10 Vital Tips for Choosing the Right Web Hosting Company
The Web hosting firm you choose can make or break your small business. Good ones can run things smoothly, are easy to reach, and fix problems efficiently. But bad ones can have more problems than they are worth, be unreachable at critical times, and bring your business to a screeching halt. Finding a good one is crucial to your success.
Here are some tried and true ideas for how to select a host that will save you money, avoid technical snafus, and build your online platform for the future.
1. Choose a Service that Primarily Does Hosting
Although it might be tempting to sign-up with a firm that provides an umbrella of services in addition to website hosting, a good rule of thumb is that if a company overly-diversifies its services, it won't deliver top quality in any of them (e.g. tech support, updates, maintenance, etc.)
2. Choose a Host with a Great Record for Online Security
Most secure hosts will provide SSL Certificates to guarantee your security. Without an SSL Certificate on your site, visitors may come and go without identifying themselves, and this could put your site at risk. Make sure your host implements best practices when it comes to maintaining security architecture, updating security software, and responding effectively to breaches if and when they do occur.
3.Excellent Technical and Customer Service Support via Phone
Does the host provide phone support around the clock? Or can you only email for help during non-business hours? You definitely want the option to call a staffer. Studies show that over-the-phone tech and customer support systems are vastly more efficient than e-mail support centers, on average.
4. Solid Add-On Services
A number of great web hosting companies provide little extras to make sites more effective and user-friendly. These can include image upload galleries, blogs, control panels, order forms, support scripts, databases, and embedded video features. When evaluating various firms, examine sample sites and note what value add-ons you like and what value add-ons you feel are missing in each sample.
5. Don't Rely on Numbers Alone to Make the Decision
Many hosts promise uptime approaching 100%. But there's no way of verifying that kind of claim. If your website goes down, for instance, the company can easily explain it away as a statistically insignificant outlier. Similarly, a potential host may brag about oodles of bandwidth and space on servers, but if your online small-business needs are modest, these numbers shouldn't be your incentive. Finally, be wary of online rating systems. These figures can be jiggered and rejiggered to make a web host look better (or worse) than it actually is.
6. The Right Price for Your Needs
Sure, you can find a service for practically nothing. But there is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to web hosting. If you're paying a dirt-cheap rate, chances are that the host is watering down services in some respect. Perhaps the host offers minimal security protections or charges clients "pay per play" for technical support. Or maybe the site charges a sky-high maintenance fee or other monthly fee. The point is, you need to read the fine print and to price-compare before making a decision.
7. Flexible Features and Enough Elbow-Room
You have no idea how your online platform might evolve. That's why you need a hosting company that boasts flexible features, supports many different languages, offers linux and Windows options, and supports an array of scripts (PHP, Pearl, Java, etc.) A good rule of thumb for determining space is to "buy big". In other words, even if you don't have tens of thousands of files to upload and store, leave yourself some wiggle room to anticipate future growth.
8. An Easy-To-Use and Safe Shopping Cart
According to numerous estimates, U.S. and U.K. consumers will be spending nearly $150 billion per year online by the year 2010. Your site's e-commerce options should be simple, safe, battle-tested, and easy-to-use.
9. Protection Against Spam, Viruses, Trojan Horses, and the Like
Most creditable web hosting sites provide solid e-mail protection. Make sure to check for compatibility, however. For instance, if you use Microsoft Outlook, make sure that the host has the tools and services to shield your Outlook e-mail effectively -- without blocking key notifications from clients or suppliers.
10.Important Questions to Consider:
* Does the host provide good references and testimonials?
* Does the company employ best-of-breed firewalls and routers?
* Has anyone filed complaints against the company through the Better Business Bureau or other organization?
* What services do small businesses similar to yours use for web hosting?
* Can the company provide any statistics to back up claims regarding reliability and technical support?
* Can you use the host for a trial period before paying full price?
* How expensive is it to upgrade or downgrade plans?
* How do blogs and customer forums rate your candidate hosting services?
Regards,
Muddabir
10 Vital Tips for Choosing the Right Web Hosting Company
Is your competition beating you with SEO? Episode 2
12. Has the keyword been used appropriately in headline tags and link text?
13. Does the site use java script, tables, frames, dynamic content, CMS etc?
14. Is the page focused around a theme?
15. How many inbound links are there to the page? You can check the link popularity of the page on www.marketleap.com? Visit the sites that have given the link. What is their page rank? What is the link text that describes the link to the website? Has the keyword been used in the link text?
16. How many pages does the site have?
17. Does the site have a good site map that lists all the content pages, videos on the site that search engine spiders can crawly easily?
18. Are there any 404 errors on the website?
19. What is the domain name extension e.g. .com,. net, .edu, .co.in
20. How long has that domain name been in existence? Search engines rank those sites better that have been around for a while, or those that plan to be around for a while?
21. How many directories has that page/website been submitted to?
22. Has the site used any spamming or illegal SEO techniques like keyword stuffing, cloaking, hidden text, duplicate content and other such spam techniques? If yes you can inform the search engine of the same but do so with caution. For Google: http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
Please note that sometimes you will find no reasons why the competitors' website is ranked above yours. And that's ok. I have experienced many cases of certain sites which go against the search engines guidelines (set by search engines themselves), and yet they rank above meticulously optimized pages.
Search engines are constantly trying to remove badly optimized or spam pages which offer little or no value to the users. Our intent here is not to focus on the missing pieces/loopholes of search engines algorithms or isolated instances of sites that don't deserve it and yet are ranking high, but to work within the framework and guidelines for the long haul.
By mapping out the answers to the above questions (preferable on a spread sheet), you will find the overall patterns of what is working for those sites and why, and then figure out ways to modify your SEO strategies to improve your rankings.
Regards,
Muddabir
Is your competition beating you with SEO?Episode 1
You have optimized your website for winning keywords, are mid-way with your link building campaign, and have been going absolutely crazy creating fresh SEO friendly content that pleases the users and search engines.
You are obviously very serious about your online business, and yet you cannot seem to cross the Rank # 12, Page 2 barrier of Google search listing for your primary keywords.
A series of questions arise from the imaginary situation above:
1. Why is my ranking for the particular keyword not going up?
2. Am I missing out on any SEO strategies?
3. Maybe I am not building enough links? How much will be enough?
4. Do I have to improve my content quality?
5. The search engine has changed their algorithm (�again)
6. Others are using illegal SEO techniques
Now while one could go over the questions in your head, read up on latest search engine algorithms, contact a SEO expert, or blindly start buying links out of desperation, there is an easier way to find your answers.
Simply ask why are the other 10 websites ranking before your website?
Now that does not mean that the above questions 1 to 6 are not relevant, but simply put, one of the easiest ways to boost your search rankings is to study the top 5 to ten websites for your keyword and then apply what working for them into your own strategies.
Now I am not asking you to copy the competition or have a strategy that just involves beating the competition at the ranking game. It never works. What is needed is a better balance between your company's SEO strategies and of those of your competitors.
Like in any business strategy, you have to know your competitors, study what strategies they are using, and then apply the best of those strategies to your own game plan.
In the same way, in defining the SEO path ahead for your website you must analyze your competition. What are they doing to rank in the top 10 that you are not doing? After all those websites are listed on the top for a reason, and they are applying SEO strategies that the search engine in particular seems to like.
Now while finding the answers to those questions in the real business world may be difficult, in the online world all you have to do is to right-click and view the source of the page.
The below simple steps will open up a world of information to you.
1. Does the domain name contain the keyword? If the link is a sub domain then does the sub domain contain the keyword?
2. In what Meta tags, title, etc has the competition placed their keywords?
3. Does the link name contain the keyword? eg. www.seo-optimization-experts.com/mumbai-seo-expert.html
4. How many keywords are listed in the keyword tag i.e. is the page focused around one or two keywords, or is it a jumble of keywords listed out.
