Managing websites is not merely optimizing the right terms in natural and pay per click searches but ensuring that the two work together. A common misconception is that there are tricks one can use in search engine marketing. In reality, there is no such thing as tricks in search engine marketing, which is in fact very similar to marketing in general. More often it is about getting the word about your products and services out, keeping the site updated with fresh content and generally ensuring that visitors recommend the site to others.

It will help if you attempt to make your site social media compatible by offering relevant information and news on the latest developments in the niche you are present in. These tactics are great marketing tools that help you to market your site to targeted audience effectively.

Search engine optimization and Pay per click strategies should compliment each other and not contradict each other.

You can ensure this by keeping a close watch on the terms that convert to leads on pay per click and the terms that bring traffic naturally to your website. If your websites appear on the first page naturally and on paid listings, it gives you an opportunity to advertise an additional message to the user. This will also keep your paid search budget well within your control.

If you notice that your natural ranking is consistently higher it means that your page is doing extremely well in Google's complex Quality Score algorithm. This will result in making your PPC bidding lower compared to others in the same position and control your marketing budget.

Search marketing also has some technical aspects similar to other types of marketing activities. The website should have rich and updated content that is unique. Make sure the server is configured correctly and indexed. Search marketing requires all the efforts that print marketers make to keep production costs down and increase efficiency.

Spreading the word around is important in any marketing activity and search marketing is no exception to it, building links on friendly sites, blog, and other sites related to your sector is one way to do this. Your site becomes a talking point and helps your marketing effort.

Having done all the above it is important to measure the effectiveness of the marketing strategy. A Web analytics package such as Google Analytics, which is free, can help in this. Continuously monitor and track your PPC campaign, test ad groups and landing pages to see if they are targeting effectively. Keep updating the content on the site and get the word out.

Increasing site traffic is not the end you also need to track your conversion rates. If your website has gained an additional 500 hits a month you need to see how many of those additional 500 visitors actually got converted to being your customers.

Find ways to increase traffic and then find ways to increase the conversion rates to make your search engine marketing campaign a success.

Peter Brittain

The Most Common Mistakes with SEO

2008-03-07T09:18:00.005+09:00

Have you ever started on some SEO work and got a bad feeling that you might be doing something wrong?

Here are some mistakes made in SEO, as well as tips on how to avoid them.

Not using your homepage

It is by far your most powerful page because the majority of your inbound links will go there. You also need words on your homepage, and your words have to include your target phrases. You can test what works, trying keywords of varying degrees of difficulty and ambition. It is important to maintain a certain keyword density for your targeted phrases.

Mistakes with SEO 2

2008-03-06T22:27:00.000+09:00

Relying too much the homepage

This is just as bad. There is only so far you can go until there comes a point when you have to realize that you need to do well on pages other than your homepage. You have to pass that success on to other pages and if you have developed your channels you will be able to use that success.

Use the power of your home page to target new niches and use internal links to pass that success on deeper into your site. And of course build deep links direct to the internal pages.

Missing The Big Picture

Most optimisation advice is given for a single page, word or technique. If a site is to help a small business then that site is going to need a lot of pages targeting many keywords, and using a wide range of techniques. All of these pages, keywords and techniques need to work together so you need a plan to coordinate that. So what are the techniques? Keyword research, strategy, site structure and navigation, on page SEO, link building and online press releases.

Mistakes with SEO 3

2008-03-05T22:28:00.000+09:00

Not having A keyword strategy

Your SEO strategy should serve the company, marketing and brand strategies. A keyword strategy is a prioritized list of the company’s target markets' niches, as defined by the keywords used in those niches - the words and phrases used in search engines.

Not coordinating SEO with your marketing departments

There is little point in having new content without SEO to maximize the visitors seeing that content. There is little point in SEO without marketing to convert the visitors to whatever it is you want them to do. And there is little point in marketing without sales. You have to make them work together and be part of the process.

Not monitoring results

You have to monitor the numbers buying your product or signing up to your newsletter. This is done with website analytics programs. You may find that the market niche you hoped would work ends up not working, and in that case move on. You have to monitor traffic, rankings and response for relevant searches. If you are getting results you need to move on to the next stage; that might be moving on to the next niche, or perhaps your results are coming from your homepage and you now have to move to get that success transferred to pages deeper in your site.

