Realizing SEO Benefits Quickly Through Blogging

Quick results in search marketing are only possible with pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, right? Wrong. The advent of blogging, as well as recent advances to search engine algorithms, has narrowed the gap between PPC and search engine optimization (SEO) to mere hours. With PPC, there is instant gratification as your advertisement will appear in search results almost immediately after your campaign is activated. However, this same advantage can now be seen in SEO.

First, let's take a look at some common reasons why SEO projects have not been carried out in the past.

• Companies don't want to abandon tech investments (e.g. content management systems and Web publishing tools)
• Lack of budget dedicated to SEO
• May take a while to demonstrate ROI

Blogging addresses each of these problems.

• SEO best practices are already in place. Blogging software by default includes a few basic but important SEO practices by using proper Titles, headlines, URLs, and internal linking structure. Search engines also like sites that have fresh content, which can give blogs great influence over search results.
• Recent search engine algorithm changes boost the visibility of blogs. An experiment by Ryan Durk took advantage of temporary changes in Google's logo linking to the search results page for "January 1 TCP/IP". It shows two things: the speed by which a new blog is indexed and the short time between your blog getting indexed and it appearing high in search results.
• Blogs are inexpensive and easy to setup. A new blog can be created in a matter of minutes with little technical knowledge. Blog creation is free in many cases, often with a nominal monthly fee for additional features.

Blogging is great for companies that are not ready to make the larger SEO investment or are worried about abandoning a CMS in which they have already invested. Blogging can be used as a proof of concept that shows that SEO can deliver results. Use of blogging software delays the larger discussion of SEO projects that are potentially more time-consuming and require a larger investment that reap longer term benefits. Setting up a blog is inexpensive and doesn't force you to abandon or modify your existing IT investments.

Then get people to notice your blog.

• Conduct keyword research Creating a blog is just the first step. Keyword research can be the difference between a highly popular, authoritative blog and a blog that no one knows exists.

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The Most Powerful SEO Tactic: Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

The most important thing you can do when talking to an SEO client (be it your boss in your company, or a different company you consult for) is to learn how to explain SEO in the simplest terms possible.

When you are dealing with a non-SEO type, use the 30 second rule: explain it clearly in 30 seconds or less. If it takes you longer than that, your chances of getting them to understand what you are saying have gone down dramatically.

The key then, is to figure out how to net things out into higher level business concepts. This starts with understanding the perspective of your audience. The explanation you might offer the CEO are probably different than the one that you would offer the CFO. The CEO may want to understand strategic impact, and the CFO will likely want to understand financial impact.

Ten killer, but oh-so-simple explanations

1. Why link building is important: "Link building is important because links behave like votes for your site. The more votes you have the better your rankings will be. This is why Amazon ranks more highly than other sites selling books (e.g. Joe's Book Store)."

2. All links are not created equal: "Search engines value the relevance of the link highly. Links from unrelated sites don't hurt you, but they don't help nearly as much as links from a relevant site. Also, a link from Amazon counts more than a link from Joe's book store, because Amazon itself has more links pointing to it.

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Entrepreneur's toolkit - an A to Z Guide

Funding

There are numerous different ways to finance a business. The bottom line here is that you do need to consider which options best suit your needs. You can find a lot more detail regarding the types of financing available in Bytestart's dedicated business funding section. Finally, as with all larger decisions, it is worth involving a professional such as your accountant when deciding upon the optimal financing arrangement.

Google AdWords

The Google search engine is one of the most powerful ways to market to customers. When users search for products such as ‘Business Plan Pro’ the results contain a mix of ‘organic listings’ and ‘paid for’ listings. Organic listings are simply the list of website links Google decides are important. These cannot be influenced by paying more to Google so as to make you appear at the top of the rankings. Paid for listings are the links that people pay for.The beauty of this setup, from an advertiser’s perspective, is that you only pay for adverts that are clicked on. The Google AdWords system also supplies significant amounts of data, so you can manage budgets, track Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and so on.