5. Is the title and description captivating enough? How has the keyword/s been placed in the title and description and at what position?
6. Is the page graphic intensive? Is the site using a lot flash or active server pages? Search engines cannot understand graphics, only the text it can read on the page. Make sure there is a good balance between the graphics and content.
7. How long is the body text? Writing 400 to 600 words is normally fine.
8. Has the keyword (keyword weight) been used appropriately in the body content? Ideally the first 25 words of content should be keyword rich, and the keyword should appear after every 100 words in remaining content.
9. Is the content interesting to you as the reader? Does the content follow a theme? Is the content relevant to what keyword the page has been optimized for?
10. What is the page rank of the page (You can check page rank of any website by downloading the Google Toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com.
11. Which is the first place in the source code the keyword appears?
Regards,
Muddabir
Facebook in 15 Minutes a Day
I've often said that social networking can take up your entire day, if you allow it. You sit down at your desk in the morning, and you see several Facebook event invites and friend requests. As you log into your account, someone's Facebook status update catches your eye, and before you know it, 3 hours have passed while you're reading and responding to social networking messages. How can you possibly get any work done in your business or for your clients at this rate?
Facebook doesn't have to be a time hog. As a matter of fact, you can actually handle most of your Facebook tasks in as little as 15 minutes per day. Here's what I do when I log into my account each morning (thanks for wonderful training I've received from Facebook guru Mari Smith for these great tips):
1. Update your status. This is the first section that you'll see on your homepage when you log into Facebook. While you can do this from your Facebook account, I prefer to update my status in Ping.fm, as this service will update my status in all of my social networking sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and MySpace. However, if you're using only Facebook for social networking, then go ahead and use the status update there.
2. Review your news feeds. This is the first tab on the right on your home page. In this review, you're seeking stories on which you can share your expertise and on which you can comment. Some of your comments may be personal in nature, but this is a great opportuníty to showcase your experience in your field and industry.
3. Review news feeds of your friends. This feature is available from the home page as the down arrow on the far right of the home page tabs and permits you to view the feeds of your Friends Lists. Friend Lists allow you to create private groupings of friends based on your personal preferences. I've got my lists created by industry, i.e. Coaches, Virtual Assistants, Marketing Professionals, People to Watch, etc. Pick one líst and comment on those feeds just as you would yours.
If you have no Friends Lists, here's how to create them: Click Friends at the top of any Facebook page. From the following page, click "Make a new líst" on the left. After typing in the title of your list, you can add friends to your líst by typing your friend's name into the "Add to List" field. You can also click "Select Multiple Friends" to the right of the field, which will allow you to select many friends from your entire líst. After making your selections, click "Save List" to store your changes.
4. Review status updates. Take a quick moment to breeze through the status updates of your friends, and click on those on which you feel compelled to comment. Many people feed their blog posts into their status updates, so this is a great way to get out and comment on the blogs of others without having to search out relevant blog posts. In this case, I comment on the blog itself rather than the Facebook status update. I usually only go through one page of these to ensure I remain within my time constraints.
5. Acknowledge birthdays. These are listed under Events and Birthdays on the right side of your homepage. When you click on the birthday person's name, you'll be sent to their wall, where you can write your personalized birthday greeting (make more effort that just simply saying "Happy Birthday!"). I also take this opportuníty to find out a bit more about the friends on my list by clicking the "Info" tab on their home page and quickly scanning their profile. This helps me start to put names and faces together and get better acquainted with my network of friends, And, I take this opportuníty to add people to Friends List as appropriate.
6. Review friend requests. Add friends as you see fit, or according to any guidelines you have set for yourself. Facebook guru Mari Smith suggests setting up a "Friending Request Policy" in which you write down the conditions under which you'll accept friends (i.e. picture must be on profile, have to have other friends in common, have to have submitted a personal note with the friend request, etc.) and to help you in your decision-making.
7. Respond to event invitations. Your friends will be sending a myriad of invites to various events (most of my invites are to teleclasses), so take a few moments to scroll through those and see if any are of interest to you, or if you have further questions about them.
8. Respond to group invitations. Most of these I ignore, but occasionally I'll join a private group, usually related to a program in which I'm enrolled. Or, if it's a group run by someone with whom I want to connect or from whom I want to learn, I'll accept the invite to the group. If I have time, I'll also visit one of the groups to see what's going on and respond to any messages here.
9. Add friends. Facebook does an amazíng job of suggesting people I actually know to add to my friends líst in their "People You May Know" section on my home page. If I happen to see such a suggestion, I send out a request to add that person as a friend. When requesting to add a friend, I ALWAYS send a personalize request, letting them know how I know about them.
10. Review notifications. The notifications icon is on the lower right side of your home page and lists what's going on in your account (friend requests accepted, notes on your wall, etc.). This is a good prompt for you to write on someone's wall when they accept your friend request or to respond to posts on your wall.
11. Eyeball your profile. Make sure your profile appears as it should, and take the opportuníty to catch up on anything you may have missed with your other steps.
12. Check your inbox. Many of the emails in your inbox are duplications of event and group invites or group emails. When I look at this, I'm seeking out any personal 1:1 emails that I might have received from someone on my líst. I've discovered that many people I want to contact respond better to their Facebook emails than through emails sent to them (or an assistant) via their website, so I often email them through Facebook, instead.
If you devote 15 minutes per day, or at least 15 minutes 3 times a week, to updating Facebook, you'll begin to see results from your social networking before you know it!
Regards,
Muddabir
Google Reveals More Linking Secrets To Webmasters Episode 2
Then Maile Ohye explained further how to create unique and compelling content for your site:
(Quoting Maile Ohye)
* Start a blog: make videos, do original research, and post interesting stuff on a regular basis. If you're passionate about your site's topic, there are lots of great avenues to engage more users.
* Teach readers new things, uncover new news, be entertaining or insightful, show your expertise, interview different personalities in your industry and highlight their interesting side. Make your site worthwhile.
* Participate thoughtfully in blogs and user reviews related to your topic of interest. Offer your knowledgeable perspective to the community.
* Provide a useful product or service. If visitors to your site get value from what you provide, they're more likely to link to you.
(End Quote)
SEO experts have been telling webmasters for years that creating valuable, unique, relevant useful content is one of the best ways to get your site and pages highly ranked in Google. If you create valuable content, then other sites will want to link to you naturally.
Linking out to other sites should be done in a "common sense" manner and it's a way of offering value to your visitor's experience. We expect helpful relevant links when we visit other sites since it's a natural way a good quality site should work; so be careful of linking out to spammy sites that only show pages of links with very little or no unique content.
There are several things every prudent webmaster should be checking like making sure your site hasn't been hacked and hidden links placed on your site without your knowledge; those with WordPress blogs should be installing the latest security measures and updates. Make sure you keep checking all your outbound links regularly since you may initially link out to a valuable resource, but over time this page may be closed or replaced with one of those spammy-links-holding pages. It can happen to the best of us.
What has confused things lately is all the "link buying" which Google greatly discourages and has shown its displeasure by de-ranking many paid directories. The size of your "wallet" shouldn't be the determining factor in how pages and content are ranked. If you're selling a link, it should have the "no-follow" tag so that it doesn't pass PageRank along and confuse the system. Policing or deciding what is or what is not a "paid link" has become a major problem for the search engines, including Google.
You should not have more than "100 links on a page" as this can overload the search engine robots that regularly crawl the web, indexing pages. Likewise, your site's "linking architecture" should be natural and easy for both your visitors and the robots to follow. Make sure your important pages are no more than a few clicks away from your homepage.
