Niche Info Online Business: April 2008

Maximize Traffic With 10 SEO Power Tips

How do you know what type of content is really going to attract the right searchers?

In this article I wanted to cover a few very basic tips that you can keep in mind when building high-performance strategies. Remember that good search engine marketing is not about trying to manipulate or "fool the search engines." Good SEO skills are more about creating genuine relevancy for well-written content that deserves to be found because it is truly the most relevant and useful to your audience of readers.

What students quickly discover in the 5-Day classes is that the optimization skills are not nearly as hard as many people make them out to be (even for the most competitive phrases,) once you've been trained and understand the full scope of influences that are at work. The biggest advantage that we have had is all about the "accuracy of information."

1. Write content that your audience is already looking for within the last 90 days.

True keyword research is not about 'guessing at keywords' but its all about researching actual data. How are your SEO research skills using Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery? At the SEO Workshops we teach much more than the traditional "keyword research" methods. We help students learn "Keyword Forensics" and how to quickly tap into the hidden niche trends that 99% of most Webmasters never even notice.

2. Does your Web copy speak to the reader or does it speak about yourself?

Remember that your Web site should be focused on your audience first and appeal specifically to a niche interest. When writing your Web copy, you need to dialog in an appropriate tone and format for the right audience. Some of the most interesting content will have more appeal if it speaks to your audience in terms of "you." You can, you might, you will, yours, your and you're INSTEAD of we, ours, we're, we will, we can, etc.

3. Focus on writing for the human audience first and search engines second.

While search engine optimization is important to your visibility, try writing your content first. Most people don't write their best when trying to optimize and create content at the same time. Focus on creating highly useful content that is extremely focused on one topic per page. Once you have completed your writing so that you are pleased with it, then go in to do a mild re-write for the search engines.

4. Tips for triggering idea generation and giving your strategies a unique twist.

While many people seem to spend time exploring their competitor's Web sites, we encourage you to lead the way with new ideas. Try not to be obsessed with what the competition is doing, but be creative and start your own new trends. Spend just a little more time working on your projects this week than you did last week. Setting yourself apart from the competition is easier than you might think and gives you a huge advantage over others.

5. Creating your content so that it "speaks" to a specific audience of visitors.

Think of how your Web copy reads and ensure the dialog flows smoothly. Read your work out loud and see if you can improve the tone of your message with natural expression. Keep your specific audience in mind. How you write for senior citizen (in tone and in format) may differ considerably from writing for an audience of for example "new parents." Always ask yourself "what is important to these readers?" Rely on researching accurate data to eliminate guess work.

6. Remember strong calls to action

Without a firm call to action, don't expect the reader to naturally guess at what you want them to do next. Plain ordinary dialog that asks the reader to take the next action will usually work best. Dialog that is written for voice (similar to the way a broadcaster writes to project their personality.)

7. Build your search engine optimization skills in the beginning with the "stress free" approach.

If you are new to SEO, you may want to focus on the long tailed niche phrases since most searchers are doing fairly descriptive and intelligent searches these days. Ideally you want to attract those who already know what they are looking for and just need to find your pages more easily. With practice and the right training you can go after highly competitive phrases too but you'll find that the best conversions nearly always come from the niches. Also remember that it is the basic SEO skills that carry you through and must come before any of the advanced strategies. The result will be stable top rankings that stand the test of time with minimal fuss.

8. Give your readers a non-threatening reason to respond right now.

What is the objective for your page and does your Web copy work effectively at fulfilling that objective? It may not always be about trying to sell a product or a service. It should not be about fulfilling your needs first but it should be about meeting the needs of why that searcher first conducted a search. Meet their needs and deliver up something that satisfies their search first and then give the visitor a non-threatening reason why they might respond to you. Do you want their e-mail address? Or do you just want them to pick up the phone and call? Never lose sight of the fact that the Web is a marvelous two way interactive experience, if you want it to be. Make your Web site a vehicle for relationship building and remember that many readers may actually have the desire to interact and participate through Blogs or other "User Generated activity." Give your visitors something that involves their participation.

9. Remember that your readers always want to feel like they are in control of their Web experience.

People often use the Web for researching topics of interest or doing preliminary price comparisons or for looking up information. While most people explore the Web for their own purposes, the more that you put them in control of their experience the better. If appropriate, you may want to consider adding additional tools or functionality to your Web site in order to enhance its usability for your specific audience.

10. Did you know that if you write your content so that it naturally "reads very well."

You will naturally gain some bonus for having created content of quality. By this, I mean content...that reads well to a human being. Don't stuff keywords all over the place. Instead, use moderation in everything you do. One of the things you need to understand is that "theme based" search engines like Google, are actually using a measure of artificial intelligence (AI) to measure how well your article "reads" based on all of the overall context of your body text (other than the keywords) based on data that a search engine has gathered concerning a specific topic. This is great news for writers because if you are making a transition to writing for the web, you'll find some search engines are literally rewarding pages that are "well written."

About the Author:
John Alexander has taught live SEO Workshops since 2002 at http://www.SearchEngineWorkshops.com as well as Online Webinars at the SEO Workshop Resource Center at http://www.SEW-WRC.com.

Kapital Bank launched disbursal of car loans under 12% per annum for 3 year

Baku, Fineko/abc.az. Kapital Bank OJSC has introduced automobile loans under quite low annual interest rates.

The Bank has informed that a new form of crediting, a KB car loan, differs from similar loans of other domestic banks.

“Features of this loan is low interest rate: for three-year period in manats - 12% per annum, in US dollars or euro - 13% per annum, for two-year period in manats - 13% per annum, in US dollars or euro - 14%. In this type of crediting there is not a necessity of initial instalment. The loan is given only to individuals for purchase of an automobile,” the Bank said.

The loan recipient is required to pay all annual interests at the primary level.

For the rest period of the loan, the loan recipient needs to pay precisely cost of the automobile (without interests).

The automobile is insured on its full value and before the loan period expiration.

