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Google Caffeine – A Taste TestBy Kalena Jordan (c) 2009 Earlier this month, Google invited the public to take their next generation of web search, code named Caffeine, for a test drive. The new search infrastructure is the beginning of Google’s advance towards improving indexing speed and scale as the size of the web grows increasingly cumbersome. Google is seeking feedback on the changes from experienced users and web developers by making Caffeine available via a web developer preview.From theofficial blog post: ”It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits ‘under the hood’ of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences.” What Is It?According to Matt Cutts of Google, Caffeine is essentially a rewrite of the search index and it roughly compares with the Big Daddy index of late 2005 / 2006. In other words, it’s a BIG change to Google search.Here’s a couple of grabs from Mike McDonald’s video interview with Matt Cutts on the subject:”We’re shooting to get results identical to previous version. We’ll open up a few datacenters with it first and then roll it out.”"Caffeine will be more powerful, flexible and robust – allowing Google to index faster.”"(Caffeine) builds a powerful foundation for including any changes we want to do with indexing. Not so much for taking advantage of semantic, real-time indexing, but for getting good infrastructure in place for growth and unlock more power.”"Webmasters shouldn’t be concerned. Caffeine does not affect your site architecture“Something that Matt Cutts hasn’t mentioned but has been discussed amongst my colleagues is whether the Caffeine rollout is at all related to Google’s BigTable technology.Bigtable is a distributed storage system for managing structured data, designed to scale to accommodate huge amounts of data. Google uses BigTable to store data from their various load heavy apps such as Google Earth and Google Finance. It makes sense that this would eventually roll out to search. Perhaps Caffeine is the new algorithmic skin for the BigTable search infrastructure? Search Technology TestingIn the SEO industry, we’re so used to Google rolling out algorithm changes without fanfare and reacting to them as we realize something has shifted that this announcement came as quite a surprise to me. Paul Carpenter made the same point on the DaveNaylor.co.uk blog:“… soliciting direct feedback from users before changes are made is something I can’t recall Google embarking on before.”My first thought was that this was a knee-jerk reaction to the Yahoo / Bing announcement last week. But in his Caffeine blog post, Matt Cutts insists that the announcement had nothing to do with Binghoo and that they’ve had engineers working on it for months. He says that Summer is simply a good time to roll it out for testing.So I decided to conduct my own test to see if I could notice any changes. The ExperimentI decided to compare de-caffeinated Google against caffeinated Google using five main benchmarks:A) Index sizeB) SpeedC) Site rankD) Link typeE) Keyword densityMy tool of choice for the comparison is Facesaerch’s Caffeine Compare. The search queries I decided to test were:1) “iPhone cases”2) “Les Paul”3) “diamond earrings”4) “Kalena Jordan”See the Detailed Search Comparison Results Chart at:http://www.sitepronews.com/images2/chart1.gifConclusions

• Probably the biggest eyebrow raiser for me was the marked jump in keyword density between SERPS on the old Google and SERPS on Caffeine. In nearly every comparison, the Caffeine SERPS featured site titles and snippets with a much higher phrase and/or keyword density. Coincidence? I doubt it.• It’s definitely faster. Every search query I tried on Caffeine was returned at a faster speed than with the current Google. Impressive.• Caffeine seems slightly fresher. Some of the results I observed in Caffeine SERPS and not in regular Google SERPS were more current. For example, blog posts published within the last couple of days.• Apart from the ego search, old Google out performed Caffeine in the index size category. But this is likely because only a handful of data-centers have Caffeine on board so far.• Caffeine definitely has a heavier emphasis on social media, with results from sites like Blogger, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google Profiles featuring more prominently, particularly for name searches. Wiki pages still seem to rank highly in both Caffeinated and Decaffeinated Google.

Other ObservationsInterestingly, a couple of other bloggers have observed different trends in Caffeine SERPS. In his blog post on the subject, Paul Carpenter says:“… maybe blended results are getting a little less prominence. Certainly some news and image results are appearing further down the page in Caffeine than in the regular, *decaffeinated* results.”Personally, I didn’t notice this. In fact with product related searches, I saw more blended results with Google shopping links often ranking higher in Caffeine.But Everflux is influencing Caffeine results too, as Matthew Rogers of EndofWeb found:“The results for any search shift and change on a daily basis, because live-search results are added to the mix, causing a more fluid day-to-day search experience along with providing more relevant data upon request.”Comparison ToolsWant to conduct your Caffeine comparison testing? Here’s a couple of tools to use:Facesaerch’s Caffeine CompareBlack Dog’s Compare Google CaffeineDoubleshot’s Get Caffeinated About The AuthorArticle by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column , Kalena manages Search Engine College – an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

