Hudson Horizons - The New Light for e-Business

News Corp. to buy Dow Jones for $5.6 Billion

2007-08-01T18:08:00.000-07:00

News Corp. said on Wednesday that it agrees to buy Dow Jones & Co. for $5.6 billion. This purchase would add The Wall Street Journal to News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch's media empire and end a century old family-run business that prospered as one of the top U.S. business news sources in the world.

The Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones possessions will contribute to Murdoch's immersive media empire, which includes such properties as the Fox television, the MySpace online social network, and the American Idol singing talent show on Fox network, just to name a few.

Under the terms of the agreement, being approved by the boards of both companies, the Dow Jones shareholders will receive $60 in cash for each share of common stock or Class B common stock that they own, the companies said.

This is a big and important purchase in the media industry, especially to Rupert Murdoch. This purchase has enabled him to achieve his decades-long dream of running the highly respected financial daily.

Microsoft Office Live offers free website, but does not support Firefox?

2007-07-31T18:08:00.000-07:00

The software giant is now offering small businesses a hosted website solution. Office Live is in Beta testing offering:

Free domain name and Web hosting
Easy-to-use Web site design tools
500 MB of Web site storage space
25 company-branded e-mail accounts
Web site reports
Search advertising tool with $50 credit*

So intrigued by this offer I clicked on the "Get it for free button" only to be given this error message:

It seems that Office Live does not consider Firefox a browser, makes me wonder if the website will work with browsers other than Internet Explorer.

Despite my disappointment, I opened up Internet Explorer and tried to signup, however this time I found that a credit card is required field.

Why would you need a credit card for a free service?

Microsoft states:

Even though Microsoft Office Live Basics is a free service and Microsoft Office Live Collaboration is free during the beta period, we still require a credit card in order to validate that every customer is a legitimate entity

So how long will the beta last? How long before Microsoft charges my card $1000/month. I will never know, the disclaimer and non-support for firefox turned me off instantly.

Good try Microsoft, better luck next time.

Duplicate Content – A Big No-No

2007-07-27T09:06:00.001-07:00

Yesterday a client of ours asked if we could search for particular terms on the Internet that relate to their business, copy any pertinent information that we could find and paste it into the new site we are designing and developing for them.

"Hold on!" I said. First of all, my business would never copy content from another website unless we had permission to do so; as this would be a violation of copyright infringement - plus it's just wrong. Second of all, if we did this, it is very likely that his website would be recognized by the search engines and determined to be "Duplicate Content".

Duplicating content on a website for your own benefit is not positively perceived by the search engines and will most likely get your site penalized or even banned from the search results completely.

In terms of SEO, writing unique content for your website is the most effective way to drive traffic. Copying and replicating other's content for your own benefit is not ethical and will never get you the exposure you're looking for.

If you do not have the time to effectively write your own unique content then you should not be spending the time or the money to build a website and run that business... Just my .02.

MySpace: home to nearly 30,000 sex offenders

2007-07-27T08:06:00.001-07:00

According to a Yahoo! News article, MySpace.com has discovered that nearly 30,000 of its accounts belong to registered sex offenders— a significant increase from its last census four months ago. Several attorney generals, including Roy Cooper of North Carolina, insisted that MySpace disclose information on the amount of sex offenders registered with the site as well as their location. The article stated that “after initially withholding the information, citing federal privacy laws, MySpace began sharing the information in May after the states filed formal legal requests."

Illegal solicitation of minors via the Internet is a serious concern in need of attention from state officials and parents alike. Addressing this matter, Cooper is “pushing for a state law that would require children to receive parental permission before creating social networking profiles, and require the Web sites to verify the parents' identity and age,” the article said.

Since its initial creation in August 2003, MySpace has become one of the most popular social networking sites; in the past four years, the site has acquired over 180 million user accounts. MySpace provides a great social environment to meet, communicate and share common interests with others, but like any virtual community, it must be protected and its users-- especially minors-- must have assured safety. With each proposed protection law, we can help make MySpace a safer place for everyone.

Joining forces to squash cybersquatters

2007-07-25T11:07:00.000-07:00

Just this morning my aunt was talking about how smart it would have been to buy a bunch of generic domain URL names when the Internet was just starting out—and then sell the domains to big companies for a lot of profit. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one with the idea. It's called cybersquatting; and for big name companies, it's grown from nuisance to threat.

In an attempt to counteract cybersquatters, top businesses such as Yahoo, Coca Cola and Hilton are pooling their resources into the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse.

As Barry Schwartz states, “Cybersquatters purchase domain names that are similar to trademark names, such as yahooemail.com and hilt0n.com. Some use that traffic to earn an affiliate commission on sales from the trademark owners, but others may use it for criminal activities, such as phishing for passwords, bank account details and other personal information.”

Concerning the coalition’s priority, CADNA President Josh Bourne states, “To effectively combat cybersquatting…and other Internet-based fraud, CADNA will work at the national and international levels to make these practices difficult to establish and unprofitable to maintain.”

Ask.com assuages anxieties with new privacy feature

2007-07-24T17:44:00.001-07:00

For those of us who fear Big Brother is living inside our computer, Ask.com has announced the creation of AskEraser, its new privacy feature.

AskEraser will allow browsers to erase all search history and, in accordance with its 18 month data retention policy, will conduct searches without logging IP addresses or cookies which could lead back to browsers.

“Anonymous user data can be very useful to enhance search products for all users,” writes Jim Lanzone, CEO of Ask.com, “… but we also understand that there are some who are interested in new tools that will help protect their privacy further, and we will give them that control on Ask.com.”

AskEraser will be available in the US and UK later this year and will launch globally in 2008.

More coverage at SearchEngineLand.com.

e-Business 2.0 emerges alongside Web 2.0

2007-07-24T15:45:00.001-07:00

Web 2.0 has changed the way we think about the Web; whether you believe that Web 2.0 is a valid name or just some coined term by Tim O'Reilly used to define the "newer" websites that function as web-applications. According to Tim O'Reilly's article, "What is Web 2.0?" the difference between the initial Web and Web 2.0 lies within the following example:

Web 1.0		Web 2.0
DoubleClick	-->	Google AdSense
Ofoto	-->	Flickr
Akamai	-->	BitTorrent
mp3.com	-->	Napster
Britannica Online	-->	Wikipedia
personal websites	-->	blogging
evite	-->	upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation	-->	search engine optimization
page views	-->	cost per click
screen scraping	-->	web services
publishing	-->	participation
content management systems	-->	wikis
directories (taxonomy)	-->	tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness	-->	syndication

Tim goes on to explain that Web 2.0 is thought to be a core set of principles and practices that tie together one or many groups of websites. These websites contain these sets of principles and stem from the core at various degrees of distance. The image below shows a "meme map" of Web 2.0 that was developed at a brainstorming session during FOO Camp, a conference at O'Reilly Media. It's stated that the image below is very much a work in progress, but shows the many ideas that radiate out from the Web 2.0 core.

As we can see, Web 2.0 has truly emerged as a new set of features and functionality that encompasses modern websites as compared to the websites of the past (Web 1.0). Some popular technologies that are utilized by Web 2.0 websites include: Blogs/Weblogs, Podcasts, Video Streaming, RSS feeds, Social Networking, Social Bookmarking, Tagging, and other forms of communication and social web-based tools.

But with the birth of Web 2.0, emerges the beginning of e-Business 2.0.

What is e-Business 2.0? In the simplest terms, it is the concept that e-Business processes have changed vastly over the last few years and are delivering a new core set of practices and functionality- practices used by some of the larger and more successful corporations of today. Because the Web has emerged into what's now being referred to as Web 2.0, members are requiring greater functionality to keep them active within websites; customers are requesting more advanced features and capabilities for product ordering, account management and customer support; and website owners require more advanced functionality to control, monitor, manage and statistically track their users and customers in one centralized environment.

Because of these requirements and expectations, technologically advanced systems are considered necessary to control/manage Web 2.0 technologies. Such examples include Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, Content Management Systems (CMS), sales automation systems, proposal-automation tools, automated submission processes (products, RSS feeds, sitemaps), Customer Support Systems, e-Newsletter Systems, Blogging Systems, Online Payment Solutions with invoicing capabilities, and much more.

These core set of systems are necessary to manage and maintain websites that utilize Web 2.0 features. They are generally easier to access by larger corporations and are frequently more difficult for the smaller business to incorporate into their websites and back-end administrative systems.

Although it is developing, e-Business 2.0 is still in the beginning stages and I predict it will not be available to the masses for at least another five to ten years. Many Web Development companies that target the smaller business find it difficult to offer these solutions in a cost-effective manner and this is why my company, Hudson Horizons, is focusing all of our attention into developing e-Business 2.0 solutions for the small business. We successfully provide e-Business 2.0 solutions in an affordable manner for our clients, and our focus is to continue and offer advanced solutions that help our clients manage the growing needs for offering Web 2.0 features to their customer and members.

Moving into the future, I foresee Web 3.0 becoming a hot topic of discussion- as Web 2.0 is today- but not for at least another ten years. And with this I predict a following of e-Business 3.0 solutions to successfully manage these new breeds of websites. Yes, these may just be coined terms, but I think it's a great way to easily categorize the features of the Web and allow Web professions to straightforwardly discuss and analyze the Web in an effective manner. I'm excited to see where Web 2.0 takes us!

Sitemaps and Robots.txt files

2007-07-21T21:01:00.001-07:00

Want to make your site more visible?

Want to create a way to let search engines know about all of your pages?

Want to let Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask and other know about your content?

Well now you can by implementing two easy tasks:

Create an XML sitemap
Create a robots.txt file

What is an XML sitemap?

An XML sitemap is a listing of all of your websites pages in a simple xml format. The file contains xml markup to define the URL of the page as well as other features. The main point in creating an XML sitemap is to capture all of your websites pages. If you have a dynamic website that is constantly growing with new products: member registration, products or blogging; then you need to constantly update the XML sitemap to let the search engines know of your new pages. If you need help creating an xml sitemap check out this automated xml sitemap submission service. After you have created your xml sitemap then you only have one more step adding a robots.txt file.

What is a Robots.txt file?

Every search engine has robots also known as bots, crawlers, spiders, etc. These applications are constantly communicating with websites in the hope to find new content to index. However, some webmasters do not want all there content indexed. This was the first reason for a robots.txt file, to limit robots from crawling various directories. Recently the robots.txt was upgraded to include the sitemap location. Basically informing the robots of a list of your pages.

If you do not have a robots.txt file, simply open notepad and type the following:

Sitemap: [Sitemap_Location]

Where [Sitemap_Location] = http://www.youdomain.com/sitemap.xml

When you are all done, upload these two files to your root folder so you can get to it in a web browser by going to:

http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
http://www.yourdomain.com/robots.txt

If you have any questions about increasing your page visibility let us know.

Hudson Horizons adds writer images to its blog

2007-07-18T12:13:00.001-07:00

We have been kicking around the idea of how to personalize a blog. The articles, tone and satire are good, but how can we put a face with an article? Then the idea hit us like a ton of bricks how about pictures of our writers. Needless to say when I put the email out requesting images, I received all the writer images within a few hours. What does this mean, image of writers on your blog are a good idea!

Why is it good to add writer images to your blog?

1. It puts a face with the name
2. If you have subscribers they can related more to your writers
3. Your writing staff will love it, its all about that, "10 minutes of fame!"

Why is it not a good idea to add writer images on your blog?

1. You only have one writer? Might look a little creepy with the same picture over and over, perhaps you can move it over to the Bio page.
2. You do not have a picture, you're not photogenic or you like your privacy. Even if you fall into one of these categories do not worry: do a quick Google search for your name, guarantee you find someone you wouldn't mind looking like.
3. You don't have a blog! - well if that's the case click here to find out how to get a customized blog for your business or personal use.

Google Introduces Custom Search Business Edition

2007-07-18T09:44:00.001-07:00

Ever notice a website with its own Google search field? Notice how the terms you enter in that search field don’t search the whole Internet, but just the pages within the website? It’s called Google Custom Search, and it’s a pretty handy product used by thousands of organizations, schools, and even blogs.

Below is a screenshot of Custom Search implemented on the Montclair State University homepage:

The great news is Google just unveiled its Custom Search Business Edition— an enhanced version of Custom Search geared towards small and mid-sized businesses.

Below are the four key features that accompany Custom Search Business Edition (as explained on SearchEngineLand.com):

Customized search results. You can change the look and feel of search results to match the underlying design of a website, using a relatively straightforward XML API provided by Google.

Optional ads. With the free version of Google Custom Search, Google displays ads alongside search results. With the Business Edition, ads in search results are optional.

Dedicated enterprise support. The new service offers both email & phone support,

Optional Google branding. Don't want the Google logo on your search results? You can easily turn it off.

Google’s Custom Search Business Edition has pricing plans which range from $100 per year (for searching up to 5,000 pages) to $500 per year (for searching up to 50,000 pages).

For more info, check out Google’s blog about Custom Search Business Edition.

Guge Gallantly Goes after Google

2007-07-16T09:23:00.001-07:00

It’s always an interesting surprise for the Internet community when a no-name (no pun intended) c ompany announces it is suing Google, the #1 worldwide search engine.

A Reuters.com article covering the story indicated that Beijing Guge Science and Technology Ltd. Co (Guge) is “suing Google Inc.'s China subsidiary for copying its name, saying the U.S. search engine's registered Chinese name is too similar to its own and has harmed its operations.”

Guge complained of frequent, misdirected calls from people trying to contact Google, reporting that the problems arise from miscommunications between phone directories and callers. Apparently Guge is tired of dealing with the erroneous traffic and is seeking rectification.

“We just want Google to change their commercial name," stated company official Tian Yunshan.

The article mentioned that this case has “been accepted by a court in Beijing's Haidian district.” Both Google and Guge refused to comment further, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…

Sell more Products Online with Google Product Search

2007-07-13T12:40:00.000-07:00

Do you have products to sell and want to get them in Google? If so, then you should submit your products to Google Base. By submitting your products to Google Base, you'll essentially be submitting them to the Google search engine. Once your product feed is approved, your products will appear in areas such as Google Product Search, Google Base and in many cases, the Google search engine itself.

If you're a seller, it costs nothing to reach shoppers by submitting your items to Google Base. You can link directly from the Google search results to your website; if you don't have a website, Google will host your offers for free within your Google Base account.

There are many ways to submit your products to Google Base. Below I've compiled an outline of the top submission methods:

One at a time - Have 10 or fewer products? Fill out the web form for each product you would like to sell and post to Google Product Search.

Bulk Upload - Upload a spreadsheet or XML file describing each product and its associated product data using the Google Base Bulk Upload. When you submit information via the web form, you can attach up to 15 digital files in the following formats: PDF (.pdf), Microsoft Excel (.xls), Text (.txt), HTML (.html), Rich Text Format (.rtf), Word Perfect (.wpd), ASCII, Unicode and XML.

API - Are you a developer? If so, you can code your way from your system to theirs. With the new Google Base data API, you can create specialized applications to handle these actions. Your application can upload new data, update or delete existing items, and execute specialized queries to find matches for complex attribute criteria.

Automated Product Submission - Tired a manually submitting your products online? Tired of creating and submitting your bulk upload product feeds on a regular basis? Want to sell more products online with Google Product Search? Then try the automated product submission and have all your products submitted to Google Base three times a week. The automated process will connect directly to your database, gather all the necessary product data, create your product feed, and submit it directly to your Google Base account three times a week... it's that simple! All you need to do is register your store for automated product submission.

MySpace News is actually Newsworthy

2007-07-13T09:09:00.001-07:00

MySpace News is making a big splash in the social networking site scene. The news feature, released in Beta mid April of this year, allows MySpace users to rate each article and so far has received excellent feedback from users and publishers.

At a glance, MySpace News seems like every other news aggregator with user ranking capabilities. But a closer look reveals that MySpace accurately sorts all stories into 25 categories with 300 subcategories, streamlining archives so users can find exactly what they’re looking for. And MySpace has another advantage—its colossal user base… nearly 43 million active account holders means lots of interaction.

TechNewsWorld.com posted a related MySpace News article that included an interview with Sterling Market Intelligence online media analyst Greg Sterling. Sterling agreed that MySpace News has such potential due to its immense popularity: “a smaller competitor… would be greeted with lot of skepticism in a way MySpace isn't because of its position in the marketplace.”

To introduce the news feature to frequent users, MySpace implemented a large colorful banner on its login page. With each page reload, the banner markets a different category (i.e.: fashion, entertainment, music, video games, sports, etc.) and links to the corresponding News page. This is a smart marketing technique because it minimizes the perpetual “boring” connotation of “News” by emphasizing current, popular themes.

As Sterling points out, “Young people are not as interested in the news as older people… There is a potential [with MySpace News] to expose interesting and important news stories to an entirely new audience.”

Giving MySpace users the power to rank articles is another smart approach to get them interested and involved. The same TechNewsWorld.com article described that “the ratings directly affect the ‘placement and prominence’ of the stories, including whether they make the MySpace News homepage.” Give users a voice and they are likely to respond positively.

In addition to benefiting the readers, MySpace News also represents a great avenue for featured bloggers. Featured bloggers can expect adequate exposure due to the site’s popularity and high traffic rank.

For more information, check out these MySpace News FAQs especially if you’re interested in submitting blog articles to MySpace News.

Google buys its protection for $625 million

2007-07-11T07:17:00.000-07:00

On Monday, July 9th, Google officially announced that it signed a contract with Postini, the “global leader” of online security. In a press release concerning the matter, Google declared for the sum of $625 million, it will have control of Postini as a “wholly-owned subsidiary” and that the deal is “expected to close by the end of the third quarter 2007.”

Google Applications such as “Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Docs & Spreadsheets, and Personal Start Page” have become very popular among small businesses; Google provided a statistic indicating that nearly 1,000 small businesses register with these applications each day.

Google maintains that large businesses will likely be impressed with this acquisition because it will allow them to benefit from the innovative applications of Google and the assured security of Postini. The press release stated that among its many security features, “Postini solutions include Email Security, IM Security, Web Security, Message Archiving, Message Encryption, and Policy-enforced TLS.”

President and CEO of Postini, Quentin Gallivan, has described the deal as “an exciting milestone,” and Google appears to agree. As far as I’m concerned, this is another huge step forward for Google, leaving other search engines and Internet application providers in the dust.

Hudson Horizons Offers New Affordable Website Content Management System Conversion

2007-07-11T06:16:00.000-07:00

Fair Lawn, NJ (PRWeb) July 10th, 2007 – Local web development company provides professional Content Management System conversion at an affordable price.

Hudson Horizons is offering clients a website Content Management System (CMS) conversion, which can significantly streamline any site and enhance the overall experience of operating businesses online.

Because the CMS conversion will be made available at such a reasonable price, smaller companies can expect an immediate Return on Investment (ROI) while defining and expanding their role in the world of online commerce.

President and CEO of Hudson Horizons Daryl H. Bryant states, “Until now, it has never been possible for a small business to integrate an advanced CMS solution for such an affordable price. Our CMS technology is the perfect solution for any small to mid-sized business because it combines top quality service with realistic prices.

“Without a Content Management System, altering content, images or links on a website can be extremely time-consuming,” explains Bryant. “After we implement our CMS, our clients retain full control over their website and can easily manage all of the content and other advanced features through back-end administrative access.”

This unique CMS solution includes a free Meta Tag Tool that allows administrators to update individual titles, keywords, and descriptions for each page of their website without complex HTLM coding. Based on the keywords clients choose, this Content Management System generates search-engine-friendly URLs which reflect the content on each particular page. “Relevant URLs are well-received by search engines, accurately indexed and help increase a website's ranking,” states VP of technologies Matt Mayernik.

“The Hudson Horizons CMS solution is completely customizable,” Bryant adds, “and can be altered to satisfy each of our clients’ specific e-Business needs.”

But the services of Hudson Horizons extend far beyond the initial CMS conversion. “Unlike other web development companies,” Mayernik explains, “Hudson Horizons can help organize your business online after the site has been converted. Our team of experts will prepare and provide different ways to build and market your site based on your company budget and objectives.”

Conveniences of a Hudson Horizons CMS include world-wide 24/7 accessibility from any location with an Internet connection and unlimited 24/7 technical support. “The priceless advantage of our CMS conversion,” Bryant states, “is obtaining a professional, streamlined website, which can help increase traffic, rank, and sales for any e-Business.”

About Hudson Horizons

Hudson Horizons www.hudsonhorizons.com is an e-Business product, solution and marketing company specializing in creating highly sophisticated customized websites, Content Management Systems and providing e-Marketing services for small and mid-sized businesses.

A main focus of the Hudson Horizons team is to develop technologies that are commonly referred in today's Internet standards as Web 2.0 technology. Such examples include: blogs/weblogs, content management, RSS feeds, social networking, social bookmarking and social web-based tools.

Their vision and ultimate ambition as a company is to always strive to be "The New Light for e-Business."

By offering new, innovative and extremely competitive products and solutions to their clients, they provide better ways to run and operate a business online.

Contact:

Daryl H. Bryant
Hudson Horizons
The New Light for e-Business
1-888-DMS-4WEB (367-4932)
info@hudsonhorizons.com
www.hudsonhorizons.com

###

Sports Court subpoenas Google for AdWords records

2007-07-09T06:48:00.001-07:00

In what is being referred to as a “trademark infringement lawsuit,” two competing companies are about to change the face of advertisement confidentiality on the Internet.

According to Eric Gordon’s post on the matter, “the plaintiff Sport Court (now Conner Sport Court International) claimed that Rhino Sports had breached an injunction by buying the keyword phrase ‘sport court,’ when it fact Rhino Sports apparently had just broad-matched the word ‘court.’”

Unconvinced, Sport Court has officially subpoenaed Google asking it to release all AdWords records pertaining to the term “sport court.” Thanks to Gordon, we have a list of the specific material included in the subpoena:

* all purchases of "sport court" as a keyword
* the associated "cost per click calculations"
* estimated ad positions for the keyword
* search volume trends for the keyword

To ensure compliance, all AdWords clients who utilize these terms have been contacted via e-mail; the AdWords data will be released pending no official objections.