As to interior linking, the two main points being: Intuitive Navigation for your visitors and Crawlable Text Links for the search engine robots. Use descriptive anchor text links that explain your content to your visitors. The anchor text is the underlined clickable part of the link and many SEO experts suggest you place your keywords or variations of them in your anchor text.
Make sure your site is transparent. Do not use "link cloaking" on your site. Make sure what your visitor sees is what the robots are indexing. Use a 301 Redirect if you have permanently moved any webpages. Again, there is stressed the need for a sitemap as this can be very helpful for both your visitors and robots to see and find all your valuable content. Make sure you have a sitemap and all your important pages are listed on it.
One final note, many professional webmasters and marketers don't worry about PageRank as much as they are concerned with SERPs. Getting those top rankings for their sites in the search engine results is what really matters. Again, quality content and building quality links play an important role in achieving those top spots and maybe Google has already given you the formula for getting them. Maybe, maybe not.
Regards,
Muddabir
Google Reveals More Linking Secrets To Webmasters Episode 1
One of the most problematic and confusing issues most webmasters have with Google concerns linking. How your links are ranked? How you should link out? How you should construct your internal links? How you should get more inbound links? How many links should you have on a page? And the líst of questions goes on...
Perhaps, the most annoying aspect for the struggling webmaster, has been Google's secrecy in how it actually ranks links and pages. Google's whole PageRank and Ranking Algorithm is so complex that no one can fully boast they understand how the whole system works.
Google's ranking secrecy and complexity has probably been well-planned mainly because there are millíons of webmasters who would like to "game" the Google Algorithm and achieve high keyword rankings through manipulation with so-called "black-hat" SEO techniques and reverse engineering.
Wouldn't it be ironic if this whole secrecy and complexity is more of a smokescreen rather than an actual deception on Google's part. What if the keys to the kingdom are actually yours for the taking? What if the solution is hiding in plain sight for everyone to see? What if the secret to high rankings in Google is not a secret at all? Wouldn't that be a hoot!
Actually, that's not a far-fetched assumption to make, mainly because many of Google's linking policies and recommendations are freely given by Google. Whether you can believe Google is actually giving you the goods is another issue that we'll put on the back-burner for another day; but for now, Google's advice on link building is rather generous and informative.
As a part of Links Week held recently, Google's Maile Ohye gave some pointers on what Google is looking for and how it does its index ranking. No big surprise that content and inbound links are the two most important factors. This is what most SEO experts have been saying for years.
A site's content is one of the main factors. Therefore, you should have a compelling site with interesting information and/or provide quality products, entertainment, opinions...
"One of the strongest ranking factors is my site's content. Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three sources -- however, one inbound link is from a spammy site. As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking."
"Given the user's query, over 200 signals (including the analysis of the site's content and inbound links as mentioned above) are applied to return the most relevant results to the user."
"As many of you know, relevant, quality inbound links can affect your PageRank (one of many factors in our ranking algorithm). And quality links often come naturally to sites with compelling content or offering a unique service."
Regards,
Muddabir Aziz
New Features in Google Adwords
Improved views for search and content network statistics
Now you can easily check your search and content network statistics on the summary pages of your account. Use the new Statistics drop-down to see separate search and content rows for each of your campaigns and ad groups, or filter your display to view only the statistics for the network you choose.
Demographic bidding now available on select sites in the Google content network
Demographic bidding helps you display your ads to specific gender and age segments on some sites in the Google content network, giving you more control over who your audience is and greater insight into how your ads perform with those audiences.
There are two ways you can use demographic bidding. First, you can modify your bids for a particular audience segment, such as increasing your bid for 18-24 year-olds and males. Second, you can exclude certain demographic groups from seeing your ads if they aren't meeting your ROI goals.
Run Demographic Reports (found in the Report Center) to guide your bids for certain groups. These reports can show you campaign performance metrics (including impressions, clicks, CTR, and conversion data) by the age and gender of the users who saw your ad.
Regards,
Muddabir
Top 5 Ways To Use Web 2.0 for Web Marketing Episode 1
Web 2.0 and Web marketing is a match made in heaven. There are many ways to create traffic to your website using the power of Web 2.0. Below I am going to examine what I consider to be the top five.
Jack Humphrey, a well-known Web 2.0 expert, defines it this way in his Authority Black Book:
Generally speaking, if people can submit links to content, submit content, make comments and vote good/bad content up/down thus affecting the amount of traffic that content can generate, it's Web 2.0.
Blogs, wikis, file sharing sites, content rating systems, book-marking sites, and social networking sites are all examples of Web 2.0. Some of the more well-known Web 2.0 sites are YouTube (file sharing), Facebook and MySpace (social networking), Wikipedia (wiki), del.icio.us (book-marking) and Digg (content rating system). The líst is almost endless, and the traffic that these websites generate is absolutely staggering.
So how can you harness some of this traffic?
1) Create original, quality and compelling content and submit them to Web 2.0 websites.
For example, if you write an original and compelling article, you can submit it to content sharing and content rating system websites such as Digg, Propeller, Newsvine, MarkTD or Reddit. Sometimes content sharing and content rating system websites specialize in a particular industry. MarkTD specializes in marketing, for example.
When you submit your article to these sites, people will give it a vote, and each vote moves the article up where it can be seen by more and more people. This has the potential of creating a lot of traffic for your website since each reader will need to click on the link to go to your site to read the full article. And you're building a permanent link pointing to your website that can be followed for months and years to come. (And don't forget, a link from a quality site to your website helps in your search engine rankings too.)
Or you can create an original video and submit it to YouTube. Here it will get rated and possibly seen by many people. If the video contains your website or a plug for your business, then all the better. YouTube is not the only video sharing website however. There are many, and one video can be submitted to them all. This same concept applies to your original images, photographs, digital art and audio files.
2) Web 2.0-ize other people's sites that contain a link back to your website
I'll assume you already know how your bookmarks (or Favorites) work in your browser. There are websites that exist that act in the same way, but the bookmarks you set are public. Del.icio.us was one of the first and a very popular example of this. People's public bookmarks are browsed by others and lead to clicks to the sites you've bookmarked. So be sure to bookmark your business website and inner pages that are important. Also, these bookmarks can appear in search results in engines like Google and Yahoo. And some even think that search engines use book-marking sites in their algorithms, although this has not been conclusively proven. Simpy and BlinkList are two more examples of these kinds of Web 2.0 book-marking sites.
Let's say you write an original, quality article and post it to your business website. Then let's say you submit the article to a handful of content rating websites like some of the ones explained above. To further market this article, you can then use social book-marking sites to bookmark the page on the content rating websites that líst your new article and that contain a link back to your article. This can be very powerful.
Or let's say you notice that an authority in your industry has a link on its website that points back to your website. Go ahead and bookmark the page on the authority site, thus marketing it, which in turn markets your site as well. One particular Web 2.0 website that is very popular and can generate tons of traffic is StumbleUpon. This site allows people to give any page you deem worthy a "thumbs-up". And if you get enough "thumbs-up", people browsing StumbleUpon will see it and click over to that page. So I always make it a point to "Stumble" my business websites' homepages and sites that contain links to my business websites as well.
If you become an active member in a handful of Web 2.0 websites and utilize these first two suggestions alone, you will be amazëd at the kind of traffic you can generate.
Regards,
Muddabir
The Mysteries of SEO Episode 3
The system Google is working hard to put in place to discount a link from a bad site is why it is very important to know who is linking to you and if their site stacks up to your standards. It is no longer true that all inbound links to your site are good links. There are very good tools available online for free that can show you who is linking to you. If you find a site that is linking to you that you feel is questionable in terms of how they relate to your website either in information or product you should contact the webmaster of the site and demand that they remove the link to your website to avoid being penalized by the search engines.