Google Alerts

Once you have identified your main competitors and the main search terms people use to find your goods or services, you should set up alerts. Google Alerts is a free process that emails you alerts when your chosen terms show up. This is a low-cost way to monitor the activities of competitors and competitive providers.

Google Analytics

While Google is best known for its search engine, it has been adding to the breadth of its service offerings over the past few years. With Google Analytics you add some tracking code to your website and this enables you to obtain rich data about the behaviour of users. Marry this to AdWords and you can really get a bird’s-eye view of user behaviour vis-à-vis the effectiveness of your marketing. The best thing is that it is free, although Google does get access to all of your user behaviour data. So if you are concerned about your Internet data you may want to explore paying for a locally installed analytics tool.

Homeworking

Homeworking i.e. working from a home office is an increasingly popular means for people to start businesses in the UK. There are a number of advantages to this, not least the fact that overheads are kept down as the entrepreneur seeks to establish a ‘proof of concept’- generating sales to demonstrate that there is indeed a demand for the product or service. As well as Bytestart's own homeworking section, there are a number of specialised websites that help advise people looking to start a business at home. Enterprise Nation is one free resource to help you start and grow your business at home.

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New Guide Offers 10 Secrets to Successful Paid Search Campaigns

With Google reporting a 30% growth in its Paid Search profits for early 2008, the time is right to execute a strong pay-per-click plan. Fathom SEO has released a new Guide detailing 10 tips to successful Paid Search marketing.

Cleveland (PRWEB) May 5, 2008 -- What do multi-million-dollar companies have in common with small start-up businesses? Many are investing huge dollars in Paid Search, a thriving trend in Internet marketing. But as more and more marketers get involved in this competitive race for online traffic, how does a business stand out among the crowd?

In its new Guide "Paid Search Best Practices: 10 Tips to SEM Success," Fathom SEO offers guidance on how to execute a well-planned Paid Search campaign. From setting up tracking results and refining keyword lists to A/B testing and using proper coding techniques, the Guide is a glimpse into this growing world of pay-per-click.

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Save a Tree, Start a Website

With rainforests being cut down by the acre leaving miles of wasteland and wasted nature, it is essential for the world’s population to reevaluate what can be done to save trees which are crucial to the health of the biosphere and valuable oxygen. Take a moment to consider what comes in the mailbox each day. It is almost inevitable that stacks of paper fliers, packets of junk mailers and cardstock advertisements take up most of the day’s mail delivery. Now ask yourself how much of that ends up in the trash…or, for all of us Greenies out there, in the recycle bin.

Although all of these advertisements and junk mailers can be recycled (and should be!), the next best thing for marketing and advertising execs to do is launch a website? The reason for this is obvious. By starting a website and creating an online marketing campaign, at least one less mile of trees will need to be cut down to manufacture and print a mailer that will more than likely not be read.

By embracing internet marketing, the options are limitless and also help save the environment. By starting up an informative and strategic website, you can effectively save a great deal of paper rather than printing paper brochures, cardstock advertisements, or other direct mail items. According to a recent study, consumers invested more trust into an updated, branded website while paper advertising and brochures were more easily discarded as trash and forgotten. This proves that a competitive website with quality marketing is a valuable piece of real estate!

While newspapers and trade magazines were the initial source for all that is educational and contemporary, the newest way to distribute cutting-edge news is to issue a press release. This has become the greenest, fastest way to get out news about products and information. The more people read your news, the more traffic your website gets. The more traffic your website gets, the more your ranking in the search engines rises. And never once, did you print a sheet of paper!

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6 factors that will decide the fate of Silverlight

Since the public release of its earliest version last year, Silverlight has been touted as Microsoft Corp.'s Flash killer. This relatively new Web development platform aims to challenge Adobe's venerable Flash (and associated Flex development tools) in the online multimedia space.

Its first version was a little rough, experts say, but the beta of Silverlight 2 (released in March) shows that Microsoft could indeed have a shot at challenging Adobe Systems Inc.'s hugely popular Web media platform. But adoption of Silverlight by developers or end users has yet to take off. Realistically, it's going to take more than Silverlight being able to overcome, or to simply match, the technology of Flash, according to many observers.

