Monday, October 29, 2007

SE Tactics: How to Avoid Alienating the Major Search Engines

Each of the major search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN have quality webmaster guidelines in place to prevent the unfair manipulation of search engine rankings by unscrupulous website owners. These webmaster guidelines change frequently to 'weed' out any new deceptive practices and those websites found engaging in these illicit practices are consequently dropped from the search engine rankings of the major search engine they have offended.


Being banned or dropped from the search engine rankings can have dire effects on your website traffic, online sales generation and site popularity. Especially if your website is classified as a 'bad neighborhood' site, you can then kiss your reciprocal linking campaign goodbye, as existing and prospective link partners will not want to be associated with your site for fear of their own rankings dropping.


If you wish to avoid alienating the major search engines then do not engage in the following SE tactics:


1. 'Cloaking' or sneaky redirects - displaying different content to the search engines than shown to your normal website visitors including hidden text and hidden links. Often this is achieved by delivering content based on the IP address of the user requesting the page, when a user is identified as a search engine spider a side-server script delivers a different version of the web page to deceive the search engine into giving the website a higher ranking.


2. 'Doorway' pages created specifically for the search engines that are aimed at spamming the index of a search engine by inserting results for specific keyword phrases to send the search engine spider to a different page. With doorway pages a user doesn't arrive at the page they were looking for. Similarly avoid 'cookie cutter' approaches that direct users to affiliate advertising with little or no original content.


3. Don't create pages that install viruses, Trojans or badware. 'Badware' is spyware, malware or deceptive adware that tracks a user's movements on the internet and reports this information back to unscrupulous marketing groups who then bombard the user with targeted advertising. This type of spyware is often unknowingly downloaded when playing online games or is attached to software or information downloads from a site. They are often difficult to identify and remove from a user's PC and can affect the PC's functionality.


4. Avoid using software that sends automatic programming queries to the search engines to submit pages or check rankings. This type of software consumes valuable computing resources of the search engines and you will be penalized for using it.


5. Don't load web pages with irrelevant words.


6. Don't link to 'bad neighborhood' sites who have:


* Free for all links pages

* Link farms - automated linking schemes with lots of unrelated links

* Known web spammers or the site has been dropped or banned by the search engines.


7. Avoid 'broken links' or '404 errors', your site will be penalized for them.


8. Don't display pages with minimal content that is of little value to your site visitors.


9. Do not duplicate content unnecessarily.


10. Do not use pop-ups, pop-unders or exit consoles.


11. Do not use pages that rely significantly on links to content created for another website.


12. Do not use 'cross linking' to artificially inflate a site's popularity. For example, the owner of multiple sites cross linking all of his sites together, if all sites are hosted on the same servers the search engines will pick this up and the sites will be penalized.


13. Do not misuse a competitors name or brand names in site content.


14. Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual host names will be penalized.


15. Do not use techniques that artificially increase the number of links to your web pages ie. Link farms.


16. Display web pages with deceptive, fraudulent content or pages that provide users with irrelevant page content.


17. Using content, domain titles, meta tags and descriptions that violate any laws, regulations, infringe on copyrights & trademarks, trade secrets or intellectual property rights of an individual or entity. Specifically in terms of publicity, privacy, product design, torts, breach of contract, injury, damage, consumer fraud, false, misleading, slanderous or threatening content.


About the Author: Rosemary Donald is an SEO Consultant with Rank1 Website Marketing (www.rank1websitemarketing.com) & author of the SEO ebook 'Insider Secrets of Rank1 Websites' available for $29.95 AU. Rosemary is a regular contributor to online article sites on the topics of SEO, website marketing, ecommerce, search engine marketing & small business development. Rosemary is also a successful online trader & owner of top ranking website .

Cornerstones of an Effective Website

Just about everyone has a website today. Certainly, if you're in business one way or another, you have a website. And people have different objectives behind their sites. Some are content-driven. Others provide an online service and have sophisticated user interfaces. Others still are designed to entertain and amuse their visitors. But regardless what your website is designed to do, there are a few primary objectives you should keep in mind before you start building.


This first website objective is FOCUS. Your site needs to have a narrow and specific focus. Why is this? Because there are literally millions of websites out there and the visitors you're lucky enough to attract will only take a few seconds to decide whether they'll stick around or whether they'll simply click the back button and continue browsing elsewhere. Within those few seconds, your site needs to communicate exactly what it's designed to do so the visitor can decide if it meets his or her needs or not.




One of the best exercises to enhance the focus of your site is to establish a 15 to 25-word positioning statement that guides all your development activity going forward. Think about it like a mission statement. It should articulate exactly what your website does in just 15 to 25 words.


Another way to look at it is to do a Google search for a keyword in your field and see what comes up in the results page. Under each listing, there's a short description of what that site is all about. As it turns out, the search engines get that description from the meta tags on those websites but it's exactly the same thing. What do you want YOUR description to say?


Once you've established a positioning statement, you should display it prominently on your homepage. It should be one of the first things visitors see when they land on your website. And as I mentioned above, the same statement should be included in your meta tags as your site description. That way, the search engines know exactly what your site is about at the same time. And if your site shows up in a search results page, that description will show up as part of your listing.


The second objective is DEPTH. Again, this objective serves your visitors as well as the search engines. Build a massive amount of content all about your narrow business focus. That way, if a visitor lands on your website and decides in the first few seconds that they need what you're providing, they'll go on to find a ton of resources all about that topic, satisfying their need and establishing trust along the way.


Depth of content helps your website with the search engines as well. Google uses complicated algorithms to assess value to different websites and one of the biggest things they look for is content. If your website has a narrow focus and lots of content about that focus, it will get ranked higher within your area of expertise. Google will consider your site a good resource for people searching for your narrow focus.

The third objective is to make your site STICKY. This is a relatively new term that describes a website's ability to keep a visitor on the site. A lot of sites do a fairly good job of attracting visitors but many of those visitors take one look at the site and leave within a second or two. As I mentioned earlier, the positioning statement can do a lot to help someone understand what your site is designed to do. But you need more than that to keep them browsing.


The visitor needs to see immediate value when they visit your site. They need to see something that will benefit them right away. They need to see something they can use to make their own lives better. This is the foundation behind today's value-first marketing moniker. People have been over-marketed and have become skeptical in clever marketing slogans. They want to see the value. They want proof that you can deliver. They want to sample your product or service before they buy anything.


You should spend some time and think about what you can offer your website visitors as soon as they land on your site. It could be information. It could be a tool or calculator of some kind. It could be a free subscription. It could be an entertaining video or an interactive game they can play. Whatever it is, you need to capture your visitor within seconds and guide them to something that will benefit them.


Once they've received one piece of value, give them a second and then a third. Guide them through a maze of value, encouraging them to continue browsing and discovering even more. This is the key to a sticky website and you can get a good idea of your progress by measuring your average time on the site through your analytics platform.


There are a million different websites out there and they're all designed to achieve different objectives. But each one of those websites can be a bit better by incorporating more focus, depth and stickiness. All three improve your website' effectiveness and all three offer benefits with the search engines as well.


About the Author: Tactical Execution with Patrick Schwerdtfeger is a strategic company focused on growth marketing and program implementation across business markets. Visit the website for actionable guidance for revenue generation.

Where's Your Social Responsibility Google?

Unless you've been living on a desert island with no Internet access, you've probably seen the recent blog fallout from Google's latest crack down on alleged link brokers.



This week it seems that Google made some type of manual Toolbar PageRank reduction on a handful of major blogs and portal sites like the Washington Post, ProBlogger, CopyBlogger and Forbes.com. Some of these sites had PageRank scores of 7 which have now dropped to 5, scores of 6 which have now dropped to 4 and so on. The blog buzz is that the sites have been singled out by Google as using their high PageRank scores to sell links and have been punished by the world's most popular search engine as a result. There is currently no proof of this and no public statement by Google acknowledging or denying the situation.