It’s obvious that if released, this data would have “significant competitive value.” Many responses in the Internet community, including my own, have been those of cautious apprehension. If this motion is passed, it stands to set a risky president for future companies looking to get ahead in the world of online advertising.

Click here for more coverage.

Mark your calendars for Google-Free Friday

2007-07-06T11:42:00.001-07:00

Today marks the first installment of the Google-Free Fridays SearchEngineLand.com is hosting throughout the month of July. In an attempt to dispel the Google hype, SearchEngineLand.com is recommending browsers abstain from using Google each Friday of this month and instead make use of the other search engines on the Internet.

In his article, Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan explains, “The point [of Google-Free Friday] is to encourage people to open their eyes to some of the other major search engines, whether it to be to discover something great and new or to reassure [them] that Google's the right choice.”

Today, SearchEngineLand.com has selected AOL.com as the alternative search engine. Sullivan states that this “is your chance to get a feel of how AOL compares by using a search service there that corresponds to one you might regularly use at Google.”

Personally, I think Google-Free Friday is a smart idea. I think we instinctively turn to Google as the be-all-end-all of search engines. I know I do. Before I read this article, I already used Google to search for five different things this morning. Google-Free Fridays may be the perfect opportunity to start using alternative search engines to see what they have to offer.

Let the competition begin

2007-07-05T09:42:00.000-07:00

The iPhone has been on the market about five days, so a rival product must be in the making, right? Right! This Yahoo! News article indicated that LG has signed an agreement with YouTube to develop a new mobile phone. The device will, among other things, “enable users to upload, view and share video clips or user-created content (UCC) online freely without using computers.”

Uh-oh. The iPhone can’t do that.

This partnership is sure to benefit LG, the world’s fifth-largest mobile phone manufacturer, and its relationship with undisputed #1 search engine, Google. Last month in Europe, LG released a line of mobile “Google phones” which offer “one-click access to Google's search engine as well as Google maps and Gmail.” YouTube, the world’s biggest video-sharing website, was acquired by Google last year for 1.65 billion dollars.

While it’s still far too early for a release date, the LG / YouTube phone certainly represents the first of many iPhone competitors that are sure to follow.

Say hello to Yahoo! SmartAds

2007-07-03T06:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Yahoo! launched their SmartAds application which, according to a SearchEngineLand.com source, will “deliver display ads to people across the web based on their demographic and geographic profiles, plus search and web browsing behaviors.”

This new form of web advertising, which apparently received positive feedback in its test stage, is expected to expand to reach all areas of the Yahoo! network pending continued success.

SmartAds appears to have a lot of potential in the advertising community; the application will allow advertisers to contact browsers based on demographic, location, or web behavior— or advertisers can mix all three elements until they target the ideal audience.

What makes SmartAds so revolutionary is the “creative assembly platform” which will “take "templates" of advertiser-generated creative (e.g., copy, logos, graphics) and assemble those elements dynamically depending on the targeting opportunity.”

You may be thinking, “Gee, presenting relevant ads is great, but tracking my “web browsing behavior” sounds a little Big Brother-esque.” At least that was my first impression. But Yahoo! representatives assure that “users are grouped into categories and subcategories… not individually targeted.”

So there you have it—Yahoo! SmartAds are taking us into the future of interactive advertising on the web. My guess is it’s only a matter of time before other search engines (*cough* Google) take up a spot in the competition.

For more coverage, click here.

Roll out the red carpet for Apple iPhone premier

2007-06-29T11:50:00.000-07:00

Today represents another breakthrough in modern technology as Apple releases the much-anticipated iPhone. With three-fold technological appeal, this cell phone / iPod / wireless internet device encompasses the elements many of us have come to regard as “necessary” for existence.

According to an Apple press release, the iPhone “will go on sale this Friday, June 29 at 6:00 p.m. local time at Apple® retail stores nationwide. All 164 Apple retail stores in the

will stay open until midnight, and customers can purchase up to two iPhones on a first come, first served basis.” The iPhone will be available in a 4GB and 8GB model for $499 and $599 respectively.

For now, iPhone will only be available through AT&T wireless services, which, is regarded as “the best and most popular carrier in the US with over 62 million subscribers.” This agreement has been ambiguously defined as “multi-year exclusive partnership”; as of now, there has been no news of future wireless network integration.

Barry Schwartz of SearchEngineLand.com accurately maintains that “the press and craze over this product is unprecedented.” In truth, the iPhone couldn’t be received by a more technologically-dependant atmosphere and audience. I have no doubt in my mind that despite the costly nature, iPhones will fly off the shelves, giving consumers a chance to determine whether or not the product lives up to its tremendous hype.

Yahoo Image Search now links to Flickr albums

2007-06-27T06:40:00.000-07:00

In the great Search Engine Competition, Yahoo recently implemented photos posted by Flickr members in its image results, “ironically catching Yahoo up to Google, Microsoft and Ask.com -- all of which already included Flickr photos in their respective image search engines.” Striving to go one step further, these Yahoo! image results include a hyperlink to the Flickr album in which the image is located.

This is good news for Flickr users, who are in essence obtaining a free inbound link from Yahoo-- something that is sure to drive new traffic to their Flickr albums. But as far as Yahoo is concerned, some responses from the Internet community maintain that for a given search, “Yahoo Images still had plenty of crud.”

Click here for more coverage, as well as a postscript from Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief of SearchEngineLand.com.

Defining Your SEO Objectives

2007-06-25T10:51:00.001-07:00

Last week I did an overview of different aspects to consider while developing your SEO goals, and how these goals can help you decide what SEO tactics, techniques and strategies would be most appropriate for your e-Business. This article will focus more on e-Business SEO objectives and the importance of clearly defining them.

Alexa
It’s tricky to define a stellar Alexa rank as your top SEO priority because the only way to achieve it is through supplementary methods; link building, content distribution, generating awareness, developing online alliances, partnerships, affiliates and friends are great ways to yield traffic, and yielding traffic is the only way to improve your Alexa rank. Like I’m doing with the Bento Yum site, you can use your Alexa rank to track your SEO success. Check back at the Hudson Horizons blog for my post on how to use different elements as benchmarks for your company progress.

Google Page Rank
This aspect of SEO can be useful, but usually does not lay the best groundwork for an SEO campaign. As the Internet advances, PR is becoming less and less of an influential element in algorithms. Consider instead an objective that would offer a more substantial, solid foundation while providing continuous benefits. Still, like Alexa, you can use your PR as a gauge to determine how successful your other SEO strategies are.

Product Sales
Is an increase in product sales your main incentive for SEO? If so, an important first step would be to optimize your on-page content to make your customers’ experience easy, informative and fun. Then, consider submitting your products to sites such as Shopzilla or Google Product Search. Keep in mind that product listings often require resubmission to ensure fresh results. At Hudson Horizons, our HH Froogle Manager provides automated product submission to Google Product Search for only $15 per month. We will submit your products three times a week to ensure that they are constantly included in the shopping search results.

Member Registration
If you’re an online community, perhaps your top goal is increasing the number of registered users or participants. The best way to spark interest in the online world is successful content distribution. Post articles pertaining to your cause or service using resources like free blog sites (WordPress or Blogger are great) or article archives (I like Ezines). Implement target keywords in your blog URL and insert your link when relevant (without spamming!!). These are easy ways to get your word out there and lead people back to your website. At Hudson Horizons, our HH Blog Manager provides unique blogs that can be implemented directly in your website, offering you a chance to design, customize, post and manage comments and links without any external blog sites.

As Stoney deGeyter put it, “There may be over 100,000,000 ways to invest in SEO, but you only need to find one that works for you.” What a gem of knowledge! Keep in mind that however appealing they may seem, fad SEO tactics may result in a waste of time and money for your company. Instead, work on clearly defining your e-Business SEO objectives so when the time comes, the SEO investments you make wholly benefit you and your site.

Psst! "Hide and Speak" meets more success

2007-06-25T07:02:00.000-07:00

If you haven't read my posts on Jennifer Laycock's "Hide and Speak" project, do it now! Just kidding, but check them out, or else the following won't make much sense.

The numbers are in! The Bento Yum site, which is being promoted solely through word of mouth, blogs, and social networking sites, continues to improve its Alexa rank. Over the weekend, the rank fell (in a good way) by nearly 100,000, coming in at an impressive 426, 538.

Keep up the good work, Jennifer!

Google births two new blogs

2007-06-25T07:01:00.000-07:00

Taking full advantage of their own blog program (Blogger), Google has created two new blogs which were unveiled last week.

The first blog released was the Google Finance Blog, with its premier post on Wednesday, June 20th. As Google explained, “We'll write about new features, share observations about new tools in the financial industry and get your feedback about new releases.”

The second blog, Google News Blog, has its first post on Thursday, June 21st. Again, Google included a statement for the focus of content for the blog: “We'll be posting about new features, giving you tips for getting the most out of Google News, and responding to questions.”

Each blog includes links to the other thirty-something blogs Google has, ranging from “Google CPG Blog” to “Inside AdSense - Français.” On the Google Financial Blog, the sidebar has a list entitled “What We’re Reading,” a link list to a dozen other personal blogs (not all with Blogger).

Using your SEO goals as a map through the wilderness

2007-06-22T09:45:00.002-07:00

In this jungle known as the Internet, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an essential tool for survival; as such, it is not to be taken lightly. Before you invest time and money in a trendy SEO technique, you should seriously examine your own website and what you want to achieve. Setting SEO goals creates an organized blueprint of ideas and objectives you can rely on throughout your SEO efforts.

There are numerous factors to keep in mind while you develop realistic SEO goals. Most of these things revolve around the fundamentals of your business. Here is a list you should consider while setting SEO goals for your website.

Time --> If you choose to perform SEO yourself, how much time can you devote to research and implement SEO in your website? If you choose to outsource, how much time can you devote to oversee his/her work? Do you have time to teach them about your business and your objectives?

Budget --> What does your SEO budget look like? If you choose to do the work yourself, how much money would you be willing to put towards SEO? Have you considered the monthly fees of buying links or submitting to directories? If you outsource, are you financially capable of hiring an SEO consultant to guide and motivate your team? Are you financially capable of hiring an SEO firm to do all of the SEO work for you? Don’t make final decisions solely based on your budget, but use it as a framework for setting realistic goals.

Size --> This factor is most closely linked with time and budget. It’s important to consider how large your company is and the amount of SEO work that needs to be done— though these may not be directly proportional. The smaller the company, the more difficult it may be to fund SEO and the more time it may take to gain visibility in search engine algorithms.

Objectives --> What do you hope to accomplish from your SEO efforts? Are you more interested in gaining a top PR, becoming #1 in SERPs or obtaining a solid marketing foundation? Keep in mind that the former is less expensive but not entirely beneficial in the long run. If you decide to outsource, use your objectives as a guide in choosing what kind of SEO company is best for you.

Whether you’re creating a new website or enhancing an existing one, keep in mind that SEO is a constant, demanding endeavor that requires a tight focus and dedicated attention. Assess your situation and set your expectations before you head out into the jungle. You’ll be glad that you did.

Is Yahoo! too desperate to be on top?

2007-06-22T09:45:00.001-07:00

Recently, News Corp has expressed interest in trading MySpace to Yahoo! in exchange for a 25% cut of all Yahoo! stocks.

But wait... on Wednesday I wrote about the changes (challenges?) Yahoo! has faced, primarily its new CEO Jerry Yang and the substantial drop in Yahoo! stocks over the past months. So amid all this tumultuous activity, why would a social networking site mogul like MySpace want to invest itself in Yahoo! at all?

One incentive could be the $12 billion News Corp would earn from the deal. Despite a decrease in Yahoo! stocks, the company is still worth an estimated $37 billion. Conversely, with a teammate like MySpace, Yahoo! could have a fighting chance against long-time competitor Google (with its famous YouTube partner), which reportedly “make[s] more money in a quarter than Yahoo does in a year.”

I don’t know about all this. It seems to me that Yahoo! is so intent on “trying to out-Google Google” (as Jim Breyer puts it) that tactics are turning from methodical to hasty. Still, this merge proposal was presented informally, and a partnership is far from finalized.

Furthermore, News Corp first introduced this proposal to Terry Semel, the very recently resigned Yahoo! CEO. As the new CEO, Yang may put MySpace on the back burner, and focus on organically boosting Yahoo! instead of taking on outside partners.

For more coverage, check out this New York Times article.

Buying e-Business feedback: the 411 on ReviewMe.com

2007-06-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

Hey small e-Business owners— here’s another online resource you can utilize to help generate website traffic, exposure, and hopefully, sales.

ReviewMe.com offers advertisers a chance to have e-Business product/service reviews posted in a relevant, quality blog. The benefits are two-fold. First, e-Business product/service reviews are a great way to generate honest and constructive feedback for your e-Business (which helps you modify accordingly); secondly, having e-Business product/service reviews in a popular blog can drive traffic to your site and by extension, boost sales.

ReviewMe.com has an impressive Alexa rank (3,480) and a Google PR of 6/10. This site provides advertisers with two distinct approaches towards marketing their e-Business:

Option A: “Create Offers for Our Blogger Marketplace”

Create a list of categories relevant to your target audience
Submit this campaign to the Blogger Marketplace
Bloggers browse through campaigns and contact advertisers
Starting one-time fee is $10.00 per review

Option B: “Order Reviews Direct from Specific Top Blogs”

Browse through lists of relevant, quality bloggers
Contact blogger directly with review request
Bloggers choose whether or not they want to do the review
Starting one-time fee is $40 per review

The buying process for Option B is very similar to the process for buying text link ads. ReviewMe.com offers a list of popular tags (blog categories) and a specific search for target keywords. Blogs are indexed according to title (with a brief description), rank, and price. A mini-shopping cart (on screen) displays items, prices and grand totals.

Purchasing terms and conditions were very straight-forward and reasonable:

I understand that this blogger will give my site an objective review, which may include positive and / or negative feedback. I understand that the blogger has 48 hours to accept or reject the offer to review my site. If they accept the offer, they then have 48 hours to post a review. Once the review is accepted and then posted by the reviewer, I will be charged.

As with any e-Marketing strategy, there are setbacks with ReviewMe.com (but mostly they are ways to avoid sponsored-blogging controversy). If reviewed, advertisers must pay the full price, even if the result is a negative review. Also, Bloggers must include in the post that it is a paid review.

Most advertisers seem satisfied with ReviewMe.com, providing their review is positive. But the only way to get a good review is to offer a good product or service. Consider ways to improve your e-Business product/service so that it reaches its potential before you have it reviewed. Then, try out ReviewMe.com to find a blog that fits your niche and can provide beneficial e-Business product/service reviews. Good luck!

Yahoo! CEO steps down in time of need

2007-06-20T08:10:00.000-07:00

After a 30% drop in its stock prices over the past 18 months, it’s safe to say that Yahoo! hasn’t been doing so hot. Now, it will have to carry on without CEO Terry Semel.

Semel, who has been the Yahoo! CEO for six years, has officially announced his resignation, though he will remain with the Yahoo! team as a non-executive chairman. Assuming the position of CEO is Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang, and Susan Decker, former Yahoo! executive VP, has been named Yahoo! president.

This isn’t the first time a Yahoo! CEO has handed the reins to someone else in troublesome times. In fact, Semel assumed the position in 2001 when the former Yahoo! CEO, Tim Koogle, stepped down after repeated drops in Yahoo! stock prices, among other company difficulties.

Yahoo! has long struggled to reclaim the #1 spot, but with “behemoth” competitors like Google and AOL, the battle is far from easy. Will Yang have what it takes to lead Yahoo! to success in the online world, or will he pass the torch when it gets too tough? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Bento Yum statistics show promise

2007-06-18T09:06:00.001-07:00

Last week I wrote about Jennifer Laycock and her “Hide and Speak” experiment. To recap, she’s hiding her Bento Yum blog site from search engine crawlers and relying instead on blogs, social networking sites, and other forms of online speaking to demonstrate that e-Businesses don’t need Google to get business.

I’ve been tracking her Alexa traffic ranking, and it seems that this weekend represented a pivotal shift. The numbers are in!...(for now, anyway). Last Wednesday, the traffic rank for BentoYum.com was 1,339,092. Less than one week later, the rank has more than halved itself, coming in at an impressive 595,788! Keep up the good work, Jennifer!

For more on Jennifer’s progress, check out her latest installment in the “Hide and Speak” series.

Yahoo! Directory costs cast dark cloud over small e-Businesses

2007-06-18T08:45:00.001-07:00

For any growing e-Business, link popularity is a surefire way to increase traffic, and the more reputable the site that links to you, the better. Let’s consider Yahoo! as an inbound link. Very impressive. One way to obtain an inbound link from Yahoo! is to submit your site to Yahoo! Directory listings. But with all the fees and lack of guarantees, is it the best bet for everyone?

Here at Hudson Horizons, we were wondering the same thing. We did a little research on the benefits and setbacks of submitting our site to Yahoo! Directory listings. The Yahoo! Directory URL submission site alone seems draped in a futile connotation. Could it be that the silver lining is just hidden beneath the myriad disclaimers?

Despite the initial $299 fee for review, Yahoo! maintains that “Use of the Yahoo! Express program does not ensure that your submission will be accepted for inclusion in the Yahoo! Directory.” Bummer. If it is included, “a listing in the Yahoo! Directory does not guarantee your site will be listed in search results for any particular query,” and that listing would cost $299 annually.

Many experts and webmasters assert that even if your site does not rank high in the Yahoo! Directory listings, having that inbound link is well worth the yearly fee. Others e-Businesses (who have tight budgets as is) are less than impressed by the expensive process that lacks any assurance; they turn instead to reputable directories that offer free submission and listing (such as DMOZ and Jayde).

So are Yahoo! Directory listings really worth it? It all depends on your e-Business objectives, target audience, and if you’re willing to shell out $300 bucks a year if you get accepted for inclusion. (Oh yeah, and if you host an “adult” site, that $300 just became $600!)

Interested in reading more about Yahoo! Directory listings? Check out this forum post for different webmaster’s opinions on the topic.

Crawl this: forum search engines can benefit e-Business

2007-06-14T08:38:00.001-07:00

We all know how important search engines are for page ranking and popularity. Nowadays, search engines use off-page content (specifically inbound links) for their algorithms, leaving your written content on the back burner. But what if I told you your e-Business could rank on page one of search engines based on your company services and products written in your on-page content?

The search engines I’m talking about have nothing to do with Google or Yahoo; instead, they are geared specifically towards indexing online message boards and forums. Forum search engines rank according to written content rather than link popularity— an incredible benefit that traditional search engines cannot provide. Because results of forum search engines include only online message boards and forum threads, you can easily avoid spamming websites and irrelevant content.

To get the full effect, I submitted the No.1 Artist Forum to three different forum search engines. You can read about my experiences and site feedback below.

Omgili.com

Omgili.com has very good page statistics (PR 6/10, Alexa 16,980) which helped me decide it’s a reputable and popular site. Omgili.com offers an advanced search for forum topics, relevant search results, and a handy “preview” feature so you can check out a forum before you visit it.

Submitting the No. 1 Artist Forum was extremely easy (and free!). All I had to do was provide the forum URL and an active e-mail address. There is a catch, though. After submitting, an Omgili.com statement read, “we do not add all submitted Forums to our index, and we cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear.”

Boardtracker.com

Boardtracker.com also has some decent page statistics (PR 6/10, Alexa 26,393). For browsers, Boardtracker.com offers both a free and premium package. Premium packages run at $49.99 per month and have additional features such as spam control, search by author, and forum statistics.

When the submission process was finished, I felt a little more confident that the No.1 Artist Forum would be indexed successfully. The only required information for submission was my name, the forum title, URL, type, and an active e-mail address. This site also allowed me to upload a thumbnail logo that would be displayed next to my URL and overview in a given search.

Boardreader.com

Boardreader.com is the last site I reviewed but has the most impressive statistics (PR 6/10, Alexa 11,824). On the About Us page, this team asserts that they “strive to increase traffic and exposure for the individual forum and message board,” which, when linked back to your e-Business website, is wholly beneficial.

For the Boardreader.com submission form, I needed to provide my name, an active e-mail address, and the forum URL, language, topic and software. There was no official disclaimer or guarantee for this site. After submission, the website simply informed me that my “information was sent successfully.”

Overview

Online message boards and forums are excellent opportunities to post relevant content and establish a network of interested peers (essential for any e-Business!). Online message boards allow you to link directly back to your homepage, easily generating more traffic for your e-Business website. Having your forum indexed in popular forum search engines only increases the chances it will be discovered (and by extension, your e-Buisness will be discovered as well!

If your company has a message board, I highly recommend you submit it to be crawled by forum search engines like the ones I reviewed. If not, you can still benefit from the above sites by browsing and commenting on forums of interest to you. Niche forums are a great way to find answers, share knowledge and increase online interaction among users. Enjoy!

Target keyword phrases are a vehicle to the top

2007-06-14T08:38:00.000-07:00

Jessica Bowman posted an intriguing article on SearchEngineLand.com pertaining to SEO via repeating target keyword phrases (she calls them brand phrases). As Jessica advises, “If your company has everything sitting on a single domain, unfortunately, it's unlikely that you will dominate page one because search engines do not like to display more than one or two pages from a given domain.” Her approach to “dominating page one” of major search engines focuses heavily upon website domain and sub-domain text.

A great way for smaller e-Businesses to work their way up to page one of search engine results is to generate distinct sites for varying aspects of their company, and incorporate target keyword phrases into each domain and sub-domain of their pages.

In order for this to be significantly effective, typical SEO strategies also need to be considered. Naturally, on-page optimizations are essential. Jessica suggests “[getting] your company name on the homepage of each website” near the copyright information. Also, implementing your e-Business target keyword phrases in on-page content is beneficial, but be sure to do so appropriately so as not to spam.

Link building is another SEO-must; “…obtain links that pass on relevancy for the brand terms you are targeting. To do this,” Jessica writes, “find sites that talk about the parent company, and see if they will also link to the websites you are targeting.”

Another tip is to research directories that specialize in your niche (small business, etc) and establish a link relationship. For an illustration of the effect repeating target keyword phrases has on page rank, check out this search for Hewlett Packard in a Yahoo Business directory. Take note of how many sub-domains include “hp.”

