Will Be Successful In Online Business?

The Internet facilitates communication and many people do business online because of the low budget involved. But there are many people who have failed. What are the reasons why they are not, and how to avoid shortages?


1. Design


Proper planning is very important for many things, including all projects and operations. You need to plan what you want to do, what things are needed, and ways to do it. Without proper planning, people can easily get discouraged when they encounter obstacles.


2. Too much information


There is too much information from the Internet. Things are constantly changing, and there are always new methods, products and strategies. It is important to be aware of information overload. If you stop after the changes that you forget what you want. You have lost your direction and end up giving up because you can not keep.


3. Do not focus on


With the overwhelming information, we can focus on the loss of what he wants. You will not follow, depending on your plan, do not go according to your schedule and do not meet your goal. You give up and can not achieve what you want.


Not finding the fourth using


You can achieve success not only for you. You can get a mentor to help you, read books to learn, attend seminars, collaborate with someone, and even get formal training. It will be easier to achieve your goal, if there is someone to help you or get help from somewhere. Successful people can give you tips on how to go about doing things and avoid unnecessary mistakes. Start to look for help somewhere or someone.


5. Immediate result


Before reaching your goal, you must believe that you can get. It is common that we want the result of the effort we put in. However, online business, you have to constantly put in the effort and the result will come slowly. There is no overnight success. You must be discipline and keep doing things according to your plan. You must work hard for the success of getting what you reap.


Only those who consistently do the right thing will succeed. It may be necessary to assess the external environment and make changes accordingly. But you should not give up when there are obstacles, but think of ways to overcome them. You must persevere until you succeed.

Rebuilding IT post-recession: Hire for the future, not the past

As CIOs and other tech-focused business leaders seek to rebuild IT post-recession, they need to make sure that the new talent they're bringing in is in sync with the new technology landscape: that is to say, flexible, adaptive and collaborative.
Cloud computing, social media and mobile technologies are having an effect that some are calling "the consumerization" of IT. Consequently, demand for new skills is emerging, such as mobile "app" developers for Google's Android, Apple's iPhone and iPad platform along with social networking sites such as Facebook, and "hot" technologies such as Flash, Flex, PHP and Ruby.
However, it would be a mistake to end the discussion here. When we talk about hiring for the future, we're really talking more about mindset than specific technology skillsets, which will come and go. Tomorrow's IT pro will operate within an increasingly fast and erratic business cycle. Consider a 2010 Zenoss survey, in which 41 percent of IT professionals indicated they now prefer to deploy servers virtually and 43 percent said flexibility was their main reason for using virtualization. This illustrates a fundamental shift in the standard implementation process, which is becoming much faster and more flexibility-driven.
Therefore, one of the first attributes you should gauge with new hires is their ability to adapt.  The old school software implementation took years, cost millions and was completed come hell or high water. The new school implementation will be completed within weeks on pennies-to-the-dollar, and may be ditched even more quickly if it proves to be a bad fit or if something better comes along. So if the traditional hire can be characterized as a rigid perfectionist, the new hire needs to be someone that can go with the flow of the ever-changing needs of the business and accept that the implementation will never really be "finished."
Also, pay close attention to social skills. Tomorrow's IT pro will function within a communication landscape in which hierarchy has all but disappeared, and people - including employees from all departments and customers - are talking to each other 24/7 in real time through every possible channel.
These new technologies will require an IT department that is fully integrated into the flow of the company. The IT pro of the future will be fluent in the language of business, and able to talk to the company's bottom line alongside any marketing or sales executive. The new state of business - in which the average employee relies increasingly on technology - will require it.
On a related note, look for new hires that have a collaborative outlook. Though we think of great innovators as individuals, the reality is that innovation in business is a collaborative process, and it will become even more so as social media and other technologies continue to break down departmental silos. So while you'll want to know what a job candidate was able to accomplish as an individual, it is increasingly important to know what they were able to put into motion as part of a team. Possibly even more importantly, find out about how they collaborated with non-IT people within the company, and how their IT work made those folks more effective in their jobs.
IT is coming out of the basement. To paraphrase comedian Jerry Stiller, "That's new school IT, baby!"
Michael Kirven is co-founder of agile business consulting firm Bluewolf, which provides lifecycle innovation, cloud implementations, IT staffing, managed services and other services to sync business and IT for efficient, adaptive performance.

Can geeks save bitcoin after hellish week of hack, heist, trojan and a crash?

The open source, P2P, virtual currency bitcoin has suffered through a really rough week, including an attack on the MtGox bitcoin exchange that resulted in a theft of almost $9 million worth of bitcoins before it crashed the $17 exchange value of the currency down to just pennies. There was another bitcoin theft worth about a half million dollars, and a Trojan designed to steal bitcoins from unsuspecting users' bitcoin wallets is floating around in the wild. And now the EFF removed the option to accept bitcoin donations. If you are looking for the silver lining in this dark cloud, it might be that bitcoin is now popular and successful enough to be targeted by attackers.

Launch called bitcoin "the most dangerous product we've ever seen" and suggested it could "topple governments, destabilize economies and create uncontrollable global bazaars for contraband." Then bitcoin miners were busted after police mistook miners' power consumption usage for marijuana grow-ops.

On the 13th of June, the first bitcoin theft worth about $500,000 was reported on the Bitcoin Forum. The user was an early adopter of bitcoin and claimed nearly 25,000 bitcoins were stolen from him; the value was close to a half million dollars, so it's not so hard to understand his intial reaction of "I feel like killing myself now." Publicly accessible information from the bitcoin network did show a transfer of 25,000 bitcoins.

Then on the 19th, MtGox, the world's largest bitcoin marketplace, was attacked. The resulting security breach allegedly involved fraudulent trades, a theft of about $8.75 million worth of bitcoins, and exposed hundreds of account logins with poorly-hashed passwords. The value of the virtual money crashed from $17.50 per bitcoin to almost nill - mere pennies. MtGox was shut down before operators rolled back the fraudulent transactions and restored bitcoin value to $17.50. MtGox claims it was not hacked, "The site was not compromised with a SQL injection as many are reporting, so in effect the site was not hacked."

However, on the Bitcoin Forum, bitcoin user "Kevin" tells the story of how he watched the bitcoin market plunge and managed to sneak in a $0.0101 per bitcoin bid which gave him $5,000,000 in bitcoins for under $3,000. Kevin claims the official MtGox story is "fishy." Another bitcoin user verified Kevin is who he says he is and the forum currently has 16 hotly debated pages about the MtGox security breach.

Last week, security firm Symantec discovered and blogged about the Infostealer.Coinbit "malware designed to steal bitcoins from unsuspecting users." But now Symantec said the Bitcoin Infostealer case is "getting funny." After finding and analyzing two more Infostealer samples, the trojan author appears to have been infected with a worm when he wrote the code. Symantec guesses the malware writer submitted his code to Virus Total to check for potential AV detections when he discovered he was infected and cleaned his computer before releasing the malware into the wild. The Infostealer executable leaves account passwords in cleartext, ready and waiting to be sniffed by anyone, and included a message from the trojan's author: "If you are looking for it, stop and go mine your bitcoins, or else I may get you the next time."  Symantec said the message might mean that the malware author previously had his bitcoin account hacked and his data stolen.

Here are some tips for securing your bitcoin wallet.

And yesterday, the EFF reversed its public policy of accepting bitcoin donations. At the beginning of 2011, the EFF blogged about bitcoins being a step toward "censorship-resistant digital currency" and began to accept bitcoin donations. But now the EFF announced it would no longer offer a bitcoin donation option and placed its accumulated bitcoins back into circulation via Bitcoin Faucet. The EFF gave three reasons for the change:

We don't fully understand the complex legal issues involved with creating a new currency system.We don't want to mislead our donors.People were misconstruing our acceptance of Bitcoins as an endorsement of Bitcoin.

While some sites are claiming this is the end of bitcoin, that seems a bit extreme. Although the EFF said it never officially endorsed bitcoin, its about-face regarding the virtual currency for donations is a troubling sign since so many people look to the EFF for cues. I doubt bitcoin is going away as it has way too many supporters  . . .  and that's on top of Anonymous and LulzSec.

Five approaches for defending a Windows PC prove their worth

A couple news stories here at Computerworld reminded me of some previously offered Defensive Computing suggestions.

According to a story yesterday by Gregg Keizer, bugs in Adobe's Flash player are being widely exploited by bad guys.

The last version of Flash was released on June 15th, the version before that was released on June 5th. On June 6th, I suggested a way to defend against bugs in the Flash player, basically, using only Google's Chrome browser on Flash-enabled sites.

One problem updating Flash in other browsers is that it's a manual procedure. Then too, it may need to be done more than once depending on the browsers you use. Finally, the way Adobe notifies end users about the need to update to a new version of Flash is seriously flawed.  I list five problems with it on my flashtester.org site.

