13 Nov 09 Infobarrel.com could help you find your niche content writer
Interesting site that needs more review http://www.infobarrel.com/. If you are a freelance writer you can make money through earning a % of adsence revenue.
Some of these guys are really good writers. If your looking for a freelancer for content, might be worth your while having a look and getting in touch with them
05 Nov 09 Leapfish - Social content merged with traditional query data
If you haven’t heard about LeapFish, you soon will. Think iGoogle with a social twist. The latest version of this search engine that launches Thursday merges social content with traditional query data, images and videos.
Registering as a member allows you to customize the home page with widgets, Facebook and Twitter feeds. In fact, more than 25 widgets will become available today, including Celebrity News, Hulu, The Onion, and Yahoo Sports. Those who log in can build a social media profile, a sort of LinkedIn for social media.
LeapFish offers two search options — traditional and real-time — to provide a variety of perspectives on news and events happening across the Web. News pulls from a variety of sites. The real-time results from Twitter update as they are posted. Visual partitions separate news, blogs and images on the search query page.
Buttons on the right of the results allow the person to toggle between Google, Yahoo, Bing, Flickr and more. Instead of jumping from page 1 of the query results to page 2 or beyond, the search engine offers an arrow key at the side of each section. This provides a way to scroll forward or back through the query results without leaving the page. While eliminating additional query pages reduces the load time, pulling in a variety of content requires a bit more processing power and time to deliver results.
The engine also allows you to share or recommend content to others with “share” and “like” buttons without leaving the search query. It has been under development for about one year. The first phase debuted in November 2008, but remained a shell until now.
LeapFish CEO Ben Behrouzi says an algorithm that sits above the content providers can identify “a place” and “a thing” when someone types “New York Sushi” into the search query box. The engine calls in data from Yelp.com, an authority on restaurants. The site relies on spiders that crawl the Web, but not for all content.
“This is a new Internet, much different than the days when the original search engines were developed,” Behrouzi says. “The days of 1996 and 1997, when we captured the Internet with 10 blue links, are behind us.”
Behrouzi says LeapFish’s new home page can support 100 widgets and “it will smile right back at you.” But if you try to build that on an iFrame infrastructure, he explains, it will crash.
LeapFish will finish 2009 with about $10 million in revenue from its paid advertising model introduced earlier this year, Behrouzi says.
Look for the engine to introduce behavioral targeting advertising in 2010, as well as an online marketplace where marketers and advertisers can buy, sell and trade paid-search keywords, as reported in March. The company will launch the trading platform early next year. The LeapFish advertising model requires marketers to purchase keywords for one year.
Source: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=116840
Tags: LeapFish, Search Engine, Social Content, Social Media
29 Jun 09 Are backlinks nothing unless your branded?
Following googles recent update, some are talking about how unless you are an established authority site and well branded, you may need to more than your link building efforts.
The main questions now on most marketers minds are:
How to brand your business, so that searchers are typing your name directly into google!
Who is talking about your brand? Some think this has become a main part of google’s view to who is an “authority” site.
Which sites are continually coming up in the social media scene?
Who is coming to your website outside of search? Volume, duration, navigation etc..
What is the related search volume, how many search for ’Nike’ and ’trainers’ in the same session?
Following the resent update, many major brands have benefited in serps for unexpected competitive keywords.
25 Jun 09 Bing vs Google Tool
Great tool here.. Compare results from bing and google on one screen..
http://www.bing-vs-google.com/
I’m sure like me, many inquisitive marketers will be examining these search engines and thinking of the implications this could/would have worldwide..
Tags: bing v google, compare search results
25 Jun 09 Google PR update dates
Google PR toolbar update dates since I have been following them..
30th April 2008
29th July 2008
29th September 2008
30th December 2008
30th March 2009
28th May 2009
23rd June 2009
30th October 2009
04th Jan 2010
With the last two update coming early, I have noticed that sites with a higher external link ratio to content, and linking to sites on a ‘lower quality/non auth’ have decreased in PR. Haven’t seen many sites increase.. Perhaps this was google’s attempt to take out a proportion of sites ranking through spammy links. With Bing hot on google’s toes, those who have had penalties on google for sites or keywords seem to be getting a second shot through Bing. Bing seems to be talking a different view on them and allowing them to rank for home and deep pages..
Tags: Google PR Updates
23 Jun 09 Google v Bing
Is Bing the new google??
The more I see, the more i’m thinking yes..
Tags: google v bing
23 Jun 09 Google PR toolbar update 23rd June 2009
What an earth is going on with these google updates? Less than 1 month after the previous premature toolbar update, google rankings and pr toolbars are on the change again!
