Reciprocal links are (still) not dead

Reciprocal links are not dead. Weren't dead before. Aren't dead now. I know it and you know it. But for just a second let's pretend otherwise.

A while back there was quite a bit of scare mongering going around the SEO industry about how reciprocal links were dead. I had a potential client once tell me that so-and-so-big-name-in-the-SEO-industry told them that reciprocal links were dead. I've said this before and I'll say it here again.

There is nothing wrong with reciprocal links. It's all about how you use/implement them that matters. No, reciprocal links are not dead and now I have the proof.

Last year I decided to run my own test so I could refute what I already knew to be true. Yeah, I know who cares about reciprocal links now, right?

The fear tactics have run their course and, frankly, nobody is engaged in old-school mass reciprocal link swapping (for the love of God people, if you're still doing that, knock it off!) But for the sake of science and posterity, I now, over a year later, present the results of my (almost forgotten) reciprocal link test.

The Set-Up

On one of my sites I created a master testing page. From this page I linked to eight new pages created specifically for this test. Each of those pages contained a few paragraphs of content with the word "reciprocallinksarenotdead" linked to an external web site. The goal was to watch the search results to see what sites appeared in the SERPs for our test term.

For the sake of creating a good testing ground, we linked to four sites that linked back and four sites that didn't. From here we split things up even further by linking to two sites in each group to that we considered to be "high authority" for their industry, and two that we considered to be "lower authority" for their industry. We then split this again using one to link using the target site's keyword in the link and the other not.

The Sting

I started out checking up on this daily seeing if Google, Yahoo or MSN cached the pages linking out and then watching if/when they showed up in the SERPs. The result was quite a roller coaster ride. One day the test pages would be cached and the next day the cache date was from several days prior. This happened frequently. The same thing with the SERPs. One day all the test pages would show up and the next day gone and then the next day just some of the test pages showed up and the next others, but not necessarily the ones from the previous day. It was interesting to watch.

After about several weeks of daily monitoring I started to cut back to every few days, then weekly then, well I kind of forgot about it with the occasional thought "Hey, I wonder how that test is going", in which I'd take a quick look and forget all about it again. Here we are now, over a year later and I think I can confidently display the results as definitive.

The Results

Google's result page:

1. Low authority, non reciprocating site
2. Low authority, non reciprocating site (keyword in link)
3. Low authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
4. High authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
5. Test page linking to #9 below
6. Test page linking to #2 above
7. Low authority, reciprocating site
8. High authority, reciprocating site
9. High authority, non-reciprocating site (keyword in link)

Google supplemental results show the remainder of the testing pages. Missing from SERPs: High authority, non-reciprocating site.

Yahoo's result page:

1. Low authority, reciprocating site
2. High authority, non-reciprocating site
3. High authority, reciprocating site
4. Test page linking to #8 below
5. Test page linking to #2 above
6. Low authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
7. Low authority, non-reciprocating site (keyword in link)
8. High authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
9. Link to a blog post that uses keyword as part of the URL

Missing from SERPs: Low authority, reciprocating site, High authority, non-reciprocating site (keyword in link)

MSN's Result page:

1. High authority, reciprocating site
2. Test page linking to #10 below
3. Test page linking to #1 above
4. Low authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
5. Low authority, non reciprocating site (keyword in link)
6. Low authority, non reciprocating site
7. High authority, reciprocating site (keyword in link)
8. High authority, non-reciprocating site
9. High authority, non-reciprocating site
10. Low authority, reciprocating site

The Happy Ending

We can conclude from that that, all things being equal, reciprocating links have no more or less value than one-way links.

Yeah, I know, we all read Matt Cutt's post about how excessive reciprocal linking can hurt, and I'm sure Matt is right. But the key word there is "excessive".

If all you do is look for low-quality reciprocal links that ad no value to any user's experience then, yes, that can, and should do you some harm. But don't be afraid of reciprocation. If someone links to you out of kindness, feel free to link back to them out of gratitude. It's not going to hurt you one bit and the link to you won't be devalued. Just be sure you're adding value, not reciprocating for the sake of reciprocating.

Top 6 reasons why your search engine rankings have dropped

Have your rankings dropped recently? Before you do anything, you should try to find out what has caused your ranking drop.

The better you understand the reason why your rankings dropped, the better you can prevent your website from future ranking drops. There are six major reasons for ranking drops:

1. Your website changes

Most webmasters update their web pages regularly. As long as the changes are only small, this won't have a big effect on your rankings. However, if you re-design your web pages or if you optimize a page for a new search term then search engines might re-calculate your search engine rankings.

Google even has a filter for changed web pages. If you change your web pages, Google will temporarily apply a filter to your sites. Details can be found here.

Required action: If you have web pages with high search engine rankings then you should change these pages with great care.

2. The links to your website change

If you have an old website with a grown inbound link structure then it's not likely that your site rankings will drop because of a link change.

If the links to your site are mainly paid links that suddenly disappear or get discounted by Google then the loss of these links can be enough to cause a significant ranking drop.

In addition, sudden changes in the linking structure of a website make your website suspicious.

Required action: If you heavily rely on paid links you might want to reconsider your linking strategy. Try to get inbound links that last.

Continually getting links is essential to keep high rankings. If you don't work on your links then your website will be replaced by better linked web pages in the search results.

3. The websites of your competitors change

Everybody wants to be on Google's first result page. For that reason, it's only natural that other websites will be listed better than yours if you don't react.

Many websites target the same keywords as you do. If these other websites have better content and better links than your site then it's only natural that these sites get better rankings.

Required action: You must offer better content than your competitors. Make sure that you offer many web pages that are relevant to your search terms and that you have better inbound links than your competitors.

4. Spam elements on your web pages

Search engines don't like spam. If search engines find out that you use cloaking, hidden text, doorway pages or any other spam technique on your web pages then it is extremely likely that your website will be penalized.

