Introduction
In case you haven’t noticed yet, Yahoo has been hard at work lately. If you missed it, Yahoo now has its own toolbar. In a similar fashion the Google toolbar works, Yahoo just introduced Web Rank’. Web Rank’ happens to be Yahoo’s new search engine algorithm, as well as the name it gave its new toolbar.
The Yahoo Web Rank’ toolbar works a bit like the Google PageRank’ toolbar and is a technical measurement of a particular URL’s popularity. If you download and install the Yahoo Web Rank’ feature on the Yahoo Companion Toolbar, an icon will display the Web Rank’ value of each URL that you visit.
Just like Google, Web Rank’ values range from 1 to 10, with the higher number depicting higher link popularity. So, it is hoped (!) that a site with a higher Web Rank will offer more information and content, at least that’s how it should work.
Note that Web Rank’ is only in Beta release, which means Yahoo is still experimenting with it and modifications in the way it works are possible, until the final version is released sometime in the next few weeks.
To help determine a site’s Web Rank’ value, Yahoo’s Companion Toolbar collects anonymous URL data about sites visited by toolbar users who have enabled the Web Rank’ feature and then sends that information back to Yahoo. According to Yahoo, the new toolbar does not collect personal identity information about you, such as your name, phone number, physical address or email address, etc.
The anonymous URL data is sent to Yahoo’s servers and the Web Rank’ value is returned to the Companion Toolbar as one single measurement of the popularity of the Web page or URL you are currently visiting.
You will see a small Yahoo icon on your Companion Toolbar, displaying the Web Rank’ value of the site you are currently visiting. The value will be between 1 and 10.
Yahoo’s Web Rank’ algorithm numbers are calculated using a sophisticated scoring formula developed in Yahoo’s labs that provides a measure of the popularity of the Web page or Web site that you are viewing.
Installing Yahoo’s new Web Rank’ toolbar is easy. With the help of Yahoo’s Companion Toolbar, you will have the option of enabling the Web Rank’ feature. If you want to use it, choose the “Install with Web Rank” button on the configuration panel and the Web Rank’ feature will be enabled during the installation of your new toolbar. It took me less than two minutes to do the whole thing.
Once you have it installed on your machine, should you ever change your mind, you can turn it off if you want. Doing this is easy: from the Yahoo Companion Toolbar, just click the “Toolbar Settings” button and uncheck “Enable Web Rank.” That way, the Companion Toolbar will stop collecting anonymous URL data about the sites you visit once Web Rank’ has been disabled.
If you are running your toolbar from a corporate network and if you need to disable it, you will need to block http://cpn.yahoo-webrank.net at your firewall or proxy server. This will disable the Web Rank feature from sending any anonymous URL data back to Yahoo’s servers.
Do you really need the Yahoo Companion Toolbar?
You don’t need to install the Companion Toolbar if you don’t want too. Yahoo’s Web Rank’ feature is opt-in only and it’s not required to install the Companion Toolbar if you don’t need it. If you decide to have it installed, you will be asked if you would like to enable the Web Rank’ feature in the toolbar.
If you choose to enable it, a toolbar icon will display the Web Rank’ value for the URL that you are currently visiting, if that value is in fact available.
Web Rank’s cool new features
I had time to experiment with Yahoo’s new toolbar and discovered some cool new features. One of them is what Yahoo calls “Recent Searches”. This feature is a pull down menu of your last 30 search terms through Yahoo Companion. At the time I tested it, 12 query terms were directly visible and I could access an additional 18 with the scroll bar.
According to Yahoo, no information is ever sent back to any of their servers on any of your recent searches. If, for privacy reasons or otherwise, you want to turn off “Recent Searches”, you can do it at any time by selecting the ‘Clear Recent Searches’ under the “Toolbar Settings” button. That button has a small picture of a pencil on it to better help you find the button.
The Recent Searches feature can be disabled entirely by deselecting the menu item called ‘Enable Recent Searches’ through the “Toolbar Settings” menu. This action will delete all the recent search terms in the client and disable the feature.
Other features and benefits to searchers
Yahoo’s new Web Rank’ algorithm has even more features. It can also provide the following important benefits to its users:
1) It will help Yahoo identify critical new trends and usage habits in Internet activity, in an effort to better enhance the quality and relevance of the products and services people are searching on.