A lot of bloggers have weighed in with commentary, observations and opinions. Every time I read a new post about the so called smack-down I imagine some Googlers at Mountain View laughing hysterically and high-fiving each other for turning the tables on the SEO industry yet again.


The situation has even got the SEOs turning on each other. One of the world's best known SEOs, Jill Whalen, made a post in response to the situation that included a comment about one of the affected sites, Search Engine Guide. Jill's post has been interpreted in some circles as a type of attack. Here's the comment Jill made in her post:


"Even my very good friends at Search Engine Guide were smacked down. I hadn't been to their home page in ages since I usually visit through direct article links, but when I looked at their home page today and scrolled down to the bottom, I was taken aback to see what looks more like a link farm than anything else!"



I've known Jill a long time and I read her remark about Search Engine Guide as a quick off the cuff comment, not a deliberate attack. Without putting words in her mouth, I think it sounded more shocking than she meant it, probably because she was typing as a response to first impressions of Search Engine Guide after not seeing it for so long and because (being ridiculously busy) she was probably in a hurry. So the comment itself didn't raise an eyebrow for me. But I WAS concerned about how the general webmaster community would interpret the comment.

Yes, she has every right to her opinion. But being who she is and the industry reputation she's built up, Jill has incredible influence over a large number of webmasters and SEOs who absorb her material. Persons reading her article that are unfamiliar with Search Engine Guide may permanently associate the site with the term "link farm" and all the negative connotations that brings. No matter her intent, her remark definitely has the power to hurt Search Engine Guide and their reputation. The site's publisher Robert Clough obviously thought so, as he was prompted to make an uncharacteristic post in response.


Personally, I think Jill should have considered the possible backlash from her casual comment and worded her post much more carefully. After all, with industry influence comes responsibility. Which brings me to the main point of this article. Google now has extreme influence and power over the Internet. When they make changes to their algorithm or the way they cache and filter web sites, it has a dramatic impact on not just web site owners, but business and life in general. Millíons of people rely on Google to survive, literally. In that respect, this attempt at link bait humor is a little too close to reality to be funny.


With such powerful social influence, I think it's about time Google started taking more responsibility by being more transparent with their activities. If too many webmasters are doing the wrong thing with regard to linking, or an algorithm change has occurred, why not launch a media release to set the facts straight? Not everyone knows about Google's Webmaster Guidelines, or has a Webmaster Tools account. But a lot of people read the newspaper. If they want webmasters to co-operate, Google has to recognize it's a two way street.

By slapping on this latest penalty, (if it is indeed a penalty), Google seems to be claiming to *know* the intent of these sites. But what if they're wrong? What if, as Jennifer Laycock claims, they are merely selling advertising space without Google being a consideration? There's nothing in Search Engine Guide's advertising material relating to PageRank OR Google. To assume they are trying to use their site's high PageRank as a selling point is pretty arrogant and irresponsible of Google, in my opinion.


Without some type of public acknowledgement from them, we can only assume Google's latest move is an attempt to control how webmasters use their own web site space. That's a huge line in the sand they've crossed and I don't know about you, but it makes me nervous.




About The Author

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running her own SEO business, Kalena is Director of Studies at Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Deciphering Web Analytics

Want to optimize your online sales? Improve your understanding of your target market demographics? Need to improve your marketing ROI? What right minded webmaster or online entrepreneur doesn't, right?

Your web analytics are your gateway to measurable success and provide a lot more information than most people give them acknowledgment for. Yes, they track the number of visitors you receive and indicate your most and least popular pages. However, they also guide you towards your best performing keywords, the countries that provide you with the most active visitors, and essentially provide you with a blueprint of the exact steps each visitor takes on your website.

Armed with this kind of information you should be able to improve the overall perförmance of your website and your online business. You can also improve your marketing efforts, enabling you to concentrate on the more effective, and ignore the least effective.


  Keywords, Search Engines, And Popular Landing Pages


For many sites, the search engine is the leading producer of traffíc. An SEO campaign can produce excellent levels of highly qualified leads with comparatively little spend. The key to a good SEO campaign, though, is to continue the optimization process.


Good analytics packages provide detailed information that is vital to your SEO campaign. You can view a líst of the keywords that visitors have used in order to find your site. This information can be used to identify those keywords that are providing the most traffíc and any that can be improved upon.


By reading the referrer of each visitor it is also possible for most analytic programs to determine the search engine that directed visitors to your site. Again, it is possible to use this information in order to improve your optimization efforts, with a little online research.


  Landing Pages And Referrer Pages


A good avenue of pertinent information is the líst of landing pages and referrer pages. The landing page is simply the page that a visitor first lands on when they reach your site, while the referrer is the page that directed them to your site.


Don't be fooled into thinking that all of your traffíc emerges on your home page. At least, for most websites this shouldn't be the case. Each page on your site is a potential source of search engine traffíc, and if you have well categorized pages then PPC campaigns should also be page dependent.

Alternatively, if you use any kind of advertising, it will pay to keep track of how each campaign performs. The referrer statistics will help you determine this very fact. If you have links all over the Internet, then this can point you to the more beneficial of those links so that you can attempt to gain more, similar ones.


  Visitor Experience


How your visitors reach your site shouldn't be your sole fascination. Once a person reaches the fold of your domain, you should attempt to learn whether they had a positive experience, and, if not, then why not. Fortunately, web analytics typically provide some very good statistics to help you with this.


Visitor and page load statistics. Whenever a page is loaded in a browser it is logged as a page load. However, any single individual can open numerous pages or may even open the same page numerous times. The unique visitor figure is the number of individual people that have accessed your site.


Visitor paths. You can track the actions of a visitor from the landing page to the exit page. This includes every page they visit in between, the amount of time they spend on each page, whether they make a purchase or click any links while on those pages, and more. This information is crucial to determining any problem areas on your site. If a particular page is leading to a lot of people exiting your site, then address it immediately. These statistics can also provide you with hot spots you weren't previously aware of.




  Translating The Results

Translating the results need not be any more complicated than actually reading them. Doing so, though, can seriously improve your profits. Here are a few guidelines that can be used when next viewing your analytics.


Lots of Visitors But No Conversions

A lot of people place too much emphasis on driving traffíc to their site, and not enough emphasis on actually converting those visitors to customers. If you find that the pages of your site are frequently being visited, but surfers are leaving without becoming customers then you need to take action quickly. Typically, your site content may need improvement or the traffíc you are gaining is not targeted to the topic of your website. Look at visit lengths and paths to determine which is the case for you.


Visitors are Leaving From a Specific Page

Again, this can usually be combated with improved content on that page. If the content of an individual page is poor, but the rest of your site is good, then you will usually see that your visitors are navigating happily around your site until they reach this one page. Look for broken links, inappropriate content, or just poorly written content.


Traffic From a Specific Source is Particularly Inactive

If you look at your referrer statistics and note that one source of traffíc is sending a lot of inactive visitors to your site there may be one or more explanations. Review where the visitors are being directed to and ensure that this page is well optimized for conversions. Also do some digging on the referrer's end. A banner or link placed on an irrelevant page is unlikely to yield the positive results you are looking for.


These are just some of the ways that analytics can help you and your website. Experiment and look for trends. Question anything that you notice until you find the most reasonable answer, and then take action accordingly.




About The Author

Article by Matt Jackson. WebWiseWords, website content that sells.




Web Site Marketing Strategy Hints And Tips

Your web site marketing strategy is the essential factor that determines the success or failure of a business web site. This is true whether your web site is an extension of an offline business, or you run an completely online business. Web site marketing is unlike any marketing you may have done using other media.