So I consulted industry analysts and a professional Web developer familiar with both platforms for their views on what elements are affecting Silverlight's odds in the rich Internet applications (RIA) development arena as it enters its second year.

1. Microsoft's technology on the Web

First and foremost, Silverlight was devised to bring the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) programming model to Web applications, and with that, the large .Net developer community. Between the Adobe Flash and Microsoft offerings, "it is not a feature war; each platform can tout some advantages. [Silverlight] is mostly about bringing Microsoft's developer ecosystem to the Web," says Al Hilwa, an analyst at market research firm IDC.

"It enables Microsoft's technology stack to have a rich media story for the Web. They didn't before; they do now," says Atlanta-based Jesse Warden, who has been developing professionally in Flash since 1998. "This means they can utilize and interface with a lot of their existing technology," says Warden, who has also started working in Silverlight.

Greg DeMichillie, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, describes Silverlight 1.0 as "a placeholder narrowly focused on video, and not a full platform. The real action begins with the second version."

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Understand Google's Guidelines

Meet Google, the "coolest kid" on the cyberblock!

Google is popular, and popularity means it may be tough to get in initially. Even if you do everything right, it could take months to see results, at least if you use their URL submission page. However, there is hope! There's a method to get indexed in 24 hours, so don't even bother submitting through the URL page.

But before you get to that, you should know about the guidelines you must follow to ensure that your site not only gets listed, but also doesn't get banned. Plus, you should learn about elements of your website that Google won't look at.

How to Get Google to Read Your Keywords First

Google's bots read web pages from the topmost left corner of your site to the bottom right. However, most sites are designed with all of the links on the left side, and the content on the right. In fact, earlier in this book you learned that this is the recommended website design you should use. Yet the problem with this design is instead of seeing your content first, Google sees the links first. Your links may not be seen to be as optimized as your content.

One solution is to use three panes rather than two. Keep the normal left and right panes, but add an extra pane at the top left of the layout. Don't put keywords in this extra pane. With this area "blank" when the Google bots read the site, rather than going for the links as they normally would, the bots see that a portion of where the links are is "blank." This then forces it to read the content first, which is more keyword-rich than the links.

Note that not all search engines read sites this way, which is why this guideline was provided in this special section dedicated to optimizing for Google. You could be on the safe side and use the layout anyway, especially if you do plan to submit to Google, which you should. It doesn't take away from the look of the site, and by using it you ensure that your content gets read first. If you don't use it, you aren't giving yourself the best opportunity to rank highly in Google search engine listings. Making tables isn't very hard to do. Most word processors and even WYSIWYG HTML editors provide them, so take advantage of it.

Things That Google Ignores

There are some HTML attributes that Google pays no attention to when it goes through its crawling process. While you won't get penalized if you use these attributes, why waste your time with them if they're not going to count anyway?

Of course, there are exceptions to these rules, as noted in the numbered list below. There are also some elements listed that you will choose not to include.

1. The keywords and description attributes of the meta tag. The keywords and description attributes are read by other search engines. However, the boost you get from having them isn't as much as if you follow the other techniques, such as proper link building. If you submit to Google only, you may not want to include the keywords attribute, but focus on a smart "upsell" or "positioning," "branding" of your message in the description attribute. Other search engines use them, so you should go on and include them.

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Search engine tailors services to black users

Rushmore Drive aims to provide quicker way to find relevant data in effort to take on Google

Cheap computers and Internet connections have helped people get online in greater numbers in recent years. Now Barry Diller's IAC/InteractiveCorp wants to make money by helping minority groups connect more easily to specific sites.

IAC recently introduced a new search engine, Rushmore Drive, meant to give the black audience a quick way to find information that other search engines — including IAC's own Ask.com — might bury beneath pages of less relevant results. The strategy will eventually extend to other ethnic groups, in what analysts said is the latest stab at diminishing Google's dominance in the search market.

''It's a good idea, especially since it's extremely difficult to attack Google head-on,'' said Michael Goodman, an analyst with Yankee Group, a technology consulting firm. ''You need to attack Google on the flanks, and this is a place where the market isn't providing the most relevant search results.''