Required action: Remove all spam elements from your web pages. Just because your website hasn't been penalized yet doesn't mean that search engines won't find the spam elements in the near future.

5. Search engine algorithm changes

Search engines are continually improving their ranking algorithms. While most changes are rather subtle, some ranking algorithm changes can have a major impact on the rankings of your web pages.

Required action: Wait for some days to find out if the ranking drop is not just temporarily. Then optimize your web pages so that they reflect the latest search engine algorithms.

6. Technical problems

Your web server can be the reason for a ranking drop. If your website is down when the search engine spider tries to access your website then search engines cannot give your web pages high rankings because they don't know your pages.

Some websites display the correct web page in the web browser but the server returns an error code. In that case, search engines won't index the web pages.

Required action: Make sure that your website is hosted on a reliable server that has no downtime. Check the HTTP status code that your website returns.

Almost any website owner will see a significant ranking drop sooner or later. Don't panic if this happens to you. Try to find the reason for the ranking drop and then act accordingly.

Website marketing: Reality check

Editorial By Anne Kennedy

November 2001: Think about it. The top of anyone's mind is a very cluttered place these days. Rising above the signal to noise ratio requires repeated impressions focused directly on your target market. Repetition increases perception and so, builds awareness.

Nowhere is this more true than on the Internet, which comprises around two billion pages, with 30,000 new ones added every day. Effective placement in online media such as search engines and directories is essential to making sure the users who are looking for your site succeed in finding it.

How do you interest your target market in looking for your website?

Simple: promote your website, even if you have an established offline business. If you don't, how will your target audience know what you are doing and why it is worth their while?

Use as many offline tactics to promote your online business as you can afford: advertising, media relations, direct mail, trade shows. In addition, take advantage of emerging online promotion tactics. And of course, optimize your website for searches.

Then, be sure your website delivers on your value promise. This is essential to increasing your conversion rate, the number of visitors who complete the transaction you want them to at your site.

Whether eCommerce, or supply chain exchange, your website must work for the user. Technology is an arena in which you truly get what you pay for. The experience, knowledge and expertise to produce an effective business online doesn't come cheap. If you didn't pay much, you most likely didn't get much.


[Sidebar] Ten Tactics Online

1. List in a business directory for your industry
2. Buy an ad in a newsletter your target market reads
3. Launch opt-in email marketing campaign
   
4. Use promotions on you site to encourage repeat business, e.g. discount prices, coupons
   
5. Start your own affiliate program with related websites
   
6. Purchase positions for targeted keywords
7. Use a button to your site for branding
8. Make registration very visible to capture user information and create your own email database
9. Send an email newsletter, in text, to maintain interest in your website
10. Create your own links page to add value and visibility.

Protect Your Brand With SEO Research

Feature article By Paul J. Bruemmer, TrademarkSEO.com

In today's competitive environment, many advertisers resort to using competitor trademark names as keywords in paid-search advertising. These trademark names appear in the search engine results pages for Google, Yahoo! and affiliates and partners when you buy Google AdWords or Overture Precision Match sponsored listings. Therefore, it's possible for your competitors to drive substantial traffic to their web sites by virtue of your trademark name, using your reputation to attract visitors.

A fine example of this is the sticky situation with Google AdWords. In an Internetnews.com article titled "Google Adwords Under Further Trademark Scrutiny," Google was quoted thusly:

"As stated in our Terms and Conditions, advertisers are responsible for the keywords and ad text that they choose to use. We encourage trademark owners to resolve their disputes directly with our advertisers, particularly because the advertisers may have similar advertisements on other sites."

I can certainly understand Google's position. Can you imagine what would happen if it were forced to reverse its policy allowing advertisers to buy keywords containing trademark terms belonging to others? This would severely impact Google's revenue, and no doubt would require exhaustive efforts on their part to prevent such activities from occurring.

It's interesting to note that originally, Google AdWords did not sell trademarked keywords. However, it currently sells trademarked keywords in the U.S. and Canada (but not internationally) with the proviso that the trademark name can't be used in the ad copy itself.

The Best Defense is an Offense

Is there any way to protect yourself from competitors raiding your trademark? One way is to hire an SEO vendor to help identify your competitors and then research their search engine advertising activities. Your legal department can subsequently use the SEO research data to protect your trademark and reputation. This step will prove invaluable toward defending your future and ongoing business.

Most often, it will be the smaller, "wannabe" companies riding on your coat tails by using your trademark terms as keywords in their advertising. These companies will generally avoid the threat of legal action upon receipt of a cease and desist letter. Not only are you protecting your name and reputation, you are crushing the competitors that you don't want representing your firm.

Building Your Marketing Network

Another benefit of mining this competitor data is to assist those whom you do want to benefit from using your trademark name. For instance, you may have affiliates, resellers, and a number of associates with whom you can negotiate on a recurring basis. These are the folks you trust with your trademark and reputation -- your friends and family marketing network. There's something in it for you when they profit from your success.

Knowing who is using your trademark in keyword search advertising or in the body text of their web site has a directly positive effect on managing your brand, your trademark, and your reputation. Make sure your SEO vendor covers this critical marketing aspect for your online success.

A Word of Caution

It goes without saying that you don't want to use trademark names other than your own in keyword phrases. Profiting from the use of another company's trademark or brand without relevance or permission is unacceptable and could even result in legal action against you.

Reviewing the above information on trademark term research while interviewing SEO vendors will help you to identify those vendors who provide added value to your search engine marketing and optimization campaign. ----

Paul J. Bruemmer is founder of trademarkSEO. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including ClickZ, MarketingProfs, Marketing Today, WebProNews, SitePoint, SEO Today, SEO Consultants, MarcommWise, Pandia, B2B Interactive and Search Engine Guide. TrademarkSEO is a search engine optimization firm based in Santa Ynez Valley, California and serves clients nationwide. His company provided search submission services to over 10,000 websites, including many of the most prominent names in American business.

