Get yourself a Wordpress Hoodie

Everyone likes to show off and of course there is no harm in it. As a new year gift, Matt gives us this new navy blue Wordpress Hoodies which is just amazing.

Well, if you are too tired of blogging around on Wordpress, just put on your Wordpress Hoodie and start wandering around your town streets. At least someone will figure out that you are a proud user of the Wordpress Blogging System.

The hoodie is just excellent for exclusive branding and some pomp and show.

Basically it is a classic unisex drawstring sport hoody made by American Apparel, screen printed with the WordPress logo.

You can buy this Wordpress Hoodie from the official Wordpress Merchandise Shop.

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MoDazzle : Next generation mobile networking

Technology has become a vital part of our life. It is creeping into our daily activities, and it has become crucial. Can we imagine living without mobile? Gosh…it will be our first expression. And now the new craze is social networking sites, people are just addicted to it. Believe it or not, people check their favorite social networking sites every second, to find who has scraped them and who is online. Imagine accessing these sites through your mobile, how easy it will be.

MoDazzle does the same. www.modazzle.com gives you the opportunity to access social networking sites through mobile via SMS and email without Internet, GPRS or EDGE on your phone. You can access LinkedIn, SalesForce and Facebook. The list doesn’t stop here you can also find out nearest star bucks, weather updates, Stock quotes and directions and many more.

To access all you have to do is, register yourself at www.modazzle.com and specify what you want to access through mobile; LinkedIn, SalesForce or Facebook. You can register for how many ever services you want.

With Linkedin on your mobile,

MoDazzle allows you to search for company details, people search also you can invite your contacts, search for person details and check out for common contacts between you & your friend. Like wise with Facebook you can send messages to you friend, you can read messages from your inbox, post a note on to your profile, poke and lots more.

As we know, SalesForce is the leader in customer relationship management. SalesForce enterprise users with the help of

MoDazzle can attach a document, find account information, can log sales call and get the tear sheet find out the new task, all through their mobile via SMS and email.

MoDazzle-easy to access and free to register. Once you have registered, accessing Facebook, LinkedIn and SalesForce is at your finger tips. Just register and make your life easy.

Splog

This is also called as the spam blogging or a fake blog, just to promote some websites, to get some traffic for their own purpose. Generally these don't have a genuine or original content, publishing a plagiarized content from an genuine source. The splogs have huge number of links, just to pull the crawlers to their site. These also associate their posts with some of the popular keywords, so that their blog turns up in the general search result, which in turn will be associated with other moneymaking ways and they earn quick bucks.

Generally these sites are not for the humans to read it. neither they want them to read. But they just want the money from it, like the ads that they feature along with it, and many spam links that are added along with the other contents. Some one who might be a novice to the internet might just click on them out of curiosity or unknowingly. Once people see that the page has more crap than anything useful or not in order, then they can call abuse it, or not use it.

After this, the Google became aware of the multitude of problems that have arisen, and to fix it, they added a feature of certain tests online, like writing whats written in code, or to add the numbers, just to confirm that the blogger is a human and not a bot. The google noticed that, many people used bots to create a blog rush, inturn increasing the traffic, and clogging the net.

Generally it could the case that a new comer to the blog world could just copy contents from other websites, and also include links, act just like what bots do, and inturn can get banned. These people have to know more on how the blogs function, than do these un ethical things and get rankings, or traffic.

BLOG's Slowing down, Dont worry !

There would be a time that every one would have felt that they have tons of articles to write, and no time for anything else. Will the enthusiasm flow for a seasoned blogger, or after blogging for a considerable long time? I guess that the answer may vary over this, but definitely the answer would be " less interested " or " have little time for it " or "No posts".
This is a general complaint from a single blogger, if he is the sole writer of the blog, and this is rarely seen in a blog where many people write to it.

Why is there this slump to the blogs? Is it self-made or has time bound your hands? I guess every one will have their own reason to quote for the slump in their blog, but if this is made as a regular habit, just like looking up the mail, or messaging over the net this will look very simple and never will the term slump come up.

The blogs just not help us updating our Knowledge Base, but also help others who are desperately looking out for knowledge.

1. Plan the Contents: It is better to start a blog that has juice to a greater extent, and the one that can spell its effect long term. If there are any posts that are incomplete then complete them.

2. Take a break: It is alright to take a break if you feel that you are out of contents or have felt bored about blogging. A small break can revitalize your thoughts and you can come up with new contents. But be very careful in mentioning your readers that you will not be posting for 'Y' number of days. Else they can unsubscribe from your article or think that you have stopped writing. Its important to retain old visitors and more important is to woo new visitors to your site.

3. Broaden the blog base: Initially one might have restricted to a single topic, which is practically difficult to target regularly. SO its better to broaden the base and write more topics in relation to the main topic we have selected. Example, if we are writing on electronic goods, its wise to broaden the base and extending to also write about ROBOTS that are just not electronic products, but is a Mechatronic product. This widens the scope of more posts, and also many people can get attracted to your blog. But be careful of not broadening the topics to a very general platform, which can make the reader feel that the blog has all crap under the sun which may not be very specific.

4. Don't clutter: If there are many sub topics that you feel cant be addressed effectively, then plan a topic for each day of the week, which can make you address many topics over the week, and also that there are a lot more chances that you can find topics to be written over a week's time. This works only if the blog is not in the line of any updating blogs like the News.

5. Friendly blogging: Ask some of the trusted ones among your friends and/ or colleagues to help posting for you as guests. Or you can talk about some of the problems that your visitors might have in the field of interest (what your blogs talk about), and solve them.

6. Revisit the Blogs: If any changes are to be made to the blogs already written, better do it at a regular interval, or that if you are able to add some more stuff to it, then go ahead and do the required changes.

Microblog, microsite, BLOG I360

Micro blogging:

Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually less than 200 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web.
The most popular service is called Twitter.

BLOG i 360:

BLOG i360 is a marketing platform that was built originally on WordPress but has grown way beyond it. On top of that, they have a more robust content management system than WordPress's basic "Pages" feature. The key word here is "automation". This does many things automatically for us, which we may have to do manually in other blogs. At $39 a month while they're still in beta (they say they're eventually going to $79 a month, but founders lock in the $39 price), it's a lot pricier than basic hosting, but how much is worth is your time? Only downside is that you have limited flexibility with the design, so if you have a very specific look you're going for, this may not suit you (yet).

Microsite:

A microsite, also known as a minisite or weblet, is an internet web design term referring to an individual web page or cluster of pages which are meant to function as an auxiliary supplement to a primary webpage. They are typically used to add a specialized group of information either editorial or commercial. The main distinction of a microsite versus its parent site is its purpose and specific cohesiveness as compared to the microsite's broader overall parent website.

In and Out of Blogging

How blogs falter:

1. Blogs with no focus.
2. That lacks direction and voice.
3. That aren't updating latest regularly.
4. If they are a dumping ground for notes that wont make the paper.

What direction to move actually:

1. Blogs should focus on one main topic and write more on them, and if necessary hover around them for more topics and information.

2. These days there are many bloggers, and eventually you have to write innovative or new topics that puts to ahead of them and sustain the competition.

3. There has to be a focus on the topics to set a firm base.

4. There should not be just a copy-paste work from other sites and articles, rather there should be a fresh look to the topics and also that there can be new things added to the present topic.

5. We should update the blog once in a day; may not be new topics atleast, we must modify and make an already written topic much interesting.