Tags: Google pagerank update
19 May 09 Who we are..
A well-known speaker started off his seminar by: holding up a $20.00 bill. In the room of 200, he asked, ‘ Who would like this $20 bill? ‘
Hands started going up. He said, ‘ I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this.
He proceeded to crumple up the $20 dollar bill.
He then asked, ‘Who still wants it? ‘ Still the hands were up in the air.
Well, he replied, ‘ What if I do this? ‘ And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe.
He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty.
Now, who still wants it? ‘
Still the hands went into the air.
My friends, we have all learned a very valuable lesson.
No matter what I did to the money you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20.
Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground
into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way.
We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value.
Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless to those who DO LOVE you.
The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know,
but by WHO WE ARE and WHOSE WE ARE.
You are special Don’t EVER forget it ‘
If you do not pass this on, you may never know the
lives it touches, the hurting hearts it speaks to,
or the hope that it can bring.
Count your blessings, not your problems.
‘ And remember:
amateurs built the ark .
professionals built the Titanic.
17 Apr 09 A body shaped Mattress
How’s this for a new mattress??
16 Apr 09 The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit Checklist
The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit Checklist
By Matt Siltala (c) 2009
From month to month I have the opportunity to present 4 different webinars on different topics related to Internet marketing to brand new online business owners.
The reason I bring this up is because no matter what the topic I am presenting on, I usually get asked the same question by completely different random people. They are all wanting me to “look at their site” and give them a “quick, what do you think?”.
These people are wanting to know if their site is ready to “go live” (although I never really understand why people ask that question) but for these people, and this post - I have come up with what I’d like to call “The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit Checklist”. If you have a brand new site, and haven’t done any kind of SEO before, this will be a great list of reminders that will set you off on the right foot.
1. URL canonicalization and 301 re-dirs. One of the first things I look for on any domain I am giving a health check on is the URL canonicalization. In My Opinion it does not matter if you pick proper URL canonicalization pointing to the www’s or non-www’s, but you need to pick one and stick to it. I personally always choose the www’s because more people (from my experience) tend to link to you with the full URL. So you need to get into your .htaccess file and make a few edits. Any variation of the homepage URL needs to be done this way too - for example you need to have the /index.php also re-direct to the main URL (however you have it set up) Bottom line here, you need to make sure all variations of your URL point to the same way you set it up.
Any extension of your URL like:
• http://www.example.com/index.php
• http://www.example.com/index.htm
• http://www.example.com/default.html
• http://www.example.com/default.php
• http://www.example.com/anything (that goes to homepage)
All need to be pointed to the main - http://www.example.com (without any extensions). You also need to make sure that you don’t have any dev links that need to be 301-ed to their new addresses so you don’t have any bad or dead links on the site. You can handle all these changes via the .htaccess file. Here is a little more in depth look into 301 re-directs via a post I did on it a few months back.
Here’s the code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
(Make sure your Apache installation has mod_rewrite enabled.)
As long as your Apache installation has mod_rewrite enabled then you should be able to use this fix on almost any host.
2. Unique Title Tags and Meta Data. I will go to Google and run a site: command and see all of the pages that are indexed just to make sure that there are no duplicate content issues and that all pages seem to be individual and unique with their own title tags and meta data. If your site is not right - all results that come back will look exactly the same, and if the title and data that comes back is all the same - you have a problem!
3. Search Engine Friendly. Check to make sure the CMS you are using is search engine friendly. Are your URLs search engine friendly? Are you using keywords in the naming structure of your URLs or just automatically created jibberish by the builder? Are you able to include header tags? Alt Tags?
4. Has the site been submitted to Google Webmaster Central? By submitting your site to Google you are able to get your whole site indexed properly on Google, and they are able to show you any errors your site may have. There are so many tools that are offered here that you need to become aware of, but for the sake of “The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit” I just want to make sure the site has been submitted.
5. Check for Duplicate Content. If you are selling products and are using a supplier with their descriptions and info, I am going to make sure there is no duplicate content issues. If you are using the same content that 1,000 other people are using, there might be a problem. I would always suggest making sure you do everything you can to make sure that you have no duplicate content of any kind on your site.
In Conclusion: Again, this is just a quick “What I would do” SEO Audit checklist of what I look for when “checking out” brand new sites. These are a few of the steps that I would recommend anyone new to Internet business and SEO should check out before really thinking they are ready to make money with their website. I know this info may seem basic to a lot of us that have been doing it “forever”, but you woul be surprised how many people still do the simple things wrong!
About The Author
Matt Siltala has been working with Internet business owners since 1999 to help them increase their conversion rate and truly become successful. Matt got started in the field by working with a small radio station in Arizona and posting to his own personal blog . From there, Matt has become an expert in the field of SEO and internet marketing, all while building his own internet marketing company, Dream Systems Media.
Tags: SEO, seo health check