2) It will also help Yahoo to correctly identify new websites faster, and then add these newer sites into its search index, resulting in more relevant results and significantly improved overall search results.
Features and benefits to webmasters and site owners
For site owners and webmasters, the new Yahoo Web Rank’ algorithm will also deliver the following features and benefits:
1) Yahoo’s Web Rank’ algorithm delivers a valuable indicator of how popular your site is perceived by other site visitors or webmasters.
2) Additionally, Yahoo’s new Web Rank’ algorithm will help alert Yahoo’s Slurp (Yahoo’s search crawler or spider robot), to the existence of a particular website or Web page, and direct its spider to visit that website or Web page for inclusion in its search index, if it isn’t already in it.
Conclusion
As I have written in my last article on the New Yahoo, it is clear now that Yahoo wants to not only conserve its lead position on Google, but it also wishes to improve on it. The next few months should be exciting, as the industry witnesses other new developments, either in new search engine algorithms or new toolbars and the like.
This industry is advancing at break-neck speed and I predict that the search engine industry will be a $30 Billion-plus industry in 2005-2006. Judging at the speed the Internet is growing, it may well be over $ 100 Billion by 2010.
Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
Interview With Eurekster CEO
If you keep tabs on the latest search engine news, you’ll no doubt realize that we are getting closer to a merging of search engine technology and social networking. While Google may have created the sizzle with its recent launch of Orkut along with rumors that it may one day roll it into its search engine, there is a company already making headway with social searching.
Although Eurekster may technically still be in Beta testing (launched in January of this year), there is no doubt that the offspring of SLI Systems and RealContacts is making major advancements in combining social networking with search engine technology.
Eurekster makes use of its own SearchMemory� technology which remembers the sites a user finds useful and presents them higher in the results the next time they search. Then, Eurekster lets a user and their friends share their searches and sites, so when they do a “hotel” search, for example, they’ll see the hotel sites their friends also found useful, moved up in the results and marked with an icon.
I had an opportunity to discuss with Eurekster CEO, Grant Ryan the future of social searching and find out what Eurekster is doing to get a step ahead of Google, Yahoo and MSN.
[Andy Beal] Tell me about the search engine technology being developed by Eurekster?
[Grant Ryan] The Internet is a huge place – how do we know what is interesting out there? Word of mouth is the most common way for new ideas to spread and the “What’s Hot” function of Eurekster allows users to see what is going on with their contacts without seeing exactly who does what. This has already worked in interesting ways. There was an earthquake in my home town and someone immediately did a search for that to find out how big it was. Two people I know who were overseas at the time saw this in the “Recent Searches” area of Eurekster and rang home to check that everything was ok. It is a great way to share information with your contacts.
We’ve also shown how search engines can now also remember that you or your friends liked one particular search result over the thousands of others, and deliver it on top of the results for all future searches performed by your network of contacts.
[AB] What new developments in search do you see happening in the couple of years?
[GR] We think that personalization will be the main area of improvement. Search technology has evolved from computers deciding what is relevant (e.g. Infoseek, AltaVista), to paid editors deciding what is relevant (e.g. Yahoo, LookSmart), to webmasters deciding what is relevant through link analysis (e.g. Google, Teoma).
The next logical step is that users decide what is relevant based on their knowledge and experiences. Search engines that learn and adapt results based on your behavior, giving personalized results is the next big opportunity and challenge.
Another big opportunity is local search – this is a form of personalization – delivering search results based on one’s location. This is, to some extent, like merging the yellow pages with search. This has a lot of potential commercially, especially since there still are greater numbers of yellow page advertisers out there than search engine advertisers.
[AB] What impact do you see social networking having on the future of search engine technology?
[GR] Word of mouth or social networking is the most commonly used method for filtering information in everyday life. We use it every day to get recommendations for doctors, lawyers, places to stay on holiday, and so on. As the quantity of information explodes, word of mouth information filtering will become even more important. It is inevitable that this natural social process will be used to filter information on the Internet and search engines are the logical place to start.
The reason that social networks are important for information filtering is that there are billions of people in the world with different views about what is important and interesting. One of the ways we choose people with whom to associate is based on the fact that we either enjoy something about their perspectives of the world or share similar views. In either case, this is a useful way to help work out what is likely to be more relevant to you.
[AB] Do you foresee a time when commercial search results (product/services) will be separated from informational search results (white papers/educational sites)?