Good luck!

Attention small e-Businesses: Google is so last season

2007-06-13T08:37:00.000-07:00

In the name of all small e-Business owners, Jennifer Laycock, editor of Search Engine Guide, is charting an unknown course. Her mission: to successfully market an e-Business without the help of Google or any other major search engine. Her chief experiment: Bento Yum. Jennifer is inviting all interested e-Business owners to track her progress—her marketing successes and downfalls— through an article series she will post online. She writes, “I've dubbed this new series ‘Hide and Speak’ because we'll be keeping the site hidden from search engine spiders and will seek to market it by ‘speaking’ to customers via links, blogs and communities.”

This new approach to e-Marketing most likely has great appeal to small e-Business owners, who have grown irritated by the heavy dependency on search engines for success. With the “Hide and Speak” method, she plans to show us that “those four engines (Google, Yahoo, Windows Live and Ask) are not the only sources of search traffic.”

Jennifer’s goal is “to build the type of content and link foundations that will help the site quickly rise to the top” without Google PR or any help from search engines at all. In fact, she will only reveal Bento Yum to major search engines once it has independently achieved ideal popularity.

Jennifer’s plan to “market via community” rather than through search engines truly represents a break from the traditional form of e-Business marketing. But could it work? According to Jennifer, Bento Yum has already showed signs of great success. So watch out, Google, e-Businesses might not need you after all!

(Note: this is a revised copy.)

Buying Link Ads: Part III of III

2007-06-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

LiveCustomer.com

LiveCustomer.com is a relatively smaller e-Business geared towards buying link ads.

LiveCustomer.com lets you browse by keyword (15 categories) or search by keyword. Results include the website title and brief description, placement (similar to zone), Alexa rating, PR and price per month. Mousing over a result displays the number of ads available and a website screenshot.

LiveCustomer.com doesn’t provide a mini-shopping cart, so when you click to buy a link you’re moved to a new page that shows your cart and final checkout options. Also on the page is another brief description of the website, a field to submit your link text and domain name (25 characters maximum) as well as “Placement – Duration options” which range from 1 to 6 months.

Personal ranking

LiveCustomer.com seemed a bit amateur; the site contained less back history and general information on buying link ads as well as lower link inventory.

Buying Link Ads: Part II of III

2007-06-11T08:34:00.000-07:00

TextLinkBrokers.com

TextLinkBrokers.com, a popular site for buying link ads, has a complex layout, but is very legitimate. On the Text Link Brokers homepage, you can find a list of “Why [their] links are more effective.”

The benefits of TextLinkBrokers.com are less tangible than the Text-Link-Ads starter kit, but are of equal value. TextLinkBrokers.com appears to be a low-risk investment primarily based on the following: the site assures confidentiality of inventory, does not force reciprocal linking and continuously refreshes their inventory based on successes and link popularity. Click here for a closer look at Text Link Brokers benefits.

In addition to text link ads, TextLinkBrokers.com offers permanent one-way links as well as both Standard and Premium Hosted Marketing Pages.

Like most sites, TextLinkBrokers.com lets you browse by keyword (70 categories) or specific searches (including lists according to PR).

Results include the website title as a link to a description page, the year of domain registration (the older the better), site ID, Zone (the location of link on site), Alexa rating (the lower is better), Google PR, Type (homepage or subpage), and cost per month. (I found the process of moving to another page for a description rather disruptive to the browsing process.)

TextLinkBrokers.com has a mini-shopping cart on the same page— complete with a guarantee that “you will not be charged until after you've seen the sites and approved of them.”

The TextLinkBrokers.com checkout prompts you to submit your link text & link URL (35 character maximum). The page also requires link description (100 characters maximum) and more detailed contact information.

Personal Ranking

TextLinkBrokers.com was a very professional and useful site, but the layout was too cluttered.

Buying Link Ads: Part I of III

2007-06-11T08:33:00.000-07:00

Is SEO a constant losing battle for your e-Business? Boosting your website’s link popularity is a great way to increase your page rank (PR) and your results in popular search engine algorithms. Though initially controversial, the most effective method for acquiring popular, quality links appears to be buying link ads. To get the full effect, I created user accounts and made mock-purchases via three popular link ad websites. This is a three-part article, so check out the TextLinkBrokers.com post and the LiveCustomer.com post for a general understanding of each.

Text-Link-Ads.com

Text-Link-Ads.com prominently displays its main sales points on the “Buy Links” subpage.

One unique benefit of Text-Link-Ads.com is the custom proposal it offer new clients. The proposal requires you to submit the following fields: Top target URL, Keywords for URL, Monthly budget, and Comments / goals for program.

Based on this information, Text-Link-Ads.com experts compile a proposal customized for your e-Business capabilities and interests. This feature is a great way to ensure you’re buying link ads that are relevant to your e-Business. (Remember: link relevance is essential to link popularity and PR!)

Text-Link-Ads.com allows you to browse the site’s inventory by keyword (58 categories plus subtopics) or search by keyword.

Results include website title, a brief description, Alexa rating, and price per month. Mousing over a specific result displays supplementary information, including a screenshot of the site, the number of pages your ad will appear on, the site’s link popularity (1-10 scale) and a ratio of ad spots filled versus ad spots available.

If you click “Buy” for a specific link, the link will automatically be added to a mini shopping cart (displayed on the same page). This feature shows the selected item, individual pricing and grand total on same page while you continue to shop.

When you’re ready for checkout, the site prompts you to provide your “Link Text Ad Details,” including “Link Text” and “Destination URL” (maximum 30 characters including spaces). Text-Link-Ads.com also provides a list of related items you may be interested in based on your purchase. The checkout process has a field where you can enter any promotional coupon codes.

The Text-Link-Ads.com guarantee states, “Actual url's are provided immediately after purchase. If you are not 100% satisfied with where your Text Link Ad will appear you can request a full refund.”

Personal Ranking

Out of the three, I think Text-Link-Ads.com is the best choice for buying link ads. It has an aesthetically-pleasing and user-friendly layout. After reading through the website, I feel well-informed of the company’s services, history, and expertise.

One thing I really like about TextLinkAds.com is the start up package they offered, which includes the custom proposal and an in-depth 11 page link buying guide with helpful tips and descriptions of what constitutes a legitimate inbound link.

To keep or not to keep? Wikipedia debates worth of Search Engine Marketing

2007-06-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday, Wikipedia proposed deletion of the main entry for Search Engine Marketing, claiming that “the article is poorly written” and lacking independent sources. Wikipedia is looking to merge SEM with the entry for Search Engine Optimization, citing that “SEM is a subset of SEO work, [and] as such, it belongs in the SEO article."

Feedback from Wikipedia users has illustrated a noticeable divide; the dozen votes left since the proposal’s posting include six “strong keep,” one “keep,” four “merge,” and one “dunno” (undecided).

Naturally, this has caused an uprising of SEM advocacy among Internet marketers, masters and users. Editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan, voiced his opposition to the proposal, while deflating several arguments in favor of merging the SEM and SEO entries. Danny Sullivan “helped popularize and define the term ‘search engine marketing’ back at the end of 2001,” making him more than qualified to offer his two cents on the subject.

The main issues SEM advocates address in their comments are that SEM and SEO are significantly different, and the services offered by SEM and SEO specialists involve completely separate aspects of the Internet. To have the SEM article redirected to the SEO entry page would be presumptuous and, depending on the browser’s focus, unnecessary. Advocates believe that for these reasons SEM deserves its own Wikipedia entry. There is no date posted for an ultimate decision on the matter, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Google AdWords holds the cards in UK

2007-06-08T12:56:00.000-07:00

This week, Google announced its refusal to host any gambling related ads in the UK.

Due to lengthy controversy surrounding the “recreational activity,” Google had often been hesitant to provide AdWords services for gambling related sites. While the previous Google AdWords policy allowed certain free gambling related sites to create advertisements, this new policy will not condone them.

An e-mail sent on June 6th from Google to UK AdWords advertisers stated that “[Google] will no longer take ads for sites that promote gambling related content or gambling tutorials or whose primary purpose is `playing for fun', gambling or casino games of skill.”

Despite the strict decision, a Google spokesperson affirmed, “we respect people's differing views on gambling - and support freedom of expression…”

So far, this prohibition seems contained in the UK, but for how long? Google and its inclusive applications—specifically AdWords— bear a strong presence in the online community. Could Google’s choice to prohibit gambling related ads go global, or influence other search engines to censor risky industries? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. But for the advertisers of those “risky industries,” one thing is sure: e-Marketing just got a lot harder.

The Queen Bs: 5 strategies for link building

2007-06-06T11:42:00.001-07:00

If you’re looking to increase webpage ranking and traffic, you should consider the importance of link building. Successful link building yields link popularity, which has a substantial influence on search engine algorithms; ergo it is likely that your page will not rank in top positions if you don’t practice legitimate and consistent link building.

Legitimate link building methods range from beefing up your own webpage to purchasing links to popular sites. Evaluate your objectives and target audience; decide how much time and money you can spend on link building; then check out these five link building strategies to see which best suits your e-Business:

Bait. Adding “link bait” to your existing webpage content is a simple way to increase webpage ranking. Nick Wilson, author of "The Art of Linkbaiting," discusses the use of different hooks as a way to bait online browsers, eliciting interest in your website. Most of these hooks are simple to implement; some involve surveys, press releases, or opposing arguments to famous Internet gurus.

Barter. In small increments, reciprocal link building with relevant partners can help increase the flow of traffic from interested browsers. If your reciprocal link building becomes too excessive, you may appear to be spamming. Also, make sure you link with professional, related non-competitors! Stay away from link farms; they are regarded as a “Link Building DON’T” and typically do not yield traffic.

Buy. Certain e-Businesses can provide you with relevant, reputable links you can use to boost link popularity while link building for a monthly fee. Depending on the quality of a site, prices can range from $20-800 per month, but the traffic and increased webpage ranking tend to make this method well worth the expense. If buying links appeals to your e-Business, TextLinkBrokers.com is a highly regarded site that sells quality links for reasonable prices.

Blog. Personal blogs are great for generating webpage content, but they’re also an opportunity for link building. In addition to posting your own e-Business news, be sure to comment on other blogs; sharing knowledgeable information on a relevant topic is a surefire way to gain visibility and connections. Also, try to have your blog included in a handful of top blog directories.

Broadcast. Spread the word about your e-Business by posting articles relevant to your e-Business services on archives like EzineArticles.com. At the end of your articles, include a mini-biography of your e-Business and link to your website. This increases the likelihood of an interested party visiting your site. Also, reviewing relevant products on e-Commerce sites allow you to broadcast your expertise, giving you the opportunity to insert your link on popular sites like Amazon.com.

While link building, keep in mind that illegitimate link building techniques should be avoided at all costs; they are ultimately unproductive and will not increase webpage ranking. Search engines are becoming more and more refined in their algorithms and useless filler sites are likely to be excluded from page ranking. Genuine link building methods are a great way to improve website traffic and increase webpage ranking. Good luck!

Google announces union between AdSense and Maps

2007-06-06T11:26:00.001-07:00

Last week, Google unveiled plans to incorporate the functions of AdSense and Maps, its advertisement application and navigation application respectively. According to Greg Sterling, who attended the conference during which these plans were discussed, no official date was ascertained as to when the combine efforts of AdSense and Maps will go public. But a fusion like this is sure to excite and benefit e-Marketers and Internet browsers alike.

AdSense, originally developed as an extensive website crawler, filters the content on e-Business websites to find and offer relevant ads e-Marketers can include and profit from whenever a browser clicks on them. Google is confident that the advertisement links AdSense provides are “so well-matched, in fact, that…readers will actually find them useful.”

For browsers, the merger between AdSense and Maps essentially means that any search results for a given location will be accompanied by mini-advertisements sponsored by local businesses, such as hotels, restaurants, or retail stores. The ads will appear when a specific push-pin is hovered over; this allows e-Marketers to receive a shared profit if the link is visited. Of course, any interested e-Business would have to pay an initial fee for the ad before profiting from it.

This screen shot was acquired from the above linked article. It illustrates what Maps searches would look like with sponsored advertisements by AdSense.

As far as application relationships go, this is a smart match on Google’s part— not only will this make browsing a neighborhood for restaurants easier, it will create seemingly limitless opportunities for e-Businesses to expand their advertisement potential. The genius of integrating AdSense and Maps is that it conveniently joins browser and e-Business by allowing both parties to mutually benefit. If these plans take off successfully, e-Marketers will have another legitimate prospect for publicity and sales in the online world.

Welcome to Link Building 101

2007-06-04T11:26:00.000-07:00

Excellent online content distribution and prominent repeating key phrases can only take your website so far. In the quest for search engine optimization, you also need to pay special attention to off-the-page factors, namely link building. Two fundamental branches of link building are link popularity and link quality. Together, these three factors represent the supreme vehicle for SEO and experts suggest that enhancing them is guaranteed to increase your website’s rank in top search engines.

What is link building? Link building is the act of integrating inbound links to your website. This can be done in a variety of ways. For example, a free link opportunity could result from politely submitting a request to be linked by a relevant website; other methods include purchasing a spot in a popular directory, such as Yahoo, for a monthly fee. Link popularity is determined by the overall amount of external sites that link to your website. Link quality involves an examination of these external sites to verify the nature of their— what else—quality. Quality is based upon professionalism, reputation, and rank in top search engines.

What’s can link building do for my e-Business? The whole point of link building is to optimize your e-Business website’s rank in top search engines. When reputable sites link to your own site, you show browsers and search engines that you are worth linking and therefore, worth visiting. One article confirms that “link popularity and link quality are very important because every major search engine now considers them as a part of their ranking algorithms.” Once a search engine recognizes your e-Business as a useful site, your rank will increase— generating more visibility, publicity and sales.

How do I successfully approach link building? There are myriad tips to follow for successful link building. Here are a few of the most significant ones:

Give sites a reason to link you. Make sure your website is optimized by including content-rich pages and useful, prevalent key phrases. Also, work out any bugs that might pose a problem.

Target relevant, reputable sites. Aim for non-competitor websites that would have an audience similar to your own e-Business. One article explains that “links from sites within your industry are strong endorsements for your site.” It’s also important to choose a reputable site. Do your homework! Research the site before you submit a request. Remember: quality over quantity. One link from a major directory is much more important than a dozen links from personal, unrelated websites. The goal is to have a top ranking site link to you so your rank increases as well.

Good manners go a long way. When approaching an e-Business to link to your site, it’s best to extend your interest over the phone as opposed to e-mail. Be polite but confident. Explain your services, your intentions, and what the benefits are for linking to your site. Show that you’re professional and responsible— include the exact URL you want to have linked, the URL of the page where it would fit best, and any suggestions for appropriate text to accompany the link. Offer to link them back in return; establishing a friendly relationship with the sites that links you provides benefits for all parties and opens new doorways for alliances.

Know your competitors. Don’t waste time asking a competitor to link to your site. Instead, check out which sites link to your competitors; see if you can offer these sites better services or a more beneficial mutual relationship.

DO NOT abuse your resources. There are a lot of legitimate strategies for successful link building. If you utilize these strategies in any way other than indicated by the instructions, you risk getting kicked out of a search engine altogether. Link farms are highly discouraged as avenues for link popularity. Also, don’t spam websites with requests to have them link your site. You’re likely to aggravate them and extinguish the possibility of future relationships.

Get listed in directories. Charges apply, but this is typically a guaranteed chance for link building. Popular directories include Yahoo, DMOZ, Business.com, and JoeAnt.com. Check them out!

For more information and advice on link building, I recommend reading through The Art of Advanced Link Building and 131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies, two articles posted on Searchenginewatch.com. Remember— good content is only half the battle; proper link building is a worth-while and rewarding endeavor.

iLike shows potential for Facebook applications

2007-06-04T11:25:00.000-07:00

News of the latest Facebook Platform naturally had me interested, seeing as I am a confirmed addict of this social networking site. Last week’s unveiling created boundless opportunities for e-Businesses to create applications which benefit Facebook users; the functions of these applications range from rating recently viewed movies to adopting cute fluffy friends to live on your profile. But do these applications have promise? The unexpected, exponential and instantaneous growth of the music application iLike suggests a resounding “UM, YEAH!”

Now, I usually consider myself up-to-speed with the happenings of Facebook, but I must have been asleep when iLike took this social networking site by storm. In the short span of its existence, iLike has accumulated over 1.2 million users including 23 of my own friends! The application’s appeal is that it allows users to add songs or music videos to their Facebook profile; and iLike preserves the concept of a social networking site by allowing users to interact with each other via sharing favorite artists or competing in trivia games such as “The Music Challenge.”

Two days ago, Cameron Olthuis posted a great article on Searchengineland.com, advising e-Marketers on how to maximize their chances of success with their Facebook application. Basically, interested e-Marketers ought to create an application that satisfies the members of a social networking site— something we Facebook addicts want (like free music to customize our pages!) and can easily use.

Olthuis writes, “Because the Facebook Platform is so new we are only able to scratch the surface at this point of what works and what doesn't.” It’s obvious that not all applications can expect the same magnitude of popularity as iLike. But iLike has certainly showed us that these applications have great potential in the Facebook community.

You can't fake real counsel, either.

2007-06-01T11:25:00.000-07:00

When my boss told me about Jill Whalen’s article entitled "You Can't Fake Real Content" (posted on Search Engine Land), I anticipated an initial hack into spammers and encounters of SEO-gone-wrong, followed by helpful advice on how to properly write and distribute online content. I was not only disappointed, but slightly (read: extremely) irritated by what she wrote. I found her article to be an immature attack on companies who encourage online content distribution which, when done properly, greatly increase the chances of a browser finding your services.

Whalen irresponsibly generalizes e-Business motives and incentives for online content distribution. Her only piece of advice: “fix your site,” and her suggestions to do so are limited and vague.

Let me turn now to the reader: do you really think that with one spiffy site, you’ll end up on the first page of a Google search? Not likely. You need consistent, positive publicity.

Whalen uses the example of a laminating service in her article. I’d like to continue with that example. If I’m sending important documents off to Joe Shmo to be laminated, I want to be assured of his professionalism, proficiency and skills in the laminating industry. He may have an incredible website that tells me everything I need to know. But my chances of finding that website are slim if he doesn’t practice accurate online content distribution.

There’s nothing wrong with him posting articles about his services or client testimonials affirming he is the right one for the job. Sure, that will jumpstart his ranking in search engines but that’s probably not his only motivation. He wants to get his message out there! And his prevalent online content benefits me as a browser. How am I supposed to be a responsible and well-informed online shopper if I don’t know what the heck his e-Business is up to?

Joe Shmo needs to tell me about the benefits of choosing him by posting information on the big project he just finished for an important client or a new division his company just opened up. He needs to utilize a variety of online mediums— such as blogs and article archives— to get his point across. And if he is really focused on SEO, he needs to insert a link back to his website and services (just like Whalen has done in this article!). That’s part of what SEO and web content are all about.

I’ll agree with Whalen: people can be con-artists. You have to be careful when sifting through online content just as you have to be careful with someone trying to sell you a Ford Pinto. But when it comes to surfing the web for a service, no content = nothing to sift through— nothing to confirm or negate the quality of that service. Without content, it becomes much harder to differentiate between the scam and the real deal. Let’s examine this from mathematical perspective: content can equal publicity; the lack of content cannot equal publicity. I’m no statistician here, but I’d rather go with the former… as an online shopper or a seller, I’d rather go with the better odds.

Whalen writes, and I agree, that “…visitors who come from keyword searches at Google may not already be familiar with what you offer. It doesn't work to speak to them in a generic way. You must use the words that got them there in the first place.” Finally! Advice! Good content must involve accurate and repeating key terms that revolve around your services, experiences and relevant news. This will only make it easier for search engines to target you and for browsers to find (and benefit from) your e-Business. Including these key terms on article archive sites or business blogs isn’t such a bad idea either.

All in all, this article gave me the impression that companies should make one website and let it sit on the Internet to collect dust… because with no online content distribution, that’s most likely what will happen.

And I must admit that I find the article a bit… hypocritical. Whalen seems to be attacking the use of content which leads back to your perfect website. Yet this article contains a link to her SEO company’s homepage. That homepage contains a link to her SEO blog. And that blog contains a link to her company’s online SEO forum. There’s nothing wrong with that… except the fact that her article disagrees with it altogether.

As a writer for a company that not only promotes online content, but personally utilizes (and benefits from) it, I have to say that Whalen’s article is one-sided and negligent. She fails to examine or explain the benefits of proper online content drafting and distribution.

Rather than tell you that your online content is fake and crappy, I invite you to check out some of the services Hudson Horizons has to offer. The HH team members will actually provide you with advice and services for how to create meaningful content and show you how successful online content distribution can enhance your e-Business.

Successful Content Distribution via Social Networking Sites

2007-05-31T11:24:00.000-07:00

One of the most important things for any e-Business is sales! A great tool for ensuring strong sales is consistent, positive publicity. Promoting your company's services and achievements on a variety of relevant social networking sites creates new opportunities for browsers to discover all that your e-Business has to offer. This form of online content distribution is simple, popular and effective.

Wait, content? What's that all about? Don't worry. “Content” doesn't always mean dense essays or twenty-page PDF documents. Content refers to any information on the Internet. One online dictionary defines content as "the ‘message’ rather than the ‘medium.’”

As the market for e-Businesses expands, dozens of free social networking sites are emerging. They act as vehicles for getting your message out there. But it's important to make sure you're utilizing the appropriate one to fit e-Business interests and objectives.

Here are brief descriptions and examples for five types of free and easy social networking sites that you can use to achieve successful online content distribution:

MySpace and Facebook: Social networking sites such as these are well-known online communities. They provide users with free, customizable profiles and encourage them to interact with other members. Some information sections on Myspace include "About Me" and "General Interests." Plugging in your e-Business services and experiences here create great opportunities for online content distribution. Facebook is geared towards students and alumni, placing users in networks based on schools and location. This refines searches and considerably simplifies online navigation. Both social networking sites allow users to blog and upload digital photos, though their main focus seems to be gaining acquaintances.

