Google's search engine dominance is rarely in question, but folks such as Wikipedia and Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales hope to change that, using open source search engines powered by people instead of mathematical algorithms. Experts consider the future of search, wondering if anything can wrest the search engine and Web services throne from Google.

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and Wikia, last week shared his view on why search engine startups bother to compete with Google. The search engine has, by most accounts, 60 percent to 70 percent of the search market worldwide.

Game over, right? Not necessarily, according to Wales, who told me the lack of a network effect enables users to easily move from one search service to the next. This is in contrast to other Web services, such as Facebook or MySpace, whose social networks can bar people from leaving.

Once you've put your info in Facebook or MySpace, it's in there. Despite the Google-fostered OpenSocial effort, it's still not practical to move all of your data from one social network to the next.

Google users aren't encumbered by this; they are free to move about from Web service to Web service. Wales told me that if a company can offer search with augmented value, such as Wikia's peer-influenced approach of letting users instead of machines influence search results, that company might have a shot at luring some users from the Googlezilla.

Enderle Group analyst Rob Enderle agreed with Wales that the switching cost for the user is low, meaning Google could get nibbled to death by services that target specific users or groups.

However, he allowed that the advantage Google has is that we are all "creatures of habit and need a cattle prod, once we have become familiar with a product, to move us off of it."

I agree with this statement, which is reflective of the "if it isn't broke don't fix it" adage. And, while I appreciate Wales' and Enderle's shared sentiment about opportunities for new players in search, I respectfully disagree.

If a new player, be it Wikia, Cuil, Mahalo, or Hakia, begins to take share from Google, Google or someone else will likely buy it. Look at Microsoft and Powerset. Powerset positioned its semantic search as Google killer and Microsoft snapped it up.

Also, while desktop search ads are currently the main moneymaker accounting for Google's $16 billion a year-plus sales, Google has just created a mobile operating system in Android that seems primed to keep users searching Google from smart phones and God knows what other devices.

If you trust that mobile is the next frontier for search, then Google already has a leg up provided carriers create phones in addition to the new T-Mobile G1.

Toss Google's Gmail and other apps, which may be paired with ads, YouTube's video ads and new e-commerce platform, and a litany of other Web services Google monetizes or plans to monetize with ads, and it's hard to find a crack in Google's great armor.

From: eWeek.com by  Clint Boulton

One of the buzz topics in the marketing world for the past few months is the fact that directory submission is dieing as a method of link development and search engine optimization.  To add to the buzz, if you regularly check up on Google’s Webmaster Guidelines you will notice that it no longer lists submitting your site to relevant directories as something you should do.  To some, this is a sign that search engines no longer view directories as important.

Have you figured out the problem with this logic yet?  Well, here it is: Google is not the only search engine.  While Google may receive the vast majority of search volume, it doesn’t mean that they get all of it.  As a result, I have been finding great success in optimizing websites for keywords in Yahoo and MSN lately.  Optimizing for a single search engine means that you are missing out on a large portion of your traffic.

Case in point, my first website Easy Online Money Making barely scratches the rankings on Google (it is Google long-tail optimized), and if you are curious no I have not taken the time to redesign it since I made it.  On the flip side, if you go to Yahoo and search for Online Money Making a very expensive keyword to advertise for, you will find that my website is ranked #2 in Yahoo and I did this thanks to a very large number of directory submissions when I didn’t know better.

Trial and error ended up showing me that directory submissions may not be weighted as much in Google as they were in the good old days of marketing, but they clearly still play a significant role in Yahoo’s ranking algorithm.

My suggestion is that you find high quality directories and submit to them manually (there are plenty on the various webmaster forums) and then use semi-automated solutions such as ResellerGo to generate a blanket effect where you are gaining links by sheer force.  This should by no means use the majority of your link building campaign, but it is the equivalent of keeping 5% of your portfolio in gold; you know that it will still be there in the end and any good investor will have at least a little.

I think of the whole thing the same way I see nofollow comments, who cares if Google doesn’t follow a nofollow comment, as long as it brings in targeted traffic directly or indirectly it all works out just the same.

From: webpronews.com by James Spinosa

A large part of market research for online businesses is identifying the competition and determining what it will take to outrank them in the SERPs (define).

Real world and online competitors may be very different sets of players. Some fierce rivals in the brick and mortar world may not even be online. They may have badly optimized or poorly converting Web sites, or not understand the local search space. In these cases, you're at a big advantage -- at least until they catch on.

On the other hand, you may find competitors in the virtual world who you don't see as a true threat to your business. However, if they rank above you for the search terms you want to rank for, they're your online competition and need to be considered as such.

Find Your Competitors

Figuring out your online competitors isn't difficult. It can be time consuming, but it's worth the investment. Do it yourself rather than leaving it to others because you'll get a detailed view of your marketplace, which is invaluable when making decisions about the future of your business.

First, search for the top five terms you want to rank for in Google, MSN, and Yahoo and see who's earned a place on page one. Then, see who ranks for those same terms in Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and MSN Live Local. Next, find out who's bidding on same keyword phrases in the PPCs (define). Google rules, so concentrate your efforts there, but don't ignore the other two.

Dismiss any irrelevant results that don't belong or pose no threat. For example, Wikipedia ranks well for all kinds of things, but they don't sell anything, so don't worry about it.

See which sites rank well for several terms or in several places. Note their PageRank, the number of Google backlinks, and the number of pages on the site. Look at the terms that their pages are optimized for and if they rank well for them. These are all clues to the power of those sites. You'll discover that there are only a few true competitors to unseat.

Learn From Your Competitors

Take a close look at these Web sites and learn what you can from them. Are they appealing, informative, and easy to use? What are they doing that you can adapt to strengthen your own Web site and business?

Explore their backlinks in Google and Yahoo to see if there are any opportunities to get links for your own site from Web sites that link to them. Be discriminating, though. Just because they have a link doesn't mean it's a good link that's helping them rank.

In Google Maps and the other local search platforms, look at what categories the top ranking businesses are in. Consider your own categories and determine what, if any, changes may help you rank better.

Review your rivals' local business listings. Do they have many reviews (good or bad)? Do they have a lot Web references (pages on the Internet that mention them, but don't necessarily link to them)? Is their profile as complete as possible, and does it include appealing images and videos, and complete details about their hours, services, brands, s served, and so on? Learn from your competitors and do it better in your own profiles.

Also, look for factors that could give competitors a natural advantage over you in local search. For example, are the businesses physically located near the post office, which likely gives them a boost in local algorithms? Do their business names include good keywords?

As you can imagine, when Google sees an enterprise named Denver Tire Repair, it's easily convinced that it repairs tires in Denver. A business that does the same thing, but has a less descriptive title, like Joe's Shop, doesn't inspire the same level of confidence. There's not too much you can do about your or official business name, but it does help to be aware that others may be outranking you with the help of those factors.

Be The Best

You can learn all types of details about your competition from their Web sites, so use your competitive research to improve your Web site and your business. How do your pricing and services compare? Are your rivals open at times when you're closed? Do they deliver or offer incentives, like coupons or new customer discounts? Again, determine what they're doing better than you and then improve yourself.

Ranking well in local search can only take your business so far. In the end, it's how well you serve your customers that makes you successful. So never stop striving to be better than others in both the virtual world and the real world.

From: clickZ.com by Mary Bowling

The increasing awareness about what SEO is and what it can do is a good thing. However, it's important to beware of "instant experts" who know a few things about what's going on, but don't get the whole picture. This ranges from major SEO firms dispensing bad, and even very risky advice, to smaller firms that are overtly ripping people off.

A large Fortune 500 client that had just fired its SEO firm recently brought us in. The firm was part of a much larger agency, and the project related to moving the client's Web site from an existing domain to a new one. While the existing domain was a respected Web site, with high PageRank, this was part of a re-branding move by the company.

The prior SEO firm had correctly recommended that they implement redirects from the old domain to the new one. But, they had explicitly suggested 302 redirects. It really, really hurt to see that. Any SEO with a basic amount of experience knows that the 302 is a message to the search engines to not transfer the link equity (link juice, PageRank, whatever) from the old to the new one, and that the redirect of choice is a 301.

In addition, this SEO firm allowed the client to pick a Content Management System with basic architectural problems that made it hostile toward search engines.

So when you're picking an SEO firm, make sure you pick one that can demonstrate its competency through reputation, references, or both. In addition, make sure they explain all their recommendations in detail to you, and make sure that they make sense. You can even use an external expert to poke holes in it. Challenging recommendations is never a bad thing to do.

Bad Advice From Articles, Too

You can also see not-so-good, or even bad advice presented in articles written online (but surely not this one!). One blog recently caught my eye on Microsoft's Office site, "Optimize Your Web Site For Better Ranking In Search Engine Results." There's some good information and advice in here, but there's misinformation as well.

One of the more interesting tidbits was the statement they make about putting text on your Web pages: "So do write text -- at least 200 words per page." This is excellent advice, but all the more interesting because of its specificity. While the post is from the Microsoft Office team, I wonder if there is something of a clue into Live Search here about how much content it would like to see on important pages.

The thing that was scary to me, though, was the way the article started:

Keywords, meta tags, search phrases: learn the lingo. Meta tags are one or more significant words we call "keywords" that are separated by commas into phrases and placed in your Web site code. Search engines use meta tags to index sites so that people can find what they are looking for.

The entire first section was about keyword meta tags. We still get calls from people who think that tweaking your keyword meta tags is all that's required for SEO. It hurts to see that being treated as the primary recommendation on a site that should be authoritative.

Ultimately, there's some possibility that keyword meta tags influence the rankings in Yahoo and Live Search, but the degree of influence they have is very, very, very, very small (I'd insert more "verys" but my editors won't let me). And in Google, it isn't a factor at all.

The article continues with some good advice on titles, headings, and content. I was recovering a bit at this point, when I got to the section called "Get Linked Up." The advice is 100 percent centered on doing reciprocal linking. Ouch!

Not too long ago, I used to receive a dozen requests a day for reciprocal links. Every Webmaster who knew anything about SEO was out there trying to swap links.

Yes, reciprocal links with relevant Web sites can help your rankings. But if this is all you do with your link building campaigns, you won't get anywhere. Link swaps could be considered barter, which makes them a compensated link. Search engines may count these for less than a one-way link.