The secret to getting the best directory listing on the internet

2008-03-05T12:26:00.009+09:00

By Peter Brittain - Managing Director Northland Digital & Slinky Internet Marketing

We all know that DMOZ is the famous Open Directory Project, right?

The Open Directory Project (ODP) is known as DMOZ because of its original domain name, directory.mozilla.org and is a multilingual open content directory of web sites that is developed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors.

Being listed in the directory is free.
DMOZ uses a hierarchical system for organizing website listings. Listings are sorted into categories, which can then include sub-categories under them.

Google uses DMOZ as a directory source so it is important to have your site listed in its index. Google's own directory is actually the whole DMOZ directory.

Robozilla which is DMOZ’s web crawler checks the status of all sites listed and periodically flags websites which appear to have moved or disappeared. This helps to reduce the link rot in its web directory.

Now, it has been said that without a DMOZ listing you will not rank well in Google. This is not true, but it is one of the best authoritative links around.

How do I get listed?
There are two ways you can submit your site to DMOZ. The first way is to find the category your site belongs to and enter your website there.

Another way is to go directly to the region where your business is located. Then look for the category you want within that region and submit your website in that location.

Always try to submit to a category that has an editor and be patient. Getting listed is notoriously slow, but the results can be well worth it. We know that being listed will probably help our Google rankings, but getting in can take a very long time.

There is a massive accumulation of sites waiting to be reviewed. Each editor can only edit their own categories.

One of the main reasons websites seem to wait forever to get listed is actually the fault of the submitter of the site. The website must be put in the correct category – not one that nearly fits or one that you would like it in more. This causes a delay with the submission being passed along to the correct category and added to the queue - again.

So, when submitting a site, always take time to find the right category for it. Don't be enticed to submit it to a category that is higher up than it belongs, because it won't be accepted there and will cause delays.

How good is a listing in DMOZ?
It will certainly help your bid for a first page listing in Google and you will sometimes find that the description used by the search engines when they list your website in their natural results will be from the DMOZ listing, not from your websites description Meta tag.

A quality link from an authoritative site or directory like Yahoo or DMOZ linking back to you is better than 500+ links from link farms or other irrelevant sources as far as your link building efforts are concerned..

Not many people actually use DMOZ for searches so a DMOZ listing is not really for generating traffic. However, its data can be freely downloaded, and any website, however small, can use it.
This has some significant effects for websites that are listed in DMOZ.

PageRank is an integral part of Google's position algorithm, and top PageRank can mean superior rankings. The PageRank within a website is increased by other sites that link to it.
The higher the PageRank of the pages that link to it, the better it is for the site that the link points to.

A DMOZ listing produces two important links to a site - one from DMOZ and one from the Google directory.

Both of these usually have high PageRank. Then add the links from the thousands of small sites that have downloaded the DMOZ directory to their own and you can see why it is very valuable for your website to have a DMOZ listing.

Peter Brittain

Mistakes with SEO 4

2008-03-04T22:29:00.000+09:00

Not doing SEO now

Here’s a simple point; every day you wait means it will be more expensive to get the same results. If you can, get to the top for a collection of keywords – this will give you momentum and help you stay at the top, and it becomes cheaper. Serious search engine success allows for serious business success - put these things together and you will have success. If you don’t do the work now it’s going to cost you more. There is a simple reason for this and it’s inbound links.

Not understanding structure and navigation

Any site for a reasonably sized business is going to need a lot of pages and if you have lots of pages you need a site structure and an accompanying site navigation that is optimized. Even on a small site it’s possible to get this wrong and waste all your work, which reminds you that you have to get everything working together. You might have wonderfully optimized pages and links but if you don’t have your navigation right or your structure isn’t right then your success will be limited.

What should you do? It’s hard to give a quick answer, but you should organize your site content into channels of related content.

Peter Brittain
Northland Digital

Northland Digital Agency

2008-02-15T13:16:00.005+09:00

By Peter Brittain - Managing Director Northland Digital & Slinky Internet Marketing

I started writing this blog back in 2002 when it was located on another domain. Recently I moved all the content over to Blogger when I restructured all the group businesses of the Northland Digital Agency - all onto their own domain names.

I was operating 4 or 5 separate businesses under the Slinky Interactive business, from the slinky.com.au domain.

Now, from an internet marketers point of view, this would be a complete no-no, but, I felt the need to do it to keep each business with it’s own focus and set of goals - and I felt the need for each to have their own unique identity.