6.Reply to the comments in a well mannered tone, than harsh voice. Have the patience and mind to thank if the commenter if they have corrected your mistakes, or added value to your article.

7. Keep track of other similar blogs that of yours, may not be as a competitor, but to learn what you want and update more on them and add the extra tinge to your post.

8. Keep writing for other blogs that are in the same line as that of yours. Never hesitate to ask things in a forum and also to reply what others ask, or to accept your mistakes (if any).

9. Have an idea of the future posts that you are planning to write.

10. The most important thing is the name of the blog. Many people may not think this as an important aspect, and think that they can do the best in reaching the people. This is the biggest folly that many commit. So, first decide on the topics on which we will keep writing, and then search the web for the names that we can name our blog to be, which give a gist of what our blog is all about, than making people guess what it could be. Many people make the mistake of attaching their name or pen-name to the blog name, which is professionally incorrect. This might be fine with a personal blog, not for a professional and a serious blog that is intended to share good and genuine knowledge.

Among all knowledge banks, blogs are the hot favorite for people in general. So, the blogs must have a clear vision on the topics that we write and we plan in future. One of the most important thing that many don't think is that longevity of the topics and their availability and necessity; because, if the topic that we start writing should have an unending development in that field and we get loads of topics to write.

The topics should not repeat in different dates or under different headings; which can irritate the reader. If the article is too big, then its better to split the topic to 2 or 3 (or more) parts, so that people don't keep scrolling and get uninterested in the post.
We can invite many people to write posts for us, thus increasing the scope of fresh topics and ideas.
Finally what we have to do is the appearance of the blog. It should not reflect our personal taste, instead reflect our professional touch.

Dedication towards the blog can make the blog rise to popularity quickly, even though it takes a little longer to get established; but the wait is worth a fortune.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)

RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document is called as a feed, contains the gist of the content or the whole content itself. This helps people in keeping their favorite websites on track automatically than manually.

RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site's email newsletter. The number of sites offering RSS feeds is growing rapidly and includes big names like Yahoo News. Since RSS data is small and fast-loading, it can easily be used with services like cell phones or PDA's.

RSS is useful for web sites that are updated frequently, like:

* News sites - Lists news with title, date and descriptions
* Companies - Lists news and new products
* Calendars - Lists upcoming events and important days
* Site changes - Lists changed pages or new pages

RSS content can be read using a software called RSS reader, or an aggregator: Amphetadesk (Windows, Linux, Mac), FeedReader (Windows), and NewsGator (Windows - integrates with Outlook). The user clicks on the RSS icon that initiates the subscription process or the user subscribes to a feed's link into the reader. the reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new content, getting any new updates if found.
Prior to RSS 2.0, RSS 0.9, .91, .92, .93 RSS 0.94 and RSS 1.0 were used.

* Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
* RDF Site Summary (RSS 1.0 and RSS 0.90)
* Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)

This icon was 1st used by Opera and from then on, this orange square with radio waves became the industry standard for RSS and Atom feed.

RSS READER:

1. 1st download the rssreader, then have the .net framework installed . Then Look for this XML or RSS RSS feed pictograms in news pages of websites, for example Yahoo! news or BBC news.

2. Place the mouse arrow on one of the above pictograms (in the website
you found) and click the right mouse button, then choose "Copy
Shortcut".

3. Start RssReader and go to add(+) channel/feed and then paste
(click right mouse button) the url and press ok. Add as many feeds to
this free RSS reader as you want and use it as free news aggregator.

Blogging When on a holiday

Its obvious that people want to go a holiday though not often. So what to do when we go on a holiday, or take the example of a student who would have exams every 3-4 months. If we go don't blog for 10 days, then the ranking of the blog can come down, or that many readers who come to our site don't turn up thinking we have stopped blogging or lack of contents... .
You may say that you have gone on a holiday, even then some people may not come. There could be many who would comment on some post and need urgent reply to it, and not getting them can divert them from our site.
So what are the methods that have to be followed to prevent the gap that becomes unavoidable or necessary?

1. Ask your friends or the regular dudes to do guest blogging: - By doing a guest blogging we can keep up the pace of the blog. At least some will not go away. The regular visitors and commentators can be requested to do the job for you in your absence.

2. Special topic: - Announce an awareness to the readers and ask them to participate. Post pictures, videos, articles... about an issue that you are taking up, so that many people can contribute to it as well as giving it some time to create awareness and at the same time you too get the time (as a break or holiday), and both the purpose is served. This not only creates awareness among the readers, but also allow them to comment on a issue and also increase the posts to you blog(be it in your presence or in your absence).

3. A Competition: - Select a topic and ask the readers to participate in it and keep writing their best, and the better one will be awarded (or anything that entices writers in your absence). IF you are an experienced writer / blogger announce the award to be a coveted article that have a good price tag in the market or that you sell through the Internet (or to be subscribed).

But if you are a new blogger, try not doing these unless you have a huge set of writing hands. Another important thing is that when you come back, do comment positively to all the writers, as this keep up their enthusiasm to come back and write more. By encouraging more writers, posts increase and our rank also increases, and we get to know more people in the same industry as we are and also a huge knowledge bank grows.

If we know that we are to leave blogging for a few days, then its better to have few posts ready before hand and post them regularly or ask our friends to do it at regular interval, provided the blog that we write are not news type, where there is an updated news all the time.
We can also have few posts and schedule to post it automatically on certain days (dates), a kind of future timestamps.
Another way that can be done by some tech savvy people is to check them on mobile online and if possible reply or post some.

How To Get more Subscribers

Every blogger will have a dream of getting more visitors + subscribers. They either start writing better contents and useful contents, or start a way of enticing more subscribers to their site. How is this done generally?

Start writing posts and try knowing the links to many people, be it the known circle of friends or the acquaintance's, by publishing in other famous sites the link of the blog. Other method is to link to others and ask them to link theirs to yours. Get backlinks. Comment on some of the other blog in the line of yours, and reply to the comments that you have got.

Few methods that people rarely follow are: -

1. Giving an E-Book: Giving a free e-book for every subscriber to your blog entices many people easily. This E-Book can contain some useful information that makes the visitor to go for it.

2. Create a video: Creating a video and linking to the site gives a boost to the site. Uploading them at Youtube, Google Video... and giving it a link to the blog does the work. This is an easy, free and a better method to get readers.

3. Forums: Forums are a real great tool to the person who is a serious blogger. It can definitely fetch more people to the blog. Important is to retain old visitors + pay full attention to the new visitors. If the new visitor asks few questions politely answer them as quickly as possible, so that the new visitor keeps visiting your site for more answer, and this can really trigger a kind of viral. But AVOID SPAMMING in forums.

4. Guest Posts: Guest blogging is one method to increase more subscribers to your blog, as this can pull many people after you have written useful and good contents in some of the famous blogs. There are chances that there could be some people who would divert some of their readers to your site if they find yours interesting Thats the advantage, cos' you are getting one subscriber who can get more to yours.

5. Direct Contacts: One of the ways to increase the subscribers is to meet the subscribers directly. Talk to them and discuss about it. Give them what they want. briefly discuss on what your site is all about, then giving link of your site ask them to link to it to know more.