Current and Future Search Trends:What the Top Internet Search Engines Are Doing

By Scott Buresh (c) 2007 Medium Blue
The future of search is unclear – what is clear is that change is rapidly happening for all of the top Internet search engines. Google as always is the frontrunner for many of these search trends, but even little guys like Ask.com are making waves. In this article, I will attempt to cover some of the more interesting search trends that are occurring today with the top Internet search engines – but I am by no means being comprehensive about the subject. Things are changing on a weekly, or sometimes even daily, basis, and future articles will cover additional developments in depth.

Universal Search

In May 2007, Google – the leader among top Internet search engines -- got people talking (again) when it rolled out its latest search concept, Universal Search. Universal Search was Google's attempt to create a single page of search results, rather than separate pages for types of results, such as videos, images, maps, and websites. When it was first introduced, many search engine optimization firms raced around exclaiming that this was one of those search trends that would change everything and that new optimization rules should be created and followed immediately.

I published an article in early 2007 in which I noted, "The problem with Universal Search is that it can muddy the results, and it can also introduce irrelevant results that a searcher cannot use."[1] I also wrote, "Clearly, Universal Search will change how an SEO campaign is run if it catches on. But this is a real if - users' search habits are hard to change overnight, even if you are Google and you essentially define what searching is and how it works."[2]

And in fact, Universal Search didn't quite take off the way Google had hoped. A post on MediaPost's Search Insider by Mark Simon boldly states, "Universal Search will probably not be viewed as the greatest Google fiasco since Google Video, but it's clear that it's failed to deliver on the vaunted promises made by Marissa Mayer back in May."[3] So will we see more of Universal Search, or will it be quietly put to the side? Will other top Internet search engines want to use it for themselves? Only time will tell, but it seems like Google needs to do a lot more work before users really warm up to it.

Personalization and Personalized Search

Personalization on the other hand seems to be one of the search trends working very well for Google and many of the other top Internet search engines. In an article I wrote a few months ago, I said "The basic principle behind personalized search is simple. When you go to Google and type in a search query, Google stores the data. As you return to the engine, a profile of your search habits is built up over time. With this information, Google can understand more about your interests and serve up more relevant search results."[4]

As it works right now, if you use a Google product (Gmail, Google toolbar, AdWords, etc.), Google is keeping track of what you search for and what websites you visit, and it's then tailoring your results appropriately. Search for "bass," and Google will know whether you mean the fish or the instrument. As I pointed out, though, there are major issues with search trends like personalization:

Privacy issues that arise from personalized search are also a big question. The EU recently announced that it is probing into how long Google stores user information (this probe was subsequently extended to include all search engines). AOL recently committed a serious blunder when it released search data from 500,000 of its users, and it was discovered that it was fairly easy to identify many people by the search terms that they use... [5]

Yet if nobody makes a fuss about this, then it's very likely Google – and the other top Internet search engines - will start tracking everyone behind the scenes, whether they use a Google product or not.

It's actually already starting – right now, the cookie Google places on your machine (did you even know they did that?) will expire in two years – but they won't really expire at all. According to the official Google blog:

In the coming months, Google will start issuing our users cookies that will be set to auto-expire after 2 years, while auto-renewing the cookies of active users during this time period. In other words, users who do not return to Google will have their cookies auto-expire after 2 years. Regular Google users will have their cookies auto-renew, so that their preferences are not lost. And, as always, all users will still be able to control their cookies at any time via their browsers.[6]

Seems it won't be long before Google knows what you're searching for before you do.

Expanding "Sneak Peeks"

Ask, one of the smaller of the top Internet search engines, has been using sneak peeks to entice searchers for a while now. Searchers who use Ask.com can mouse over an icon next to many results and see a screen shot of the website. No clicking needed. Google, always watching for search trends, seems to have noticed, because they've filed a patent for expanding their own snippets.[7] Soon searchers on Google may be able to read expanded summaries of pages, or longer clips of page text. This tactic appeals to searchers who are now demanding more and more information faster and faster from the top Internet search engines, and who don't want to waste precious seconds clicking on a link and then on the back button to find just the right site for their needs.

Syntax Queries

When Ask was Ask Jeeves, the butler was supposed to listen to your search queries in the form of questíons and then get answers for you. The problem was, this just didn't work exactly the way it was supposed to. Instead of answering the question based on syntax, the engine still responded to searches in the same way others did, by analyzing the words and returning a líst. Jeeves was retired with a bit of fanfare, and the engine handles queries in the more traditional manner for now. But all of the top Internet search engines have continued to work on this concept, with Google again leading the way since it has the manpower and brainpower to do so. I expect that within the next year, this will be one of the search trends that the engines will want to focus on with a greater push toward answering questíons rather than just returning related results.

Speech Recognition and the Mobile Market

Speech recognition is really going to be one of the huge search trends in the coming months and years for the top Internet search engines. In an interview from this past summer, Peter Norvig, director of Google Research, noted, "[Google] wanted speech technology that could serve as an interface for phones and also index audio text. After looking at the existing technology, we decided to build our own. We thought that, having the data and computational resources that we do, we could help advance the field."[8] With speech recognition in place, one could go to Google (or another of the top Internet search engines) and use a microphone to ask a question aloud, or just say some keyphrases, and get a líst back immediately.

And speech recognition has the biggest benefit for top Internet search engines when it comes to users of mobile devices. Let's face it, as advanced as those keyboards may have gotten, they're still a pain to use and it's time-consuming to type in more than a few sentences. (That's y txt msgs r lk ths, u c?). Norvig is on top of that too, noting, "In general, it looks like things are moving more toward the mobile market, and we thought it was important to deal with the market where you might not have access to a keyboard or might not want to type in search queries."[9]

More to Come

As I noted in the beginning, this is just a small sampling of the search trends for the top Internet search engines today. Google, Yahoo, and even Ask are all working tirelessly to get your business and to make search easier, faster, and more accurate. Keep checking back for future articles covering some of the other trends and following up on the ones I've already discussed.