The online dating business will remain on the slinky.com.au domain while the web design site is now Slinky Web Design and specializes in Website Design & Website Development.

The Business Web Directory & Search Engine will possibly suffer the most, because that has gone from having a Google page rank of 4 to zero today. It also had over 20,000+ links pointing to it - to now just a couple of hundred today.

Lucky we’re experts at link building!

Our Perth Internet Marketing business which used to operate under the identities of Slinky Interactive and Northland Marketing has been consolidated under the Slinky Internet Marketing brand name.

Our 1900 services telecommunications service bureau business has been retained under the Slinky Interactive banner.

Here's to the future...

Peter Brittain

Directory link building for link popularity and superior SEO

2008-01-22T16:33:00.005+09:00

In search engine optimisation (SEO), off page issues have become more and more significant as they relate to rankings. In particular, link popularity can build or destroy a website with the search engines.

Link popularity is the amount and quality of the incoming links that are pointing to your website. It can be determined that these other sites that link to you, consider your site important enough to link to.

From the search engines point of view, your website is considered important as well.

One of the most difficult areas of SEO is building link popularity because the search engines don't want unnaturally fashioned links, so there are no easy ways to create link popularity.

The days of link farms and huge link exchange programs are history. Those strategies now could have you removed from a search engine.

The search engines like links from valued websites. These are called ‘authoritative’ sites. The first one you should try and get a link from is the Open Directory Project (ODP) otherwise known as DMOZ. Listings are free, but can take a notoriously long time to get. Make sure you follow the instructions to the letter – or you will be wasting your time trying.

Yahoo is the other major directory, but this will cost you a couple of hundred bucks each year.

The other aspects the search engines look for are, if the links are coming from websites that share the same subject or focus as your website.

Again, this is where the directories provide a strong basis from which to construct your link building strategy, because you can list your website in an appropriate relevant category – with related products or services to yours.

Apart from the link popularity you gain by getting a major or authoritative website to link to you, you will also gain additional visibility and subsequently traffic for your Web site.

Good luck with your link building strategy.

Peter Brittain

SEO web page design service

2008-01-03T23:08:00.005+09:00

To construct a great content rich website, it takes a great deal of planning - upfront.

You need a very detailed plan to give to your web graphics designer to implement.

Slinky Internet Marketing offer a SEO Web Page Design Service. This is not designing the site to look pretty – our web designers, can do that.

Our "SEO Design" service, plans crucial elements like file structures and intuitive navigation that will let the search engines decipher your website effortlessly.

We will also advise on issues such as page loading times - which is so critical to your customers experience.

These factors are one way to help you get found and loved by all the major search engines.

Peter Brittain

Optimising your web pages for great Pay-Per-Click results

2007-10-18T16:47:00.006+08:00

When you pay the search engines per click for traffic, it is a good way to work out very quickly if you have a problem with your website.

While it is vital to your internet marketing strategy that your website has quick load times - it is down right painful if you don’t have optimised landing pages for your Pay-Per-Click marketing!

If you are experiencing poor conversions from your test traffic, one of the first things that you should do is run a Web Page Speed Report for your site.

A great website performance site with a Web Page Analyser is webpageoptimisation.com

The reports will tell your total page sizes including image and script sizes and whether anything needs to optimised. For a user on a dial up connection (in 2008, still up to 30% of some of our site traffic) the site still needs to load fast. Any more than a couple of seconds or so, and you start to lose your customers.

A lot of web designers make the mistake of making the pages too large, because they have a fast broadband connection. Their clients may also have a fast connection, so this aspect can easily go unnoticed.

We also explain web page design on one of our web pages here.

You need to keep your main page images optimized to less than 20KB and if possible down around 13KB. Small logos etc should be only a couple of KB.

Good luck optimising your site.

Peter Brittain

SEO Target Marketing 1

2007-09-08T19:57:00.002+08:00

If you want to have a successful business, you need to make sure that all your company information and advertisements reaches your target audience. This may not be easy, but new techniques that include SEO target marketing can be a great help in attaining your advertising goals.

Survival and growth of a business is greatly dependant on target marketing. Unknowingly or by design, you may already be using target marketing techniques in your advertising campaigns.

Target marketing consists of directing your advertisements and commercials to focus on a particular segment of consumers. If you are selectively placing your commercials and ads on certain websites based on their readers and site contents, it means you are already using target marketing to promote your business. In this scenario SEO target marketing is simply extending, what you are already doing a little further.