Currently domestic banks extend car loans under 18%-25% per annum, but a range of suppliers give automobiles in leasing under 9-10% per annum.

Profits from personal loans

Borrowers are facing increasingly high repayment terms on personal loans, according to new analysis.

The trend has become even more marked in the last fortnight, with a host of lenders pushing up selected rates. These include Barclaycard's rise of 0.5 per cent, Lombard Direct increasing by one per cent and NatWest by 2.5 per cent. Barclaycard has also withdrawn its best buy loan through its Masterloan brand. It is the latest sign that lenders are looking to shore up profits in the face of the credit crunch.

Michelle Slade, an analyst at Moneyfacts, which conducted the research, said: "It's not only mortgage rates that continue to increase, so too have the rates and monthly repayments on personal loans… Since the beginning of the year more than half of lenders offering personal loans have made changes to their rates."

Black Horse has increased rates for those looking for smaller loans by as much as 11.0% points, adding £52.68 in additional interest on a £1,000 loan paid over one year.

Larger loans have also been hit. NatWest has increased rates on a £25,000 loan over five years by 1.5% points, adding £1,015.20 to the total cost.

Despite the hikes, there are still some good deals available to those who shop around.

Moneyback Bank, Britannia BS, Yorkshire Bank and Clydesdale Bank have all reduced selected rates since the beginning of the year.

Anyone looking to take out a £5,000 loan with Yorkshire Bank or Clydesdale Bank will have seen rates reduced by as much as 7.0%.

It is worth bearing in mind that smaller loans cost more in interest. Black Horse for example now charges 27.9% on a £1,000 loan over one year, but only 16.9% on a £7,500 loan over five years.

Another tip is to avoid Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) from the loan provider. PPI has been subject to an investigation by the Financial Services Authority, the City regulator, following complaints that the policies were mis-sold and people were unable to claim because of caveats in the policies.

The cover also has one of the poorest payout records in the industry: only 20% compared with 80% for car insurance, for example.

If you do want to take out the cover you can expect to pay up to £20 to protect each £100 of monthly mortgage repayment if you go with your loan provider. Someone taking out a £10,000 loan with Yourpersonalloan.co.uk, at a rate of 6.9%, would pay £196.56 a month without PPI but £236.32 with the cover.

Independent firms offering PPI such as Britishinsurance.com and Paymentcare.co.uk are up to 50% or more cheaper, charging around £8 a month for the above loan.

Nationwide reveals steep drop

Nationwide's measure of house prices has suffered its first annual fall in 12 years and the pace of monthly decline is increasing, Britain's largest building society reported today. The last time house prices fell year-on-year was March 1996.

Prices are now 1 per cent lower than this time last year, taking £1,759 off the average price of a home in Britain, which is now £178,555.

On a monthly basis, the average price of a home fell by 1.1 per cent in April, twice as severe as economists had expected. That ratcheted up the pace of decline and represented the sixth consecutive monthly drop in prices. The average price in March was down 0.7 per cent, the figures showed.

A polling of 30 economists by Reuters had forecast house prices to fall in April on average by 0.5 per cent.

The monthly drop has only been matched over the past year by the declines in October and November. The pace of decline slowed marginally during December and January but since February has picked up.

Fionnuala Earley, chief economist at Nationwide, poured cold water on hopes voiced by the Chancellor last week that the Bank of England's £50 billion injection of capital into the banking sector would loosen the mortgage market.

Ms Earley said: "The scheme is unlikely to mean that house prices and mortgage lending will return to levels seen at this time last year. Weakening housing sentiment and demand, unrelated to the financial turmoil, will mean that we should expect slower market conditions."

Homeowners and househunters have been hit by a triple whammy of tightened lending criteria, withdrawal of mortgage products and a jump in monthly repayments as thousands come off cheap deals.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders estimates that 1.4 million borrowers will be coming off cheap fixed rate deals this year.

Ms Earley said: "We estimate that a further 400,000 borrowers will come to the end of tracker or discount deals over the whole of 2008, and these borrowers may also face a fairly significant payment shock."

Howard Archer, chief economist at Global Insight, said that he could not rule out mortgage lending remaining depressed until the middle of next year.

He said: "Banks need sufficient funds for responsible lending but the days of 100 per cent loan-to-value lending are definitely gone. I would be surprised if lending picks up suddenly — my view is it will remain depressed for an extended period."

The number of mortgages taken out fell by nearly 50 per cent in March, according to figures from the British Bankers' Association, as the mortgage drought left buyers scrambling to secure home loans in the wake of the credit crunch.

Global Insight forecasts a 7 per cent fall in house prices this year, followed by a 9 per cent decline next year. "I could easily see prices dip by over 20 per cent over the next couple of years," Mr Archer added.

Savills, the property agency, asseses the chances of a 25 per cent slump in house prices over the coming two years at 25 per cent, and a 6 per cent slide at 60 per cent.

The gloomier scenario is based on job losses spreading beyond the financial sector to other industries such as housebuilding.The construction industry is braced for tens of thousands of job cuts after Persimmon, the country's largest housebuilder, said that it would stop building on new sites until market conditions improve. Some contractors feared that the downturn could be worse than the slump between 1989 and 1994, when 500,000 construction workers were laid off.

Ms Earley was keen to differentiate the current housing market from the crash in the early 1990s, saying that the vast majority of homeowners were today benefiting from relatively low interest rates.

The Bank of England cut interest rates this month by a quarter percent to 5 per cent, the the third such cut in five months. During the late 1980s and early 1990s interest rates spiralled up into double digits.

Ms Earley said: "Overall, some groups of borrowers will certainly feel the effects of higher mortgage rates but around 85 per cent of borrowers will be seeing no impact or will benefit directly from reductions in the Bank rate this year.

"This is good news for the overall stability of the housing market and is a significant factor that differentiates the housing market of today from that of the late 1980s and the early 1990s. Back then a much higher proportion of loans were on variable rates and as a consequence were hit quickly by the sharp increase in the Bank rate in the late 1980s. This was a major factor behind the collapse of the market in the 1990s."

