Video is a great way to get your business noticed. One good video can get you thousands of views that may eventually buy your product or service. Ensure that you create by using these tips.

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Robert Moorman wrote:

Click to read more:       Andy Jenkins wrote:

Spend a little time surfing around web-marketing forums and it becomes clear that the art and science of making Viral Marketing Videos is about as well defined as the purpose of an Escher Painting. I see lots of guesses.  I see even more TERRIBLE advice.  The next time someone tells you that the key to [...]

Scott Cowley wrote:

The blog home page is one of the least-optimized pages on a website. It doesn’t get nearly the same level of love as an individual post page when it comes to keyword research, SEO, and internal linking. I don’t think it’s intentional.

I think it’s just easy to forget how authoritative blog home pages can be and how much traffic they can garner on their own. So what should you be doing differently?

Keyword Research

Too many people are giving their blog something like “Company X Blog” for a title tag. In slightly more effective ways, many blogs pick an ultra-competitive title tag like “SEO Blog,” thinking that this is the key to success. It’s not easy to outrank big, bad, established SEO blogs.

Keep in mind, that your blog has other ways of being defined beyond the word blog. Get creative with a thesaurus. Among other less-competitive, more attainable words you may consider incorporating as you research:

• news
• reviews
• tips
• information
• hacks
• tools
• how-tos
• tutorials
• posts
• walkthroughs
• articles

On-Page Optimization

What page attributes would you normally optimize to get a page to rank? Title tag? H1 tag? Body content? Internal links pointing to the page?

Blog home pages should be treated like ordinary pages, and this often requires some code tweaks, because most blogs I’ve seen aren’t set up to optimize the blog home page like a normal page.

You can easily incorporate keywords into your title tag and meta description. You’ll probably need to code an H1 tag above the posts. See how this has been done on the SEO.com blog, for example.

Normally you’d have a few hundred words of static content to work with and optimize as a best practice. Many blogs have no static content. Many choose to put their primary static content on an “About” page. The problem with this is that your posts won’t be seen on this page and most people won’t link to it when they’re referring to your blog, generally speaking, so your efforts are divided.

One way to incorporate static content is in the sidebar, like HubSpot has done.

While I’ve used sidebar static content in the past, I have some reservations about its effectiveness. Putting content in the sidebar ends up duplicating it across all of your pages, and often your blog home page doesn’t end up getting the authority credit for it. Once again, it tends to divide your optimization in an inefficient way.

The most efficient way to incorporate static content is to add a block of static text to either precede or follow the listing of recent blog posts. Very few bloggers are doing this (here’s an example of one that’s a bit unpolished), but it enhances the SEO in a way that an optimized title tag alone can’t. Just be sure to code the page so that the static content only appears on the blog home page, for maximum effectiveness.

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wrote Terri Wells:

It’s been nearly four months since Google’s Panda update first made its presence felt. Dubbed “Farmer” by some, it hit content farms particularly hard. With Google rolling out the third update to Panda, what do we know about this bear that can keep you from getting clobbered?

Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land reported on the new version of Panda. He noted that Matt Cutts reported at the SMX Advanced Conference that it had been approved, but not yet rolled out, and that he started seeing hints of its influence on SEO forums on June 16. On June 20, he received confirmation from Google that the ranking changes being noted in the threads were probably due to the Panda 2.2 update.

A lot of sites that weren’t previously affected by Panda are feeling its wrath now; many others that suffered under earlier Panda updates are actually doing a lot better after the change. Whether or not you’ve been adversely affected, these changes can be unsettling. Are we back to the days of the Google Dance?

It may look like it at first, but we’re not even close. According to Danny Sullivan, what we’re seeing is nothing like the old days, when Google would update its index every month or so by “suddenly dump[ing] millions of new pages it had found into its existing collection” which “caused ranking changes that could take days to settle down, hence the nickname ‘Google Dance.’” We’re also not seeing a full-fledged update to the algorithm, along the lines of “Florida” in 2003 and “Mayday” of last year.

So what exactly is going on? To understand that, you need to understand the nature of Panda. The nearest comparison Sullivan could make was to PageRank. Yes, PageRank – that factor that supposedly has no effect on your ranking in the search engine results pages and which Google rather wishes we’d all ignore. Panda, he says, is not itself an algorithm change; it’s a ranking factor.