[GR] Yes it may head that way. I can naturally see that there will be more tabs on search engines to allow users to focus only on products or just on educational information, etc. Most users simply want to type in a search query and have results appear — so I suspect they will continue to be mixed by default.
[AB] How do you see search engine technology impacting our use of portable technology such as PDAs and Cell phones?
[GR]I would be surprised if PDAs and Cell phones will ever be used as a primary source for searching given the requirement for small screen size. Mobile search engines of the future are likely to take into account your precise location when serving results as you are more likely to be looking for directions, local news, sport etc.
[AB] If search engine users gave up a little of their privacy and allowed their search habits to be monitored, would this allow the search engines to provide better, customized results?
[GR] Yes – if users want truly customized services then the provider has to know something about their preferences. The level of service you can get from a travel agent or investment advisor would be severely limited if you had to start from scratch every time you needed something. Most search engines assume that everyone typing in a term is looking for the same thing and give them exactly the same results!
[AB] Grant, tell us what Eurekster is doing to personalize the search experience?
[GR] At Eurekster we have developed a way to learn from your past search history and that of your contacts in a way to provide personalized and more relevant search results. There are strong incentives for search engines to keep their promises on privacy given there is more value in keeping a long term quality relationship, compared to the negative publicity and loss of customer trust.
[AB] How can Eurekster compete with Google or Yahoo?
[GR] I have been involved in the search business for over 6 years now and every year have read articles about how the search wars have been won (different companies over time e.g. AltaVista/Infoseek, Yahoo, Inktomi, Google). It is inevitable that companies will continue to come up with new technologies that offer consumers greater choice and new improvements. That is what we are doing at Eurekster, so have a play and tell us what you think — and what features you want us to add next.
Author Name: Andy Beal
Company: KeywordRanking.com
Email: andy@keywordranking.com
Author Bio:
Andy Beal is Vice President of Search Marketing for WebSourced, Inc and KeywordRanking.com, global leaders in professional search engine marketing. Highly respected as a source of search engine marketing advice, Andy has had articles published around the world and is a repeat speaker at Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Strategies conferences. Clients include Real.com, Alaska Air, Peopleclick, Monica Lewinsky and NBC. You can reach Andy at andy@keywordranking.com and view his daily SEO blog at www.searchenginelowdown.com.
Don’t Drop Winning Ad Campaigns!
Newcomers to pay-per-click advertising are often stunned at how quickly they can achieve success marketing affiliate products. Don’t make the beginners mistake of dropping a winning ad campaign.
Here’s a fairly common mistake that is made by the newbie to the pay-per-click scene.
So you’ve started a Google AdWords campaign, and you’ve registered as an affiliate with several different products, and you’ve found at least one product that’s making you money.
Let’s say you’ve found a toy company that pays you 10% of the sale to promote their products (just for a tangible example we’ll refer to it as ‘Toy Company #1’)
You’ve played around, tweaked your ads, and you’re getting a little success. Bravo! Things are running in the black, and you’re making steady profits.
But wait, you’re still combing the Internet, looking for new and better opportunities when bam, all of a sudden you find Toy Company #2. Wow, Toy Company #2 looks really great. It pays a 20% commission on all sales, and the landing page seems easier and more intuitive than the landing page for Toy Company #1.
Being the wise and quick-to-evolve pay-per-clicker you are, you swiftly join the affiliate program for Toy Company #2 and set up an ad campaign for it, using many of the same ads and keywords that you’ve had such great success with in promoting Toy Company #1.
Surprise! Toy Company #2 is a great find! It converts much better than Toy Company #1 and moreover it pays much more per sale! You’re ecstatic! Greater success!
And then comes the mistake. Thinking ruefully what a sucker you’ve been all along for promoting Toy Company #1 instead of Toy Company #2, you pull the plug on your ad campaign for Toy Company #1.
It’s only human nature to want to do this. After all, Toy Company #1 wasn’t performing as well as #2 is. You aren’t seeing nearly as high a profit margin.
But the hard truth of the matter is this: Toy Company #1 was making you steady money! It wasn’t running in the red. It wasn’t a drain on your budget or resources. It was a winner.
Profit is profit. Every little bit adds up. Sure, Toy Company #1 wasn’t making you much money, but even a little bit of profit is more than you had. Imagine if you found seven more companies that performed like it ‘ at the end of the month, all those ‘little’ profits would add up to a ‘big’ overall profit.