However, marketing your web site on the internet shares many common core marketing foundations that underlie your marketing efforts regardless of the media you use. I am a strong believer that for a small business, all marketing should be based on the old direct marketing mantra of attention, interest, desire, and action. In this article I am going to discuss those aspects in terms of how they are crucial in marketing your web site on the internet.


Regardless of the media you choose, nothing will ever happen if you don't attract the attention of prospective buyers. This is one of the very basic tenets of successful marketing. On the internet, this concept is evaluated by the traffic that you receive on your web site. But there are a lot of factors that affect how much traffic you get, and only part of it is the actual content of your web site. There are two ways you can get attention in any media: you can earn it or you can buy it.


All the major search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc.) show up two different types of results when a customer uses them.


The most relevant results based on the search algorithms used by the engine are called 'free' or 'organic' since they are the natural result of running a search.


The second type of result are actually paid advertisements, and they can be very difficult to distinguish from the results that are actually relevant to you query.


It is important to keep in mind that no matter how good the engine, the results are still hit or miss. It is a computer program sorting web pages based on mathematical formulae, not live people helping you select the best results, so as a person hoping to be indexed, you must be willing to put the time and effort into checking how you rank on the major engines and tuning your word choice to optimize that. If you can't make it onto the first (or second at the very least) page of results, your traffic will drop dramatically! Most people don't bother to wade through the hits on the pages after that. Even second-page ranking will hurt your ability to attract new users.


One of the most effective ways to increase internet traffic is buying some form of advertising. One of the most pervasive forms is banner advertising. Originally, these were very popular forms of advertising, but as they became more prevalent, their effectiveness waned. They can still be effective as long as you have a clear marketing strategy and are able to track your advertising statistics.


Text advertisements are probably the most common form of internet advertising today. Google has paved the way, and if done correctly, your internet traffic can multiply quickly by using Google ads. MSN and Yahoo also offer text advertisements on their sites. One downside to text advertising is that the cost can add up fairly quickly, depending on how many hits you receive for your ad. Each time a searcher clicks on your text ad, the provider charges you a set amount. Another way to increase traffic to your site is to buy traffic from someone who has an e-mail contact list or has a lot of traffic on their site already.


Any approach to publicizing your website or portal must begin with the aim of grabbing attention of the web surfers and internet addicts. To grab attention, you must deliver your message to surfers on websites they frequently visit. You can publicize your website by doing the hard work yourself or by availing expert help, or a mix of both.


Doing it yourself means you will have to commit your time, energy and money. It might sound daunting but ultimately proves to be cheaper as well. Availing expert help can get your results without eating your time. To set the cash registers ringing, it is suggested that you develop your own mix of both ways suited to your own needs and resources.


About the Author: You can get more information about Business Marketing at http://www.BizRave.com. Eric Menzies writes about Search Engine Marketing Firms and other topics.

4 Steps to Combat Website Plagiarism

Publishing your website can be one of the most exciting times for a business owner. After all of your hard work and persistence, the whole world now has access to your products or services. You have either paid hundreds of dollars to have someone write your site content for you, or you have put your heart and soul (not to mention hour upon hour of hard work) into creating content of which you can be proud. In either case, you've invested time and/or money into your website copy. Now that it is out there for the whole world to see, it may be a target for all kinds of unscrupulous individuals.


Copyright infringement is a very common occurrence on the World Wide Web. How do you protect yourself? And, what can you do if someone steals your content?


It's important for you to know that anything you have written is copyrighted. You can register a copyright, but you don't need to in order for it to be illegal for someone to copy or reproduce your work without your permission. Any written text, painting, drawing, musical composition, photograph or computer program, be they published or not is protected by copyright law. Unfortunately, just because your work is copyrighted doesn't mean it is safe. Some individuals don't know that copyright laws apply to the internet, and others simply don't care.


With millions of websites out there, it's difficult to know if your website has been targeted by thieves. A great tool to use in the protection of your website content is www.copyscape.com. Simply enter your website URL and it will scan the web for you. This is a free service, but if you have been a frequent victim of copyright infringement, you might want to consider their paid service, which automatically scans the web regularly for any duplicates of your content.


What do you do if you are one of the unfortunate victims of copyright infringement? How can you deal with the offender and avoid the high cost of litigation? The following are some simple steps that you can take to ensure that the infringer removes your material from their website.


1. Contact the offender. You can usually visit the "contact" page of the offender's website to obtain their contact information. If for some reason you can't find their coordinates that way, you can perform a search for "who is" to find many sites that can provide information about the website owner by simply entering their URL. The website owner's contact information should be posted here, but if not, their website host will be and you should contact them. Keep your first contact civil. Calling or emailing the responsible individual with a stern, yet professional demeanor will be much more effective than yelling or name calling. Remember that the owner of the site isn't necessarily the writer, and if they are, then being nasty may not have the desired effect and in fact may create more problems for you in the long run.


2. Send a cease and desist order. If your initial contact didn't get the desired results, your next step should be to send a cease and desist order. You do not need to hire a lawyer to create one for you. A simple search for "cease and desist order templates" should give you an order that can be altered to meet your needs. Send one copy by email and one copy by registered mail and make it look as official as possible. Include a date by which the material should be removed. You want the offender to know that you mean business.


3. If action is still not taken, send a cease and desist order to the offending party's web host. Again, the host information is available by performing a search for "who is". The majority of hosts will take action by temporarily removing the offender's site until the copied material is removed.


4. The situation should be resolved at step 3, but one more step that can be taken is to notify search engines of the infringement. Performing a search for the "DMCA" or "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" policies for each search engine will provide the information you need to contact each of them in order to request that the offender's website be removed.


Finally, it's always advisable to protect yourself by keeping records of the dates your content was placed on your site. This ensures that the other party can be proven wrong it they claim to have posted their content first.


Placing your website and it's content on the internet for the world to see is a proud moment. It's nearly impossible for you to be able to prevent the theft of its content, but the next best thing is knowing what to do if it does happen.


About the Author: Kelly Sims is a Virtual Assistant and Owner of Virtually There VA Services. To find out more about virtual assistance and how using a Virtual Assistant can simplify your life and increase your profitability, visit her website at => http://www.virtuallythereva.com. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for her free monthly newsletter providing useful information that enhances and simplifies the lives of busy entrepreneurs.

All That You Need To Know About RSS

You probably have seen this three-letter acronym called RSS in the course of your internet surfing. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary; syndicating means republishing an article that comes from another source such as a website.

An RSS is a means of publicizing updates about websites. It may or may not include a summary and photos of the latest posting. But those that provide summaries (thus Rich Site Summary) allow users to skim through the article so that they can decide later on if they want to access the website source. The RSS feed usually contains the title of the update originating from the website. It is also usually the link to the website source.




What are the benefits of RSS? RSS has benefits for both readers (users) and web publishers.

  1. It gives you the latest updates.

Whether it is about the weather, new music, software upgrade, local news, or a new posting from a rarely-updated site you learn about the latest as soon as it comes out.


  2. It saves on surfing time.

Since a RSS feed provides a summary of the related article, it saves the user's time by helping s/he decide on which items to prioritize when reading or browsing the net.


  3. It gives the power of subscription to the user.

Users are given a free-hand on which websites to subscribe in their RSS aggregators which they can change at any time they decide differently.


  4. It lessens the clutter in your inbox.

Although your email address will be required to enjoy the services of online RSS aggregators, RSS does not use your email address to send the updates.


  5. It is sp@m free.

Unlike email subscriptions, RSS does not make use of your email address to send updates, thus your privacy is kept safe from sp@m mails.


  6. Unsubscribing is hassle-free.

Unlike email subscriptions where the user is asked questíons on why s/he is unsubscribing and then the user is asked to confirm unsubscribing, all you have to do is to delete the RSS feed from your aggregator.