Chrome has none of these problems, it self-updates its embedded copy of the Flash player quietly and quickly. When the June 15th bug fixes were rolled out by Adobe, my Chrome browser had updated itself with the latest Flash player before I knew there was a new version. Thank you Google.

This strategy means that Flash is not available in other browsers. I continue to use Firefox at times and haven't found life without Flash to be a big deal. After all, millions of iPad users somehow manage to survive without it.

Firefox without Flash produces messages such as the one below from ft.com

and this one from youtube.

On  a few sites however, Firefox pops up a yellow bar at the top of the web page warning about needing an additional plugin to view the web page. To me, this annoyance is a small price to pay for the added security.

Anyone using the Adobe Reader version 9 or 10 has another copy of the Flash player that also needs to be updated. Adobe has often updated this copy of Flash well after updating the web browser copies.

To deal with this, I suggested back in October to use another PDF viewer, advice that I stand by.

Anyone married to Adobe, can avoid Flash issues by using version 8 of the Reader. The June 14th updates to the Adobe Reader included fixes to version 8, which shows Adobe is still maintaining it. Version 8 of the Reader is available from Adobe at get.adobe.com/reader/otherversions.

It was interesting to see that Adobe blamed hacker interest in exploiting Flash on its popularity. This is certainly true and applies to other popular software as well. Mac and Linux users benefit greatly by being lesser targets. One of the reasons I cited for avoiding the Adobe Reader is that because of its popularity, bad guys will be sure to exploit known bugs.

The same is true of Internet Explorer which is also having recent flaws exploited left and right.

But IE has another strike against it, one that I discussed back in December: Microsoft is slow to release patches. Whatever the pros/cons of Chrome and Firefox, I believe that known bugs in these browsers are patched faster than known bugs in IE. With these two strikes against it, Internet Explorer is the worst browser for Defensive Computing.

In addition to being free, Firefox and Chrome offer a huge amount of extensions, are available in portable editions on Windows and run on Macs and Linux, none of which Internet Explorer can match. So, let the bad guys exploit the latest flaws in IE. I don't care, and there is no reason for you to care either.

Of course, every article that discusses a web browser mentions speed, so let me weigh in too.

Speed should not be a consideration in choosing a web browser. Safety and other features matter more. For speed, consider a faster net connection, a faster computer or an SSD. I have done each of these, and each made a huge speed difference compared to minor differences between browsers.

Finally, I recently heard about a web site offering free iPads (I wont mention the site name because I believe it to be a scam). Figuring the site was dicey, I visited it with a browser running in a Sandboxie sandbox.

The sandbox insulated the rest of the system from changes, ran the browser with lowered rights and discarded any changes the browser thought it made. As a test, I installed a browser extension which was fully functional but then disappeared when the browser was shut down.

I last wrote about Sandboxie back in April. It has proven its worth time and time again and remains an outstanding way to defend a Windows computer.

And, it's not limited to web browsers. If someone sends you a file, consider saving it to your hard drive and opening its viewing application (be it Word, Excel, the Adobe Reader or whatever) in a Sandboxie sandbox. This way, even if the file is malicious and the malware gets by your antivirus software, your system is still protected.

Will Microsoft buy RIM?

Here's the quickest way for Microsoft to finally become a big player in mobile: Buy Research in Motion. Bloomberg reports that RIM's stock price has declined so precipitiously that it's now at bargain basement prices --- and a number of financial analysts have said Microsoft would be an ideal buyer.

Bloomberg reports that

Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM) has lost so much value that an acquirer could pay a 50 percent premium and still buy the BlackBerry maker for a lower multiple than any company in the industry.

RIM, once worth $83 billion, fell more than 80 percent from its record three years ago as Apple Inc. (AAPL)'s iPhone and Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android platform siphoned off smartphone customers. The Waterloo, Ontario-based company, which plunged last week after saying quarterly sales may drop for the first time in nine years, closed yesterday at $25.89 a share, or 4.7 times earnings next year. That's less than any communications-equipment provider, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

In other words, it can be gotten for bargain-basement prices.

Scott Sutherland at Wedbush Securities Inc. in San Francisco told Bloomberg that purchasing RIM would bring "critical mass" to Microsoft in the smartphone market.

Buying RIM would make plenty of sense for Microsoft. With the purchase of RIM, it could have two separate smartphone lines, one for business (RIM), and one for consumers (Windows Phone 7). Given Microsoft's deal with Nokia, it would have either own or have deals with two of the largest phone manufacturers in the world.

I don't expect Microsoft to purchase RIM, though. One issue is that Microsoft seems wedded to a Window-everywhere strategy, and RIM doesn't fit into that. Still, buying the company would be a quick way for Microsoft to immediately become a much larger mobile player.

Google Quietly Launches Panda Update Version 2.2

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goodwin-danny by Danny Goodwin, June 21, 2011

Google Panda Update Logo

Webmasters and SEOs suspected the next wave of Google's Panda update began hitting last week, with reports coming in of traffic drops, as well as some recoveries starting around June 16. And it seems that is the case, as Google has today confirmed the arrival of what is being dubbed Google Panda Version 2.2.

As is typical of Google, they're revealing nearly nothing about what this tweak is targeting. As yet, Google hasn't made an official announcement of the rollout of the algorithmic change on a company blog, though Google has recently tried to downplay Panda, noting that Panda is just one of about 500 algorithmic search tweaks Google makes each year.

Supposedly, one thing Google was going to address with Panda 2.2 is the issue of scraper sites – websites that republish other people's content on their own site, usually making money from Google AdSense in the process – outranking content originators. As Frank Watson noted, "Google created the mechanism that clogs its own data centers and overwhelms its own spam battlers."

History of Panda

Google announced the arrival of a new algorithm aimed at reducing rankings for "low-quality sites." Though Google said only 11.8 percent of U.S. queries were impacted by the update, it was enough to do some big damage (organic traffic losses of up to 80 percent were reported) to many unsuspecting online business owners, webmasters, and SEOs, which we chronicled here, here, here, and here.

A second version of Panda followed in April for all English sites, incorporating user feedback (blocked sites) as a search signal, followed by what is now being called Panda 2.1 in May.

Panda Tips

Early on, Google offered little advice to those caught in Google's algorithmic net, aside from removing low quality content and releasing a list of 23 questions to help you think like Google about which types of sites Google tries to reward with higher rankings.

In the months since the initial launch, some more clues have emerged and our team of experts have been busy unraveling the SEO factors involved with the Panda enigma.

Most recently, Garry Przyklenk yesterday offered five SEO Panda survival tips, including diversifying your traffic, addressing usability issues, and creating high-quality content – which is what Google says the Panda update aims to reward, despite the collateral damage that has been reported since February.

Also see my post, a collection of suggestions coming out of SES New York this year.

As for recovery? We reported on a couple sites that have recently made progress after being hit hard when Panda launched. See their recovery strategies here.

Let us know if you've seen any changes to your rankings or traffic in the past week in the comments.

Save up to $500! Register now for SES San Francisco. In addition to high-level strategy, keynotes, an expo floor with 100+ companies, networking events, and parties, you don't want to miss out on the latest trends and strategies during sessions on SEO, PPC management, social media, keyword research, local advertising, mobile engagement, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, online video, site optimization, usability, and more. Early bird rates expire July 22.

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What's Your Story?

With Google making the life of the SEO harder and harder, it pays to add as many marketing strings to our bows as we can. In this article, we'll look at a way to brand and position using stories. Hopefully, if we have a good story, and tell it well, people are more likely to remember us, and more likely to pass the story on.

Most people think their site is special. But, by definition, few sites in a given niche can be special.

If we target a keyword term, that many other sites are targeting, we'll probably write a similar keyword-loaded page, including the same synonyms, derived from the same keyword tools, using the same headings in bold, in the hope of appearing in the top ten list of pages - which are just like the others.

We may distinguish ourselves by managing to rank in the top three, but, as we know, there are no guarantees we'll maintain this advantage.

If SEO is our only strategy, then this will only work if few other people are using SEO. How many niches worth fighting for are like that these days?

Not many.

Generally speaking, the more mature the niche, the more you need something besides SEO. You need to make as much effort to stand out as possible, otherwise people will likely overlook and forget you. There are too many other sites and options.

Let's look at a differentiation strategy based on stories.

Stories are universal.

The human race has been using stories for thousands of years. We use stories because they are informative, memorable, and easily spread to others. Isn't that what we want our sites to be, too?

Every news story is a tragedy. Every religion is a story of redemption. Politicians tell stories, some of which are true! The alternative would be to give people a string of disconnected data and facts. Such data and facts may be 100% true, but they are seldom memorable or easily repeatable. Telling a compelling story is one good way to contextualize information, and make it more meaningful.

A story isn't just words on a page, saying how great a company is, and what products they have, and if you want them, you should "click here". That's surface. Think of "story" as a sub-text, the underlying, perhaps unspecified tale of who you are, what you're doing, and how you can help people solve their problems. This is a form of positioning, and branding, but I find it's helpful to reduce those high concepts down into a simple narrative. It helps bring a lot of different, and sometimes complicated, marketing aspects together.