If a large percentage of your links are reciprocal in nature, then you could be headed for real trouble. This was the subject of the BigDaddy update by Google back in early 2006. In this update Google did many things, but one of them was to discount the value of reciprocal links for sites that had too many of them.

Summary

Just because someone calls themselves an SEO, or even if they're writing publicly about it, doesn't make them an expert. Put your mental filters on what you hear and what you see. Here are some quick things you can do to protect yourself:

• If you outsource your SEO, have someone in-house who has a basic level of competence.
• If you hire a full time SEO, you should still have someone else who has a basic level of competence.
• Ask questions. Make sure you understand the logic of what your SEO is recommending. If your SEO won't answer the questions, or can't do so clearly, it's time to get a new SEO.
• Validate advice. Do recognized experts provide contradictory advice?
• Get references when you sign up an SEO firm, or hire an SEO to work for you.
• Similarly, don't read one article, and act on it, without validating that advice as suggested above.

This may add some extra time and effort to your SEO efforts, but it's your site, and it's well worth it.

From: www.searchenginewatch.com by  Eric Enge

I have said numerous times that FireFox is an awesome SEO tool in itself. Therefore I pay so much attention to customizing it to make the SEO process most efficient. Today I decided to share 3 ways to create quick searches (or “smart keywords“) to help you access your favorite sites and search engines quickly.

What are FireFox quick searches?

FireFox quick search enables you to search within any site you prefer right from the the bar / addressbar (that’s where you type the URL to load a page). The process is simple: you type in a smart keyword (e.g. g for Google) and a search term (e.g. SEO) in the address bar and this resolves into the search for SEO in Goolge:

How do I create “smart keyword search”?

Method 1: navigate to the site you want to create a quick search for, right-click inside its search box and choose “Add a Keyword for this Search“:

After that name your search as you prefer and set a keyword for its quick access (for example, g for Google).

… You are done! Now just type [g seo] in the address bar and you will be instantly brought to Google search results for [seo].

Method 2: (described by SugarRae) useful if the site you want to add doesn’t have any decent search system of its own.

• Search Google [site:yourfavoritesite.com keyword];
• Copy the URL of the search;
• Change keyword in the query string for %s;
• Go: Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks => New Bookmark;
• Create new search bookmark the following way:

Method 3: Install YubNub search plugin and either use multiple quick searches already created there or create your own ones using a simple wizard:

From: searchenginejournal.com by Ann Smarty

ou can’t go very far these days without reading or hearing about Web 2.0 and RSS, Web analytics, blogging, social networking and the like. For small businesses it might all seem to be chaotic and confusing and make little to no sense at all. But while these new tools aren’t the end all and be all, they do present a great opportunity for small businesses to connect and engage with their customers to sell their products and services.

Let’s start with the basics. First, Web 2.0 is less about the tools. It’s about the programming languages behind the scenes that allow these different tools to be shared and connected together. It’s what allows a person to have a blog and automatically list their blog updates on their Web site. It’s what allows a person who is reading an article from The Burlington Free Press to “share” it with their friends via e-mail, or by posting it on their Facebook page or adding it to their blog.

The big shakeup is less about the tools themselves and more about what people (you and your customers) can do with those tools. It is empowering your customer, creating engagement opportunities and entering into a partnership with your customers to share your brand. It’s a big switch from creating an advertisement to run on your local TV or in your local newspaper and hoping that is enough to drive people to your business.

How can these tools help you? Let’s look at a few and run down how they can help your bottom line.

Web Analytics: There are many analytics programs out there that provide usage data from a Web site. If you aren’t monitoring that data to know where users came from, what your “bounce rate” is (the rate at which users come to your homepage and then leave immediately), and how long they stay on your site, you are missing an opportunity to improve your site (which is your best 24/7 employee. Doesn’t need sleep, no benefit cost and always says what you want!).

-- Really Simple Syndication is a two-way street that provides your customers with a way to subscribe to yourinformation updates from your Web site or your blog without cluttering up their e-mail inbox. At the same time it provides you witha way to measure the engagement of the customer with your information: the more subscriptions you havethe better.It also allows the business professional a faster and easier way to gather their information without cluttering up their in box!

-- Blogging: A blog is a simple way for a business to communicate with itstheir customers. While the company Web site is the standard bearer for the company brand and general information, the blog is the human face of the organization. It’s the ideal place to showcase expertise — not to sell product, but rather to highlight why the business is good at what it does (the people behind the brand, of course). A good local example of this is the blog run by Seventh Generation President and CEO Jeffrey Hollender.

-- Social Networking: Sites such as LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook all provide differentways to connect to customers and clients. Start with where your customers are, and then use the appropriate sites to build your fan base, provide special incentives, or create a buzz.Many of these sites are free, so while a time investment is needed, it is not financially burdensome.

-- Monitoring the Social Web: Use online tools, such as Google Alerts, to find out what people are “saying“ about your business. One of the simplest ways to connect is to know when your company is mentioned online so that you can respond through a posting or an e-mail to let your customers know they have been heard.

The best advice for any small business tois that they pick one thing to start with and give it a try. Keeping the target market and company brand image in mind, setting clear goals for the tool, and monitoring the progress will allow any small business to effectively evaluate what online marketing tools will work best for them.

From: burlingtonfreepress.com by Elaine Young 

Interesting piece on CNet today about how Microsoft are focusing on tailored search in order to give them the edge in the search market. Dislodging Google from it’s number one position will be a tall order however Microsoft feel they can provide something unique and useful by having their dearch engine learn from a user’s previous behaviour in order to better understandtheir interests and needs and present more useful results.

According to the article Mircosoft’s Satya Nadella said “I believe this notion of understanding user intent, being able to analyze [search queries] and come up with search patterns and use them to shape the search experience, is one of the most important areas for us”

Basically the theory goes that because half of the search queries at Microsoft’s search site are part of a 30-minute session. These people are searching and reasearching the Web sites returned in the Search Engine result. If these patterns can be analysised then a picture of their needs can be built up in order to increase the relevancy of subsequent result sets. In effect Microsoft’s search engine will be learning from the user’s behaviour in order to be more relevance.

Whilst most users are looking for something in particular and can be easily served with a standard ‘one size fits all’ search this extra tailoring of the results using search patterns will be of benefit for the more indepth longer term ’search projects’.

According to Satya this approach of innovation will help them in the battle against Google and Yahoo “If we come again and again with innovation that matters, we will have the opportunity to grow our volume and our share, we made decent progress but we have a ways to go”.

From: hitsearchlimited.com 

UPLINK WEB DESIGNS & MARKETING

It is clear that the Internet is becoming a dominant factor in urban life. With a rising Internet-savvy population, sending and receiving emails, browsing news and information, logging on to social networking websites and watching videos online is becoming a part of everyday life in India.

There are many people that have an internet business but they don’t know enough about internet marketing strategies to be able to advertise their business. You can easily learn what you need to know if you are willing to let yourself be taught. All it takes to learn is research and time. Here are some of the best internet marketing strategies that you will want to use for your business.

One: Search Engine Optimization – This is when you optimize your website using keywords that are found when people search using search engines. This is one of the internet marketing strategies that you will have to get educated on because if you don’t, you will become confused and frustrated. Optimization is not hard to do but only if you understand it.

Two: Article Marketing – This is one of the best internet marketing strategies that has been used for years and will continue to be used because it works no matter what. This will also help you with search engine optimization because you can easily write an article around one or two popular keywords and then put it as content on your site to help with optimization or you can use it submit the article to the many articles directories. This is a good way to help you build links.

Three: Build links or exchange links – There are many ways you can do this. One is with article marketing and another is to submit your site link to the many directories that are available. You can also exchange links with another websites owner. This is basically what it sounds like, you give them your link to place on their site and they give you their link to be placed on your site. The more links you have pointing to your site the more search engines are going to list your site.

Four: Press Releases – This is one of the internet marketing strategies that a lot of people need to use but don’t because they think it doesn’t apply to their business. You can successfully use press releases for any business and reach a lot of people.

Five: Blogging – This is one of the best internet marketing strategies that you can use because the search engines love blogs that provides fresh content. Learn all you can about this before you do it so that you can do it right from the start. It is not hard to do unless you are clueless about it.

These are only five of the best internet marketing strategies that you can use to help you build your business. The more internet marketing strategies you use the faster your business will start seeing results. Just make sure you learn as much as you can about each of the strategies before you attempt to use them so you can do it right from the start.

Summary: Do you have an internet business but you don’t know much about internet marketing strategies? If this is the case then you need to take some time to learn internet marketing before you try anything. Here are some of the best internet marketing strategies that you can start using and learning about.

From: promotionworld.com by Cherie Ang

A Simple & Effective Keyword Strategy

When it comes to ecommerce sites, there are plenty of keywords to choose from. Because sites typically follow a fairly set format, numerous pages are created between the home page and the order confirmation page. Those pages all need keywords and phrases if they are going to rank high in the search engines. So, how exactly do you choose the best keywords for each page? Here's an easy strategy to follow. (Please keep in mind that all keyphrases used in this article are for example only and have not been researched.)

Home Page > > > Broad Keywords

When you start out, use keywords and phrases that are descriptive of your overall site. For example, if you sold clothing for the entire family, you might opt for phrases such as "ladies clothing," "men's clothing" or "kids clothing." Those would be expressive, but could also be worked easily into the home page copy.

Think of the sales process as a funnel. It's broad at the lip and gets more narrow as you move closer to the spout. The same goes for the keyword strategy: broad keyphrases at first and more specific ones as the subject matter gets more specific.

Category Page > > > Specific Keywords

Once you move to the category pages, you'll want to select keyphrases that work well with what you're trying to describe in your copy. If your visitor clicks on the women's shoes category, she'll want to read about and see pictures of women's shoes. Perhaps you'll use phrases such as "fabric ballet flats" or "leather peep-toe pumps."

I typically create a paragraph at the top of the page, then add a descriptive sentence or two under each image. Sometimes, I'll also add a paragraph of copy at the

bottom of the page. This helps guide your visitors through the sales process.

Product Descriptions > > > Long-Tail Keywords

The product description pages should incorporate long tail keywords that are laser specific. If your visitor clicked on a link for "Bermuda shorts" on the category page, you'll want to get as detailed as possible, so your customer can make the decision to buy.