Backlinks

Back links are incoming links to a website or web page. The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page. A backlink id any link received by a web node (web page, directory, website, any domains...) from another web node. Search engines often use these backlink as one of the factors for ranking. A website can employ some techniques called SEO to increase the number of backlinks pointing to their website. Some of the search engines offer a mechanism to determine the number of backlinks they are recorded to a particular webpage. Google has recently added a new webmaster tool which allows webmasters to view more backlinks to their websites. Some website software keeps track of the backlinks, Eg: - Wiki.
Generally page rank 4 and above are only listed in the backlink list. Page rank 5 and above that is obtained as backlink is considered as valuable. Its just not only important to have many backlinks, but more useful are good and quality backlinks than ordinary backlinks.

All that matters are the following factors:-

1. Quality backlinks
2. Content in those pages
3. Backlink page title Keyword density
4. Backlink Quantity etc.

Factors to consider in accepting Backlinks: -

1. Linking page has right context
2. Page title matches the link
3. The content is also up to the mark
4. Page rank of a page not more than 4
5. Its better to have backlinks from .gov, .org, or any .country sites

Live Blogging

Live blogging is basically taking notes, photos, or recordings at lectures, conferences, and presentations of what was said and posting it to your blog. The advantage is that you get to write down the required things immediately and can edit it if there are any mistakes in the writing. If there is a WiFi connection then we can save the file directly, else its better to either save it in the laptop or use any blog-editing softwares that allows us to save work offline. Another advantage is that we will know before hand as to which live blog we are attending and the brief topics on them. so we can prepare a small draft on them, so that we can fit the new info where ever required. Its always better to add a disclaimer stating the that this is a live blogging content and any minor errors be excused. Its also better to add the conference technorati tag at the bottom + any trackback URL's.

Its also a good practice to take several photos that capture the essence of what it was like to be in the room. Photograph the speaker, selected slides or fipchart notes, and people in the room. It would be beneficial to quote any compelling question that will be raised (if any) in the conference.

We can also add few line or comments that would have gone in the minds of the readers around us, those points that the audience dint agree with, or accepted even without a single nod. There are great chances that we might have missed few points or others in the room might have missed a point and putting it in the blog gets an appreciation. This could also get us a huge amount of traffic as well. If we have practiced to type quickly, then we can finish all basic stuff needed for blogging then and there it self, and later we can edit it if it needs any polishing touches. A major advantage is that, we can get fresh content.

One important thing that has to be kept in mind is that we should be totally focused on the contents or report that is being talked about and parallelly jotting down the important points, scenes, click photographs (if necessary), and also not get distracted by other's behavior. Also there are chances that we may get influenced by the talk and get inclined to it. We have to remind ourselves that we are there to make some useful notes and knowledge out of it. This kind of opportunity is a great time to meet like minded people, who does the same blogging business as we do.

Get new contents

There are times when every blogger might have felt the exhaustion of contents to write in the blogs. There are chances that many topics will be written by many bloggers and there will be a repetition of the contents. If we are writing as a hobby, we rarely face this problem as there may not be a great frequency of posts. But if we are writing for a company or more seriously to increase self knowledge and do a bit to the society or to earn some bucks, we will be tied by time and there has to be some posts very often. There are some of the methods that can be used to extract idea or content for writing some posts. They are: -

1. Forums: Forums are like a rich resource of knowledge as they have a variety of topics discussed day in and day out. We have to just find those list of forums and subscribe them. There would be a huge number of forums in every aspect.

2. Comments: This is one of the most important thing that every serious blogger should think of, as this not only widens the knowledge horizon but also allows us to go much deeper into the topic and get a great detail about the topic. Its not mandatory to comment on a topic we fairly know, but we must try getting the required content form those comments. Also if we start commenting on a huge number of bloggers list, then we will have little time for writing some useful things. Also commenting back will do a lot more than what we expect in return.

3. Social websites: This is also one of the good places to find the contents. We should have the patience to search the right content, as the social websites may not have the exact division like forums. we have to dig out all those posts that sounds interesting and new.

4. Archives: We have to get back to our posts and try improving our posts by editing them at regular intervals. Its not that we have to edit all the good ones and add more to them, but those posts that seems to be good, but which has not caught the eyes of the visitor has to be edited.

5. Tags: We have to write articles to the tags. If the single word is not helping, then use a keyword tool and enter the tag. we will get many modified versions of the keywords that might that might help us.

SEO- Latest information

ADWORDS FORMULA UPDATED:

Google Adwords now considers the maximum CPC set for a keyword to rank your add instead of Actual CPC that was considered earlier.


LSI TOOL:

LSI is a new strategy involving statistically probable and correlation that helps reducing the semantic distance between words. It is a complex strategy but can be easily implemented to perceive the relation between certain words in a paragraph
or in a complete document. This strategy is being used while indexing a page in the database of search engine.


Local Search engine optimization:

This is a connecting with a small market based in and around where your business is based, basically connecting local customers. For example if we have a furniture store and we want to make this known publicly or if want to search a furniture store in a particular area, then this is one of the ways to improve the sales in your locality or to help people track their required business establishment in a particular area. This helps with a selected range of audience.

Google OpenSocial to launch Thursday

Google is working on new project “OpenSocial”. Google wants to create an easy way for developers to create an application that works on all social networks. Google’s goal is to fight Facebook by being even more open than the Facebook Platform. If Facebook is 98% open, Google wants to be 100%.

OpenSocial is a set of common APIs (Application programming interface) that application developers can use to create applications that work on any social networks (called “hosts”) that choose to participate. The three common APIs with input from partners that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks:

• Profile Information (user data)
• Friends Information (social graph)
• Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

Partners are in two categories: hosts and developers.

Hosts are the participating social networks, and include Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle.

Developers include Flixster, iLike, RockYou and Slide.

The URL will go live on Thursday, 1st November, so keep watching!!!!

Source: Techcrunch

Create Viral Traffic By Offering An E-Comment or E-Card Service

Social networks have become an extremely popular way for people to stay in touch with each other. If you have not been to MySpace or Facebook, it is worth a look around. While a lot of the publicity these sites have gotten is because of the teens and college students that use them, businesses have discovered they are a useful way to build their networks as well.

Some of the sites are very bare-bones, but some of them are quite elaborate. One thing most of them have in common is a place for visitors to leave comments. Many times these comments are text messages back and forth between friends, but some of the messages are small digital pictures and graphics with a prewritten message.

There are web sites that provide these e-comments free to their viewers. If you see one you like and want to share with a friend, you can copy and paste a small line of code into your friends comment box, and the e-comment will appear.

When you look at these e-comments you will notice that on every one there is a company name or web address at the bottom. Most of these graphics are clickable links that will take the viewer back to the web site of the person that created it. If your e-comment is attractive or quirky enough, social network users will start sharing it with their friends. When their friends (or their friend’s visitors) see the graphic, they will click on it to see what other e-comments you have to offer.

While many businesses are using these services to build their networks, the majority of users are teens, young adults, and women. If your business is aimed toward adult men, this method may have limited success, but if you are marketing to the younger generation, you can bring a flood of traffic to your site with this method.

A similar service you can offer is free e-cards. People are always searching for cards to send to friends, family members, acquaintances, and co-workers. They are easy to use, and have maintained their popularity over the years. These cards come in several different varieties; with or without music and static or animated. Some are very simple animations; others are very elaborate Flash animations.

Once the person finds the card they like, they can fill in the message box, add the email of the person they are sending it to, and press the send button. An email is sent telling the recipient that their friend has sent them a card, and it gives them a link to click that will allow them to view the card.

The person receiving the card gets a message from a friend to enjoy and a small line telling them who sponsored the card. Because you are hosting the card service, the viewer is already at your site. You just have to give them a good reason to click the links that will take them where you want them to go.