Rushmore Drive, which gets its name from the location of the building in Charlotte, N.C., where the Web site was originated, offers search results that, at first glance, border on stereotypes. A search query for ''Thanksgiving recipes,'' for instance, yields sites featuring recipes for sweet potato pie and collard greens. But according to Johnny Taylor, the chief executive of Rushmore Drive, the results are based on years of search data from IAC's Ask division.

Rushmore Drive analyzed search results for 3,000 of the most popular search terms in areas with large black populations and found that when people in those areas searched for recipes, they were much more likely to click on pages with soul food. Those searching for hair products, dance, cars, fraternities and sororities also ended up on vastly different Web sites than people who lived in areas with smaller black populations.

Rushmore Drive moves the Web sites preferred by black people near the top of the search results. ''It's not just prefixing 'black' into the search query,'' Taylor said. ''It's sound technology.''

The top four results are ads that Rushmore Drive distributes on behalf of Google and Ask.

Taylor said the company has already bolstered its paid search advertising revenue with banner advertisements from Buick and Coca-Cola, among others. Those sites run ads in Rushmore Drive's news section, where about 10 contributing writers offer their perspective on current events.

Rushmore Drive is the first of what will most likely be more ethnically focused search sites, Taylor said. ''Now that the technology has been created, it can apply to all identity groups,'' he said.

The big question, of course, is whether audiences will go through the trouble of visiting a new search engine, rather than typing in ''African-American hair care products,'' or ''soul food Thanksgiving recipes'' on Google and other sites.

Ask.com met with critical success when it unveiled search refinements two years ago, and despite a big marketing campaign that included television ads, its market share increased by just half of a percentage point in the last year, to 2.5 percent, according to Nielsen Online. Meanwhile, Google's share increased from 55.8 percent to 58.7 percent.

A Google spokeswoman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the company's policy, said that Google welcomed competition ''that stimulates innovation and provides people with more choice.''

Taylor said that IAC would also put an undisclosed, but significant amount of money, into promoting Rushmore Drive, in an effort to reach the roughly 12.4 million blacks now online in the United States, according to Nielson Online.

In addition to buying ads on radio, magazine and Internet properties frequented by blacks, the company will soon embark on a ''gospel brunch tour'' with performances by the singer Regina Bell at black churches in eight cities. Organizations like the National Urban League, the National Alliance of Black School Educators and others have also agreed to promote the service among members.

Goodman of the Yankee Group said that IAC might not find huge success with Rushmore Drive. ''But I think its future is pretty bright,'' he said. ''Diller has been fairly clear with his Johnny Appleseed strategy, where he's putting a whole lot of microconcepts into the market so you don't have to have a billion dollars invested in one idea or one company.''

Other IAC initiatives under development, Goodman said, included a children's site aimed at environmentally conscious families and a site for news aficionados.

Editorial Web sites aimed at blacks were, before last week, wary of the Rushmore Drive project, thinking it might be a competitor. But Calvin Wong, senior vice president for advertising sales for Community Connect, publisher of BlackPlanet.com, among others, said that editorial sites could benefit.

''If anything, this will cause Google and Yahoo to fine-tune their own search algorithms more intelligently,'' Wong said. ''So maybe this is what we needed to surface more articles.''

Cheap computers and Internet connections have helped people get online in greater numbers in recent years. Now Barry Diller's IAC/InteractiveCorp wants to make money by helping minority groups connect more easily to specific sites.

IAC recently introduced a new search engine, Rushmore Drive, meant to give the black audience a quick way to find information that other search engines — including IAC's own Ask.com — might bury beneath pages of less relevant results. The strategy will eventually extend to other ethnic groups, in what analysts said is the latest stab at diminishing Google's dominance in the search market.

''It's a good idea, especially since it's extremely difficult to attack Google head-on,'' said Michael Goodman, an analyst with Yankee Group, a technology consulting firm. ''You need to attack Google on the flanks, and this is a place where the market isn't providing the most relevant search results.''