The best solution is to keep the ad campaign that’s already working, and add new campaigns that show even better profits to it.
But what about the fact that you’re now competing with yourself? On the surface it doesn’t seem to make sense to promote two different products that are aimed at the same audience.
The answer to this objection is simple. Why shouldn’t you compete with yourself? That way, no matter which choice the consumer makes, you win. Some of your audience, for whatever reason, just isn’t going to buy products from Toy Company #2. Some of them will only buy from Toy Company #1. Don’t you want to make profits from those people too?
The lesson is simple. Don’t drop winning ad campaigns!
Author Bio:
Daniel Brough is the founder of AdWord Wizards, a free mentoring program designed to teach anyone how to profit from pay-per-click search engines. Want to start a profitable AdWords campaign in less than 30 minutes? Come to http://www.adwordwizard.com and sign up for this free program.
Traditional Search Engine Optimization
First I will define what traditional SEO is. Search engine optimization is the process of fine tuning (otherwise referred to as optimizing) your web site to reflect specific keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business and for which you want to attract visitors to your site who are searching for such words.
This optimization relates to a variety of elements, not only on your web site’s home page, but its sub pages as well. Those elements can include things like title tags, meta tags, alt tags, link structure, link popularity and the content of the site itself. Once your web site is properly optimized, the goal then is to make sure that each of the top crawler based search engines find your site and add as many pages as possible in their indices. These engines will usually start with your home page and then work their way to other pages of the site.
This is where another important aspect of SEO comes into play – making sure the sub pages or at least the main areas of your site are accessible from the home page. It can be assumed that if many of your pages are optimized for different keywords and can be found in the search engines, they will draw traffic to your site.
Search engine optimization also involves making sure your site is listed in the major directories such as Yahoo and Open Directory to name a few. I won’t go into detail about proper directory submissions here as that is another topic of its own but will say that it is important to make sure you are listed in the right category and have a title and description that is reflective of the keywords you are trying to target.
Other elements of SEO include monitoring your positioning in the search engines, making adjustments as necessary to your site to stay in top position and submitting to new engines or directories that come along as well.
Pay Per Click
Now I will define what PPC is using Overture as an example. PPC or pay per click is a service in which an advertiser selects specific keywords or phrases and then creates a listing that will show up when someone searches for that phrase. The advertiser selects an amount they are willing to pay for each click on their listing which results in a visit to their site ‘ thus the term ‘pay per click’. At Overture, you can bid anywhere from $.10 up to $50.00 for each click.
If other advertisers have selected the same keyword or phrase as yours, you then are competing against them for the highest position. Whoever is willing to spend the most shows up first and the others following in order.
What makes PPC attractive in the case of Overture is that they distribute their paid listings to other partner sites. In fact, if you bid in one of the top three positions at Overture, your listings will also show up at some of the leading search engines including Alta Vista, HotBot, Infospace, iWon, Lycos, MSN, Yahoo and others. They also show up in several meta crawlers and other minor search engines.
Therefore if you bid for top placement at Overture, you will show up at these partner sites as well. There are many other pay per click programs including Google AdWords, ah-ha.com, FindWhat, Sprinks and Looksmart to name a few. All function in a similar manner.
What PPC has allowed one to do then is to instantly ‘pay’ their way to the top whereas traditional SEO takes a lot of time and effort.
The overriding question then is how valuable is PPC and should it replace standard search engine optimization techniques?
Pros and Cons of Pay Per Click
First of all you must understand that PPC will never help improve your positioning in the regular editorial search results. They most always appear in a “Sponsored or Featured” area which is usually at the top or side of the regular search results.
While it is nice to ‘show up first’ there are still a lot of end users, myself included, that do not click on the “paid” listings but rather will search through the regular editorial search results.
Pay per click will not optimize your site so that it reflects who you are and what you offer. If your site is poorly optimized before you begin to advertise it with PPC, it will still be poorly optimized afterwards. Another downfall is that when you stop paying for PPC, it disappears and so does the traffic it brings!
On the other hand, a well executed SEO plan will improve your position in the regular editorial search results. You will have a finely tuned web site that reflects who you are and what you offer. You are not held hostage to having to continuously throw money at search engines to maintain your listings.