Everyone can tell a story, especially about themselves.

Every business has a story.

Take Amazon.

The Amazon is the largest river in the world, which is an appropriate name for a site which aimed to be the largest retailer on the planet. Amazon is huge. Amazon is huge because they took the shopping experience, made it easier, and people loved it. With one click, a customer could order a book, or a DVD, and many other products and have it sent to them. Amazon faced some huge challenges. Just how do you store and ship a vast array of products and still make money? Amazon do massive volume, and use unique, sophisticated tracking and packing systems to overcome these challenges. Amazon's cloud computing service alone has revenues in excess of $500m.

Amazon's story is mostly about "being big". All very well for Amazon, of course, but what about the little guy showing people how to build stuff? There's a story in that, too.

Tim Carter founded "Ask The Builder.com". Tim provides tips for DIY, answers building questions, and provides product and tool reviews. Rather than the home DIY enthusiast going out and buying manuals, or hiring an expensive builder, Tim provides his information for free, and his video's provide depth that printed books do not. Tim clearly cares about building, and the home DIY enthusiast. Tim's gone a step further, and told his life story.

Try boiling your site down into such a story. Once you have a story, you can then flesh out narratives that flow through everything you do, from your graphic design, to your copy, to your approach to customer services.

For example, Tim's story is a "small, personal" story. It is fitting that he doesn't have a glossy, corporate theme, as this would grate against the narrative. Rather, the site is a bit raggedy and amateurish, in a good way. He is providing one-to-one personal help, so it fits that he talks directly to camera. It fits that, unlike Amazon, you know who is behind the site. It fit's the the About Page is a personal history. It's approachable. It's all part of the "small, personal" story. It helps make the site more convincing, and hopefully more memorable, if common themes are repeated.

A story helps achieve focus, clarity and distinction.

If you're having problems getting started, here's a work-plan.

What do you do? Make it short and sweet i.e. "Provide advice to home DIY enthusiasts". "Sell books online".

How did you start? Why did you start? What did you do before you started? What position are you in now?

What problem do you solve? What are challenges have you overcome? It helps if these are the same challenges and problems your customers face.

Did you overcome people? Organizations? Time? Money? Lack of knowledge?

Who, exactly, are you trying to help? Where do they live? What is their time of life? What challenges do they face?

Security? Being first? Individual care? Low prices? Value?

What do you offer that other sites do not?

How do you know you're completed what you set out to do? What is the measure of victory?

Answer these questions, and it becomes easy to make decisions about design, positioning, branding, and marketing.

Hopefully it helps make your site more memorable, too.

Increasing SEO Complexity Lowers Result Diversity

In the last post I mentioned how the US government tried to change the cost benefit analysis for some sleazy executives at pharmaceutical corporations which continue to operate as criminal enterprises that simply view repeated fines as a calculable cost of doing business.

If you think about what Google's Panda update did, it largely changed the cost-benefit analysis of many online publishing business models. Some will be frozen with fear, others will desperately throw money at folks who may or may not have solutions, while others who gained will buy additional marketshare for pennies on the Dollar.

"We actually came up with a classifier to say, okay, IRS or Wikipedia or New York Times is over on this side, and the low-quality sites are over on this side." - Matt Cutts

Now that Google is picking winners and losers the gap between winners & losers rapidly grows as the winners reinvest.

And that word invest is key to understanding the ecosystem.

To those who are not yet successful with search, the idea of spending a lot of money building on a strategy becomes a bit more risky when you see companies like Demand Media that have spent $100's of millions growing an empire only to see 40% of the market value evaporate in a couple weeks due to a single Google update. There are literally thousands of webmasters furiously filing DMCA reports to Google after Panda, because Google decided that the content quality was fine if it was on a scraper site, but the exact same content lacked quality when on the original source site.

And even some sites that were not hit by Panda (even some which have thousands of inbound links) are still getting outranked by mirroring scrapers. Geordie spent hours sharing tips on how to boost lifetime customer value. For his efforts, Google decided to rank a couple scrapers as the original source & filter out PPCBlog as duplicate content, in spite of one of the scrapers even linking to the source site.

Outstanding work Google! Killer algo :D

Even if the thinking is misguided or an out of context headline, Reuters articles like Is SEO DOA as a core marketing strategy? do nothing to build confidence to make large investments in the search channel. Which only further aids people trying to do it on the cheap. Which gets harder to do as SEO grows more complex. Which only further aids the market for lemons effect.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are currently some search results which look like this

All of the colored boxes are the same company. You need a quite large monitor to get any level of result diversity above the fold. The company that was on the right side of the classifier can keep investing to build a nearly impenetrable moat, while others who fell back will have a hard time justifying the investment. Who wants to scale up on costs while revenues are down & the odds of success are lower? Few will. But the company with the top 3 (or top 6) results is collecting the data, refining their pitch, and re-investing into locking down the market.

Much like the Gini coefficient shows increasing wealth consolidation in the United States, search results where winners and losers are chose by search engines creates a divide where doing x will be very profitable for company A, while doing the exact same thing will be a sure money loser for company B.

The lines between optimization & spam blur as some trusted sites are able to rank a doorway page or a recycled tweet. Once site owners know they are trusted, you can count on them green lighting endless content production.

Many mainstream media websites have topics subdomains where they use services like DayLife or Truveo to auto-generate a near endless number of "content pages." To appreciate how circular it all is consider the following

a reporter makes a minimally informing Tweet Huffington Post scrapes that 3rd party Tweet and ranks it as a page I write a blog post about how outrageous that Huffington Post "page" was SFGate.com has an auto-generated "Huffington Post" topics page (topics.sfgate.com/topics/The_Huffington_Post) which highlighted my blog post some of the newspaper scraper pages rank in the search results for keywords sites like Mahalo scrape the scrape of the scrape etc.

At some point in some such loops I am pretty certain the loops start feeding back into themselves & create a near-infinite cycle :D

The OPA mentioned a billion dollar shift in revenues which favors large newspapers. But those "pure" old-school media sites now use services like DayLife or Truveo to auto-generate content pages. And it is fine when they do it.

...but...

The newspapers call others scammy agents of piracy and copyright violators for doing far less at lower scale, all while wanting to still be ranked highly (even while putting their own original content behind a paywall), and then go out and do the exact same scraping that they complain about others doing. It is the tragedy of the commons played out on an infinite web where the cost of an additional page is under a cent & everyone is farming for attention.

And the piece of pie everyone is farming for is shrinking as:

Rather than subsidizing the media with ads, brands are becoming the media:

Aware that consumers spend someplace between eight and 10 hours researching cars before they contact a dealer, auto markers and dealers are vectoring ever-greater portions of their marketing budgets into intercepting consumers online.

As but one example, Ford is so keen about capturing online tire-kickers that its website gives side-by-side comparisons between its Fiesta and competing brands. While you are on the Ford site, you can price the car of your dreams, investigate financing options, estimate your payment, view local dealer inventories and request a quote from a dealer.

AdWords is eating up more of the value chain by pushing big brands

comparison ads = same brands that were in AdWords appearing again bigger adwords ads with more extensions = less diversity above the fold additional adwords ad formats (like product ads) = less diversity (most of the advertisers who first tried it were big box stores, and since it is priced on a CPA profit share basis the biggest brands that typically have more pricing power with manufacturers win)

Other search services like Ask.com and Yahoo! Search are even more aggressive with nepotistic self promotion.

Not only are big brands being propped up with larger ad units (and algorithmically promoted in the organic search results) but the unstable nature of Google's results further favors big business at the expense of small businesses via the following:

more verticals & more ad formats = show the same sources multiple times over less stability = more opportunities for spammers (they typically have high margins & lots of test projects in the work...when one site drops another one is ready to pop into the game...really easy for scrapers to do...just grab content & wait for the original source to be penalized, or scrape from a source which is already penalized) less stability = small businesses have to fire employees hard to make payroll less stability = lowers multiples on site sales, making it easier for folks like WebMD, Quinstreet, BankRate, and Monster.com to buy out secondary & tertiary competing sites

If you are a small business primarily driven by organic search you either need to have big brand, big ego, big balls, or a lack of common sense to stay in the market in the years to come, as the market keeps getting consolidated. ;)

SEO and SEM: Electronics-Industry Tips

sem electronicsJERUSALEM — Here in the Silicon Valley of the Middle East, I once attended a networking event at which representatives of Israeli SEO companies gave brief presentations to local businessmen on various online-marketing topics. The speaker on keyword research made an excellent point that is worth remembering for people interested in how to do SEM for electronics companies:

The more specific the search, the more likely that a person is looking to buy.