Rushmore Drive, which gets its name from the location of the building in Charlotte, N.C., where the Web site was originated, offers search results that, at first glance, border on stereotypes. A search query for ''Thanksgiving recipes,'' for instance, yields sites featuring recipes for sweet potato pie and collard greens. But according to Johnny Taylor, the chief executive of Rushmore Drive, the results are based on years of search data from IAC's Ask division.

Rushmore Drive analyzed search results for 3,000 of the most popular search terms in areas with large black populations and found that when people in those areas searched for recipes, they were much more likely to click on pages with soul food. Those searching for hair products, dance, cars, fraternities and sororities also ended up on vastly different Web sites than people who lived in areas with smaller black populations.

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More spam appearing on social networks

Wherever you go on the Web, it seems the riffraff are not far behind.

Consider Facebook, the social network started four years ago for Harvard students that has blossomed into a popular hangout for 70 million users.

Over the last month, some Facebook members have received messages inviting them to download free ring tones or buy male enhancement drugs.

These messages appeared to come from trusted friends, but the links led in one case to an affiliate ad network, Incentaclick, and in other cases to one of several sites offering drugs to improve sexual performance. None of the sites could be contacted for this story.

Other phishing and adware schemes have been reported recently by the TechCrunch blog, Wired.com and several security vendors - Sophos, Fortinet and Cloudmark, which said it's been hired by a top social network that it can't name to improve security and block spam.

The goal of many of these schemes is to collect users' passwords so members' profiles can be used as launch sites for spam delivery and hackers phishing for sensitive information.

Spammers who direct people to an ad network like Incentaclick get paid per click, said Derek Manky, a security researcher at Fortinet, and the drug sites are probably parts of automated "botnets" whose controllers can quickly redirect victims to new sites as older sites are detected and taken down.

People have become accustomed to getting spam in e-mail messages, but finding a message posted directly to your Facebook profile can be jarring, especially if your only contacts are people you know.

"People feel safer on Facebook because of the brand they've built up," said Corey Lewis, a Facebook member who works at the LaunchSquad, a public relations agency in San Francisco.

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Children Need Better Web Experiences

Warren Buckleitner, the editor of Children's Technology Review, has been engaged in an interesting - and revealing - project. It was done in conjunction with Consumer Reports' WebWatch, and sought to find out how children use the Internet. "In the study," wrote Buckleitner in the April issue of the magazine, "we put video cameras in 10 households that had both young children and broadband, and asked parents to record what happened. It was a learning experience."

If your children are like the ones Buckleitner observed, they aren't getting much out of the Internet in terms of what they could be getting when it comes to learning and exploring.

He said what he saw most was "young children spending a lot of time on sites like Webkinz, Club Penguin, Noggin, Addicting Games, Everything Girl and Millsberry with content that can best be described as commercialized and lacking educational benefit."

Buckleitner said in terms of "quality per click," the payoff was pretty dismal. He contrasted this with some of the pre-Internet software titles available for the education of children: Millie's Math House, The Logical Journey of the Zoombinies or The Living Books.

Those, he said, were "titles that delivered powerful interactive experiences with nary a banner (advertisement) or shopping cart to be found."

And while 10 families are far less than a pollster would want for a scientific sampling, the fact that so many of these children "are doing so little of significance with Web-based content is rather unsettling," he said.

But Buckleitner provided some alternatives that parents should suggest to their children. One of them is Lego Universe (www.legouniverse.com). He noted that the site is still under construction, and the Universe is not scheduled for release until sometime in the first quarter in 2009. Like Lego Blocks, the site will let children and adults participate in a massive online game to build communities.

Buckleitner said Hark Hansen, Lego's director of business development, told him that the Universe won't be just "another Flash-based experience," like those found at the current Lego site or Club Penguin.

Buckleitner said that meant a program - either downloaded or purchased on a CD - would be used as the basis for Lego Universe and that means "the game can have better graphics and sounds, while the networking aspect operates in the background."

Instead of just having a half-dozen points on a Lego building block to interlock, Hansen said the Lego blocks used in Universe would have "hundreds of thousands of polygons" to make creations look realistic.