  

7. It can be used as an advertising or marketing tool.


Users who subscribe or syndicate product websites receive the latest news on products and services without the website sending sp@m mail. This is advantageous to both the web user and the website owner since advertising becomes targeted; those who are actually interested in their products are kept posted.

What are the drawbacks of RSS? The disadvantages of RSS use are brought about by its being a new technology and some user-preference concerns.


  1. Some users prefer receiving email updates over an RSS feed.


  2. Graphics and photos do not appear in all RSS feeds. For conciseness and ease of publication, RSS feeds do not display the photos from the original site in announcing the update except for some web-based aggregators.


  3. The identity of the source website can be confusing. Since RSS feeds do not display the actual URL or name of the website, it can sometimes get confusing on what feed a user is actually reading.


  4. Publishers cannot determine how many users are subscribed to their feed and the frequency of their visits. Moreover, they would not know the reasons why users unsubscribe which could be important in improving their advertising.


  5. RSS feeds create higher traffíc and demands on a server. Most readers still prefer the whole update over a brief summary of the entry, thus they still access the site.


  6. Since it is a new technology, many sites still do not support RSS.



  How do I start using RSS?


There are two things needed: an RSS feed and an RSS aggregator or reader. The RSS feed comes from an RSS-supported website. There are also websites that provide a líst of RSS feeds of different websites. An RSS aggregator is used to read the RSS feed from the source website. It scans and collects data on the latest RSS feeds from the worldwide web.


An aggregator comes in two forms: a downloadable program also known as desktop aggregator and an online or web-based aggregator. Downloadable aggregators may require payment before they can be acquired, while internet-based aggregators are usually free of charge. All you need to do is to register an account then you are ready to use their services. Both versions allow you to customize or choose which RSS feeds to enter. Paid aggregators are usually chosen by more experienced users and they usually allow more freedom in customizing feeds.


  1. Choose an RSS aggregator to use. For beginners, web-based aggregators are recommended since they are usually user-friendly.


  Editor's Note: A good directory of both web-based and desktop aggregators for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms can be found at NewsOnFeeds.com .


  2. Scan the homepage of your target website for the RSS or XML button. It contains the RSS code you need to enter in the aggregator. Copy this code. Syndic8 provides a directory of websites that support RSS.


  3. Paste the code (which contains the URL of the website) in your aggregator. There is a space provided for pasting the code.


After you have done these three easy steps, you can start reading the RSS feeds coming from the website. New postings appear as they are published real time at the source website.


  RSS and Internet Marketing


The original idea of RSS came from Netscape, where their intention was to provide a means for users to customize their personal homepage to contain links to websites that interest them, similar to bookmarking websites.


The application of RSS to internet marketing was an unforeseen development to RSS technology developers. Since users are given the freedom to add RSS feeds to their aggregators, those who are interested in particular products and services available on the internet can now be notified real time. Marketing becomes more specific to interested people and not a hit-and-miss operation.


Medium to big-scale companies who intend to use RSS for marketing their products and services should consider linking up with email account providers, (e.g. Yahoo, MSN, Google mail); networking websites (e.g. Friendster, Multiply, My Space, Hi5); and newspaper and television network websites (e.g. New York Times, CNN). Smaller businesses can also look at networking websites as well as personal blog websites (e.g. Blogspot) and websites of clubs and organizations that would probably make use of their products or services e.g. - a fishing supplies store could look for the website of their local fishing club for possible RSS marketing.


Clearly, RSS is an innovation in information management on the worldwide web as well as online marketing. We can expect better RSS technology in the not-so-distant future as its popularity increases among users and website owners alike.




About The Author

Jo Han Mok is the author of the Number 1 international business bestseller, The E-Code. He shares his amazing blueprint for creating million dollar internet businesses at:

InternetMillionaireBlueprints

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The Modern Marketing Reality

Remember back in the good old days when TV commercials showed blind-folded people tasting different colas or washing dirty laundry, only to discover that one product was better than the other?


Remember when such blatant product claims met with acceptance from the viewing audience? Remember when we actually believed the claims made through advertisements? Well, those days are long gone.


Over the past few decades, advertising had increased steadily to the point where the average person sees literally thousands of marketing messages each day. And that's had an effect. Today, the average consumer no longer believes the claims communicated through marketing and have grown suspicious and skeptical of marketing in general. The average consumer has been fooled too many times to let another scam pull the wool over their eyes.


There are actually a few specific reasons why this evolution has taken place and we've already mentioned the first one. The fact is that there's simply too much marketing out there. Between TV ads, radio ads, magazine ads, billboards, product placements, celebrity endorsements and the internet, our world has simply become over-saturated with marketing messages.


The second thing is that modern advertising has become deceptive. It's long since been known that the easiest way to lie is to use statistics. There are so many different ways to interpret data that someone could probably convince you of just about anything and have detailed statistics backing up their argument. Marketers have taken advantage of this reality and made incredible claims that appear to be verified by legitimate research. Once the consumer discovers the figures were correct but misleading, the trust level disintegrates. That's what's happened these past few years. Consumers no longer believe the research marketers present.


The third thing that's happened is simply that the marketing messages no longer get noticed. Consumers have become desensitized to marketing messages so most go unnoticed by consumers. Now, the reality remains that the subconscious mind continues to be affected by these messages even if the conscious mind isn't engaged but the impact of a marketing message on the conscious mind of a consumer has diminished significantly.


The marketers who will succeed in the new era are those who give consumers a sample of the product before a purchase decision is required. This phenomenon started with the increasingly unconditional return policies of retailers. Before long, it crossed the purchase threshold such that potential customers could actually sample the product before they made a purchase decision.


This is no different than the sampling stands you find in Costco. People are hired to prepare products and give shoppers free samples so they can make an informed decision. In fact, in more and more product categories, consumers are demanding samples first; value first; benefits first. And if the product meets their expectations, they can consider a purchase thereafter.


The downside is that marketing has become more expensive. Companies have to provide more value before revenue can be expected. But the upside is that customer loyalty is alive and well. You just have to earn that trust directly. If you can do that, the rest of the selling proposition becomes much easier.


About the Author: Tactical Execution with Patrick Schwerdtfeger is a strategic company focused on growth marketing and program implementation across business markets. Visit the website for more specific tips to start generating revenue today.

20 MORE Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools

My recent article 20 Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools listed 20 of the most popular time-saving tools you can use to help you with your search engine marketing efforts.

The article proved quite popular with both search engine marketers and webmasters, some of whom decided to send me their favorites that weren't included in the list. I also discovered a few more of my own since I wrote the original article, so I decided to add to the list by reviewing another 20 tools.





So here are 20 MORE must-have search engine marketing tools:

  1. SEO Toolbox

The SEO Toolbox is a collection of 11 free SEO tools developed by the team at SEOmoz, including a backlink checker, URL inclusion checker, an outbound link checker, domain age detection and a PageRank checker.


  Price: $0


  2. EditPlus

EditPlus is a 32-bit text editor, HTML editor and programmers' editor for Windows. While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad, it also offers many powerful features for Web page authors and programmers.


  Price: Shareware (Registration fee encouraged)


  3. WordPress

Like Blogger, WordPress offers hosted blogging and blog templates. Unlike Blogger, WordPress also offers a stand-alone publishing platform to enable you to host and fully manage your own blogs.


  Price: $0


  4. Marketing Experiments

MarketingExperiments is an online laboratory engaged in research publishing and education. Their mission is to test and document every conceivable marketing method on the Internet.


  Price: $0


  5. Web Page Analyzer

Web Page Analyzer is a free web page analysis tool and web page speed tester to help you improve your web site's performance. Enter a URL and the tool will calculate page size, composition, and download time.