Blogger, LiveJournal: The function of these social networking sites is to allow users to publish personal web logs (blogs). While some blog purely for entertainment, you can increase online content distribution by publicly posting relevant articles, testimonials, contact information, or examples of work if possible. Blogger, a product of Google, and LiveJournal both allow for complete customization of your blog's appearance to help maintain any e-Business logos or aesthetic themes.

Ezines, Articlesbase: Another avenue for company-focused blogs is publishing articles written by you or your co-workers. Social networking sites such as Ezines Articlesbase, most online article archives have sections on the homepage for featured authors. Also, these social networking sites often list submissions according to category which increases the likelihood of your article being found by interested parties. This also allows you to get the scoop on any e-Business competitors.

Fickr, Fotki: Geared towards mass image uploading, social networking sites like Flickr allow users to “store, search and share your photos.” This is an excellent opportunity for promising photographers or artists looking to maximize online content distribution. All accounts are free and browsers have a choice between searching for photos by keyword and perusing through a list of categories, much like the article-based social networking sites. In addition to uploading photos, social networking sites like Fotki hold contests for viewers to vote on their favorite image. Your original artwork, for example, is more likely to catch the eye of a potential buyer when it’s situated in the right place.

Broadcaster, Youtube: The Youtube phenomenon has had a considerable impact on the lives of average people all because they plugged their video on a very popular social networking site. This can happen to anyone! Got an interesting short film? Or an e-Business promotional video? Uploading your clips to social networking sites like Broadcaster.com or Youtube is a smart outlet for online content distribution. A handy feature of these sites is that viewers can comment on your work, giving you the initial feedback you need. And even if your video isn’t the first one they see, a useful “related” tab can lead browsers right to you.

These are only a handful of the social networking sites out there and each kind has its own target audience. I encourage you to visit each of the sites to learn more so you can find your own social networking site niche. allow you to upload hundreds of articles at no charge, and online browsers can obtain the full article text for free as well. This vastly increases opportunities for people to reach your work. In addition, authors can upload a mini biography, including a user picture, work experience, and e-Business objectives.

If you have an e-Business and are seeking free exposure, I strongly recommend you to get out there and take advantage of these popular social networking sites. Online content distribution is essential to generating publicity for your e-Business. A great benefit of all these sites is they allow you to include personal information and links for your e-Business website. Remember: the main goal is to get your message out there and have as many doorways leading back to your website and your services.

Get noticed: a glimpse into online content distribution

2007-05-30T11:24:00.000-07:00

So you wrote a great article promoting the exceptional services of your business, or you just finished compiling a portfolio of your original essays… now what? You need to generate positive attention from interested parties. A fruitful first step towards obtaining that much sought-after publicity is exhibiting your work, and there is no better venue than the Internet. As we progress into the future, the Internet is becoming our most vital tool for exposure. But in order to get optimal results, you have to master the art of online content distribution.

Online content distribution is pretty self-explanatory: it’s the distribution of metadata (information about content) throughout the Internet. The more links and arrows pointing back to your work, the more traffic your website will receive, thereby elevating your status in the online market. Simple yet effective mediums for online content distribution include blogs or social networking sites. But there are more complex avenues as well; perfecting online content distribution requires attention to SEO and potential media partnerships.

Check out this post on toprankblog.com for tips on how to approach online content distribution. For more information on metadata specifically, I recommend reading through this document for a detailed explanation of the process and benefits of online content distribution.

Today: local e-Market; tomorrow: the world

2007-05-30T11:23:00.000-07:00

This year’s Search Engine Strategies China conference, held in the city of Xiamen, generated some interesting theories for the future of the international e-Market. The author of this article, Chris Sherman, not only attended the SES China conference, but formally spoke alongside several of the CEOs and chair people he interviewed. From these discussions, Sherman sensibly deduced that “sometime in 2007 China will become the world leader in numbers of online users, and will likely become one of the most significant online marketplaces…”

What does this mean for small or mid-sized American e-Businesses? Sherman believes that this potential shift of dominance within the international e-Market is quite relevant to local e-Businesses interested in continuously expanding their user population; “[it is] an important consideration for search marketers wanting to reach the widest possible audience,” he writes. To ensure survival, e-Market competitors will have to expand their visions of what customers want and need. But unlike the past, tactics will have to be culturally tailored and amplified in order to successfully reach the “four corners” of the world and its international e-Market.

Moving towards a cleaner Internet

2007-05-23T11:23:00.000-07:00

On Monday, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that they are working with BBN Technologies Inc. to manage the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI), a "clean slate project" intended to test the possibility of recreating the Internet from scratch. Referred to as an “experimental research network,” GENI will require significant funding of up to $10 million over the next four years which will be supplied by the NSF.

So why all the renovation?

When the Internet was initially developed nearly forty years ago, it was not designed with E-Bay, MySpace, or personal blogs in mind. But for many Internet users today, these things are the quintessence of online activities; they represent the ever-growing virtual connection between buyers, sellers, friends and clients.

Many of us have witnessed— if not reaped— the boundless benefits of the Internet, but not without the occasional detriments. I am referring to dangers such as privacy invasion, identity theft, and account hacking.

A main focus of the clean slate projects is to eliminate technological flaws such as these. As stated on the GENI homepage, the organization strives to “invent and demonstrate a global communications network and related services that is qualitatively better than today's Internet.”

In an interesting MSNBC article concerning this matter, several researchers were said to believe that redesigning the Internet would be the “only way to truly address security, mobility and other challenges that have cropped up since [its] birth in 1969.” Ultimately, these renovations would involve “replacing networking equipment and rewriting software on computers,” among other things.

What do clean slate projects mean for people and businesses that are just now acclimating to the current Internet? Nothing too drastic… the NSF maintains that any newly-designed network will co-exist alongside today’s Internet until users are ready to make the switch. MSNBC reporter Anick Jesdanun states that “individuals and businesses [can] gradually [migrate] over as they need more advanced applications.” This is a comforting concept, but I can’t help but wonder if a delayed transition would be as futile as refusing to buy a cell phone or upgrade from vintage vinyl to compact discs.

Still, the theorized advantages of clean slate projects are impressive. For example, GENI hopes to approach the concept of wireless connections in a whole new way, aiming to “provide connectivity without the high cost of fixed wireline infrastructure.” GENI researchers assert the need to “rethink what support is needed for the mobile host” in order to improve it in the future. Limitless wireless connections could significantly enhance the capabilities of online businesses as well as individual users.

For the most part, this shift represents yet another attempt to better our existence through innovative restoration. With careful consideration to what consumers want and need in order to thrive on the Internet, the efforts of GENI could very well be a huge success. If a “cleaner” Internet does eventually emerge, one can only hope that through user-friendly mechanisms and helpful applications it would continue to encourage individuals and companies to explore and expand their role in the age of virtual interaction.

I am Shopping for? The Best way to sell my Products Online

2007-05-15T12:41:00.000-07:00

Retailers are constantly looking for better ways to sell their products Internet. In today's vastly changing online world, selling products through the means of shopping comparison websites have become a great way for retailers to drive more traffic to their website, increase sales and at the same time advertise and strengthen the brand of their business.

With the birth of shopping comparison sites back around 1995, several major players have surfaced in the past 12 years. Some of the most popular sites include BizRate, Shopzilla, Shopping.com, NexTag, Froogle (recently named Google Product Search), MSN Shopping, Yahoo Shopping, Price Grabber, and one of the newest additions Become.com. These sites provide users with a means to search for a product, locate many sellers, compare prices, and be directed to the seller's website to purchase the product.

These shopping comparison sites are highly effective, cost-per-click marketing programs designed for online retailers. Every week these sites direct millions of pre-qualified, ready-to-buy shoppers to thousands of online stores participating in these shopping search engine programs.

In today's cluttered online world, smart consumers demand simple and easy comparison shopping features that take the stress out of online shopping, lead them straight to the products they're seeking, while saving them time and money. That's why these shopping comparison sites offer shoppers easy-to-use search tools, engaging content and time saving navigation, along with millions of unbiased product and merchant reviews from the opinions of the shopping community - all in once place.

Here's a little information on seven of the top shopping comparison sites:

Shopzilla
Founded in 1996, Shopzilla is a leading comparison shopping service. The company's mission is to enable shoppers to quickly and easily find compare and buy anything, sold by virtually anyone, anywhere. Each month, Shopzilla connects millions of consumers with thousands of stores. In June 2006, Shopzilla attracted over 18.9 million unique visitors according to ComScore. Shopzilla also operates the BizRate consumer feedback network that collects millions of consumer reviews of stores and products each year.

BizRate
BizRate is operated by Shopzilla, a leading comparison shopping service founded in 1996.

Shopping.com
Shopping.com, an eBay company, pioneered online comparison shopping and today is one of the fastest growing shopping destinations for a comprehensive set of products from thousands of trusted stores from across the Web.

NexTag
NexTag.com is the leading comparison shopping site for products, financial services, travel, automobiles, real estate, education and more. At the core of NexTag.com is its proprietary Search And Match (SAM^TM) technology that enables shoppers to quickly compare prices and find the best deals on millions of products and services. For thousands of merchants, service providers and individuals, NexTag is an extremely efficient sales channel with its highly qualified traffic and performance-based pricing. More than 11 million people per month use NexTag.com to research, compare, and buy products and services online*.

Froogle / Google Base / Google Product Search
It costs nothing to reach shoppers by submitting your items to Google Base so they'll be found on Google (you'll be asked to create a Google account if you don't already have one). You can link directly from our search results to your website, and if you don't have one, we'll host your offers for free.

PriceGrabber
PriceGrabber.com is the industry innovator in online comparison shopping. Millions of consumers use PriceGrabber to quickly obtain free and unbiased information about products, services, merchants and sellers before making a purchase decision. Through continued innovation and consistent focus on providing the best comparison shopping experience on the Internet, PriceGrabber has established itself as the most trusted and effective online destination for savvy shopping.

Become.com
Become.com claims to be the only fully integrated Web-wide product search and comparison shopping site on the Internet. Become.com is fast and easy to use whether you are researching what to buy or simply deciding whom to buy it from.

As you can see, there are a bunch of sites that offer shopping comparison. The ones I've listed above are some of my favorites and definitely the most visited on the Internet. If you're an online retailer who is looking for other ways to get your products out there, I highly recommend using one or more of these shopping comparison websites - It's a great way to increase traffic, gain more exposure, strengthen your brand and sell more products... all in one shot!

If you're interesting in having your products submitted for you, contact us today. We offer automated product submission services to many of the popular shopping comparison websites.

Minimize Outstanding Invoices with an Electronic Invoicing Solution

2007-05-07T07:08:00.000-07:00

On average, how long does it take your business to collect payments from your customers? Are you currently waiting to obtain payments for services rendered over one or two months ago? If so, then consider implementing an electronic invoicing solution that allows you to invoice your clients via email and accept payments through credit card, EFT (electronic funds transfer) or ACH (Automated Clearing House) direct deposit.

This method of invoicing your clients via an electronic means, such as email, will save your business time, money and provide a return on your investment. My company integrates electronic invoicing systems for our clients and I can say with experience, it allows you to collect payments in weeks rather than months. It's also much easier for your clients to click a link in an email, fill out some basic credit card information and submit their payment online then it is to print an invoice, write a check and mail it back to you. Your clients will be more inclined to process payments sooner if you provide them with a method that takes one minute to complete.

By doing this, you're also gaining another significant advantage - the next time you invoice your client, you will have their payment information stored on file so you can easily process their credit card or request payment through their bank account (ACH), without having to wait for them to submit the payment. This will tremendously minimize the amount of outstanding invoices, while giving you more cash flow to run and operate your business today.

Some businesses use PayPal to invoice their clients. As this is a very similar means, it's not as professional. If you are using PayPal to invoice your clients, you may be showing that you cannot afford to implement an online invoicing solution; however, if you employ a customized e-invoicing solution, you will prove to your customers that you are successful and are continually working to improve your business - a notion that is very important for customer retention.

If you're currently using PayPal and I just offended you - I apologize. I did not mean you're not on the right track because you most definitely are. People, who use PayPal, are farther ahead of the game than the business that does not accept any form of electronic payment. I'm just trying to open your eyes and let you know that you can implement a customized e-invoicing solution for your business for a minimal cost and with fewer seller fees than PayPal's standard transaction costs.

When it's time to search for a solution that's right for you, be sure to find an e-invoicing solution that is flexible and provides you with the ability to submit and request payment for both one-time product/service invoices as well at recurring. Also, try to find a solution that accepts both credit cards, as well as processes ACH direct deposits because as your company grows, so will the need to use ACH. Also, ACH transaction fees are much cheaper than credit card transaction fees, so this will give you the capability to process ACH transactions whenever possible. Other than that, the additional features and functionality will depend on your specific business needs - so find a solution that is customized for yours.

I hope you find this article to benefit your business. I'm confident that if you implement an electronic invoicing system for your business, you will reap the benefits instantly and will be able to streamline and run your business more efficiently... as I have for mine and my clients.

Website Development for a Fraction of the Cost

2007-04-26T06:38:00.000-07:00

Fair Lawn, NJ (PRWEB) April 26, 2007 -- Hudson Horizons offers customized website development services and e-commerce solutions for half the cost of their competition.

As a result of Hudson Horizons web-based products, solutions and services, organizations do not need to continually rely on a web-development company to manage their website, nor do they need to pay extensive amounts of money to receive an advanced website for their business. Instead, organizations can simply obtain a customized e-business solution from Hudson Horizons that encompasses all of their business tasks and is easily manageable, for a fraction of the cost, as compared to some of the industry leaders in the web development industry.

What this means for their clients is that the user of Hudson Horizons' technology gains a significant competitive advantage by integrating multiple business processes into one affordable customized e-business solution. Now Hudson Horizons' clients can manage their entire website through Content Management, generate online invoices, accept credit card payments through their website, utilize ACH direct deposits, generate HTML e-Newsletters, perform Customer Relationship Management, and much more with a customized e-business solution from Hudson Horizons.

"It's an unbelievable breakthrough in advanced technology", explains President and CEO, Daryl H. Bryant, "our advanced technology allows our clients to fully automate their business through the back-end of their website. This translates in a huge return on investment (ROI) for our clients since they can receive a customized e-business solution for a fraction of the cost and without the heavy resource fees required to operate and maintain their websites on a month-by-month basis."

Moving into the future, Hudson Horizons continues too innovate their technology on a daily basis and has developed multiple online products that automate e-marketing services for their clientele. Their current web-based products, HH Sitemap Manager, HH Froogle Manager, HH Blog Manager and HH e-Newsletter Manager provide exactly this. "As the Internet is expanding and offering more opportunity to perform business online, it's an open door to create customized web-based systems that allow us to provide automated e-marketing services for our clients online", states CTO and Vice President of Technology, Matt Mayernik.

While in the pursuit to develop online products, Hudson Horizons main focus is to provide affordable, customized, dynamic websites and web-based software applications to small and mid-sized businesses. This will enable them to reach their goal to become the leading e-business solution provider of the future.

About Hudson Horizons

Hudson Horizons is an e-business product, solution and marketing company specializing in creating highly sophisticated customized websites, web-based software applications and providing e-marketing services for small and mid-sized businesses.

A main focus of Hudson Horizons is to develop technologies that are commonly referred in today's Internet standards as Web 2.0 technology. Such examples include: blogs/weblogs, content management, RSS feeds, social networking, social bookmarking and other forms of communication and social web-based tools.

Their vision and ultimate ambition as a company is to always strive to be "The New Light for e-Business."

By offering new, innovative and extremely competitive products and solutions to their clients, they provide better ways to run and operate a business online.

Move over Froogle - Make room for Google Product Search

2007-04-20T07:09:00.000-07:00

Back in 2002, Google launched Froogle, their product search engine. It’s named was created by mixing the terms “frugal” and “Google” together.

Well yesterday, Google announced that they are converting Froogle over to a Google brand and naming it Google Product Search instead. If you go to http://www.froogle.com/, you will now be redirected to www.google.com/products. Why the sudden name change?

"We were a really young company, and I don't think we really understood the burden of a new brand," said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google. "I also think it was very hard to build awareness. Our product offering was very robust, but it will fare better with a Google Product Search name."

So it seems like Google is taking a more grown-up approach to their product search and trying to brand their product search under the Google name. I think that’s half of the reason. I truly believe that the major reason for the name change is because Froogle was not doing that well on it’s own. I think it needs the recognition of the Google brand to be noticed more.

The Froogle link was removed from the Google homepage last year. But now you’ll find the Products link under the “more” link. See the image below to see what I’m talking about.

Even though Google has changed the name from Froogle to Google Product Search, users will still submit their products to Google Base as they have done so in the past.

Now it all makes sense! Last year the Froogle product submission feature was suddenly switched to Google Base and then a few months ago, Google required additional required fields when submitting products to Google Base. Now these changes all make sense. They were slowly integrating Froogle over to this new system.

I think this is a great change for Google, as well as all online product companies out there. This should be a golden opportunity to take advantage of. If you’re a product company and you don’t submit your products to Google Base, then I would think about doing this ASAP. The new change should drive more exposure to the Google Product Search engine and will in turn increase sales for all product companies who submit their products to Google Base.

If you’re looking for an automated product solution that connects directly to your database, give this product a try for only $15 / month.

Google, Yahoo, MSN and Now Ask.com Offer Auto-Discovery for Sitemaps

2007-04-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

There is some great news in the SEO world that will change the way webmaster process and submit Sitemaps to Google, Yahoo!, MSN and the newest member Ask. The four search players announced on April 11, 2007, that there is a new way to let the search engines know about your Sitemap file. The new process is being referred to as the Auto-Discovery of Sitemaps.

How to specify the Sitemap location in your robots.txt file

You can specify the location of the Sitemap using a robots.txt file. To do this, simply add the following line:Sitemap:

The should be the complete URL to the Sitemap, such as: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Click the following links to view their full announcements: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask. The following is a short snippet from their statements:

Google states, Second, it's now easier for you to tell us where your Sitemaps live. We wondered if we could make it so easy that you wouldn't even have to tell us and every other search engine that supports Sitemaps. But how? Well, every website can have a robots.txt file in a standard location, so we decided to let you tell us about your Sitemap in the robots.txt file.

Yahoo states, Please provide the complete URL for your Sitemap on this line. We will pick it up wherever you put it in your robots.txt file. This directive is not specific to user-agent. If you have multiple Sitemaps, you can point to your Sitemap index file on this line. Details about the Sitemaps protocol including this addition are available on the protocol website -- http://www.sitemaps.org.

MSN states, Although we aren't ready to start consuming sitemaps quite yet, I encourage you to build a sitemap and add the "sitemap" directive to your robots.txt. As soon as we roll out support (before the end of the year), we will be able to start crawling your sitemap files immediately. If you want more detail on the sitemaps protocol, including auto-discovery, check out www.sitemaps.org.

Ask.com states, In addition, Ask.com is now supporting submission of Sitemaps via http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=SitemapUrl.

Of course, neither auto-discovery nor manual submission guarantee pages will be added to the index. The pages must meet our quality criteria for inclusion in the index. And use of these submission methods does not influence ranking.

Even though this new auto-discovery process can make a webmasters job easier, I still think it's extremely useful to submit your Sitemap through Google Webmaster tools and Yahoo Site Explorer so you can make sure that the Sitemap was processed without any issues and you can get additional statistics about your site.

Will MSN and Ask.com be creating a similar type of Sitemap submission section so webmasters can track and view more detailed statistics about their websites? Only time will tell!

Its Sales Conversions that Matter Most

2007-04-05T06:46:00.000-07:00

Do you have or utilize the services of an SEO specialist? What is their primary focus? If its to get you to the top of the search engines then let me forewarn you " in todays online world, search engine ranking is not and should not be the primary focus of any SEO specialist. If it is, then let me say one thing they are not a specialist, find a new SEO!

A true SEO does not just focus on search engine ranking. This is the game of the past. Todays top SEO specialists know and understand the search engines, how they work, their algorithms and how to increase sales in a number of ways.

So if search engine ranking is NOT the most important factor, then what is?

It IS the conversion of sales from the amount of website traffic!

In the end, sales are what drive our businesses forward - so without new sales, there will be no growth and without growth your business will not be on a path to success.

So in terms of SEO, why should this be any different?

It shouldnt. As an example, lets say your website is listed on the first page of Google for a certain search term but NOT receiving many sales, then I would say that your SEO is NOT producing the results you should be looking for. However, if youre not even on the top 5 pages in Google, but you HAVE increased sales over the past X months, then I would say your SEO IS showing signs of success.

Now lets compare your sales to your website traffic and determine your conversion rate. If your SEO has doubled your traffic over the past X months but your sales have not doubled since then, then I would say you need to re-focus on whats most important. First, focus on getting more sales with less traffic. After youve accomplished this, then you and your SEO can work on increasing your website traffic because at that point, you should be able to double your sales by doubling your traffic. Yet, without this foundation in place, you will just be wasting your time, money and energy since youre not focusing on the conversion of sales from your website traffic.

In terms of sales conversions, receiving 100 sales on 1000 website visitors is better than 200 sales on 5000 visitors because the conversion of sales with 1000 visitors is much higher than the conversion of sales with 5000 visitors - its actually four times higher. If you focus to increase your sales from the 1000 visitors first and after youve increased that to say 200 sales, thats when it should be time to focus to increase your traffic - because with 5000 visitors, you will now receive 1000 sales instead of the previous example of 200.

I dont mean to be throwing all these numbers at you to confuse you,my whole point is the fact that sales conversions should be you and your SEO specialists main focus. If you can learn to apply this idea of increasing sales conversions, Im 100% confident you will see tremendous improvements for your business.

As you can see, there is more to SEO then just search engine ranking. The top SEO specialists of today will know this and focus on increasing your sales, rather than focusing to increase your ranking in the search engines. If your SEO specialist does not think this way, then like I said before, get away fast and find a new one who believes this is the path to success. Sales are the bread and butter of any business. Do you want more sales or do you want better search engine ranking? The choice is yours! Do whats best for your business.

Optimize your Google Base Data Feeds for Success

2007-04-02T06:47:00.000-07:00

For all you Google Base fanatics out there, I have one very important question for you? Are you optimizing your Google Base data feeds for success? If not, I would like to explain a few basic things for why and how you should optimize your feeds before submitting them to Google Base.