In most cases, once you have good positioning in the regular search results, you will continually receive free traffic. It may require some minor adjustments from time to time but all in all brings in consistent free traffic so long as people are searching for your products or services.
I am not saying that PPC is bad and you shouldn’t do it for if you have the budget that will go beyond a traditional SEO campaign, then by all means, utilize PPC as well. You gain instant exposure and only pay for actual visitors to your site.
But never ever disregard SEO in place of PPC! SEO should be the foundation of your online marketing strategy because in the long run, the benefits of SEO will far outweigh anything else you do.
Author Bio:
David Wallace is CEO and founder of SearchRank, an original search engine optimization and marketing firm providing keyword analysis, organic search engine optimization, link popularity enhancement, pay per click management, search engine friendly web design and ongoing campaign maintenance.
The Failure Of The SEO System – Part 2
I frequent a number of search engine optimization forums on a daily basis and the one thing I see more of than anything else are optimizers who will quickly tell you that this method is evil, or that method is spam, or this other method is cross-linking. The search engines each have their own policy pertaining to these methods, and most are in the form of ‘guidelines’. Note the emphasis on the word guidelines, as I want to make it clear what they really are.
A guideline is not a hard and fast rule, it is there to set a basis only. Some engines say to ‘avoid’ this method or that one, but they do not come right out and say not to use it at all. This is because that while the method is abused by some, it has it’s value by legitimate relevant usage. The key word here is relevancy. The search engine care more about the relevancy of their listings than anything else. They want the surfer to find exactly what it is he or she searched for. That is the bottom line. The rest is semantics.
The search engines do not generally penalize you for using what some search engine optimizers will tell you is an evil method, besides actual pure spam of course, if you are using it to promote relevant search results.
Some Basic Examples
Some optimizers will tell you that you should not link to a restaurant web site from a retail hardware web site, quoting the phrase of, it is not relevant to your web site. However this is not the type of relevancy the search engines care about. The only relevancy that affects their listings is that the link text (anchor text) is relevant to the web site the link points to. These optimizers neglect to tell you that.
Some optimizers will tell you that cross-linking your web sites is the devil’s work at play. Again, the search engines only concern is with relevancy. As long as you maintain relevancy in your links, I have yet to see bans or penalization for those reasons. When it does happen, it is generally due to a competitor being able to write a very good report to the search engine and usually includes other factors that contribute. There are forums that share email templates for reporting competitors to the search engines in a well written, professional sounding manner with it’s members. The funny part is these forums preach ‘ethical’ SEO.
In Summary
It is not the methods that are bad. It is the way some people use those methods that makes them bad. But alas, this is not what too many misguided people preach. Be careful who you listen to. It is very easy to be pushed the wrong way by people whose only wish is to impose their morals and thoughts into your thinking.
Author Bio:
Aaron Turpen is the proprietor of Aaronz WebWorkz, a full-service online company catering to small and home-based businesses. Aaronz WebWorkz offers a wide variety of services including Web development, newsletter publishing, consultation, and more. http://www.AaronzWebWorkz.com
Web Strategy For Success
Building a successful web strategy is both an art and a science. To simplify the process, we break it down into five steps. You need to attract the right visitors to your site, engage their interest, build their trust, lead them to take action and measure the results.
Building a successful web strategy is both an art and a science. To simplify the process, we break it down into five steps. You need to attract the right visitors to your site, engage their interest, build their trust, lead them to take action and measure the results.
1. Get the right people to your site. If you’re not attracting the right visitors you’re not building your business. Rather than relying on any one method, consider a variety of techniques to bring targeted traffic to your site including:
– Search Engine optimization
– Pay-per-click campaigns
– Email marketing and email newsletters
– Links to related, non-competitive businesses
– Real-world promotions, advertisements and PR
2. Establish your credibility.
Just as you would in the real world sales environment, start to build rapport with your visitors as soon as they arrive. Establish your credibility. Show that your company understands their needs and offers the products and services to meet them.
Your site must have a professional look and feel that reflects your company and marketplace. The copy should speak to your visitors in an appropriate “voice” and emphasize the benefits– “What’s in it for me?”