In early 2006 job listing service CareerBuilder.com launched a program called Monk-e-mail. With the click of a mouse you could choose which chimpanzee you wanted to use with your card, then personalize that chimp with different clothing, glasses, hats, and backgrounds. Users also had the option of writing or recording their own message, and even had a text to speech functions that allowed the chimp to deliver your message. As an extra bonus, when you move your mouse around the screen, the chimp follows your movement.

Within 3 months of launching, over 14 million monk-e-mails had been sent. The kicker is that CareerBuilder spent no money in marketing this service. In the first week CareerBuilder sent out 1,500 monk-e-mails to employees and agencies, and word of mouth did the rest. Monk-e-mail was so original and quirky that the buzz quickly spread across the internet, and even maid it to the main stream media outlets.

You do not need to create a program as elaborate as monk-e-cards, but it does need to be creative and unique. If you do digital photography or graphic art, this could be a very good way to use your talent to build traffic to your site, or you could hire a freelance designer to create your cards for you. Do a search for e-cards and you will get a good idea of the types of designs people are using. As always, quality and uniqueness are an advantage.

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Whats up with Blog Rush???

I was just thinking if BlogRush was going to be worth it. Well, for 10,000 bloggers it seems it wasn’t.

Without much notice, 10,000 blogs were removed from the network, their credits, and advertising of the network, meaning nothing for them. They were told how to improve, and to re-submit, but will people who were dumped unceremoniously really care to come back? Why not give them a warning and give them 2 weeks to make the requested fixes? Why were they just dumped, leaving a bad taste in their mouthes?

BlogRush may not be able to recover from the bad PR that 10,000 angry bloggers can spread rather rapidly.

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some of the common mistakes that people make:

1. Lack of Targeted Keywords and Phrases: Its only the keywords that leads a reader to you. The crisp and search-able keywords used, then the reader will definitely come to your site.
2. Poorly Written Content: If the keywords and the content doesn't match there's no much to do further. Neither the reader or the spider wont scan your content for the mismatch. More related content w.r.t the keywords fetches the spiders and the readers more frequently.
3. Black Hat SEO techniques: Black Hat web site optimization includes techniques that are unethical and frowned upon by search engine spiders. These techniques include keyword stuffing, doorway pages, invisible text, and more. They might rise the page ranking quickly, not always thats the truth. Once the spider comes to know about this, then it rules these sites as spams.
4. Using Meta Tags improperly or not at all: Meta tags include title tags, keyword tags, and description tags. Make sure to include all these tags in every page of your site, and target them for each individual page.
5. A badly designed site: Ineffective site design includes lack of clear navigation, poorly designed frames, and large,load-intensive graphics.

Search Engine Optimization is not too difficult to understand and implement. If we are having a good knowledge about the basics then there is no reason to look back. It is a myth of people if they feel that the search engine optimizing is difficult or not for them. Many people can do the optimization to certain extent, but need more perfectionist touch to earn that extra praise. We cant learn all the things on this earth and is also not so necessary to do so for our work. so stick to the basics and we can create wonders and make a beeline of visitors into our site. Its not that just after the content is submitted to the web launches it immediately and people will read it. the content is just 1 among millions of contents, and its this SEO thats makes you stand out of the line and project you. Also that don't make the mistake of doing all the optimization at the end, as and when possible give the required touches and finally give it a go and see the difference.
If you haven't started doing the optimization, then start immediately, and from the most important and most read page of yours, to attract more visitors. after this, slowly move on to all the pages and finish optimizing all the pages of your site, plus keep the strategy going on from that stage and optimize all the new pages as and when they are done.

This is one of the ways to update your website. The target should just not to be on the top of the search engine, but to stay there and to attract more visitors to it. for this, regular optimization is necessary. Its not that once the optimization is done, it doesn't need any more, we need to keep an eye on each and every article, so that every article fetches the same amount of traffic. Its not that only after doing optimization the site gets more rank, but the truth is, that may not be the exact cause, however that optimization adds more value to the existing one.

WEB CONTENT, CONTENT WRITING

This requires a different approach to write, than that is done for printing and
publications. Writing contents on the web is altogether a different skill and technique, that has to be tuned into writing articles, or it could be to sell product or service or something personal on your blog.

The 1 thing makes you stand out of the crowd is, which makes people come back to your site again and again, or make them read your article and also recommend others to go through the article. The content has to be crisp, compelling, relevant, interesting, unique content, updating content and timely. One more important information is that, any visitor has to find all that he is searching to be relevant and also easily findable with minimum clicks (or moving to multiple pages). If the content is all plain, then there is no difference in your site and others. So, you have to make is clear that, the important and search-able word has to be search-able or EYE-CATCHABLE. Also that if you have a very huge article that can go on scrolling, then its better either ti use multiple pages or give the gist of the topics and
link them to the article; this makes the article more readable, and you need not put all the content in a single page and make it look cumbersome to read.
The content has to be presented in such a way that, people who have less time / patience or both just scan the content, and have to catch the word immediately that they are searching for. Then we can make the visitor to read our article, else they go to another search.
some important points that has to be kept in mind are:

1. Keywords: this has to be clear, selected, bold, different size
2. clear title: we can make the title more artistic or fun filled. but the visitor may not search for that word, or the spider wont take that word as a genuine word
3. Be short and sweet: As far as possible don't make the paragraph run to as big as a page. Cut them at suitable lengths and make them more clear and use simple language thats understandable by everyone.
4. Sales language: Preferable don't overuse the sales language, which may make the visitor feel alienated.
Another important point is that always scan your contents from the visitors angle. then you can know what others can field.

SEO: PART 5

MONITORING:

Monitoring is basically getting back to the article after few days/weeks of posting of articles, so as to assess ourselves. This helps in auto correction of our article from our angle angle with a fresh vision.
There are three basic yet critical steps to the monitoring process. They are:
1. Monitoring your rankings
2. Monitoring links
3. Monitoring changes in the search engine environment

1. Monitoring your rankings: This can be done in a number of ways, either manually, or using softwares, or online services to check the ranking.

2. Monitoring links: It's a good practice to schedule weekly checks of how many backlinks you have detected by the major search engines and also check to see how many your main competitors have. While you should always be generating more inbound
links for your site whether you see your competitors doing so or not,thinking that a silent shore can create a greater threat. So always be careful in monitoring and never stop or show any slack from your side.

3. Monitoring changes in the search engine environment: The last thing you will have to monitor is for changes with the search engines themselves.This means what internal changes are done in the site itself, like the search engine algorithm

THE EXTRAS:

Some of the important things that has to be kept in mind are:
* their position
* their PageRank
* their Alexa rank
* the total number of backlinks to their site as seen by Google
* the number of their site pages indexed by Google
* their keyword density for the targeted phrase
* their title
* their H1 tag
And if you are looking at a more detailed angle, then it must include:
* the backlink URL
* the backlink domain
* the IP address of the backlink
* the PageRank of the backlink from that page
* the specific anchor text use for that backlink (or a note whether it was an image)
* the title of the page linking back
* the Alexa rating of the page linking back
* the top three keyword focus' of the page linking back
* the number of links pointing to that page
* the number of outbound links from that page

SEO: PART 4

WEBSITE SUBMISSIONS:

Here are some common misconceptions that are often believed about search engine submissions:

1. You need to submit your website often to keep it indexed by the search engines
2. You need to submit your website to thousands and thousands of search engines to get decent traffic
3. Submitting your website often will keep you at the top of the search engine rankings


1. Meta Tags Generator Tool:
Some think that the meta tags are not that important, but the search engines think otherwise.A META Tag is the hidden text placed in the HEAD section of your HTML page.Its very important to have a good meta tag + the title + contents for a better rank. The Meta Tags Generator Tool is a search engine optimization tool that allows webmasters and web marketers create Meta Tags – including Meta Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords within a flash of a second.This Meta Tags Generator Tool will make it more easier to include the meta tags on the pages of the website.