Probably the best way to obtain a back link to your site is through anchor text. That is when you have another website with content that is relevant to your own (relevancy is ALWAYS important) including your site in the actual content of their site with a hyperlink inside the text. These back links are valued much higher than a simple sidebar link as long as they appear in the text in a way that has a fluid and meaningful association with the content of the article. There are several ways to get such back links.
Providing articles to content sites with your link built into the article is one method. If you write very compelling information on your website is another as someone else with a similar site may wish to point it out on their own. You may not even realize they are doing it unless they tell you about it. This is one of the main reasons it is important to keep an eye on who is back linking to you. While the majority of those types of links are wonderful and you should thank the site owner for their inclusion, if you feel the site that is linking to you does not meet your standards, have similar information, or the content is not relevant to your site you should definitely ask them to remove your link.
Back linking is an extremely important aspect of SEO development and it is something you need to understand well in order to implement and control it properly. There are many secrets and mysteries in the SEO world that diligent study can clear up. Keeping your website in good standing with the search engines and popular with your visitors is the best way to ensure a vital and profitable
Regards,
Muddabir
The Mysteries of SEO Episode 2
The term "back link" refers to an outside link on another site that points to yours. In the past any link from another site would have a positive impact on your site by the search engines. Because there were so many gimmicks developed in the last few years to garner massive back links to websites such as link farms, and irrelevant reciprocal linking Google began to develop a way to weed out links that were purchased, or had little meaning or relevancy.
Even though back linking is used to manipulate search engine popularity there are many very legitimate reasons for using the system of back linking. Finding web sites that have a common interest to your own who are willing to place your link on their site can get you extra exposure. When their visitors come to their site they will see your link and likely visit your site as well.
The fact that onsite links like that have such a perceived relevance to the visitor makes them a valuable marketing tool, but that perception of quality is also why Google works so hard to be sure they are real quality links. You will get higher ranking on a search engine for a number of truly appropriate back linking partnerships however if the sites linking to you do not share any common information or products Google will penalize you for the link. There are new programs in the works with Google where your site could even be devalued if the site that links to you is determined to be bad quality so it is important who you choose to link to, and also who links to you.
In the past many web site owners would open up multiple websites with the sole purpose of promoting one principle site. They would use the extra websites as a means of placing back links to the main site. Google now watches for sites that are created with the same IP address. Creating a large number of websites on the same IP address and putting back links on them to quickly develop a number of links is known as link bombing. That is not to say that you cannot ever link to your own website from a site you own. If there is a reason to show your visitors some additional information a few well placed back links are fine. It is when there are many links from each site all pointing to a single 'main' site that the search engines look at them suspiciously.
Regards
Muddabir Aziz
The Mysteries of Episode 1
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the most important element in building a successful website. Most people online have heard the term SEO and have some idea of what is involved yet it remains a mysterious process to many. One of the reasons SEO is so mysterious is that it can be a complicated endeavor and search engines are constantly changing the way they rank sites and the way the recognize the many tools of SEO.
At the forefront of the SEO check and balance system is the leading search engine Google. They have pretty much set the standard for technology in search engine algorithms that can track the relevancy of a website to its content and SEO efforts. Their ranking system remains one of the most popular methods of determining a web site's quality because of their diligent efforts of weeding out the bad apples that have little to offer a consumer other than skilled manipulation and the ability to 'play the system' to their advantage.
Of course taking advantage of the system makes perfect sense from a business standpoint but from the search engine outlook of wanting to provide the best quality sites on their results for the viewer it can become difficult to differentiate the site that is good quality wise from the site that is good because it has a very manipulative operator at the helm.
Because the rules for SEO evolve and change rapidly the mystique of search engine optimization continues to confuse website owners. Many people build their websites thinking the only SEO tool they need is key word density. While key words are an important aspect in SEO they are not the only means to an end, they are simply a part of the puzzle. There is another tried and true method of SEO that is as relevant today as it was at the start of the concept of web 2.0 marketing and that is back linking. While back linking remains one of the most successful ways to get your site to rank high on the search engines it also has undergone some changes making the types of links important so that search engines do not penalize a site for bad incoming links.
Regards,
Muddabir
Social Networking Software-Network Applications
* Multiple video formats can be converted to a compatible format and encoded on your server.
* A tag cloud is a user-friendly graphic featuring a group of connected words, each with a linked tag that takes you to related content when you click on it. It’s similar to a search, but using words already linked together.
* Social bookmarks allow users to save external URL links and share them with others.
* Organize the creation of versioned controlled pages and upload different types of file or documents.
* Calendars are used to set up meetings and events. Event creators can invite individuals or teams to attend and potential attendees can accept or decline invitations. Each event is stored to be referenced by the user as required.
* Blogs show posts, comments and blog archives. Video posts can also be made.
* A threaded discussion forum where staff or like-minded users can exchange ideas, post questions, suggest answers and offer help on relevant topics.
* Editable Wikipedia-type pages.
* Search results are displayed by content type - blogs, videos etc. The search mechanism uses dynamically-updating predictive text, anticipating the desired subject as you type.
* Teams consist of multiple users - each team can create its own blog and related files. The activities of team members are shown on the team page. Team creators can invite other users to join their team, and invited users can accept or decline these invitations.
visit: http://www.brandstation.tv
The 10 Step Plan To Successful Email Marketing Episode 1
When website owners and marketers talk about online marketing, they often refer to SEO and PPC. Email marketing can sometimes be overlooked despite being one of the most powerful methods to reach potential customers and to keep existing customers coming back for more. Perhaps a factor in this is that direct email campaigns are commonly associated with spam emails, but careful list management ensures that this need not be a problem.
There are a number of stages to a successful email marketing campaign and by nailing as many as possible you can improve your results. The key to success, though, most commonly lies in the planning stage – if this is your first foray into email marketing then be prepared to treat it as a test run. The more direct email marketing campaigns you run, the more opportunity you have to optimize the process and improve your results. Here are ten of the most important steps to an effective email campaign.
1 – Determine Your Ultimate Goal
This might sound obvious, but having a clear goal in mind will help to concentrate your efforts. There are many effective uses of an email marketing campaign from increasing brand awareness to pushing a new product or seasonal promotion. Each of these uses typically demands a different campaign with its own style and its own components.
Increasing traffic to your website is not usually a bottom line target. The reason for increasing traffic to a website is normally to improve sales and increase profits. In the majority of cases, it is more desirable to attain greater sales through fewer visitors, than having a site awash with visitors but with a poor conversion rate.
A prolonged and careful email marketing campaign will naturally help to improve brand awareness. Your readers will naturally remember your name and the products or services that you sell as they gain more and more exposure to your marketing emails. Similarly, as long as you produce relevant and useful emails, your potential customers will grow to trust you making it more likely that they will purchase from you now or in the future.
2 - Your Opt-In Email List
There are a couple of key aspects to this section. YOUR opt-in list will generate better results than the use of somebody else's list. If you have taken the time and put in the effort to grow your own list, then the members of that list will already have some degree of awareness for you, your products, and your website.
Developing your own list can take time and money. To get a head start it is possible to buy or rent email lists from others. In these cases it is particularly important to pay attention to the second important factor – the list MUST be an opt-in list. Every member of that list must have opted in to receive marketing communication from you and they MUST be given adequate opportunity to opt out of future communication.
Particular care needs to be taken with your list management techniques to ensure that you are not deemed as being spam. If you purchase lists or partial lists then members that opt out need to be recorded separately. If you purchase another list that includes the same name and you subsequently email that person without their express request to be re-included in your list then you face the very real possibility of being flagged as sending spam email.