SEO Target Marketing 2

2007-09-07T20:42:00.000+08:00

During target marketing your main aim is to invite the right traffic, which really means such people, who may be interested and looking for whatever product you have on offer. It is therefore of utmost important that all the content that you provide on your website is directly related to the product or service, which you are offering to consumers. Not only that, your content should also be interesting and informative. So, if your site is about painting, make sure that you do not add content related to gardening or something else that is irrelevant to what your site is about.

Search engine optimization better known as SEO is a system, which requires preparation of your site's content, in a way that makes it keyword rich i.e. including specific keywords that may be found easily by search engine robots. This lets search engines index your site quickly. In order to know, which keywords or key phrases will best suit your type of business with respect to search engine optimization, you can take help from a number of SEO websites and marketing tools that are easily available today. Once you decide upon the keywords and phrases relevant to your business from the SEO point of view, you can start in earnest on a target marketing plan.

SEO Target Marketing 3

2007-09-06T20:44:00.000+08:00

Among the many ways to utilize SEO target marketing, nicely written blogs having particular themes that are updated frequently are quite popular. To ensure that your site experiences greater number of hits, and which refers to your site being listed on the search result page of a search engine, your site will need to have regular additions of new content. This is easily possible through blogs, which regularly have fresh articles added with information and text in easily searchable forms. In their quest for learning new things netizens keep searching blogs for interesting content and placing their ads and information on pages carrying blogs, which would provide a high degree of visibility to their business.

The biggest advantage of blogs is that they allow you to add tags or keywords to every entry/post. There are many blog search engines through which it is possible to link the keywords to several other information systems and blogs. When you use the right keywords on the right posts, you are assured of cross- linking your site to a number of different blogs and websites. This will give your advertisements exposure to a very large audience, which will gain information about your company.

Making Money Online With Click Bank

2007-05-28T21:29:00.001+08:00

Click bank is the most well-known and popular affiliate program to earn money online. You must have seen ads flashing on the net to help you change your fortune by becoming a member of the affiliate network. This may not need much investment. All you need is a computer and an Internet connection. There are several products on the click bank site that you can promote and earn good profits. Simply create an account and log on to visit an online market.

Click bank can be well termed as online marketing, as you will find variety of products put up for sale. After creating an account, you can choose any of the products to promote them. Always be cautious, when choosing any product. There are millions of products available leaving you with many options. Go for the products that pay you higher. However at the same time, these products should not be very common, since there will be several people selling the same products reducing your chances to earn profits. It is good to make a research concerning these

products that would be available and which could most easily be sold. Choose rare products to sell, which would offer good value in return.

Once you have selected your product, you need to start promoting it. The best way you can promote it is to write reviews on it, and offer samples to receive customers’ feedback. You can purchase the product first, test it and then write a proper review on the same to let customers know, how it can benefit them. Your review should give the readers a complete detail about the product and how it would satisfy them. Remember when a customer has to make a purchase, he/she will always think, how the product will suit them. Thus always write about the benefits and gains the customers would have.

Making Money Online With Click Bank 2

2007-05-27T21:32:00.001+08:00

You can also create blogs and script articles on your website concerning the product. Also put your link, so that after looking at the review, the readers can immediately click on the link and take a look at the product. This will help you turn readers into buyers. Also create a feedback page, where customers can share their comments concerning the products. You can also use these comments to advertise the product by letting other readers know how the product has benefited other users. Always ask the browsers to leave their contact details like the email address, so that you can email them concerning the details of the product. Add a link to the product in the mail that will help them view it.

You would need to constantly promote your website, as well as the products you choose to sell. Thus do not relax your nerves after choosing a product and expect an automatic sale. You need to be creative and unique, especially when there are more than 2 sellers for the same product. You need to reach to the prospects before others do and leave a better impression. Giving better customer service will help you to have loyal customers. Keep in touch with your customers through mails or chats and offer them complete assistance.

Be creative and find different ways to promote your products. You can also post articles and blogs on popular directories along with a link attached to your website. This is one of the best ways to earn money. After you have been in the market for long, you can build your own network and employ other people to do marketing and promotion for you, while you enjoy earning high perks.