2. Sitemap Builder Tool:
This is used to ensure a complete spidering and indexing of the website. This work is done with the help of a sidemap builder tool.
The sitemap tool does the following:
2.1. Table of contents - Site information and timestamp that the sitemaps were created
2.2. Broken Link Report - Web pages that link to, or contain links to pages that do not exist
2.3. Listing of non http links - these include links such a javascript links, etc.
2.4. Sitemaps for websites - Creates sitemaps that can be included into your website for bots and visitors
2.5. Mimetype URL stats, Sitemaps Stats ...

3. Link Building Tool:
This is a critical component when you're trying to attain top search engine positioning. Some of the link-building techniques are:
3.1. Reciprocal link building
3.2. Directory listings
3.3. Non-reciprocal link building tactics
3.4. Tools to maximize your efforts

3.1 Reciprocal link building: this is basically a "you post mine then i will post yours". generally the link is any-and-all sites willing to link to them. This is not a good practice.
There are some of the basic rules that has to be followed when exchanging links:
3.1.1 Relevancy is more important than PageRank
3.1.2 Check and make sure the recips aren't being blocked
3.1.3 Link pages with more than 50 links aren't worth exchanging with
3.1.4 Prepare for the future

3.2 Directory listings: Having your website listed in quality directories is perhaps one of the most valuable things you can do for it in regards to inbound links.Directories link DMOZ and Yahoo! hold significant weight. Google draws it's directory results from DMOZ and Yahoo!

3.3 Non reciprocal link building tactics: Some of the most important techniques that are required to build the non reciprocal links are:
3.3.1. Articles
3.3.2. Press releases
3.3.3. paid links

3.4 link building tools: As the link building tools is very important to improve search engine positioning a number of tools is built to support this. Some of the important link building tools are :
3.4.1 PR Prowler
3.4.2 Total Optimiser Pro.

SEO: PART 3

INTERNAL LINKING:

This is one of the powerful tool in the SEO quiver.
Internal links can do:
1. getting your website spidered
2. Build the relevancy of a page to a keyword phrase
3. Increase the PageRank of an internal page

1. getting your website spidered:
Its important that the spiders crawl all the pages of our website to increase the rank and also that it also increases the number of phrases that your website has the potential to rank for. Pages can be hidden from search engines if the linking is done in a way that they cannot read. This is the case in many navigation scripts.
Also if the images are text based and linked then the spider links those also, as the
spiders don't read the images and the chances that the images can be skipped even though it may have a greater relevance to the content. so its better that we convert the images to the text format and allow the spider to scroll this also.

2. Build the relevancy of a page to a keyword phrase:
1 of the thing that has to be kept in mind is that, not all the pages in our websites are equally ranked. This is more important, because generally the home page is used to rank all the other pages, so if you have a better ranked page then link it to the weaker ranked pages and thus increase the rank, The other thing that may happen is that by doing a wrong linking the rank of the well statured page can come down. so a greater caution has to be kept in mind.Generally the home page is ranked higher than other pages, and all those pages that are closer to the home pages gets a better rank than other pages. Also that the page thats linked to the home page is ranked higher even if its far away from home page. This doesn't mean that all the pages has to be linked to homepage to get a better rank, and if done can look unattractive. It's important to pick solid pages to target keyword phrases on as you don't want human visitors going to your "terms and conditions" page before they've even seen the products.

Ways to improve internal linking structure:
1. Text link navigation
2. Footers
3. Inline text links

1. Text link navigation:
found in the left part of the page generally.

2. Footers:
Keep your footers clean, use the anchor text well, and link to the key internal pages of your website and you will have a well optimized footer. You will also want to include in your footer a link to a sitemap.

3. Inline text links:
Internal text links are links placed within the content of your work. While debatable, inline text links do appear to be given extra weight as their very nature implies that the link is entirely relevant to the content of the site.

HUMAN TESTING:

This is like post testing. The human nature comes into picture here. The spelling mistakes, paragraph breakups, framing of sentences ... . Now go ahead and ask people to do the proof reading who have not read the article, as they will be like an intended visitor and the images,content mistakes, additional unnecessary stuff ... can be knocked off and further beautified.
The majority of sites out there either have their main navigation on the left or the top of the page. Its always better to allow the visitor check the gist of the contents then lead to a new page expanding the stuff + have a BACK click to lead us back to the same page, else the visitor can be driven away from the main page that he visited.
Quite possibly one of the most useful tools available is Clicktracks. This tool will show you all the very specific details of how visitors are navigating your site. This tool is many steps above your typical web stats, it will show you details so specific that you can not only see the search term a visitor used to find you but what search engine they came from and the path they followed through your site right down to which search term is selling the most.

SEO: PART 2

SITE STRUCTURE:

This is the way you decorate your house. put the most beautiful thing in your house in the visible part and less important in the other rooms. Similarly we have to keep the most important content readable- to the visitors and to the spiders. the easier for them to scroll through, the better is your site. The more the code we have the spiders take more time to go through them which is dangerous, also it may hamper the ranking. so keep it simple and small. trim it manually, or use a better tool that does a fair amount of good job. The spider scrolls from top to bottom and from left to right. After writing the contents optimize it. Then create Meta tags that fit your keyword choice. The two most important Meta tags are the Description tag and the Keyword tag. Your description should highlight your keyword phrase, keeping it focused, to the point and readable. Your keyword tags should also be focused using each keyword a maximum of 3 times in any set.
Next move onto Alt tags. Though it is good practice to add Alt tags to all your images the spiders only put weight on those that are contained within links.Another great place to add a link along with its Alt tag is in your header image. Linking this image to your URL adds the ability to make the first thing the spiders hit within your tables to at least hold some content that "matters" rather than simply a static image.
H1 tags are important to use. We can use H1,2,3,4 tags. H1 being the most weighted then H2, H3 .... The size of H1 must be highest, then H2, H3 ...

CONTENT OPTIMIZATION:

Alongwith the better quality content what matters is the number of links that is getting attached to our site than ours getting linked to others. There is one more thing that has to be kept in mind that, what google ranks higher may not be done by other yahoo or others and vice versa is also true.
some of the important things that has to be kept in mind are:
1. Heading Tags
2. Special Text (bold, colored, etc.)
3. Inline Text Links
4. Keyword Density
1. Heading tags: These are the ones that indicates the visitor and the spider what the content talks all about. The first of this has to be boldest and largest (w.r.t subsequent headings).
When using your heading tags try to follow these rules:

* Never use the same tag twice on a single page
* Try to be concise with your wording
* Use heading tags only when appropriate. If bold text will do then go that route
* Don't use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to mask heading tags
Preferably don't use more than 2-3 headings, and keep it in mind that, the size and bold has to be of the decreasing order and never the same for subsequent headings (it looses crawling or will be considered as spam ).
If you have a long heading, then the consideration to be given to the keyword reduces.
So have a short heading thats descriptive and doesn't swallow the opportunity of the
keywords. Dont over use the tags throughout the page. If you feel that the content so very important and have to use multiple heading tags, then its better that you divide the content to many pages, each with its own tag and keyword target possibilities. Bolden only those that are really important, use caps letters, underline the required words, italize or color the important words, not all. Don't make the page look like a collage, or like a colorful love letter. Give proper spacings to headings and contents or subheadings.