Before you start scratching your head, let’s review how search engines work and define a few terms. Search engines send out software to examine web pages for indexing. They look at various factors on the page to determine a page’s relevance for any particular search; Google looks at anywhere from 50 to 200 of these factors, depending on who you believe. They may include such information as what keywords are in the page’s title, how many links point to that page, what words are in the anchor text used by the links, and so on.

Google’s algorithm looks at these factors. Various factors receive different “weights” or levels of importance. For instance, the meta keyword tag isn’t considered important at all, but several factors pertaining to links receive a lot of weight when the algorithm does its thing. Once the algorithm weighs the factors for a particular page as related to a search using a particular keyword, it decides where to put that web page in the SERPs.

So what does this have to do with Panda? Panda is yet another ranking factor. I can’t prove it, but I think what’s going on is that Google looks at a number of signals, not just one, that its engineers believe indicate the “thinness” of a web page’s content. I believe that Panda takes these signals as a whole and applies a formula to return a value. If the page stays below a certain value, Panda leaves it alone; go above that value, and Panda lays some kung fu on it.

Some may wonder how Panda can be just a ranking factor rather than an algorithm change when it seems to have such a disproportionate effect. I’m with Sullivan on this, though. Consider how much of a difference links make to your standing in the SERPs, and you’ll see why.

I already explained that ranking factors can have various “weights” in Google’s algorithm. They can be of no importance, like the meta keyword tag; or very important, like links from authority sites; or somewhere in between, like relevant title tags. Right now, Panda is dialed way up in importance, which is why it’s having such a huge effect. That will continue to be true for quite some time, so you might as well get used to it.

There’s one other thing which Panda and PageRank have in common: they’re updated periodically. What I think is going on is that certain ranking factors are more complicated than others, because a number of different pieces of data go into them to return a value. When enough pieces of data go into calculating a particular ranking factor, it takes too long to find those values fresh every time. So Google calculates those values for a page and stores them, and uses the stored values every time it runs its algorithm…until it performs an update to calculate new values for that particular ranking factor.

These updates happen when someone at Google decides they need to happen. Sullivan notes that they’re sometimes called “manual” updates, but that’s really a misnomer. What really happens is that someone decides it’s time to run a particular computer program to update the values. That program might not have changed since the last time it was run, but pages on the Internet certainly have, which means that the ranking factor for the pages will change – and so will their standing in the SERPs.

What I think is going on at Google isn’t just that Panda is being run again at regular intervals; I’m certain Google itself is examining the results it gets every time it runs Panda, and tweaking the Panda program based on how close they come to what they want to see. If it helps, think of Panda as an algorithm within an algorithm.

Because Panda is run periodically, if you make changes to your website based on how badly you got burned by the last update, you probably won’t see significant improvement in your standing in the SERPs until the next update. And trust me, you can expect to keep seeing regular updates for a while. Panda 2.0 got pushed out seven weeks after 1.0. Panda 2.1 popped up four weeks after that, and Panda 2.2 showed up five weeks after 2.1. Sullivan seems to think that Google will continue running Panda updates on a four-to-six-week schedule.

But don’t focus everything you do on your website around Panda updates. Sullivan reminds us that “Google makes small algorithm changes all the time, which can cause sites to fall (and rise) in rankings independently of Panda.” Even if Google doesn’t change the algorithm itself, but updates a ranking factor that feeds into it, your website’s ranking might change.

So what should you do if you see your rankings drop? First of all, don’t freak out. Second, note the date. If it turns out that the date your rankings dropped coincided with a Panda update, you might well have been mauled by Google’s newest beast. Before you do anything else, however, Sullivan suggests that you “Look at the overall traffic that Google has sent you.” You might even find that your numbers have gone up. Remember that rankings are a means to an end, and you might still be achieving that end after all, even if you’ve lost what you thought was an important ranking. Good luck!

salario wrote:

Your landing pages aren’t converting. Sadly, this is not your customer’s fault. It’s your job to tell your customers why your product is awesome and you have fewer than five seconds to tell that story.

Regardless of whether you’re a rookie or veteran marketer, we’ve assembled the following checklist to help you avoid some of the common pitfalls we see all too often with pay-per-click landing pages. The hope being that you can take some of the recommendations into consideration before you go live with AdWords campaigns of your own.

