Paid links: Valuation techniques

To purchase links or not?

You really need to know the type of link popularity that is going to be passed to determine a monetary figure to associate with the link. This way you know what kind of deal you’re getting if you are buying links. There’s a few ways to associate a value with the link. One of the easiest ways is to use this page strength tool, or use the Text Link Ads Link calculator, to determine some type of value associated with what to spend on the link.

Growing Your Inbound Links

It should be emphasized that the more quality inbound links your website has, the more likely it is to be deemed “important” by the search engines. Therefore, a good SEO package includes the development of a quality linking strategy. This is a technique that connects your website to other relevant websites, through the placement of text-based links.
To begin, consider linking with complementary businesses and industry associations. This is as easy as sending out a personalized email requesting a link on another website. These exchanges tend to result in a “link love triangle” because Google discounts reciprocal links. So, be prepared to offer a link on your own site or another media property in exchange for the link you hope to receive.

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Penalized By Google?

The Official Google PageRank Update has just happened yesterday. Many websites have been penalized for selling text adds.

If you see a different PR on different datacenter as well, you probably are being penalized by Google for selling Text Link Ads. If you would like to get your PageRank back, you can go to Google Webmaster Tools and request a reconsideration by clicking on “Request reconsideration” after removing your Text Link Ads and stop selling them from now on.

It seems Page Rank is a little on the fritz for the time being.

The best open source CMS?

I always prefer Wordpress, is nice, friendly and have a lot, a lot of extensions…And for the clients is very easy to understand. The only thing that Wordpress lacks is a good forum plugin. Wordpress.. yes, it seems too much popular but isn’t it just for blogs?
For clients that desire greater customization and more powerful functionality I recommend Joomla, but i guess it might be little bit tough for a beginner. Joomla! is extremely customizable, and with a lot of work it can even be SEO and WAI compliant. An excellent resource is http://www.opensourcecms.com/

How to blog as a corporation . . .

Transparency is Paramount

People who read and write blogs generally speak plainly and expect others to do the same. The cynical nature of bloggers causes them to quickly dismiss messages that employ buzz-words and marketing speak. It is important that blog posts always be candid and honest.
It should also be clear who is blogging and why. Most people want to know the source of any information and blogs are no exception. In the case of corporate blogs, readers will want to know the poster’s position in the organization and the motivation for making public announcements on the Internet.
Bloggers are already on the Internet and use it to relentlessly check facts and sources. If they feel like a post is an attempt to hoodwink them with half-truths or camouflaged marketing messages, bloggers will make short work of discrediting an author — and the parent company. Credibility is particularly hard to recover in the blogosphere, and failed attempts at lighting the blog community frequently make headlines.

Build Your Own Blog
If you intend to operate your own blog, a custom built platform is not essential, but it is highly recommended.Whether you do so in house or contract out, developing your own brand and voice will be easiest on a blog built specifically for your company. Both credibility and control will be lost if readers are referring to a URL from a free blog provider. It may be a good idea, however, to look to these public blogging hosts for design and feature ideas.

Don’t make your visitors have to think . .

Ensure your site has intuitive navigation and usable site architecture, not just an appealing look and feel. Visitors should be able to accurately guess what a button or link does before clicking on it.

The search function (you do of course have one!) should appear in the navigation bar, preferably at the top right, where users expect to see it — and not as a button but as a type-in field, which saves the visitor from having to go to a search page to do their search.

Upon a keyword search, automatically check spelling and, when appropriate, suggest corrections. If their search is too generic, suggest alternatives (for example,”You just searched for ‘cameras.’ If you’d like, you could try a more specific search like: ‘ canon eos cameras” ‘nikon digital cameras,’ … “).

Rich Media. Rich Results.

Every advertiser – and every ad online campaign – is unique. Campaigns have different sets of objectives, and different creative goals and rich media implementations are required to deliver the specific and quantifiable results that today’s online advertisers expect.

What is your next Campaign’s Objective?

Your rich media has creative goals for each of the four primary campaign objectives:

• Brand Impact & Awareness
• Brand Interaction, Education and Mind Share
• Direct Response & Acquisition
• Brand Endorsement

Know that what matters to today’s savvy advertisers are the bottom line results. Using common analytics tools you can link a direct ROI from your rich media effort

Flash and Search Engines

Flash suffers from under optimization, and is perceived as harming search engine rankings. . .

Why are search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners concerned about Flash, and how can we SEO Flash content? The main problem with Flash is that search engines don’t yet understand it, and probably won’t in the near future. Flash includes logic and can take input from the visitor, but search engines are designed to handle static content. Flash is actually a compiled program, so it’s much harder to analyze than plain HTML code.

The leading web development tool, Adobe Dreamweaver, embeds Flash in web pages with code that fails to provide accessibility for visitors or search spiders who cannot handle Flash. Instead of using the default code, my recommendation is to hand code Flash pages with primary HTML content, and a method of automatically testing for Flash support before attempting to insert the movie.

If a site only has a few, noncompetitive keywords, optimizing the Flash site can work. But before actually creating the Flash site, heed this: Do not create the Web site as a single page with a giant Flash movie.

On the surface, it may seem a Flash site consists of many separate pages. This assumption may be incorrect. Many Flash sites consist of a single Web page with a single Flash movie. Most sites have multiple entry points. A Flash site often has only one entry point.

The usual optimization strategies apply to Flash sites. Optimize each movie and page with appropriate titles and content. In the absence of indexable content, make sure all pages have appropriate meta tags.

Unless your Flash site has a few targeted keyword phrases, split it into separate pages. It will help your optimization efforts.

The primary HTML content can be search optimized as if the Flash wasn’t there, while the Flash provides an enhanced user experience for those visitors who have the necessary Flash player.

• Clean design
• Code validation and standards compliance
• Correct functionality with IE

Search Engine Marketing

There is a lot involved with search engine marketing. In fact, it can be a bit overwhelming, even for those with a great deal of experience. It really boils down to creating best practices. The good news is that by taking it one step at a time, it is not hard to learn. And once learned, search engine marketing can provide an effective method of driving highly targeted visitors to your web site. There are a whole host of web 2.0 ways to market your site online the the long tail demographic.

Get Verified by Google

Using Google’s webmaster tools you can obtain comprehensive stats and and error information about the pages in your site.

Its as easy as adding a meta tag to your site.<meta name=”verify-v1″ content=”wUgn2fcqOau6b4u84ZVxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx=” />

Why do it?
To further take advantage of additional webmaster benefits from Google, we have introduced support of verifying site ownership with Google. Merchants can upload the account specific verification code provided by Google Once ownership has been verified, site owners will then be able to access additional tools and features (diagnostic/statistics) from their Google Webmaster interface.