Make Money Online

Thanks to Guest Blogger – Larry Gotterer

In the search engine world, your rank means everything. Show up on the first search page and you’re on your way. Land a spot in the top seven and you’re clicking with the big dogs. Reach the top three and your competitors start fuming with envy. Grab the top position and you’re a Google God!

The question now is: What have you sacrificed to get to — or closer to — that coveted number one spot? Search engine optimization is a science. To succeed, it means writing to get noticed by search engines. There are rules to follow (Ten Golden Rules come to mind right off the bat). But unfortunately, search engines only list your pages. They don’t do the purchasing — people do. So, if you don’t also write for your target audience, you’ll be paying the price for a lot more than clicks in the long run.

It’s easy to see if your search engine optimization efforts are working. Just search yourself. But is your copy working? Have your relevant keywords sucked the life out of your content’s creativity? Have your key messages lost their voice in a web of multiple keyword doubletalk? The truth may be lurking in the answers to these questions:

1) Is your copy overly written for search engines … or is it also written to sell what you
offer in an engaging, enticing, entertaining and/or educational way?

2) After reading your copy out loud, do your keywords make it sound like a robotic, dry encyclopedia excerpt … or do your business identity, brand and personality still shine through?

3) Your click rates and visitor counts have been going up … but have your sales?

Search engine optimization should be a critical component of any Interactive marketing plan. Just remember that businesses buy keywords, but customers, clients and consumers buy the pitch behind the keywords. Bottom line: when you optimize your search engine efforts, make sure to optimize the impact of your copy.

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Guest Blog – Your SEO Copy May Rank … But How Does It Rate?

Here’s a tip for the day:

If you made a blog some time ago, you might want to think about updating the look and feel, as well as considering additional content and features. Blog platforms have become more robust, and the number of templates and features available have expanded.

We recently undertook a “blog beautification” project for one of our clients, as they became more active with their blogging.

With a few waves of the “beautification wand”, the blog went from this:

To (a much improved) this:

We also added content feeds with top headlines relevant to the blog topic, as well as a blog roll and enhanced links.

The brand is enhanced, the client is overjoyed, and it took very little time to do. Well worth the effort.

Go here to see the original:
Your Blog: Before & After

What is working? What is not working? Well, guessing is not exactly what you should be doing. Let your website visitors tell you what they think and want.

Avinash Kaushik and iPerceptions created 4Q, a free survey that enables you to ask the most important questions to your visitors:

-How satisfied are my visitors?
-What are my visitors at my website to do?
-Are they completing what they set out to do?
-If not, why not?
-If yes, what did they like best about the online experience?

Not only this tool is free (how you like that for a bailout?), but you will get real-time and complete access to the results.

Now you do not have any more excuses for not digging into what should you have a long time ago. Go to 4Q and begin using your visitors feedback to convert them into customers by giving them what they want and not what you think they want.

See more here:
Free Survey For Your Website cortesy of Avinash Kaushik

Constant Contact and Ten Golden Rules will present, “Ten Free or Low Cost Tools to Market Yourself and Your Business in a Recession.” The event is set to take place at the Westin Hotel in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida on January 29th at 7:30 am. This presentation will feature leading edge internet marketing promotions and advertising strategies for marketing in a bad economy and to maximize traffic to your website.

For $20 guests will learn topics such as:

• How to maximize web site traffic by using Free Search Engine Optimization techniques
• Ways to measure the cost to acquire a lead and a sale
• Idea’s for building your company’s position on high traffic Social Media sites

For information on registration please visit our Internet Marketing Strategies Presentation page

More:
Constant Contact Teams Up With Ten Golden Rules For Internet Marketing Strategies Presentation

Recently, Google launched a new look for the webmaster forum. It is now definitely easier to find answers, share resources and participate in discussions. Originally, Google Webmaster Help was in Google Groups, but now is closed and still available for reading old discussions.

Discussions in the help forum include crawling, indexing and ranking, webmaster tools, sitemaps and chit-chat. I think this is a great resource for internet marketers who want to improve their website visibility in Google and if they ever run into specific problems.

Check out the Google Webmaster Help Forum and bookmark it! You’ll never know when it will come in handy.

Here is a video from the Google Webmaster Website explaining the latest changes.

Read more here:
Google Launches New Look for the Webmaster Help Forum

A November study by IBM showed that 36% of people are replacing TV viewing time with online video streaming. Although these results can frighten network executives, indicating that ratings will be on the decrease as viral videos make their way into more living rooms, you don’t need to worry yet Ted Turner.

A Nielsen report was just released contradicting IBM’s study. According to Nielsen data, television viewing actually increased from last year across the U.S. It appears that rather than replacing television time with online video time, people are watching more online video in addition to more television. If anyone needs to worry, it’s not the networks, but rather the local gyms and recreational facilities as people stay home to watch Seinfeld reruns on TV and Tina Fey impersonating Sarah Palin on Youtube.

Read the original post:
Is Youtube Killing Your Television?

DeepDyve, formerly Infovell has released a beta version of their deep Web search tool designed to dig below the surface of the Internet, reaching resources not indexed in Google and the other major search engines. With over 500 million pages indexed to date, DeepDyve is targeting in-depth, professional content that resides deep within the Web.

By using a search algorithm that matches patterns and symbols, DeepDyve returns complex data that is not likely to be found in traditional keyword searches. The goal is to filter out opinion sites and irrelevant content for researchers looking for highly relevant, non-opinionated information on complex topics.

Although this search tool can be used for free upon registration, a more complete version is available for $45 per month. While the major players in search offer free access without registration, we will see just how much people are interested in reaching these deeply buried web pages.

The rest is here:
Dyve Deep into the Web

Change has come to the federal government, and Barack Obama hasn’t even been inaugurated as the nation’s 44th president. Change.gov — was launched within 24 hours of Obama’s presidential election victory over John McCain.

The interactive Web site of Obama’s transition team is the first sign that the candidate who revolutionized American politics with his heavy use of cutting-edge communications technology and social networking tools is preparing to transform the way the U.S. president interacts with the citizenry.

“Obama is going to be the first global leader of the digital age,” said Phil Noble, founder of PoliticsOnline.com, an Internet information and consulting company. “We are in totally uncharted territory.”

At the turn of the 20th century, William McKinley became the first mass-media president during the newspaper barons’ golden age. Three decades later, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” ushered in the era of intimate radio communication. John F. Kennedy’s performances in televised news conferences brought Camelot to the masses. Obama’s presidency, experts say, will reflect a leap in communications technology that will allow the commander-in-chief to speak directly and unfiltered to the American people. It could also allow the American people to interact in unprecedented ways with the nation’s chief executive and the federal bureaucracy.

Source: Chron 

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Obama is the first global leader of the digital age?