Banks and mortgage lenders have, however, faced criticism for their reluctance to pass on cuts in Bank of England base rates to new and existing mortgage customers.

Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest are cutting their new mortgage rates by between 0.1 and 0.3 per cent.

However from today Abbey will have only one deal left for homeowners with 5 per cent equity — a five-year, fixed-rate deal charging 6.99 per cent interest.

From tomorrow Nationwide will offer loans for 95 per cent only to existing borrowers or people taking out a three-year, fixed-rate mortgage.

Earlier this month Halifax said that it would increase one of its two-year fixed mortgage rate deals from 6.09 per cent to 6.59 per cent, adding £46 a month to repayments on a £150,000 loan.

On a two-year tracker, the rate has increased from 1.49 per cent above base rate to 1.99 per cent, to give a current rate of 6.99 per cent.

Global Insight predicts that the Bank of England may by June cut interest rates by another quarter-point to 4.75 per cent, with rates falling as low as 3.75 per cent by early 2009.

oil refinery strike begins as petrol tankers set sail

By Andrew Alderson, Jasper Copping and Richard Gray
Last Updated: 10:45am BST 27/04/2008
Staff at the Grangemouth oil refinery began their 48 hour strike this morning, as preparations were made to ship fuel from Europe to prevent pumps from running dry.

Operators Ineos have already shut down the plant - Scotland's main fuel supplier - in preparation for the strike by Unite union members.

An emergency convoy of seven tankers carrying 65,000 tons of fuel, mostly diesel, is due to arrive from Europe in the next few days.

The shipments from Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Gothenburg will be unloaded on the river Forth, Scotland's busiest shipping lane. They will provide enough fuel to keep Scotland running for nearly 10 days.

Officials hope that the deliveries will avert the panic buying that was spreading south of the border yesterday, with the first pumps running dry in the north of England.

Announcing the deliveries, Alex Salmond, the First Minister of Scotland, said: "From across Europe, unprecedented supplies of additional fuel are arriving in, and heading for, the Forth over the coming days to make up for the loss of production at Grangemouth refinery in Stirlingshire."

Mr Salmond said public servants would be urged to cut their use of petrol and switch to public transport where possible. "By pulling together we can minimise the disruption Scotland faces."

As concern grew, the Government admitted the country faced a "challenge" to keep fuel on garage forecourts.

The Forties oil pipeline, Britain's biggest, was due to shut completely from 6am today because of a 48-hour walkout by 1,200 workers at the Grangemouth refinery in Stirlingshire.

As fuel shortages and queues spread south from Scotland, there were isolated reports of garages out of petrol.

At Peter Marwood's Total Garage in Richmond, North Yorks, some pumps ran dry as the filling station was overrun with motorists. Jeff Savage, a cashier at the garage, on Darlington Road, said: "This morning was manic. People were panic-buying, desperate to fill up."

John Hutton, the Business Secretary, urged Britain's 33 million motorists not to panic buy and suggested the strike would create problems if they started to stockpile petrol. "There is every reason to believe that we will get through this period sensibly if people continue to buy fuel sensibly, too," he said. "But of course there is going to be a challenge if people change the way that they consume fuel."

He said a national emergency plan - in place since the fuel protest of 2000 - would only be triggered by a shortage of supplies which, he said, would not be the case for "a significant period of time".

Petrol and diesel prices are soaring, with the average price of unleaded petrol poised to top £5 a gallon (£1.10 a litre). A small number of garages were already rationing customers, with some permitting each motorist to buy just £10 worth of petrol. Others have been accused of profiteering.

In Edinburgh, the forecourt was virtually empty at the Shell garage at Crewe Toll, with most nozzles out of use. A sign on one pump said "diesel only".

Diesel had run out at the BP station on Edinburgh's Queensferry Road, and the Shell station on Glasgow's Woodlands Road. The Shell garage at East Marketgaite, Dundee, was out of petrol, with staff saying they did not know when they would receive another delivery.

Val Pattinson, 47, the manager of a petrol station in Blaydon, Tyneside, where she has worked for 13 years, said she had not seen anything like it since 2000. "People are panic buying. We are always a busy garage but it's been extremely busy and the fills people are doing are very large. You are going to get the hauliers coming here for fuel and to fill up and that's when we will run out. I just don't think there is any need to panic-buy at all."

INEOS, which owns Grangemouth, accused Unite, the striking union, of jeopardising future jobs and investment. "They are holding the country to ransom. This is the first time in living memory that the whole plant has been shut down," a spokesman said.

Experts predict it could be two or three weeks before the company is back in full production. It is estimated the pipeline closure will cost the economy £50 million a day.

The Forties pipeline brings in 700,000 barrels of oil a day from the North Sea - 30 per cent of Britain's output - as well as 2.8 billion cubic feet (80 million cubic metres) of gas a day.

Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat transport spokesman, said: "The price of oil is going in only one direction and that's upwards and fast. We need to start weaning ourselves off our dependency on oil."

What On Earth Is An Algorithm?

Each search engine has something called an algorithm which is the formula that each search engine uses to evaluate web pages and determine their relevance and value when crawling them for possible inclusion in their search engine. A crawler is the robot that browses all of these pages for the search engine.

Google has a comprehensive and highly developed technology, a straightforward interface and a wide-ranging array of search tools which enable the users to easily access a variety of information online.

Google users can browse the web and find information in various languages, retrieve maps, stock quotes and read news, search for a long lost friend using the phonebook listings available on Google for all of US cities and basically surf the 3 billion odd web pages on the internet!

Google boasts of having world's largest archive of Usenet messages, dating all the way back to 1981. Google's technology can be accessed from any conventional desktop PC as well as from various wireless platforms such as WAP and i-mode phones, handheld devices and other such Internet equipped gadgets.

Page Rank Based On Popularity

The web search technology offered by Google is often the technology of choice of the world's leading portals and websites. It has also benefited the advertisers with its unique advertising program that does not hamper the web surfing experience of its users but still brings revenues to the advertisers.