For instance, a keyphrase such as "Liz Claiborne pastel plaid Bermuda shorts" would be perfect for a product description because it is… well… descriptive. Long? Yes, it is a long phrase. Most long-tail keywords will be. But the further into the sales process a customer gets, the more specific their searches will be. Chances are, someone who has decided she wants pastel plaid shorts will use a phrase like the one above instead of something like "Bermuda shorts."

Here's a plus: Because long-tail phrases are much less competitive than broader terms, you stand a better shot at getting ranked highly for them.

A Word on Linking

Here's where some copywriters get confused. When you use links in anchor text, you're giving credit to the page being linked to. For instance, if you have a category page for shorts, you would want to use the keyphrase "Bermuda shorts" in the anchor text of a link that pointed to the Bermuda shorts page. That way, the Bermuda shorts page gets credit for the link. The link would be of no (or very little) value to the general shorts page.

When you take note of the navigation and purchase cycle of your visitors, you begin to see why this simple strategy for keyword placement works so well. Using more specific terms as you write more specific copy helps usher visitors from the front door to the checkout counter with ease while also boosting your search engine rankings.

From: isedb.com by  Karon Thackston

Although Google Universal Search (GUS) is still very much in flux, it's been a part of the SEO landscape for a while now. In that time, there have been some good studies about how often GUS presents video results, and some research into how it ranks videos versus text pages.

One aspect of GUS that's been mentioned anecdotally is its preference for videos hosted by other Google properties: YouTube and Google Video. A few explanations have been offered for this behavior:

1) Google Video and YouTube have the largest archive of videos on the Web, so the odds of these two sites having a relevant video in their inventory is much higher than for other portals.

2) The indexing technology behind GUS has to be custom-tuned for each video portal, and naturally the Google properties are the best understood by GUS developers.

3) The YouTube and Google Video pages were designed from the start with search engines in mind, and so they are easier to index.

These all sound very reasonable. Yet there's another possibility:

4) Google may be cultivating a walled garden, where searchers are kept in the system to keep spinning the turnstiles and create more ad revenue.

But before we label them with a scarlet G, let's take a look at some Universal Search results, and see what portion of video listings actually come from Google properties.

Did someone say scarlett?

To see what GUS's preferences are, let's choose a list of search terms that are likely to result in GUS-driven video listings. Celebrities are a natural, and I hit the jackpot at UGO: The 50 Hottest Actresses Under 25. Everyone on this list should be well represented in the video portals. And just to be sure, I appended "...video" to each name before running the searches. Including Ms. Johansson.

Findings

Surprisingly, even for up-to-the-minute pop culture searches, only 7 of the 17 competing portals displayed any results in GUS. Let's take a closer look at the resulting chart.

Two sets of figures are represented. The height of the bars indicates the number of listings each portal received, out of 50 actress/video searches. Taller bars mean better coverage. The numbers shown on each bar represent the average position that these listings achieved in search results - lower numbers mean higher rankings and better visibility.

Take a minute to review this, and you'll see that it's a mixed bag. Looking just at the bars, YouTube performs the best, but not by an astoundingly margin.

Look at the average ranking numbers, and the difference is more dramatic. YouTube is leaps and bounds ahead of any rival, with a killer combination of higher rankings and broader coverage.

Google Video is another story: for this class of search terms, this property doesn't offer much.

Conclusions

• The range of content being indexed is playing a role here: many portals aren't displaying any results, even for these very specific searches. This could be due to indexing problems, or a simple lack of inventory.
• There's clear support for the perception that YouTube dominates GUS video listings.
• The very high average ranking for YouTube definitely raise an eyebrow. It's pretty clear that even if Google's algorithm is being objective, it's been trained to respond to the characteristics that YouTube has in spades. It's debatable whether this is a "bias" or just good design - take a Sphinn and let me know what you think...

From: searchengineland.com by Sherwood Strenieri

An SEJ reader sent us the following SEO question, which which I decided to discuss with our readers:

What is an orphan page and dead-end page? What’s the difference? How are they harmful for your site?

An orphan page is the one that is not linked to by another one of the site (i.e. that cannot be reached from anywhere on the site) and thus cannot be found by a search bot unless it is linked to externally. It can occur deliberately (when a webmaster creates a “private” page to show to someone but not to public, for example) or accidentally (in this case it’s a web development/ design mistake).

While there are plenty of myths that, once discovered by a search bot, such web page may be classified as a doorway page and by this cause penalty to the whole site. I’ve personally never experienced that penalty myself and don’t believe that it can happen but if you have another experience, please share.

The worst thing about orphan pages is that they are useless for SEO as they can’t be seen by a search bot.

A dead-end page is the one that has no outgoing links, thus creating a “dead end”. It is definitely not a best case as, first, it’s unnatural (a web page should be connected to other pages, hence its name) and, secondly, it leaves both the robot and the visitor no other choice accept abandon the site: they have no way to go.

With template-driven sites it is quite difficult to create a dead end (you always have links in a sidebar, footer or banner). A common case of a dead end is a 404 page: therefore it should be optimized to include links to home page and important site directories.

From: searchenginejournal.com by Ann Smarty

UPLINK WEB DESIGNS & MARKETING

Google has been very vocal about their policy on paid links. Matt Cutts has written about the topic, and spoke about it at industry conferences and in interviews over the years.

Yahoo and MSN have been much quieter on the topic. They've certainly indicated at industry conferences that they don't want publishers to buy links for the purpose of affecting their rankings in the search engines, but less has been said about how they act on that policy.

During a recent interview with Yahoo's Priyank Garg, I got a much clearer sense of how Yahoo's policy on paid links differs from Google's. Let's take a look!

Google Policy on Paid Links

You can read about Google's policy here, here, here, and here.

Here's my brief summary of the policy: Offering compensation for a text link ad is a normal part of the Web economy. However, doing so for the purpose of influencing PageRank, or your rankings, is against their guidelines.

It's also well known that Google provides a way for users to report paid links that they see to Google. While according to a survey by Barry Schwartz, less than a third of SEOs report paid links, this is a relatively important source of data to Google on the topic.

Yahoo Policy on Paid Links

Here's a summary of Yahoo's policy on paid links, using an excerpt from my interview with Garg:

"If a paid link is not valuable to the users, we will not want to give it value. Our algorithms are being organized for detecting value to users. We feel most of the time that paid links are less valuable to users than organic links. But that's not black and white, it is always a continuum. Yahoo continues to focus on the element of recognizing links that are valuable to users, building mechanisms in our algorithms that attenuate the signal and capture as much value from that link in context, rather than worrying about it being paid or unpaid."

Commentary

One thing both policies have in common is that both search engines are concerned about how paid links impact their rankings. However, in Google's case, the key concept (or goal) is that all paid links should have no impact on search rankings.

This is pretty difficult to execute against, and it's what has led to Google offering a paid links reporting mechanism -- to get help. It has also led to Cutts suggestion that publishers that sell text links mark their links with the nofollow attribute.

Yahoo appears to be taking a different route. As I read the comments by Garg, it seems that they focus more on the end user value of a link, whether it's paid or not. To read between the lines a little bit, end user value is most likely being measured by the relevance and context of a link.

This saves Yahoo from fighting a difficult battle, a battle that has led some to say that there's an arms race between Google and spammers. Certainly if this battle is inherently unwinnable, the Yahoo approach may be a pragmatic one.

For example, Yahoo doesn't have the burden of being called out in posts like this one by Michael Gray, which accuses Google of having a double standard.

Gray's post outlines a scenario in which a PR firm wines and dines a bunch of high profile A-list bloggers with an all expense paid weekend getaway, and then asks them "if they had a good time please write about it on their blog and post some pictures to flickr."

Many have cried out for Google to recognize paid links as a part of the Web environment, and to develop ranking algorithms that are less subject to being affected by them. Of course, if this was simple to do, the search engines would have moved on from links as a major ranking factor a long time ago. Don't expect it to happen any time soon.

From: searchenginewatch by Eric Enge

algorithm, you could look at actual usage data from hundreds of millions of users.
Since there are more web users than webmasters BrowseRank would be a more democratic system, but many users are mislead and/or easily influenced by social media, public relations, and some referral spam strategies, so BrowseRank could surface some low quality temporal information, making manipulating Digg and other "firehose of traffic" sources more valuable than they perhaps should be. Although if certain referrals were blocked (Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.) and/or BrowseRank was combined with a blended search strategy (like how Google mixes Google News in their organic results) Microsoft could have a bit more confidence in waiting out some traffic spikes to see if traffic is sustained. And this potential shortfall (if managed properly) could actually lead to a major advantage over the stale effect of PageRank. If you create non-resource hyped up piece of linkbait that gets a quick rush of links and never gains any more votes then why should that page have a lot of authority to pass around your site?

Such an algorithm would add value to direct navigation keyword rich URLs. Another obvious extension of such an algorithm would be identifying brand specific searches and URL searches, and bucketing those referrals into the green category as well.

To encourage such branded search queries and long user interactions it would be better to create strong communities with repeat visitors and many web based tools rather than allowing useful user interactions occur through browser extensions.

Another big issue with BrowseRank is that it highlights many social media sites. The issue with social media is that any piece of content is generally only relevant to a small number of people and most of the content is irrelevant to the population at large. Unless the search engine had a lot of personalized data promoting the general purpose social media sites would be blunderous - surfacing lots of results that are irrelevant, spam, or both.

One of the big advantages PageRank has over BrowseRank is an economic one.

• People are more likely to link at informational resources, thus surfacing those pages and sites higher in the search results.
• This gives Google's organic search results an informational bias which makes searchers more likely to click on Google's paid ads when performing a commercial search.
• Google also has the ability to arbitrarily police links and/or strip PageRank scores to 0 with the intent to fearmonger and add opportunity cost to anyone who gathers enough links pointing at a (non-corporate owned) commercial domain. This layer of social engineering coerces publishers to create the type of content Google likes to rank.

From: searchnewz.com by Aaron Wall

For more on this topic, go to www.dentaleconomics.com and search using the following key words: search engine optimization, SEO, Web site, domain, meta tags, links, title tags.

You have a Web site. You worked hard to design it. You are good about updating it. You are always thinking about ways to use it in your marketing efforts. I hate to tell you this ... you are not done ... there is more work to do. The foundation for establishing and maintaining an online presence for your practice begins with search engine optimization (SEO). Even though your Web site has great content and looks great, it needs to rank well with important keyword phrases on the major search engines.