Portions of the Universe will be created by professional Lego developers as well as visitors.

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The Top 10 Questions You Should Ask When Choosing a Web Professional for Your Site

The most important thing to remember when you are building a site for your business is that websites are now critical marketing tools. The days of static sites that simply present products or services are giving way to the Web 2.0 boom, and these types of sites are a critical sales vehicle for any type of business. 

Finding a web professional who can build these interactive sites is essential for today’s competitive marketplace and they can help you build, develop and even market your business with ease. When you’re searching for the right web professional to join your team, here are the top ten questions to ask during the interview process:

1. Do they build for the search engines? Making sure your website is compliant with today’s SEO rules and regulations is a critical step for site construction.  If a web professional isn’t keeping up to date with SEO guidelines you could be left with a less-than-stellar site that doesn’t get any exposure on the major search engines.

2. Do they check their work for W3C compliance?  W3C compliance is another critical area for websites, and building a site with these rules and regulations in mind can also earn you high rankings on the search engines.  This will save you coding work in the future, so make sure the candidate is aware of industry rules and can apply them to all of your projects.

3. Do they have Web 2.0 development skills?  The days of static websites are long gone, and it’s essential that your web professional has the skills and experience to build a web 2.0-friendly site.  Avoid getting left behind as the industry grows with the latest Web 2.0 developments; select someone who knows which direction the industry is growing and can help you build your business accordingly.

4. Do they understand your marketing concept?  Building and designing a website in today’s competitive marketplace involves a thorough understanding of the market and sales.  Your candidate should be able to understand your marketing goals and build something that attracts your target market appropriately.  Remember, you need to build a site that sells to get the traffic and advertisers you need to build your business; can the web professional create a site with this goal in mind?

5. Do they have verifiable references? Checking work history is an important part of your interview process, and can help you learn more about the candidate’s work style, commitment to projects and deadlines, and the types of projects they’ve worked on.

6. Are they committed to ongoing education? Ongoing education is necessary for all professionals in your organization, especially with the rapidly changing world of the internet.

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Search engine optimisation technology offered by Wiliam

Site rank offered by wiliam is the technology for search engine optimisation reporting. There are various features of Site rank that include keyword research and site analysis, customised strategies for the optimisation of search engine and detailed SEO reporting.

earch engines are a significant part of online marketing because the majority of search for products, information and services are done by the people online. The possible impact of search engines on the goals of business cannot be denied. The majority of traffic of web site is referred by search engines like Yahoo and Google.

The objective of SEO approach of Site rank offered by William is to augment the probability of connecting to the target audience by increasing the finding ability of the website.

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Analyze This, That, and the Other

Recently I was appointed chair and host of Search Engine Strategies (SES) London, which, of course, I'm looking forward to immensely. But that's not the only chair I'm honored to have thrust under me. I'm also proud to have been appointed chair of the Search Analytics track at the upcoming eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in Washington D.C. (Any more chairs and I'll have a full dining set!)

Together with all the other great stuff being ushered in by Google and universal search, search analytics will make not just search more interesting but analytics, too. At this time in search, analytics tends to be tied mainly around PPC (define) campaigns and ROI (define). I must say, as a quick aside, many companies I've dealt with seem to take only the most cursory glance at their PPC campaign stats. Then they simply continue to hurl money at search, when they should be paying just a little more attention to this guy.

Back in the day, marketers viewed SEO (define) as little more than smoke and mirrors. We got our analytics out of a log file with a text editor (can anyone else remember just how dull it was trying to read log file referrer data in Notepad?). People still talked about hits back then, and nobody was all that interested in a bunch of text or even a few pie charts they couldn't make sense of anyway.

It's been interesting to watch the industry evolve from a brigade of rank checkers and log analyzers into bona fide marketers and marketing analysts. Pre- and post-click, all of a sudden we make perfect partners. Of course, in SEO it's mainly search engine referrer data people seem to be interested in. On the paid side, it's mainly tracking tagged pages. But in the true sense of getting the big picture about our clients' online performance, we must look at the entire marketing optimization process.