When you search for a particular keyword or a phrase, most of the search engines return a list of page in order of the number of times the keyword or phrase appears on the website. Google web search technology involves the use of its indigenously designed Page Rank Technology and hypertext-matching analysis which makes several instantaneous calculations undertaken without any human intervention. Google's structural design also expands simultaneously as the internet expands.

Page Rank technology involves the use of an equation which comprises of millions of variables and terms and determines a factual measurement of the significance of web pages and is calculated by solving an equation of 500 million variables and more than 3 billion terms. Unlike some other search engines, Google does not calculate links, but utilizes the extensive link structure of the web as an organizational tool. When the link to a Page, let's say Page B is clicked from a Page A, then that click is attributed as a vote towards Page B on behalf of Page A.

Tobacco firms ‘colluded on cigarette prices’

Eleven big retailers and two tobacco companies are facing a government-backed inquiry into allegations that they colluded over the price of cigarettes.

Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda, as well as Imperial Tobacco and Gallaher, were among those accused of increasing profits illegally by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) yesterday. Cigarette brands at the centre of the investigation include Embassy, John Player Special, Lambert & Butler, Benson & Hedges and Silk Cut.

The initial findings are part of the latest OFT clampdown on alleged anticompetitive practices and could result in fines of tens of millions of pounds.

Anti-smoking groups said that the findings of the OFT showed the cynicism of tobacco companies and retailers that trade in cigarettes.

"The hypocrisy of the industry knows no bounds," said Deborah Arnott, the director of Action on Smoking and Health. "While complaining bitterly about tax increases, these companies have been raising the price of cigarettes to fill their own coffers while hiding behind the screen of tax rises."

The investigation by the OFT found that the companies were illegally coordinating the prices of brands to increase their profit margins.

Some companies coordinated to link the price of some brands to rival products. Others arranged to swap information on future pricing.

In a statement, the OFT said that the named companies struck deals that "restricted the ability of each of these retailers to determine its selling prices independently" between 2000 and 2003.

Gallaher, Imperial Tobacco, Asda, Sainsbury's, Shell, Somerfield and Tesco were also accused of exchanging proposed future retail prices through a third party between 2001 to 2003. First Quench, which trades under several names including Threshers, Morrisons and the Cooperative Group, is also among those named in the inquiry. Each company now has about two months to respond to the OFT's statement of objections.

Companies involved in anticompetitive pricing practices can face fines of up to 10 per cent of the relevant annual turnover. Penalties can be cut if businesses cooperate with an investigation.

The OFT declined to say whether any of the companies have applied for leniency or admitted illegal collusion. It is understood that most of the companies named in the investigation are preparing to fight the allegations.

The clampdown was prompted in part by new laws and international pressure. This month the OFT announced an investigation into price-fixing in the construction industry.

The largest fine imposed to date was the £121.5 million levied on British Airways last year over a conspiracy with Virgin Atlantic to fix passenger fuel surcharges on transatlantic flights. Virgin escaped financial penalty because it had blown the whistle to the OFT.

On Thursday the watchdog won a critical High Court ruling over its efforts to regulate bank overdraft charges. The decision clears the way for a further hearing to decide whether the charges are actually unfair and, if so, what a fair charge should be.

A final defeat for the banks in the courts would result in a bill for well over £1 billion in repayments.

Critics have complained that these costs are likely to be passed on to current account holders in charges.

Tesco denied any wrongdoing. "We do not believe that Tesco has acted in a way that has harmed consumers," a spokesman said yesterday.

Imperial Tobacco said it would respond to the allegations in due course. "Imperial Tobacco takes compliance with competition law very seriously and rejects any suggestion that it has acted in any way contrary to the interests of consumers," a spokesman said.

Do-It-Yourself SEO A Beginners Checklist

There have always been do-it-yourselfers succeeding at web promotion and search engine optimization. In fact, many of the established businesses offering web services today came from humble beginnings, perhaps nothing more than a college student with a laptop, an internet connection, and too much free time. The Web evolves as the result of the innovation and experimentation of individuals. The sharing of knowledge. The do-it-yourself attitude.

As text link brokers and mass link networking decrease in value and use in social media increases, it becomes more important for companies to have an internal approach and awareness of search engine marketing. Don't get me wrong; outsourcing to SEO firms is still a smart option. That said, making the most out of Web 2.0 usually requires some level of cooperation between SEO firm and site owner. You don't need to be an expert to know the basics of good SEO practices, and that added knowledge will be a great advantage whether you're working along side an SEO team, or promoting your own site in your spare time.

So if you're on a "need to know" basis with SEO, the following points should illustrate what an overall plan should include:

1. Create Search Engine-Friendly Content

Unique web content is your most valuable asset, and ensuring search engines can read it is crucial. Text embedded in images or Flash cannot be read, so make sure you use important keywords, headings, and hyperlinks in plain text form. Instead of using images as navigation links, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) makes it easy to format those links to look more like 'buttons', thus creating powerful anchor text as well as making it visually appealing. Use heading tags properly and don't try to hide keywords or text by making it the same color as the page background or shrinking it so it can't be seen. Make sure the keywords you wish to rank high for are used frequently in the page copy but within reason.

Now that you've created good content, is it actually being crawled? Copy and paste a page's URL into a search engine to see if it has been indexed. If you've just created the page, it may take a few days to show up. Aside from age, many factors can lead to web pages not being indexed by search engines, such as duplicate content (ie. a printer-friendly version of a page might be indexed and the normal version not, or vice versa); links generated by JavaScript instead of HTML; poor site architecture (ie. using too many sub-directories); lengthy, dynamically generated URLs using special characters; and orphaned pages.