Keyword density:
This is the percentage of your total content that is made up of your targeted keywords. Generally this is fixed to range from 3% to 10%, although there always a debate on this magic number. This varies from site to site, and not constant either.
There are many unethical methods that can be adopted to dupe the search engines and stay on top, but this is temporary, as the competitor doesn't want his cheating competitor to lead and if the cheating is reported, then you could be well penalized or spammed.

SEO: PART 1

THE TOP 10 ASPECTS FOR A SEARCH ENGINE POSITIONING CAMPAIGN

1. Keyword selection
2. Content
3. Site structure
4. Optimization
5. Internal linking
6. Human testing
7. Submissions
8. Link building
9. Monitoring
10. The extras


KEYWORD SELECTION:

This is the most important step in the optimization process. If the exact keyword is not selected, then you will not maximize the ROI on the campaign. Keyword is not just about selecting the most searched words (or phrases), but select those that produces a good ROI for time and money. If the keywords that we are using are more scrolled than using what people search for, this increases the rank to a greater extent. There are cases that sites having highest number of searches is not necessarily the best target for your business.
At this point of time comes 2 things SEARCHES AND CONVERSIONS. It doesn't make sense to a business that gets great number of search and very little or no conversions. even if the search is little, and most of them are getting converted makes things working.

tools:
How do you know which phrases are even searched? Fortunately there are a couple great
resources out there to help you find out how many searches are performed for specific
phrases.
Some of them are:
1. The Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool (Here it doesn't recognize between singular and plural, mis-spellings ... are all lumped together)
2. WordTracker (the above disadvantage is overcome,but not mis-spellings)

keyword tricks:
Some of the common tricks that works sometimes are:
1. Think like a layman:
Think as if that you are not familiar with the industry. This helps in finding those keywords that a layman might search for, else we end up in putting those technical terms that a layman may not be aware of on a common platform.
2. think like an expert:
On the other side think like an expert who would search for those words who is in that same industry. There could be some of the words that are not used and can stand apart from our usage.
3. Dont target too many keywords:
Its a good idea to have many keywords in the kitty, but select only the gems, not some ordinary stones among them, else we might miss those that are actually required for our business. keeping focussed on the keywords will help in ranking our site higher always, than having too many and poor ranking.
Its always good to test the keywords through pay-per-click engines. Set up an account with a PPC engine and bid on the phrases that you would like to target. One most important thing that has to be kept in mind is that, these doesn't produce the best phrases, as the way these work is different than a search engine. So its not evident that the top rated keyword produces the best return, or not-so-sought-after word wont produce results.

CONTENT:

The content should have the following properties:
1. Unique and well-written:
2. Articles with links

1. Unique and well-written:
There is no alternate to a very well written content. it not only increases the number of visits, but also can help in bringing more links to your site that will again help increase your rank to a much greater extent. Its more important to put it there what the reader wants from your site, or what he expects. The internet is such a medium where you have to write to a person whom you don't know or his reactions. Here we must not actually sell our product, but must put it in such a way that entices people to come and purchase our product. The quality in the content converts the intended buyer to buy. a buyer if has decided to buy will buy, but with you there are many people who are standing in the competition to sell their product online. Its the content thats presented in the most impressive way that makes the buyer buy your product than from elsewhere. The content should just not speak, but should speak in totality from all angles, the question that the intended person could ask and wants to know. If your site has all these details answered and the best deals that around, be 100 % sure that this click can become a good conversion. With the technology thats getting along every person searching on the net knows what to search for and in multiple sites. once he lands in your sites and if he feels spending more time on your article or registers to your site, be almost sure that this click might turn into a conversion. The more time spent on a page means that your site is instilling a sense of trust, and this turns to your advantage.
If at any stage the visitor feels that he is not getting the information he is searching, or he has to do a research where to find it, he just comes out. The site should be organized in such a way that, its orderly presented, yet searcheable, and is appealing, and the visitor need not crack his head to search the information he wants. If we are keeping all informations grouped, then the grouping has to done is such a way that it indicates what each heading says, and where he gets what he wants. This categorizing is the most critical thing that makes the visitor hover the site for a longer time, else it take no time for him to exit. This planning has to be done more carefully and in a much better planned manner.
Also we have to make sure that at no point of time any page has the same content, or that leads to the same page. There has to be a revamp of the sites once in a while, but not too often, because a sea-change will make the engine spider consider it as a new site than old one, and the rank may vary or fall (chances of rising is bleak). If the engine spiders visit quiet often for the contents rank rises. but on the other hand if it visits for the unnecessary changes made else where, the ranking drop drastically.
One more important thing that has to be kept in mind is to proof read the contents, especially with those who are neutral or in line with the content. this helps in knowing what people want and on the other hand helps refining the content and also earn that extra buck. Along with writing articles to our website, writing articles to other sites can improve our incoming links, earn us a little money, our commitment and efficiency also increases.

The Unseen Pitfalls of Google Ad words Marketing

"Spending 5x the Google Ad words spent didn’t increase sales 500% (only 10% increase). This is pretty dismal. What we discovered was that the Google Ad words delivered good traffic, but the traffic that was delivered converted to sale at about 20% of the conversion rate of traffic from natural search engine results."…………

There was Proactive S/W which tested what works out, what will not and what strategies would take us forward than our competitors, as any co for that matter is driven by Metrics. They conducted a test to find as to how many sales were from Google Ad words. They had free and paid Marketing tools and the budget was 1000$ per week on Ad words.

They decided to evaluate Google to know as to how other PPC Competitors were doing well like Yahoo and MSN. Google’s ‘Price per bid’ to retain a set position has lifted 80% in the last year.

They undertook 3 experiments and came to a final conclusion and were able to identify Myths as well.

EXPERIMENT 1:
One Month with Google Ad words turned off completely

- Website Traffic dropped about 80%
- New Trial Accounts dropped only 25%
- New Sales dropped only 10%

So they thought they had then push Google hard. We turned up the Google Ad words

EXPERIMENT 2:
One Month with Google Ad words set at $5000 per week! (5x original budget)

- Website Traffic increased 2-300%
- New Trial Accounts increased 50%
- New Sales increased 10%

So then they did one more experiment and set Google Ad words to $100 per week for a month. Here are the results:

EXPERIMENT 3:
One Month with Google Ad words set at $200 per week (1/5 of original budget)

- Website Traffic dropped about 10%
- New Trial Accounts dropped only 10%
- New Sales dropped only 5%

Conclusion:
The entire Ad words traffic was doing was flooding our demo pool with poor converting leads.
So they have dropped the Ad words completely for a few months now to confirm the conclusion. Basically, still making good sales but saving thousands of dollars per month in poor performing traffic.
In Julian Stone opinion, Google Ad words aren’t a ‘waste of time’ but you need to test thoroughly to understand the conversion rates. The amount we’re saving could be another staff member’s wage!
So they are concentrating on other (free) marketing approaches and keeping those wasted Google dollars in the bank.

