Blog insurance?

James Duthie asks the question - Do you have blog insurance? This is interesting as I never thought of blog insurance as something I might need, perhaps he made me aware of an area that I am lacking in.

Perhaps this new area of blog insurance is the new wave of the internet. Thank you James and all the best to you.

Learning SEO basics

According to Jessica Bowman even if you outsource your SEO, it is a good idea to learn SEO basics so you can better administer what is going on. I agree totally, because if we do not understand what is happening we will be in a world of hurt.

One of her ideas of bringign an SEO consultant in house to teach SEO to your people is excellent because it allows you to gain competent designers and programmers to help push forward your SEO drive.

The future belong to innovative companies that learn new skill and move in new directions.

Social Media

I still remember when CompuServ charged me $6/hr to use their service over a 300 baud modem, that was back in the 80's. I was using a terminal, talk about "thin client", and made friends over cyberspace.

Social media marketing has been around even before we had computers. In fact, I believe it probably began around a fire in a dark cave. Still, the internet has made it easier to communicate with the world via, text, sound, and video.

Problem with linkbait

We all want links to our website, but one problem with linkbait is that you have no control over what anchor text will be used to link to your web page and Google will penalize you if too many links have the same exact tag. Remember that most people are not creative and they will you your title as anchor text so this may trigger an avalanche of similar links to your web page.

Buy domains for SEO help?

The right domain name can help you get a boost to you business. Perhaps you have heard about the sandbox and how it works. An aged domain with aged links can boost your stand. To avoid making mistakes flipsquare has a domain buying mistakes list.

Google says no to paying users to click

Google grew market share in April while Yahoo, AOL, Ask, and Microsoft lost. Anxious to get back in the game, MSN will now pay users. This is a desperate attempt to gain back market share. Google says it will concentrate on the relevance of search and it has "no plan to pay users."

Get the edge with SEO

SEO can give you the edge in competition with other businesses. Each firm looks at the net to generate new sales, but few uinderstand the power of search engine optimization. Each brand should try to carve out a niche for itself.

The key is to dominate a small portion of the internet. Then you can expand into new areas.

Social Media as a source of traffic

Target social media for posts to get traffic. You need more exposure for your web site and blog. Making people aware of what you have to offer will increase the number of visitors you get as well as links and bookmarks. If you get on the front page of a major social media web site you will build brand awareness for your name. This will help increase the number of active members you have.

For example, I just signed up for Technorati to get more exposure for my blog.

Community powered local search

Lets face it, most search is local. You do not want to go to a store one hundred miles away. Also, if you are a business, most customers live within the five mile radius of your store. As gasoline prices go up this becomes more true every day.

So community powered local search is great for both the customers and the stores. This is the future of search engines.

Google controls search quality.

Google works hard every day to improve its search algorithm that determines which pages get top rankings on the search engine. The dynamic duo of Larry Page and Sergey Brin came up with the page rank algorithm that assigns a score to each page on the internet.

Basically Google has a spam prevention team to control search quality. The see who is abusing the system and how it is done. Black hat hackers are contrsntly changing their methods so Google must constantly be changing their algorithm to make search relevant.

Are alt image tags important?

It is one more way that Google looks at your page. I feel that the ALT IMAGE TAGS tell the search engine what the picture is about. Also the popup tool tip helps the user identify the picture.

The title tag also helps as does the name of the picture so call your pic something like BABY_DUCK.JPG instead of xtw172v.jpg, and have an ALT IMAGE TAG of {a baby duck} to go which it.

Keyword Relevance

Finding relevant keywords is essential to SEO and marketing. As Christine Churchull says "Many CEOs of big biz outsource SEO to people in poor countries that do not have command of the English language." Executives are always saying 'cut costs', 'gotta outsource', and 'reduce headcount' when in fact, many inhouse people are the best for finding relevant keywords.

Future SEO trends

AS we look out into the far future no doubt technology will be far different than now, but what are the near term investor marketing trends telling us? Basically we see that Google is taking over. Yahoo and Microsoft have lost the search engine war. The merger of the two failure might have postponed the inevitable demise of Microsoft, but only by prolonging the agony.

Small search engines like ASK.COM will slowly fade away. They cannot compete with the giants. Take a look at all the small car companies of the 1920's. Truth is that the internet will look very different in the future with HD video and broadband being common, but the main player are already at the table.

Online Reputation

People can trash your online rep so be careful out there. By planting false stories competition can do serious damage to you. They can make baseless claims and attack you with fake photos and planted stories.

Finding Keywords

Number one in my arsenal is Keyword Discovery, and two is Word Tracker, but both of these are expensive. There are many free tools out there for keyword brainstorming.

Some of my favorite tools are Quintura, Kartoo, and Mooter.

Myspace beats spammers

Myspace won a court judgement against spammers for 230 million dollars. Spam is choking the mail, it is twisting up guestbook, filling up forums. Don't clog the blog with spam. Most people get a few emails, but I get thousands each day from spammers.

Riding the cluetrain is a pain

Get the free text to the Cluetrain and read it for yourself. It is nothing short of a revolution in new think. Perhaps you do not see the future. It is getting closer everyday.

Still, the book is a hard read as you will find out. It is not as simple as many would imagine to ride the train.

Ways to boost your rank

Linking to BBC will boost your rank on Google and help you get to the top. This is old news to most SEOs, but it may help people who fail to link to others learn that linking to authority sites helps both parties.

Actually I think that some form of PR is passed back to your site. How this works is still a bit cloudy, but linking to bad neighborhoods hurts you also.

Best SEO blogs

Best bloogers in the biz parade their best blogs. Learn what tech is like now. SEO is changing and we must change with it. Most of these blogs should be common knowledge, but a few will surprise you.

Future of search

What will future search engines be like? Should we use 3D goggles or pictures? Microsoft has a patent for Queryline Tracking. Is this the road ahead for finding information? Time will tell.

Is blogging worth it?

Shari Voigt has an excellent article called "What Makes Blogging Worth It For You?" that talks about the investment in time and power that it takes to make your blog a success. This very excellent topic is described in a logic based manner. The ROI is high for blogs.

A good read for all bloggers.

Wind Power

Green Tech is the future and wind power will make it possible. Wind generated electricity is quite inexpensive. It is going to help us create power without greenhouse gas.

Today my favorite link is - cashnrewardsnetwork.com

www.cashnrewardsnetwork.com

This is a place where you can Get paid to sign up for offers, view ads, take surveys and more. So check it out an post a comment on how it went.