2. Choose Your Keywords Wisely

One of the first steps of SEO, this one needs to be done properly the first time or all your future efforts and promotion could end up being wasted. Start by writing down general terms that describe your products, services or web content. Use keyword research services to investigate word and phrase variations. Wordtracker, KeywordDiscovery, and the Google AdWords suggestion tool are good starting points. The goal is to find those niche phrases that your target market uses to find sites just like yours and optimize your site for them. If the phrases do not get enough use by searchers, your profits from ranking for them will be low. At the same time, stay away from general terms that are tougher to rank for (ie. like "art", "computers", "business", etc.) as a great portion of the traffic will be irrelevant and you'll break the bank attaining such competitive phrases.

3. Get Others to Link to Your Site

In theory there are countless ways, some traditional and some quite innovative, to get other web sites to link to yours. In practice, it can be easier said than done. Google defines a link as it pertains to rankings and SEO as a "vote" from one site to another. The more quality votes your site receives, the greater chance you have of rankings well. If a well established site links to yours, that link carries more weight than one would from a mom & pop shop or less reputable page.

If your site has useful content and is doing something unique, you're already ahead of much of the competition. People need a reason to link to your site, as very few will do it out of the goodness of their heart. Trading links can work, but link exchange networks have decreased in value and won't be of much use in competitive fields. Buying links, if you haven't heard, is a big Google no-no. While entire articles could be written on this topic, here are a few popular methods of acquiring incoming links:

- issuing company press releases with a link back to your site
- submitting to reputable business directories such as Yahoo! and Business.com
- be active on related blogs by commenting and exchanging ideas
- if you have clients with web sites, ask if they would mind adding your link in a "partners" section
- participate in relevant forums and discussion boards with a link in your signature
- write and submit original articles to web publications in your field with a link in your bio
- get involved in social media and bookmarking

4. Join the Social Media Revolution

The collaboration between Internet users and the development of online communities is at an all-time high. Social bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Furl, Reddit, and Technorati offer users a way to store their favorite pages and media online, and share it with others. These services also provide a way to promote your own content or create a buzz over a product or service. Creating a Myspace page or Squidoo "lens" is also a way to network and share information.

However, if your goal is to generate sales then you must offer something without the promotional hype. The reality of social media is that popularity is based almost entirely on public interest. If your information or media isn't unique or of interest to anyone, you cannot force success using social media communities.

The key to using social media and bookmarking sites to your advantage is to not be shy. Network with other users, bookmark and share useful content, create eye-catching titles for your entries, and tell your friends and co-workers to vote on content you have on these sites.

These four points are a general guideline to follow for SEO. Search engine optimization experts and firms are a good outsourcing option in competitive markets, while the DIY attitude can yield great results for web site owners with smaller marketing budgets. If you're in the latter group, hopefully this helps get you started.

About the Author:
John Metzler has held executive positions in the search engine marketing industry since 2001. He is the Founder of FreshPromo, a Canadian-based SEO firm and updates his blog regularly

Yahoo! and Microsoft, Search Engine Partners

How Mergers and Acquisitions May Change the Search
Engine Playing Field - and Where Google Comes In
By Scott Buresh (c) 2008

Until recently, there were five major players in the search engine world: Google, MSN, AOL, Ask.com, and the Yahoo! search engine. These top Internet search engines quickly could be narrowed down to four, however; AOL uses the Google algorithm and will yield nearly identical results. Further narrowing is rapidly occurring - Ask.com seems to be stepping out of the spotlight to focus on specific markets, and in early March 2008, Microsoft began attempting to purchase the Yahoo! search engine. If there are just two top search engines with which to be concerned, what does this mean for your business and for SEO as a whole?

What's Going On with the Yahoo! Search Engine?

As almost anybody with access to a news source knows by now, Microsoft put in an unsolicited offer to purchase the Yahoo! search engine in early March 2008. Yahoo! rejected this offer at first, saying that it undervalued its company as one of the top engines (and a provider of other services, including email and chat as well). Microsoft did not increase the offer at this point; it instead decided to enter a proxy battle.

A proxy battle would involve Microsoft putting up its own board of directors to let shareholders decide if its purchase of the Yahoo! search engine would be acceptable or not. In essence, Microsoft has decided that it will attempt to convince shareholders that their interests are better served by people who will approve this acquisition between two of the top Internet search engines. And Yahoo! shareholders have been beaten down for some time, so it is widely expected that the majority will in fact favor this acquisition.

Meanwhile, Yahoo!, on spurning this offer, began talking with other companies in order to build strategic partnerships and keep itself as one of the top engines, as it had been for so long. It was rumored that MySpace's parent company, News Corporation, was in talks to work with the Yahoo! search engine, as was Google. However, these talks seem to have fizzled, and Yahoo!'s board of directors has begun speaking directly with Microsoft's board. Yahoo! bought a bit of time by delaying the election of its board, but it is believed that this is all the shareholders will stand for at this point.

So I'm assuming that if the acquisition goes down, the Microsoft search engine and the Yahoo! search engine will likely be using the same algorithm, even if they remain separate sites. It just makes sense not to spend the money to have two separate research departments, especially when the Yahoo! search engine is widely regarded to be superior to Microsoft's.

Will Ask.com Continue to Be One of the Top Internet Search Engines?

For a time, Ask.com seemed to be trying to go head to head with Google and to position itself as one of the top Internet search engines - period. You may remember the "algorithm" ads that it ran for a time on television. However, recently Ask.com announced that it will instead be tailoring itself to the niche market share of which it already has control. In other words, they're no longer trying to be all things to all people in the way that other top search engines like, well, Yahoo! and Google are.

What we know about Ask.com's demographic is that it is largely female, although Ask.com refutes the notion that it is focusing on "older women." According to an article in Forbes, an Ask.com spokesperson said that:

...reports of the site becoming oriented towards older women are false and were fueled by an erroneous Associated Press article that has since been changed. Ask acknowledged that married women do compose a lot of its core users and these matronly queries are often dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia type queries - as well as categories like health and entertainment(1)...

Seeing as Ask.com also laid off 8% of its staff at the same time that it refocused, it seems clear that the company is no longer aiming to be considered one of the top Internet search engines.