The following items will explain some important things to consider prior to submitting your data feeds. If you apply these, you will be sure to bring more success from your Google Base data feed submissions.

What is Google Base?

Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content. The items you submit can include labels and attributes that help describe what youre uploading so people can easily locate your items.

Attributes are words or phrases that help describe the characteristics and qualities of your items. For any given attribute you may enter multiple values separated by commas. Labels are any keywords or phrases " such as recipe, event, or product " that can be used to classify or describe your item.

Google Base Data Becomes other Google Data

The items you submit to Google Base will be included in the Base directory and depending on your items relevance, can automatically be posted in such places like the Google search engine, Froogle, Google Maps and more. This is an important thing to understand because the quality of the data you submit will not only affect your results in Google Base, but in these other areas of Google as well.

For example, if you submit a real estate property listing to Google Base, the property listing information will eventually be added into the Google search index.

Utilize Google Base Custom Attributes to Optimize your Feeds

The Google Base data feed allows you to specify your own custom attributes. Custom attributes allow you to include additional information about your items. You can include an unlimited number of custom attributes in your tab-delimited bulk upload file.

Why is this important? Well like I said before, depending on your items relevance they will automatically be included in such places like the Google search engine, Froogle, Google Maps and more.

By defining custom attributes for your items, you will be in fact optimizing your feeds for success because you will be providing more detailed information about your data. By providing more detailed information to Google, they will have more information about your items and when someone searches in Google Base, Google or Froogle, your items will have a greater opportunity of being discovered.

More relative content will equal more quality trafficits that simple.

Also, considering many people who upload their data feeds to Google Base do not use the custom attributes feature, you will gain a significant competitive advantage over your competition because your feeds will be more optimized for success than the rest of your competition.

Automate your Google Base Data Feeds

Another way to gain a substantial competitive advantage over your competition is to completely automate your Google Base data feeds. By automating your feeds, you will be sure that the information uploaded to Google Base is 100% up-to-date and completely accurate.

The best way to automate your Google Base data feed is to connect it directly with your database and have a process pull the most recent data once a day and submit a new bulk upload to Google Base on a frequent basis. Many companies claim to automate your data feeds but the only company Ive found that completely automates the process is Hudson Horizons. They will setup a process to connect to your database on a daily basis, compile the most recent data, create your new bulk upload, and submit the data feed to Google Base three times a week.

The process takes about 1 day to setup but after that its 100% seamless and automated. All you have to do is sit back, relax and watch your sales come in. There is a small $15 per month fee for them to automate your Google Base data feed submissions.

I hope you will find the above information to be beneficial to the success of your business. Google Base is a great resource to help distribute and share information with others that you would not otherwise know how to reach. With Google Base, your information is almost instantly added and viewable by people searching for your items. Remember to follow the above information and you will be sure to increase the success of your Google Base data feeds.

How to list your Products in Froogle (Google Base) the Automated Way

2007-03-27T07:09:00.000-07:00

Froogle (now submitted through Google Base) is a price comparison service launched by Google Inc. in 2002. Froogle is different from most other price comparison services in that it neither charges any fees for listings, nor accepts payment for products to show up first. Also, it makes no commission on sales. Any company can submit product information (via a data feed) and be included in the Froogle price comparison engine.

This process is good but can become very tedious so today I would like to discuss a more streamlined way, which you can have your products automatically submitted on a frequent basis. This is the method I would like to discuss and inform you of so you can reap the benefits for your business.

Having your products submitted automatically to Froogle (Google Base) is great for product companies that use a database because the automated process can simply connect to your database everyday and compile a new list of product information. The process will then take this information and format it for insertion into the Froogle system. This automated method will save your business time, money and dramatically increase sales because the automated process will handle the entire process for you.

There are a few automated tools out there that claim to automate the entire process. The only fully automated system Ive seen so far has been developed by Hudson Horizons. Their system is completely web-based, allowing you to easily signup and enter in some basic information. After that, the rest is handled by their team.

Hudson Horizons provides automated product submission to Froogle for only $15 per month. Their product, HH Froogle Manager, provides automated submission of your products to Froogle three times a week. You no longer need to remember to set up the product feed, format the data and upload it to Froogle all on your own.

The HH Froogle Manager offers an extremely simple way to submit your products through database integration.

After you register, you can simply provide them with the information of your product database. A member of their team will then setup the automated process to connect to your database, free of charge, to gather your product information. The submission will then be tested by their team and placed into rotation to be submitted three times a week. You will also receive email notifications of the status of your product feeds every time the process runs.

If at any time you need assistance uploading your products, they are there to help. They offer FREE customer support and once the feeds are setup their job is not done. The will constantly monitor your feeds and make sure the information is successfully being inserted into Froogle three times a week.

So if you have a website that is constantly being updated and utilizes a database then this service can definitely save your business time, money and increase company sales. If thats what youre looking for, then dont let another potential sale pass you by and signup today to have Hudson Horizons automatically submit your products to Froogle (Google Base) three times a week.

Minimize Credit Card Transactions Process ACH Transactions for your Business Instead

2007-03-26T07:10:00.000-07:00

What types of payments does your business currently accept? Youre probably saying cash, checks and credit cards " why what else is there? Well have you heard of or though about accepting ACH transactions? If youre wondering what ACH is and how to do it, continue reading this article and you will learn how processing ACH transactions will save your company time, money and simplify your business.

The Automated Clearing House (ACH) is an electronic network for financial transactions. ACH processes large volumes of both credit and debit transactions which are originated in batches. Some of the most popular ACH payments include:

Direct Deposit of payroll, Social Security and other government benefits, and tax refunds

Direct Payment of consumer bills such as mortgages, loans, utility bills, insurance premiums, and other forms of online bills

Business-to-business payments

e-checks

e-commerce payments

Federal, state and local tax payments

Businesses are also increasingly using ACH to collect online payments from their customers, rather than accepting credit or debit cards. Now is the time to think about doing the same for your business. Over the next few years, ACH will become a popular method for businesses to accept payments from customers or make payments to vendors because it is much cheaper than the standard credit card transaction fees.

As an example, lets say youre currently paying 2.5% and 15 cents per transaction to your credit card processing company. If your average ticket cost is $100, you would pay approximately $2.60 per each sale.

Now lets say that youve implemented ACH for your business and you now accept e-checks and/or direct deposits from your customers. On the same $100 ticket item, you would pay anywhere from 20 " 50 cents depending on your ACH processing company. Thats a cost savings of $2.10 per sale!

It gets even better than that " lets say your average transaction was $1000, surprisingly you would still pay the same 20 " 50 cent fee. Thats the beauty of ACH - they do not care how large your transactions are.

You can also easily make payments to your vendors using your ACH solution. Simply add your vendors bank account/routing number, enter the payment amount, submit your batch and whalah your vendor is paid. And its even cheaper and easier then sending a check in the mail!

There are many companies that offer ACH payment solutions but most are manual processes. If youre looking for a fully automated ACH payment solution, Hudson Horizons has can integrate an ACH solution into your website or application in a matter of days. They can have you accepting real-time ACH transactions and saving your company time, money and streamlining your business. Their costs are extremely reasonable and the solution is fully automated. The last I heard, their costs are $15 per month and 39 cents per transaction.

So as you can see, ACH is definitely the way to go. You can potentially save your business hundreds, if not thousands of dollars every single month by integrating an ACH payment solution for your business.

Venture capital investment in Web 2.0 on the rise

2007-03-22T07:11:00.000-07:00

Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal - Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Venture capitalists continued to favor the innovative activity of Web 2.0 companies, deploying substantial sums in the segment throughout 2006, according to the latest data released by Ernst & Young and Dow Jones VentureOne.

The global research showed that $844.4 million was directed into 167 deals last year, more than twice as much money and nearly twice as many deals as occurred in 2005.

The research demonstrated a continuing trend that has seen the amount of worldwide venture capital invested into Web 2.0 practically doubling in size every year since 2002. However, most of the growth remains centered in companies based in the U.S. and Europe.

"Web 2.0 is certainly a very fast-growing segment of the overall venture capital market right now. However, based on the median size of Web 2.0 deals and the conservative level of pre-money valuations for these companies, the data does not indicate that we are entering bubble territory," said Stephen Harmston, director of global research for VentureOne. "Rather, what we are seeing is robust investment activity aimed at a still emerging business area."

The median pre-money valuation for a Web 2.0 company in 2006 was $6 million for both U.S.-based companies and worldwide, compared to the $18.5 million overall median pre-money valuation reported for U.S. venture-backed companies and also below the $7 million overall median pre-money valuation for European venture-backed companies.

The median size of a Web 2.0 deal on a global basis was $5 million in 2006, an increase from the $3.3 million median the year before. The median size of a financing round was also $5 million in the U.S. and China, but was higher in Europe last year at $6 million.

VentureOne said it adopted a strict research methodology for categorizing Web 2.0 companies, reviewing them on a case-by-case basis to determine if they meet specific criteria. Companies included in this study have a business model that revolves around a dynamic interface facilitating participation through such methods as user-created content, networking, and collaboration. Applications include podcasting, tagging, blogs, social networking, mashups, and wikis.

NBC, News Corp. to launch rival to YouTube

2007-03-22T06:25:00.000-07:00

Crain's NYBusiness.com - Published: March 22, 2007

News Corp. and NBC Universal have partnered on a new Internet video venture -- backed by some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry - in an effort to unseat YouTube, the popular user-generated site owned by Google Inc.

Starting this summer, two major movie studios and a dozen television networks will provide free, advertising-supported content, including NBC's "Saturday Night Live", Fox's "24" and feature films like "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Borat.""This is a game changer for Internet video," said News Corp. chairman Peter Chernin, in a statement. "We'll have access to just about the entire U.S. Internet audience at launch." News Corp. the MySpace social networking site, which has 65 million users.The video venture comes one week after Manhattan-based Viacom Inc. filed a $1 billion copyright infringement suit against Google, charging that YouTube users were uploading unauthorized clips from Viacom programs, like The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.Viacom officials said they consider the NBC/News Corp site a welcome development."Upholding the rights of content creators is the only logical and legitimate path for the creative and technology communities to come together and bring great new online experiences to consumers," a Viacom spokesman said.MySpace, AOL, MSN, Yahoo! " who reach a combined 96% of the U.S. Internet audience, have all agreed to become distribution partners. Cadbury Schweppes, Cisco, Intel, Esurance and General Motors have signed on as advertising partners."This venture supercharges our distribution of protected, quality content to fans everywhere," said NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker, in a statement.The new company will have headquarters both in New York City and in Los Angeles, led by a transitional management team including George Kliavkoff, chief digital officer at NBC Universal. A permanent executive team will be announced shortly, along with new advertising partners and brand details.

Alexa makes some cool changes

2007-03-19T06:33:00.000-07:00

For all you Alexa fanatics out there, some changes have been made to the Alexa Traffic Rankings section that may be of interest to you.

Update Information for New Sites

For new sites that have no information in the Alexa database, the owner of the site can now add information about the site to help Alexa start tracking data on the site.

With this new feature, Alexa now allows you to:

Click a link to have your sites thumbnail updated (takes approximately 2 days)

Update your sites contact information (name, address, phone, email, etc)

Confirm your email address (must be an email address of that domain)

Click a link in an email they send you to approve these changes

After these few basic steps are complete, Alexa says your sites information should be update within a few days.

Top Visited Users from what Countries

Alexa now provides you with a graphical representation and percentages of where your sites users are coming from. The following is an example of what you will see:

Traffic Rank in other Countries

Another cool feature is Alexa now provides your sites traffic rank for other countries. The following is an example of what you will see:

Get a Custom Tee with your Stats

Alexa is now integrated with Zazzle, a customized products marketplace for consumer enthusiasts to share and celebrate their interests by creating apparel, posters, cards, stamps and more.

With the integration of Zazzle, you can now purchase the following tee shirts with your Alexa stats and ranking on them:

My Site Rocks (displays your percentage of Internet users who visit your site)

You will " (displays your traffic rank and says You will visit my site - You will give me better rank)

Rank Matters " (displays your traffic rank and says They say size doesnt matter, but rank does)

Dance for Rank (displays your traffic rank and says Will dance for better Alexa rank)

Why Squidoo has Potential

2007-02-28T06:39:00.000-08:00

Michael Arringtons post on TechCrunch, Squidoo: Seth Godins Purple Albatross? got me thinking and I must say I agree with some of Michaels points but I also disagree with some of his others.

Michael states, Squidoo is a mixture of evergreen (static) and refreshed content. I agree with this statement because as Michael suggests, after you create your Lens there is really no need to login back into your Squidoo account to make changes on a frequent basis. This lack of bringing the user back on a daily basis is one major reason why Squidoo will find it difficult to take off. MySpace is a perfect example of a site that successfully intrigues their members to log into their account on a consistent basis for many members, thats almost every single day. I agree, this is a big problem for Squidoo. But after some intensive testing with my Squidoo accounts, I began to see the potential here. With some much needed changes to their site and back-end account section, I truly believe that Squidoo could be a great resource for just about anyone looking to increase the exposure of their business, make a few extra dollars on the side, or simply help out one of the Squidoo partner charities organizations.Why I believe Squidoo has PotentialIf we take a look at the Squidoo website, what is it? Its a place where any user can create a page, or Lens as referred by Squidoo, on just about any topic imaginable. Each Lens contains is a set of modules that are composed of links, information, Amazon products, e-Bay products, iTunes songs, RSS Feeds, and much more. All of these modules make up content elements. As we all know content is the key to success on the Internet. With good quality content, a website will be sure to find success in the search engines.Each Lens on the Squidoo website is in relation to a specific topic. And each of the modules on that Lens, generally relate to the topic being depicted. With this concept, each Lens has a great chance to have good-quality content because each of the modules are providing semantic keywords that relate to the main topic of that Lens, a concept that could really become popular with the major search engines. Most of the major search engines will look for semantic keywords on each page and rank that page on whether the content is good or not. So in my mind, they have the content portion down and seem to be continually integrating with other companies as to create more module choices for their members to interact with. Currently there are approximately 50,000 members and approximately 100,000 Lenses. If Squidoo could acquire a few hundred thousand active members, then Im confident that their site could become a content powerhouse.But lets go back to Michael Arringtons TechCrunch article and talk about his concern of how the site does not intrigue their members to login and update their existing Lenses on a consistent and frequent basis. Currently as I stated above, there is really no reason to log back in and update your Lens once it has been created, unless of course I wanted to create a new Lens on a different topic. But what if Squidoo turned into some type of social networking community? Lets just imagine for a second that if I, as a member of Squidoo, had the ability to login and tag other members Lenses, comment on their Lens, create a personal page with pictures and videos, manage a personal blog, interact with other members in some other means, and change the look-and-feel of each Lens page with different colors, fonts, css styles etc?Wow, now were talking!Basically what Im suggesting is if Squidoo took the concept of MySpace and wrapped their Squidoo model around that then I believe there would be a reason for me to login everyday and update my Lenses. The concept of Squidoo is cool and intriguing; however, if they were able to accomplish the social networking community side of things then I believe that would supply Squidoo with tremendous value.I give Seth Godin lots of credit. He went out on a limb here and created something that, in my mind, has potential. Many Im sure will disagree with me on this, but I dont think people are thinking outside the box as Seth has on this one. As with all new sites, it takes time and good feedback from active members to make it better and fix things that need to be fixed. From what Ive been reading from the past several months, it seems that Squidoo is constantly improving its services for its members, something that is worth taking notice.We all know and respect Seth from his writings and his books, my favorite being his new one, Small is the New Big. So instead of bashing Squidoo for what it does not have, lets give Squidoo a chance to grow and evolve into something that is has the potential to do. Im just waiting for the day when Im logging into Squidoo to message my friends, update my blog and comment on a few Lenses.

Happy Valentine's Day from Google Webmaster Central

2007-02-15T06:26:00.000-08:00

Google officially announced that they are taking webmaster tools out of beta and enabling comments on their Webmaster Central Blog.

Here's a direct statement from the Webmaster Central Blog.

Bye, bye beta
We've come a long way since our initial launch of the Sitemaps protocol in June 2005. Since then, we've expanded to a full set of webmaster tools, changed our name, listened to your input, and expanded even more. 2006 was a year of great progress, and we're just getting started. Coming out of beta means that we're committed to partnering with webmasters around the world to provide all the tools and information you need about your sites in our index. Together, we can provide the most relevant and useful search results. And more than a million of you, speaking at least 18 different languages, have joined in that partnership.

Click to read more about Google taking webmaster tools out of beta out of beta.

The Future of Social Networking Websites - Target Niche Groups

2007-02-14T07:48:00.000-08:00

From virtual communities that allow members to upload and share their media to social content websites that permit users to tag and communicate their favorite blogs, articles and websites with one another, social networking websites are popping up everywhere we turn.

A social networking website is defined as a community of individuals that share common relationships and connect to one another through various social interests and close-knit bonds. Some of todays most popular social networking website brands are MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Technorati, Digg, Delicious, Orkut, Xanga, Yahoo 360, Webshots, and Classmates.com. These sites all have different features and functionality but they share one common goal " that is to create a large community of members that possess common social interests and relationships.

However, as the Internet continues to bring more competition, it will be increasingly difficult for future social networking websites to compete with the big dogs and make a name in the world of social networking. I believe that weve only touched the surface of social networking on the Internet and predict the next ten years to bring some innovative and exciting new ideas that will further shape the Internet as we see it today.

Nevertheless, in order for future social networking websites to become a success, they must adapt and change with the times. With all the competition that is already present, I believe all future social sites must focus on targeting a niche group of people rather than aiming for everyone, like many of the social websites online today. In my opinion, there are too many MySpace, Digg and Delicious types of sites alreadyin competition(literally thousands). In order to make a future social networking website a success, it must not replicate what these sites have already done but focus on targeting specific niche groups of people instead. By targeting niche groups, future social networking websites will become more of a resource and less of impracticality for their members.

No.1 Industries is a company who is already doing this to a T. They have created a few social networking websites that target specific niche groups of people. Here are some of their already flourishing communities " No.1 Artist, No.1 Band and No.1 Talent.

Lets take No.1 Artist for example. Their focus is to provide a social network for artists that allow them to interact with other artists, sell their artwork off their portfolio, gain more exposure in the art industry and just have fun. It makes more sense for an artist to signup for No.1 Artist than it does for them to signup as a member of MySpace because in the end, they will receive better targeted exposure. I spoke to a representative of No.1 Industries yesterday and they are in the stages of launching three more social networking sites within the next 6 months.

By focusing on a niche, it will be easier for social websites to launch features for their community that provide resources and exposure for their members rather than just trying to target a wide range of individuals. By targeting everyone, it will just be replicating what has already beendone. By targeting specific niche groups, it will be creating value and providing essential benefits for the members of their social network.

MSN Live to Support Sitemap 0.90 Protocol - What does this really mean?

2007-02-12T07:20:00.000-08:00

Three months ago, Google and Yahoo! announced that they have joined forces to support a unified system of submitting Web pages to their crawlers. Google launched their Google Sitemaps protocol as part of their Webmaster Tools in June 2005 and Yahoo! recently with their Yahoo! Site Explorer.

On the sitemaps.org website, it states that Microsoft is also supporting this new protocol standard but the question that lies yet to be answered is " How is MSN Lives Sitemaps Submission product going to function?

The day the information was released to the public, the General Manager of Live Search, Ken Moss, announced that they are excited to be apart of the Sitemaps protocol standard. Ken Moss states, We are 100% behind this protocol - this kind of collaboration will help improve the search experience for all of our customers, and we are working hard to release full support in 2007.

I wonder what type of support Microsoft is thinking of providing. As we all know, Microsoft does everything in their power to not only duplicate what their competition has done but also seeks to jeopardize their competition at the same time. If Microsoft is going to create a Sitemaps submission product, I bet they are going to do it in a way that affects many types of web development and consulting firms that offer creation tools and services to submit Sitemaps to Google and Yahoo.

If this happens, I think it will be a bad move for Microsoft. If you look at what Google and Yahoo! have done, theyve created their Sitemaps submission products in a way that allows other web companies to prosper by offering Sitemaps creation tools and services to submit Sitemaps to their search engines.

Now Im just speculating here. So until Microsoft either releases information or launches their beta product to the public we really wont know what they are thinking. I just hope when they say collaborate, they know it means to cooperate and not to dominate.

Googles Personalized Search Debate

2007-02-08T06:47:00.000-08:00

Danny Sullivan does it again, with his in-depth look at Googles new personalized search feature " Google Ramps up Personalized Search great article. The topic of personalized search results is stirring up the SEO world - some say its a positive change, while others are suggesting it could potentially put a stop to SEO all together. Whos right, whos wrong, and what is personalized search anyway? Well heres some basic information and my initial view on this topic.

What if you had your own personalized search engine, that provided results based on your own past search behavior? What if one of your favorite websites has moved up in ranking because you visit it often? Well this is what Google is now offering - Google has just announced the launch of their new Personalized Search feature that will provide personalized results to you based on your past search history, which sites you click on most often and what topics you seem to search for on a consistent basis. Based on these behaviors, the personalized search feature will rank and provide specific results that relate to your trends as a user.

This personalized search is a feature that will come with every new Google Account and you must be logged into your Google Account in order to use this feature. If you are not logged in, you will see the standard organic search results. For users who already have a Google account, you must enable this feature by going here.

So that was a basic explanation of the process. For more information I highly suggest reading Danny Sullivans article from above as he dives into great detail or going through the Google Help Center for personalized search topics.

Ok, so immediately this raises a few thoughts and theories in my head. It seems like were all going to be getting some sort of batting average based on our trends as a user while using the Google search engine. So if we do a search multiple times for a specific topic and click on site A five times but only click on site B one time, in theory, site A should rank higher than site B well for me anyway, not for anyone else, unless their behavior was identical to mine.

Now this makes sense but the ultimate question that comes to mind is " Does our "batting average" as an independent user, have any affect to other users personalized searching experience? If ten users all click on site A more often, does this mean that site A will begin to slowly increase for other users the first time they search and prior to them having any personalization on that topic?