Here is what the speaker meant. A person looking for general information on “digital cameras” will likely search Google for just that short-tail keyword. But a person who looks specifically for “Nikon D3X” is likely looking to purchase that product — and using search engines to find the best price as well. The take-away: Short-tail keywords should be targeted to provide information; long-tail keywords should be targeted to make sales. It is the primary reason that an SEO-optimized website structure should go from short-tail or long-tail keywords as one proceeds further inside a site (often using a process called “breadcrumb navigation”):

Nikon USA –> Nikon Products –> Digital SLR Cameras –> Nikon D3X

Now, just so my readers know: Nikon is not an SEO-consulting services client, so I have not analyzed their search-engine optimization specifically. I cite them only since the aforementioned speaker mentioned “digital cameras” as an example in his keyword-research talk. However, the company is a useful example of what can form the basis of an effective SEM-electronics strategy in this specific industry using both short-tail and long-tail keywords.

In so-called “inbound marketing,” the goal of most websites needs to be twofold: to become a industry thought-leader (through blog posts, white papers, and articles) and to generate revenue (through advertising clicks, product sales, or other means). General pages with short-tail keywords can be used to provide information; the specific pages further inside the website hierarchy can be used to generate sales. If a website visitor is impressed by the informational pages, then he will be more likely to make a purchase since he will be more likely to view the company subconsciously as a reputable thought-leader within the specific industry. It’s one way that branding can be used in an online, SEO-based context.

SEM Electronics

However, this strategy is much easier to use specifically in an SEM-electronics company — or any other sector — that offers many products. Companies that offer services generally have fewer keywords that they can target. Say that your business aims to teach English as a second language. Most of the researched keywords will resemble “learn English,” or something to that effect. There will be little variety. However, companies that sell products can target dozens, if not hundreds, of keywords because each individual product will be searched within Google in its own right (see the “Nikon D3X” example above).

The electronics industry is the best example since each brand will have dozens of products, and each product will have dozens of models. Any company that can rank highly in search engines for each specific product model will certainly receive a high level of organic-search traffic — that those visitors are those who are most likely to convert into sales.

The take-away: It will take a lot longer to optimize each page of an SEM-electronics website, but the results will make it worthwhile. The key is to do the optimization correctly so that it will need to be revisited only rarely. We invite readers to peruse our SEO-software reviews to see which platforms may work best for them.

Rejected connection and other issues of pipes

Use of pipelines has grown exceptionally since its launch almost three years ago. Unfortunately, the original architectural design and the implementation of the engine has been showing now is age for a while.

To address these that we have worked actively to move from the current engine to a new data flow based engine in the a YQL uses for some time. We talked a little about this before.

Pipes has become more popular so it has number of deliberate and accidental abuse in the system (abuse = execution of large numbers of pipes complexes with frequent changing of parameters). It has resolved us many of these and they are working on others. jQuery, for example, caché-bustos in each application to ensure that those who will get through that library in search of a pipe block way more than what you owe (jQuery must really add instruction "if IE" before doing so).

We are making great strides with the new engine and we will send information to some of you in the coming weeks to start the test. Meanwhile us we are continuing to update other parts of our infrastructure and many of these issues must begin to disappear, but not remedied until the new inline engines.

If you use pipes much and would like to participate in the new engine test, send an email to questions of pipes [at] yahoo-inc.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 6: 14 pm and is filed in developers, news.

Tight-Lipped Networking & Black Hat SEO Tips @ SES

You are here: Home > Industry
davies-dave by Dave Davies, June 21, 2011

black-hat-ses-torontoThere are a lot of benefits to attending an SES event. If you're new to SEO, there are excellent tracks that will introduce you to the fundamentals of Internet marketing by seasoned veterans, an education that would otherwise cost well over the price of a flight and a ticket.

If you're an experienced SEO you'll have the opportunity to attend the more advanced or specific tracks to learn things you don't know, or have what you do know reinforced by people you respect. Yes, there's something for everyone.

If you don't attend you're likely reading the forums, blogs, and tweets about the event (or if not, you should be) but there is information you just can't get from these mediums.

While I love attending SES events and always come away with enough new information to easily cover the costs of attending, some of the biggest benefits come from the things you'll never read about. How much would it cost to sit down with 4 or 5 of the top Internet Marketers in the world and chat with them about strategy if you had to pay by the hour? More than the drink it'll cost you at SES, that's for sure.

While the sessions are full of outstanding information, it's after hours or over a meal that attendees get the chance to sit down with the speakers, vendors and other attendees to discuss what's going on in the industry and with their own sites.

But the most fun (and often best information you'll never hear about) is an event held on the last day; the white hat vs. black hat panel. Often held in a lounge and luring people to spill the beans with the offering of a free drink for doing so, this session allows webmasters and SEOs to talk about their experiences with black hat strategy without judgment and without risk of persecution.

If you've never been to SES you've likely never heard of this session and definitely haven't heard any of the details – because no one is allowed to blog or tweet it. Basically, it's a very nerdy form of Fight Club.

At this session you'll hear reputable SEOs and webmasters talking openly about cloaking, auto-content generation strategies, link-building crawlers, hacks, ways to send Google the wrong (or shall I say right) signals and so much more. I walked out of that session having cleansed my SEO soul with two confessions under my belt from my affiliate marketing days and a bunch of very interesting things to think about.

Even if you're not a black hat SEO, the strategies you'll hear about during this session will definitely open your eyes to what's possible and what you have to look out for from your competitors, but only if they're attending SES – and only if you don't work for Google.

Save up to $500! Register now for SES San Francisco. In addition to high-level strategy, keynotes, an expo floor with 100+ companies, networking events, and parties, you don't want to miss out on the latest trends and strategies during sessions on SEO, PPC management, social media, keyword research, local advertising, mobile engagement, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, online video, site optimization, usability, and more. Early bird rates expire July 22.

Search engine optimization • Internet marketing • Google • Fight Club • White or black hat • Search Engine Strategies • Marketing • SES

Incisive Interactive Marketing LLC.

© 2011 All rights reserved. 55 Broad St, 22nd Floor, New York, NY 10004

Incisive Media AOP Digital Publisher of the Year

Google AdWords Experiments with a Click Count Feature

You are here: Home > PPC
Rob Young by Rob Young, June 20, 2011

Google is never short on AdWords experiments, running numerous format and placement experiments of varying sizes at any given time. One recent experiment includes an extra line in the search ad: "X clicks for this advertiser."

There aren't a lot of solid details; while the experiment was spotted by multiple parties and officially confirmed by a Google spokesperson, the extent of the known data is what you can see on your screen:

google-adwords-clicks-for-this-advertisers

Highlights added. Image courtesy of Vinny O'Hare.

This is just one of a few experiments being tried. Other formats reported include a shorter version that gave only the number of clicks (formatted as "X clicks").

Here are a few of the remaining questions for Google:

Are advertisers volunteering for this program, or are the ads just getting the extra line?Is there a threshold on the minimum number of clicks before this line is displayed?What factors determine if this format will be used?Does it seem to be impacting CTR, for better or worse?How is the number of clicks calculated? Total for the campaign, total for the ad, total for the advertiser over their account history, or something else entirely?

I've contacted Google to see if I can get those answers, or at least some more information, but haven't received word yet. I'll update here once more data becomes available.

Those paying attention to the industry know that Google runs experiments frequently, often running them – without the advertiser being aware – on a very small scale. If the format, placement, or other element seems to be helpful to advertisers or users, the experiment expands and can eventually become the status quo.

Other recent Google experiments have caused far more controversy. A display network format based on CPL (cost per lead) even led to accusations that Google was giving the Obama re-election campaign unfair access to experimental new formats. Google denied those claims, stating that no CPL ad packages had been sold to any political group.

The "X clicks" format is a somewhat less exciting format, but one that's more likely to impact the average advertiser. If the number of clicks ends up giving a positive CTR impact, top-heavy investment, larger campaigns, and long-term advertising will become factors in the success of individual ads.

Save up to $500! Register now for SES San Francisco. In addition to high-level strategy, keynotes, an expo floor with 100+ companies, networking events, and parties, you don't want to miss out on the latest trends and strategies during sessions on SEO, PPC management, social media, keyword research, local advertising, mobile engagement, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, online video, site optimization, usability, and more. Early bird rates expire July 22.

Google • AdWords • Advertising • Clickthrough rate • Cost per Lead • Political campaign • Barack Obama • Obama

Incisive Interactive Marketing LLC.

© 2011 All rights reserved. 55 Broad St, 22nd Floor, New York, NY 10004

Incisive Media AOP Digital Publisher of the Year

SEM, PDF, and SEO-Optimization Tips

sem pdfIf you think that Google cannot index PDF files, you would be wrong — it is yet another avenue that webmasters and marketers can use to help the search-engine giant to index and rank a website properly and relevantly.

Most SEO and SEM experts know that the type of content can matter just as much as the content itself. Or, in other words: the medium, when it comes to Google, can be just as important as the message. For example, Flash web-development software is rightly known as the bane of online marketing’s existence. And for good reason.