And this means that we are down to two search engine technologies dominating the entire landscape: Google and a MSN/Yahoo! search engine hybrid (Micro-hoo? Yah-soft?).

How Will This Affect Consumers?

If there truly are only two major top Internet search engines, the industry will be like Coke vs. Pepsi. Sure there are other, smaller players like RC Cola that some people will be brand loyal about, but for the most part it's either Big Guy One or Big Guy Two.

And this means that businesses that had good rankings and that were getting good traffic from, say, Ask.com and MSN but not the Yahoo! search engine, will be in a bind. With only two top Internet search engines, there will be less real estate to compete for and the same number of businesses vying for this real estate.

How Will This Affect SEO Companies?

In one sense, having only two serious engines makes the job easier for search engine optimization companies - there's just less algorithms to absorb and master. However, it makes the opportunity for volatility much more likely. Before, if the Google or Yahoo! search engine changed its algorithm, you had three or four other engines to fall back on while you worked to update your practices. But with only two major players, a tweak to either the Google or MSN/Yahoo! search engine algorithm could have much further reaching implications to individual companies in the search space.

Who Will Compete Next?

Google has been coasting for many years as being seen as the underdog in the industry - the cool, hip engine to use that's not owned by the big guys. However, search engine optimization practitioners have started to see some cracks in that veneer. The truth of the matter is that Microsoft is seen as a huge corporate conglomerate, with Google starting to be seen similarly. And now Google has to answer to shareholders, rather than just going along trying "not to be evil." Google has its own set of privacy issues and conflicts of interest, such as its recent purchase of DoubleClick, which came along with a SEO company. [See my recent article A Slippery Slope: Google Owns a Search Engine Optimization Company on this topic for more information.]

So when there are just two top Internet search engines, the door is opened for competition. If another company can come along technologically that is on par with the Google and Yahoo! search engine algorithms and that does not have huge corporate considerations, it could very well start gaining some market share in this space. I'll let you know if I see any contenders.

Sources

1.
Forbes.com

(c) Medium Blue 2008

About The Author
Scott Buresh is the founder of Medium Blue, a search engine optimization company. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including MarketingProfs, ZDNet, SiteProNews, WebProNews, DarwinMag, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide.

Japan warns on oil prices after pirates attack tanker off Yemen

By Russell Hotten
Last Updated: 1:00am BST 22/04/2008

Oil and gas prices have hit new highs, spelling more pain for consumers and businesses. Oil reached a record $117.40 a barrel at one stage yesterday, dragging up the price of gas to a new peak, amid concerns about crude supplies after a Japanese tanker was attacked in the Middle East and militants blew up a Royal Dutch Shell pipeline in Nigeria.
The head of Opec dashed hopes that members of the oil producers' cartel might help ease prices by opening the taps, telling a conference in Rome that there is no shortage of crude on world markets.

Oil for May delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose to a record $117.40 a barrel, before falling back to $116.63. Oil prices had touched $117 on Friday. In the UK, gas for delivery over the next six months rose 5.1pc to 83.6p a therm.

Malcolm Wicks, UK energy minister, acknowledged that the rises are hurting. He told the conference: "Record prices for energy are hitting businesses and they're hitting the domestic customer." But there is little the Government can do, with prices being driven by geopolitical events and speculation by oil traders.

Yesterday, off the coast of Yemen, a Japanese tanker was hit by a rocket. Meanwhile, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta warned that it would intensify attacks on Shell pipelines.

Abdalla Salem el-Badri, secretary-general of Opec, said on Sunday that oil prices would likely go higher, but that he doubted there was a need to raise output. "Oil prices - there is a common understanding that has nothing to do with supply and demand," Mr el-Badri said. Over the weekend, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that crude oil prices at $115 a barrel are too low, and that oil must "discover its real value".

However, Opec was warned that high energy prices threatened economic growth. "Oil prices are at an extraordinary high level today," said Akira Amari, Japan's economy, trade and industry minister. "I have been repeatedly stating my strong sense of crisis that the global economy would suffer a setback if these conditions are left as they are."

Rising food prices a silent tsunami

By Rosa Prince, Political Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:12pm BST 22/04/2008

Rising food prices are a "silent tsunami" which threaten to be as devastating as the worst natural disasters, an international conference has been warned.

Josette Sheeran, of the World Food Programme told Gordon Brown and other political and business leaders that the international community needed to respond as effectively to the hunger crisis as it did to the 2004 tsunami which killed 250,000 and left 10 million destitute.

"This is the new face of hunger - the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are," she added. "The response calls for large-scale, high-level action by the global community, focused on emergency and longer-term solutions.''

Her comments follow a call by the Prime Minister for an "agricultural revolution," to encourage poor farmers able to take advantage of technological solutions to grow high-yield crops.

Mr Brown admitted that British shoppers were already feeling the effects of the highest global food prices since the war, but warned the impacts on the world's poorest countries were catastrophic.

He added: "The World Health Organisation now views hunger as the number one threat to public health across the world, responsible for a third of child deaths and 10 per cent of all disease.

"Tackling hunger is a moral challenge to each of us and it is also a threat to the political and economic stability of nations. So I believe we need to see a fully co-ordinated response by the international community."

"I want to see an agricultural revolution that helps poor farmers in developing countries to grow more and we need to ensure more of the food they produce gets to market rather than being left to rot, as more than half is at present.

"A large 'aid for trade' package will be crucial to help poor farmers build storage facilities, better roads and develop the capacity to sell their products in our markets.''

Mr Brown has already written to G8 leaders calling for action on food prices. The aim of the summit is to develop a plan to take to the EU in June, the G8 in July and a special meeting of the United Nations in September.

Unveiling a £455 million food-aid package, Douglas Alexander, International Development Secretary, said: "We will work with key international institutions, such as the World Bank, IMF and United Nations, to develop a comprehensive approach that will help put food on the table for nearly a billion people going hungry across the world."

Meanwhile, the Trade Minister, Gareth Thomas, also warned that environmental campaigners may be fuelling poverty by persuading people to not buy food which has been flown in from Africa.

