blogging 102

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes If you have been following all the latest developments in Internet marketing you will have discovered a few things. Recent trends are proving to be very lucrative for those savvy marketers who are taking advantage of these new changes. First, video is popping up everywhere: on websites, in sales letters, in testimonials and in training manuals. Google (reluctant beacon of all things net) is making its move on video in a big way by videotizing their ads and by snatching up YouTube for a Billion and some change. Second, if you have placed a blog and RSS feed on your own website, your stats will show you that blogging is an excellent source of traffic. RSS is a simple way to get your content on the web, including your videos and podcasts. RSS and Blogging are propelling the social networks which are burning up the web and video is only adding fuel to the fire. YouTube and MySpace barely cracks the surface of the online community building fury that’s... 

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes The real potential of RSS lies in Broadcasting. In former times, jumping up on a soapbox or any platform in the street to speak your mind was a popular pastime. Mainly reserved for political radicals, the biblically inspired or the Cuckoo’s frequent flyer’s club – the soapbox did fill a need. The need to express oneself. I have always thought of RSS/Blogs and blogging as more of a ’soapbox’ than a ‘journal’ or a ‘weblog’ of daily events. A modern day techno version of the soapbox with the transfer of one’s firmly held beliefs/opinions in a few kb’s here and there along the information highway. The stronger the beliefs or opinions – the more popular the blog. The more unique the content – the more entertaining the blog is to read. It also gives you a platform for entertaining off-beat ideas and new ways of thinking. And it’s a very democratic platform – where... 

Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes Has Google finally embraced RSS with their new XML powered Sitemaps program? Well, sort of, but it seems more like a hug than a strong impassioned embrace! It does use XML technology which allows for the crawling and updating of your site’s web pages. You can even include your entire web site (all urls) with this indexing program. For anyone targeting the search engines, especially Google, this program (still in beta) is a MUST HAVE. If you require timely updating of your most popular pages Google’s new Sitemaps may prove indispensable. It’s a little premature to assess the importance or impact of Google’s new program but anyone wanting to give their site a competitive edge should be gearing up. How it works: There are several ways to set-up a XML Sitemap, perhaps the easiest way is to use the open-source Generator which you can download from Google. This is a Python file that you can upload to your webserver and this... 

Reading time: 7 – 11 minutes No matter how hard some people try to mystify SEO, it is not as complicated as many would lead you to believe. Despite all the techno jargon that many in the field will throw at you: SERPs, SEM, PageRank, Keyword Density, Vertical Search, Algorithms… SEO is really simple to do if you understand some basic concepts and follow some easy steps. Search Engine Optimization is getting your content listed in all the top positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN for your targeted keywords. When someone does a keyword search in a search engine for your particular subject or niche — you want your site or content to be at the top of the list. Here are 10 SEO tactics that have worked and are working for me at this moment in time. I make this clarification because you must understand search engines, especially Google, are constantly redefining how they rank pages. Here are my favorite tactics and strategies: 1. Quality Content is and always will be your number... 

Reading time: 6 – 9 minutes Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions, perpetuated by industry SEO experts, is that a website must follow perfect SEO strategies to get top rankings. While adhering to simple common SEO standards does help the search engines both find and index your site more quickly, it doesn’t guarantee by any stretch of the imagination, that following those SEO guidelines will propel your site to the top of the rankings. If only search engine optimization was that easy! No doubt, there are some SEO faux pases that will do harm to your site’s rankings, especially in Google, the ultimate hall-monitor all puffed up and ready to pounce on any misbehaving webmaster. Things such as keyword stuffing, keyword spamming or linking out to bad neighborhoods such as link farms, pharmaceutical or gambling sites may get you blacklisted. But how much SEO do you need? How much search engine optimization do you need to get top rankings? Do you need a whole lot or do you...