How to Optimize for Google – 1By Scott Van Achte (c) 2009 In today’s online world search engine rankings can make your business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very valuable, their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important. In this three-part series on How to Optimize for Google we will touch on a number of important aspects for top Google rankings including website optimization, links, Google Webmaster tools, and a number of other considerations.The focus of Part 1 will be with on page website optimization.THE RIGHT KEYWORDSThis article is not about keyword research so I will not spend too much time on this topic, however, I felt it was important to at least brush on this slightly. Make sure that your targets are achievable. If you select the wrong keywords it can make your entire optimization experience essentially a waste. Choose keywords that are attainable but yet still provide a reasonable search frequency for your industry. Your phrase selection should also be targeted to bring qualified traffic to your site.Using the hotel industry as an example, targeting the word “hotel” would make very little sense but by narrowing it down to “Victoria BC hotel” you now have less competition, and a more qualified audience. Keep your targets in perspective and go after the obtainable rankings.WEBSITE OPTIMIZATIONThere are many on-site factors that play a role in your search engine rankings. Here are a number of those factors and what you can do to improve your chances of success.Title TagThe title tag plays one of the most important roles in search results at Google, and is almost always the heading Google chooses for each of its listings. Placement of your target phrase is best used near the start of the tag and repeated again in the middle or near the end. Three uses of your target phrase may be helpful in some instances, as long as it is not too overwhelming. For best results each page on your site should have a totally unique title tag.It is also important to remember that because Google will use this title as the main heading for your listing, you will want to keep it attractive to potential searchers. Try to also add a call to action, or other wording to help make your listing appear attractive to searchers.To help illustrate the fact Google takes this tag into consideration, simply do a search for your target phrase and take a look at the titles of the top 10. I tried a search for a rather broad term “hotel” and saw that all 10/10 listings had it in the title tag, and 6/10 had it as the very first word. A quick scan showed that the entire top 30 either had the word hotel, or hotels in their title tags.If you do only one thing to your website, make sure that all your title tags are relevant, unique, and contain your target phrase for each page. Meta Description TagThe Meta Description tag is still occasionally used by Google as the description which appears in the search results themselves. While this used to be a more common practice Google tends to use it most often on sites with very limited content, or those which are flash based. I have seen it still used for content rich sites, however this is less common.The Meta Description tag still has an impact on search rankings. Your best bet when using this tag is to keep it short and sweet with your target phrase close to the start and not repeated more than 3 times. Like the title tag, each page on your site should have its own unique description tag.Meta Keyword TagWhen it comes to Google this tag is useless, and won’t influence your rankings. There is some speculation as to whether a spammy keyword tag can however, have a negative effect on Google rankings. As a result, if you do utilize a keyword Meta tag for the smaller engines, it is best to keep it clean and play it safe.DensityKeyword density plays a role in overall rankings; however, it is not as cut and dry as it once was. Once upon a time there was a magic number that when used could almost guarantee top rankings.This is no longer the case. Today the ideal density varies from industry to industry, phrase to phrase. To find out what density you should aim for, take the top 10 or 20 search results and see what percentage those sites are using. In most cases you will find that the majority of these sites have a very similar density to one another, and this average density is a good estimation of what you should aim for.Body Text and Keyword PlacementThe location of relevant text on your site will help establish the overall importance of your target phrase. While you do not want to overwhelm the engines and site visitors with a bombardment of target phrases at the top of the page, try to sprinkle in some instances as close to the top of the page as possible. SynonymsBe sure to include various synonyms for your target phrases within your body text on your site. Google will use these synonyms to tie in the overall relevance of the page for your main target phrases, which in turn can improve your odds.To find possible synonyms you can use a thesaurus, but the best way is to search Google itself and see exactly what they consider to be similar. Simply search in Google for your target phrase preceded with a tilde, such as “~hotels”. Next scan through the search results for any text Google has bolded. These are all words that Google considers to be related. Using the “~hotels” example Google brings up phrases such as ‘travel’, ‘tourism’, ‘accommodation’, as well as various hotel chain names such as ‘Hilton Hotels’.Keywords in DomainThere is still some speculation if having a target phrase as part of your top level domain (TLD) is of use to search rankings. From my experience, yes, there is value here, although, nothing like it was several years ago.If you are starting off in the online world and are contemplating which domain to go for, consider one that uses your target phrase, assuming that it is both relevant to your business name, and uses no more than a single hyphen. While multiple hyphens in a domain can be successful, they are very common with highly spammy websites, so it is best to not take that route if possible.While having a keyword located within your domain can provide some ranking juice, I would not suggest heading out and doing a domain swap. In most cases you would be better off working on your existing site than starting from scratch with a new domain.Keywords in page specific URLUsing keywords for specific page URL’s can also help add a little bit of value to your site, providing you use them responsibly. Consider using a keyword as a directory name and as part of a file name where it naturally makes sense to do so. If you have a website that focuses on tourism and includes local hotel listings, you may want to consider the following structure for your page on the Hilton:MyTourismSite.com/Victoria/Accommodations/Hotels/Hilton.html About The AuthorScott Van Achte is the Senior SEO at StepForth Web Marketing Inc.; based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read more of Scott’s articles and those of the veteran StepForth team at http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at http://www.stepforth.com .

Website Traffic Generation Planning and MethodologiesBy Duncan Wierman (c) 2009 Real Estate internet marketing is like any other kind of marketing, you’re trying to reach a niche market and must plan accordingly. You have to start by identifying your target market in order to develop your message conveying exactly the kind of high value business proposition which your niche will respond to. The first steps are to:1) Identify your target market; start with geo targeting and work with the demographics from there.2) Decide how you want to be perceived by this target market and decide how you’ll foster thisperception.3) Identify and refine your value proposition. Once you’ve done this, the next step is to develop and distribute your value proposition, making sure that your value proposition is perceived by your target market exactly as intended. In marketing, shaping consumer perception isn’t just the most important thing: it’s everything.You have to start by positioning yourself to be perceived in a specific way; from here, you’ll need to maintain, develop, grow or alter this market position as you deem necessary.The real challenge is putting these principles into action:Driving TrafficThere are some important principles of traffic generation you need to understand in order to be successful at bringing visitors into your website.There are both principles and rules of traffic generation; principles have to do with your approach to the task and the rules are the practical nuts and bolts of driving traffic. You need to have an understanding of the larger picture before you can successfully put the practical techniques into action.What you’ll usually see a lot of is the techniques alone. While this is still valuable information, you probably won’t get far with these techniques if you aren’t versed in the underlying principles of traffic generation.These are the most important principles of traffic generation: 

• Traffic generation isn’t a black art – it’s something which largely relies on common sense and methods which can be replicated with consistent results.• The reason people usually fail in their traffic generation efforts is that they don’t truly commit to making traffic generation techniques a fully integrated part of their business strategy.• You need to create a plan for driving traffic. Think of it as a road map; follow it, but remember that it’s not carved in stone. Your plan can and should evolve to reflect your real life experience and results.