References

1. http://www.mediumblue.com/newsletters/universal-search.html
2. Ibid
3. http://blogs.mediapost.com/search_insider/?p=637
4. http://www.mediumblue.com/newsletters/personalized-search.html
5. Ibid
6. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/cookies-expiring-sooner-to-improve.html
7. SEMClubhouse.com
8. http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/19050/?a=f
9. Ibid

Websites: It's the Experience Stupid

By Jerry Bader (c) 2007
The other day I picked up a book that was sitting on my night table for over a year. It's just a small book and seemed like an easy read, perfect for falling sleep. It was called, "The Invisible Touch" by Harry Beckwith. Mr. Beckwith has written several books and is an expert on positioning, branding, and client relations. I wasn't sure if I was going to bother reading it or not, but after looking at the introduction I was hooked. This guy knew what he was talking about; he must because I agreed with most everything he said. That surely makes him an expert, at least in my eyes. Anyway, he tells a story about going to a concert for one of his favorite artists, a Laura Nyro. He purchased her recordings and loved them for their exquisite sound and her technical playing ability but the concert was a disaster.

Ms. Nyro performed with her usual skill and precision, but she nevër once looked at the audience, preferring instead to sit at the piano staring offstage while she played. Each song was preceded by a perfunctory introduction that was barely addressed to the audience. Needless to say, Harry was disappointed, as you can imagine anyone would be.

The Difference Between Products and Services

The point of the story Harry Beckwith was making was that there is a big difference between products and services. To quote from his book, "Products are made; services are delivered. Products are used; services are experienced." In this case, recordings are products and concerts are services. This got me thinking of my own experience, perhaps not quite so genteel as Mr. Beckwith's but instructional, nevertheless.

Marketing Is Creating Memorable Experiences

When I was a young man, just after graduating from College in New England, I started working in the family business. My father exiled me to the shipping department where he figured my newly earned business degree wouldn't get the company in too much trouble. One day he came out from his office to the plant floor where I worked and said, "Come on, let's go to lunch." My father knew I didn't eat lunch so this was a special moment, as he didn't bother asking me to lunch at work. Perhaps this was the day that I would finally be allowed into the ranks of real businessmen who worked in the office and wore ties to work.

As we got into the car I asked where we were going, to which he answered, "The Dirty Bagel." He looked over at me and saw me roll my eyes and grunt in disgust. Of course I knew the place he was taking me. Every businessman in Toronto who worked in the garment district knew "The Dirty Bagel." It was a legend more than a restaurant.

Its real name was just "The Bagel" but everybody called it "The Dirty Bagel" to distinguish it from another uptown, neighborhood place where the same businessmen eat breakfast on the weekends and where their wives lunched after shopping. Back then it was rare for upper middle class women to work, so they shopped and ate lunch when they weren't taking the kids to the dentist or hockey practice.

"The Dirty Bagel" and the "The Bagel" both served the same kind of food, simple meals, bagels and coffee. The downtown version was old, grimy, and well worn, while the uptown version was new, well lit, and well ... cleaner. The waitresses in the new place were middle-aged, chewed gum, had pencils stuck behind their ears and called everyone "Hon." The waitresses in the downtown version were old, actually ancient, spoke with thick European accents, and were just plain nasty. If you asked for an extra pad of butter or more cream for your coffee, instead of getting a "Sure thing Hon" you were more likely to hear something like, "Sophia, listen to Mr. Big Shot, he wants more butter. Hope he knows a good heart doctor..." and as she turned to leave you probably over-heard some Yiddish profanity under her breath.

Now you may be thinking, why would a bunch of rich, privileged businessmen who owned their own businesses, wore expensive silk and mohair suits, and drove Lincoln Continentals, put-up with nasty old ladies who tossed the food on the table and treated you like you were in prison? At least that's what I wanted to know.

On this particular occasion, the food arrived skidding across the table like a curling stone looking for the button (that's the red center of the bull's eye for the uninitiated). After mopping-up the spilled coffee and reassembling my bagel and egg salad, I asked my father, "Why on earth do you come here, the place is old, the waitresses are nasty, and the food is something you could brown bag?" My father looked at me, smiled and said, "It's for the 'experience." And then he took a bite out of his giant twister bagel and winked.

These businessmen were old school, not an MBA in the bunch. They survived the Depression and built substantial businesses with little or no formal business education in conditions that were quite frankly antagonistic. No matter how successful they became, they always remembered where they came from and what was important. These men were characters, who built their businesses by force of personality and shrewd decision-making. "The Dirty Bagel" offered these men an experience that kept them grounded and reminded them how they got to be successful.

Of all the lessons I've learned about business and marketing over the years, this was probably one of the most important. It's about the experience stupid!

If Your Website Isn't An Experience, What Is It?

Today every business has a website but so many are sterile, impersonal and lack any kind of meaningful experience for the visitor. Businesses spend so much time worrying about driving traffíc to their websites that they forget what happens when people arrive.

If you provide your website audience with an experience, it is something your competition can't appropriate. On the other hand, if all you're providing is a commodity, it's something somebody else will eventually provide cheaper and faster in which case you may end up eating at your own version of "The Dirty Bagel" and not because you want to remind yourself where you came from, but rather where you're going.

History of the Search Engine - What Came Before Google?

Although we credit Google, Yahoo, and other major search engines for giving us the system we use to find the information we seek, the concept of hypertext came to life in 1945 when Vannaver Bush urged scientist to work together to help build a body of knowledge for all man kind. He then proposed the idea of a virtually limitless, fast, reliable, extensible, associative memory storage and retrieval system. He named this device a memex.

But there is a long list of great minds that have given us the information system we now use today. This article illustrates some of them. Here is the History of the Search Engine:

Ted Nelson
Ted Nelson created Project Xanadu in 1960 and coined the term hypertext in 1963. His goal with Project Xanadu was to create a computer network with a simple user interface that solved many social problems like attribution. While Ted's project Xanadu, for reasons unknown, never really took off, much of the inspiration to create the WWW came from Ted's work.