3. Give your visitors what they need.
Provide appropriate information and options at the right time. How do people make the decision to buy your product or service? As much as possible, your site should support the personal and psychological variables of your potential clients. Offer alternatives for those who:
– already know what they want
– have an idea of what they want, but need more info
– are browsing and need direction
4. Motivate them to take action: conversion rates.
This is what it’s all about. Conversion is the process in which you persuade visitors to take the action you want them to take: signup for a newsletter, submit a form, or make a purchase. How can you improve your conversion rate?
Make the action steps obvious in your copy– its color, style, and position on the page. Minimize elements that detract from the action step, and provide reassurance with your privacy policy, guarantee, and testimonials. You might even consider a FLASH demo or web audio to guide visitors through the conversion process.
5. Measure the results.
With web analytical tools you can learn what’s working and what’s not. When you’ve identified a problem area, make revisions or updates– but be methodical. Change only one thing at a time so you can figure out if it actually helps.
Author Bio:
Barry Harrison is the author of “REDiTIPS” eMarketing Newsletter and a partner in Resolve Digital, Web Strategy for the Real World.
Introduction
Did you realize there are only three types of online promotion?… This statement may seem odd and even untrue in your mind, but I am speaking in more general terms than you might be thinking.
Let me explain.
The three types of promotion are Junk, Active and Passive promotions.
Junk promotions are money pits
Junk promotions are those that seem to produce results, but by their very nature are really only illusionary promotions.
For example, let me begin with FFA (Free For All) pages. You might find yourself subscribing to a submission program that tricks you into believing you are submitting your links to tens of thousands search engines.
According to the Open Directory website, they have only approved 1705 search engines and directories for inclusion in their database (http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/).
I like using the DMOZ directory as an example because submitted links are tested by human beings with integrity, for the honesty used in site description. Search Engine Watch and other search watchers tend to show fewer than these 1705 engines, primarily because a lot of the engines provide very little value.
Yes, you can submit your URL to a FFA page, but FFA�s usually only permit 100 or 1000 links on their page at any one time. So, if ten thousand people are submitting a link to an FFA page on a daily basis, then the average life of your link is between seven minutes and 144 minutes. I suspect the actual number of submitters is much higher and the results are much worse. Given that few people surf FFA pages, the chances of your submission being of any real value is practically nill!
Most of the people telling you that you can submit your site to tens of thousands of search engines are truly only submitting your site to FFA pages! Beware of the false promises.
Another junk promotion method is Safe Lists. A safe list is a mailing group that is signed up to be received by people who want to submit their own ads. Now, most safe lists have thousands of subscribers who are able to submit their ads daily or weekly. The person signed up to receive the list will receive anywhere from twenty to 140+ messages a day from the list. These messages will be received by people only interested in promoting their own thing who do not have the right motivation to open, let alone read Your Advertising. As a result, thousands of messages go out daily or weekly that will never be seen by anyone but the sender of the ad. Where is the value in that? There is none.
Active promotions
Active promotions are the type that require you to go out on a daily basis or a weekly basis and put out your advertisements. With active promotions, you will either place your advertising or you will not sell your products or services. Your choice is simple — work or starve.
Examples of active promotions include Pay Per Click Search Engines (PPCSE�s), Direct Email, Ezine Advertising, Solo Ezine Ads, Newsletter Publishing, Ezine Ad Swaps, Classified Ads, Auctions, Site Sponsorship and Banner Ads.
Some people are able to utilize these methods very productively, while others are destined to drop their money into the bottomless pit of failed Internet promotions.
Passive promotions
Passive promotions are those promotions that can continue to provide results for you long after you have invested the work to make them available to the Internet community.
Examples of passive promotions include: Link Exchanges, Articles, Ebooks, Content Exchanges and Writing Testimonials for others.
Let�s look at articles as a solid example of my point.
You are reading an article that I have written to promote my own business. This article is timeless and therefore could have been written five years ago and still have been as valuable as it is today.
Due to the fact that the article is timeless, it can and will be placed in newsletters/ezines and their accompanying online archives, on websites and in ebooks for many more years to come.
As a result, this article will continue to serve me well beyond the time in which I wrote it and submitted it to publishers and webmasters for public consumption and publication.
This is the best example I can give you of an excellent passive promotional method.
Avoid the money pits
Many try and even fewer succeed to conquer the Internet and to produce their dreams of online wealth.
My hope is that you will be one of the people who conquer the challenges before you and to make a nice living while working online. It will take drive, determination, study plus trial and error, but you can make it work for you.