• Continually test and track the results of your traffic generation efforts – and adjust your plan accordingly.• Set goals for yourself and as you meet them, raise the bar; traffic generation is a process, not a single objective.• Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see results immediately.• Remember that driving traffic begins with building your site – Why is this? Because your site should be built from the ground up with visitors in mind. Look at other sites in your industry to gain an understanding of patterns of visitor behavior.

See what these other sites are doing; don’t hesitate to take a page from your competition’s playbook if you see something which is working for them.This is where things can become challenging; it’s something like standing in Grand Central Station at rush hour with a megaphone, trying to be heard above the noise of the crowd. The goal here is to get the attention of your target market and get them to come to your site.All business is arbitrage. You’re taking something which is cheap (to you, at least) and exchanging it for something of higher value – buy low, sell high. For example, SEO and other free traffic generation strategies essentially trade your time for traffic which is of higher value to you; this value may be measured directly in monetary terms or in other means (for instance, as signups to a list). The same is true of paid methods of driving traffic like PPC advertising; you’re paying what you deem to be a small amount for something else which you see as more valuable.If you’ve been reading carefully so far, you may have noticed that I haven’t said a word about being indexed by the search engines; that’s because this falls under the heading of techniques, not the principles of traffic generation. While you do of course want to be indexed, this isn’t your primary objective – and it’s something which will happen naturally as you work to drive traffic using other strategies.Don’t lose sleep over the search engine crawlers; they will come sooner or later. Remember that even once your site is indexed, there’s no assurance that visitors will follow. Focusing on being indexed is losing sight of the forest for the trees. This will happen anyway as a side effect of using other traffic generation methods. What you should be focused on is getting targeted traffíc to your site. For instance, if you exchange links with another site (or even a directory) relevant to your industry, the search engine crawlers will follow these links when indexing this other site and voila! Your site will be indexed.What you need to do is to let the web know that your site is there while simultaneously driving targeted traffíc. The best way to do so is to create links to your site from other sites; not only do these result in your site being indexed, but back links are great SEO and of course, they can generate traffic directly through visitor clicks. About The AuthorDuncan Wierman is an Ex Software company CEO turned Real Estate Investor and Marketer. Discover how to outsmart your competitor, ethically dominate the search engines, and legally siphon off tons of cash in hand buyers from your website! Get a customized Free report on what is wrong with your website! InternetMarketingConsultingGroup.com