George Salton
George Salton was the father of modern search technology. He died in August of 1995. His teams at Harvard and Cornell developed the Saltons Magic Automatic Retriever of Text, otherwise known as the SMART informational retrieval system. It included important concepts like the vector space model, Inverse Document Frequency (IDF), Term Frequency (TF), term discrimination values, and relevancy feedback mechanisms. His book A theory of indexing explains many of his tests. Search today is still based on much of his theories. History of the search engine uses some of the same techniques even today.

Alan Emtage
In 1990 a student at McGill University in Montreal, by the name of Alan Emtage created Archie; the first search engine. It was invented to index FTP archives, allowing people to quickly access specific files. Archie users could utilize Archie's services through a variety of methods including e-mail queries, telneting directly to a server, and eventually through the World Wide Web interfaces. Archie only indexed computer files. With Archie, Alan Emtage helped to solve the data scatter problem. Originally, it was to be named archives but was changed to Archie for short.

Paul Lindner and Mark P. McCahill
Archie gained such popularity that in 1991 Paul Linder and Mark P. McCahill created a text based information browsing system that uses a menu-driven interface to pull information from across the globe to the user's computer. Named for the Golden Gophers mascot at the University of Minnesota, the name is fitting, because Gopher tunnels through other Gophers located in computers around the world, arranging data in a hierarchical series of menus, which users can search for specific topics.

Tim Berners-Lee
Up until 1991 until there was no World Wide Web. The main method of sharing information was via FTP. Tim Berners-Lee wanted to join hypertext with the internet. He used similar ideas to those underlying the Enquire (a prototype created with help from Robert Cailliau) to create the World Wide Web, for which he designed and built the first web browser and editor, called WorldWideWeb, and developed on NeXTSTEP. He then created the first Web server called httpd, short for HyperText Transfer Protocol daemon.

The first Web site built was at: http://info.cern.ch/ and was first put online on August 6, 1991. Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web Consortium in 1994. Tim also created the Virtual Web library which is the oldest catalogue of the web. The history of the search engine is a fascinating story.

Search Engine Optimization for Small Business Owners

Small business owners are often limited by small marketing budgets and manpower. But that doesn't mean they can't compete against larger businesses or websites when focused on search engine optimization. SEO is a basic marketing tool that everyone should use regardless of size.

Can the small websites compete with the big guys?

I'm often asked by small business owners if they stand a chance against larger websites when it comes to organic search results. My response is that size doesn't matter. When it comes to improving natural search results, it's all about the keywords you choose and how competitive those keywords are.

What makes a keyword competitive?

One way to determine the competitiveness of a search term is to simply type that search term into Google and notice the number of web pages that contain that search term. This number appears in the upper right-hand corner of the search results page and appears as, "Results 1 - 10 of about 228,000,000 for [your search term here]."

The large number you see gives you an indication of how many websites contain the keyword term or phrase you're searching for. Not all of these sites would necessarily be competitors, but have been indexed by Google none-the-less. From my perspective, when this number is less than 3 or 4 million, the particular search term would not be all that competitive in and of itself.

Determining just how competitive the search term is.

There are a variety of methods to determine true keyword effectiveness (KEI, etc.). However, if you're just a regular person trying to figure out how difficult it will be to rank well for a particular keyword, consider the following. In addition to the number of sites that contain your keyword, how well optimized are the top 3 sites that appear on the search result. You can determine this by:

1. Visiting the site and determining the Google PR of the page. This information is available by downloading the Google toolbar and looking in your browser. You will see a green bar and ranking (ex: PR5), which tells you how Google ranks this page/website with regard to popularity. Any site with a Google PR6 or better is well established and will be difficult to outrank in the near term.

2. Visit Google and type, "link:www.competitorwebsite.com". Be sure to replace 'competitorwebsite' with the website name you are researching. Remember, this should be a website that appears on the Google search result for the keyword term or phrase you're researching. This will tell you how many sites are linking to this particular website. The larger the number the more difficult it will be to outrank.

3. Look at the website code. Simply visit the competitor's website and go to "View", "View Source". Look for the meta tags of "Title", "Description", and "Keywords". Are the meta tags at the very top of the page? Does the website also use h1, h2, and h3 tags? If so, they probably know something about SEO and have applied some on-page optimization techniques.

Using the above will give you a good sense of whether of not you can compete for given keywords. As you've figured out by now, a company's size is no indication of their level of experience in optimizing their own website. You'd be surprise of the type (and size) of companies that call me for SEO advice.

Keep this in mind the next time you think that size matters!

2 Dozen Ways to Improve Your E-Mail Marketing Results

I suppose I can title this article "25 Email Marketing Mistakes I've Made." But rather than focus on the negative, below I've outlined the best practices I've come to adopt over the years. Hope you find something here useful.

1. Diversify your Content: If your entire email focuses on one product, service, or topic, you risk alienating all but the few people who will be interested. Unless you have segmented your database based on previous behavior, do not send an email on only 1 topic. I consistently find that the click through rate increases in proportion with varied content.

2. Don't Stress about Spam Words: Many experts will tell you to avoid words like "free" or "sale". In my opinion, ISPs tend to be moving away from content based spam filtering in favor of reputation based filtering. In other words, your sending IP address and from email are more important than whether or not your email contains certain words. Personally, I've used words like "free" in the subject line without any affect on delivery rates.

3. Make it Readable with Images Disabled: Always take into account the appearance of your email with images disabled. For email clients such as Outlook, this is now the default feature. Even popular web mails like Hotmail now disable images unless the sender is in the address book of the recipient. The best tactic to create readable emails with images block is use an alt description.

4. Create an Online Version: Always provide an online version of your email for users having trouble viewing images. I've calculated from emails I've sent in the past that around 5% of users will use this feature.