He added: "People shouldn't assume that buying food from abroad is worse for the environment than buying from the UK. It's not that simple.

"The livelihoods of a million African farmers are threatened by a misinformed food miles debate that might put shoppers off their produce - for example Dutch roses use more energy to produce than Kenyan roses."

Another threat to the third world, highlighted by My Brown, is the drive to convert farm land to produce biofuels could result in starvation for millions.

Until now, the Government had been a strong supporter of the use of biofuels grown from cereals such as maize as a means to reduce carbon emissions.

But in an article ahead of a Downing Street summit on global food prices, the Prime Minister said that hunger was now the world's number one threat to human health - and warned biofuels may be exacerbating the problem.

But the Prime Minister raised concerns that the use of farmland for energy crops may be adding to the global surge in food prices.

In this country, the price of some basic food items has risen by four times the rate of inflation, with cheese, eggs, butter, bread, milk and chicken all increasing by more than 10 per cent in the last year.

In his article for the Downing Street website, Mr Brown admitted the UK needed to be "more selective" in its support for biofuels, which it had previously championed as a means to tackle global warming.

Under the terms of the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation, all petrol and diesel must now contain a proportion of biofuel.

Mr Brown said the new fuels were "frequently energy inefficient," but added: "We need to look closely at the impact on food prices and the environment of different production methods and to ensure we are more selective in our support.

"If our UK review shows that we need to change our approach, we will also push for change in EU biofuels targets."

Phil Bloomer of Oxfam, who is attending the summit, welcomed Mr Brown's change of heart, saying: "Setting mandatory targets for biofuels before we are aware of their full impact is madness. "Not only are biofuels pushing up food prices, but they are also linked to human rights abuses and land-grabs from the poor."

Also attending the summit are representatives from the World Food Programme, the African Development Bank, Oxfam, Save the Children, the National Farmers Union and Sainsbury's.

Worried shoppers 'turn to cash'

Worried shoppers are increasingly spending with cash instead of credit cards, a survey by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) has suggested.

A survey of 17,000 shops found cash was used for 60% of transactions last year - up from 54% in 2006 - and accounted for about a third of all money spent.

The BRC said it showed a reluctance by people trying to control their finances to spend money they did not have.

Director general Stephen Robertson said cash was "alive and thriving".

"Hard-up customers are increasingly reluctant to spend money they haven't actually got in their hands," he said.

There should be a lower fixed fee per [card] transaction which actually reflects the cost of processing

Stephen Robertson
British Retail Consortium

"While total retail spending continues to grow, there is a widening gap between the amount spent in cash and the amount spent using cards, suggesting customers want to keep tight control of their finances."

The BRC Cost of Collection report also argued debit and credit card companies should cut the amount they charge retailers.

It said a £20 transaction in cash cost the retailer around 4p, but a shopper paying by credit card would cost them more than four times that amount.

Mr Robertson said the charges were "unjustifiable" and cost customers because retailers were forced to pass them on.

"There should be a lower fixed fee per transaction which actually reflects the cost of processing, so new technology brings balanced benefits to retailers, consumers and banks," he added.

EU probe

The underlying charges for accepting the cards, levied on shops by card issuers, have been under regulatory scrutiny for a long time, both in the UK and in Europe.

Since 2000 the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has been investigating the interchange fees imposed by Mastercard and Visa and is expected to rule shortly.

Last month the EU began an investigation into the charges made by Visa when a credit card user shops abroad, and last year Mastercard was criticised by the European Commission for charging cross-border fees on credit and debit card transactions.

The payments industry says the charges reflect the fact that payment to the retailer is guaranteed, even though the customer has not paid the credit card company yet.

Wall Street eyes more earnings this week, including Bank of America, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo

By Madlen Read, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- The stock market has reacted well to the recent stream of glum earnings. But this week, Wall Street faces an even bigger flood of first-quarter results, and as General Electric Co.'s bleak report earlier this month showed, bad earnings can even hurt a stock market with low expectations.

Out of the 30 components that make up the Dow Jones industrial average, Bank of America Corp., American Express Co., Merck & Co., McDonald's Corp., AT&T, DuPont, Boeing Co., 3M Co. and Microsoft Corp. will be reporting quarterly results this week.

Other big technology players besides Microsoft -- notably Yahoo Inc. and Apple Inc. -- are also scheduled to release earnings. So are toy makers Hasbro Inc. and Mattel Inc., homebuilder Pulte Homes Inc., and shipper UPS Inc.

Overall, Wall Street has been pleased with how companies fared during the first quarter. Their upbeat mood, however, is relative. After months of shocking news -- financial institutions on the brink of failure, demand sapped in the credit markets, and declines in the nation's payrolls and discretionary spending -- even poor earnings gave investors relief.

A case in point is Citigroup Inc., which along with Google Inc. and Caterpillar Inc. helped the stock market soar Friday. Citigroup posted a first-quarter loss that was wider than the average analyst estimate, but compared to its even-bleaker results in the fourth quarter, the first three months of 2008 looked practically decent.

"The takeaway from that is that the news is still bad, but it's not catastrophic," said Claire Gruppo, the co-founder of the boutique investment bank Gruppo, Levey & Co. "There's an underlying fear factor that it's going to be an unmitigated disaster. So when it just continued to be pretty bad, there's a 'phew' factor."

Last week, the Dow finished up 4.25 percent, the Standard & Poor's 500 index ended up 4.31 percent, and the Nasdaq composite index rose 4.92 percent.

Though sentiment on Wall Street is clearly better than it was earlier this year, the market can rise only so much due to mediocre news -- no matter how much investors have already priced in a recession.

For retailers, Gruppo said, "the month of March was the worst March in 13 years. We haven't seen that reflected yet in the earnings for retail. That will be another blow to confidence."

And General Electric's profit decline and lowered forecast on April 11 caused the Dow to plunge more than 250 points.