Controlling Search Engine Spiders for Improved RankingsBy Eric Johnson (c) 2009 When it comes to getting your website listed at the top of the search engines keyword search rankings, it is essential for you to gain a deeper understanding of the search engine spiders that crawl over your website. After all, it is the spiders that determine the relevance of your website and decide where your site will land in the search engine results page. Therefore, by learning how to control the direction of the spiders, you can be certain your website will rise in rankings. Gaining Control with the Help of Robots.txtYou may think that gaining control of search engine spiders is an impossible task, but it is actually easier than you might think when you take advantage of a handy little tool called the robots.txt file. With the robots.txt file, you can give the spiders the direction they need to locate the most important pages on your website while preventing them from wasting time on the more obscure pages such as your About Us and Privacy Policy pages. After all, these pages won’t do much to improve your search engine ranking and won’t help your target market find your website, so why should the spiders waste their time exploring these pages when ranking your site? Another positive aspect to using a robot.txt file is the fact that it prevents the spiders from indexing duplicate pages. This is beneficial because having duplicate content can actually reduce your search engine ranking. So, while you are making changes to your website or working on an area that isn’t fully developed yet, you can instruct the spiders to leave those pages alone until you are ready for them to be crawled. The same is true if you have a blog on your website, as a blog post created in WordPress will show up in the main post page, in an archive page, in a category page and as a tag page. With the help of the robots.txt tool, you can instruct the spiders to look only at the main post page.With the help of your robot.txt files, you can tell the search engine spiders which pages they should and should not search through and index. It is important to keep in mind, however, that the robots.txt tool is meant to be used to prevent search engine spiders from searching certain pages. Therefore, you will only need to use it on those pages you don’t want the spiders to crawl.Implementing the Robots.txt ToolTo successfully use the robots.txt tool, you first need to determine which pages you don’t want the spiders to search. Then, slowly begin making the changes to your site. By using the tool on only one or two pages at a time, you will be better capable of identifying mistakes that you may have made during the process.To make your changes, you will need to add the robots.txt file to the root directory of your domain or to your subdomains. Adding it to your subdirectories will not work. For example, you may add the robots.txt file to a url such as http://domain.com/robots.txt or to http://privacypolicy.domain.com/robots.txt. But, adding it to a subdirectory such as http://www.domain.com/privacypolicy/robots.text will not work. With just one robots.txt file within your root directory, you can manage your entire site. If you have subdomains, however, you will need a robots.txt file for each one that you need to manage. You will also need separate robots.txt files for your secure (https) and nonsecure (http) pages.Creating a Robots.txt FileCreating a robots.txt file is a relatively simple process, as you only need to name your text file robots.txt within any text editor, such as Textpad, NotePad or Apple TextEdit. Your robots.txt file only needs to contain two lines in order to be effective. If you wanted to stop the spiders from searching the archives of the blog on your site, for example, you would add the following to your robots.txt file:User-agent: * Disallow: /archives/ The “User-agent” line is used to define which search engine spiders you want to have blocked. By placing the asterisk (*) here, you are instructing all search engine spiders to avoid the specified pages. You can, however, target specific search engine spiders by replacing the asterisk with the following codes:* Google – Googlebot* Yahoo – Slurp* Microsoft – msnbot* Ask – TeomaThe “Disallow” line specifies which part of the site you want the spiders to ignore. So, if you want the spiders to ignore the categories portion of your blog, for example, you would replace “archives” with “category” and so on. If you wanted to instruct the spiders to ignore multiple sections, you would simply add a new “Disallow” line for each area you want to be ignored. Just as you can name specific areas that you want the spiders to avoid, you can also list specific areas that you want specific spiders to view. For example, while you may want most spiders to avoid a specific area, you may want the MSN mediabot, Google image bot or Google AdWords bot to visit those areas. In this case, you can use the asterisk to instruct all search engines to avoid the area while instructing a specific spider to allow the same area. If you want Google’s Adsense bot to access a folder, for example, you would create the following command:User-agent: * Disallow: /folder/ User-agent: Mediapartners-Google Allow: /folder/You can also use your robots.txt files to prevent dynamic URLs from being indexed by the search engine spiders. You can accomplish this with the following template:User-agent: * Disallow: /*& With this command, you are instructing the spiders to index only one of the URLs that matches the parameters you have set. For example, if you had the following dynamic URLs:* /greatcars/details.php?propcode=ANCHORS&SRCH=tr * /greatcars/details.php?propcode=ANCHORS&vr=1 * /greatcars/details.php?propcode=ANCHORSYour robots.txt instructions will tell the spiders to only list the third example because it will disallow any URLs that start with a forward slash (/) and contain the & symbol. You can use the same strategy to block any URLs containing a question mark by using the following:User-agent: * Disallow: /*? Or, you can block all directories that contain a specific word in the URL. For example, you might create a robots.txt file such as the following:User-agent: * Disallow: /corvette*/With this command, any page with a URL containing the word “Corvette” will not be crawled by the spiders. It is important to use caution when using these directives, however, as they will cause the spiders to avoid all pages containing the word you specify. As a result, you may accidentally block pages that you do want to be indexed. If you do want to block all but one or two pages with URLs containing a specific word, you can create a robots.txt file that specifically allows the page you still want to be indexed. In this case, your robots.txt file would look something like this:User-agent: * Disallow: /corvette*/ Allow: /greatcards/corvettesandvipers/details.htmlIt is also possible for you to instruct the spiders to avoid an entire folder on your website while still allowing it to access specific pages within that folder.About The AuthorPlease visit TopClickMedia for any kind of SEO help.

How to Control Your Listing Text in Google’s Search ResultsBy John Metzler (c) 2009 A Google Webmaster Help video from Matt Cutts released on Nov. 10, 2009 got me thinking how the listing text in Google’s search results can easily be overlooked by some webmasters in their SEO efforts. SEO is all about extending the reach of your web site content to your target market using online search platforms. You can tell when this has been achieved, and to what degree, by using web analytics software to monitor referral and visitor data. But what that data won’t tell you is how your site appears to users in a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Sure, you’re getting traffic but perhaps you’re missing out on a lot more because your listing text is weak. You wouldn’t take out a newspaper advertisement without looking at the final proof first. So don’t be in the dark over how your site appears to people who use Google. Poor page titles, visible copy, and description meta data can result in a weak listing. Webmasters have a lot of control over what text is displayed in a SERP, but in the end, Google reserves the right to modify result snippets if it feels the original isn’t up to par.It’s important to remember that this decision by Google is based on a highly refined algorithm and is ultimately for the benefit of people searching for your content. That said, I’m willing to bet most webmasters still prefer to retain control over how their web site is shown in Google.By ensuring your on-page content is the best it can be, you’re greatly increasing the chances Google doesn’t step in and tweak your listing.Let’s look at the different elements of an organic Google search result and how we can control what is shown.Page TitleThe large blue link at the top of the snippet. As Matt points out in his video, most people know Google can modify the description snippet in the listings but not everybody is aware that Google may also change the title. In this case, it is usually due to a shortcoming with your web page’s title attribute. If the title is missing, too long or irrelevant, Google may show something more on-topic to the search query made.Here are some tips to ensure Google displays the best possible title text to a user: 

• Always ensure that page titles are unique and not just copied page to page across the site.• The page title isn’t something you stuff with keywords. Yes, always include your most important key phrases but don’t provide a long list of everything your web site is about. It should be a concise headline that describes the content on the specific page – personally, I try to use no more than three different keywords or phrases.• Page titles over 60 characters in length are likely to get cut down and manipulated by Google. If the search term(s) appears in a lengthy title tag, it’s likely that a snippet of it will be used where the term appears.