Simply stated, SEO means the ongoing process of setting up your Web site in order to increase the number of visitors. Unfortunately, this can be an ongoing, time-consuming process. You can try this yourself, with your Web site designer, or find an SEO consultant to perform this task for you.

SEO begins and ends with the content of your Web site. You are best served if you create unique and well-written content. More importantly, you need to keep content fresh and updated. Blogs are a good way to do this. Generally, you make new entries to a blog on a frequent basis and search engines index these pages.

Search engines do not index Web sites. Rather they index pages in Web sites and even elements within the sites such as videos, articles, and images. Avoid cramming too many subjects on a page. Create dedicated pages for each subject you want to list. You need well-researched keyword phrases programmed into each page. The more pages you have and the fresher content you add, the greater the chance you will end up with a higher listing on the search engines.

Some people think that if you submit your Web site to search engines repeatedly, your site will be moved up on their "list." In reality, if this is done without making modifications or updates, some search engines will treat this like "spam" and may remove you from their listings.

Another fallacy is that if you add a lot of repetitive keywords to your meta tags, you will move up the "list." This process is known as keyword "stuffing" and can actually have the opposite result. Getting other sites to link to you increases your site's popularity, but you have to avoid something called "link farming." Getting links from irrelevant, nondental/medical/health-related Web sites can hurt you more than it can help you. Some search engines have paid or sponsored listings. This can get expensive. SEO is done in order to move you up the "list" in a more natural manner.

Ask for monthly reports to track your site's rankings. Be patient with this process. It can take three to six months to see results depending on the competitive level of your market. SEO is all about making adjustments on the fly if things are not working as planned.

So who are some of these SEO consultants? Here are a few who work with dental practices: Page 1 Solutions (page1solutions.com), Proceptive Dental (proceptivedental.com), TNT Dental (tntdental.com), Roadside Multimedia (roadsidemultimedia.com), Einstein Dental (einsteindental.com), and SEO.cc (seo.cc).

Besides these, there are many other companies that do this type of work. Be sure to ask the right questions when you talk with an SEO consultant. You need to be a good consumer and get what you rightly deserve.

In summary, SEO consists of: 1) easy to read, keyword-rich content; 2) proper coding of title tags on each page; 3) proper use of alt tags for images; 4) proper use of link building (link popularity is important); 5) proper use of page names and titles; 6) submission to Internet search engines; 7) inclusion into business-related directories for strong inbound links; 8) baseline rankings and ongoing search engine ranking reports.

This is an ongoing process. Search engine algorithms regularly change so even though your Web site is optimized perfectly today, a change in the algorithms can make your optimization ineffective tomorrow.

It is with great fear that I have made my practice's Web site available for viewing. I asked Bill Fukui from Page 1 Solutions to do a quick site evaluation since I have not worked much with SEO. I mentioned it to my site host, who also does the site's design work. I know I have much work to do. Here is a summary of the points Bill compiled for me:

• Domain age and page history — The Web site has a long history on the Web compared to other dental sites and has hada number of pages indexed. Unfortunately, the site has lacked strategic SEO and has not leveraged the substantial equity.
• Meta tags — The Web site's meta tags are not effectively optimized as all pages have identical meta tags, no optimized image tags, and even misspellings.
• Title tags — Title tags are not customized to the topic of each page. Like meta tags, they should be unique to each page based on the target keyword phrases on each.
• Internal linking — Good use of internal linking and text links.
• Attracting links in — The site has a few incoming links, but has not aggressively attracted them. Google does not recognize any incoming links.
• Content — Web site needs more focused content based on target keyword phrases. If you want to show up for "St. Louis porcelain veneers" on Google, you should include focused pages on porcelain veneers. Current page on new advances should divide services into separate pages (e.g., Invisalign should have its own page).

Finally, he ran a search engine scan and market analysis report for me.

Chris Lister of Proceptive Dental also created a Web site report card for me. He graded my Web site for navigation, list of services, unique content, contact information, and more. I earned B's and C's. He then graded on-site optimization. This consisted of unique meta tags, meta title tags, internal link structure, age of site, site map, keyword-themed content, and more. I was across the board here with grades ranging from A's to D's.

Bill and Chris ran quick analyses for me strictly for this column. Each of their companies normally provides a long and in-depth analysis when hired. We thought that if we took the initial didactic part of this column and put it to use with an actual site, it would then explain what SEO entails.

My Web site apparently is set up more as an online brochure instead of the proactive, online marketing resource that I want it to be. It's time to get to work!

From: dentaleconomics.com by Jeffrey Dalin

Last month I attended a SEMPO New York networking event that featured an “In-House versus Agency” debate, in which the debaters argued the benefits of each model. After the debate, I was speaking with one of the agency panelists, and we discussed the challenges agencies face differentiating themselves from their competitors given the number of search marketing agencies in the market today.

A key point that is often overlooked from my perspective is that differentiation is not only about how your prospective customers view your agency, but also how prospective job candidates view it.

As a quick exercise, grab a pen and paper and imagine you are interviewing someone for an open search marketing position in your firm, and he or she asks you, “what do you feel differentiates your agency from your competitors?” Quickly jot down what you would say.

Are your points of differentiation something like the following?

• Our team provides world-class customer service.
• We hire great and passionate people.
• Our company has an established track record with proven results.
• We have developed a customized SEO / SEM methodology that works.
• We have an experienced team of industry thought leaders.
• We take the time to understand our customers’ business goals.

Let me first say that I believe you do all of these things well, but you should be aware that every other employer that candidate interviews with is saying the same things that you are. So how do you demonstrate to this future employee that your company is different - and you really are the customer service leader and deliver rock-solid results for your customers?

I would recommend you evaluate using the Net Promoter Score (or NPS) as a way to both validate why you are different, as well as drive growth and profitability. I am not aware of any search marketing firms that are using NPS as a customer satisfaction measure, or at least any that have publically acknowledged it, and it surprises me given the metrics-focused culture of search.

So what is NPS and how does it work? NPS was developed by Fred Reichfeld, a consultant with Bain & Company, as a way to provide an indicator of a company’s performance from the perspective of its customers, as well as measure its ability to drive growth and profitability.

Your NPS score is based on how your customers answer a single question: “how likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or a colleague?” Your customers answer this question using a scale of 0 to 10 (with 0 being the lowest score and 10 being the highest.) Based on how they answer this question, all of your customers can be divided into three categories: promoters, passives, and detractors.

• A promoter (a customer who rates you a 9 or a 10) is unflinchingly loyal to your company; and when asked about their experience with your firm, will evangelize your business and its services.
• A passive (a customer who rates you a 7 or 8) is neutral about your company’s performance. When asked how their company’s search marketing engagement went with your agency, the response might be along the lines of, “They did their job.”
• A detractor (a customer who rates you a 0 to a 6) is unhappy with your company’s performance. If asked about their company’s relationship with your firm, the customer will provide negative feedback and ultimately discourage other prospective customers from engaging with your firm.

The way to calculate your NPS score is by aggregating your survey results and then subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters (i.e. Promoters - Detractors = Net Promoter Score). The passives are considered neutral so are not factored into the score. For example, if 70% of your customers were promoters, 10% were passives, and 20% were detractors, then your NPS would be 50% (70% - 20%).

The power of NPS is not based on how high you scored on your first NPS survey, but instead the subsequent impact you get from your employees and company becoming focused on improving the score. An increase in your NPS score means you are getting more referrals and higher customer satisfaction — which will lead to more growth and profitability. NPS practitioners typically survey their customers monthly so they can continually tweak and their company’s internal processes until they hit their NPS goal.

NPS has been used at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, GE, and many others, and I believe it is a great tool for search marketing agencies as well. Having an NPS program focused on driving NPS improvement provides your customers with a simple metric of why your agency is great at what you do, and equally important, an illustration to your future employees of why your agency is a great place to work.

From: searchenginejournal by Ken Clark

Whether you want to take your web working career into a different direction or you simply want a refreshing distraction from your regular web work, it’s likely that you’ll consider changing your niche market at least once in your career. What are the consequences of changing your niche? Is that even advisable? Also, how do you go about it?

The first thing you need to do is to understand how this affects your personal brand. If you’ve already established yourself in a particular niche, shifting to another one, whether completely or temporarily, might be confusing. It’s similar to having such a wide variety of jobs across several industries on your resume - from food service to law enforcement to art to dental hygienist. You risk looking unfocused or spreading yourself too thin.

Confusing as this may be for some people, the truth is that we are dynamic. This is especially true of web workers. We have a variety of interests and strengths which we can explore.  However, if you want to be a known expert in one thing, establishing your expertise publicly may prove to be difficult if people see you working on several niches at once. But there are some workarounds:

Be clear about the niche or field you’re prioritizing in. This will especially help you when you’re making time-management decisions. Which field are you more passionate about? Does your website or blog reflect your own priorities? Devoting more blog posts or space to your priority niche will show your website visitors that your new niche is just a sideline.

Have different “storefronts”. If you want to be both an illustrator and a programmer, you might need different websites for each service. This will allow you to market and promote both services equally, without confusing your web site visitors in the process. The less related the two niches are, the more you need a separate storefront for each.

Find an intersection between your current niche to the one you want to shift to. If you can find some common ground between your current niche and your alternative niche, it’s best to start with that. If you’re known for making great Flash movies and you want to shift to SEO, consider making search-engine friendly Flash movies as your transitional move. Or, if you’re known as a problogger and you want to shift to web design, you can start by redesigning your own blogs and selling templates through your blogs.

Know your respective audiences. Each niche comes with a different target market - which means, you’ll be doing your research all over again. How do you communicate with this new batch of clients? What makes it different from how you handled clients from your original niche?

Learning to communicate better with your new audience will be a long process. While there may be some similarities between audiences from both niches, you still need to your research.

Realize that you’re virtually a beginner. If you’ve already made a name for yourself in your niche, don’t be surprised if you’re not known outside of that. For example, if you’re known for being a business blogger, you might have to go the extra mile to prove yourself if you’re shifting to blogging about food and wine. This can be especially tough on a personal level if you’re used to getting all the business blogging jobs you apply for.