Some final thoughts…
———————————

Myth 1. Google Ad words Marketing is Controllable & Dependable!
It’s not. You can be knocked off the list easily by other higher bidders. There’s heaps of click fraud and you have no control over the quality leads you pay for.

Myth 2. Google Ad words Convert Well!
They may for some people but didn’t for us. This depends on a lot of factors. One other factor we’ve measured is the conversion rate of Ad words leads now as opposed to a year ago. The conversion rate has dropped considerably (but not for other marketing methods). So we believe the ‘Quality’ of Ad words has dropped.

ONLINE MARKETING DICTIONARY ( K - Z)

16. Keyword --> Keyword is the term used for words included in a web page that would match words used by web surfers in finding that web page (via a search engine). Identifying appropriate keywords and using them on a web site is important for search engine optimization. Keywords can simply be words included in the body text of the document, or added to the header using meta tags to increase the number of keywords. Using keywords in the title tag is also important. Selecting keywords, that match your target audiences' use of the web when searching your product, is a critical marketing tactic.

17. Marginal Costs --> Marginal costs are the costs associated with creating an additional unit of product. This is similar to variable costs, which are the costs that increase directly with the increase in production (unlike fixed costs). Digital products typically have very low marginal costs, when compared with traditional goods (materials, labor etc.) and if the product is distributed via a web site, then the marginal costs can be zero. The consumer is bearing the distribution costs, and there are no packaging costs. This is why companies are able to market their products for free on their web sites, in order to try to entice further purchases at a later time (in the hopes of creating lock-in perhaps).

18. Marketing Mix --> A Marketing Mix is the combination of product offerings used to reach a target market for the organization. The marketing mix comprises the Product (what the actual offering comprises), Price (the value exchanged for that offering), Promotion (the means of communicating that offering to the target audience, promotional mix) and distribution (also known as Place, the means of having the product offering available to the target audience). The marketing mix is also known as the four P's.

19. Opportunity Costs --> Opportunity costs refer to the costs associated with giving up an opportunity. They are relevant in the marketing of digital products when one considers the value lost to the company when giving away a product for free. Since digital goods primarily consist of fixed costs and often have zero marginal costs then marketing strategy often dictates to give-away a version of the product to encourage consumers to upgrade at a later time (assuming lock-in etc.) The only cost incurred here would be the opportunity cost of the lost revenue from the consumers that would have paid for this version of the product in the first place. To avoid this situation, companies typically segment their markets, and offer a free product, with limited functionality (and no customer support or documentation) to a casual user group, and an upgraded version, at a price, with customer support etc. to a more sophisticated customer. The company will hope the casual users will upgrade to the upgraded version as they become more sophisticated users and more reliant on the product. They also assume the sophisticated user will not be satisfied with the free version, due to its lack of functionality. Eg: blogger and jot.

20. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) --> SEM comprises SEO and search engine advertising. Search engine advertising, in its current model, typically uses text-based advertisements that the marketer bids on based on the keywords the marketer wants to associate with the advertisement (contextual advertising). The business model is typically PPC. Goto.com pioneered the PPC model for search engine advertising. Goto.com was purchased by Overture which was ultimately purchased by Yahoo! Google's Google Adwords is the main competitor.
Both these networks supply advertisements for other sites.

21. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) --> SEO refers to the art of designing a web-site for better listings in search engines. This includes ensuring you have the appropriate keywords in the body text of the site, in the title tag and the meta tags. Google's PageRank algorithm also rewards sites that have inbound links, and even considers the anchor text of the inbound links. Search engines also reward sites with fresh content. Regularly updated blogs therefore serve as a good SEO tool.

22. Shopping Cart Abandonment --> Shopping Cart Abandonment refers to the loss of a customer who is going through the check-out process of an online transaction. Some statistics suggest that this can be as high as 75%. It is principally caused by poor usability of the site and the check-out process (too time consuming, too many clicks), and hidden shipping charges.

23. (Web) Spider --> A spider (also known as a crawler) is used by a search engine to
identify web pages in order to be cataloged in the database of the search engine (web site designers can also submit web pages to be cataloged in a search engine). Spiders therefore help search engines to keep up with the evolution of web content by crawling through the web seeking new sites. To control spiders in terms of cataloging a web site, a designer can include a robots.txt file that instructs a spider to exclude pages that are not to be cataloged.

24. Text Advertisements --> Text advertisements are text links that are paid for by the sponsors of the target page of the advertisement. They are a form of advertisement that can be considered more contextual (assuming the text link is relevant to the subject of the web page), and less obtrusive than other forms of advertising on the web. Text advertisements can also be used for affiliate advertising and the emerging search engine advertising programs from Google Adwords and Overture.

25. underdelivery --> delivery of less impressions, visitors, or conversions than contracted for a specified period of time.

26. Viral Marketing --> Is a marketing technique that takes advantage of a marketer's
customers in promoting the product. This technique was pioneered by Hotmail. Hotmail
launched its free web-based e-mail service with the tag line (at the bottom of each e-mail) "Get your free e-mail at Hotmail." As customers used this e-mail service, and were e-mailing others, they were effectively sending an advertisement for the product. This attracted new customers, who repeated the process. Once a critical mass of consumers were using Hotmail, a tipping point was reached, where the number of new users started to increase non-linearly. Hotmail soon became the fastest growing media company in history.

27. Web 2.0 --> Web 2.0 comprises technologies such as blogs, wikis, podcasting and RSS. It is a term that tries to embrace a participatory web; a web where all can now participate in content creation and consumption. It thus presumes that Web 1.0 was a 'static' environment.

28. Web Analytics --> Web Analytics is the field of data mining the data that is generated from those navigating a web-site. Web Analytics allows a site designer to understand the flow of those going through a site, essentially measuring the behavior of the site's users. Which pages are most popular, which are the entry and exit points, and which are the referrer URLs. Metrics used include page views, hits, sessions and impressions. There are a number of software providers who provide web analytics tools, and a host should also provide this service to its clients.

29. Weblog (blog) --> A blog is a website that is updated frequently by its author, in a standard format, with the most recent entry at the top, and older entries archived. Each entry is a unique URL, a permalink. Entries also include trackbacks and the option for allowing comments. Blogging software (such as Blogger.com and typepad.com) allow anyone the opportunity to be a publisher on the web (no need to know html), thus truly democratizing the process of publishing information (a potential threat to traditional media organizations). Blogs are used to annotate and collect news sources across the web; used as personal journals and for sharing experiences; and used by businesses to reach out to their customers and engage in conversations.

30. Word of Mouth Marketing --> Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) refers to the marketing that can be gained by actively engaging customers to share insights with each other (create buzz that goes viral). WOMM has clearly been around since the inception of marketing, but has gained more prominence with the evolution of the internet, and the ease with which customers can share their stories. Web 2.0 technologies such as Blogs and News Readers are enabling WOMM. Discussion Boards have helped customers form communities. Good WOMM relies on great products that customers willingly evangelize. Marketers have been prone to try to 'effect' this by incentivizing 'fake' customers to talk about their products. This can backfire.

ONLINE MARKETING DICTIONARY ( A -I )

1. (Online) Advertising --> This has a variety of forms of advertising, most popular being banner advertising, though text advertising is getting importance now. Google adwords and Overture / Yahoo! Interstitials are the more common forms of internet advertising.