Listing DescriptionUsing the same logic as for the title, the description displayed in a SERP comes from the most relevant area of your web page. IE. – The area of your text containing the word(s) used in the Google search query.The listing snippet is typically generated from your visible copy on the page or the description meta tag. This is a good reason to optimize the description meta tag as part of your SEO campaign. While Google’s algorithm ignores it for purposes of determining rankings, it can still pull the tag’s content and display it to its users. A good description meta tag uses proper grammar and explains the page content in under two or three sentences. Remember, don’t stuff the description tag with a list of keywords. That isn’t helpful for users or the search engines.If you write focused, quality on-page content for your target audience and create a helpful description tag, you should have your Google listing snippet covered. Cache Version of the PageNext to the green URL in your Google listing is usually a “Cached” link. Clicking this will display the version of your web page that was indexed by the Googlebot when it last crawled your site. Also included is the crawl date.Why is this important? Well, if you’ve recently updated your page title or visible copy and the changes are not reflected in Google results, it probably means Google hasn’t returned to check your site’s content for updates.Common reasons for this include few inbound links or existing inbound links of poor quality. If Google doesn’t crawl the pages that link to your site, it stands to reason they won’t visit your site frequently.If you find your site isn’t getting crawled enough by Googlebot or other search engine robots, consider submittíng your site to local business directories or swapping links with other good quality, relevant web sites. The benefits of inbound links also go much farther than just increasing crawl frequency – they will also play a significant part in how well your site ranks.Now that we know the elements of a typical Google listing and the factors that determine what is shown, all that’s left is for you to monitor your site listing for various keyword searches and make changes when necessary.Remember: a top Google ranking doesn’t mean anything unless people actually click on it. Have a look at your competitors’ listings in Google and see how yours compares – which one would you click on if you did a search for that topic? In my experience, there is often room for improvement when it comes to copy writing and content relevancy. In the end, your users and the search engines will like you more for it. About The AuthorWith eight years in the search engine marketing industry, John Metzler of FreshPromo knows what works and what doesn’t regarding website success. His strong grasp on visitor usability and analysis, along with a highly-skilled SEO perspective, can be seen through his professional SEO services. Read the FreshPromo blog for more free tips and commentary.

Bootstrapping Basics Entrepreneurs Need To KnowBy Ellisa Brenneman (c) 2009 Over the last five years approximately 600,000 entrepreneurs pitched first tier venture capital firms in North America and about 15,000 received funding. Your chances of getting funded are 2.5%. This is a fact. Many of those that were funded became quite wealthy and many more failed. Venture capital firms are looking for home runs not base hits. To begin, let’s say you’re having difficulties raising capital for one of a multitude of reasons. You lack an experienced management team with a track record of prior success, your product is still in development, the service you’ve created hasn’t been market tested and you still haven’t refined the sales process. Or, your company may simply not be a “VC deal” or a “home run”, that is, something that will go public or be acquired for a bazillion dollars. Finally, your organization may be a non-profit with a cause like the environment or autism. Does this mean you should give up? Not at all. I could build a case that too much money is worse than too little for most organizations, not that I wouldn’t want to buy a NBA franchise one day to emulate Mark Cuban. Until that day comes, the key to success is bootstrapping. Bootstrapping refers to a group of metaphors that share a common meaning, a self-sustaining process that proceeds without external help.The term is often attributed to Rudolf Erich Raspe’s story The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen, where the main character pulls himself out of a swamp, though it’s disputed whether it was done by his hair or by his bootstraps. Regardless bootstrapping sounds a lot more businesslike and appealing than hairstrapping. What follows is some practical advice for bootstrapping a start-up or small business.First, focus on cash flow, not profitability. Generating revenue and profíts is the key to survival. If you could pay the bills with theories, this would be fine. The reality is that you pay bills with cash, so focus on cash flow. If you know you are going to bootstrap, you should start a business with a small up-front capital requirement, short sales cycles, short payment terms, and recurring revenue. Service oriented businesses or new products in hot market segments come to mind immediately.Next, forecast from the bottom-up. Most entrepreneurs do a top-down forecast: “There are 150 million cars in America. It sure seems reasonable that we can get a mere 1% of car owners to install our satellite radio systems. That’s 1.5 million systems in the first year.” The bottom-up forecast goes like this: “We can open up ten installation facilities in the first year. On an average day, they can install ten systems. So our first year sales will be 10 facilities x 10 systems x 240 days = 24,000 satellite radio systems.” 24,000 is a long way from the conservative 1.5 million systems in the top-down approach. Guess which number is more likely to happen. This is one of the most common mistakes I see entrepreneurs make. Stop dreaming and let’s get real.Hire an affordable mentor or small business coach to provide guidance based upon relevant experience. Most likely they’ve bootstrapped their own businesses in the past. They can provide you with valuable objective advice steering you around potential pitfalls and hopefully save you dollars, along with time, by keeping you from making the same mistakes as they did in the past. They also aren’t going to want equity in your business just by having their name attached to it or request a seat on your board of directors. Most start-up small business entrepreneurs don’t have a “proven team” and you can’t create experience out of thin air. Proven teams are often over-rated anyways. Especially when most people define proven teams as people who worked for a multibillion dollar company for the past ten years. These folks are accustomed to a certain lifestyle, and it’s not the bootstrapping lifestyle. Hire young, cheap, and hungry people. Employees with passion and desire along with low overheads are going to be much more likely to stick beside you during the inevitable ups and downs your business will face. Once you achieve significant cash flow, you can hire experienced supervision. Until then, hire what you can afford and make them into great employees.What type of business is best for bootstrapping you ask? One path to take is to start as a service business. Let’s say that you ultimately want to be a software company: people download your software or you send them CDs, and they pay you. That’s a nice, clean business with a proven business model. However, until you finish the software, you could provide consulting and services based on your work-in-process software. This has two advantages: immediate revenue and true customer testing of your software. Once the software is field-tested and battle-hardened, flip the switch and become a product company. You’ll also have obtained a líst of satisfied clients and developed important industry connections which can be priceless.During the start-up stage be prudent and focus on value. You don’t need the fanciest office furniture, phone system or computers. Look for the best value, haggle and shop around for the best deals. There is no shame is negotiating pricing and terms on almost anything related to your business. Sometimes the best isn’t always the best either; it’s just the most expensive.When it comes to employees make sure new hires have multiple skill sets and can handle stress because if they can’t they’re going to crack or go crazy lowering overall morale in the process. You are the visionary and leader of the company. Your employees need to believe and put their faith in you. Take your time; hire carefully. At times you’ll be asking your employees to do three jobs at once, while learning a fourth, and eating lunch that day at their desk because there’s so much work to be done. Your employees look to you for leadership so make sure to lead by example. YOU are the first one there and the last one to leave. Every day.Go direct and sell, sell, sell. The optimal number of mouths (or hands) between a bootstrapper and customer should be zero. Sure, stores provide great customer reach, and wholesalers provide distribution. But ecommerce was invented so that you could sell direct and reap greater margins. By taking this route you’ll also learn more about your customer’s needs. Stores and wholesalers fill demand, they don’t create it. If you create enough demand, you can always get other organizations to fill it later. Why would a store or a wholesaler put time, money and effort into selling your product or service if you can’t? If you don’t create demand, all the distribution in the world will get you nowhere fast. Sell, sell, sell and if you’re not good at selling one of your first hires better be a superstar in that department.In summary, focus on creating revenue, retain a qualified affordable mentor/business coach, forecast from the bottom up, pick the right business model for bootstrapping, focus on value when purchasing goods and services for your business, take your time to hire the right people and sell, sell, sell. For a small business or a start-up nothing happens until someone sells something to someone. Period. About The AuthorThe author, Ellisa Brenneman, is the owner of Ethos Mentor. Ethos Mentor provides entrepreneurs with affordable one on one mentoring, business coaching and capital raising services so they can launch and grow their businesses. Visit www.ethosmentor.com for additional information or email info@ethosmentor.com to schedule a free consultatíon with a Mentor.