  Price: $0



  6. Web Accessibility Toolbar

The Web Accessibility Toolbar has been developed by the Web Accessibility Tools Consortium to aid manual examination of web pages for a variety of aspects of accessibility. It's particularly helpful for site usability testing and there are versions for both Opera and Internet Explorer users.


  Price: $0


  7. Search Engine Friendly Layouts

SearchEngineFriendlyLayouts offers CSS-based layouts that are known to be search engine friendly (easier for search engine robots to index). All of the XHTML, CSS and Javascrípt code used in the layouts are provided for use free of charge.


  Price: $0


  8. The Interactive HTML Tutorial

Dave's Interactive HTML Tutorial is a tutorial for anyone who is serious about learning HTML code or who just wants to brush up on some of the basics. It includes code descriptions and integration examples.


  Price: $0


  9. Indextools

Indextools is another popular web site analytics program that also offers built-in PPC bid management tools.


  Price: From USD 49.95 per month


  10. WordTracker

WordTracker was one of the very first keyword research tools available on the Internet. It helps you pinpoint the most popular keywords for your product and services, generate thousands of relevant keywords to improve your organic and PPC search campaigns, research your online markets and find niche opportunities to exploit.


  Price: From USD 30.00 per week




  11. CSS Layout Techniques

CSS Layout Techniques catalogs search engine friendly web site templates based on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). All code is made freely available for download. The site also includes links to various online CSS resources and tutorials, appropriate for both the novice and the seasoned CSS veteran.

  Price: $0


  12. RSS Feeds Submit

RSS Feeds Submit is automatic RSS and blog submission software that submits your feed to over 80 search engines and directories automatically. The creators claim it's the quickest way to submit your feeds to the most popular RSS directories and blog search engines. You can also choose to submit your site manually to directories that require more detailed information about your feed.


  Price: USD 29.95


  13. iBusinessPromoter (IBP)

iBusiness Promoter (IBP) is a suite of professional web promotion tools created by Axandra.com that helps you with all aspects of website promotion and search engine optimization. It includes tools for optimizing your pages and links, researching keywords, submitting your site to search engines and directories and search position querying to determine how your site pages are ranking for particular keywords.


Disclaimer: Some of the functions performed by this tool (e.g. automatic submissions and search rank querying) are discouraged by Google in their Webmaster Guidelines.


  Price: From USD 249.95


  14. Bid Rank

BidRank is a desktop application that you run on your PC to help you manage your PPC campaigns and automate the keyword bidding process. There are two versions of the product available: BidRank for Yahoo! which is a Yahoo! approved third party bid management tool to help you manage Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns. Then there's BidRank Plus which works with multiple pay-per-click search engines, including Google AdWords, to help you manage multiple PPC keyword accounts.


  Price: From USD 14.90 per month


  15. Hot Banana Web CMS

Hot Banana is an easy-to-use Web Content Management System (Web CMS) that helps marketers build and manage SEO-friendly Web sites that can be automated and optimized for maximum lead generation and conversion performance. Content Management Systems are notorious for being SEO unfriendly but this one is purposely built to avoid such problems.


  Price: From USD 329.00 per month


  16. WebPosition

WebPosition is a powerful suite of tools aimed at improving your web site's search engine positioning and monitoring performance. WebPosition allows you to review your search engine rankings, target your keywords, optimize pages using built-in expertise, submit URLs to search engines and analyze conversions using WebTrends site metrics.


Disclaimer: Some of the functions performed by this tool (e.g. automatic submissions and search rank querying) are discouraged by Google in their Webmaster Guidelines.


  Price: From USD 149.00


  17. Competitive Intelligence

Trellian's Competitive Intelligence provides the means to monitor your competitors' web sites to identify their major traffíc sources. You can find out which sites are responsible for sending traffíc to their pages, including search engines and the search keywords used.


  Price: From USD 99.95 per month


  18. HTML Toolbox

The HTML Toolbox from NetMechanic is an online tool that helps you discover HTML errors and syntax that prevents browsers from processing your HTML and prevents visitors (both humans and spiders) from reading your site. HTML Toolbox automatically fixes html problems upon request with one quick clíck. The Toolbox includes several tools in one, including a HTML Checker and Repairer, a Spell Checker, HTML Validator, a Browser Compatibility Checker and a Load Time Checker.


  Price: Free for up to 5 pages


  19. Web CEO

Web CEO claims to be the most complete SEO software package on the planet. The latest version of this SEO/SEM software provides the ability to research keywords and keyphrases that will bring most targeted visitors to your site; optimize your Web pages for better search engine visibility; submit your site to search engines; research, analyze and build links; manage pay-per-click campaigns; track your positions in search engines; review site traffíc statistics; get rid of errors on your sites; find bad links before your visitors do; edit your Web pages; upload any file or folder to your site and monitor the availability of your web site.


Disclaimer: Some of the functions performed by this tool (e.g. automatic submissions and search rank querying) are discouraged by Google in their Webmaster Guidelines.


  Price: From USD 199


  20. AdWatcher

AdWatcher is a suite of tools designed to help you receive the maximum ROI for every advertising dollar you spend from online marketing campaigns, be it Google AdWords, banners, text links, or email marketing. It detects and combats clíck fraud and allows you to manage all of your ad campaigns from one easy-to-use interface. Essentially, it provides clíck fraud monitoring and ad tracking.


  Price: From USD 29.95 per month


So there you have ANOTHER 20 time-saving tools to help you with your search engine marketing efforts. Now there's no excuse for avoiding SEM. Happy site marketing!




About The Author

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running her own SEO business, Kalena is Director of Studies at Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

The Death of Paid Content Has Been Exaggerated!

There is a debate raging on the internet at the moment about whether the move by some of the major national newspapers in the US, away from subscription to a free, advertising driven business model, is a signal that the days of paid content is over.

This debate shows a lack of understanding of content publishing on the web. The reason that the national newspapers are failing in the subscription market is because most of their content is available elsewhere for free. If there is a free alternative, guess what, people will always take the free option.




In the early days of the web, brand was enough to sustain many of the online sites of the national newspapers, but now brand is not enough. There are many credible sources creating content and the internet community is getting pretty good at ensuring quality floats to the surface and the dross is trampled under foot.

So do huge national newspaper sites being forced to go free mean paid content is dead? The figures suggest not. In fact they suggest that the market has blood surging through its veins. According to the Online Publishers Association, paid-for content billed over $2bn in 2005 and is expected to reach over $5bn in 2007. In Europe according to a study for the EU, revenues will jump from €849m in 2005 to €2bn by 2010. So if the large national newspapers with their huge audiences are not generating subscriptions, who is? The answer is highly focused niche websites. As Gary Hoover said at the recent SIPA (Specialist Information Publishers Association) Conference "In the information business all the money is in the niches".


At the specialist information end of the market, knowledge and expertise is still a limited resource and there are many reasons why people pay to get access to it. These include:


  • When knowledge is restricted to one individual or a small group of individuals e.g. share tipping and ínvestment information - www.t1ps.com and Bull Market Report www.bullmarketreport.com


  • When knowledge is inextricably linked to one personality or celebrity e.g. Jancis Robinsons' expertise in wine, www.jancisrobinson.com


  • When the editor has privileged access to source material e.g. insider industry information like www.beernet.com



  • The timeliness of information. If one website gets access to information quicker than other sites, people will pay for that time advantage e.g. the fashion trend prediction site www.wgsn.com


  • A specialist website aggregates information which saves the reader time and hassle e.g. www.lvtbulletin.com provides analysis of court judgements that are relevant to landlords.