5. Remove Inactive Subscribers: Inactive subscribers are the most likely to get you in trouble by clicking the spam button. Consider automatically removing a subscriber that hasn't opened an email in several months.

6. Proofreading: Always have every email proofread by at least 2 detail oriented people. There's nothing more embarrassing than a typo in an email blast.

7. Monitor Replies: When you send out thousands of emails, you're bound to get a few replies. Occasionally, you'll get some good feedback from your subscribers. In addition, some people reply with unsubscribe requests.

8. Unsubscribe at Top: I know what you're thinking, "At the TOP!?" Yes, at the top. Lazy unsubscribers have a tendency to click the spam button instead scrolling down to find the unsubscribe link. By placing the link at the top, you might increase your unsubscribe rate, but that's better than an inflated spam complaint count.

9. Don't Over or Under Mail: If you send too much, you'll get deleted or marked as spam. Oddly enough, if you send once every 3 months you may have the same problem. Keep your brand top of mind for your customers by finding the perfect balance between over and under mailing.

10. Forward to Friend Feature: Many users automatically do this, but it doesn't hurt to ask. First time potential customers can be very open to a company when it is introduced by a friend or colleague.

11. Subscribe Feature for Forwards: Make it easy for potential new subscribers to subscribe if they receive your email as a forward. Include somewhere in the body a subscribe link.

12. White List Reminder: If you want your subscribers to add you to their white list or address book, you need to ask. Sure, not everyone will add you. However, those who do are likely the people who care most about receiving your emails and, therefore, you have the most to lose if your emails get flagged as spam.

13. Single Click Unsubscribe: I generally recommend keeping the unsubscribe as simple as possible. However, you may want to confirm the action if you place your unsubscribe at the top of every email in case users click the link on accident.

14. Privacy Policy: Always place your privacy policy at the bottom of every email. Assure customers that you obtained their email address in a legitimate fashion, and you will not sell their personal info.

15. Don't Rent Lists: Some may disagree on this, but I've never seen anything good come from a rented list. Don't risk your sender reputation with emails from questionable sources. If you want to reach a new audience, consider a joint venture with another firm in a similar but non-competing industry.

16. Develop your Brand: Remember that your emails will slowly build your brand in the minds of your subscribers. Even if they never click-through and make a purchase, be sure to keep a consistent and accurate corporate image with your email content.

17. Call to Action: Each section must contain a specific call to action that avoids vague phrases like "click here." You'll be surprised how an effective call to action button or link can improve your click through rate.

18. Mix Freebies with Products: Too much selling can burn people out. Engage your subscribers with useful, free content. For example, if you sell home theater equipment, send out an article on the explaining the benefits of newer technologies. When you provide additional value to your customers with learning resources, they are sometimes even willing to pay more for your merchandise. In addition, strategies like this keep your brand top of mind.

19. Find Your "Tuesday": For the eCommerce sites I've worked with, Tuesday morning has always resulted in the best open, click-through, and conversion rates. However, every company is different.

20. Same Day, Same Time: Be consistent in the time you send your emails for two reasons. First, the ISPs see inconsistency as a possible spam flag. Spammers can care less when they send out mass emails. Second, your customers will begin to anticipate your emails at a certain time each week, possibly increasing the likely hood of them opening and clicking through.

21. Keep the Good Stuff above the Fold: Remember that many email clients will obscure a large portion of your email unless the user scrolls down. Make sure the top 400 pixels are as engaging as possible. I can't tell you how many times I've had to send artwork back to the design department because the top of the email failed to grab your attention.

22. A/B Test 1 Variable at a Time: It took me far too long to learn this. For years, I would change several factors in each successive email blast, but never could find that perfect mix. If you really want to find out what works, you can only change 1 variable. For example, should the subject line be short or long? Keep the same content and split your list in 2, sending half a longer subject and the other half a shorter one. Do not change any other variables!

23. 600 Pixel Width: Due to the limitations of many email clients, stick with a width somewhere between 500 to 600 pixels wide.

24. Experiment with Subject Lines: I wish there was a magic principle I can share with you about subject lines. Unfortunately, there isn't. The best we can do is test, test, and test again. Sometimes short subjects are better, sometimes long, sometimes intriguing, sometimes urgent, whatever works best for you. Here's a great article on email subject lines.

25. Begin Segmentation & Personalization Now: In a few years, email marketers that don't practice segmentation and personalization will be left in the dust. There are an endless number of ways to segment your email list. Some popular ways are by purchase behavior, geography, or ordering frequency.

As a long term strategy, I would also greatly encourage researching transactional and trigger based email marketing, as they tend to product much better open, click-through, and conversion rates. To learn more about eCommerce Email marketing, please visit the Palmer Ecommerce Marketing Blog

Font Basics for Branding Your Small Business

By Erin Ferree (c) 2007
There are many components of a brand identity: logo, color palette, font choice, and the Visual Vocabulary. There's a lot of information available about the use of logos, colors, and Visual Vocabulary, but not much on the effective use of fonts. So, here's some information on the creative, practical, and technical aspects of fonts.

Font Basics

A font is a set of all the letters in the alphabet, designed with similar characteristics. This is also known as a typeface.

Fonts are usually designed to include several style variations. This can include styles like light, regular, bold, semibold, ultra bold, and italic. Some fonts also include "Expert" versions, which are fonts that include fractions and mathematical symbols.

Font families are typically packages of fonts that include all of the different versions of a font. Using fonts with large families will give you a wide range of fonts to use in your materials, for variety and emphasis.

There are many basic classifications of fonts. Four of the most common classes of fonts are:

• Serif fonts, which have little "feet," called serifs, at the ends of the lines that make up the letters. Some examples of serif fonts include Times, Palatino, and Garamond. These fonts are more traditional, elegant, and old-fashioned.
• Sans-serif fonts don't have those feet. "Sans serif" means "without serifs." Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, and Helvetica are some of the most common sans-serif fonts. These fonts are more clean and modern.
• Scrípt fonts are calligraphic or cursive fonts. Brush Scrípt and Nuptial Scrípt are two common scrípt fonts.
• Display fonts are decorative and often used for logos or headlines.