Search engines scan and index the HTML (or PHP or other) code of a website — or, in other words, they can read only text. One reason SEO professions recommend that the alt-text of images be optimized for targeted keywords is that the field is what Google can see — Google cannot see the image itself. In a nutshell, Google sees a page like this:

text text text text

baseball scores

text text text text

The keyword in the middle is the alt-text of the image that was placed between the two blocks of text. The image is invisible; Google reads it as text just like the rest of the words and code on the page. The same is true for Flash — any part of a website created with the software is invisible to search engines — and it is unable to be optimized like images themselves. While Flash may impress visitors with, well, flashy designs — the graphics impede efforts to rank highly for one’s targeted, relevant keywords. It is better to use text-based links for items like section headings and tables of contents. (It is also one of the reasons to hire an SEO before you develop your website.)

However, the rule does not apply to PDF files because the documents — when created correctly — are not image files. If you want proof, here is top Google search-result for “SEO PDF”:

sem pdf

Directly below the meta title (page title) and in the URL as well, you will see that the link goes directly to the PDF. Moreover, the “Quick View” link below the link opens an HTML version of the file. The obvious conclusion: Google could not generate an HTML version of the PDF if the search engine were not able to index the PDF in the first place.

So, it is important to optimize PDF files for SEO just as one would for page headings, meta descriptions, image alt-tags, and a host of other items. But how exactly does one do that? Matt McGee offers a few good tips. In part:

2. PDF optimization is similar to optimization for a regular content page. Try this: good use of keywords/phrases, appropriate headlines and sub-headlines, solid content that reads well to a human eye, etc. If the PDF will include images, a caption underneath each image would be a good idea, especially if the caption includes a targeted keyword/phrase. (Of course, don’t overdo it. Remember my mom’s advice about SEO.)

Proof: Using the search above, we find this PDF ranked prominently in all three engines. On page 9 of this PDF, there’s a bold content heading (the equivalent of an H2): Awareness and Usage of the XML Button. Let’s not use the exact text, but something close: Here are the SERPs for [xml button awareness]: Yahoo, Google, and MSN. In each case, you find the PDF ranked highly in the SERPs and that exact bold content heading showing prominently in the snippet.

3. The most important thing where PDFs and SEO is concerned is how the PDF is created. Don’t use Photoshop to make your PDF, because when you do that, you’re actually making a big image file, not a true PDF — and the spiders cannot crawl or “read” the text from that image file. The PDF should be created with a text-based program, like MS Word or Adobe Pagemaker, so that the final product is text-based and can be crawled.

Kevin Harris offers more thoughts as well on the idea of optimizing PDFs for more-general keywords (or long-tail keywords) — but do not risk making the documents seem like a content farm. The key to a good SEO title is not to use PDF files as a form of article-marketing automation — it is, as I mentioned in “SEM-Video Resources,” to use them to transform your business or yourself as a thought-leader in your chosen industry.

The issue: Anyone can put text on a website. Heck, I am doing it right now. But even though anyone can also create a PDF in a matter of seconds, the format still carries more cache from a branding standpoint. Here in Israel, I once worked as the online-marketing manager for a start-up involved in speech-to-text transcription, and my goal — if the venture-capital funding had come through before we were laid off — was to post extensive, academic white-papers on phonetics, linguistics, and related topics to communicate the vast amount of knowledge held by the company. And, of course, they would have been published on the website as PDFs rather than generic text.

Apply the same example to your specific industry or sector — but just make sure that you optimize the PDFs for Google.

New White Paper Release: Listening Beyond Keywords

Today it’s impossible to have a conversation about social media for business – regardless of one’s level of experience – where the topic of monitoring and measurement does not come up or become a focus of discussion. The business world is built on numbers: everything is measured. The energy and resources that a company devotes to utilizing social media is no exception to this rule. To be used successfully, it must be crafted, monitored, measured and analyzed.

As the need for social media analytics tools has become increasingly important, the industry has responded with a variety of solutions. Early developments included social media listening platforms that used searches to locate and track keyword mentions around the Web. These platforms have become the gold standard, and providers of these solutions count the world’s most recognizable brands among their customers.

But has something been overlooked in the race for a solution to the problem of social media monitoring? Where does content figure into the process? Businesses are spending more time and money than ever creating compelling content and marketing it online.

Monitoring the performance of that content across social networks and hubs is key to understanding that often elusive concept: return on investment. Do the messages your online content contains resonate with audiences on the social web? Where, when and who is interacting with the content your company has painstakingly crafted?

In our newest white paper – Listening Beyond Keywords – we hope to spark conversations with companies and organizations already actively using social media monitoring techniques, as well as those who have more recently begun to dip their toes in the waters of the social web.

View and Download

PostRank Data Services offers a variety of solutions for brands, agencies and organizations of any size who are interested in discovering, monitoring and analyzing online content about them and their competitors. Using our advanced URL-based techniques and complementary keyword-based strategies, we can help you better understand your content’s performance across social networks, discover your audience, and facilitate relationships with your influencers. Check out data.postrank.com or contact our Data Services expert to learn more about raw data and customized reports.

Search as a Verb: a Digital Representation of the Physical World

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There are many approaches to online navigation & discovery. On the surface many of them look exceptionally different, but when you look a bit deeper many of them are playing the same game with the same game plan. The main differences are brand perception & marketing angle, but they all copy off of each other.

There is an illusion that social media is significantly different because messages from friends are mixed in with the other stuff. However, when you look at the aggregate trends, ultimately social media pushes the same stuff that the mainstream media pushes (which is the same stuff that post-Panda Google pushes).

Researchers at HP tracked Twitter:

Huberman and three fellow researchers demonstrate that "user activity and number of followers do not contribute strongly to trend creation and its propagation."

Instead, says Huberman, "we found that mainstream media play a role in most trending topics and actually act as feeders of these trends. Twitter users then seem to be acting more as filter and amplifier of traditional media in most cases."

Social signaling is powerful. It drives people to like things they otherwise wouldn't. And the tear down is far faster & far more brutal than the build up:

it's amazing how you can be the king at one point, quote unquote, and everyone loves you and the minute your time has passed and it's time for you to get torn down. When it's tear down time -- woah, it's harsh. There's no pity. They will hurt you however. Jabs, uppercut, hooks, and they want to see you on the floor knocked out. TKO. That's what they want. I saw it happen to some people, but when it happens to you, it's amazing how devastating it can be. When the negativity is directed at you, it hurts because you're there as an entertainer. You want to please your fans, have a good time and make them smile. You do the best you can on stage for them, and suddenly, you're nothing but a joke. - Fab Morvan, Milli Vanilli

Facebook is also aiming to highlight big media:

Facebook is developing features that will make the sharing of users’ favorite music, television shows and other media as much a part of its site as playing games or posting vacation photos.

Along with the official relationships (and game board tilting) that big media enjoy, larger merchants can also tilt the table by selling into a new category with a loss leader to buy marketshare. In some cases they can promote give aways that use social signals as a form of payment.

The largest companies enjoy an asymmetrical information advantage, which easily allows them to scale up and down the value chain to dominate their vertical. Amazon.com sold books, but after Kindle they now sell more ebooks than physical books, they promote new formats like Kindle singles, and they look to be pushing into publishing. That is great news for authors, but is certainly scary for some traditional publishing companies.

Most of the "social" signals will generally promote that which is already large, or (for smaller businesses) that which is weird, funny, exotic, extremely biased, comforting & (falsely) empowering, fluff, or brutally honest.

If you are small, race toward an edge & stick with it. Own an idea. ;)

Facebook has their popular like button. Google owns like.com, which unlike other shopping-search businesses that Google has bought and folded in, remains an active site, in spite of the launch of Boutiques.com. Google unveiled the +1 button to compete with Facebook. Facebook's add as friend button now states "+1 Add as Friend."

In a recent Youtube video, Matt Cutts highlighted that "Google will use +1 activity to influence its search results ... "It's definitely a signal we're paying a lot of attention to," Cutts said. "It has tons of potential. It looks very promising."

Google accidentally leaked on TV that they were going to bake +1 into Google Chrome.

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article about how some of the social media voting buttons track users, even if they do not log in to the social networks or click on the voting buttons. You can avoid using the official buttons & use third party buttons, but those companies do the same thing! You can say "enough is enough" and simply avoid all the social media nonsense, but unfortunately 25% of Google's bonuses this year are tied to social crap. If you ignore social & your competitors do not, then ultimately you lose.

As I wrote earlier, many of them are playing the same game with the same game plan.

Blekko's slashtag model is all about highlighting content from the most well known sources in a niche. When you think about some of the really awful misinformation shared in the SEO space it is clear that popularity & quality are not the same. But if you have brand, sound authoritative, and speak of innovative changes; those can easily mask any factual errors. ;)

Bing's Stefan Weitz was recently interviewed by Eric Enge. In the interview Stefan points out how he thinks Bing sees the web differently than Google, in that:

they "look at the web as a digital representation of the physical world" search will move from a web of nouns to a web of verbs, helping you to complete tasks in a more integrated manner: "there are enough services opening up their protocols and their APIs, Bing can then broker out that request to a number of different services across the web and stitch that information back together to help me go from I want to do this to I have done it." "Humans have this primal behavior around the social experience where we almost always ask our friends and acquaintances for advice."