2. Adware --> Adware is advertising-supported software.

3. Affiliate Program --> An affiliate program is a form of advertising, on the web, that rewards the affiliates (self-selected advertisers) for driving traffic to the advertiser (PPC) or for subsequent transactions (CPA). An affiliate program uses a multi-level marketing concept where consumers (affiliates) attract additional consumers. Some affiliate programs are multi-tiered, thus increasing the income earning opportunities for the affiliates (rewarded for their traffic and the traffic of affiliates they recruit). Affiliate links also have a positive branding effect for the sponsoring site.

4. Aggregator --> (News Reader) Aggregator is an application, either for the web, any
operating system, that aggregates dynamic content (RSS or Atom files) for the subscriber to view. The dynamic content is typically generated by blogs, news organizations or other sources interested in distributing news to subscribers, using the XML format to generate the RSS feed. Aggregators are one of the web 2.0 technologies. Examples of web-based aggregators include bloglines and NewsIsFree.

5. Auction Pricing System --> Using an auction pricing system, sellers are not constrained by having to fix a price without knowing what the market will bare traditional pricing methodology). If a seller sets a very low price using a classified advertisement, then the demand will definitely be very high, but the seller will not get the most revenue and also that the buyer who wanted the product most (willing to pay the highest price) would not automatically receive the product. Conversely if the price is too high then many people who have bid low will be excluded, and only the high bidders get a chance. The auction pricing system is a dynamic pricing model, much like the reverse pricing model. Game Theory can impact the strategies involved in setting a starting price (for the seller) and bidding strategies for the buyers. Ex: Ebay and QXL.com.

6. Average Costs --> The average cost of a unit of product is made up of its fixed costs / # units produced, and the variable cost per unit. With digital products, where the variable costs are very small (and in some instances zero), the average cost of the product declines as more units are produced and sold. Thus the market leader for a product typically has the lowest average cost per unit. This allows the leader to have increased margins, and increased flexibility to lower price.

7. (Shopping) Bots --> Bots are software programs developed to help the user search the web to identify and compare products for purchase. Examples include: Froogle, MySimon, DealPilot.com etc.

8. Break Even Analysis --> Break Even Analysis refers to the calculation to determine how much product a company must sell in order to break even on that product (revenue = costs). It is an effective analysis to measure the impact of different marketing decisions. It can focus on the product, or incremental changes to the product to determine the potential outcomes of marketing tactics. The formula for a break even analysis is:
Break even point ($) = (Total Fixed Costs + Total Variable Costs).
Total Variable Costs = Variable cost per unit x units sold
Unit contribution (contribution margin) = Price per unit - Variable cost per unit.
If making changes to fixed costs (changing advertising expenditure etc.):
Incremental break even volume = change in expenditure / unit contribution.
Thus if a company increased its advertising expenditure by $1 million, and its unit
contribution for the specific product is $20, then the company would need to sell an
additional 50,000 units to break even on the decision.

9. Burn-Rate --> Burn-rate refers to the amount of money a company spends from month to month (money burnt) in order to survive. Thus a burn-rate of $50,000 would mean the company spends $50,000 a month above any incoming cash flow to sustain its business.

10. Call to Action --> Call to Action is the action that is requested by a marketer's
content (either from an internet advertising or web-site copy for example). This may be to click-through to enter a contest, enter a survey to win a free prize, or purchase a product.

11. Click Fraud --> Click fraud comprises clicking on a link that either provides monetary gain for the clicker or adds cost to the marketer whose link is being clicked (a competitor of the 'clicker' for example).

12. Contextual Marketing --> Contextual marketing is marketing that occurs in the context of when a person is more likely to be interested in the product/industry. Thus, a page sponsorship can be considered contextual, as the viewer has elected to view the page, and assuming the sponsorship is for a product that is related to the content of the page, the product has the right context (the viewer self-selected to view the content). Text advertisements that are relevant to the content of the web page on which they appear are another example of contextual marketing. An example of this is the advertising programs run by search engines that have advertisements served based on the keywords that the user uses to search.
Contextual Marketing is becoming more popular with increasing use of search engine marketing, and will only gain greater strength with the evolution of wireless marketing (m-commerce). Wireless marketing will take advantage of knowing where the consumer is located using GPS. This can then translate into marketing messages that have direct relevance to the consumer as the messages relate to the context of the consumer at the point in time they are being delivered.

13. CPM, PPC, CPC, CPA --> CPM (Cost per 1,000), PPC (Pay per Click), CPC (Cost per Click) and CPA (Cost per Action) are types business models for calculating the charge for pages (advertisements) being served. PPC and CPC refer to a cost (payment) associated with each click on the advertisement to the target page. CPA is a cost associated with each lead created from a click on the advertisement (CPL), or each sale (CPS). Both PPC / CPC and CPA are much more accountable means of developing a price for the advertisement, and either are also used for affiliate programs and text advertisements on search engines.

14. CTR (Click-Through Rate) --> is the number of times an advertisement is clicked upon over the number of times the advertisement is served. Typical click-through rates have been declining (a click through rate of 1% would be very high). While click through rates help determine the effectiveness of the online advertisement, advertisements also contain a branding impact. The click-through rate will determine the cost of an advertising campaign that was based on PPC / CPC and CPA.

15. Impressions --> Impressions refers to the number of times a page is accessed over a fixed period of time. Thus if a page receives 1,000 impressions per day, then that page is accessed 1,000 over the course of the day. This term is often confused with hits, which is actually an incorrect use of this term (hits and number of impressions would be the same if the page was simply a text page with no additional files associated with it). Page impressions also equals the number of times an advertisement is served, assuming a banner is served each time the page is accessed. Impressions are a metric used in web analytics.

Why do Web 2.0 Startups Abound?

News and emails about new web startups being established here and there pop up like they are not afraid of a bubble burst. But who’s going to blame them? Startups are established to fill the expanse of the market needs or wants, much like as software are being created to fill the computer memories. But based on how they deliver, I only see four exit points for these startups:

* Failure - poor business plans, poor execution, market inefficiencies
* Acquisition - startups dressing up for acquistion maybe the next eBay’s Skype or Google’s YouTube
* Re-invent themselves - business failures can be startup’s best friend
* Merge of equals

With the spate of these web startups, will you succumb to their invitation? Here are some guidelines:

* Is this really what I need or simply something to doodle about?
* Will this enhance my workflow, connections and mobility, or am I just reacting to peer pressure?
* Will I be able to monetize from this Web application, or is it the other way around (as a consumer)?

Web 2.0 for all its hype basically falls into two categories according to Danny Ayers: The Web as Platform and The Architecture of Participation. Yet, I see it simply as those who cater to human wants or needs. While Google, although relatively stable compared with others, still offer new web features using the "fail fast" strategy (that is, launch, listen, improve, launch again), small startups run the risk of going out of business if they fail slowly and miserably. Om Malik says that even in Web 2.0, scale and size matter.

One of the speakers at the Go Negosyo forum recently held in Pampanga talk about startups:

1) The market is looking for better products. Yet most Web 2.0 startups are simply me-too varieties.

2) Money or capital is looking for markets. Yet venture capital is being poured on startups that offer little or no differentiantion at all. Forget the mobile version of these web applications because the wireless infrastructure is not yet ready for the high-speed, scalability and reliability that the mass market is looking for.

So why do Web 2.0 startups abound?

Maybe, it’s partly due to excesses of venture capital and a huge market to follow. Add to that the propensity of the Americans to bask in the spirit of entrepreneurship even when shrewd and solid business plans are short in supply. Just follow what techdumpster is saying.

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