Digg-ing for SEO success

2007-03-09T23:29:00.007+09:00

In case you haven't been on the Internet for the past year or so, there has been a tremendous amount of attention being captured by social networking sites such as Digg.

As Digg explains things, it is "a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web."

So, what does this have to with Search Engine Marketing?

There is a phenomena called the Digg effect, which can bring a ton of traffic to your site in a small amount of time - sometimes within minutes.

Everything on Digg, from news to videos to images — is submitted by the digg community. Once something is submitted, other people see it and Digg what they like best. If your submission receives enough Diggs, it is promoted to the front page for millions of visitors to see.

While digg readers despise seo-planted stories, if you do have something topical or free to use or even something that's just cool, you won't feel the wrath of the digg community, and end up with your post getting buried.

Peter Brittain

Digg-ing for SEO success 2

2007-03-08T21:53:00.000+09:00

So how can you use this site for your benefit?

One of the key elements of getting a story on the home page is to have either a ton of people who have "dugg" your posting, or if you happen to know and get some of the top users on Digg to vote for your story, you'll have no time reaching the front.

While there are sites that sell services to "Digg" stories for you, at some point in time, Digg will put a stop to that.

There is another site that allows you to alert any of your friends when you have posted on digg, called Digg Alerts.

But despite all the gaming that goes on, at the end of the day, you need to have a compelling story to have the readers react to.

You need to have a compelling title and summary to get any reader to even bother checking out your site. This can also be called link baiting and is covered in another part of this blog. Link baiting is fast becoming a golden way to get quick traffic.

The other thing to consider is to review all of Digg's categories - if your story does not fit on the site, don't waste your time.

The expectation set forth when using Digg in as part of your marketing strategy should be to create buzz, build brand name and drive traffic to your site.

Digg users are generally tech-savvy so you will need to be patient and become part of the Digg community by submitting great stories you find - often, it will already be posted, but every once in a while you can beat them to the punch, and you gain a little bit of Digg credibility while your at it.

Peter Brittain

When should I consider SEO services?

2007-02-18T23:16:00.003+09:00

SEO should be implemented during the conception of your website design strategy.

If you're working with Slinky, we will SEO-design your site with every consideration for the search engine optimisation process from the beginning.

This saves you money having to correct those issues that might be creating website ranking problems within the search engines. We will give you or your web graphics designer clear guidelines to use that will keep the search engines and your customers happy.

Slinky’s site-based optimisation services are available if you already have a website, but are not having any success being found. We analyse your site to identify bad architecture in its structure and unhelpful content.

We can make recommendations that will make your site both user- and search engine-friendly.

In addition, during the search optimisation process we will make specific changes designed to improve your site's functionality, appearance, and overall quality for search engines and your customers.

Peter Brittain

Branding - An Effective Internet Marketing Strategy

2007-02-06T20:57:00.002+09:00

Branding has an important role to play in every organization. To survive in the competitive world, one has to create a brand for the company to be recognized among several other brands. To name a few, Coca Cola, Reliance has made a mark with their relevant industries. Internet itself envisages a huge market and thus you could pose a big challenge to brand your products. The Internet branding strategy differs from the normal methods.

The websites when came first in the market have been very successful in maintaining the brand. Sites like Amazon and EBay are still very popular and referred to. When entering the Internet market, you must be lucky enough to have no competition or else you need to step in the field with lot of financial backing and strong branding strategies to survive the competition. To build a brand, you need to make sure that your website is SEO (search engine optimized). An SEO website makes it easy to come and display your brand on the first page making it visible to vast number of people.

To make your website Search engine optimized, you need to be aware of the keywords that your prospects may use. For example, if you have an article written on ‘Growing potatoes in a Patio”, make sure that you use the words ‘potato’, ‘growing’ and ‘patio’ at least 3 to 4 times depending on the length of your article. This will make it easy for the search engine to locate your site and pull it out on the first page. As you generate content, you should be aware about the words to be used that will be keyed in the search menu and then use them accordingly.

More On Branding For Internet Marketing

2007-02-05T21:01:00.004+09:00

A search engine optimized websites helps to generate large amount of traffic. If it comes up with 200 pages with each page having at least 50 visitors, you will have 10000 visitors daily. Thus you can easily create a brand for your company. To your surprise the website will also appear on the top 10 rankings, thus helping you to gain popularity. The prospects will keep looking out for your website every time they want some information. Hence, you get both credibility and recognition.