Meanwhile, with the housing market still weakening, the nation's economic and credit troubles are likely to last for a while. Economists surveyed by Thomson Financial/IFR predict the National Association of Realtors will report on Wednesday that existing home sales fell in March, and that the Commerce Department on Thursday will report that new home sales also fell that month.

Landing Your Dream Job

Do you have a job that's just like everyone else's? Are you looking for a 9-to-5, but wish you weren't? Do you wish there was another option, one that would lead to an exciting, unique, and fulfilling line of work?

I recently interviewed more than 100 people who currently hold their dream jobs as research for a new book called "How'd You Score That Gig?" These individuals, who are travel journalists, event planners, fashion designers, forensic scientists, interior decorators, Internet business owners and more, have one thing in common -- persistence.

As unattainable as a dream job might sound, with the right amount of forethought and preparation, you can make the move as well. Following are six tips to get you started.

1. Learn about yourself.

Take time to do a self-assessment of your values, how you like to work, and what you'd be compelled to do even if you never got paid. Research careers and industries that map to your skills and interests. Hit the Internet, set up informational interviews, take relevant coursework, and arrange to go onsite at a company in your chosen field.

2. Don't be deterred by a lack of experience.

In developing a resume and other promotional materials for the field you want to pursue, think about how your current skills and talents apply to the responsibilities you'll hold in the new job. For example, knowledge of project management, client relations, information technology, and sales will take you far in most types of careers.

3. Ease into a new career one foot at a time.

Perhaps this means earning a paycheck at your current job while doing a part-time internship in your new field, or taking an adult education class or workshop on the weekend. The only way to find out if you're passionate about something is to try it -- ideally with as little risk as you can manage.

4. Remember that any progress is good progress.

Even confident people stay in unsatisfying jobs because they feel safe, and because they're afraid of making a bad decision. But in the quest to uncover a source of meaningful work, though, your worst enemy is inertia. Make an effort to do one thing, like emailing a networking contact or attending an event -- that moves you a bit closer to your big-picture goal.

5. Start early.

Twenty- and thirty-somethings have more flexibility when it comes to test-driving different careers. The process of self-discovery is much easier when you're unencumbered by family responsibilities and substantial financial burdens, and when you haven't yet reached a level in a career where it's tougher to turn back. That said, it's never too late to pursue your passion. More and more baby boomers are leaving the world of traditional employment for alternative career paths that will fulfill them well into retirement age.

6. Have realistic expectations.

Even if you're lucky enough to hold your dream job, there's no such thing as the perfect work situation. Every job has its ups and downs, and aspects we love and aspects we don't love. And "dream job" doesn't mean "cushy job." As your mom always told you, anything worth having in this world requires some effort. There will be some days you feel like shutting the alarm off and going back to sleep, but many more where you feel more energized by the prospect of work than you ever thought possible!

Alexandra Levit is the author of "How'd You Score That Gig: A Guide to the Coolest Careers - and How To Get Them" (scorethatgig.com). She speaks at corporations, universities, and conferences around the country about workplace issues facing young employees, and her career advice has been featured in more than 800 media outlets.

Monetize Your Traffic and MaximizeYour Income

By Alexander Marlin

Establishing your own E-commerce site is not like what it used to be. There are thousands of competition that is all too willing to get a bigger share of the pie. Every scheme and method you can find to augment your sales would be very beneficial.

We have got to admit to ourselves. Most of us are into it for the money. We are not going to waste our time and effort just for the fun of it. Many sites would not wait until hell freezes over just to see their profits. While there are some who takes things lightly there are always those who would rather see profit any given day.

It is common knowledge that without traffic we have no business. Like any business, without any customers you don't get sales. Traffic represents all the people that gets a chance to see what you have to offer. The more people who see your products the more people there would be to buy them.

Nobody puts up an E-commerce site that doesn't expect profit. We have a startup capital that needs to be regained. With a consistent traffic, we at least have a fighting chance to achieve that probability. Monetizing your traffic would optimize your chances of making the best out of it.

Making Money out of your Traffic

http://how-to-build-website.com/FindHotNiches

The best and most proven method of making a profit out of your traffic is using advertising. The internet generates hundreds of thousands upon hundred of thousands of traffic everyday. Most of them are searching for something. While some are just looking for information there is also a good percentage that is looking for something that they need.

The internet has proven to be a very reliable source in finding what was deemed to be a very unsearchable product. The internet has made the world a smaller place; you can advertise a product from the depths of Istanbul and still find a buyer from the center of Philadelphia.

Generating traffic is not an easy task. You have to contend with a great number of sites to generate a good number of traffic flow. But if done successfully this could open up a Pandora's Box of possibilities. One of the benefits is monetizing your traffic flow.

So, to get to the core of it the more traffic you generate the more likely you are considered as a desirable, desirable, in a sense that a good traffic flowing site is easily convertible to profit. Basically traffic equals profit. Advertising is the name of the game; with the good advertising scheme you can use your traffic flow to your advantage.

When you have good traffic you have a good number of potential customers, customers that are willing to pour money into your coffers. Other than that these are also traffic that can be redirected to sponsored links that are willing to pay you for a sizeable portion of the traffic that you have generated.

This scheme is called "pay-per-click". With every click a visitor of your site makes on an advertised link you will be paid. The more traffic you generate and the more clicks that happens would spell to more profits.

Affiliate Programs

Another method of monetizing your traffic are affiliate programs. You can link up with other tried and tested sites and online companies and monetize your traffic by having a percentage of sales generated by traffic coming from your site.

The basic idea is, traffic generated from your site will go to another site that can offer a product that you do not carry. Many programs can keep track and make records of transactions that was made possible because of site linkage.

When purchases are made by customers that was led by your site to their site you get a percentage of that sale. Affiliate programs would give you the benefit of monetizing your traffic without the actual need of carrying or promoting a certain product.

There are so many ways and methods to monetize your traffic. All it takes is a bit of hard work and the desire to successfully launch a profit-earning site. The internet is a veritable source of information, many tips and guides are offered everywhere in how to monetize your traffic and make your site a good profit earner.

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