I highly recommend the interview as a must read to understand where search is headed. The speed of change in technology is increasing at a logarithmic progression & search is going to become much more of a complete end-to-end service.

The big takeaways for me from that read were that Bing will be doing hard brand pushes at some point (a digital representation of the physical world) & a lot more tight vertical integrations (a web of verbs). In summary, that means their game plan is just like Google's.

The only areas where they are significantly different currently is that Microsoft is trying to partner to build an ecosystem, whereas Google wants to own the ecosystem (see Freebase, Google's ITA integration, Google Places pages scrape-n-displace, BeatThatQuote / Google Advisor, illegal ebook scanning, Google's botched partnership with Paypal on mobile payments).

Hosting Youtube's 3 billion daily video views, Google now controls more display ads than Yahoo! does.

In search, more data is typically better than better algorithms. As more signals get mixed into the pool, the value of any individual signal decreases.

Google has tried a number of attempts to solicit end user feedback & collect user data: the Google toolbar, Knol, SearchWiki, SideWiki, Google Chrome, etc. The Google founders have desired an annotated version of web more than search:

Sidewiki feels like another swing at something Google seems to desperately desires — a community of experts offering high quality comments. Google says that’s something that its cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted more than a system for ranking web pages. They really wanted a system to annotate pages across the web.

Yelp has dominated the review space, but in Portland (a test market) Google has collected more local reviews than the rest of the big review sites have in the history of their existence - and it only took them a couple months to do it.

A lot of information is coming online, but it is hard to sort out the signal from the noise unless you have identity. Google now has that through Gmail, Google Checkout, Android & Google wallet.

Eric Schmidt suggested that smartphone contacts could be used to create a social graph. Those cell phones use local services to send your location. With Google Wallet they are willing to give you $10 just to try it, simply because they know they will make more than that back on improved ad targeting & getting a taste of local ad budgets via their offers. They even have stickers to put on phones without NFC to enable it.

Who are the real wine experts in Portland? Maybe the people who...

actually live there (confirmed by the address associated with their credit cards, the IP address of their home computer & the location information Android phones share with Google) those who are consistently spending hundreds to thousands of Dollars a month buying wines (the more skin you have in the game the more weight Google can put on your feedback & reviews.) those who review wines (Google can offer perks & bonuses to get people over the hump, & then add social game dynamics like badges) those who review wines who have positive reviews from other wine drinkers (nothing like a little peer review to an academic mind)

What wine stores in Portland are the best? Probably the ones which the above wine reviewers shop at. Looking up driving directions can be seen as a relevancy signal.

What wine stores in Portland are less scrupulous? Those which are mostly given 5 star reviews by out-of-town (or, out-of-country) people who have never logged into Google from an IP address in the Portland area, never used an Android phone in the Portland area, and have never looked up driving directions around the Portland area.

Cell phones show human movement predictable 93% of the time.

At one point in time online was a new and (fairly) level playing field where one could win based on meritocracy. Increasingly though search is becoming "a digital representation of the physical world." To win online you will often be required to win offline.

With all the above data being included in Google's algorithms in the coming years (along with other brand signals) some people might decide that SEO is becoming too hard for the head keywords & that they are better off playing in the tail of search. But even that has 3 big problems:

if you have too many low quality pages Google can torch the whole of your site for it (and at this point it has been close to 100 days since Panda, and virtually no recoveries have been reported) the eHow model will be reformulated at some point & added into some of the larger publishers that Google's algorithms boosted the rankings for, so if you are not one of those guys then they would still have a cost advantage over you through increased rankings & distribution (along with easier influence of social signals & such) Google is looking into renting ebooks & could eventually unveil an ad supported ebook model for endless editorially-reviewed longtail content (and since Google would host those ebooks they would be able to track more relevancy signals from them, just like they have with videos on Youtube).

Certain categories with significant guilt or shame (say genital wart removal, criminal defense lawyers, etc.) won't have much end user data shared publicly (or, at least, users won't intentionally share that data with Google - though they may do so accidentally). Many (most) categories will have a sea of data available. And in those categories, at some point jumping through technical loopholes will be so tiresome & expensive that it will be cheaper and easier to create the signals Google wants to see through brand, public relations, and consumer experience than it is to try to fake them.

As search is becoming "a digital representation of the physical world" some of the best SEO tips in the years to come will have nothing to do with sitting at a computer. In due time, in search, there will be no security through obscurity.

Indeed, the future is already here.

Start With A Business Opportunity Successful Home Based

It’s one thing to decide to start a business opportunity based at home and another to actually get started. Studies have shown that millions of Americans have decided that online businesses will help you to overcome financial difficulties and have seriously considered starting their own and only one tenth of them go with it. Then a few withered down to a group still very low as many of these brave entrepreneurs are not fully prepared with a lot of knowledge and skills needed to survive in the highly competitive arena of online market.

Many people do not understand that business success online depends heavily on how to start a home business opportunity. And most claim to have a great chance to get started is to have a business plan. A business plan will help you describe each factor that will affect your business. This will include all of your finances, costs, operational problems, resources, market strategy, target audience, and much more. Your business plan will help you be prepared for any unforeseen event with your company to reduce the risks that may cause the fall of a business opportunity.

Create a good business plan can be a problem, especially with people who have not one ounce of the unique business experience. Business plans can be complicated and time-especially those that are very comprehensive and well laid out. Therefore, you may need to have a superior course of business you can get online. You do not really need one that is synonymous with a business degree, especially if you’re busy, but it may be appropriate for, but a journey that will cover most bases and be able to To give you a good guide on how to do business online would be sufficient.

Get as much money as possible online marketing. It must be ensured that the home based business opportunities will fail if not well prepared for the online marketing strategy and campaign ready. You can find the courses that will also offer tutorials on online marketing, or you can purchase e-books, videos and newsletters that can help prepare and update their online marketing efforts.

Do not be afraid to invest in the help. If you think the race overnight business “transaction with the online marketing campaign will be overwhelming for you, then finding people with the skills and knowledge for a minimal fee, you may be able to do the work for you. For example, if you do not have the talent to write a good copy of your website, then you can find someone to do it for you.

If you’ve noticed that most of the preparations for a good start into an opportunity for home based business is about to develop as an owner. You are the greatest asset of your online business. In addition to training and research must also make sure you have the right attitude.

If you are looking for an opportunity honest, ethical and legitimate to generate a full time income at home

click here http://www.differentwaystomakemoneyonline.com

Welcome to My Business Opportunity Website. Hi, my name is Elvis and I would like to welcome you to my business resource website. If you are looking to start a profitable online business which can make you £10.000-25.000 a month... This business resource centre has been put together to help up and coming Internet marketers. I have put the best product packages together to get you started immediately! Please have a look http://www.differentwaystomakemoneyonline.com

Today’s SEO and Online-Marketing News

Social-Media Use Trends

The rate of participation of senior citizens on social-networking websites has been increasing. In addition, teenagers have been blogging less often in recent years. Of course, as all marketers know, younger people tend to be early adopters while older demographics are late ones. But now that the latter is increasing their use of sites like Facebook, it is important for social-media marketers now to explore how they can reach that target audience. I wonder: Will social-media users increasingly see advertisements for prescription drugs and biotech devices like those that flood nightly-news broadcasts?

Moreover, as the Times article notes, fewer young people are blogging now since they can communicate with friends and spread their life-updates though microblogging sites like Twitter. Just as instant messages and SMS technology has shortened language through abbreviations, so are the length of the messages themselves decreasing.

But do not proclaim the “death of blogging” just yet. With fewer young people using blogs as online diaries, the average quality of the blogosphere may increase — as defined by the percentage of people who use of blogs for serious purposes like online marketing and political commentary. If this trend occurs, then it will become that much more important for marketers to use SEO and related inbound-marketing strategies.

Digital Coupons

The use of online coupons has skyrocketed since 2006. Now, coupon websites can immediately transfer the credit onto a store’s loyalty card. High-tech company Point Inside is now developing geo-tagging technology that can alert shoppers of nearby discounts while they are inside stores.

Online marketing, of course, is more than just SEO, keywords, and linkbuilding. (The terms just themselves are complicated enough so that one may need an SEM wikipedia to understand so-called off-page SEO factors. The definition of Internet marketing is merely an strategy that aims to increase traffic to a website.) Marketers need to follow the latest technology and understand how it can apply to their websites — food companies retailers, as the article states, can use their websites to transfer discounts to customers. Those who will be the most successful in the Online Age will be those who can develop innovative, successful ways to use their company sites in addition to the standard SEO practices.

Hebrew Domain-Names

Domain names in the Hebrew language are now available for registration. However, I am not sure how much of an advantage they will provide to marketers who want to target the Israeli demographic.