To make things easy, always make use of word tracker. This helps you know, what are the common key words used by the browsers and you would know what exactly to use in your content.

You will also get the details of most common words and how they are used and how many websites use them. This will help you make your website unique and thus stand out on the first page of Yahoo, Google, or MSN. It would be a good idea to come up with a company logo that will make branding easy and effective. People can always recognize you with the logo and as they say pictures are easier to remember than names.

So after a good research, come up with an effective Internet and strong marketing strategy that will help you to register a top place in the competition. Branding the company is the best way, you can achieve credibility and goodwill. It is always good to take professional help, so that you don’t miss out on anything and something that is important.

Creating A Great Internet Marketing Plan

2007-01-08T22:09:00.001+09:00

A well conceived Internet marketing plan can successfully project the name of your business earning you the recognition of your own brand. It will help you reach out to a huge group of potential clients and consumers. If you need to know how to go about making an Internet marketing plan for your business here are a few tips to help you start off in the right direction.

Determine your objective: You first need to consider what you want to achieve through Internet marketing. Ask yourself whether your aim is to

• expand your customer base,
• provide your present customers with fresh information and services,
• increase the sale of your products and services,
• create an online community from your target audience,
• find out how much the Internet marketing plan is going to cost

Creating A Great Internet Marketing Plan 2

2007-01-07T22:12:00.001+09:00

Once you figure out what you really want to achieve from your marketing plan and have a definite budget for the plan it will help you make a truly effective marketing plan.

Create a marketing funnel: Let your online marketing plan be based on the funnel theory. It consists of beginning at the top end of the funnel that means low-priced offerings or freebies, then gradually moving customers towards higher-end products that expect them to spend increasingly more money as they move towards the narrower parts of the funnel. For this approach you need to have a range of products at various price levels for creating the funnel effect. If there are gaps in your funnel-type marketing plan you will have to develop and offer new products for filling those gaps.

Plan to counter competition: You can send across a strong marketing message when you know well how you are placed in the existing competitive market. Go about this exercise cautiously.

Make an online search for your business using keywords, which a user may type to come upon your website. Once your reach the search result pages jot down the URLs of your five topmost competitors. Use Alexa for checking their traffic rankings and find out other websites with a link to them. Try to find out if your competitors have something better or unique to offer their consumers. Now critically look for the gaps in the services or products your competitors are offering.

Creating A Great Internet Marketing Plan 3

2007-01-06T22:13:00.001+09:00

Go for target marketing:

You must efficiently regulate your advertising and marketing activities. Instead of trying to sell to all and sundry you must focus your efforts on your target customers that you can define and locate easily. They may belong to a specific gender i.e. male or female, a particular age group or some clearly definable social, cultural or economic group. Try to locate their hangouts, both online and offline. Find out what professional or occupational group they have an allegiance to, what their earning level is and whether they can afford the products or service you are offering.

Create a brand for your business:

You must ensure that your brand name helps you clearly stand out from the rest of your competitors. The least you can do is buy a domain name, preferably the .com, that includes your name as well as that of your business. Whether or not you are able to get the URL of your choice depend on the availability of names. Later on, you can add a few more .com versions named after your products.

Another potential way to get noticed by your target market is through a domain name associated with the solution you provide with your products or services for the related problem. For example, if you sell seepage and water leak repair products or services you could try a domain name like RepairYourBasement.com. The name will give your business a distinct identity and people searching for basement repair solutions are bound to land at your website. Many of such people are likely to become your lifelong customers or clients.

The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups

2006-10-04T20:37:00.001+08:00

by Paul Graham

In the Q & A period after a recent talk, someone asked what made startups fail. After standing there gaping for a few seconds I realized this was kind of a trick question. It's equivalent to asking how to make a startup succeed—if you avoid every cause of failure, you succeed—and that's too big a question to answer on the fly.

Afterwards I realized it could be helpful to look at the problem from this direction. If you have a list of all the things you shouldn't do, you can turn that into a recipe for succeeding just by negating. And this form of list may be more useful in practice. It's easier to catch yourself doing something you shouldn't than always to remember to do something you should. [1]

In a sense there's just one mistake that kills startups: not making something users want. If you make something users want, you'll probably be fine, whatever else you do or don't do. And if you don't make something users want, then you're dead, whatever else you do or don't do. So really this is a list of 18 things that cause startups not to make something users want. Nearly all failure funnels through that.