3 - Establish Performance Tracking Techniques
Tracking the performance of any advertising campaign should be foremost in your mind. This is the only true method of determining its worth and is the only way you can optimize your advertising to generate the best possible results. Web analytics are an absolute must-have, and with the wealth of affordable and even free choices available today there is no reason not to have a good analytic package in place.
Tracking code can also be placed into an HTML email. You need to operate a degree of caution when implementing code into HTML emails, because it could lead to your email being blocked by over zealous spam filters. If you can use hyperlinks that include tracking code, and your analytics package includes referral data, then this can generate the majority of the information you require.
The more information you can gleam from an advertising campaign, the better. You will be using these results to fine tune future advertising campaigns, so too much information is better than too little. If in any doubt then consider using an email marketing management service to conduct the tracking on your behalf.
Regards,
Muddabir Aziz
Targeted Traffic and How to Get it Episode 3
Buy Expired Domain Traffic:
This may be the most expensive in terms of money, but also the cheapest in terms of time. You will usually get a traffic boost within a month. What is it that you're buying? You are buying traffic from a company which has invested in expired domain names.
They are domain names which are still registered on the search engines which get a certain amount of traffic. The previous domain name owners have not renewed the registration for whatever reason. The traffic from the expired domain name is redirected to your website. This is usually high quality traffic as only expired domains with relevant traffic is redirected to you. As always, you should undertake a test run to see if this traffic is suitable.
When you combine these techniques and apply them consistently over time you will find a rich source of targeted traffic coming to your website. This, combined with quality products will ensure the success of your online business.
Regards,
Muddabir Aziz
Targeted Traffic and How To Get It Episode 2
Linking from/to other websites:
Look for websites which are similar to yours (but which do not compete directly). Ask the website owner for a reciprocal link. Be sure to pick link partners who match your customer profile. Try using a software program like Arelis to help you find link partners.
E-Zines:
Buy adverts in ezines that target your market. Perform a test to ensure that the return on your investment is enough to cover the cost of the adverts. You may save a considerable amount.
Newsletters:
Offer your visitors something of value, such as an eBook, in exchange for signing up for your newsletter. Write your newsletter so that it's tightly focused on your subject. You should publish your newsletter regularly, preferably once a week.
E-Books:
Write (or have written) a free informational eBook which you can give away to your clients and others. You can place links back to your website in the eBook.
Joint Ventures:
Online marketers are always looking for products to sell. They may have large mailing lists with eager to buy customers. Usually they will be willing to send an email to their list for a cut of the sale price. This works particularly well with informational products. It has several advantages. It can give a large boost to both your mailing list and sales in a short time.
Regards,
Muddabir Aziz
Targeted Traffic and How To Get It Episode 1
If you have a website, you know that traffic is essential, especially if you have something to sell. Not just any old traffic, though - you need targeted traffic.
How is targeted traffic defined?
It means website visitors who have a specific interest in the topic of the website. For example, someone who is planning to buy a wedding ring would be interested in jewelry websites.
How do I get targeted traffic? Here are some effective techniques:
Forums:
Whatever your topic, there's sure to be at least one forum about it. Subscribe to a couple of forums. Join in the discussions, answer questions, and ask pertinant questions yourself. Become known as an expert in the field. Then with each article reply you write, have a discreet link to your website in the signature file. What can be placed in your signature is often determined by the forum moderators. Do not spam the forum or you will be stopped from posting. You should be able to get a fair amount of traffic from a popular forum, and the people who click your link will already be familiar with your writing style.
Regards,
Muddabir Aziz
Basic Rule OF Internet marketing Episode 3
1. Learn how to write effective copy.
The skill that will make or break you in internet marketing is copywriting.
It is especially important to learn how to write headlines. There is a ton of good information online that is free regarding headlines and copywriting. Just do a Google search.
2. Take action, test, and track.
Tracking is essential because you absolutely need to know the results of your marketing efforts.
Once you start getting results, you can employ simple tests to see if you can improve. Often this testing involves strategies that are free.
One such strategy that comes to mind is split testing. You can do this for free, and it can provide incredible returns. Generally speaking, split testing involves making slight changes to a landing page or adwords ad, often just the wording of the headline, and testing it against a current version.
I have seen very simple changes DOUBLE the productivity of an ad. It's not only amazing, but also a lot of fun! Marketing takes work. You simply cannot get something for nothing. Massive action creates massive results.
So take action and do not be afraid to fail. Remember to minimize your risk
Regards,
Muddabir Aziz
Basic Rule For Internet Marketing Episode 2
1. Be consistent.
Successful marketers do something to propel themselves forward everyday. That is their secret.
A good practice is to create a to-do list every night featuring 5 actions that you must complete the following day.
By doing this at night before you go to sleep, you engage your subconscious mind and the next day you will know what you have to do and be on target to complete these tasks.
This is a very powerful process. Try to do this, one day at a time, until it becomes a daily habit.
2. Set a budget.
Determine what you can afford to spend on advertising on a monthly basis. In this way you can set and manage your expectations.
This should also prevent you from trying things you cannot afford.
3. Diversify.
Spread your efforts as much as you can over many different sources. This will also reduce your risk and help you to discover what works.
Remember that if one internet marketing method that you try does not produce results, you have not failed. This just means that you are one step closer to finding something that DOES work.
Regards,
Muddabir
Basic Rules for Internet Marketing Episode 1
Internet marketing strategies involve driving targeted (people who are interested in what you have to offer) traffic to your website, blog, or sales page.
That traffic then has to be converted into sales. This simple formula illustrates this process:
Traffic + Conversions = Sales
Keeping this formula in your mind will help you in your internet marketing efforts because you will realize that you not only have to generate traffic, but also turn those visitors into buyers.
Furthermore, here are 7 basic rules to follow when applying this formula. These rules are relevant to all forms of marketing but are especially important for online marketing where inexperienced people can "burn" a lot of money quickly and become very discouraged.
1. All marketing involves RISK.
Whether you are trying something new or "copying" a strategy that has brought good results for others, there is still an element of risk.
When speaking of risk, you tend to think of gambling which makes for an appropriate analogy here.
For internet marketing, we try to reduce the risk and swing the odds in our favour by doing keyword research, learning skills like ad writing, article marketing, and pay per click, and other general marketing activities such as knowing what your target market is interested in.
2. Test small first.
Reduce your risk by testing a marketing approach on a small scale first. If it works, then increase the scale and create momentum.
This is how to make money!
Regards,
Muddabir
Keywords have close contextual relationships to other Keywords
For those of you interested in the study of "semantics" or Latent Semantic Indexing(LSI) as it relates to which keywords have close contextual relationships to other keywords....here is an interesting experience.
Check out a brand new Search Engine called http://www.quintura.com Not only does it use LSI but it even displays the evidence of how your search word shave other words relating to them. Unlike keyword-based search, that returns too many "irrelevant results," Quintura often finds what your looking for with one merely one click. Enter your search term. It displays a "cloud" of results. The size of a word shows its significance in relation to the query.
The larger a word is, the stronger the contextual relationship with your query. The smaller the words appear the less related they are. Now place you mouse over each keyword in the cloud and see how your SERPs change. You may find what you're looking for visually with just one click. Click on any word in the cloud to change your query and get relevant results that will comply with your new query. Visit http://www.quintura.com and give it a try.
Regards,
Muddabir
Yahoo Confirms Maven Networks Acquisition
Yahoo has acquired video publishing platform Maven Networks for $160 million. We were the first to report the deal the day the papers were signed, on January 31. The next day, Microsoft announced its bombshell offer for Yahoo, which probably delayed the announcement of this smaller acquisition. Everyone at Yahoo has been a little bit preoccupied.