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Time Warner Inc.'s AOL unit on Friday began a round of layoffs from its Web ad-selling unit Platform-A that will ultimately result in about 100 people losing their jobs.

The layoffs are part of an effort by Platform-A's new president, Lynda Clarizio, to overhaul the unit, which launched about seven months ago but has stumbled. Ms. Clarizio has been tapped to better integrate the seven ad-technology firms that AOL spent $1 billion to buy in recent years as part of its effort to build a one-stop shop for buying Web ads. She has said the unit suffered from duplication among its sales, tech and other groups.

One of her first moves in the new job was to announce a new leadership structure that created single teams -- in sales, technology, marketing and other areas -- that cut across all the company's different ad units. The layoffs are expected to be completed by the end of the month and will reduce Platform-A's headcount to about 1,500.

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RISMEDIA, April 17, 2008-How do you know if your website is operating at peak performance? Are you converting a significant amount of online leads into meaningful conversations and transactions? Let’s find out if your site is achieving outstanding results by reviewing these five keys to online marketing success:

1. Have Them at Hello - Design

Is your website is more than just a pretty face?

A professionally designed website will strengthen your image and build brand recognition with prospects. Remember, in real estate, YOU are the brand. Make sure your website branding is consistent with your other marketing materials and places you in a professional light.

Choose a color palette that is clean and simple.

Use only high quality photos on your site and ensure they aren’t large files - nothing will turn away people faster than waiting for your website to load!

It should be easy for people to find what they’re looking for. Primary navigation on your site should be front and center. Use sub-navigation if necessary.

2. Keep Them Coming Back - Content

Is your website loaded with information that is valuable to your prospects?

Entice your visitors to keep coming back for home searches, instant home comparables, community info and valuable real estate tips.

Clearly state your value proposition. Tell your prospects what you will do for them and why you are the best person for the job. How do you sell yourself during listing presentations? Use this as a basis for your value proposition.

Get IDX (direct MLS feed on your website) - this can’t be stressed enough! Chances are that people who go to your website are looking for homes and if you can’t show them all the homes in your area, they’ll find someone who can.

Establish yourself as a local expert by demonstrating your knowledge of the area.

Update your website often with fresh information.

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Nimbus Data Systems, the leading innovator in IP storage systems, recently unveiled its Breeze Hybrid series of multi-protocol IP storage systems that combine next-generation 10 Gigabit Ethernet networking, an on-demand scalable architecture that unifies block and file storage, and energy-efficient storage tiers to bring dramatic savings in operational and capital costs to midsize enterprises. The Breeze Hybrid, or H-series, is an easy-to-use IP storage system with software intelligence and simple Web-based management. It features seamless iSCSI SAN and NAS capabilities, storage options ranging from fast solid state disks (SSD) to cost-effective SAS and SATA drives, and the Nimbus HALO storage operating system, which provides virtualization and advanced data protection without incremental licensing fees. The two new models include the Breeze VH630, designed for server virtualization, and the Breeze MH860, designed for large-scale rich content storage.

With the Nimbus Breeze Hybrid series, midsize enterprises can:

• Reduce costs of scaling out storage by 50% as compared to clustered iSCSI arrays
• Reduce storage hardware and software licensing costs by 40% as compared to iSCSI-only arrays
• Increase bandwidth by over 24 times as compared to clustered iSCSI arrays
• Capitalize on a 50 fold improvement in access times for I/O-intensive applications
• Reduce power and cooling costs by 75% as compared to separate SAN and NAS devices
• Utilize 10 Gigabit Ethernet, with 2.5 times the throughput and 75% lower cost than 4 Gigabit Fibre Channel
• Meet the challenges of both rising datacenter costs and ambitious storage and server consolidation projects with a single versatile, affordable, and familiar IP-based infrastructure

"At Loro Piana, our nationwide network of luxury clothing stores depends on nonstop access to critical application servers and storage. Using the Nimbus Breeze unified IP storage systems as the SAN and NAS foundation for our VMware ESX v3.5 environment, our IT operations run smoothly, efficiently, and virtually administration-free," said Aaron Martin, IT Manager, Loro Piana. "Given the success to date utilizing the 10 Gigabit bandwidth of the system, we further plan to scale out our Nimbus to run a Virtual Desktop environment, as well."