  • The website hosts a specialist community. Charging for access acts as a quality filter to ensure all members have a reason and interest in participating e.g. the many collectors clubs and niche industry groups such as www.restaurantowner.com


  • People pay for exclusivity. Many paid-for websites are driven by people wishing to be a member of a small elite group. It's much the same as private members clubs or exclusive golf clubs in the real world e.g. www.smallworld.com


  • People who are passionate about a subject often want to submerge themselves in it and are prepared to pay to mix with likeminded people e.g. fans of the T Bird car www.tbirdfans.com


  • Training sites that give people access to information that will improve their skills or knowledge e.g. the photography site www.photographytips.com and the writers bureau's writing course www.writersbureau.com


  • Help sites that enable people to improve themselves or their health e.g South Beach Diet, www.southbeachdiet.com and What to Expect Pregnancy Club, www.whattoexpect.com


  • Save people time e.g. business book summary sites such as www.bookbytes.com, www.redbooks.com and the site that provides preachers with downloadable sermons www.preachingtoday.com


What is driving this revolution is the combination of cheap and simple publishing tools, zero cost distribution via the web and the access to a global audience via the search engines. Suddenly individual experts can easily share their knowledge and become global celebrities in their specialist areas of interest.


Chris Anderson has researched this phenomenon in his book "The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand". He observed that:


"When you can dramatically lower the costs of connecting supply and demand, it changes not just the numbers, but the entire nature of the market. This is not just a quantitative change, but also a qualitative one, too. Bringing niches within reach reveals a latent demand for specialist content. Then, as demand shifts towards niches, the economics of providing them improve further, and, so on, creating a positive feedback loop that will transform entire industries – and the culture – for decades to come"


Historically the distribution of knowledge and expertise has been restricted by the cost of distributing it via magazines, books and newspapers. Editors, literary agents and publishers were the gatekeepers who decided and controlled what was worth printing. Chris Anderson compares this to islands being visible above an ocean, where the waterline is the economic threshold for what is worth printing. The islands represent the publications that are popular enough to be above that line, and thus profitable enough to be offered through the publishers distribution channels. However islands are just the tips of vast undersea mountains. When the cost of distribution falls, it's like the water level falling in the ocean. All of a sudden things are revealed that were previously hidden. And there is much, much more under the waterline than above it. What we are now starting to see, as online production and distribution costs fall, is the shape of the massive mountains of choice where before there was just a peak.


This can illustrated by the fact that there are approximately 75,000 print magazines, newsletter journals and newspapers in the UK and US, yet there are over 15m active blogs and millíons of niche content websites.


Conclusion


The future of internet publishing is in the niches. Subscription and advertising revenues will continue to migrate down the long tail to the niche sites. Specialist publishers who are focused on creating the best site in their subject area in the world are set to prosper. The mass market publications will continue to see their audiences and revenues squeezed.




About The Author

SubHub provides an all-in-one solution to enable you to rapidly design, build and run your own content website. Publish for profít on the web. Website: SubHub.com     SubHub Articles Feed




XQuery: The Search Language For A Multi-Platform Future

The advent of wireless internet access has made web design a very complicated matter. Previously, all web browsers were created equal. HTML was the only language used to create web sites, and it was only possible to go online with a desktop PC.


Since the turn of the century, cyberspace has changed. It is now possible to surf the world wide web using a wide variety of wireless gadgets, such as cell phones, palm tops, laptops, computer screens in automobiles, etc. As a result, new programming languages and specifications that are more versatile than HTML have evolved to create websites that can be displayed on the new web browsers utilized by these various devices.


Languages such as XML, XHTML, XSL, and a host of other programming innovations were developed because web sites coded in basic HTML were not being displayed properly on the browsers installed on all these neat gadgets. XML is a language that enables data to be displayed across all platforms because XML is a simple text file that merely defines data, it does not tell the web browser how to display the data. XSL and XHTML were created so that XML could be transformed into a web page.


Now that you have a basic understanding of how and why programming has changed, you are ready for a brief introduction to the main topic of this article, XQuery. XQuery was invented so that there was a way to query data stored in an XML document, much the same way SQL is used to query a database.


XQuery uses simple functions to query a document. An XQuery function looks a little like a javascript function in that it uses parentheses containing an element that is to be the object of the function. With XQuery, the element in parentheses is typically the name of the document or file to be queried.


To find what it is looking for within that file, XQuery narrows its search by using path expressions that look a lot like the path for an ordinary file stored on your computer, with the various subsets of data within the XML file separated by backslashes. The predicate is the final component of an XQuery function. The predicate tells the function exactly what information, data, or range of data within a particular subset is to be extracted and returned to the user.


For example, an XML file for a dating website would contain a list of men and women who have posted their profiles on the website. Some of the people in the XML file might be classified as single, while others might classified as divorced. The XML file would also contain the age of each man and woman.


If a woman were to visit that dating website and perform a search for profiles of only single men who are over the age of 30, that search request would be converted into an XQuery function that would contain a path that would tell the function to search through the list of men who are classified as single, and the predicate would instruct the function to return only the profiles of the single men who are older than 30.


Learning how to use XML, XHTML, and XQuery is of critical importance to every web designer or programmer. There are now so many ways to connect to the internet using computers that run on different platforms that are no longer compatible with many elements of the HTML programming language. Web designers need to be conscious of this and start designing web sites that utilize XML and XQuery.


About the Author: Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make an HTML form.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The Modern Marketing Reality

Remember back in the good old days when TV commercials showed blind-folded people tasting different colas or washing dirty laundry, only to discover that one product was better than the other?


Remember when such blatant product claims met with acceptance from the viewing audience? Remember when we actually believed the claims made through advertisements? Well, those days are long gone.


Over the past few decades, advertising had increased steadily to the point where the average person sees literally thousands of marketing messages each day. And that's had an effect. Today, the average consumer no longer believes the claims communicated through marketing and have grown suspicious and skeptical of marketing in general. The average consumer has been fooled too many times to let another scam pull the wool over their eyes.


There are actually a few specific reasons why this evolution has taken place and we've already mentioned the first one. The fact is that there's simply too much marketing out there. Between TV ads, radio ads, magazine ads, billboards, product placements, celebrity endorsements and the internet, our world has simply become over-saturated with marketing messages.


The second thing is that modern advertising has become deceptive. It's long since been known that the easiest way to lie is to use statistics. There are so many different ways to interpret data that someone could probably convince you of just about anything and have detailed statistics backing up their argument. Marketers have taken advantage of this reality and made incredible claims that appear to be verified by legitimate research. Once the consumer discovers the figures were correct but misleading, the trust level disintegrates. That's what's happened these past few years. Consumers no longer believe the research marketers present.


The third thing that's happened is simply that the marketing messages no longer get noticed. Consumers have become desensitized to marketing messages so most go unnoticed by consumers. Now, the reality remains that the subconscious mind continues to be affected by these messages even if the conscious mind isn't engaged but the impact of a marketing message on the conscious mind of a consumer has diminished significantly.


The marketers who will succeed in the new era are those who give consumers a sample of the product before a purchase decision is required. This phenomenon started with the increasingly unconditional return policies of retailers. Before long, it crossed the purchase threshold such that potential customers could actually sample the product before they made a purchase decision.


This is no different than the sampling stands you find in Costco. People are hired to prepare products and give shoppers free samples so they can make an informed decision. In fact, in more and more product categories, consumers are demanding samples first; value first; benefits first. And if the product meets their expectations, they can consider a purchase thereafter.


The downside is that marketing has become more expensive. Companies have to provide more value before revenue can be expected. But the upside is that customer loyalty is alive and well. You just have to earn that trust directly. If you can do that, the rest of the selling proposition becomes much easier.


About the Author: Tactical Execution with Patrick Schwerdtfeger is a strategic company focused on growth marketing and program implementation across business markets. Visit the website for more specific tips to start generating revenue today.