If this is the case, then will Google be morphing into some type of social community tagging system like Digg or Delicious? Will the ranking, trends and behaviors of other user's personalized search also affect my results, for the first time I search on a topic? If so, I think this is great news for the SEO world. Firstly, because this means that optimization of a website will be more strategic and analytical than it is today. Secondly, I believe it will greatly reduce spam, something that is a huge concern with the search engines today.

So far so good " Im definitely digging the idea of personalized search and believe, in theory, it could definitely change the SEO world for the better. However, there is one concern I have with this whole idea of personalized search. In an article from Out of My Gord " The Future of SEO in a Personalized Search Interface, the author Gord Hotchkiss states, In Canada, we're already dealing with this as Google experiments with re-ordering organic search results based on Geo-targeting of user IP's. The same is true in the UK and other markets. This idea concerns me. So this suggests that our results could potentially be based on our locality? Im not sure I agree with the locality issue so much. Does this mean that if I type in best wines, Im going to get results based on wine stores in New Jersey, since I reside in NJ and I have an IP address thats geographically a NJ IP address?

Im not sure I like this. Perhaps Im looking for a site with the best wines and I dont care where the company resides? Perhaps Im just looking to buy a nice bottle of wine and not going down the street to pickup a bottle from a local wine store? Am I now supposed to log out of my Google Account so I can use the standard organic search results? Isnt this what Google Local is for anyway? I mean where do we draw the line here? Yes, in many cases, providing locality driven results will be a good thing but for the purposes of my argument I wanted to provide a what if example.

Im curious to see where this personalized search takes us. As an SEO expert, I welcome any new changes to the SEO world as I always believe changes will continually bring exciting and new opportunities to take advantage of. As time moves on, how does Googles idea of personalized search relate to Wikipedias new idea of a socially community-driven search engine? You can read my thoughts on this topic from my article " Wikiasari " The Future Search Engine to Rival Google.

Google Base Bulk Upload fails with Zero (0) Errors

2007-02-07T06:26:00.000-08:00

Today I encountered another unhelpful error from the Google Base bulk upload system. When I logged into my Google Base account I saw that one of my clients uploads had failed with zero (0) errors. How could something fail with zero errors? Is this even possible? Or did the Google Base system just decide to get even lousier with their error handling and now start this as a complete guessing game?

In the past, Ive received sucherrors as,Bulk Upload Failure. 1200 errors and when I click on the see details and get help link it basically tells me nothing, just that there is an error in my bulk upload file. This is obviously unhelpful and takessome time trying to manually figure out whats the error in the feed -especially when you have thousands of items.But todays bulk upload failure with zero (0) errors tops them all off I think their error reporting system is heading in the wrong direction. Why cant they provide automated responses to the errors? Such responses as, Incorrect formatting, Title Undefined, Invalid character in description field " these would all be extremely helpful. Things like this could save us website owners and SEOs countless hours normally spent trying to resolve issues with our Google Base bulk uploads.Just some food for thought.

Overstock Merchant Auctions List and Sell your Items

2007-02-05T07:21:00.000-08:00

For all of you eBay fanatics out there, Overstock.com has created a very similar website for merchants to sell items through auction-based listings that looks very promising. Lately, Ive become extremely frustrated with all the competition on eBay so I wanted to search for another auction website where I could list my items for sale and not be overwhelmed by 100s of other item listings that are similar to mine.

So I searched in Google and came across Overstocks Merchant Auctions website. At first glance, I thought theirwebsitewas simple to navigate and listed all merchants items by department category for quick and easybrowsing.

Well I wanted to see how easy their listing system was so I signed up as a member and listed one item for sale. My first impression of their auction listing system is very positive. It was easy to use and I was able to list my item for sale on their website in less than 10 minutes and my total listing fee was only 79 cents.

Overstock.com Auctions charges insertion, upgrade (if applicable), reserve price, and closing fees. If an auction closes with a winning bid, the reserve price fee is refunded. Fees are based on a percentage of the selling price. Overstock.com's fees are 60-67% cheaper than their major competitor's.

So if youre looking for another type of auction website to list your items, thats similar to eBay in functionality but has less competition, and is cheaper on your wallet, then I highly recommend Overstocks Merchant Auctions.

For more information on how to sell on Overstock.com Auctions, click here.

About Overstock.com

Overstock.com is an Internet leader for brand names at clearance prices. They help you shop smarter by offering top-quality brand-name merchandise at 40-80% off, every day of the week.At Overstock.com, you'll find a great selection on your favorite brands, all backed by the warranties and service you'd expect.

How can they offer such great deals?

Overstock.com has partnerships with many leading brand-name companies. Because of these relationships, they are able to buy items at significant discounts, which then allow them to pass these incredible savings on to you. Here are a few examples of how we do this:

Overproduced Items
Each year manufacturers estimate how many items they will sell. Many times they overestimate and produce too many items. The manufacturer is forced to liquidate these excess items. Overstock will purchase these items at below-wholesale costs and then pass the savings on to you.

Cancelled Orders
Store managers frequently change the items they sell in their stores. As a result, they often cancel orders they have with manufacturers. The manufacturers are forced to liquidate these excess items. Overstock will purchase these items at below-wholesale costs and then pass the savings on to you.

Company-Specific Issues
A company may be downsizing, moving facilities, or just need to reduce its inventory for any number of reasons. The company is willing to sell the items for less than it normally would (often below its cost) to get rid of the items quickly. Overstock will purchase these items and pass the savings on to you.

Do Alt and Title Attributes help with SEO?

2007-01-26T06:48:00.000-08:00

A highly talked about topic is the SEO world is, Do Alt and Title Attributes Help with SEO? Well to help shed a little light on this topic, I did some research and came up with a few good conclusions. Im not suggesting these are 100% accurate but from my initial research they seem to be right on target. I welcome all other SEO experts to share their opinions on this topic by posting their comments " because as we all know, every little bit of information can help us all.

Well to start, I want to provide a brief introduction of each attribute to help you understand their intended purpose.

The alt attribute is, popularly and incorrectly referred to as an alt tag and is commonly misunderstood to provide a tool-tip for an image. Both of these are incorrect. First of all, the alt attribute is an attribute and not a tag. The alt attribute was always intended to provide alternative information about an element and is generally required for image and image maps and is not meant to be used to display a tool-tip. The alt attribute, can be used for the img, area, and input elements to help provide alternative information to users who cannot display that element in their browser. As an example, here is how you would define an alt attribute for an image: < img src = "imagepath.gif" alt="this" />. If the image is not displayed the text, this is our company logo will be displayed in the place of the image.

The title attribute, on the other hand, is meant to provide additional information about an element, which is displayed as a tool-tip by most graphical browsers. The title attribute can be used to describe any HTML element except for base, basefont, head, html, meta, param, script, and title.

An excellent use for the title attribute is to provide descriptive text within an anchor tag to let the users know where the link will direct them if they click on it. When the user places their mouse over the link, it will display a small tool-tip displaying the title text that youve provided. An example would be < a href= "linkpath.html" title="more">.

So as you can see the alt and title attributes have different purposes but how do they affect SEO? This is the true question we all want to know and understand. Do they help with SEO or are they simply ignored by the search engines? I tested several different scenarios, all in Google, and after my research Ive come to the following conclusions.

Alt attributes seem to be picked up by Google, whether or not there was a link within that element. Some SEO experts have mentioned that if there is no link, then the alt attribute would not be indexed from my research Ive found this to be false.

Going further, I noticed in one testing scenario, if there was an image with an alt attribute and a link to a completely other site, that other site was also indexed by Google when searching for the text within the alt attribute. It was difficult for me to verify this multiple times but I definitely verified it in one testing scenario.

I also took this one step further and analyzed my results with what Google Images was displaying. I immediately noticed that Google sometimes takes the alt attribute text and provides this text as the description for the image in Google Images, something that is very valuable to know and understand when doing SEO for your website.

In all of my testing scenarios, the title attribute do not seem to be picked up by Google and adding a link to that element did not seem to affect this result at all. If you really think about it, this makes complete sense. Since you can place title attributes in almost every element of a website, it would be very easy for a user to affect the search engines by keyword stuffing throughout their web pages, something that Google and the other major players do not want, hence why title attributes do not help with SEO.

In my opinion, you should use the title attribute to help with your users experience and not with SEO. Since tool-tips provide more useful information to the user about images, links, fields and much more, you will help your users to understand what is happening around the web page.

So from my testing Ive determined that a title attribute is meant to provide tool-tips to the user for user experience, whereas the alt attribute is helpful in terms of providing alternative information to the user when their browser cannot display an image or input element and helping to increase the SEO of a website. My recommendation is to pay close attention to when, where and how you are using your alt attributes. If they help with SEO, then you should pay close attention to what you are adding.

When adding images always be sure to add an alt attribute to the code of each image. If you do not have one, then just specify a blank one, such as alt=. Also, be sure to add alternative text that is relevant to that image, the content on that page and be sure not to specify an alt attribute greater than 100 characters in length, as this may be perceived as spamming.

I hope you find my brief overview on the topic of, Do Alt and Title Attributes Help with SEO? to be beneficial for you and your business. Im sure one could dive deep into this topic, spending weeks determining the differences between how Google, Yahoo! and the other major search engines handle title and alt attributes with regards to SEO for a website.

I welcome all comments and/or feedback.

Business 101: Always pay your Business Debts

2007-01-22T06:39:00.000-08:00

As business owners, we have a responsibility to pay our debts. Whether its paying our bills, finalizing payment for a service provided, or paying our employees we are the ones who are accountable to ensure that all business expenses get paid in a timely manner.

Withholding payments from any person or company will only hurt your business in the long run. I will go into more detail at a later date but for now here are my reasons why:

You will lose trust in the person you are withholding payments from. Losing trust in employees and clients will rapidly push your business over the cliff - youll be committing corporate suicide.

It will be difficult to attain recurring business. Who wants to do business with someone who doesnt pay them? I sure dont.

If youre trying to play hardball to get something in return, well youre playing the wrong game. When it comes to withholding money from someone it will only make them livid and will not do any good for your business.

Referrals? Yeah right! Who would refer a business that doesnt pay?

It will hurt your reputation. If youre a company that has a reputable name, then you will quickly diminish all reputability when you make it tough on people to receive their payments " word will quickly spread.

If youre a business that doesnt pay your debts then rethink what youre doing and change this immediately - your business willimprove tenfold.

The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch

2007-01-19T06:40:00.000-08:00

The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch is one of my favorite shows Donny is the man! For those of you who do not know Donny, he is an advertising icon from Madison Avenue and one of the best and last standing if you ask me. As business owners, we have a lot to learn from Donny. Watching his show, The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, gives some great ideas and inspiration that entrepreneurs can apply to their own businesses.

Donnys show on CNBC, The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, is a great show for anyone especially people with an interest in business, politics and pop culture. Donnys engaging and passionate style relaxes his guests so viewers see celebrities and business icons at their very best. He is also great at interviewing and putting the average, everyday person at ease. Hes interviewed everyone from Donald Trump, Jim Donald, CEO of Starbucks, to the biggest winners of the show Deal or No Deal, another favorite show of mine.

The show airs on CNBC, weekdays at 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. and Sunday at 10 p.m. EST.

I highly recommend Donnys show to everyone. You can view his shows website at http://www.bigideadonny.com. If youre looking for a little more information on Donny Deutsch, I found an interesting article on nymag.com that talks about who Donny is as a person, his current and past success, and his big ideas for the future.

MySpace your Business: The Benefits of creating a MySpace Page for your Business

2007-01-17T07:21:00.000-08:00

We all know about MySpace and its popularity amongst teens and young adults. We also know that MySpace has been known for its share of ups and downs and both good and bad publicity. But have you stopped to think about the idea of creating a MySpace page for your business? Do you see its potential to help increase your exposure, generate more leads and ultimately produce more sales?

Well in my opinion, MySpace is a great resource for business owners. Ive had success with MySpace and will continue to utilize it for my various business endeavors in the years ahead.

Depending on your type of business, there are some features on MySpace that will be of great value. The following are a few simple ways that MySpace will further enhance your brand, build awareness and acquire more clients for your business:

Company Overview

Use your MySpace page to provide an overview of your company. List your services and explain in detail how you can benefit your target audience. Also, use your logo as your default portfolio image. This way, when people come to your MySpace page it will be the first thing they see. When adding friends, it will also be the image that is displayed on your friends MySpace page. MySpace also allows you to customize your own page with CSS. This will allow you to specify your own corporate colors so you can truly customize the presence of your MySpace page for your business. By doing these ideas, you will instantly begin to build brand awareness to a community of over 100 million registered members and growing.

Pictures

Now depending on your type of business, you will use the picture upload for something that suits yours. For example, if youre a small business you can upload pictures of your employees, add images of coupons for people to download, provide a picture of your office or perhaps a picture of yourself. Whatever pictures you decide to upload, be creative with it. This is just another great way for users to understand who you are and what you have to offer.

Videos

Now this feature is not something that will be used by everyone but if youre smart you will figure out a way to make it benefit your business. Also, MySpace videos can become viral. If someone likes your video or gets a kick out of it, they could pass it along to their friends and so on this could create a viral email of sorts. Maybe you can create a video of your business interviewing your employees and some of your happy clients, maybe you already have a commercial that you can easily upload, or perhaps you just want to find a funny video and add that to your page in an attempt to get the viral chain of events to play out for you. Either way you look at it, videos are just another great medium to provide additional information about your company.

MySpace Blog

MySpace allows you to create your own blog, which can easily be accessed from your MySpace page. It also lists the titles of your most recent blog posts on your page for everyone to see. Your friends can also subscribe to your blog so they will receive a notification the next time your blog is updated. Adding a blog to your MySpace page is a great way to get your content indexed in the search engines and generate more traffic for your business. If someone does a search, for an industry specific topic in Google, your page may popup because of the content thats on your MySpace blog. Creating a blog is also a great way to demonstrate to your audience know that your business is knowledgeable in your industry.

The following are just a few ways that MySpace will help increase your exposure, generate more leads and ultimately produce more sales. I can write 10 more pages about the benefits of MySpace but for the purpose of this article I just want to get you thinking about the benefits of creating a MySpace page for your business.

Whats the most important idea here is not to be on MySpace just because everyone else is doing it. The thought that I really want you to begin and think about is the various ways you can use the Internet to market your business " MySpace is just one of those ways. MySpace is one of my first choices because there are thousands of potential leads already at your fingertips. All you need to do is put your business in front of them.

Well what are you waiting for?

Here are a few examples of companies using MySpace for their business.

www.myspace.com/numberoneartist
www.myspace.com/fox
http://www.myspace.com/hudsonhorizons

I Digg Blogs of all Types and Styles

2007-01-10T12:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was reading Jennifer Sleggs blog post on Search Engine Land, 25 Tips To Optimize Your Blog For Readers & Search Engines, and after reading the post I clicked on the Digg This link on the bottom and was brought to the Digg.com comments page for this post.

The first comment had a message that read blah blah blah blah blog. For some reason this comment really got to me. Why would someone share a negative comment like this when Jennifers blog post was very good and sharing some valuable information?

Here is my list of reasons why - if youre interested:

The commenter probably does not even know what a blog is and what its purpose is. Blogs provide a great way for people to voice their opinions, market their business, help others on certain topics, and simply have fun. Anyone who would post a unintelligent comment like this is just uneducated.

This commenter probably did not even read Jennifers post, which was very good and informative for anyone looking for help on marketing their blog online. Jennifer provided 25 basic ways for the average person to optimize their blog for search engines and their target audience. Again, anyone who would comment with blah, blah, blah, blog is just being impolite for no apparent reason at all.

Because I am a blogger myself. I enjoy blogging and appreciate every chance I get to write a new entry and post it to my blog. I digg blogs of all types and styles. Everyone has a blogging purpose in this world; you just have to find yours. Blogging can be used for anything imaginable - to post pictures of your family, keep a daily diary, write about your business, share your knowledge, and much more. Thats why this persons comment got to me so much. If they had pictures of their family, would I ever comment with, blah, blah, blah no of course not!

Blogs are the future. As big as they are today, they will grow into something more advanced in the future and continue to help drive the growth of the Internet in the years ahead. A comment like this is almost as silly as me saying, blah, blah, blah when someone told me about the World Wide Web over 13 years ago.

Here are my messages:

To the commenter: If you happen to come across my post, please realize how silly your comment was. I am not trying to bash you but understand that a professional post, such as Jennifers, is very helpful to millions of people and a comment such as, blah, blah, blah, blog was unnecessary. Like the next commenter said, Grow Up! Look at blogs as something positive and not negative.

To Jennifer Slegg: Great post! Your information is accurate and very helpful to us fellow bloggers.

To anyone that has a negative outlook on blogs: I challenge you to think about creating your own blog one day. Use it to express yourself or to share your knowledge on a subject you may be experienced in.

Whatever it is, have fun with it

Yahoo! Local Adds Quick Business Listing Feature

2007-01-05T06:34:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! Local announced today the launch of a new feature that allows any business to quickly add and edit their business listing on Yahoo! Local. Yahoo! states that their new quick listing feature empowers you to add your favorite new local business, alert others when an old favorite has closed, and add or change business info quickly.

The new listing feature is supposed to have your business listed or updated in less than 24 hours. To edit a business listing, look for the "Edit This Listing" link directly under the business rating. You may also want to claim your business, if it is listed, by clicking on the "Edit This Listing" link and selecting that option.

Wikiasari - The Future Search Engine to Rival Google

2007-01-04T07:22:00.000-08:00

In the past several years, Google and the other major search engine players (Yahoo!, AOL, MSN, Live, and Ask) literally changed the way we do business and permanently altered our culture for the better. Search has become suchan integral element of today's Internet world and if it was to be sucked away from usat this very moment,I seriously believe the world would stop turning.

Google, todays major search provider, has become such a dominant player in search over the past few years that it seems almost impossible to stop them in their tracks. However, with the birth of a new player, who specializes in community-driven content, there seems to be an upcoming rival between two very popular but different players that could change the way we search for information in the future.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of popular Wikipedia (an online user-driven encyclopedia of sorts), is now in the works of producing a new type of search engine that is predicted to rival Google in 2007. The new Search Wikia, dubbed code word Wikiasari (supposedly not the future name to be used), will be a search engine that will take the algorithmic power of Google and combine it with the editorial community-based input of humans, similar to how Wikipedia operated. This idea is predicted to eliminate a lot of useless information that cannot necessarily be filtered out by a computer algorithm.

Heres Jimmy Wales public statement on the inspiration for and fundamentals of the project:

Search is part of the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet. And, it is currently broken.

Why is it broken? It is broken for the same reason that proprietary software is always broken: lack of freedom, lack of community, lack of accountability, lack of transparency. Here, we will change all that.

There have been some amazing projects in recent years which have matured now to the point that a new alternative is possible. Wikia is funding and supporting the development of something radically new.

Nutch and Lucene and some other projects now provide the background infrastructure that we need to generate a new kind of search engine, which relies on human intelligence to do what algorithms cannot. Just as Wikipedia revolutionized how we think about knowledge and the encyclopedia, we have a chance now to revolutionize how we think about search.

Help me out, spread the word. I am looking for people to continue the development of a wiki-inspired search engine. Specifically community members who would like to help build people-powered search results and developers to help us build an open-source alternative for web search.

In my opinion, its a brilliant idea. Will it stop Google in its tracks? Not anytime soon. But will it be a new way for us to search that could potentially change the way we receive more useful information? Yes, I believe so as it makes perfect sense. With the birth and success of user-based communities like MySpace and Friendster and the power of Google and other search engines, it seems like this would be a perfect match - Combining the power of a search algorithm with the editorial input of a human to drive the future of search technology.

I'm excited to watch this potentially new search rival develop. I will be monitoring the Wikiasari project closely to see where this takes us and how this could potentially change the way we search for information in the future.

Froogle Price Comparison with Google SMS - Retail Stores Beware?

2007-01-03T10:24:00.000-08:00

In a world where the Internet competes directly with retail stores around the world, its getting more difficult for the everyday mom-and-pop shops to stay in business because of the ever-increasing popularity for people to shop online.

Back in October 2004, Google integrated their Froogle price comparison website with their Google SMS (Short Message Service). As the Internet becomes more popular, especially with the accepted popularity and integration of mobile devices, I feel services thisare something retail stores should be aware of. As people are shopping offline, a user can simply text message Google and receive a quick result of price comparisons from various online outlets back to their mobile device.

For those of you who are not familiar with Google SMS, it is a Short Message Service that enables you to search Google, via a mobile device, and have your results returned as a text message back to you. For all of us who are familiar with text messaging, all you have to do is text message your search query to 466453 ('GOOGLE' on most devices) and Google will text message the results back to your mobile device. For a complete list of the available queries, visit the Google SMS homepage.

For those of you who are not familiar with Froogle, it is Googles price comparison website and allows a user to search for specific products in the Google database to compare prices. The results are generated, listing the various prices and websites where the user can purchase the product from.

Put these two together and you have a way for users to compare prices while they are shopping in your store. Now dont get me wrong, Im not suggesting that this will definitely take business away from you anytime soon, but I am suggesting you should be aware of services like this and realize the importance for you to stay knowledgeable to keep your business competitive in therapidly growing Internet world.

If you have a website and are interested in having your products included in the Froogle database, you must first submit them manually to Google Base. By including your items in Froogle, they will automatically be searchable through their Google SMS - Short Message Service.

If you're looking to automate the submission of your products to Froogle, click here.

Froogle Price Comparison with Google SMS - Retail Stores Beware?

2007-01-03T07:22:00.000-08:00

Google Sitemaps - Questions Answered by Vanessa Fox

2006-12-21T06:49:00.000-08:00

With Googles recent joint venture to collaborate with Yahoo and MSN to create a Sitemap submission protocol standard, there has been a lot of buzz generating lately for Google Sitemaps in the SEO world. This has caused many webmasters and business owners to regain focus on the true implications and question the validity of the Google Sitemaps program. Because of all the noise, Rand Fishkin, SEO expert from SEOmoz.org interviews and questions Vanessa Fox of Google to help clear some of the smoke.