Shifting to a different niche can be a welcome change in your career. But, like most major decisions, you’ll have to educate yourself and plan for the changes you’ll be making.

From: webworkerdaily.com  by Celine Roque

Online video -- when done well -- is an incredibly effective marketing tool. But you knew that already. But did you know that small and midsize businesses, can now more easily, and affordably, get in on the action?

A few months ago I interviewed Ben Wayne whose company, Fliqz, provides hosted solutions -- read: affordable -- that enable smaller businesses to put videos on their site. None of this consumer, YouTube stuff where customers click away from your site: This is videos on your site, you get the search, you get the traffic.

More recently, Glenn Pingul wrote on SearchEngineLand about the significance of online video in terms of generating and maintaining traffic and in terms of search. Granted, Pingul is the VP of marketing for Mixpo, an online video advertising company dedicated to small and midsize businesses.

But he cites research done by "SEO guru" Mark Robertson, (check out what Robertson has to say in this video). Robertson reports that "that research from the folks at FindLaw showed that video marketing, which in this case meant adding an online video to a law firm's web site can help increase, to a somewhat dramatic extent, conversions from prospective clients."

The research is pretty compelling for smaller businesses. Pingul writes: "The research reported that consumers typically visit an average of nearly five Web sites (4.8 actually) before deciding which attorney to select. When lawyers added video to their respective Web sites, however, this number decreased fairly substantially, to 1.8. Studies like this are great. They show the promise of how video can help small and medium sized businesses and point to the importance of placing video strategically throughout the "buying funnel" with the right messaging at the right time -- and in the legal case above, accelerate people down the buying funnel."

Pingul says that in his company, their for clients who incorporated video ads into their landing pages, conversions went as high as 50 percent.

Impressive but another thing that Pingul points out makes sense, at least for now: "On a crowded search results page, online video can make the choice seem more clear, limiting the need or desire by users to "shop around" though search results and elsewhere. It’s too early to tell conclusively, but one would surmise that at a time when the use of video is still comparatively limited, the companies who do use it have a chance to "stand out" from others, whether in search results or elsewhere."

For smaller businesses, it's all about standing out in the crowded marketplace. Video has helped larger businesses get lots of attention but now there are lots of companies that are turning their attention to SMBs. In addition to Fliqz and Mixpo, there's Twistage, which also hosts videos for smaller businesses.

Now there's no more excuse. Get your site singing -- or at least talking.

From: bMighty.com by Naomi Grossman

UPLINK WEB DESIGNS & MARKETING

“AdWords Keyword Tool Now Includes Search Volume Data.”

Google has just yesterday announced at it AdWords blog that it is adding an all important search volume data to its AdWords Keyword Tool, which would help advertisers to approximately evaluate how frequently people actually use particular search terms in order to more finely tune their ad campaigns.

In addition to recommending related keywords, the tool now includes the approximate number of monthly search queries for each keyword with adequate data, and search volume for the most recent calendar month. “These approximate numbers are intended to provide better insight into keywords’ monthly and average search volumes than previously provided by the tool,” said Google’s Trevor Claiborne on the Inside AdWords blog.

“Now, when you use the Keyword Tool to search for related keywords to include in your keyword list, you will be able to see the projected number of search queries matching your keywords that were performed on Google and the search network,” said Claiborne in a blog posting Tuesday.

“The move is almost certainly smart: advertisers love quantitative analysis, and this gives them more hard data immediately.”

With search volume data now becomes obtainable in the Keywords Tool; AdWords publishers can easily check the estimated number of search queries that matched the publishers’ keywords when users performed searches on Google and its search network. The search volume data offers better understanding into keywords’ monthly and average search volumes as compared to previous keyword tool.

For non-AdWords publishers, the Keyword Tool is a tool for producing and refining associated keywords that best matches a publisher’s product or service.

Especially the Keyword Tool’s search volume data for making new ad group around high-traffic keywords, for targeting ad text and specific landing page, better planning budget spent for particular keywords, searching and selecting relevant keywords that would yield quality leads within a publisher’s budget.

“These keywords can then be added into the publishers’ ad groups.”

The improvements to the Google Keyword Tool come just a few weeks after Yahoo! discontinued its keyword suggestion tool. Yahoo!’s tool, a remainder of the old Overture system on which its search marketing product is based, had long included approximate search volume numbers. Yahoo! stopped officially supporting the app about 14 months ago, and indicated that the search volume figures were inaccurate as a result.

“Nevertheless, just because it offered the query data, the tool was viewed as a helpful piece of the search engine marketer’s arsenal until Yahoo! axed it last month.”

Google builds the vast majority of its revenue and profit from advertisers whose text ads appear next to search results. Advertisers bid for the words, and their ads are displayed based on a formula involving how much they are ready to pay and the quality of the ads themselves. As of mid-June, ad quality now is ranked on how fast the advertiser’s Web site responds. Advertisers pay only when searchers actually click on the ads.

AdWords, which has been the cornerstone for Google’s immense success in online advertising, is the platform that delivers relevant text, image or video ads next to search query results and on Web pages with matching content.

The more transparent Google Keyword Tool comes soon after the release of the AdPlanner tool, which demonstrates approximate traffic volume for competitors’ web sites. Hence, Google is now opening up and giving out more of their enormous stockpiles of web data is a win for all webmasters.

From: eBrandz by E. Waghle

UPLINK WEB DESIGNS & MARKETING

It goes without saying that there are many expensive methods for getting indexed in search engines fast. The fact of the matter is that there are many inexpensive and even free methods to get indexed in search engines almost immediately. This is great news for small businesses looking for affordable seo techniques. Today I am going to focus on the search engine MSN. MSN has a significant enough piece of the whole search engine traffic pie to make it one of your priorities when optimizing your website pages. I will go into this in more detail at another time. The best reasons why organic (free) search engine traffic should be your focus is the fact that you do not have to pay for any traffic (visitors) to your website; surfers are actually searching for precisely what you are offering at your website; and your website visitors are able to visit your website 24 hours a day 7 days a week regardless of what you are doing or whether you have pay per click campaigns underway or active. A recent study has shown that people searching on search engines such as MSN, Yahoo directory and Google always look at the organic free search results first (on the top left hand part of the page) rather than any pay per click ads anywhere else on the page. For this reason alone it is absolutely critical that you optimize your web pages to get targeted traffic from organic search results PLUS that you get indexed (listed) as quickly as possible in the search engines to take advantage of your targeted traffic. The more targeted traffic you get to your website the more sales that should result. Now if you have just launched or are about to launch a new website you may be scratching your head wondering how you can get listed in the search engines for free. Of course there are timely delays on some search engines in getting listed and some directories and search engines you must pay to even get consideration for a listing, however, with the search engine MSN it is possible to get your brand new website listed in 24 hours without paying a cent. In fact, you can achieve all this in only a few minutes of your time. Simply go to msn.com and type in your full url, that means with the http:// prefix and the full url after it. You will then be told that MSN could not find any results for your url. Do not despair because this is where it gets pretty exciting! Keep reading down the page on msn and you will find the following words: if you cannot find a page that you know exists send the address to us. All you have to do is click on the send the address to us link. All you need to do is type in the displayed characters and then your full domain url and click submit url. It is as easy as that. That is just one affordable seo technique for small businesses.

From: PR-USA.NET

UPLINK WEB DESIGNS & MARKETING

Small business people are notoriously choosy when it comes to buying things. This trait can be even more extreme when it comes to purchasing web-related services.

Given that web marketing is such an important process for online businesses, we've compiled a list of completely free resources which will help measure the success of your ongoing effort to propel your website up the search engine rankings.

Google Analytics

Many companies market web analytics software (which analyse all the visits made to your website). Such tools will let you know where your visitors come from, which parts of your site they visit, which keywords they used to find your site, and much more.

Rather than paying a monthly fee for online traffic analytics, Google Analytics is completely free.

After you have attached a small "tag" to your webpages, Google Analytics will give you a thorough analysis of your site traffic. If you are after more in-depth traffic reports, you will probably have to pay for it - Webtrends on Demand is a good (paid for) alternative.

Marketleap

We've used a variety of web marketing tools on Marketleap for many years now. The Link Popularity checker analyses how many other sites link back to yours - across the major search engines. Although this is not an exact science, you can track your results over time to give you a good idea of how your web marketing effort is going.

The Search Engine Saturation tool simply shows how many pages from your website have been indexed by the major search engines. Again, this is a useful benchmark for your marketing campaigns.

Google Trends

Another excellent tool from the omnipotent Google, Trends allows you to see how popular various search terms are - over time.

More interestingly, perhaps, is the ability to compare your site against your competitors to provide an overall traffic comparison. You'll need to "sign in" to compare websites, but it is worth it. One potential downside of Google Trends is that it only tracks more established sites, so you may have a wait before your new site appears.

SEOChat

Aside from its excellent SEO forums, SEO Chat also has probably the most extensive set of free web marketing tools. You can do anything from comparing the search results in Google vs. Yahoo, to optimising and analysing keywords, and even a tool which will help generate your meta tags for you.

From: bytestart.co.uk  

Back in the late 90s the only thing we worried about in the White House was a certain dry cleaning bill and a gentleman’s proper cigar etiquette. Yes, times were different. Back then Microsoft was perceived by some as the next great monopoly, with Bill Gates as Cornelius Vanderbilt ready to dominate the desktops of every man, woman, child, and wildebeest. Now in the aught-ies the focus of the Justice department and armchair alarmists alike is Google and Bill Gates has retired to live the life of a full-time philanthropist.

Today’s New York Times has a great story by Steve Lohr comparing the two companies and the baton pass that has occurred. As Reprise Media’s Senior Vice President of Business Development Dan Kashman pointed out to me this morning, the most interesting nugget here are the search-specific methods that Google has used to grow and solidify its industry leadership position. Through harvesting their rich load of data from search and then their ancillary products Google has managed to stay nimble and innovative. As Google’s Chief Economist Hal R. Varian says in the article,” The source of Google’s competitive advantage is learning by doing…”

A number of their recent announcements have been the direct result of their strategic experimentation, data harvesting, and improvement philosophy — AdPlanner and Flash crawling anyone? The GooHoo deal is simply the culmination of this masterful strategy.