Yahoo will use Maven’s technology to host video for media partners and incorporate Maven’s video-ad insertion technology into its overall advertising platform.
Regards,
Muddabir
SEO Experts Tip Of the Day
When doing press releases at http://www.prweb.com/ remember that you must thinkin terms of news, not sales. Editors and publishers are looking for good legitimate news. If you give it to them, you may even be contacted for a larger story to be published in their print publications too.
What do publishers watch for?
- Legitimate news
- Background stats
- Human interest
- Seasonal interest
- Well-written humor
- Industry specific news
- Hard news related to real world events.
Regards,
Muddabir
SEO Experts Tip Of the Day
Here is your free Tip of the Day:There is little value in focusing all of your attention on trying to analyze something that is designed for the purpose of constant, continual and nearly perpetual change. Don't spend hundreds of hours trying to analyze algorithm.Instead, use your time wisely to create fresh original content that is mildlyoptimized for those low competition "niche phrases" that are being used bysearchers (the ones who know what they are looking for and know how to search.)Excellent at keyword research and it'll make your optimization work MUCH easier.
Regards,
Muddabir
Google Announces Urchin Software Now Public(By Mike Sachoff)
Google has announced that the Urchin Software is now in public beta and can be downloaded at urchin.com.
Google says the software is similar to Google Analytics but you install and manage the software on your own servers. The company says the beta software "should only be used for evaluation purposes," and it is not recommended for production environment.
Urchin can be used by businesses that have content behind a security firewall or that have restrictions that will not allow them to use Google Analytics. The software can also be used to do ad-hoc historical log processing for those that want to store their Web analytics on local servers.
According to the Google Analytics Blog the upgrades include:More accurate geo-identification of visitorsCross-segmentation options similar to Google AnalyticsEcommerce and campaign trackingImproved embedded scheduler to more easily manage processing and re-processing jobsImproved user interfaceMore robust log processing engine A 90-day version is available for download. When the software moves out of beta it will be available for $2,995.
Regards,
Muddabir
Simple way to get messive Traffic Episode 5
1) Start an email newsletter: while it may not seem like a newsletter that you email can drive traffic to your site you'd be surprised at the effectiveness of this type of promotion. If your newsletter (like your articles) is interesting and relevant to your audience, you'll find that it has a huge pass-through factor, meaning that it is passed from one email subscriber to another. Also, if you have an email newsletter you should never, ever go to a single event without your handy signup sheet. Yes, you can even use offline events to drive traffic to your web site.
2) And speaking of offline efforts: if you're ever quoted in a magazine or other publication, make sure and mention your URL as it's appropriate to the topic. Don't be too pushy about this, but do not forget to tell folks you have a web site that may be a great resource for the topic of your interview.
3) If you have products to sell, why not get a store on eBay? This site gets a tremendous amount of traffic and on your sales page you're allowed to list your URL. It's another great way to get an inbound link and a way for people to find you.
4) Load a video on YouTube and 57 other video sites
5) While this isn't a tip per se, it's still important. If you're going to go through all the trouble of getting traffic to your site, make sure your site is converting this traffic into something. Get folks to sign up for something, your newsletter, the RSS feed on your blog. Whatever it is, getting their email address will help you remarket to them when the time is right. Studies show that visitors landing on a site often don't buy the first time. That's ok! You want to get them into your marketing funnel so you can market to them again and again – not in a way that's obtrusive, offensive or downright annoying, but in a way that is helping them with their own mission.An example of this might be an email newsletter. A helpful, informative newsletter is a fantastic funnel. A blog is another great way to keep people in your marketing loop without bombarding them with "please buy my stuff" email messages. Also, make sure you know what your traffic numbers are before you launch into any Internet marketing campaign. By traffic numbers I mean how many people are visiting your site. You want to know this so you can gauge a before and after view of your marketing efforts.
One place for freebies
www.freebiesarchive.com
http://www.freebiesarchive.com/sitemap.xml.gz
regards
Muddabir
Simple Ways To Get Massive Traffic Episode 4
1) Start an email newsletter: while it may not seem like a newsletter that you email can drive traffic to your site you'd be surprised at the effectiveness of this type of promotion. If your newsletter (like your articles) is interesting and relevant to your audience, you'll find that it has a huge pass-through factor, meaning that it is passed from one email subscriber to another. Also, if you have an email newsletter you should never, ever go to a single event without your handy signup sheet. Yes, you can even use offline events to drive traffic to your web site.
2) And speaking of offline efforts: if you're ever quoted in a magazine or other publication, make sure and mention your URL as it's appropriate to the topic. Don't be too pushy about this, but do not forget to tell folks you have a web site that may be a great resource for the topic of your interview.
3) If you have products to sell, why not get a store on eBay? This site gets a tremendous amount of traffic and on your sales page you're allowed to list your URL. It's another great way to get an inbound link and a way for people to find you.
4) Load a video on YouTube and 57 other video sites (the rest listed on my Red Hot Internet Publicity blog).
5) While this isn't a tip per se, it's still important. If you're going to go through all the trouble of getting traffic to your site, make sure your site is converting this traffic into something. Get folks to sign up for something, your newsletter, the RSS feed on your blog. Whatever it is, getting their email address will help you remarket to them when the time is right. Studies show that visitors landing on a site often don't buy the first time. That's ok! You want to get them into your marketing funnel so you can market to them again and again – not in a way that's obtrusive, offensive or downright annoying, but in a way that is helping them with their own mission.An example of this might be an email newsletter. A helpful, informative newsletter is a fantastic funnel. A blog is another great way to keep people in your marketing loop without bombarding them with "please buy my stuff" email messages. Also, make sure you know what your traffic numbers are before you launch into any Internet marketing campaign. By traffic numbers I mean how many people are visiting your site. You want to know this so you can gauge a before and after view of your marketing efforts.
Simple Ways To Get Massive Traffic Episode 3
(1) Make sure your blog has an RSS feed so if you capture a reader you don't lose them if they forget to bookmark your site or blog.
(2) Join relevant groups at Yahoo groups. You'll find everything from groups on growing your small business, writing books, finding your passion, even underwater basket weaving. I dare you to find one that isn't right for what you're promoting. When you do find the right group, join and participate as you can!
(3) Podcasting is another great way to drive traffic. Start a podcast by going to Audio Acrobat. There are other programs you can use, but I love Audio Acrobat. You can record the podcast over the phone quickly and easily and then hit the "send" button on your computer once it's recorded and the system will syndicate it to 27 podcast directories including iTunes. It's a great way to let people know about you and your web site!
(4) Start a blog and then once you do, start commenting on other people's blogs, linking to them from your site or adding them to your blogroll.
(5) Inbound links: don't squander your time (or a perfectly good link) on smaller low-traffic sites. Instead spend your time going after high traffic, high quality sites. Good sites should have a PR (page ranking) of 4-6 depending on the market. You can find out what a site's page ranking is by downloading the Google toolbar which comes with a PR feature built in.
Regards,
Muddabir
Simple Ways To Get Massive Traffic Episode 2
(1) Offer a freebie on Craig's List: you'll be amazed at how much traffic you get from a single Craig's List ad. The key here is to send people to a page on your site and make sure they have to sign up for something (like your email newsletter) before they can grab their freebie. That way you're not just getting traffic, you're also building your list.
(2) Create a "recommended by" list on your Delicious page – you can do this by logging on and creating an account and there and then tagging articles, blogs and other content you think is important to your readership. Then offer this page as a resource site. You can add a link to this page in your email signature line or on your web site.
