your link to better business solutions

Tag Archive for ‘online’ rss

Personalize Your Link Building

by on Oct 07, 2008 (0) Comments

The ethnographic method is an approach of studying a person or group of people by participating in the culture of interest while still remaining a bit of an outsider. At its core is the focus on cultural relativism, which is seeing something through the eyes of the involved. Thus, to get to know someone or a group of people, you have to lose your own set of beliefs and views and start from scratch as you seek out the functional reasons why things happen.

This method is critical for successfully connecting to people, especially online when you have no physical cues to tell you about a person. In essence, you have to lose your own identity at first, in order to get a better idea of how to best connect to someone new. When you approach a potential link partner, you know very little about that person except for a few clues picked up in the analysis of the site that he or she controls. Your best bet is to pick up that information as quickly as possible, because you have a very limited amount of time to make or break that connection.
Personas makes use of the ethnographic method in SEO and are intensely valuable. This process helps you learn about your audience and mindset, and the resulting personas can help you to compare the output of your efforts to the target market in question. It’s commonplace to use personas in areas like usability and social media, but they also can be a tremendous help when written specifically for link development. An audience IS an audience, after all.

Writing personas

Ask.com Taps Semantics for Smarter Search

by on Oct 06, 2008 (0) Comments

Ask.com rolled out a new version of itself Monday. The revamped search engine includes a new user interface with three new technologies — DADs (Direct Answers from Databases), DAFS (Direct Answers From Search) and AnswerFarm — that offer users the ability to search the Web using commonly spoken language.

The enhancements to Ask.com will help the site retain existing users and attract new, said Caroline Dangson, an IDC analyst.

Natural Language Search

Ask.com’s new technologies differ from those used by competitors such as Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) and MSN Search because they enable Web surfers to type real questions, instead of a series of keywords, said Erik Collier, vice president of product management at Ask.com.

Generating Leads in a Web 2.0 World

by on Oct 06, 2008 (0) Comments

Marketing is going through a revolution online, thanks to the continual adoption of the Web 2.0 concepts originally defined by Tim O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty.

If you want to see some excellent graphics and analysis explaining Web 2.0, subscribe to Ross Dawson’s blog, Trends in the Living Networks.

A New Conversation

Social networking has removed many of the obstacles that got in the way of better understanding prospects and customers, and serving them.

Building a Profitable Web 2.0 Web Site

by on Oct 03, 2008 (0) Comments

Competition for building a profitable Web site is quite fierce. Yet many of us have dreams of a unique concept that will attract viewers, followed soon thereafter by advertisers. I’m not sure what percentage of aspirants succeed in this quest, but I would venture to guess that it’s a very low percentage.

With the evolution of the Web to the Web 2.0, the task becomes even a bit more challenging. For those who aren’t familiar with the term Web 2.0, Wikipedia can help out: “Web 2.0 is a living term describing changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and Web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the Web …” The complete definition also mentions video sharing sites.

A Beginner’s Guide to Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

by on Oct 01, 2008 (0) Comments

Pay Per Click or PPC is among the most popular of all web-marketing tools. It is nothing but a small two or three line text advertisement which contains keywords and phrases. These small advertisements are usually found on the right side of search pages on leading search engines. Quite often one or two links are also highlighted on search pages. These links are termed ‘sponsored links’ and can be seen in leading search engines such as Google, MSN Live and Yahoo. These sponsored links are nothing but PPC advertisements.

The three entities involved in PPC advertising are the visitor, the host that carries the advertisement and the advertiser, who has advertised a product or service on the host website, usually a leading search engine. In this form of advertising, advertisers have to bid on keywords and phrases. Whenever someone searches a product or service using certain keywords, the search result page will feature those advertisements which contain the keywords using which the visitor actually searched in the first place.

Social Network Marketing Benefits

by on Sep 26, 2008 (1) Comments

You have recently set up your business organization and deciding on a proper marketing strategy to add brand value to your organization. However, your resources are limited and this is restricting you form any sort of capital investment in this regard. Amidst a highly competitive market, how would you advertise and add proper brand value to your products? The answer in this fast-paced technology aware world is quite simple and intriguing: Social Networks.

For those of you new to this philosophy or rather a concept, a Social Network is a social structure which links individuals and organizations on common grounds of interdependency and areas of interest. These interests may include friendship, kinship, values and visions, or even financial exchange and trade; just to mention a few. There are a plethora of websites that offer you services that allow you to Social Network. However, the question is, How do you utilize this offering?

Solid SEO Starts With A Solid Business Model

by on Sep 25, 2008 (0) Comments

Bob Massa, one of the original SEOs (though I don’t think he likes to be referred to with that label), always talks about SEO from a conversion standpoint, offering quotes like “traffic without conversions is the epitome of futility.”

The SEO space is a bit crowded right now. So many people are fighting for attention that it seems like people are fighting without purpose. There may be more people writing SEO blogs than there are reading them. That abundance of new publishers makes it easy for established authors to build links by re-spinning old phrases with new definitions, but if those links don’t create profit what is the point?

There’s no such thing as a free lunch

Looking back a few years, I can see that I was a bit economically challenged. I tried helping many people for free… but then some of those people I helped for free could never get enough, plus when something is free many people simply do not respect it. I remember my wife reading a book about self-made Internet and info-based product millionaires, and coming across a guy who in the past valued my time at nothing, always reminding me of how poor he was (though never reminding me that he is economical with the truth!)