Five Crucial Components of Web DesignBy Woody Longacre (c) 2009 Professional website developers know the importance of web design and the role it plays in making a website successful. Designing a successful website is no easy task, especially for someone who is new to the world of web development. With the help of web development applications many people can and do create decent websites. But decent in most cases is not good enough to make a site successful from a traffic or financial standpoint.There are five crucial components of web design that you must focus on in order to make a site valuable to its visitors and successful for you.• SEO -Getting free traffic to your site.• Usability -Ease of navigating around the site and finding desired information quickly.  • Aesthetics -Visual appeal.• Content -Valid, up-to-date, relevant information.• Graphics -Eye candy that relays relevant visual information to the visitor.SEOBefore you ever lay down a byte of HTML code for a site, you have to know and understand at least the basics of SEO and how it fits into the design. SEO is the art of designing a site in a fashion that gives the site an advantage for obtaining free and abundant traffic.The number one aspect of SEO is selecting keywords relevant to your site. The keywords you select should be based on high usage, low competition and relevancy to your topic. Once you select keywords you can then begin the development of your site. Keep in mind keywords are a critical aspect of the design. The keywords you choose will be applied within the design in strategic fashion to benefit the flow of traffic to your site. To understand more on how to implement SEO you should read and learn more about this important subject. If you don’t, your website success will be difficult to achieve.UsabilityYour website must be easy to navigate and designed in a way that makes it easy to find information. Visitors will not stay long if it takes more than one or two clicks to get the information they want or if it takes brain power to figure out how to get the information they want. One of the goals of your site design is to keep usability easy, and simple. To do this, apply the following three fundamentals of usability.• Provide a site search tool.A visitor in a hurry can quickly find the info they desire then move on to the action they desire.• Provide simple, intuitive and consistent site navigation.This provides visitors the tool they need to leisurely explore their way through your site.• Provide logical and simple to follow content. The message of a site should start off in a simple and basic fashion with well defined links pointing the way to more detailed information or explanation as needed.In the cases above, the goal is to make it easy for your visitor to find the information they want without frustration or difficulty. Doing this well will have a positive effect on increasing the return of your visitors.AestheticsA website has to look clean, uncomplicated and strike a balance in layout that is pleasant to the visitor. Pleasing aesthetics come about when the colors of a site complement each other, the graphics blend and lend continuation of the theme and the layout brings unity and openness to the page.Often overlooked by novice designers is the color palette of the site. While you can select color in a willy-nilly fashion and still provide a visually appealing site, a better idea for color selection should be based on an understanding of the color wheel and proven color strategies.Many web designers often view a web page as an opportunity to blast a visitor with lots of information in hopes this will convince the visitor to take action. Usually this results in a quick exit due to the overwhelming visual effect and complicated look. A better approach is to provide less content and open space (referred to as white space) to allow visitors eyes to scan and explore with ease.ContentAn important feature of any website is the quality of the text content. Visitors come to a site expecting to find answers to their questions, solutions to their problems or for entertainment value. The content offered at your site must be well-written and without grammatical or spelling errors. It also has to be relevant to the theme of your site, with valid, up-to- date information for your visitors. Content is King!GraphicsYou can have a functional and usable website without graphic elements. However, if there are similar sites to yours that employ graphics, guess which site will get the most traffic. The necessary companions to any well-designed site are the images and illustrations that grace its pages. The images can’t be any willy-nilly graphic that you might think is cool. Graphic imagery has to support your branding, and communicate the message you are trying to convey. Before you incorporate graphic elements into your site, take some time to look around the web. Notice what looks good and how elements are laid out. These same layouts techniques can be used as models for your site.The Internet is a highly competitive business arena. To be successful with a commercial website, you have to keep these five crucial web design elements in mind. Contrary to what many will tell you, it is rarely possible to have commercial success without the benefit of a professional website. This is not to say that you must hire a professional, however you must implement professional design elements to improve your chances for success. About The AuthorWoody Longacre, Internet Web Design. We invite you to visit the Web Hosting Goods Store for Web Design Services, Web Hosting, and Domain Registration.