The nature of experimentation is that not everything Google has tried has worked, far from it. Their Picasa web image hosting has been less than a runaway success and their Blogger blogging platform hasn’t knocked WordPress out of the market. Let’s not forget Google Finance which has failed to take a bite out of one of Yahoo’s strongest features. What these and Google Maps, the YouTube purchase, and iGoogle have in common is Google’s desire to learn about how disparate online activities tie in to their main search business. Sometimes the connection- as with AdWords - becomes a tremendously powerful revenue generator. Other times, it’s an imperfect fit with Google’s overall model, but in each case they have the opportunity to learn something about the behavior of their users and are able to adjust accordingly.

Search marketing can function as a microcosm of this, allowing a brand to experiment fine-tune and hone their message while getting back a slew of relevant data.

One of the things that sets search marketing apart form other forms of marketing is the availability of in-depth data and the ability to quickly respond and continually tweak your campaigns to take new information into account. Varian’s description of Google’s strategy doubles as a description of a good search marketing campaign “The system is constantly evolving to optimize efficiency, improve ad quality and make the pricing smarter, so you don’t want set rules that say we do X and we don’t do Y…”

As a marketer this can mean experimenting with the effect of widgets on organic results, brand keywords versus generic keywords or geo-targeted copy versus universal copy to name just a few. The web is a dynamic marketplace — sitting still on what seems to be a winning strategy while your competitors experiment and refine their approach based on hard data just won’t cut it. Ask Jerry Yang.

As smart as Google has been though, it’s also important not to get too bogged down in data analysis. Remember, data is only useful if you stay flexible enough to act quickly. Google’s obsessive compulsive focus on not adding a single word to their homepage added wasteful time to the implementation of a simple link to their privacy policy. Maintaining the “weight” of their homepage at 28 words seems a mite ill-considered as months have gone by and privacy concerns have multiplied. This was a classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees.

From: searchviews.com by  Noah Mallin

UPLINK WEB DESIGNS & MARKETING

Bill Gates, who walked away from full-time work at Microsoft last month, was perhaps the foremost applied economist of the second half of the 20th century.

Mr. Gates and Microsoft fundamentally shaped how people think about the behavior of modern markets in which technology plays a central role. Under Mr. Gates, Microsoft also challenged the conventional wisdom about competition, business strategy and even antitrust law.

Now, in the early years of the 21st century, Google is the company prompting a rethinking of assumptions.

Microsoft was a master practitioner of “network effects,” the straightforward precept in economics that the value of a product or service often goes up as more people use it. There is nothing new about the concept. It was true of railways, telephones and fax machines, for example.

Microsoft, however, applied the power of network effects more lucratively than any company had done before it.

Microsoft attracted consumers and software developers to use its technology, the software that controls the basic operations of a personal computer. The more that people used Microsoft’s operating system (DOS and later Windows), the more that third-party developers built products to run on Windows, which attracted more users.

So Microsoft’s success snowballed, and the company owned the essential technology, making it harder for users and developers to switch to alternatives.

But the Internet has changed the rules of networked competition, partly because Internet software standards are more open than those in the PC industry. That helps explain why Microsoft has struggled to catch up with Google in the rich new market for Internet search advertising.

Google’s huge, widening lead in that business suggests that while some weapons of competition have changed, the market dynamics are similar, say economists and industry experts. At this stage, they note, Internet search appears to be a market that is winner take most, if not all.

Google, it seems, is the emerging dominant company in the Internet era, much as Microsoft was in the PC era. The study of networked businesses, market competition and antitrust law is being reconsidered in a new context, shaped by Google. Google’s explanation for its large share of the Internet search market — more than 60 percent — is simply that it is a finely honed learning machine. Its scientists constantly improve the relevance of search results for users and the efficiency of its advertising system for advertisers and publishers.

“The source of Google’s competitive advantage is learning by doing,” said Hal R. Varian, Google’s chief economist.

In the Internet marketplace, Mr. Varian notes, users can easily switch to another search engine by typing in another Web address, so there is no tight technology control, as there is with proprietary PC software. Similarly, Mr. Varian says, advertisers and publishers can switch fairly easily to rival ad networks operated by Yahoo, Microsoft and others.

But economists and analysts point out that Google does indeed have network advantages that present formidable obstacles to rivals. The “experience effects,” they say, of users and advertisers familiar with Google’s services make them less likely to switch. There is, for example, a sizable cottage industry of experts who tailor Web sites to get higher rankings on search engines, which drive user traffic and thus ad revenues. These experts understandably focus their efforts on the market leader, Google — another network effect, analysts say.

Google executives often point out that personal data in its services like Web e-mail is not held in proprietary document formats, as it is in PC software. Formats aside, however, a person with a year or so of e-mail housed in Gmail is highly unlikely to switch as a practical matter, analysts say.

Taken together, these networked advantages enjoyed by Google are significant, most analysts agree. “It certainly does have an impact on whether other companies can be competitive threats to Google,” said Michael Katz, an economist at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “But it’s a very different way to lock people in than it was for Microsoft. It would be a lot easier for people to walk away from Google.”

Michael A. Cusumano, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sees the difference in terms of what he calls “direct network effects” and “indirect network effects.” The direct effects, he says, include software document formats and technology standards that are owned by one company and that are incompatible with a rival’s technology. The indirect effects, he adds, include large numbers of users, the ability to learn from those users, the power of a well-known brand and user inertia.

“For Google,” Mr. Cusumano said, “the indirect network effects are very powerful.”

From: NewYorkTimes By STEVE LOHR

UPLINK WEB DESIGNS & MARKETING

We keep hearing about website internal duplicate content issues but many of us are sincerely unaware of the fact that that’s what our own website also suffers from. Why?

• most of the websites are made with the help of third-party site creators that create duplicate URLs to same content and we don’t know about that;
• sometimes webmasters just lack SEO knowledge. For example, they might be unaware of the fact that URLs are case sensitive and www.yoursite.com/page1 and www.yoursite.com/Page1 are handled as two different pages with the same content.

Now what can create duplicate content:

• canonical issues (www and non-www version);
• pagination when different pages have identical titles and meta description;
• various versions of the home page (e.g. www.site.com and www.site.com/index.php);
• incorrect internal navigation creating several URLs to one and the same page (e.g. www.site.com/page.php?id=567 and www.site/category/page.php?id=567); etc

Why is it important to get rid of duplicate content issues?

Google has mostly figured how to sort this out. It will drop one version and index and rank another one. But still internal content duplication may result in a few issues:

• decreased crawl rate as Googlebot is kept busy crawling unnecessary identical pages;
• a wrong version of the page ranked which results in bad user experience (e.g page 2 is ranked instead of page 1);
• delayed ranking of newly launched sites.

What can help you to find internal duplicate content issues?

There are only few free tools available that can be of much help identifying your site duplicate content:

1. Duplicate content tool estimates the following:

• www and non-www header response;
• Google cache check;
• Similarity check;
• Default page check;
• 404 header response;
• PageRank dispersion check (i.e. if www and non-www versions have different PR).

2. Xenu scans all your site links and returns a table of all available URLs - all you have to do is to sort the list by title and find pages with identical titles.

3. Google Webmaster Tools reporting your site duplicate titles and meta descriptions.

From: searchenginejournal   by Ann Smarty

From hinting at fraud to identifying usefulness

SEOs should prepare to feel all warm and fuzzy.  In a document titled "What's an SEO?  Does Google recommend working with companies that offer to make my site Google-friendly?" Google's softened some of the language it uses to describe them.

The old version mentioned "a few unethical SEOs" in the fourth line and then jumped into a list of warning signs.  The revised help page introduces a negative in line three, but uses the gentler term "irresponsible."  From there, it names a lot of possible benefits.

"Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including: Reviewing and providing recommendations on your site content or structure . . . Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript . . . Content development . . . Managing online business . . . development campaigns . . . Keyword research . . . SEO training."

Relatively neutral, background check-type questions follow, and then the same warnings eventually appear.  It seems Google now has fewer qualms about nudging people towards SEOs, though, or has at least decided that its old description came off as too harsh.

Barry Schwartz deserves credit for unearthing the less-than-sweet version.  And perhaps as another way of saying "sorry," Google's asking people to contribute their own SEO-related recommendations.

From: webpronews.com by Doug Caverly

In grade school, I really wanted a pair of Velcro tennis shoes. My parents obliged. Shortly after, I decided that I needed a pair of new basketball shoes (before I realized I was too short to succeed at basketball). My parents couldn't understand why I didn't just wear my new tennis shoes. In vain, I tried to explain that each served distinctly specific functions. No dice.

While site-side Web analytics platforms are an appropriate, central hub for understanding overall digital performance, many marketing professionals still find it necessary to use complementary analytics solutions for more specific needs. Media and ad trafficking platforms are necessary for measuring display ad and paid search performance. Panel-based analytics are necessary to understand industry and competitive trends and insight. While these tools are all of an analytics nature, they each serve distinctly specific functions.

My Velcro shoes belonged on the street; basketball shoes were necessary to play basketball (or at least look good on the court). I don't want to replace my Web analytics platform, but I need a supplement for specific marketing functions to make effective business decisions.

SEO (define) is growing as a legitimate area of focus for enterprise marketing professionals. It's unequivocally the most efficient method for traffic acquisition, compared to paid search or display advertising, where costs scale with increased traffic. This makes SEO especially attractive in a recessed economic environment.

But we need to understand SEO performance at more granular level. Typical, high-level metrics provided by site-side analytics tools, like referring traffic or keywords, don't provide enough depth or breadth to make effective decisions for SEO.

I recently spent some time with Richard Zwicky, founder and president of Enquisite, a search analytics solutions provider. I'm impressed by Enquisite's unique analytics capabilities specific to SEO, and I asked Zwicky to explain how search analytics can be an appropriate complement to a traditional Web analytics tool.

Shane Atchison: Let's start with the obvious question: why are marketers demanding more insight from search analytics?

Richard Zwicky:The budgets, activities, and expectations that drive search engine marketing -- SEO as well as SEM [define] and paid inclusion -- are all on the rise and are increasingly competing with other digital and traditional marketing and advertising spends. Search-specific analytics help marketers be more responsible with their budgets by offering a closer look at specific search performance and ROI [define].

SA: Why run search analytics alongside your Web analytics solution?