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SEATTLE, WA -- 04/15/08 -- Mercent(TM), a provider of online marketing technology and services for retail merchants, today announced its designation as a Google Product Search Partner.

Google Product Search(TM) is a free and powerful way for merchants to connect their products to the shoppers searching for them. Mercent's designation as a Google Product Search Partner signifies that Mercent exceeds rigorous quality standards for ensuring that retailers' product information is accurate and complete for consumers using Google Product Search.

"By combining Mercent's merchandising platform and tools with Google Product Search, we are giving retailers a significant new channel to efficiently drive online sales and brand awareness," says Todd Sherman, VP of Business Development for Mercent.

Mercent's hosted performance marketing software, Mercent Retail(TM), helps online retailers ensure their products are visible and competitive on leading marketing channels, including shopping portals, transactional marketplaces, and comparison shopping sites. Mercent gives retailers the ability to manage key aspects of their online merchandising, including automatically optimizing for profitability, inventory, and other business goals, while reducing their internal IT burden. Mercent Retail may be purchased as self-service software or as part of Mercent's full-service performance marketing solution, Mercent Performance(TM).

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A coalition of advertising industry groups cautioned the Federal Trade Commission Wednesday that pressing for too stringent industry self-regulation of behavioral advertising practices could backfire and ultimately harm consumers.

The Association of National Advertisers filed comments jointly with nine other trade groups, responding to a FTC staff draft filed in December. Behavioral advertising collects information about past activities of individual consumers online to predict preferences that, in turn, leads to tailored marketing messages.

The ANA coalition said the FTC’s proposal for restrictions does not strike a “balance” between interests of both industry and consumers. The ANA comments suggested that the FTC’s position on curbs for using non-identifiable information are too stringent and unnecessary since that info doesn’t harm individual privacy. The trade group was also opposed to an FTC suggestion that consumers be allowed to opt out of anonymous tracking.

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A network of e-commerce sites and product manufacturers intends to target ads across the Web using predictive modeling based on consumers' past purchase behavior. For advertisers, it may be an attractive offering, but for consumers it may raise privacy concerns.

Executives from aCerno, the network, said they spent two years building the network designed to share data across retailers on a single cookie to provide continuous modeling across all the sites.

"We gather all of [an e-commerce site's] users and behaviors, all anonymously, to then target all of those users across all of the Web to drive them back to all of the member sites to create more transactions," said Bennet Zucker, VP of sales and market at aCerno.

Last fall the network opened to advertisers and agencies, when aCerno began using anonymous data gathered in user cookies to serve targeted ads across publisher sites and ad networks. It's a change from the behavioral marketing model where users are targeted based on recent search behavior. ACerno instead categorizes segments based on predictive modeling and matches advertisers to an audience segment.

"We're able to take those same audiences, package them up, customize those segments for brand advertisers, make deals with agencies, [and buy] CPA deals with target sites," said Zucker.

Behavioral targeting competitors, such as AlmondNet, say using purchase data is too late to reach consumers through advertising. But it may have another use. "If someone has already purchased, that information may be used to upsell and offer a complimentary product," said Roy Shkedi, CEO of AlmondNet.

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OpenEMM, the first and only open source email marketing software, can now also be operated without local installation. All those who send newsletters, but do not wish to install and administer OpenEMM, can now effectively outsource this by utilizing the eMM-Xpress complete package. The eMM-Xpress offering comprises hardware, software, database, administration, and data traffic in a single package.

Since eMM-Xpress is designed and implemented as software-on-demand, anyone wishing to send newsletters no longer needs to provide their own IT resources in order to do so professionally. The OpenEMM email marketing software is installed in its entirety on a hosted server and administered there. The effort involved in setting up and maintaining hardware, software and the database is thus completely eliminated. The user operates the software via a web browser, controlling the composition of newsletters and their transmission.

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