(3) And speaking of your email signature line... do you have one? If you don't, create one. Believe it or not, people do follow these links. You'll be amazed how many folks read email signature lines. I have one and change it several times a year, depending on what we're doing or promoting or what books I have coming out.
(4) Lend a helping hand: you can be an answer person at Yahoo Answers – you don't have to spend hours on there, but maybe a few minutes a week. Make sure and include a link back to your site following your answers.
(5) Set up a social networking site using Facebook, LinkedIn, or Squidoo. It's free and easy to do, just don't forget the all-important link back to your site!
Regards,
Muddabir
Simple Ways To Get Massive Traffic Episode 1
Embarking on an Internet marketing campaign doesn't have to be difficult, tricky, or complicated. Here are a few simple ways (twenty in fact) that you can easily implement to get tons of traffic to your site right now!
1) Write articles: believe it or not this is an incredible tool for driving traffic. Well-written, relevant articles can net quite a bit of activity to your web site. Don't forget to add your URL in your byline. Articles should be 500 to 2,000 words in length. You can send articles to sites like:
2) Social bookmark *everything* - and I do mean everything - you can bookmark each page of your site and each blog entry you post. While this might seem tedious, it's worth it. You'll see a strong increase in traffic if you social bookmark each page on your site and each of your blog entries.
3) List yourself in the best directories – you'll have to pay for this but since most people don't do this (since everyone's looking for a freebie) you could really enhance your traffic by getting a listing: dir dot yahoo dot com, business dot org, botw dot org.
4) Get yourself listed at: DMOZ dot org – it's not easy to get listed there, but worth the effort.
5) Review: if you can review hot new products or books within your market, head on over to Amazon and start positioning yourself as an expert. In order to do this effectively you'll want to create an Amazon profile and make sure and sign each review with a reference to your URL (your web site). You can also go to Epinions and Revoo to review products as well.
Regards,
Muddabir
SEO Expert Tip Of the Day
Here is your SEO Tip of the Day. Are you continually looking for new types of content to add to your Web site? One type of content to consider adding is "statistical data."What is useful or of high interest to your target audience? If the stats aren't your own, always indicate where you're getting them. It's important to quote your source. Your next SEO tip will arrive tomorrow.
freebies
Regards,
Muddabir
Internet Marketing in the Age of Google
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2008
Forget the Computer Age or the Internet Age, centuries from now our current time will probably be referred to as the Google Age. This assumption is not exactly a great leap of faith; Google has quickly permeated into mainstream culture to become an underlying factor of everyday life, a tightly woven backdrop to our lives.But never make the mistake of trying to define Google as just a search engine or you will miss the true calling of this little "Backrub", which was the original name used by its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1996.
Google as we now know it debuted in 1998. The name Google is a twist on the word Googol, a number represented as 1 followed by 100 zeros. After everything is said and done, it will more than likely refer to Google's net worth - monetary or otherwise.But forget search engine, for regardless of the founders' intentions or company's objectives, Google is and has always been the ultimate marketing machine. A massive marketing machine that is just now gearing up and aiming for more and more lofty heights. These heights seem to increase each day as Google quietly rolls out program after program.All noble ambitions aside, Google is the perfect marketing machine. Google has no equals, and it is very close to getting a stranglehold on the real power behind all marketing, which is information.
Marketing is information. Information is marketing
Great marketing is supplying the right information at the right time. Google more than any other entity on the web or in the world, for that matter, fulfills this criterion at its very core. Google is re-writing the book on how products are marketed.Google now has over 60% of the search traffic in the U.S., with a staggering 7.3 billion monthly searches. In some countries Google's search share is 80% or more. (Source: comScore) Those webmasters who have number one keyword listings in all three of the major search engines will know Google is the only game worth playing because it delivers by far the most traffic.
While MSN and Yahoo! are still major players and are listed in the top 5 traffic sites on the web, what most people don't realize is that (unlike the other two) almost all of Google's traffic is search traffic. From a marketing perspective this is extremely important since search traffic can deliver the highest conversions (sales) mainly because it lets you capture the potential customer or client when they are in the right mindset to buy or to perform an action.Obviously the key to successful marketing is finding the buyers and clients for your products and services. Google has forged itself as the ultimate "middleman" as more and more of the world's business is performed in cyberspace. And as everyone knows the "middleman" can reap huge profits and hold enormous power.Google, within its Adsense program, now offers CPA or Cost Per Action where marketers can now receive larger returns for displaying Google's links on their webpages. As any professional marketer will tell you, you can get 10 times the revenue by promoting affiliate products rather than the Adsense code on your sites. But by adding CPA and other affiliate products within the Adsense program, Google has made it more attractive to serious online marketers.Another step in that same direction is Google's acquisition of DoubleClick, which includes the massive online affiliate marketing network Performics. This means Google can now bring any customer full-circle from initial search to checkout.This may have dire consequences for large, lucrative third-party affiliate networks like Commission Junction and LinkShare. Online marketing and ecommerce is growing at a blistering rate, and the company that controls the majority of these transactions will wield enormous power. Will make the Medici look like paupers.
Those marketers who have managed to acquire number one listings for their targeted keywords in Google's organic search are smiling all the way to the bank. Mainly because Google commands enormous trust with the surfing/buying public and this is demonstrated through higher conversion rates. Likewise, those who have mastered the Adsense and Adwords programs will know Google is an excellent source of online income.Most of the complaints against Google stems from its PageRank system, which is supposed to be Google's version of online democracy in action, a link is a vote for your page or content. The higher the number of links, the higher your page will be ranked in Google's index or SERPs - Search Engine Results Pages.So far Google has played fair, giving even the smallest webmaster the opportunity to capture top Google listings if they produce superior or popular content to the surfer. Some would even argue Google's recent crackdown on sites offering paid-links can be seen as evening the playing field for the small webmaster or marketer who obviously doesn't have the economic clout or resources to buy their way to the top of Google's listings.
Keyword rankings may be the ultimate equalizer and determiner of online wealth. Those who can reach the top positions for their chosen profitable niche keywords will have companies and service providers lining up to do business with them. The fallout can prove extremely lucrative for both parties.However, few marketers or webmasters forget who is really holding the cards; Google controls all steps along this marketing tunnel with its search listings, Adwords and Adsense programs. The only dark spot on the horizon could be monopoly issues, but Google probably has enough reservoirs of public goodwill and deep enough corporate pockets to squash any claims.As Google's dominance in the search market becomes greater, Google will have control of all segments of the online marketplace. Why should Google stop there, why not go into Radio, TV... as the Internet gradually mutates into a billion+ interactive TV channel universe (as many believe it will) who do you think will be at control central offering you a nice free remote?Then there is also Google's planned broadband 700 MHz bid; one can only speculate on Google's intentions. But Google must find a way to transmit its information free to its users. Could it mean free wireless Internet for everyone on free Google boxes or gadgets of some form, usable and accessible anywhere in the world? Anything is possible because the stakes are so astronomical and the marketing revenue so vast, Google must get its information seamlessly and instantly to the end user at all costs.One can only guess at the enormity of the marketing power Google will yield in coming years as the Internet slips out of its teen years. But it won't be just marketing, the influence of Google on all aspects of our lives will probably grow exponentially and that influence will be huge.For the true power of Google is only just now beginning to be glimpsed; only as more and more of the Google pieces fall into place will we truly fathom what life will be like in the Google Age. Google's power, reverence and respect will no doubt be so enormous it may lead some to make comparisons to a higher power that has guided most of the life on this planet so far. Which could also lead one to muse, at least they got the first two letters correct.