First, the domains use Hebrew characters for the main part with a suffix using Latin characters — for example, ???.co.il (the Hebrew word means “house” or “home”). The Internet Era prizes simplicity and efficiency, and different languages within a single word or sentences requires a keyboard shortcut — Alt+Shift on my PC — for each change. I’m not sure how many people will bother to make the, well, shift.

Moreover, the presence of multiple languages — or at least characters in multiple languages — in a domain may confuse search-engines and make SEO much more difficult. As SEM experts and online marketers know, a website targeting a specific country can use a country-specific suffix to bolster its search-engine rankings within that location. And while the co.il suffix will achieve that goal, I still wonder whether the presence of both English and Hebrew characters may hamper the effort since Google may not know whether the website is targeting English-language speakers in Israel or Hebrew-speaking ones.

Real-Time Demographic Targeting

New Israeli start-up Taykey is offering a marketing software to companies who want to discover where their target demographics are located online in real-time as they move. The article in Globes — the linked version is to an English-language version of the Israeli publication — is short on detail, but I imagine that the software allows marketers to use trending topics and related data to know what their demographic is discussing and where they are online.

I imagine something like: If many Wal-Mart customers are discussing the latest Britney Spears album on Twitter, then the company’s online marketers can start posting marketing messages on Twitter with whatever hashtag is being used. But I am just guessing.

One problem I see is that of potential spamming. When phones became common, so did telemarketing. When business used faxes, so did unsolicited faxes. And we all know what happened with e-mail. Spammers are always early-adopters. I fear that the technology, if it works how I imagine, will allow mobs of marketers to follow the online masses — always being one step behind. It is always important to market in a way that is honest, welcomed, and not spam.

Google Maps PPC and SEO Tips

google maps ppcIn a modern world fueled by technology and globalization, it is tempting to focus only on the global and ignore the local. But Google, if recent developments are any indication, has not. Don’t focus so much on making a sale thousands of miles away that you forget about the potential customer right down the street.

What are the three most-important words in business strategy?

When I was in college, I returned to my house at Boston University after a late-night shift at a journalism internship at The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, about half an hour southeast on the subway. I logged onto my computer and saw that my roommate just down the hall was on AOL Instant Messenger. (Do people still use that?) I had rushed out of the newsroom to cover a shooting at a Quincy mall and was still wired afterward as a result, so I could not sleep.

So, what did I do? Instead of walking ten feet and knock on my friend’s door, we chatted on AOL IM for a half-hour. We were using the Internet to connect with people right next door. For all of the cliches about the Internet opening the global door for business, people are still using the technology to research, shop, and connect locally. And Google, in its supposedly-infinite wisdom, knows that.

The search-engine giant recently announced that the company is experimenting with the placement of hotel prices next to local searches in Google Maps. As PPC Blog notes, the search-engine giant also began inserting Adwords prices next to search results.

So, the obvious question: How can your business appear in these search results? Peak Web Marketing accurately opines:

The two main factors that influence website rankings in Google Maps and Yahoo Local, are back-links from other local directories and user generated reviews. Simply, get your website in the following search engines, popular local search sites, local directories, and yellow pages. (emphasis original)

The art of gaining quality backlinks is greatly misunderstood. Some just spend hours submitting their sites manually to junk directories one-by-one (or still worse, using sketchy SEO-software to submit the entries en masse). Others use black-hat SEO software (and thereby guaranteeing an eventual SERP-smackdown from Google).

(Personally, I do neither — though I can only speak for myself. My general principle has always been to publish quality content here and at my Considerations journalism-blog while knowing that the links will come naturally. Well, at least if people like the content. Any large-scale, link-building push that is too fast, too soon risks looking artificial and “fishy” to Google.)

But many marketers who do actively try to increase their number of backlinks go about it the wrong way. First, it is not the number of individual links that matters; the number of linking domains is also important. If I place a link on my blogroll, that will be dozens or hundreds of links (one on each blog post) but from one domain. In other words, it was a decision by one webmaster that a site is important. So, Google considers the number of linking domains as the number of individual decisions regarding what sites should be “authoritative.” Increasing the number of links from a single domain will provide diminishing returns.

Second, links need to be relevant. If you run a baseball website, a link from a forex website will do less than you think. Google prioritizes links from sites that are in the same industry or have the same theme. If my baseball site links to your baseball site, then I — as a baseball expert — am recognizing the other site as an authority. The same theory holds true in SEO and online marketing. As Peak Web Marketing notes, local backlinks to a local business are more beneficial than a random link from directory somewhere.

Still, what I find interesting about Google Maps PPC personally is the business implications. When I was a newspaper editor and publisher in Boston, I experienced first-hand the tension between the twin goals of any newspaper (or any media-outlet): to provide a public service while maximizing profit at the same time. I cannot cite a source, but I remember a BU journalism-professor once telling my class that the circulation of the Boston Herald would increase by thousands on any day that the newspaper would put the Red Sox on Page One with a good photo. So, each day brought a choice: Do we find any excuse to put the team on the cover, or do we place a story there that is actually the most newsworthy? The possible examples are numerous.

I fear that Google is dealing with the same issue. PPC blog also makes an intriguing observation:

So the blur between paid and organic continues it’s inevitable march forward.

It’s also of note that Google has chosen affiliate sites like Expedia and Priceline as their preferred advertiser testing partners for this experiment, not the hotels themselves…

It will be interesting to see how this progresses, and what other verticals it shows up in. (emphasis original)

Google’s famous — or perhaps infamous — slogan is “Don’t Be Evil,” but the choice the company must be facing is clear: Are search results in Google Maps prioritized based first on relevance and second on potential revenue — or the inverse? The choice must always be made since the two priorities rarely match perfectly.

The issue remains to be seen. But Google, for the record, stated the following:

This new feature will not change the way that hotels are ranked in Google Maps. Google Maps ranks business listings based on their relevance to the search terms entered, along with geographic distance (where indicated) and other factors, regardless of whether there is an associated price.

For more information and resources, I also recommend these posts by Web Salad, David Mihm, and SEO Boca Raton. I also suggest prior posts on SEM-video resources, tips for when you want to download PPC-software, advice from SEM wikipedia on off-page SEO factors, and how to use Google external-keyword tools for mean SEM.

Regardless, the importance of local search will increase just as global marketing does the same. At the beginning, I asked, “What are the three most-important words in business strategy?” For those who may have forgotten, the answer: Location, location, location.

Will Social Networks invade Your TV?

By Bill Slawski, on June 5, 2011, at 11:02 am

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Maybe a better question is when will TV set top boxes give people the ability to interact with others on their TV screens when watching? A patent filing published at the end of May shows one possibility that we might see in the future for making TV more social.

A screenshot from the patent showing a TV screen with an image from a movie as well as a chat interface, a request for an incoming video conference, an online status, and other social options.

In addition to enabling television and social networking to be available via a real time interface, the set top box might allow people to preconfigure access to different social networks based upon channels on the television or certain time ranges.

For instance, you might associate ESPN with a Twitter Red Sox Fan Group at @Rdsxfans, as seen in the user interface screen below, or chat access to a specific person on Facebook between the hours of 7-10pm:

A screenshot from the patent showing a User Interface listing chat permissions for contacts and other user preferences.

The patent is:

System and Method for Social Network Chat via a set top box
Invented by David Emerson, Kelsyn Rooks, and Gary W. LaFreniere
Assigned to Embarg Holdings Company, LLC
US Patent Application 20110126258
Published May 26, 2011
Filed November 25, 2009

The ability to associate a specific channel with specific social network walls, contacts, or chat interfaces is interesting. Imagine watching the game along with a dozen or so friends, each from the comfort of your own homes.

Or imagine watching that same game while having tweets available from ball players, sports casters, and other fans of the team, and being able to access additional news, film, images, videos, and other information about the game while watching.

An interface like this might enable you to catch a movie or TV show together with friends or family members remotely, watch news or public policy programming with an organization that you’re a member of or with a very informed audience who may have interesting and significant viewpoints to add.

Imagine watching, for instance, the State of the Union address along with members of your state or national political party, or with a public policy think tank you might belong to, or with analysts from a television network.

The patent application describes how different user settings might be added to your set top box, and how different family members might be able to associate social networks with different channels.

This system might also enable you to search for and switch over to televised content being viewed by a social contact

A picture-in-picture feature might allow for live-time video chatting while watching television broadcasts as well.

Will we see either Apple TV or Google TV start integrating social networking features into what they offer sometime in the future?

Apple has a past history of attempting to converge television with computers with the Apple Interactive Television Box in the mid-90s and the Macintosh TV in the early 90s. Maybe adding a social aspect to TV is a difference that would make a difference?

Google TV’s main innovation seems to be integrating search capabilities with television and bringing Web video to the TV box. Given Google CEO Larry Page’s recent mandate to Google employees to make Google more social, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Google sprout ideas on how to make watching a TV a more social activity as well.

Google has published a number of patent filings that involve seaching for or scheduling television broadcasts or performing analytics on viewership for advertising purposes, but none of those appear to include a social aspect. They’re still worth a look, especially since some of them describe possible revenue models that Google might use on television screens:

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How To Thrive In Crowded SERPs

Google is favoring big brands.