8 Methods Of Adding More Content To Your Site

Content is king and your content site is your kingdom. When the adage "content is king" was first coined, the web was, in many respects, a simpler place for Webmasters. Creating a website with ten to twenty pages of keyword rich content would generate excellent search engine results and a mass of traffíc as a result. Note that keyword rich has now been replaced by keyword optimized – a subtle difference, but a difference nevertheless.




However, the web evolved (difficult to imagine that it's only now considered web 2.0). With the evolution of the web came a much greater demand from web users. Where the static content site was once the epitome of everything good about the Internet, that is less true of the most recent incarnation of the World Wide Web. Your website visitors demand more, but are you able to provide it? We look at various methods of including more content on your website.

  More Pages


OK, we'll deal with the most obvious method first. Add more pages. It's simple and it might be considered old school to many, but it still has a place. The more pages of content you have, the more information you can provide and the more keywords you can target. The math is simple and the technique is devastatingly simple.


Try to add new pages for new topics and, if a particular topic looks like being too verbose, split the page down into several parts. Hostíng plans usually allow for a lot of disk space so you should have no problems with space limitations in this respect. Content Management Systems are often included as part of a hostíng control panel, again making it much easier to add more pages to your website.


  Add An Article Directory


This is a similar approach to adding more pages in many respects except that it allows for a slightly different structure. An article directory is an excellent way to provide visitors more information on the topic of your site. Articles can be categorized, and include deep links to the appropriate pages of your site.


Articles are very marketable, in the sense that if they are well written, other websites may be inclined to link to the article or even republish it in full with all links to your site left in place. If you simply want to add more content, and use the resulting pages as online real estate, then you could consider accepting article submissions from other authors and Webmasters. You receive free content while the authors receive exposure.



  

News Section


News items related to your industry or even your business can be a good excuse to regularly add content. As a general rule they will contain what will turn out to be reasonable long tail search results and you can optimize the pages. Good news or press releases may be picked up by other industry news sites providing you with more exposure as well as genuinely useful content for your site.


Let's not overlook that it's always good to brag. Modesty will not win you customers, so if your business or website achieves something big then brag about it. Inform your customers how they too can benefit and the advantages that your news gives to them.


  Forums


Some believe that the forum is becoming outdated by more modern web 2.0 applications and portals. While this may be true, the forum can still be used to your advantage although only in the appropriate circumstances. Forums provide a means for people to communicate with one another, and if you can create a vibrant and lively forum, you will instantly attract regular visitors.


The forum can also be used to direct your website visitors. If there's a particularly hot topic, then link to it from one of your pages. If somebody (even you) posts a particularly beneficial post, then link to it from one or more of your pages. Conversely, you can also point forum readers to the main pages of your site. It is possible, with certain forum applications, to replace all instances of a word with a link to one of your pages – a quick way to flow traffíc into your main site.


  Blogs


Who hasn't heard of blogs, right? They caused a huge debate when first introduced. Early bloggers claimed they would be the future of the Internet while more skeptical marketers and Webmasters decided their popularity would dwindle eventually. The former certainly came true and it seems there are blogs everywhere, within every industry, and on every conceivable topic.


Blogs have been turned into books, books into blogs. Blogs have even been turned into TV series and, again, vice versa. If you're not blogging then you're not communicating because a blog really does provide a superb way of communicating with your visitors and your customers. And, you guessed it, it allows you to add a lot of good content to your site and will usually draw good search engine traffíc for your efforts.


  Frequently Asked Questíons


An old favorite of the Internet marketer. The FAQ page serves a number of purposes, but primarily it is used to prevent an excessive number of telephone calls and emails with simple questíons. An FAQ page can also be used to highlight some of the main benefits of your service or product. For example, if you sell trainers, and deliver them the next day, one of your questíons could be:


"Q - How long before my Nike trainers are delivered?"


"A - We provide next day delivery on all orders placed before 2pm"


That's a very simplistic view, but it can help to sell your product. Also ensure that you include some of your more important keywords through the questíons and answers.


  Knowledgebase


A knowledgebase is essentially the next step up from an FAQ page. Instead of having a single page with all of your questíons and answers you would create an article or short article that concentrates on one question or one tutorial. Once you have built up a good number of these you have an excellent point of resource, a good way to attract visitors, and a method of keeping unnecessary customer communications to a minimum.


  Feeds


RSS and XML feeds are not new, but they are good for adding content to your site. Look for other sites within your industry that provide feeds and embed them into a page or several of the pages of your site. This can help with SEO because the better feeds update regularly and the search engine spiders believe your site content updates regularly.

These are just some of the more basic but effective methods of adding more and more content to your website. Anything that enables you to add more words has the ability to help improve traffíc and conversions, and provide your customers with an invaluable resource that they will hopefully return to time and time again.


If you don't already have a blog, then get one. At least one. You can combine a blog with other methods of adding content. For instance, you can add other people's articles, or your own articles to the pages of your blog. Alternatively, you can use a blog as the news section of your website. They are easy to design and typically very easy to establish and integrate into your website.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

40 tips for optimizing your PHP code

If a method can be static, declare it static. Speed improvement is by a factor of 4.
echo is faster than print.
Use echo's multiple parameters instead of string concatenation.
Set the maxvalue for your for-loops before and not in the loop.
Unset your variables to free memory, especially large arrays.
Avoid magic like __get, __set, __autoload
require_once() is expensive
Use full paths in includes and requires, less time spent on resolving the OS paths.
If you need to find out the time when the script started executing, $_SERVER[’REQUEST_TIME’] is preferred to time()
See if you can use strncasecmp, strpbrk and stripos instead of regex
str_replace is faster than preg_replace, but strtr is faster than str_replace by a factor of 4
If the function, such as string replacement function, accepts both arrays and single characters as arguments, and if your argument list is not too long, consider writing a few redundant replacement statements, passing one character at a time, instead of one line of code that accepts arrays as search and replace arguments.
It's better to use select statements than multi if, else if, statements.
Error suppression with @ is very slow.
Turn on apache's mod_deflate
Close your database connections when you're done with them
$row[’id’] is 7 times faster than $row[id]
Error messages are expensive
Do not use functions inside of for loop, such as for ($x=0; $x < count($array); $x) The count() function gets called each time.
Incrementing a local variable in a method is the fastest. Nearly the same as calling a local variable in a function.
Incrementing a global variable is 2 times slow than a local var.
Incrementing an object property (eg. $this->prop++) is 3 times slower than a local variable.
Incrementing an undefined local variable is 9-10 times slower than a pre-initialized one.
Just declaring a global variable without using it in a function also slows things down (by about the same amount as incrementing a local var). PHP probably does a check to see if the global exists.
Method invocation appears to be independent of the number of methods defined in the class because I added 10 more methods to the test class (before and after the test method) with no change in performance.
Methods in derived classes run faster than ones defined in the base class.
A function call with one parameter and an empty function body takes about the same time as doing 7-8 $localvar++ operations. A similar method call is of course about 15 $localvar++ operations.
Surrounding your string by ' instead of " will make things interpret a little faster since php looks for variables inside "..." but not inside '...'. Of course you can only do this when you don't need to have variables in the string.
When echoing strings it's faster to separate them by comma instead of dot. Note: This only works with echo, which is a function that can take several strings as arguments.
A PHP script will be served at least 2-10 times slower than a static HTML page by Apache. Try to use more static HTML pages and fewer scripts.
Your PHP scripts are recompiled every time unless the scripts are cached. Install a PHP caching product to typically increase performance by 25-100% by removing compile times.
Cache as much as possible. Use memcached - memcached is a high-performance memory object caching system intended to speed up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load. OP code caches are useful so that your script does not have to be compiled on every request
When working with strings and you need to check that the string is either of a certain length you'd understandably would want to use the strlen() function. This function is pretty quick since it's operation does not perform any calculation but merely return the already known length of a string available in the zval structure (internal C struct used to store variables in PHP). However because strlen() is a function it is still somewhat slow because the function call requires several operations such as lowercase & hashtable lookup followed by the execution of said function. In some instance you can improve the speed of your code by using an isset() trick.