1) Pre-Populate Cursor – Does your landing page have a form field you want customers to fill out? If it does, a great way to reduce friction, and increase conversion rate, is to pre-populate the cursor into the first field. This might sound like a nit, but in all the tests I’ve seen run, this seemingly slight difference has had a significant impact on conversion rates. A great example of this in the wild is what eHouseOffers does with their sign up page.

2) Eye Contact – You’re driving northbound on I-5 (or whatever interstate you drive in your hometown) and there’s an accident in the southbound HOV lane. What do you do? You probably turn your head and look at what everyone else is looking at. This seemingly obvious piece of human behavior is something you shouldn’t forget to talk to your designer about on your landing pages.

What do I mean? Well, the concept is simple. Think of it as the “Look at what other people are looking at” principle, but essentially what it means is that people will tend to look where the subjects in your hero graphic look, not necessarily at your ad creative.

http://usableworld.com.au/2009/03/16/you-look-where-they-look/

As the above heatmap shows, landing pages are no different from highway accidents: you look where other people are looking. So, if you have a landing page creative with people in them, why not take a page out of what PayPal does with their landing pages and have your subjects look in the directions of your call to action?

3) Testimonials – Another tactic that is incredibly effective is including customer testimonials on your landing page. There’s really no better way to build trust with prospective customers than to have existing customers sing your praises. And though you don’t necessarily have to do what Sono Bello Body Contouring does and include the testimonial in the header of your site, you should include testimonials somewhere on your landing page – possibly in the sidebar.

4) Point of Action Assurances – It’d be impossible to create a landing page checklist without referencing Bryan Eisenberg, who was truly one of the first real conversion rate gurus. One of the best tips Eisenberg gives in his book Always be Testing is around the importance of putting trust icons, or “point of action assurances” as he calls them, next to your call-to-action buttons. Put another way, if you put trust icons next to your submit buttons more people will click on them. One of many examples of this principle in action is what Provent Therapy does on their sleep apnea treatment landing pages.

And bizarre as it sounds, it is important that these trust icons, which can vary from McAfee Secure logos, to Visa logos, to industry awards, are as close to your call-to-action buttons as possible. Why? Well, because customers will notice these symbols and feel at ease. Strange as it sounds these logos will in fact reinforce trust and increase conversion rates.

5) Match Headline with Intent – Not to be forgotten when considering landing page optimization is Google AdWords quality score. Having a high quality score will not only decrease your cost-per-click, it will also help reduce overall acquisition costs

And though quality score is comprised of many parts – including keyword relevance and ad copy – you should always make sure you’re getting the most from the headline of your landing page. Specifically, once visitors get to your landing pages, you should make sure you remind them that the site they’ve landing on is in fact exactly what they a) searched for and b) clicked on in your ad.

One startup out of San Francisco who really gets this, and who has seen some early wins from creating targeted landing pages is Red Beacon, which is a site who recently won the TechCrunch 50 that’s dedicated to connecting consumers with service professionals.

6) Drive a Single Call-to-Action – One of the most common mistakes we see is people trying to do too much with their landing pages. If you ask visitors to do 55 things, odds are they’ll bounce instantaneously. However, if you focus on driving a single action, you’re likely to get people to take the action you want.

And even though from hosted exchange to great SEO books there’s no shortage of sites who implement great simple landing pages, the concept is not to be forgotten. Pick something simple and drive people to take that single action. With landing pages the old adage is incredibly true: less really is more.

Ultimately, there is no one size fits all landing page. There are many approaches you can take and some useful gallery sites to get design ideas from, but there’s no substitute for understanding the principles of conversion rate optimization and working with a talented designer to give you exactly what you’re looking for.

And though this is not an exhaustive landing page checklist, hopefully the above examples provide a useful overview of some of the key principles you can apply to your landing pages before you throw too much ad spend at sub-optimal, poorly converting creatives.

 

WorkFromHome wrote:

If you are reading this article, then you have already figured out that to connect with anyone in today’s society, you need to be able to get onto the Internet. If you have not already purchased your own high powered computer, to be used solely for your home based business, then you must do so immediately. Along with a great work ethic, some capital, creativity and a great product, technology is an essential component of your business success.

Also essential to your business’s success, though, is having a website so that your new clients can find your home based business. If they cannot find your home based business, then they cannot contract your services or purchase your products. Still not sure about why you need a website for your work from home business? Read on for the top reasons for you to invest in a well designed website for your home based business.