There are other types of fonts as well, including handwriting fonts and all-caps fonts. However, the four listed above are the most common and useful in business communications.

Creative Font Usage Guidelines

Each type of font has certain characteristics that translate into that font's personality. A font might be serious or light-hearted, traditional or modern, legible or decorative, or any number of other personality traits. The traits of the font that you use in your marketing materials and business communications should reflect and enhance your company's brand.

Your company should have designated fonts to use in the following situations:

• A logo font, which is typically not one of the fonts that come installed on Windows machines: it should be more unique and interesting. Some logos will have two or three different fonts in them. If this is the case, then consider using one of those fonts as the secondary font as well.
• A secondary font, used for headlines, sub-headlines, taglines, special text such as graphics and captions, and decorative text such as pull quotes, which are the large quotes that are used decoratively in articles and documents. This can be the same font as is used in your logo. This is typically an interesting and unique font as well. This may also be used as the font for your contact information in your stationery, depending on its legibility.
• A tertiary font is optional and may be used when the secondary font is not always legible, for mid-length texts such as pull quotes and contact information.
• A serif text font, for lengthy printed documents. Printed materials are more easily read if they are in serif font rather than sans-serif font.
• A sans-serif font, for shorter printed documents and on-screen use. Text on a computer monitor is easier to read in a sans-serif font than in a serif font.
• A website font, which may be the same font as is used as the main sans-serif text font, depending on how that font translates for online viewing.

All of these fonts should have similar or contrasting characteristics. Choosing fonts with similar characteristics will make your fonts match and create consistency throughout your documents. Choosing fonts with contrasting characteristics will build visual texture and interest into your materials. For example, you could pick all thin, sans-serif fonts such as Arial and Frutiger to create a harmonious, matching suite of fonts. Or you could pick fonts with contrasting characteristics to create greater interest, such as using a serif font like Palatino for the headlines and then using a sans-serif font like Verdana for the text.

Each piece of marketing material or document created should have a maximum of three or four families of fonts on them. (A font family includes all of the bold and italic variations of a particular font, so using bold or italic effects does not count as additional fonts.) Using more than three or four fonts is confusing, and it looks unprofessional.

Practical Font Usage Guidelines

Fonts can require special consideration when you send materials to a professional printer for reproduction, use them on your website, or send Word documents to others. Here are some basics on using fonts and preserving their appearance in these cases.

• In printed materials, it's easier to read long blocks of copy that is set in a serif font. Sans-serif fonts are usually used in print for short blocks of information, like headlines, pull quotes, or bulleted lists.
• When sending your materials to be professionally printed, make sure to address your desires regarding the use of fonts. You can either include the fonts with the files you send to the printer (which might be considered a copyright license infringement), rasterize your artwork (convert it to pixels, so the font data is no longer needed), or outline your fonts (creating shapes out of the fonts, an option that's available in most vector art programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand), so that they can be printed accurately. Outlining the fonts is the best way to ensure that your fonts will remain accurate and sharp.
• Online, in websites, emails, and HTML newsletters, sans-serif fonts look the best: they're clean, clear, and easy to read. There is one other trick to online font use: you have to make sure that you use fonts that will be installed on the computers of people reading your site. Otherwise, your text will appear in the default font selected by their browser, which is often Courier, a very plain font. That limitation does leave you with several fonts to choose from, though, including Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, and Trebuchet MS.
• Serif fonts could also be used on websites; however, it's best to use them in limited quantities, such as for headlines and subheads. Some fonts that are available to use on the web include Times, Times New Roman, and Georgia.
• Another issue that commonly arises with online fonts is the difficulty in controlling the size and appearance of those fonts. Standard font tags in HTML don't provide precise sizing control and need to be used several times throughout each HTML document, so making changes can be time-consuming. You can use Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, to precisely control the exact size of your fonts and to make site-wide font, size, or color changes with one simple alteration.
• In Word Documents, you also want to make sure that the fonts that you use for the text will be available on the recipient's computer. Good fonts to use are the standard fonts that come installed on PCs, which include Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Georgia, Palatino, Courier, and Trebuchet MS.
• In order to insert a small amount of customized text - such as your logo, tagline, or address information - create an image of that information and place it in the header and footer of the page.
• Another way to preserve the appearance of text is to export your document as a PDF file and send it to the recipient; PDF files embed the fonts into each document so that they can be viewed on any computer and still look right.

Some Technical Info About Font File Types

When you purchase fonts to use on your computer, you'll often be given a choice of buying a PostScript, True Type, or Open Type font. Here is a brief explanation of the characteristics and problems with each of these formats:

• PostScript fonts are considered industry standard and are therefore preferred by professional printers. There is a format of PostScript fonts available for Macintosh computers and another format available for Windows computers; those fonts cannot be shared between Macs and PCs.
• True Type fonts are often found on Windows machines. These fonts do not print as well as Postscript fonts.
• Open Type fonts are the newest type of font. They are cross-platform compatible, but many fonts aren't yet available in this format.

With this information about the creative, practical, and technical aspects of font usage, we hope that you can make font choices that will enhance your brand

How I Got 70,000 Useless Visitors To My Site In One Day!

(An Analysis of Social Bookmark Traffic)
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2007
Recently, a page on one of my websites was bookmarked or listed on Digg, a popular social bookmark site. It gave me the perfect opportuníty to study and analyze the traffic coming from these social media sites. Read to discover the advantages and disadvantages of social bookmark traffic and how it can be applied to your own online marketíng or site.

Is Social BookMark Traffic Useless?

First, we must make the distinction that no traffic is useless. Any visitor to your site is a good thing and should be welcomed. However, all traffic is not created equally, there are great differences in the sources of your traffic. This article takes a close analytical look at social bookmark traffic from an internet marketing perspective.