Some questions that are discussed in this video are: Does a duplicate content filter induce duplicate content penalties? What about format preference? Is an XML sitemap superior or can a simple text file suffice? What is OAI-PMH?

Given some recent dialog on sitemaps versus other SEO methods, Vanessa reiterates the intent of a sitemap: it should be merely one part of the strategy.

Hudson Horizons HH Sitemap Manager - Automated Sitemap Submission to Google and Yahoo!

Also in the interview, Vanessa clarifies the difference between Google Toolbar's Page Rank and Google Webmaster Tools. Vanessa states, "Webmaster Tools- is a little more accurate and a little more up-to-date. The Toolbar page ranking does not get updated quite as often, of course it's only one factor. I feel like people get really hung-up on the Toolbar Page Rank. People probably spend a little more energy on it than they need to."

I think this interview was a good decision for Google and the rest of the SEO community. I agree with Vanessa and believe that submitting a Google Sitemap for your website is highly recommended. Is it the cure all? No, but is it an important piece to the SEO puzzle? Yes, most definitely. Ive seen the positive results with my own eyes. I submit Sitemaps for each one of client andhave noticed their content getting indexed in days, rather than months. Our business will continue to setup and submit Google Sitemaps for our clients, now following the new Sitemaps.org XML protocol standard.

You can watch the interview on WebProNews.com.

What is Organic SEO? How to effectively maximize your Websites Visibility

2006-12-13T06:50:00.000-08:00

An organic search is a process by which Internet users find websites in the SERPs, (Search Engine Result Pages), as opposed to using pay-per-click advertisement listings, such as Google AdWords, displayed alongside the organic search results.

The field of search engine optimization, (SEO), is focused on maximizing the visibility of a website by making its listings appear more frequently and more prominently in organic search results. Most businesses are more interested in basing their SEO strategies on the successful inclusion of their website listing(s) into organic search results for various popular keywords relating to their business. This process is recognized as organic SEO, (Search Engine Optimization).

How to successfully perform organic SEO is one of the most commonly asked questions by website owners and for the right reasons. Unfortunately, there is no overnight solution to successfully perform organic SEO so that your website is listed on the top of SERPs. The goal should be to increase your websites visibility in the search engines over time. This process generally takes time, money, patience and consistency. If you can learn how to manage and leverage your efforts, it will be possible to effectively get your website positioned more frequently and more prominently in the major search engines.

The following are a few organic SEO techniques that will increase the visibility of your website in the organic search results. Again, there is no overnight solution but if you are determined and consistently make and effort to apply these organic SEO strategies to your website, you will see dramatic results I promise!

Add Relevant Meta Tags to each Page of your Website

META Tags are an element of HTML coding on a website that is used by search engines to index a website in the organic search results. META tags are generally included within the 'header' code of a website and the most important tags are the title, description and keyword tags. Rules used by different search engines govern how such tags are used, how many characters they should contain, and how they should be formatted. Below our some general ideas on how to setup the META tags for your website to help with your organic search engine optimization, (SEO).

A META tag title is the heading of your page that you will see on the top left portion of the Internet browser. This is a caption that will be used by the search engines and displayed for viewers of your website. A title should be relative to your business and should include some main keywords relating to the content of that page. It is important to keep the title under 80 characters in length. In my opinion, a relevant title tag is one of the most important aspects for successful organic search engine optimization (SEO).

META tag keywords should list important words that you suspect your target audience will search for when looking for your type of business on the Internet. The list of keywords will be used by the search engine crawlers to index your pages in the organic SERPs. A common mistake people make is to list too many keywords or list the same words over and over. If either of these mistakes is made, many search engine crawlers could consider this spamming and potentially decrease your page ranking. Be sure to keep the number of words to 20 and make sure to list keywords only once.

A META tag description is a short explanation of your business. The search engine crawlers will take the description and will list it with your listing in the organic search results. It is important to carefully write 200 character max sentences and phrases, targeting the most important words contained on your web pages. When you are writing the META tag descriptions, try to eliminate as many filler words as you can to make room for your most important keywords.

Setup a Sitemap for your Business and submit it to Google and Yahoo!

The new Sitemap Protocol standard, now followed by Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, allows a webmaster to inform search engines about URLs on a website that are available for crawling. A Sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for a site. It enables webmasters to include additional information about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site. This allows search engines to crawl the site more intelligently.

Hudson Horizons HH Sitemap Manager - Automated Sitemap Submission to Google and Yahoo!

Submitting a Sitemap file to Google Sitemaps and Yahoo! Site Explorer will dramatically increase the visibility of your website in the organic search results. There are even tools out there that will automate the Sitemap submission process and have your Sitemap file submitted and processed to Google and Yahoo! three times a week.

Submit important Information, such as Products, to Google Base

Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content that will dramatically help with your organic SEO. The items you submit to Google Base will be included in the Google Base directory and depending on your items relevance, can be posted in such places like Google, Froogle and Google Maps, which could greatly increase your websites visibility in the organic search results. The items you submit can include labels and attributes that help describe what youre uploading so people can easily locate your items. Attributes are words or phrases that help describe the characteristics and qualities of your items. For any given attribute you may enter multiple values separated by commas. Labels are any keywords or phrases " such as recipe, event, or product " that can be used to classify or describe your item.

Google Base is a great resource to help distribute and share information with others that you would not otherwise know how to reach. With Google Base, your information is almost instantly added and viewable by people searching for your items. Froogle has even been integrated with Google Base. Now products that need to be submitted to Froogle, are submitted through Google Base and is no longer a separate program like it was in the past.

You can submit all types of content to Google Base. Examples include the following: Articles, Events and Activities, Hotels, Jobs, People Profiles, Products, Real Estate, Reviews, Recipes, Services, Vehicles, and much more.

Setup a Blog to add more Content to your Website

As most of us know, content is the key to success on the Internet. With good, quality and relevant content, you will certainly to increase the visibility of your website in the organic search results.

Adding a blog to your website will enable you to increase the amount of content on your website that is relevant to your business. With a blog in place, you can post articles about your industry, feature new products, share specific ideas that may benefit your audience and simply demonstrate that youre a company who is specialized in your business field.

I recommend setting up a blog on a sub-domain of your website. By doing this, when your articles or blog entries are located in the organic search results and a user clicks on the result, your website will appear; hence, directing them to the source of where you need them to be.

The above ideas are some great ways to begin to effectively perform organic SEO to help increase the visibility and frequency of your website in the organic search results. If you are dedicated and consistently perform these techniques, Im confident you will dramatically increase your organic SEO results.

My Success with EzineArticles

2006-12-04T12:42:00.000-08:00

Over the past few months I have established a new inspiration in my life " and that is to write. I never really enjoyed writing all that much when I was younger and going to college but lately, I have found writing about my professional knowledge and experience to be extremely rewarding and generating new business for my company.

How did this all come about? Well, several months ago I came across this website called EzineArticles. Its a website that brings together authors and publishers and allows Expert Authors and Writers to post articles about their experiences, knowledge, opinions, and much more within the EzineArticles community. Once approved, content ezine publishers can pick up and distribute the articles to their various streams of publishers and email contacts, all for free. Doesnt this sound like a great opportunity for any business? Well I though so too and thats why I decided to give it a shot.

Ok, so its been about seven months and in those seven months I have written 53 articles, received 11,000 views to those articles, and have witnessed my articles popping up all over the Internet on various ezine and content publishing websites. I also receive contacts directly regarding my articles asking if other website owners could use them on their website. I say of course you can, just as long as you provide me with credit for the article and include a link back to my EzineArticles portfolio. Why wouldnt I allow this? - Its just more exposure!

Also, in the past seven months since I started writing about specific topics in my industry, I have received phone calls from potential customers interested in my topics, knowledge and how I can help their business succeed online. Because of these phone calls, my company has landed a few new clients and I totally contribute this success to the opportunity EzineArticles has provided for me and my business.

Now not everyone can post an unlimited number of articles. The standard Expert Author can only post 10 articles. After you reach your 10 articles, the EzineArticles Team must then evaluate and approve you to become a Platinum Expert Author of EzineArticles. If and when they approve you, you are then granted the capability to upload an unlimited number of articles, all for free.

What I am also fond of about EzineArticles is the fact that they have a team of publishers who actually approve each article before it gets published to the live site. Now at first, I must admit, this was a little annoying because I would add several links into my articles and they would get rejected over and over again. I couldnt figure out why they would do that - what couldnt I include links in my articles?

But over the course of a month or two, I realized that in order to get accepted, you can only use three links in the body of your article and cannot include links in approximately the first three paragraphs of any article. I began to respect this rule because this actually controls spam and keeps their content clean and allows us authors to continually take advantage of the opportunity that EzineArticles is providing. But dont get me wrong, they DO allow you to include a little shameless self-promotion. On the bottom of every article, you can include a Resource section where you can do a little shameless self-promotion to let people know who you are and why you are knowledgeable in the topic you are writing about.

And to top it all off, a few days ago I received a package from them in the mail. I asked myself, what could EzineArticles possibly be sending me? So I opened the package and there it was - a nice large white coffee mug with the EzineArticles logo on it " very cool! The package also included a letter, on behalf of the EzineArticles Team, which was actually hand-signed by Christopher Knight, the manager of EzineArticles, along with the EmailUniverse.com Team.

So overall I truly believe EzineArticles has helped contribute to the success of my business. I also bestow credit of my new found inspiration in writing to EzineArticles. So heres to the EzineArticles Team " thumbs up - great job guys! Keep up the great work and Ill continue to contribute to your website on a weekly basis.

And to all you business owners out there, I highly recommend Ezine Articles - it may just increase the success of your business and also help you uncover a new pursuit in life, as it has done so for me.

Capitalize on the Upcoming Holiday Season by offering Website Promotions

2006-11-28T12:43:00.000-08:00

With the holidays vastly approaching, now is the perfect time to offer website promotions that will increase online sales guaranteed! According to data supplied by Coremetrics, the upcoming holiday season is when most online retailers generate 20% - 40% of their annual eCommerce revenues and profits and historically, analysts have publicized "Cyber Monday," (the Monday after Thanksgiving) as the highest traffic day for online retailers.

However, based on actual 2005data fromits LIVEmark benchmarking service, Coremetrics advises its clients to expect their highest traffic day to actually be the following Monday, December 4, 2006. Coremetrics predicts that sales on this date, which it has coined "eDay," will be 19% higher than "Cyber Monday," and that 2006 overall holiday retail sales will increase 16% over last year's holiday season.

Now is the time of year when online shoppers are looking for the best bargain and many shoppers are doing most of their shopping online rather than offline. According to the above data, now is a perfect opportunity for us online retailers to capitalize on the upcoming holiday season by offering website promotions that will increase our online profits. Whether its to offer free shipping, reduced prices or website coupon promotion codes, there are various ways to promote to your customers to intrigue them to purchase from your website vs. from your online retail competition.

The following outlines my three favorite website promotions and if you apply these to your business, Im confident you will greatly increase your holiday online sales:

Free Shipping

With eDay vastly approaching, offering Free Shipping to your customers would be a great way to capture your audiences interest. If a buyer recognizes that they will receive free shipping by purchasing from your website and the cost of your product is competitive, then they will be more inclined to make a purchase from your site, rather than spending additional time to search for the same product from one of your competitors.

Website Coupon or Promotion Codes

Your repeat customers should be your pride and joy. If you have customers that continually come back to purchase from your website, then you should provide them with website coupon code discounts to thank them for being a loyal customer. This will make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside and they will greatly appreciate you recognizing them as a valuable customer.

A common website coupon code is one that offers them a 10% - 30% discount off their next order. Setting up a website Coupon Discount Code Program requires some modifications to your website. I also recommend setting up a system that will automatically send the website coupon code by email along with their order receipt. The email could say something like the following:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for your recent purchase. Weve noticed you have purchased from our site before. To show our thanks for being a repeat customer we want to offer you with the following coupon code for your next order. Simply enter the coupon code 20OffOrder when checking out on your next online order from our website and you will receive a 20% discount off your total order price.

Customers who Bought this Item also Bought

A great way to up-sell products is to let your customers know about them. Amazon.com does this to perfection. When browsing and making a purchase off Amazons website, you will notice, underneath the product, an area that says Customers who bought this item also bought. This is a great way to let you customers know about other products that are similar and were of interest to your other customers. By doing this, you offer the opportunity to up-sell some products that maybe your customer did not see or were not thinking about when they were browsing your site.

These three website promotions will provide your business with the ability to capitalize on additional sales this holiday season. Like I said before, considering the fact that your customers will be purchasing many gifts this holiday season, they will be sure to look for a bargain, so you need to intrigue them and capture their attention any way you can.

Some of these changes may be simple, yet others will require some back-end modifications to your existing online retail website. If youre looking for some assistance, a Web development company such as Hudson Horizons will be able to help you implement these changes to your online retail website before the upcoming holiday season passes you by.

Writing for the Web - Increase your Ranking in the Search Engines

2006-11-20T06:50:00.000-08:00

Writing and preparing content for the Web requires a different approach from writing and preparing content for print documents and publications. When writing for the Web, not only do you have to make it appealing and grammatically sound, you also need to focus on developing your content in a way that provides search engine optimization (SEO).
This added step, referred to as Content Development, is oftentimes forgotten when people write content for the Web and is a primary factor why their website or article does not appear as high as they would like in the search results. However, once this step is understood and mastered, you will be able to increase you ranking in the search engines guaranteed!

Step 1:Understanding your Target Audience to think like one of your CustomersIn order to help you master the Content Development process, youll first need to understand your target audience. When writing content for the Web, you need to be in the mind of one of your customers at all times and attempt to think like they do. If they were to be searching the Internet for a business like yours or information on a specific topic, what would they be typing into that search box? This question is crucial and needs to be answered upfront before you begin to write and develop any content for your website or article.

Step 2:Define Several Primary Keyword PhrasesOnce you learn to think like your customer, then you will be one step ahead of the game. Begin to write down several keyword phrases that you believe your customer will type into the search engine. These phrases are extremely important and must be used within the content of your article or website a number of times. If you do not use these phrases in your content, then there will be absolutely no way for your content to be discovered in the search engines.Content Development is the key to success on the Internet and with good-quality content, you will be sure to increase your ranking in the search engines. So before you write any content write down these phrases on the top of your document. When youre writing, refer back to this list and make sure youre using these keyword phrases throughout the development of your content. The more you list these keyword phrases in your content, the greater change you have to be discovered in the search results for those particular keywords. The Internet is a numbers game - the more relevant content you have, the greater change you have to be discovered.

Step 3:Be Creative with your Article or Web Page TitlesWhen coming up with titles for your articles or Web pages, make sure you use a few of the keyword phrases that youve defined above. In many cases titles are often written in larger font and sometimes bolder than the rest of the content on that page. Some search engines will even give a higher weight to the words that are in larger font or are bolded because in many cases the title of a page usually defines the content of the article. So be creative but at the same time make sure to add a few keywords to your titles.

Step 4:Utilize Image Alt Tags and Link TitlesAdding alt tags and titles to the images and links within the content of your website or article is a great way to help increase your search engine optimization (SEO). This is a key step in the Content Development process and will help increase your page rank because many search engines will provide a higher weight for the information provided in an image alt tag or a link title. However, its vital that when adding image alt tags and link titles to your content, you must be sure to use the keyword phrases that youve defined above " this is extremely important. If you do not use the same keywords, then it will be completely worthless and will provide no added value to your content.

Step 5:Setup a Sitemap File and submit it to Google, Yahoo! and soon MSN LiveSitemaps are an easy way for website owners to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.I highly recommend setting up a Sitemap for your website using the new Sitemap Protocol 0.9 as defined at www.sitemaps.org and submitting to Google Sitemaps and Yahoo! Site Explorer. If youre thinking of taking your SEO to the next level, then you should absolutely start here. If you can force your pages and content to be indexed in days, rather than months, then you will be sure to increase your websites visibility, generate more website traffic and ultimately increase your sales.
Hudson Horizons HH Sitemap Manager - Automated Sitemap Submission to Google and Yahoo!

If youre looking to manage both of these manually, then I recommend visiting Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo! Site Explorer online sections, which will provide you with all the details of how to create and submit your feeds to their search index.If youre looking to setup an automated submission of Google Sitemaps and Yahoo! Site Explorer, then you should visit Hudson Horizons HH Sitemap Manager for more information. Their system will automatically crawl your website, create a site feed of your URLs and submit the file to both Google and Yahoo! every three days.Content Development is extremely important to the success of your business on the Internet. If you can think like your customer, come up with several primary keyword phrases and effectively implement them into the content of your website or article, then you will be sure to increase your ranking in the search engines I guarantee it!

Google and Yahoo! Join Forces to Support Common Sitemap Protocol

2006-11-16T06:51:00.000-08:00

There is some great news in the SEO world that will change the way webmaster process and submit Sitemaps to Google, Yahoo! and soon others.

Last night, November 15, 2006 at 9:00 pm, Google and Yahoo! announced that they have joined forces to support a unified system of submitting Web pages to their crawlers. While Google launched their Google Sitemaps protocol in June 2005 and Yahoo! recently with their Yahoo! Site Explorer, they both offered different protocols for submitting Sitemap files in the past. But because of this new supported Sitemap Protocol 0.9 Standard, this move marks the day when the 'big two' have agreed that they will all now support the Google XML protocol method via the new www.sitemaps.org destination.

Not only are Google and Yahoo! collaborating on this project, theyve also issued an open invitation to all the other search engines willing to join. Microsoft accepted that invitation and will jointly support Sitemaps.org and its efforts.

Hudson Horizons HH Sitemap Manager - Automated Sitemap Submission to Google and Yahoo!

Sitemap Protocol 0.9 is offered under the terms of the Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License and has wide adoption, including support from Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft.

Google Stated, "Last year we published the Sitemap 0.84 XML protocol as a free and easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about URLs on their web sites so that search engines can more effectively crawl them. We released it under the Attribution/Share Alike Creative Commons license in the hopes that other search engines would adopt the protocol too. And today, we're excited to announce that Yahoo! and Microsoft are joining us in officially supporting the Sitemap protocol."

What does this mean for webmasters?

Well first, this means that webmasters must work to adapt and implement this new Sitemaps Protocol 0.9 Standard. They must follow and abide by the unified protocol, as defined at sitemaps.org and learn to accept this new standard of processing and submitting Sitemaps to Google and Yahoo! and soon MSN.

Because of this supported effort and open initiation, this means that other search engines, especially MSN, will most likely develop some type of Sitemap submission service that abides by the Sitemaps Protocol 0.9 Standard.

This is great news for the search industry and means that all search engines will be able to support and accept the same Sitemap Protocol, making it easier for webmasters to abide by one standard to manage their sitemap submissions in the future.

For more information and to watch an interview with Google and Yahoo! on the announcement, click to watch the Exclusive Video: Google and Yahoo! Launch Sitemaps.org.

Index your Content in Days rather than Months

2006-11-14T06:51:00.000-08:00

Hudson Horizons HH Sitemap Manager - Google Sitemap Protocol - Google Sitemaps - Yahoo! Site Explorer - Index your content in days rathern than months - search engine optimizationAs many of us know, the most common way our content becomes indexed in a search engine is through the process of search engine crawling. How it works is simple - a search engines crawler comes and visits our website every so often, captures some data and updates their search index with this newly captured information.

Well thats all fine and dandy but the problem is, sometimes it takes anywhere from 30-90 days for any new content and pages to be indexed, depending on the search engine. For us website owners, this is not a feasible solution considering we need to have our content indexed in days, not months. If we want to successfully run our business and focus to increase our SEO (Search Engine Optimization) then we need to figure out another way to get our content indexed much more rapidly.

Today Im going to explain a simple way to get your new content and pages indexed in Google and Yahoo! in a matter of days, rather than months, and depending on your needs this can be a manual process or you can have it fully automated for your business. Now since both of these search engines are from different companies, there are two processes that you need to focus on and they are the Google Sitemap Protocol and Yahoo! Site Explorer.

Both of these tools offer you a way to create a file of all the pages in your website and submit that list to Google and Yahoo! directly. Whatever pages are listed in that file, their search index will populate those pages and tell their crawlers to go get the content. By doing this, you are simply telling the search engines where your pages and content are, rather than relying on their crawlers to come visit and find your pages on their next crawling process.

To help explain the tools, heres an overview on each:

Google Sitemaps - The Google Sitemap Protocol allows a webmaster to inform search engines about URLs on a website that are available for crawling. A Sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for a site. It enables webmasters to include additional information about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site. This allows search engines to crawl the site more intelligently.

Sitemaps are particularly beneficial in situations when it is difficult for users to access all areas of a website through the browse-able interface. For example, sites with a large "archive" or "database" of resources that aren't well-linked to each other (if at all) only accessible via a search form. The webmaster can generate a sitemap containing all accessible URLs on the site and submit it to search engines.

Note that the Sitemap Protocol is only a supplement and does not in any way replace the existing crawl-based mechanisms that search engines already use to discover URLs. By submitting a sitemap (or Sitemaps) to a search engine a webmaster is only helping that engine's crawlers to do a better job of crawling their site(s).

Yahoo! Site Explorer - The Yahoo! search database contains detailed information about links between web pages and uses that information (as well as additional algorithms) to gauge the popularity of a given page.

Site Explorer is a tool that lets you access the information we have about a site's online presence. You can see which sites and sub-pages are indexed by Yahoo! Search, track sites that link into webpage, and view the most popular pages from any site. Use Site Explorer to:

* Find which sub-pages within a URL are indexed by Yahoo!.

* Find pages that link to that site or any page. (in-links)

* Submit and track feeds for your sites.

You can get even more detailed information about a site or its URLs when you authenticate the site. Exploring a site is as easy as doing a web search but instead of entering a "query term" you will enter a site's URL. A Site Explorer search will not return the same results that a web search would. Instead, Site Explorer uses the URL you submit to return particular information related to the structure of that URL in the Yahoo! Search database and on the Web.

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For further analysis, you can export Site Explorer data in a tab-separated (TSV) form. Also check out Site Explorer's Web Services APIs for ways to help you understand your site traffic and usage better. Note: You can submit missing URLs to the Yahoo! Index for free. If you own a site, register it with us to see even more information and simplify managing any site feeds you have.