The Last Word in PPC vs. Article MarketingBy Valerie Mellema (c) 2009 There is always a big discussion when it comes to comparing two of the best ways to advertise online: PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising and article marketing, otherwise known as “organic” or “natural” search engine optimization. There is no denying that both methods can be effective. However, which method is better? Which gives you a bigger bang for your buck? You may get varying statistics on this issue, depending on which website you visit for information. Oh yes, this matters, because you have to consider the source of the statistics and who is sponsoring the article. For example, two sources of information (respectively, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and ComScore) recently produced studies indicating that PPC advertising was more cost-effective on average. However, did the fact that Yahoo/Overture and Google were sponsoring this major study play any role in determining the final outcome? Of course it did – those are the two biggest PPC companies on the net!In figuring out which of the two is better, you have to consider cost-effectiveness as well as click-through-rates and direct conversion from visiting user to paying customer. We are going to review some statistics a little bit later on. For now, let’s consider some logical points that illustrate how PPC and article marketing differ. Search engine result pages display more listings than PPC results, which does have a psychological effect on the user. For some users seeing ten search results (each one relevant to the search) is enough to convince them that there is enough web information on the subject and that “fishing” PPC ads might not be necessary.The catch is that in order to actually rank in the Top 10 SEO results for your keyword, you have to have relevant website content, not to mention technical prowess in HTML coding. Search engines will be focusing on their proprietary algorithms, or the most relevant websites based on the search term queried. There is no “bribery” here, whereas in PPC, it is quite the opposite: whoever bids highest for each word usually gets the top listing. A quality algorithm definitely plays a part in PPC, but in the end money talks. In article marketing, we haven’t quite come to the point where “money talks”. The best websites still win the search engine contest and that is an important factor to consider in your marketing campaign.Even PPC proponents will admit that PPC is largely style over substance. With PPC advertising you are trying to grab attention in just a few loud and occasionally obnoxious words. You direct the user to a carefully crafted page that “sells” the idea. This operation contrasts with article marketing, which doesn’t necessarily sell an idea on a single page, nor does it grab attention with a few words. With article marketing, there is an entire article waiting for the visitor, which uses a methodical and “indirect” approach. Assuming you are listed in the Top #10, your listing means that the search engine agrees that your website is the best authority on the keyword subject – for the time being. People in a hurry or on a whim will probably click on PPC. People on a mission will be looking for relevant content on their chosen keyword.Therefore, the question now becomes which methodology works better for your business? Are you appealing to the fast clicker or the thoughtful user? Let’s now consider two sources of statistics for a clearer view of the issue. First, one in favor of article marketing, the next in favor of PPC.In Favor of Article MarketingJakob Nielsen, Ph.D. and principal founder of the Nielsen Norman Group researched the behavior of users who found search engine results pages and noticed some trends. Forty-two percent of users selected the #1 search listing for their result, leaving 58% that selected another Top 10 Result. The #1 site listed held the majority of clicks. This indicates that almost two thirds of Internet users were not content to choose even the #1 listing on a natural SEO search. That means that these users (and the majority of all users) are actually using independent judgment in deciding what links are most relevant to their needs. Other related statistics (with sources from ComScore, Webxico, iProspect, SEOResearcher and Hotchkiss, Garrison, and Jensen) concluded that 77% of search users choose organic listings over PPC ads. There were also studies that suggested organic click-through generated 25% higher conversion rates than equivalent PPC click-through.In Favor of PPC AdvertisingNow to be fair, we have to consider some advantages that PPC advertising has. The best feature PPC has is that it gets instantaneous results. SEO advertising takes time, especially if you have a new website just submítted to the all of the major search engines. Yes, this can be frustrating. PPC brings you immediate traffic and sometimes brings in thousands of users. Seeing your Alexa ranking take a drastic jump certainly pumps up your adrenaline!ComScore recently published statistics in favor of PPC, stating that their studied users had an 18.3% click-through-rate on “paid” search results versus a 4.3% click-through rate for organic search results. The conversion rate was also higher according to ComScore, stating that PPC had a 1.4% versus SEO’s 0.6%. The Real Issue: LongevityHowever, the downside here (even if you didn’t contest these suspicious results) is that instant and high volume traffic is, frankly, cheap and not as exciting as it first appears to be. Remember that when you use PPC ads you are making a pitch and capitalizing on your audience’s curiosity. When that curiosity fades, they forget your website – especially if it’s just a glorified advertisement. PPC campaigns can also be costly and time consuming when you consider your duties as a manager.Another problematic scenario with PPC is that they have no staying power – unless of course you have thousands of dollars a month to blow in this recession. With article marketing you get more quality traffic, and perhaps more importantly to you, you earn customer trust over time. Internet users aren’t stupid, the popularity of Yahoo Answers notwithstanding. Most users know that PPC ads usually aren’t relevant to their search – they’re just there because someone is consistently paying to get noticed.You can consider article marketing as an investment that continually pays all through the life of your company (or until you shut the website down) since it generates traffic forever. You can easily spend thousands a month on a brilliant PPC campaign and soon run out of money, meaning your ads go extinct. Therefore, we can conclude that article marketing does have specific advantages over PPC, which are intrinsic because of the differences in operation.•     Article marketing generates traffic forever•     Article marketing improves your natural SEO ranking and backlinks•     Article marketing establishes trust – you appear as a professional in your industry•     Article marketing doesn’t cost you extra on top of fees spent on websites, landing pages and superfluous domainsHow About Return-On-Investment?ROI is another key issue, as short-term and long-term profit must equal out. Article marketing, by some authorities appears to have a slower ROI -(especially if you make revenue on CTRs). However, studies suggest that organic ROI is more consistent than PPC. Consider some independent research conducted by popular blogger Gord Hotchkiss who explained the situation in crystal clear terms. Let’s say you have 50 high traffic search terms. Now for these 50 terms, there are 2.8 million searches being launched in a month. If statistics like ComScore’s are correct and unbiased, that translates to 456,000 visitors thanks to PPC and 153,000 visitors thanks to article marketing.The total cost of those 456,000 PPC visitors would amount to over $500,000 with an average CPC of $1.18. Even if you work with an SEO company that charges top dollar ($10,000 a month, let’s say) you’re still paying $10,000 compared to half a million. That means article marketing’s virtual CPC amounts to $0.07. Even if you apply PPC’s higher conversion rate, 3,647 converted visitors, you are paying $147.08 for each individual person. Compare that to 611 visitors you earned through article marketing – you are paying $16.37 for each visitor. And in doing so, you are also earning a higher quality of customer and generating traffic until the end of days.Does your final ROI number take into account your total expenses? Absolutely! While both methods of advertising have their place online, when it comes to earning quality traffic, article marketing gets the last word. About The AuthorWords You Want is your one stop resource for all of your writing needs. Words You Want offers a variety of services including SEO packages, article directory submission, SEO article writing, ghostwriting, eBook writing, travel writing, equine writing and more.