In case you haven't noticed, right now social bookmark and media sites are all the rage on the web. Social bookmark traffic comes from such popular sites as Slashdot, Digg, Stumbleupon... basically these sites are driven by their users - that is, users or members pick and bookmark the content they want to view and discuss.

These social bookmark sites are extremely popular; they command the high traffic numbers most ordinary sites can only dream about obtaining. But is this social bookmark traffic useful?

Is it worth your time? Should you be actively promoting to these social media sites? Should you concentrate your online marketíng efforts on these types of sites? More importantly, what are the benefits and disadvantages of getting a front page listing on a site like Digg or Stumbleupon?

As a full-time online marketer I wanted to know the answers to those questions. Moreover, I wanted to discover how or if I could use these sites from an online marketer's advantage; i.e. how can they help me create more online income.

Recently, the Digg listing gave me a first-hand opportuníty to really study these sites.

Of course, nothing happens without a reason... I did actually court these social bookmark sites by placing the free Addthis.com bookmark on all my pages. You can do the same. Just use this simple bookmark to attract these sites.

But be careful; getting your site featured on the front page of these sites can drive 100,000's of visitors to your site immediately, so much traffic that it may overtax your server and crash it.

So be warned; if you're actively promoting to these social bookmark sites just make sure your servers or web hosting is up to the demanding task of handling all these sudden visitors.

In my case, it didn't crash my servers but unfortunately, the page/link in question featured an old poorly written article I did on the history of the Internet. Why it was even featured on Digg is a puzzle and beyond me.

But still I am not one to waste an opportuníty, so I put my Google Analytics into overdrive and starting analyzing these visitors and social bookmark traffic. It pointed out some very interesting factors about this bookmark traffic.

Most of this traffic will:

• simply bounce back
• very few visitors will spend much time on your site
• very few visitors will even venture into your site
• very few will sign-up to your newsletter
• very few will enter your marketing follow-ups/funnels

(The unknown variable here being the content on your site, how good it is? How well does it perform?)

Regardless, one common problem with traffic from these sites is that it's very temporary traffic. The high volume will only last a few days... until your item is moved back from the front page.

These visitors will not stay on your site long and most are gone within seconds, not to be seen again. A few may sign up to your newsletter or venture to other areas of your site but not many.

Social bookmark traffic is very fleeting, like customers in the drive-thru section in a fast food restaurant. They grab the content and surf back to the major linking site very quickly and surf on to the next item.

This traffic will behave very differently than organic traffic from the search engines, or from your newsletter traffic or from traffic in your marketing funnels. Much different.

It was unlike getting one of my articles featured in Addme or SiteProNews, where I can easily get 200 or 300 new subscribers in a day. Plus, these visitors are interested in my information and have been exposed to my content (article) before coming to my site.

So there was no comparison; I would take the traffic from these sites any day over traffic from the social bookmark sites. And I would take free organic traffic from the search engines over any other source of traffic.

So the question remains - is social bookmark traffic useless? First, as I mentioned before, you must realize no traffic is useless; any visitors to your site is a good thing. Without traffic your site is worthless, just a few files sitting on a server in the middle of nowhere. Obtaining visitors is one of your first objectives as a webmaster. You must get visitors to your site or it's game over.

The best kind of traffic is traffic coming from organic search, visitors who come from the search engines seeking exactly what you're offering on your site. These are targeted visitors who will consider your pitch, read your information, maybe buy a product or sign-up to your newsletter or follow-up system. They often become repeat visitors to your site. These are your ideal visitors. This is the kind of traffic you want.

Social bookmark/media traffic is different but it does have some saving graces.

Mainly it can help expose your site to millions and help brand your site or business. It can get the word out about your site. Start a buzz.

If you have a site that appeals to the mass market, then these social sites could be an excellent recruiting ground for visitors and traffic.

These social sites are good for another reason; getting your links on all these high traffic, high PR7 and PR8 sites can't hurt your search engine rankings. Once featured on a site like Digg, your link will appear on many secondary sites around the web, so far 500+ and counting. Monkey see, monkey do. Although it hasn't been my main ambition to get featured on Fark.com, all these sites do have high PR ranks so from a SEO standpoint it is not necessarily a bad thing.

Since many of these visitors will be using the Firefox browser which has the Alexa toolbar embedded - your site's traffic rank will improve. Over 50% of the bookmark traffic coming to my site were using the Firefox browser. Alexa's traffic rankings are not a true picture of the web's traffic, but it's a good measuring stick, nonetheless.

Google might even consider it when ranking your site. Google basically considers their whole indexing system as a democratic voting structure... sites give a vote by linking to your content; wouldn't it also be reasonable to assume more traffíc means more votes. So wouldn't getting a lot of traffic or being featured on a site like Digg where the users vote to propel the best content to the front be the ultimate vote.

One strange thing I did notice, for some reason the traffic from Stumbleupon was different. These visitors stayed longer on my site and reacted more like organic traffic. Maybe the Stumbleupon site is of a higher quality and this may have been reflected in the quality of the visitors coming from there. It also reminded me, all traffic from these social media sites can't be judged with the one brush.

This whole experience also pointed out another important factor; it made me realize how unsuited my content is for the general web surfer or the mainstream web. All my sites and content were planned and organized to first draw in targeted (warmed up) visitors from free organic search and from my online articles.

If I, or anyone, wanted to take advantage of this social media traffic, they would have to create site/content to appeal to these surfers and then somehow draw them into their marketing funnels. I don't know if the majority of the users of these bookmark sites would make good prospects, but my guess is not very likely - the nature of the beast. But it would largely depend on what you're offering on your site and how well it is suited to these users. So I am not drawing any conclusions yet.

Hopefully, I will have further chances to study traffic from these social sites and get the long-term effects, especially in regards to my keyword rankings in the search engines before making any final judgments.

For now I will keep an open mind but the jury is still way out whether or not social bookmark traffic is worth the interruption to the daily marketing tasks of your site. Just seems like much ado about nothing.