Ex.
if (strlen($foo) < 5) { echo "Foo is too short"; }
vs.
if (!isset($foo{5})) { echo "Foo is too short"; }

Calling isset() happens to be faster then strlen() because unlike strlen(), isset() is a language construct and not a function meaning that it's execution does not require function lookups and lowercase. This means you have virtually no overhead on top of the actual code that determines the string's length.
When incrementing or decrementing the value of the variable $i++ happens to be a tad slower then ++$i. This is something PHP specific and does not apply to other languages, so don't go modifying your C or Java code thinking it'll suddenly become faster, it won't. ++$i happens to be faster in PHP because instead of 4 opcodes used for $i++ you only need 3. Post incrementation actually causes in the creation of a temporary var that is then incremented. While pre-incrementation increases the original value directly. This is one of the optimization that opcode optimized like Zend's PHP optimizer. It is a still a good idea to keep in mind since not all opcode optimizers perform this optimization and there are plenty of ISPs and servers running without an opcode optimizer.
Not everything has to be OOP, often it is too much overhead, each method and object call consumes a lot of memory.
Do not implement every data structure as a class, arrays are useful, too
Don't split methods too much, think, which code you will really re-use
You can always split the code of a method later, when needed
Make use of the countless predefined functions
If you have very time consuming functions in your code, consider writing them as C extensions
Profile your code. A profiler shows you, which parts of your code consumes how many time. The Xdebug debugger already contains a profiler. Profiling shows you the bottlenecks in overview
mod_gzip which is available as an Apache module compresses your data on the fly and can reduce the data to transfer up to 80%
Excellent Article about optimizing php by John Lim

Monday, October 15, 2007

20 Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools

Anyone working in Search Engine Marketing knows that this industry travels at warp speed. If you're trying to market your web site or the web sites of your clients via search engines, chances are your time is limited - severely limited.

To squeeze as much into my schedule as possible without resorting to self-cloning, my daily routine involves the use of a range of time-saving tools and software. I use such tools on a daily basis and I truly don't know how I'd function without them. I'm not the only one. I've talked to other SEM experts and they also rely on various tools to help them through their hectic schedules.




Here is a líst of 20 must-have tools used by busy SEM professionals:


  1. Freshbooks Invoicing and Timesheets

Freshbooks is an online estimating, invoicing, project management and time tracking service that gives your business a professional image, no matter how small. I use it to invoice all my clients online and it can even be set up to automatically bill and debit the credít cards of recurring clients every month. It also has built in staff timesheets and project management tools for online collaboration.


  Price: Free for 3 clients or less


  2. XML Sitemaps Generator

The XML Sitemap Generator trawls through all levels of your site to generate an XML sitemap. It also gives you a running count of pages, provides a text-based URL líst and a HTML sitemap you can import straight into your site. The online version of the generator is free for sites of less than 500 pages, but there's also a low-cost script-based version for large sites that can be set up to automatically index your site, upload an updated XML file to your server and ping Google and Yahoo when done.


  Price: Free for sites of 500 pages or less


  3. Proposal Kit

ProposalKit takes the chore out of creating and tailoring client estimates and proposal contracts. With over 200 pre-designed self-guiding templates ready to fill in the blanks with your company, project/product/service and client information, ProposalKit has already half completed your proposal for you.


  Price:

From USD 47.00


  4. ClickTracks

As far as site analytics goes, the depth and accuracy of data provided by ClickTracks just can't be beaten, in my opinion. The visual analysis ClickTracks provides is probably its best known feature, with statistical data overlaying actual screenshots of your web site pages. The ability to flag individual visitors or groups of visitors based on unique identifiers (such as all persons who visited page x or all persons who bought product d) provides a level of analysis that other analytical packages can't compete with.


  Price: From USD 79.00 per month



  5. AWeber

AWeber is a multiple auto responder and mailing líst management service rolled into one. Members can send an unlimited number of campaigns, follow up messages, and newsletters to an unlimited number of approved opt-ín lists. For newsletter purposes, a wide range of templates are provided, as are free training guides and videos to help you create campaigns.


  Price: From USD 19.95 per month


  6. JROX

JROX Affilíate Manager software (JAM) is a super powerful affilíate program that includes follow up email tools, email broadcasting, custom URLs and the ability to create up to 10 affilíate downlink levels. It offers affiliates groovy 3d Flash-based graphs and charts displaying their referrals and commissions and an organized marketing tools area for storage of banners, links and promotional materials.


  Price: Free for 50 affiliates or less


  7. Keyword Discovery

Keyword Discovery is an advanced keyword research and search term suggestion tool produced by Trellian.


  Price: From USD 69.95 per month


  8. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is free web-based site metrics / analytics software hosted by Google. After you include tracking code on all selected pages of your site, Google collects data regarding visitor activity and then you are able to log into an Analytics interface and view site activity and produce reports.


  Price: $0



  9) Backlinkwatch.com

Type your URL into Backlink Watch and get complete detailed information about the quality and quantity of backward links pointing to your website. It will show you anchor text, Google Toolbar PageRank, total outbound links on that page and nofollow flag for each of your inbound links available.


  Price: $0


  10) Jim Boykin's tools

A collection of 17 free SEO tools developed by Jim Boykin and his staff, including a cache analyzer, Backlink checker, keyword density tool and multiple inbound and outbound link checking tools.


  Price: $0


  11) Google Webmaster Central

Google Webmaster Central is Google's one-stop shop for webmaster resources. It contains answers to common questíons about Google crawling and indexing and guidelines for webmasters to follow when publishing their content. It also provides statistics, diagnostics and management of Google's indexing of your website, including Sitemap submission and reporting.


  Price: $0


  12) Yahoo! Site Explorer

Yahoo! Site Explorer is Yahoo's version of Google Webmaster Tools. It allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search, view the most popular pages from any site, view a comprehensive site map and find pages that link to that site or any page.


  Price: $0


  13) Ranks.nl

Ranks.nl is a keyword density and page prominence indicator. Type in a URL and target keywords to determine the page density and prominence for certain keywords within the page text and/or HTML tags.


  Price: $0


  14) Rex Swain's Tools

Rex Swain is an independent software developer who has uploaded a range of his custom server tools and demos to his web site. Tools include an RGB color sampler, HTTP Cookie Demo, a HTML sampler and an email form demo.


  

Price: $0


  15) SearchStatus for Firefox

SearchStatus is a toolbar extension for Firefox and Mozilla that allows you to see how any and every website in the world is performing in the search engines.


  Price: $0


  16) Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel is probably the world's most popular spreadsheet application. Apart from its powerful formulas for financial reporting, Excel charts and spreadsheets are great for site analytics analysis and sharing, sitemap creation, SEO/PPC campaign reporting and tracking link building campaigns.


  Price: Bundled with MS Office from USD 180.00


  17) Google Reader

Google Reader is a RSS and XML feed reader that constantly checks your favorite news sites and blogs for new content and presents them to you in one interface. It also allows you to share sites/pages of interest with others.


  Price: $0


  18) Blogger

Blogger is a popular online blog provider and templating service owned by Google, where you can quickly set up a blog of your own to post thoughts, interact with people, and more.


  Price: $0


  19) The Lynx Viewer


The Lynx Viewer developed by YellowPipe allows webmasters to see what their pages will look like when viewed with Lynx, a text-mode web browser. This view is very similar to how search engine robots see your site.


  Price: $0


  20) Basecamp

Basecamp is an online collaboration and project management service designed for staff and clients to manage internal and client projects from multiple locations.


  Price: Free for 1 project


So there you have it - 20 of the most popular time-saving tools to help you with your search engine marketing efforts.