Blogging Your Way to the TopBy Scott Van Achte (c) 2009 It is no real secret that a well written topical blog can significantly help out your website – so why aren’t you doing it? The most common reasons I hear for not starting a blog involve a lack of time to write posts, and limited ideas to write about, but taking that extra time to get some useful content out there can do wonders for your search rankings among other things.An established blog that is updated regularly gets spidered by Google often, and increases the chances of new search rankings considerably. I have seen multiple situations where regularly updated blogs wind up ranking #1 in Google for relevant phrases literally within a couple hours of posting. It usually takes a well established website and blog to make this happen, but there is big potential if you do things the right way. While blogs work best if updated multiple times per week, even those with a new post every week or two have advantages. Blogs don’t have to be a major undertaking, spending only an hour or so a week on posting can have you seeing results in no time.There are many advantages to adding a blog to your website. Here are a few. 

Increased RankingsBy boosting your topical content, you increase the value and relevance of your site. The more new stuff you add, the more of an authority you make your site, and this helps to improve your overall search rankings. It can also help you obtain rankings for “long tailed search phrases”.Long tailed search phrases are those that are less commonly searched, and usually exceed 3 or 4 words in length – they are also very targeted to your product or service. Blogs are great for getting rankings on long tailed search phrases. If you see a long tailed search phrase you want to rank for, use the phrase as the post title (if it makes sense to do so) and write a good, content rich post about it and your ranking potential for this phrase will rise.By writing blog posts with your target phrases in mind, you can often help improve your overall rankings by increasing the relevance of the site to that search phrase. Consider also linking to other relevant pages within your site from the post.Increased TrafficBlogs are great for increasing traffic. Aside from the added traffic you may see from search ranking improvements, if your blog is interesting and topical, you will get some repeat visitors to your site as readers check back for new posts. If people really like your blog, they will spread the word, resulting in even more visitors. Just think, have you ever emailed or instant messaged a friend with a link to an article you have read? Don’t you want your link to be the one passed around?

CredibilityBy blogging regularly about your industry you will help to establish yourself as an expert. Many of your potential customers will see your blog and notice that you know what you’re talking about and be more likely to utilize your services. By sharing your knowledge it can help to instill trust onto your visitors which can actually result in increased conversions. There are a lot of faceless, anonymous websites out there – an active blog can help people relate to you and trust you.LinksA good, well written blog can result in free one way links to your site. Sometimes it is as simple as a fan adding your link to their blog roll, and other times it may be RSS working its magic. Try to squeeze in a link or two into your posts and direct them to other internal pages on your website. If anyone then republishes or syndicates your posts on their sites, you will also end up with a relevant back link. (If you would like some other ideas on link building be sure to check out Ways to Increase Link Density & Building Links with Directory Submissions )A blog is not a magic bullet used to skyrocket your inbound link counts, but it can certainly help.

What Platform To UseI am a firm believer in the power of WordPress and the seemingly unlimited plug-ins available to help you. That said, just about any blog platform will work. It is probably best to stick with the main stream providers as they tend to have more options available and better support forums in case you get stuck with customization issues. In the end however, any search friendly blog platform will ultimately do the trick.Blog Post IdeasIf after reading this you are sitting there thinking, “What should I write about?” here are some ideas to help you get going:• New product launches• Press releases• Industry relevant news• How to’s related to your product or service• Answers to reader comments• Posts revolving around relevant long tailed phrases• In depth product descriptions or tutorials• Company history or interesting stories• Reviews of related products, services or online toolsBlogs are relevant for pretty much all industries, and they don’t have to take a lot of your time. A little creativity can help you come up with ideas for posts, just try to think outside the proverbial box.If you’ve been putting off the blogging idea for some time, consider getting started now. There is much to gain and very little to lose. About The AuthorScott Van Achte is the Senior SEO at StepForth Web Marketing Inc.; based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read more of Scott’s articles and those of the veteran StepForth team at news.stepforth.com or contact us at www.stepforth.com