Please continue to educate yourself so that you can avoid the money pits – instead, strive to find the money barrels. It can be done. I am living proof.
Author Bio:
Stone Evans owns the Home Business Resource Directory where you can find everything you`ll ever need to start, run and grow a home based business at: http://www.Home-Business.com
Why MSN Won’t Buy AOL
You may have seen the online headlines this week “MSN in talks with AOL execs to buy AOL from Time/Warner.” At first glance you may think “wow that would make MSN pretty powerful.” After all, while AOL’s customer base is shrinking, it is still substantial. MSN’s reach is expanding, especially as the portal continues to grow in popularity. By merging these two client bases, Microsoft would have an impressive number of paying portal customers. Whether one portal was dropped in favor of the other would remain to be seen, but they could end up with about of the world’s internet portal customers.
So you are probably wondering: why won’t this happen? One word: Competition.
Microsoft has already faced a barrage of anti-trust lawsuits filed by various US and global governments citing its apparent monopoly on the computer software/operating system market. In fact, in the most recent ruling against them by the EU, the company was fined many hundreds of millions of dollars for stifling competition in the European Union. Or course, Microsoft will appeal and likely settle out of court for an undisclosed amount of money, all the time preaching their innocence.
But that stifling of competition is why Microsoft will not buy AOL. In fact, they likely can not buy AOL because of the assets the company has. If you look at it in these terms you begin to understand.
Let’s start with browsers. AOL owns Netscape. Sure, it isn’t much of a player anymore, but for Microsoft to buy this company, they could effectively put Netscape out of business. Not that Microsoft didn’t already do that with the settlement they reached last year with AOL.
There is also ICQ and AIM, both instant messenger platforms are owned by AOL. MSN could shut both down with the purchase. AOL also owns Mapquest.com, a competitor to Microsoft Mappoint and they own Winamp.com, which is a direct competitor to Windows Media player.
There are also a few others, like MovieFone.com, CompuServe and the ODP (DMOZ.org) which aren’t necessarily direct competitors to MSN or Microsoft, but would be a loss for the internet if Microsoft purchased them.
So when you consider that AOL is a direct competitor of Microsoft and/or MSN in more than a dozen different markets, you can see that even if they did make an offer, it’s highly unlikely that such a merger would be approved by the various regulatory boards located on American soil. Not to mention the various world governments and other organizations which would lose sleep over such a merger. This is why I don’t think Microsoft could make a play for AOL.
But consider this option. What if (and this is probably more of a long stretch than an MSN/AOL merger) Microsoft and Google formed a temporary alliance and bought AOL and its assets and divided them among themselves. Google could get control of those properties which they don’t already compete in (such as AIM or ICQ, Mapquest and Winamp) while Microsoft could get the portal and its customers.
This scenario is probably more of a stretch than the one where Microsoft buys AOL. But as we’ve found in the past, with search and search engines you just never know.
Author Bio:
Rob Sullivan
Production Manager
Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Positioning Specialists
Failure of the SEO system
I see people daily preaching about how web site owners need to pay upwards of $7,500.00 or more for a marketing consultant who also practices search engine optimization. The reason given for this is that any SEO can get you top rankings, but that will not help you sell your products. They preach that searchers have no trust, they say that getting a #1 position for your relevant keywords will only bring visitors, not sales.
To an extent this is true. But the fact is, this is said so you will pay the fee they ask. They know their service, they know their prospect’s mindset, and they do a fine job of turning you into a new customer.
You know your products or services better than they possibly could. You know your customers better than they ever could. This stands true of any industry or business model. Make that work for you!
Instead of shelling out the dinero, why not sit down and lay out the groundwork for a plan of action based on what you know about your business and it’s customers. What do they want to see, how much detail do they want to see, and above all, what does it take to close the sale.
Once you know all of this, the rest is merely laying it all out on the web site according to your plan. It sounds easy, and it really is not, it takes hard work on your part. But you are not relying on someone who claims that they will research your business and be expert enough in a matter of days to sell your product line.
Do not fall for the hype
Once you have a web site that you are confident will convert searchers into sales, it is time to make sure you have searchers finding your web site. These same marketing consultants will tell you that you need them for this also. They will tell you that you need to concentrate on the lesser search terms that will bring in lesser amounts of traffic. They will tell you that this method will bring you better quality traffic because it targets the visitor better. Bull! The fact is these marketers know that they do not have the ability or the means to target the more competitive search terms and keywords. They use this method so that they can show you good results using the lesser keywords, to keep you ignorant and happy in your newfound traffic. I say ignorant, because they will not tell you that you could in fact have twice to three times the targeted traffic if you used someone who was a true professional.