RZ:Enquisite focuses on natural search referrals. We're able to provide a level of depth beyond what traditional Web analytics tools offer. But search analytics isn't intended to replace Web analytics; rather, it complements Web analytics by shedding detailed insight on how search efforts specifically contribute traffic to a site and which specific keywords perform on a site. Our data is made actionable only when viewed in the context of traditional Web analytics reports and insights.

SA: Can you share examples of how search analytics are able to provide more "detailed insight?"

RZ:A good example is geotargeting. This is commonly used to inform paid search strategy but isn't commonly achievable for SEO efforts. Enquisite's reporting allows for a highly refined and customizable look at geographic performance from natural search. We show performance by city (and, in some cases, by Zip Code) for each individual search referral. This is especially useful because your site can rank differently in search engine results pages, depending on a searcher's .

Traditional Web analytics would simply show you that you're getting search traffic but wouldn't explain your site's positioning in the SERPs [define] -- or the fact that it differs in geos. It also isn't going to distinguish the fact that some traffic comes from New York and some from Seattle.

SA:We see companies consistently wanting to view SEO success beyond just rank. Can this be more achievable with search analytics tools like Enquisite?

RZ: This has always been a common challenge, and one of the reasons that SEO and SEM performance have always been an apples-to-oranges comparison. The central problem is conversion. SEM managers are able to view conversion data at a keyword level, but SEO reporting has never really been able to tie specific keywords to specific site-side conversions.

We are soon to release conversion functionality, and we believe that Enquisite will be the first solution to offer detailed conversion tracking and analytics for natural-search-referring keywords. We can also identify which search terms, not currently optimized, have the highest potential for driving future traffic and conversion value.

SA:SEO conversion tracking is a promising level of value and insight that marketers haven't been able to realize from traditional tracking or Web analytics solutions. But it also seems like an opportunity for alignment with traditional solutions. How can that be achieved?

RZ:You're right; the value of providing SEO conversion insight is a core reason that dedicated search analytics tools will emerge as a necessary complement for marketing professionals. But you're also correct in identifying the need for alignment. The sophisticated insights that Web analytics provide in terms of looking at path data, funnel analysis, identifying and defining success events, goals, or conversions are crucial. We simply want to focus on specific insight and performance from search. This should both inform Web analytics and be informed by Web analytics. Search analytics insights can also align with other efforts like behavioral targeting.

SA:What are the big opportunities for search analytics in the next 12 to 18 months?

RZ:There is still a wealth of opportunity for search analytics providers to deliver deeper reporting functionality. Firms will need to focus on reporting functions that really address the decision-making needs of search marketing professionals. Accordingly, we really try to base our primary product focus on user feedback. We try to pay attention both to what our customers tell us and what the tight-knit search marketing community discusses. As important as search marketing is, providers need to realize that it is only one aspect of a larger analytics and marketing effort. Marketers only have limited time and attention to dedicate to search analytics. Firms need to try and avoid reporting clutter that over-delivers on analytics that we think are cool or are just nice to know.

From: ClickZ By Shane Atchison

UPLINK WEB DESIGNS & MARKETING

Incoming links are considered to be a major factor that forms Google’s opinion about your site. Naturally, country specific links are also very important to make sure Google understands your geographic targeting efforts.

That’s not a big deal if you have only one site targeting one specific . But what if you have numerous websites all meant to target different countries? In this case you may end up targeting a foreign country you have not much knowledge about.

Here is a short helpful list of tips on how to pursue country-specific backlinks:

• find your competitors’ country specific backlinks and follow their example:
  • search for places to drop a link in Google using country specific TLDs and site: command.

  Examples: [site:.co.uk donors], [site:.co.uk forums], etc

  • take advantage of this handy Yahoo search operator to find pages of different geographic (available country options: europe, africa, asia, centralamerica, downunder, mediterranean, mideast, northamerica, southamerica, southeastasia).

  Example: [linkdomain:YourCompetitorSite.com region:europe]

• search for your potential promoters using this Google Global FireFox extension allowing you to see local search results for 5 s: USA, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia.

Example: find Canada-specific results for [inurl:forums keyword]

• let the country specific links come on their own: dedicate a few prominent sections of your site to the country you are trying to target and list there the country’s most bizarre history or culture facts.

Example: if your site is all about cars and you want British auto enthusiasts to link to it, list most weird British superstitions related to cars or most interesting history facts about British autos, etc

From: searchenginejournal

by Ann Smarty

UPLINK WEB DESIGNS & MARKETING

A while ago I discussed how you could manually evaluate your competition by comparing the key phrase inachor: and intitle: results. Today I’ll add a few online tools that can also be very helpful in measuring your SERPs competition.

1. Nichewatch (free) looks into top 10 Google results for a given phrase and lets you compare them by letting you compare:

2. Keyword difficulty tool (for SEOmoz premium members) will estimate the level of competition by looking into (for both Yahoo and Google):

3. Compete.com (paid with several free searches) will also list your direct competitors for a certain keyword and some interesting additional info you will like:

From: searchenginejournal by Ann Smarty

Using Keywords to Show Up in Search Engine Results

Do you have a keyword strategy? If so, please weigh in and leave a comment. If not, check out some steps you may want to consider:

Quality Content
Your number one goal should always be to create quality content for your keywords. It will drive traffic to your site if it is useful and your visitors recommend your site to other visitors.

SEO
There is a lot of advice out on the web regarding SEO and many arguments about what does and does not work but one thing remains constant, if you take the time to optimize your pages for the search engines, you will receive better results than if you didn’t. One popular method is to have your keyword in the headline or H1 title of your page. Make sure the keyword is included in the first and last 25 words on the page. Pay attention to keyword density and don’t overstuff your pages with your keyword, it won’t work.

Blogging and Web 2.0
Your site should have a blog and an RSS feed attached so that you can use them to boost your keyword ranks. Make sure you tag your posts too, Blogger has a form where you can put your keywords (tags) for each blog post and WordPress uses categories that will automatically be seen as tags.

Article Marketing
If you want to be found using your keywords, try writing an article and placing it in a relevant section on your site. Once Google has indexed your site and has found your article (you can speed up the process by uploading a new sitemap and letting Google know about it), go out and syndicate that article by submitting it to other article sites.

Long Tails
You can work off of your master list and use related long tail keywords. Use one of the free keyword searches to find out what the daily searches are and go for the ones that aren’t in high competition if your site is relatively new. If you don't know what a long tail keyword is, please let me know and I'll do another post on that!

Domain names, URLs and Titles
If you haven’t purchased your domain name yet and you know that you are going to have a specific keyword that will relate to your site, buy a domain name with the keyword in it. Make sure that you have your keyword in your URLs to your pages and in your meta and title tags for the page.

Links
Use anchor text incorporating your keyword to link to your page. What that means is, instead of “click here” put the keyword so that it is the underlined linkable text. In addition, try to get quality one-way links from other websites that are related to yours. For instance if you sell baby clothes, try to get a website for moms to link to your site.

Useful Links for keywords:

Google Keyword Selector Tool is great, it can scan your site for existing keywords as well as give you suggestions for related keywords.

Want to see what people have been searching for in the past on Google? Try Google Suggest and start typing in your keyword.

Enter your site url and see what sitereportcard.com has to say about your optimization or keywords. It’s a fun and free tool for you to use.

From: PromotionWorld    by Joanne Pele

UPLINK WEB DESIGNS & MARKETING 

By Mark Jackson, Search Engine Watch

It's happened more than once. A prospect calls me to discuss the possibility of having my company handle their SEO efforts, and then tells me that their goal is to "increase their Google PageRank from a 4 to a 6."

First, for those of you who are not aware of Google PageRank, let me share this Wikipedia definition with you:

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E). The name PageRank is a trademark of Google. The PageRank process has been patented (U.S. Patent 6,285,999). The patent is not assigned to Google but to Stanford University.

One point that isn't explained in the Wikipedia entry is that PageRank is actually named after Larry Page, one of the founders of Google: the word "Page" in the name has nothing to do with a "Web page."

OK. Back to the topic at hand. A company's SEO "goal" is to increase Google PageRank? Seriously?

Yeah. Seriously.

Google PageRank is one of many things to be considered for your SEO efforts. It may be a consideration as to how authoritative your Web site is, but it's not why your Web site will or won't rank in the Google search results.

As an example, I Googled "business software" (without the quotes). As of the writing of this column, here are the PageRanks of the top 10 sites in the search results:

1. PageRank 6
2. PageRank 7
3. PageRank 4
4. PageRank 6
5. PageRank 6
6. PageRank 6
7. PageRank 5
8. PageRank 8
9. PageRank 8
10. PageRank 8

As you can see, even a PageRank 8 does not get you a top ranking; in this case, it gets you ninth and 10th position in the search results. And a PageRank 4 page is ranked third. Furthermore, one of the PageRank 8 pages, Business Software Alliance, was ninth in the search results.

Google's PageRank number, the number we see in the Google Toolbar and through other online tools, doesn't have much to do with the actual search engine rankings. To check the search engine rankings for yourself, Aaron Wall has an add-on tool for the Firefox Web browser that lets you "analyze" the search results as you search. After installing Firefox, you can go to this page to get more information and to install the add-on.

Once you start the SEO for Firefox tool and perform a search, more data is automatically displayed under each search result. You can easily see useful data (other than PageRank) that might give you a clue as to why the Web page is showing up where it is in the search results.

There are at least 100 or more factors that make up the Google algorithm -- and most likely a lot more than that. As you can see from the "business software" search at Google, a higher PageRank number doesn't necessarily mean better rankings.

From:

Google is looking at how far the auction can expand across all media

NEW YORK The fact that Google has a chief economist is unusual for a media or technology company. That it has over 100 statisticians crunching numbers is even more rare. But, as the search giant famously stated in the "founders letter" that accompanied its IPO filing in 2004, "Google is not a conventional company."

Hal Varian, Google's chief economist and author of a textbook still used at many universities worldwide, is tasked with perfecting the core of Google's money machine: its paid search auction.

Varian joined the company in 2002 after Google CEO Eric Schmidt asked him to look into something. "He said to me, 'Why don't you look into this auction thing. It might make us some money,'" Varian recalled.

The paid search auction, which was actually pioneered by Overture founder Bill Gross, has made Google plenty of money by matching consumers and advertisers in a more efficient manner. It has created a virtuous cycle for the company: the more advertisers Google gets into its system, the better it can target ads and the more money it can charge per click.