How do I implement a Google Sitemap and a Yahoo! Site Explorer feed?

I highly recommend setting up a Google Sitemap using the Google Sitemap Protocol and submitting a site feed to Yahoo! using their Yahoo! Site Explorer.

If youre thinking of taking your SEO to the next level, then you should absolutely start here. If you can force your pages and content to be indexed in days, rather than months, then you will be sure to increase your websites visibility, generate more website traffic and ultimately increase your sales.

If youre looking to manage both of these manually, then I recommend visiting Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo! Site Explorer online sections, which will provide you with all the details of how to create and submit your feeds to their search index.

If youre looking to setup an automated submission of Google Sitemaps and Yahoo! Site Explorer, then you should visit Hudson Horizons HH Sitemap Manager for more information. Their system will automatically crawl your website, create a site feed of your URLs and submit the file to both Google and Yahoo! every three days.

Win the Content Race with RSS - Real Simple Syndication

2006-11-13T07:23:00.000-08:00

The Internet is a race " a race to see who can acquire the most content on their website or blog in the shortest period of time. Whether its text, images, data or video; the sites who obtain the most content are the ones who will generate the most traffic and ultimately sell for millions of dollars to larger corporation like Yahoo, Google, Fox or Microsoft.

Lets look at MySpace, which sold to Fox a few months ago for 580 million and YouTube, which recently sold to Google for $1.65 billion. How was it possible that these sites were so valuable and sold for that much money? Well, it comes down to many factors but one of the primary reasons is the breadth of content that both of these sites contain. MySpace, an online social networking community, has generated well over 120 million members and YouTube has already grown to serve more than 100 million video views per day and receiving more than 65,000 new video uploads daily " this is why!

Looking at what these two sites have done in such a short period of time is simply amazing and its going to be very difficult for any of us to produce the same results in 20 years that both MySpace and YouTube have done in only a few short ones. Now dont get discouraged because there are still many websites and blogs that are popular, receiving great exposure and valued at well over a million dollars.

As I state in many of my articles, it all comes down to content. These larger companies look for websites or blogs that will generate more exposure for their company. The more content you have on your website or blog the more traffic youre going to receive and the more your website or blog is going to be desired and valued.

Ok, so how do you get to that point?

It truly depends on your business model and how your website or blog is structured but a great way is through RSS. RSS, Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, is an XML-based format that provides an open method of syndicating and aggregating Web content through the use of data feeds.

RSS makes it easy to take another sites content and feed it directly to yours. As an example, lets say I took Yahoo!s Sports RSS feed and added it to my website. Every time they posted a new sports article or story it would be updated on my site as well, a concept that was a revolutionary breakthrough for the Internet a few short years ago. Now websites can grow their content, at an increasing rate, without having to write the information on their own.

In my opinion, this idea will continue to drive the Internet and will thrive for many years to come. If you want to increase your exposure on the Internet, then you must focus to increase the amount of content thats on your site. If you setup and automated RSS feed to pull data from other sites into yours then you will be increasing your chances on the Internet. By doing this, you can potentially generate thousands or millions of pages in a few short years.

But like I said, it really depends on your business model and how your website or blog is structured. For example, maybe it doesnt make sense to pull other sites data into your site. Maybe it makes more sense to push your data to other sites and increase your exposure that way. If this is the case, then you should be the one setting up RSS feeds so other website owners can pull your data to theirs. There are many ways to organize the type and amount of data youd like to provide as to organize it in a way that will meet your needs for how youd like to distribute the information.

So as you can see the possibilities of RSS are endless. RSS can be used to feed data to or from your website or blog and if setup correctly can increase your exposure on the Internet in a short period of time. If you want to win the race, then you should consider setting up or accepting RSS feeds for your website or blog today.

At Hudson Horizons, we provide website design, development, content management, e-commerce integration, RSS content distribution, search engine optimization, e-marketing services and the development of custom applications such as blogs, newsletter systems, online payment solutions and any other Web application that may be needed to help simplify your business.

Be Creative - Utilize your Website as a Marketing Machine

2006-11-08T07:23:00.000-08:00

Last week I received an email from my father and it was link to an online marketing campaign sponsored by ESPN and GMC. The campaign is called Keys to Victory. Its an online contest that allows the website visitor to select the football team, who they think will win, for the upcoming Monday Night NFL game, register online, and be entered to potentially win a brand-new 2007 GMS Sierra pickup truck. I then noticed that ESPN also formed several other contests, in sponsorship with other companies, to help promote their products online " WOW, what a great concept.

What caught my eye about the GMC Keys to Victory campaign is that the contest website is extremely interactive and user-friendly. When you first come to the site, Joe Theismann appears on the screen and starts talking and moving around. He provides a short introduction about the contest and then brings you immediately to the main website where you are presented with various options, such as, hear Theismanns 2 minute trivia, scout some talent, draft a friend, or fire off your pick for the contest.

If you remember, AOL created something very similar a few months back called AOL Gold Rush. This innovative concept that these larger companies are starting to invest millions of dollars in is a great way for them to generate leads while promoting their products online. This idea is becoming more and more popular and many companies are beginning to dream up the next concept to use their website as a marketing machine.

Ok, I know what youre thinking " its much easier for these companies to create and launch a product campaign of this scale because they have millions of dollars to invest in the contests design, development and maintenance. Yes, you are correct and this is 100% true; however, the idea I want to get across is that these companies are effectively using their website as a marketing machine and we should be able to do the same with ours. Im not suggesting you have to go out and create a completely interactive Flash-based contest to promote your products online, which breaks your bank; but what I am suggesting is that your website does not only have to be used for the display of content and information about your company thats boring. Be creative! Utilize your website as a marketing machine and generate that buzz.

Here are a few ideas that may fit into your business:

Recommend or Offer Free Online Tools - Offering your customers with free resources and online tools to help them with their business is a great way to show your customers that you care and want to help them succeed. If you continue to add new tools and resources, your customers will be sure to come back and visit your website time and time again.

Create a company Blog or Community Forum " Educating your users on topics in your industry or providing them with the ability to interact with others on various issues is a great way to create a buzz and keep them coming back.

Create a Contest and offer FREE Products " Like with these other companies, a contest can be a great resource to create a buzz and generate new leads, while promoting your products or services online.

Allow your Customers to create a Profile on your Website " Depending on your business, this may or may not be a viable option for your company. But if you could find a way to make it work, allowing your customers to upload pictures, advertise their company and interact with others for free is another amazing way to generate new leads and keep your existing customers coming back.

As you can see, there are many ways to create a buzz for your business by using your website as a marketing machine. And as youre reading this article, youre probably thinking of some creative and innovative ways that might relate to your business better than the options Ive provided above. If this is the case, great go get started. If youre still struggling on coming up with ideas for your next website marketing campaign, dont worry. I recommend asking some fellow colleagues to help get your started or even better; ask one of your existing customers who you have a close working relationship with. Sometimes customers are the best resource for us business owners considering they are the ones who expect from us and we are naturally the ones who are embedded deep within our business that sometimes we cant see over the fence.

I hope this article has provided you with a few ideas to get the ball rolling and to realize that your website can be used as a marketing machine to help create a buzz for your business. I know none of these solutions are the cure-all but as with anything for your business, you must continually think of the next big idea, the next way to market your business and the next way to increase your sales otherwise,youre in the wrong business.

Be creative! Utilize your website as a marketing machine.

And best of luck to YOU!

Increase Sales and Simplify your Product Business with a Content Management System (CMS)

2006-11-07T07:24:00.000-08:00

We will continue to invest in systems, people and product expansion, each of which helps us better serve customers ... For the rest of this year we expect to invest more heavily than we have in the past.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com made this quote back in 1999. We are all familiar with Amazon and its tremendous success over the past several years. Even though Amazon is not as profitable as it would like to be, they definitely did one thing right " and that was to create one of the most recognized online brands in the world.Their website isone of the most well-known and trusted websites to purchase products from on the Internet and every product company would love to replicate what Amazon has done in just 12 years in business.

Looking at the Amazon website - how is it that they are able to sell millions of products while maintaining a website that is user-friendly, easy to navigate and generating millions of dollars a day in online sales? The answer lies in their core back-end applications and advanced content management (CMS) technology. If you really want to get into it, I believe Amazon is more of a technology company than they are a product company because of the number of advanced systems, developers, networks and applications required to run and operate their online business; however, Ill leave the further explanation of this theory for another article.

Now lets go back and review Jeff Bezos quote one more time " We will continue to invest in systems, people and product expansion, each of which helps us better serve customers... So what Mr. Bezos is suggesting is that in order to improve Amazons user experience, they must focus on investing more in technology that will allow them to continually increase the product selection on their website. As owners of our business, we should take this valuable knowledge and experience from Jeff Bezos and apply it to our own product-driven websites. If we want to increase sales, simplify our business, and improve our users experience, we must forever focus on product expansion.

Implementing a content management system for your website will allow you to easily maintain your products as you focus to expand your business online. A CMS will allow one or more administrators of your website to prepare and publish information, without the need to create and manage HTML coding. By using a CMS and focusing on product expansion, you will increase sales, enhance your users experience and minimize resources, while effectively and efficiently managing your product-driven website.

I highly recommend considering some type of CMS to help manage products on your website. If you want to stay competitive and develop a stronger business, you must operate like Amazon and continually invest in systems, people and product expansion - each of which will help you to better serve your online customers.

Relevant Content is the Key to Generating Successful Website Traffic

2006-10-26T06:54:00.000-07:00

Today I received a phone call from a potential client who found our website searching Google for companies that could help increase traffic to her website. For the purpose of this article, lets call her Tammy. I initially started the conversation asking Tammy what types of marketing she is currently doing to help generate traffic to her website. She mentioned she has setup Google AdWords and Yahoo! Sponsorship campaigns for her business, but is unfortunately not generating any sales. I said ok, thats a great start. I then asked her what else she is doing. Tammy said, Nothing thats why I need your help. We both laughed.

This is a very common conversation that I have with my clients on a daily basis. Everyone wants to know how to increase traffic to their website because as we all know - increased traffic equals increased sales. For many, its the unanswered question that they struggle to find an answer for every day as they try to expand their business online. Well, today Im going to show you how you can increase traffic to your website in the most effective manner possible. Im going to provide you with a cost-effective solution that will increase traffic to your website through organic search marketing.

As we all know, the Internet is made up of millions of websites, encompassing billions of pages of content. When we do a search in Google, some results appear on the first page, others appear on the third and then there are those that dont appear at all. What makes a website appear before another? Is it because they have better keywords in their site or is it because their site is more popular? Well to be honest, there is a whole slue of reasons why one website might appear before another. For the purpose of this article, Im only going to talk about the leading reason why I believe one site appears higher another - and that is Relevance.

In order to appear in the search engine for a particular keyword search, your website must be relevant for that particular search term " makes sense right? Ok, so then wouldnt you also agree that if your pages are more relevant to that search term, then they should appear higher in the search results, right? Well I hope youve answered yes because its 100% true. If your Web pages contain more relevant content than another site, there is a greater chance you will appear higher then they will in the search results.

If relevance is the answer then how do I make my site more relevant?

Thats a great question and Im so glad youve asked. The answer is hidden in the Content of your website. If your site contains more relevant search terms, you will become more visible in the search engines for those terms guaranteed! Content is the key to success on the Internet. With good, quality and relevant content, you will find it much easier to generate traffic and produce online sales.

Ok, so if content is the key to my success, then what do I need to do?

The following are some of the best ways to make your website more relevant and to increase the exposure of your business online. Some of these are adjustments that you need to make to your existing website and others are changes that will help you get more content indexed and indexed faster.

Add a blog to your website

Adding a blog to your website will enable you to increase the amount of content that is relevant to your business. With a blog in place, you can post articles about your industry, feature your new products, share specific ideas that may benefit your audience and simply show that youre a business that is specialized in your chosen profession.

I recommend setting up a blog on a sub-domain off your website. For example, if your website is http://www.hudsonhorizons.com, then you can add your blog or article section to http://articles.hudsonhorizons.com. By doing this, when your articles or blog entries are located in the search engines and a user clicks on the result, your website will appear; hence, directing them to the source of where you need them to be.

Submit OnlinePress Releases

Submitting press releases about your company can be a great resource to generate new business and make a name for your company on the Internet. There are many ways to submit a press release. A great way is to use a company like PR Web. You can signup for an account and they will distribute your press release for a certain fee. I recommend submitting a new one every month. You will notice your releases getting indexed on numerous websites on the Internet, getting indexed in the search engines, and in such important places like Google News and Yahoo! News.

Be creative with your press releases. Come up with a story that others want to hear. Maybe its the launch of a new product or maybe its to announce a partnership with another firm. Whatever it may be, make it interested so others will want to read it. Add links back to your website so when others are reading, they can be directed to your site for more information.

Submit your pages to Google and Yahoo! directly

Google Sitemapsand Yahoo! Site Exploreroffers you a way to submit a complete listing of your site's URLs to their search crawlers,informing their search engines about all the pages in your website.

With Google Sitemapsand Yahoo! Site Explorer, you can keep their crawlers informed of all the pages in your site and if done on a regular basis, provides fresher search results and a smarter crawl of your website in their search engines.

Submitting your URLs directly to Google and Yahoo! is a great way to increase the visibility of your content and increase traffic to your website. I recommend submitting them on a frequent basis to ensure that your pages are consistently being added and to increase the rate at which your pages are being indexed.

I hope you find these three things to be beneficial to the success of your business online. Remember, if you can focus to increase the amount of relevant content thats in the search engines, you will be sure to increase your sales.

I wish you much continued success!

The Web Development Company of the Future

2006-10-19T06:54:00.000-07:00

As the Internet is rapidly changing, its difficult for many Web development companies and solution providers to stay abreast of all the latest industry developments and as more advanced technology becomes readily available, companies desire more for their website. Businesses no longer want a static website, they are in need of a more dynamic, customizable and interactive site for their business.

With the birth of content management, blogs, RSS, content distribution, social networking communities and interactive websites, the Internet is no longer a place for companies to display a website for information purposes only. The Internet has matured into a resource for companies to interact, communicate, share information and build an online existence that exceeds the offline companies of the past.

To see how this has all developed, lets take a brief look at the Web industry just a few years ago. Back in the year 2000, the Internet was a place for companies to have a presence on the Web; a presence that was primarily used for informational purposes. Because of the simplicity of the Internet back then, any company could easily find success in obtaining a Web designer or developer to create a website for their business that met their expectations.

That was then and this is now.

Much has changed since the year 2000. Over the past several years, the Internet has exploded and brought on a totally new idea and acceptance to use the Internet in hundreds of new and exciting ways. Now companies are interested in managing their website on their own, providing online networking communities for their members, pulling RSS feeds from other sites, distributing their products and content to various places on the Internet, integrating e-commerce, and receiving search engine optimization and e-marketing services to help promote and brand their company online. The Internet is no longer only a place to provide information, but also a place to create brand awareness, streamline internal business processes and increase sales, all at the same time.

As these changes are occurring before our very eyes, many outdated Web development companies lack the knowledge and experience to offer these services to their clients and unfortunately many of them are simply fading away. There is a positive light at the end of the tunnel however; with the loss of these older companies there is a new breed of Web Company that is beginning to emerge. These are the Web solution providers that have the comprehension and skills to provide these services, offering a promising future that will drive the development of the Internet for the years ahead.

Because of the vast potential in the Internet today, companies should no longer be seeking a company that is just focused in design or static Web development. Companies need to consider the possibilities and seek a Web provider that can not only design and develop a website with true precision but one who is specialized at providing such additional services as content management, e-commerce integration, RSS content distribution, search engine optimization, e-marketing services and the development of custom applications such as blogs, newsletter systems, online payment solutions and any other Web application that may be needed to help simplify their business.

As this is obviously the Web development company of the future, many companies are finding it difficult to locate a provider who is basically their one-stop-shop for all their e-business and e-marketing needs. The future of the Internet is unimaginable; however, the future Web development company cannot be. They must and will be the company who can not only design, develop and maintain a website of high caliber but a company who can also customize, distribute and market their clients into the future. These are the only types of providers who will survive in this rapidly changing Internet world.

If youre interested in seeking a provider who is the Web development company of the future, then contact Hudson Horizons today. We are an e-business product, solution and marketingcompany specializing in creating highly sophisticated customized websites, web-based software applications and providing e-marketing and SEO services for small and mid-sized businesses.

Our vision and ultimate ambition as a company is to always strive to be "The New Light for e-Business." By offering new, innovative and extremely competitive products and solutions to our clients, we provide better ways to run and operate a business online.

The Beauty of Drop Shipping Products on the Internet

2006-10-12T07:24:00.000-07:00

Having the ability to sell another companys products on the Internet without having to worry about the accounting, inventory, and shipping of the products is a great way to grow an online retail business with minimal resources. This idea that I am referring to is the process of drop shipping.

When you are setup to drop ship another companys products the process is simple - you receive the order from your buyer, relay the order information back to the manufacturer or distributor and they will handle the rest. Once they receive the information from you, they will then process the order and ship it out to your customer for you. All you have to do is get the sale, collect the money and pay the drop shipper your agreed amount for the product.

Now, there are a few ways in which you can to start drop shipping another companys products. For the purpose of this article, Im going to talk about the two most common ways to get you started selling immediately.

The first way is to contact a manufacturer or distributor directly and ask to setup a drop shipping account. Most manufacturers and distributors have special pricing for people who wish to drop ship their products. For example, if you contact a distributor of rocking chairs, you may find a price for one of their products to be around $250 for retail but for people who wish to drop ship, the price may be $200. This means you could sell their rocking chair at $250 and only pay $200 directly to the distributor, hence earning you $50 off the sale of every chair.

The second way is to search the Internet for the lowest price of a certain product on a website and then markup the price at which youll sell the product from there. Lets say you search for a specific type of HP computer and find the lowest price to be on Walmart.com for $1250. Now lets assume their competitors were listing the same HP computer at $1500. This means that you could list the product for lets say $1400, undercut your competition and still profit $150 off the sale of each HP computer. So now when you sell the product, you simply go to Walmart.com and complete the online transaction using your billing information and your buyers shipping information. Wal-Mart will then ship the product directly to your buyer " its that simple!

The best way to market the products is to utilize eBay or create your very own website around these products. I recommend starting with eBay to test the waters on a certain product. Some products you will find to work really well, earning you a nice profit for each sale; yet on the other hand, you will find it harder to sell others. Its a process that will require some testing and analysis on your part.

After you find which items work best, you can develop a website around those products and make the process fully automated. Hudson Horizons can develop a custom e-commerce website that can automate the entire process for you, even the process of contacting and paying the manufacturer or distributor whose products you are selling. If you are a manufacturer or distributor and looking for others to sell your products, through the process of drop shipping, then I also recommend contacting Hudson Horizons. They are experienced at selling and marketing products on the Internet and will even develop a website around the products for free if they find them to sell well.

Drop shipping is a great way to start an online retail business without having to worry about the accounting, inventory and shipping of the products. Even if you have a fulltime job, the process of drop shipping is something that can be done part time on the side. Like I said, since the entire order and shipping process is handled by the drop shipper, all you really need to focus on is getting the sale!

Drop shipping works and could be a great side business for anyone.

Give it a shot!

Why Google Sitemaps are so important for the Success of your Business

2006-10-06T06:56:00.000-07:00

Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine. This quote was made by Sergey Brin, one of the co-founders of Google with Larry Page.Search engines have become so powerful and vital to the success of every business. Whether or not you think Google is God, Satan or just an ordinary search engine, the fact still holds true that the success of every business on the Internet is in part determined by the results of their search engine marketing. Because Google is so popular, the companies who are most visible in Google are the companies who find great success because of their search engine optimization efforts.

The solution is in Google Sitemaps!

Today, I want to talk about Google Sitemaps - the most basic way to increase your websites visibility in the Google search engine. This is something that is mostly performed by Web developers because it requires knowledge of hosting; but today I am going to show you how the average/everyday person can utilize and implement Google Sitemaps for their business.

To provide you with a story of its importance - recently, we setup Google Sitemaps for one of our clients and the results were staggering. Before we implemented and submitted their sitemap file to Google, we checked the number of pages that were indexed and it came to approximately 3,000 pages. After two week of submitting their sitemap file to Google, that number increased to 8,000. This means that we were able to more than double their number of Web pages that were indexed in the Google search engine.

A few days later, the client called me to share some great news. They just made a $2,000 sale from one of their new online products they recently listed on their website, just a week ago. Why was this amazing news for them? Well first of all, it was a nice profitable sale but more importantly, this means that the sitemap process was able to index their new content in Google within days. If they did not have a sitemap process setup, the rate at which their new product could have been indexed could probably been closer to 60 days if not ever. By submitting a file directly to Google with their new Web page, Google was able to take that information and immediately index the new content in their search index.

This is just one example of how Google Sitemaps has increased our clients sales and achievements on the Internet. I could share many other stories of Google Sitemaps success but for the purpose of this article Id like to share with you how our Sitemap Manager product which will allow you can easily implement Google Sitemaps for your business without worrying about creating and submitting the process manually and on a frequent basis.

Hudson Horizons HH Sitemap Manager allows you to register online to create and automated a sitemap submission for your website to Google Sitemaps and Yahoo!s Site Explorer. The HH Sitemap Manager will greatly improve the visibility of your website bysubmitting your Web pages to the Google and Yahoo! index three times a week.

The HH Sitemap Manager willprovide better crawl coverage and fresher search results to help people find more of your web pages. The following are some of the features and benefits of using the HH Sitemap Manager.

Automated submission to Google Sitemaps three times a week.

Automated submission to Yahoo!s Site Explorer three times a week.

View and trackthe statistics of each Sitemap submission.

Ease of Use! After the Sitemap is setup for your domain, it will run three times a week automatically, completely eliminating the process for you to do it manually and on a frequent basis.

Improved URL visibility.

Better crawl coverage of your website.

Fresher search results.

Faster indexing of your Web pages and their content.

Signup today to improve the visibility of your website in Google and Yahoo!

Google Sitemaps has provided much success for my clients on the Internet. Im confident that if you implement Google Sitemaps for your business, you will greatly increase your visibility, sales and success in a very short period of time.

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