If Google's comments and actions of late, are anything to go by, the chances of the little guy, armed only with SEO chops, being able to compete with deep-pocketed corporates are becoming less and less likely. Google algorithms tend to reward the big players - the people everyone talks about, and links to.

How can we combat this situation?

Ever notice how a page on FaceBook, or some other behemoth site, which consists entirely of a Wikipedia cut-n-paste, can often rank well on Google? At the same time, many unique, interesting pages are buried deep on SERP #20?

It's happening a lot.

It's hard to fight against a domain that can distribute high link authority down through hundreds of thousands, or millions of sub-pages. SEO chops alone are unlikely to cut it if your niche is full of such sites. The game is rigged, and it doesn't favor you.

One approach is to not fight such competitors at their own game.

Instead, take a new look at your business. How unique is your offering? Are you competing with many other sites that offer pretty much the same thing?

If you offer a similar product and service to all the rest, then it is inevitable that you'll eventually lose to the company with the deepest pockets. Google, and the world in general, tends to reward those who already have the most.

I'm sure you've heard about the Unique Selling Proposition.

For those who haven't, the Unique Selling Proposition, or USP, is the term is used to refer to an aspect of a service or good that differentiates it from similar services or goods.

For example, a USP of Amazon is that it sells the widest range of books online. Your local rare bookstore, on the other hand, has a USP of stocking and selling rare books. Both Amazon and your local bookseller sell books, but their services are clearly differentiated from one another.

The concept of a USP came about as a result of a marketing problem that exists when markets are crowded. If many companies offer similar things, then how can any one company stand out?

A USP isn't critical if there are few players in a market. This was the case in the early days of the internet, when finding a site that met your needs wasn't assured . As the internet became more populated, webmasters used techniques such as SEO in order to rise above the masses, safe in the knowledge that searchers will typically click on the top few results. They still do, of course, but if Google increasingly favors the most popular sites, then the return on SEO for the smaller player decreases.

These days, with plentiful options, the searcher either finds what they want on their first search, or they rephrase, and make their search more specific. It is in the second option where the most opportunity lies for the little guy. The visitor is rephrasing in order to be more specific. "Dell Monitor Cheap" may become "Used Dell Monitor Free Overnight Delivery". Vagaries of Update Panda aside, the guy who has a USP of dealing in used monitors, and offers fast delivery times, can still compete in Google.

The USP isn't just an add-on marketing tactic. It's a fundamental aspect of your business.

USP's are about specific benefits for the customer. Put yourself in the customers shoes and ask "how does this benefit me?". In the example I used above, the benefit is "a low cost, recycled monitor that will be delivered quickly".

The twist is that you need to make your offer unique. Look at your competition and ask yourself "what aren't they doing that they should be doing, and that the customers wants"? If you find it difficult to answer such a question after having evaluating your competitors, it may be a sign the market is too crowded, and you may be better off trying something else.

There are various ways to introduce a USP if you're selling a similar product or service to others.

One idea is to make your process unique by making your site more usable.

For example, I buy cases of discount wines online. Whilst there are many other sites offering this service, I use one particular site mainly because the ordering process is so streamlined. The benefit is saved time. The site retains my login and billing details, and it prompts me for re-orders with emails sent out at intervals based on my previous order history, and the previous selections I have made. The site pretty much "knows" what I want before I've even thought about it, and I can order with a couple of clicks. The wine always arrives promptly.

So their USP is in their process. They sell the same wine as the other sites, but the process is "unique", from what I can tell. It's also troublesome for me to switch. It invites a set-up cost (time), risk (they may not deliver), and I lose my history.

What's this got to do with SEO?

Once your visitor finds you, give them a very good reason to bookmark you, join, and keep coming back. Once that happens, you don't need to rely on new leads form Google so much.

It's not enough to just come up with unique angle.

The unique angle has to be workable. There has to be a niche of people who want the unique aspect you deliver, and are prepared to pay you enough for it to make the effort worthwhile. For example, offering fresh pizza in the middle of a desert may be unique, but it is unlikely to succeed as a business model, because of low demand.

Finding a workable USP is a matter of research, and trial and error. Look thought the search keywords related to your term and look for an angle. What are people asking for? Type that keyword term into Google and see if anyone is servicing that demand. Ask your existing customers what they want, or what you could do better. Buy third-party research to help discover where the market is heading, and how demands are changing.

Imagine the future, as opposed to mimicking the past.

1. List Your Key Benefits

What aspect do you do really well, and that other people really like? If you're at a loss, what could you change to make it so?

2. What Pains Your Customers?

They kinda want something. They might vaguely feel they need it. But if you find something they absolutely must have, so much so that it pains them not to have it, then you're onto something big. What is that thing?

3. Be Specific & Provide Proof

It's one thing to say it. It's another thing to do it. How many sites say "we're the best". Or "Experts in SEO". It's meaningless.

"We get your site thousands of qualified visitors at half the cost of your Adwords spend" is a specific, meaningful benefit.

Then you need to show how you do that. Case studies are great. You can seldom have enough case studies. Say what you were going to do it, do it, then tell them you've done it.

4. Be Concise

You only have a few seconds. You need to state your USP quickly. Short phrases. People read the first line, then the next, but only if the first line was worth reading. They'll scan through to pick something that interests them.

This is where graphic design is important. Pictures really are worth a thousand words if the person is scanning for information. Does you graphic design underscore, or detract from, your USP?

5.Your USP Flows Through Everything You Do

If your USP is, say, to provide individual attentive service, then you need to answer the phone right away. You need to respond to emails quickly. You need to make it easy for people to talk to you.

If you USP is a massive inventory, then the user has to be able to get to that inventory easily.

You can never repeat your USP too often. Do so on many levels. People aren't really paying attention, so take every opportunity to remind them what is special about you :)

Schema, Scheme or Scam?

"I am just like a robot - following only what I have been told." - Katutu, Google toolbar testimonial

As long as end users get their Angry Birds they really don't care how it comes to them. But they should!

Right now, an aggregated link to this entry places higher in a search of the title than my own site, which is a Page Rank 5 site (i.e. it has a lot of "strong" links in and a lot of content). That is a snapshot of what is pushing the Media to spewing ever louder and more meaningless sounds and furies.
...
search engine offshoots have failed the nation, profoundly, deeply and irrevocably. - Charles Hugh Smith

Google & Bing recently launched Schema, a way to "help" publishers mark up & structure their content.

If you are the first person in your vertical to leverage these new formats that can help your listing look more appealing & help you capture a bit more of the traffic (for a while). But after a half-dozen sites in your vertical use it then it no longer becomes a competitive advantage, rather just an added cost of doing business (just like Google Checkout or +1).

Then eventually it becomes much worse. Rather than being a "top resource" you get to become a "top reference" (unlinked, of course).

Your content ends up in the search result and you are an unneeded artifact from the quaint & early days of the web.

"Many answers to search queries can be computed, rather than simply returning a list of links from an index." - Eric Schmidt

In *totally* unrelated news, ...

Google Places is at it again, brazenly borrowing reviews from Yelp. But this time it’s in their iPhone app and they are not even bothering to link back to Yelp or attribute where they are getting the reviews.
...
Apparently the issue is also happening with other sources of reviews and local data such as TripAdvisor. Google says it is a mistake and it is fixing it.

If you go outside Google's guidelines & they try to penalize you for it, simply remind them that it was a technical glitch, a misinterpretation, an accident. No need to worry, as you will fix it on your end at your leisure.

It is almost universally far more profitable to do what Google does, rather than to do what they tell you to do. A fact many webmasters are waking up to 100 days after Panda torched their websites.

On a related note, JC Penny (which flagrantly violated Google's guidelines with bulk link buying) was allowed to rank again after 90 days.

"You don’t want to be vindictive or punitive, so after three months the penalty was lifted." - Matt Cutts

Those that were hit by Panda are still left in the lurch over 100 days later.

If penalizing for greater than 90 days for flagrant guideline violations would be considered "vindictive" or "punitive" then how would one describe a 100-day penalty for not breaking the guidelines?

The slow recalculation isn't an accident.

Google whacking a webmaster & then paying someone to steal their content is no different than a crooked bank that commits accounting fraud & then throws their own customer in jail for the crime the bank committed! It could become temporarily inconvenient if the press covers it, but until then who cares?

Certainly not Google.

As the original content sources disappear from the web, the aggregators eat more clicks & get fatter on the no-cost, no-effort profits (in some cases their duplication not only replaces the original source, but drives the original source into bankruptcy, making the duplicate become "unique" content). Youtube's traffic from Google has grown over 4% a month for a few months in a row. Ask grew their Google search referral traffic by roughly 25% in a couple months (while starting from a rather large base).

Keep working on adding quality and value. Then mark up your work. Google will keep working on sucking profits out of the ecosystem.

Possession is nine-tenths of the law.