Professionalism
There are different definitions of a marketing professional, but for this purpose we are talking about search engine optimization professionals. There are many who call themselves professionals, but who will not go after the competitive keywords and phrases. They are the ones who will tell you it is better to be happy with less traffic, and thus, less sales. They do not practice search engine optimization, because they do not know how, or are not willing to do that much work. The true SEO will make sure that you get the absolute most that you possibly can for your money spent.
There are some well published so called professional SEO’s out there that are excellent at promoting themselves. They can make you think their way is God’s way with an almost religious zeal and grand speeches about what is ‘ethical’.
In summary, watch out for self hype, do not think you have to pay someone $7,500.00 or more to get less than the best rankings, and do some research on the marketer you choose to use. Google searches are often an excellent way of seeing the real story behind marketers.
Author: William Cross
What Is RSS?
By now you have probably heard lots of talk about RSS news feeds or XML news feeds. In fact, if you look at our home page you will see that we offer a link to our own XML news feed. So you’ve probably been wondering – what the heck is an RSS news feed?
Quoting the official RSS v1.0 specification: “RDF Site Summary (RSS) is a lightweight multipurpose extensible metadata description and syndication format.” And in case you are wondering, RDF is short for “Resource Description Framework – a metadata standard.”
So what does this mean? Well, take a look at our XML feed. If you open it in your browser, it doesn’t make much sense. Unless you have a browser capable of displaying RSS you won’t see too much that is interesting. But, if you have a program which can display the feed, it does look much better.
Take a look at a flash application I found which displays XML properly. On our site, I built a sample page which displays the feed. What this handy little application does is display the feed according to the parameters I specify. I tell it how many items of the feed to display, as well as whether to display the title and description, or just the title. Depending on the application which you use to display the feed, you can control many other elements including the font size and color, whether to put boxes around the text, even what color the boxes should be.
So by now you are probably asking yourself “that’s kinda cool, but why would I want to do that?”
Well there could be many reasons. Primarily it is a way to increase traffic to your site. Since it can be difficult to spread your message, consider how much easier it is if someone else displays your feed on their site? Now you can spread your message more effectively by letting other sites display the feed for you. Many sites (like Yahoo!) offer their users the ability to display RSS feeds on their home page. On my Yahoo! home page, I have a couple RSS feeds linked, so that I can see what’s new on other sites.
There are also sites out there to which you can request that your feed be added to their database of feeds. That way you can make your feed available to millions of other web users who may be looking for information on topics on which you are an expert. One such site is called Syndic8. Here you can find thousands of feeds. Imagine getting your site listed here and having others freely display links to your site via the feed.
Also, search engines are getting into indexing feeds. Yahoo! for example has indexed the feed from searchengineposition. Now when we are found for our keywords, our XML is also listed in the results, increasing the chances of other sites using our feed as a source of information on their site. Some applications also have the ability to display XML feeds. Microsoft Office 2003 for example can import an XML feed into Excel.
And maintaining the feed is quite easy. I simply open it up in notepad and edit it whenever a new article is posted. It takes me about 30 seconds to update it, and it is instantly updated on any site displaying our feed. And since we control the output of that feed (because it resides on our site) we don’t have to worry about anyone changing it to suit their needs. Sure they can change the number of items displayed but they can’t change the wording in the feed. That’s the beauty of this format. You can control what is seen. The more compelling your articles (or whatever you are supplying via the feed), the more likely that someone will click on one of your links. Maybe you are starting to see why this could potentially be a good source of qualified traffic?
It takes a little getting used to the format of an XML feed – there are very specific rules one must follow to ensure that the feed is in the proper format – but once you get used to it the update process is very smooth. There are also free tools out to help you validate your feed to ensure it will work properly. Feedvalidator.org is one I use occasionally if our feed doesn’t display properly.
So if you have ever wondered about XML or RSS feeds or were considering employing them on your site, I hope I have provided you with some more information to help you make the decision.
Author Bio:
Rob Sullivan
Production Manager
Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Positioning Specialists