Regards,
Muddabir
Application Developers: Don’t Be Surprised If Facebook Changes The Rules When You Do Something That Hurts Users
We saw early on that Facebook was willing to change policies and their API in order to protect users against clearly black hat/spammy applications, or ones that break the terms of use with users.
A new Facebook application called Break Up, created by FaceItApps, may lightly trip both of those problems. The application tells you when someone has removed you as a friend. Currently (and thankfully) there is no notice to the other person when you remove them as a friend. Sometimes they’re just a little too creepy. Antagonizing them with a friend removal notification could make them worse. So Facebook has chosen not to notify people when they are removed as a friend, and it’s one of the features I like about the service.
Break Up automatically tells you if you’ve been removed as a friend. It’s a relatively simple application. But since this information isn’t available through the Facebook API, it probably requires the use of scraping of your friends sites to see if you remain a friend (this was one of the issues Facebook had with what
Plaxo was doing), or else just hammering the getFriends function in the API over and over.
There service itself is not currently violating Facebook’s terms of use, and the application is live. But they are still waiting on inclusion into the Facebook directory. In an email to the Break Up developers (which they forwarded to us), Facebook said:
We sincerely apologize for the delay, but we are currently in the process of reviewing this application to ensure that it does not violate any of the site’s Terms by allowing users to view which of their friends have removed them from the Friend List. Break Up is one of the first applications we’ve seen to include this functionality, and we appreciate your patience as we decide our policy going forth. We will inform you as soon as a conclusion has been reached.
FaceItApps was clearly looking for sympathy from us in sending it to our attention. But when it comes to user privacy, I tend to see things as a bright line. The application is in a grey area that hasn’t yet been contemplated by Facebook but is clearly something many users won’t like. The fact that they are likely scraping to get their data just puts them in a worse position.
If you are contemplating an application that is within the strict guidelines of Facebooks terms of use but is questionable when it comes to user privacy or Facebook’s server stability, don’t be surprised if Facebook puts you on hold and changes the rules. It’s in the long term best interest of the network and its users to block it, and therefore also in the best interests of Facebook employee’s stock value.
Regards,
Muddabir
SEO Expert Tip Of The Day
Here is your SEO Tip of the Day:
Create content that is truly relevant (and honestly deserves to be found at the top of the search results.)
Get some feedback from a professional, experienced writer or even seek the opinions of those who will give you genuinely, honest feedback that you can trust.
Always focus on the value that you can deliver to your readers.
Would you like to have an experienced writer working for you and offering feedback?
Reply to this message and I'll put you in touch with an experienced writer whomyou can hire at a reasonable rate.
Regards,
Muddabir Aziz
SEO Experts Tip Of They Day
Create content that will meet your visitor's exact search query and satisfy it. When optimizing a page for a specific phrase, think about why an searcher mightbe using that specific phrase.
If you are optimizing an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page, are you truly delivering your MOST frequently asked questions?What do you think the background circumstances might be in that individual's lifewhen they search using very specific phrase clusters such as:
"infant pillow support" (Would this attract parents of newborn babies?)
"Meaning of babies names" (Would this attract "soon to be" parents?)"expandable rv shower curtain" (Perhaps attract an audience of seniors who travel?)
"garfield shower curtains" (Someone looking for brand specific product?)
"COST OF LIVING canada to usa" (Is this someone thinking about moving?)
"How to Connect Headphones to TV" (Lot's of folks looking for helpful tutorials.)
"wheres our economy heading" (Why are individuals asking a search engine this?)
"Reasons against Capital Punishment" (People use the Internet to research hot topics)
I could give you hundreds of examples, but the point of this tip is quite simple.Do your best, to understand WHY someone is using the phrase and create your contentto satisfy that reason. Your next SEO Tip in this series will be sent to you tomorrow.
Thanks & Best Regards,
Muddabir Aziz
Google Processing 20,000 Terabytes A Day, And Growing
Niall Kennedy reports the breakdown of how Google’s large-scale computing has grown, and estimates that hardware cost for each large-scale computing job (known as MapReduce) is about $1 million. The number of such jobs grew nearly an order of magnitude (10X) between 2004 and 2006, and then another order of magnitude a year and half later. See the chart above.
Regards,
Muddabir
More Defections At Google
Today we learn of two more Googlers leaving the search giant: Kevin Fox, a UI designer who worked on Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Reader, and Nathan Stoll, a product manager at Google News. Fox is going to an unnamed startup. Stoll is vague about his plans. Update: Add New York sales vet David Hirsch to today’s list.
Remember, these are two three employees out of 16,000 and the end of the year is a natural time to leave a job for something else. But Fox and Stoll join a growing trickle of Google veterans who no longer find Google as alluring a place to work as they once did.
Anyone know what Google’s employee churn rate was in 2007? Anyone want to guess what it will be in 2008?
Regards,
Muddabir
SEO Experts Tip Of the Day
It is our sincere wish that your Web site may flourish in therankings for the finest quality of content, for the longest stable duration and that your work will prosper beyond the realms of ordinary businesss. I hope youare enjoying these SEO tips. Okay....here is your SEO Tip of the Day:
(It's simple yet powerful
The search engines love simplicity, so give it to them. Two ways youcan do this is by using CSS (cascading style sheets) or by goingoutside of the restraints of your Web site design by creating a simplified version of your site without the mouseovers, heavy navigation, etc. Both work beautifully.
Where to place keywords?
Using Keywords @Right Place
· User important keywords, those that people are using to reach to your site near the top of the page
· place keywords into
· use bold and italic keywords
· put keywords into bullted lists
· use keywords multiple times between 4 to 7 %
· Put keywords in anchor text.
Keyword Research Tools
www.findwhat.com
Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool
Google Keyword Sandbox
AnalogX
Keyword Live
Keyword Density Analyzer Reverse engineer top positioned Web sites
Regards,
Muddabir
MeeMix Opens Beta To Public, Has Much Work Ahead
Tel Aviv, Israel based MeeMix, which we first covered in August, is kicking-off the New Year by moving their taste-predicting Internet radio service from closed to open Beta.
Internet radio is already a very crowded space dominated by entrenched startups like Last.fm and Pandora. Smaller players and recent entrants such as SpiralFrog, Jango and Slacker are not increasing the breathing room. MeeMix wants its share of the pie, too, and is keeping its crosshairs focused on the U.S. market and its dominant revenue potential.
MeeMix’s public beta launch is marked by the addition of new features:
Meeps: Comment-based conversations users can have regarding a song, album or artist.
Station Home: Every MeeMix station now has a dedicated page allowing users to interact in its context and shape its playlist.
Mee Feeds: This is basically MeeMix’s version of Facebook’s News Feed. The feed indicates songs favorited, stations rated, friends added, etc.
Mee Journey: Users can see other members’ public log or “journey” of actions in MeeMix.
Station Gift: Users can now send other members a station as a gift. The station is then the “property” of the recipient who can customize it without affecting the original station.
Twitter Integration: Users can update their Twitter accounts with songs they’ve listened to, their favorite stations, etc.
MeeMix claims to have doubled its music catalog, but a search for my personal favorites ‘John Coltrane’ and ‘Miles Davis’ came-up empty. The same searches on Jango and Slacker both came-up positive.
I would like to have seen the addition of “genre” to the channel creation wizard which is still limited to artist and song. A widgetized player also would have been a welcome addition, especially the desktop kind.
In my original post, I hypothesized that licensing its engine could become MeeMix’s core business. Looks like this might not be far fetched as the company says they have been approached by a mobile operator for the purpose of powering a taste-based cellular music streaming service. The company has also shared with me some interesting offline deals on the horizon that should keep MeeMix’s potential on a positive note for 2008. We’ll post another update soon. In the meantime, let us know how you think MeeMix compares to the competition.
Regards,
Muddabir