Now, following the acquisition of DoubleClick and forays into print and TV, Google is looking at how far the auction can expand across all media.

"The biggest problem in advertising has been the performance measures," said Varian. "In search engine advertising, you have the click and the conversion. It makes it much more easy. In brand advertising, the difficult part is the measures are much more diffuse. We hope to use math to bring more clarity to that."

What does that mean for the future of the agency business? Varian believes advertising will come to resemble the financial-services sector, which also went through a technology revolution more than two decades ago. While the relationship aspect remains, technology made it more efficient to match up supply and demand.

"Marketing is the new finance," Varian said. "Just as finance has become more quantitative because of what happened in the 1970s, you'll see marketing do that."

Agencies that embrace quantitative tools and ad platforms will thrive, he believes, but those that are only intermediaries in transactions will struggle. One area in which Google has no interest: creative.

"If you're adding a lot of value, those jobs are good," Varian said. "Computers are good at doing non-creative tasks."

The biggest opportunity for Google: TV advertising. All TV ad spending in 2007 (network, cable, spot and syndicated) totaled almost $77.5 billion, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus. Google sees TV as a market ripe for disruption, since ads are poorly targeted and difficult to measure.

"TV will come into the 21st century," Varian said. "It's going to be a lot easier to measure response and target than it is today." 

From:

While everyone talks about Google's market dominance and how it's taken over the world (naturally, because it's good at what it does), most forget that like any business, Google has made erroneous decisions as a company from time to time. PC World explores these flubs, flops, and failures in an article that proves to be a very informative read.

Some examples of Google mishaps include Google X (a homage to Mac OS X which mysteriously disappeared after a single day of being public), Google Video Player, Google Catalog, Google Web Accelerator, Google Answers, Google Coupons, Google Voice Search, Google Viewer, Google Checkout (especially related to a party-crashing incident), and Orkut (at least in the US).

The question is: do you guys really remember most of these? Probably not. With success will ultimately come failure, but you can certainly gain from learning what works and what doesn't.

FROM: search engine roundtable 

UPLINK WEB DESIGNS & MARKETING  

Moli.Com: Social Networking Means Business

Social networking has moved rapidly from teen-centric sites such as MySpace into the realm of business with career-networking sites like LinkedIn. Now the trend is picking up speed in the world of small business with sites like Moli.com.

This self-described social media/social commerce site has launched the Moli Small Business Center, which it said is designed as a destination where small businesses can go to collaborate with, learn from and market to their peers.

The company defines small business as a the owner/operator or business with fewer than 10 employees and Judy Balint, Moli's president and COO (and one-half of the management team that created Etrade), estimated that there are 22 million such small businesses in the U.S., and a total of 40 million world wide.

Balint described Moli as a free, online social community designed for collaboration and e-commerce, a place where individuals and small business owners can create their own Web sites. It lets them manage multiple Web profiles from a single account to control their privacy and separate their social, business and family relationships.

The site offers tools and resources to help small business owners take their companies to the next level and, said Balint, still have time for their real life. Through a partnership with E-Myth, an expert in work/life integration, Moli offers E-Learning courses covering topics such as sales, marketing, accounting, HR, finance and operations.

"Moli combines rich functionality that lets people do more in one place in less time," said Balint. "It lets us get offline and get things done in the real word. We're not teenagers with hours to spend. Efficiency is key for us."

Other resources available in Moli's Small Business Center include a variety of forums, courtesy of a partnership with Yedda. In the community forum, members can connect, network, discuss issues and get advice and support. In the Ask the Experts forum, members can seek advice from retired business entrepreneurs.

The Small Business Center also offers a media album, calendar, blogs, RSS feeds and message boards along with audio and video clips and podcasts that contain content from both original and third-party sources.

“Business owners can’t afford to spend unproductive time searching aimlessly around the Web looking for the resources they need to better manage their businesses and improve the quality of their lives," said Balint. "With the Moli Small Business Center, members have the most comprehensive set of resources and tools available to grow their businesses for long-term success.”

Web Pages, E-Commerce and SEO

According to Balint, small business owners often have a hard time driving traffic to their Web sites, if they even have one. "Building a Web site in a social networking environment let's then focus on marketing and promoting their business instead of on SEO," she said. She added that Moli does it for them because its building community for everyone.

A free Moli account includes a control panel, a private page where you can manage your separate business, personal and family Web pages. Balint said that Moli uses CoVibe technology that protects personally identifiable information and provides members with consumer data aggregation and analysis on the visitors to their sites.

Members can purchase reports from CoVibe that contain real-time stats on the visitors to their sites, including how many visitors, their sex and their age. Balint promises that none of the information is personally identifiable but meant as a way to let members know what kind of an audience is interested in them.

Reports cost between $3.99 and $7.99 depending on how many variables and the type of analysis you want to include.

Moli also includes online store resources to let you sell products on your site. Tools include audio and video, text, a proprietary, AJAX-based shopping cart, Google Checkout and PayPal. Balint claims you can set up an online store in 30 minutes without any programming.

The online store costs $3.99 per month, and Balint said there's no limit to the number of products that you can sell, and that Moli does not take a cut of the transaction fee. Currently, the e-commerce function does not work with QuickBooks, but Balint said that integration with the popular accounting program is in the works.

Membership on Moli is free, and includes one personal URL and as many profile pages as you like. You can make profile pages private, public or hidden altogether, a capability that Balint said makes it easy for small businesses to create separate, hidden pages for vendors, clients, customers and employees.

Additional URLs cost $1.99 per year each. Currently, Balint said there are no storage limitations because the service is still young and they're learning about the community's usage patterns.

They may add storage limits in the future, with options to purchase more, but Balint said the basic storage offering would stay in line with the marketplace (i.e., Google currently offers more than 2 GB of free storage).

The company launched in January 2008 with 241,000 registered members. According to Balint, in April 2008, the site received 20.9 million unique visitors.

FROM: SmallBusinessComputing.com by Lauren Simonds 

UPLINK WEB DESIGNS & MARKETING  

Good day to all.. this is my first blog, where in i would be sharing to you. it's a news article that i happen to come across today and i think it would be worth it to share these facts to all. I've learned from it and i hope some will also learn after reading this... if you have any comments or a reactions, don't hesitate to message me or to comment.. Happy Reading!

What’s Important to Know About the Google “Dewey” Algorithm Update

Well, you probably already know about the new Google update. While the last several updates don’t have a distinctive name, this past update which came roaring in during March and April wreaking havoc to all SEO’s deserves a name like a great storm- this one named “Dewey” after a code word used in Matt Cutt’s blog. Following is some of the information I have been able to collect on Dewey, hopefully giving SEO’s information that can be useful for their clients and websites.

Dewey Wreaks Havoc

For most SEO’s and general web surfers Dewey was extremely easy to spot. It only took a few searches to realize that something was off kilter and to many SEO’s totally out of whack. So what were some of the distinct characteristics of the Dewey algorithm when it first reared its head? Here is just a short list of the things noticed by the SEO community:

Older Sites in General Suddenly Disappear

One of the first alarm bells that went off was that many of the quality old sites that we love and nurture suddenly disappeared from the top ranking positions to pages in the tens or twenties of the index. This very unfortunate fact sent many SEO’s into panic mode.

Less Relevancy

Many web surfers and SEO’s noticed that searches were not nearly as relevant as before. For many, it seemed that Google was tipsy, spewing out half baked results for straight forward queries.

New Sites Were Loading Extremely Slow

Nope, it wasn’t your broadband connection. Yahoo and other search engine interfaces were acting fine. Many web surfers noticed however, it was mostly newer websites that were having difficulty loading.

Problems with Cache Data

Many SEO’s realized that cache data was not showing up accurately even though index reports were showing otherwise.

Rebuilding After the Storm

So to recap, the Dewey update has wreaked havoc on both web developers and SEO’s. During the update, traffic dropped precipitously with many businesses seeing drops of more than 75% in traffic and revenue. While the Dewey update has seemed to pass, many SEO’s are still trying to figure out what they should be focusing on and how to get their sites they have diligently developed back up in the SERP’s.

As with all Google updates, once the updates have been implemented, there is a lot of buzz about what Google is now focusing on and rewarding and what details of sites Google is punishing or penalizing. Here are just some of the details that I picked up that can be helpful to all web developers and SEO’s. Keep in mind it will take a few months and lots of research to figure out precisely what works and what doesn’t, but never the less, here are some tips.

Continue with White Hat SEO Strategies

While the chatter online can be deafening at times at what works and what doesn’t, it is crystal clear that white hat SEO strategies will continue to be the best route to developing a website or blog.

Content

It’s too early to tell exactly which types of content are receiving more attention from Google, however keep in mind that high quality, relevant, unduplicated content is the best choice for your site.

Back Links

Forget about paid links and spammy links. If you are paying for advertisements that are bringing real traffic that is one thing, but if you are trying to build page rank using paid links, the clock is definitely ticking. If you choose to use paid links make sure they are embedded in relevant content. It’s amazing how much relevant content can clean up paid links.

Multi-Media

Find a way to add as many different types of multi-media as possible. Make sure you optimize any images you place on blogs or websites. For those using WordPress, there are plug-ins available that make this task super quick and easy. Video is another area where you may want to get your feet wet. While not the perfect match for many types of websites, if you can find a way to add video to your site, you will usually also increase your chances of improving in the rankings. By the way, make sure to post your video on YouTube and many other video sites for backlinks and increased traffic.

Ups & Downs

It seems that the top ranking sites are still bouncing around quite a bit- especially for competitive keywords. While we SEO’s can only wonder in the short term how things will settle, there are a few different theories bouncing around. The first is that Google is trying to recalibrate AdSense. Secondly, it is suggested that Google is implementing some of its new search technology that is part of a longer term strategy. However, it might be a year or two before we know exactly which direction Big G takes us. Remember, Google, is in the business of selling ads and not necessarily to help out mom & pop businesses- so don’t expect any sympathy for small e-commerce sites.

In closing, it should be mentioned that the Dewey update jumped the pond to the UK, however, India For SEO’s looking for confirmation of strategies that are working, it looks like it will take a month or so before the data starts coming in. seems to be holding its own.

FROM: PromotionWorld.com by Roger Janik is the President and Founder of ServerSideDesign.com

Aloa of UPLINK WEB DESIGNS & MARKETING