A Website Tells Your Potential Customers That You Are Credible

Before the Internet became popular, a potential customer would turn to the telephone book to find stores that sold what he or she was looking for. If a store did not spend the money on an advertisement in the telephone book, then the customer would assume that the store was no longer in business, or that it did not sell what he or she was looking for.

Today, nearly every Australian is Internet savvy, or at least Internet literate. This means that a search for anything, from a pair of socks to a specialized piece of machinery, typically begins with a search on an Internet search engine. If you do not have a website that advertises your products or services, then you might as well be invisible to the potential customers searching for the items that you sell.

You Can Show Off Your Expertise On Your Website

Professionals offering services ranging from freelance writing to landscape design can greatly benefit from having a website. A website is much more than just a listing in a virtual phone book, after all. It also contains whatever images, videos and documents that you choose to upload to share with potential clients and customers. By showing off your best previous work to your website’s visitors, you can increase the likelihood that potential clients will turn into paying customers in the future.

By using your website as a virtual portfolio, you also make it easy for you customers to understand the different options available to them as they go through the ordering process. Whether you are offering custom wedding cakes or redesigned resumes, giving your clients a tangible taste of your expertise will whet their appetite for more of your expert work.

Your Website Is Like Having A Store That Is Always Open

A brick and mortar store will close at 9 or 10 p.m., but a website is always available to your customers. Whether your customers are abroad or just down the street, they can visit your website to look at your merchandise or read about your services at any time of the day or night. It could be Christmas, Easter or New Year’s Day, and if a potential client has a whim to learn more about your business or wants to order your merchandise, then he or she can easily do so.

Your website also means that you can access a wider customer base regardless of what time of day it is. While you would have to pay a great deal of money to move a physical store to a better location, having a website just requires you to use the right key words to make it easy for your customers to find you. If you use relevant keywords to optimize your website for search engines, then you can be sure to enjoy a great deal of web traffic. Want to upgrade your virtual location? Then you just have to pay a small amount of money for search engine advertising.

Without A Website You Will Be Out Of Business

It sounds harsh, but it is the hard truth. Still unsure of whether you have to set up a website in order to stay in business as a home based entrepreneur? Take a look at your competition. Odds are that they all have websites of varying levels of sophistication. To stay ahead of them, make sure that yours is the most informative and sophisticated. Then, make the effort to keep your website up to date, so that your potential customers and other visitors are never concerned about whether your home based business is still in existence.

Allison Midori Reilly wrote:

 

A blog can lead to more connections than you think. Just one more reason to keep a company blog going.

Sure, blogging isn’t quite as cool as Facebook and Twitter. It certainly isn’t as easy either. However, a blog is still imperative to a small business’ content and marketing strategy.

Although social media and a company blog can perform similar functions, they shouldn’t not be considered interchangeable. Blogs are superior to social media sites for damage control, corporate communications and messages from executives, because you can control the look and feel of them. A blog can add a human element to the company and create conversation with those who have something to say about your company, or your company’s niche.

Blogging works in the B to B world for two reasons, said Mike Rowland, president of Impact Interactions, a marketing services company that specializes in social media, in BtoB Magazine.

“When you look at the b2b market, what’s necessary is thought leadership, and you cannot get thought leadership in 140 characters or a Facebook post,” he said.

Also, blogs allow for more in-depth customer interaction than either Facebook or Twitter. They are also ideal for collecting customer feedback, which is a great way to remove some of the burden of your customer service personnel. You can avoid customers calling in with questions, or going somewhere else for the answer, by addressing them in a blog. It keeps down the marketing and corporate speak while really getting at the needs of your customers and prospects. Use a blog to share and to talk about customers, industry challenges and how you approach your work.

But, avoid selling on a blog at all costs. Keep that sort of content to your social media sites, and to your salespeople.

In partnership with Business on Main, here are a few additional tips to keep your company blog going:

1. Make it fresh and exciting: What can you bring that’s a little different? Whether it’s beautiful photography, cutting-edge design, quirky humor, compelling customer stories, research or contests, think creatively to keep people coming back.

2. Be strategic: There’s no evidence that blogging on a regular schedule is imperative to success. If you can only post every couple of weeks, make sure that when you do, the blog furthers your story or fills a specific purpose.

3. Use multimedia: It’s recommended that readers are given the option to read text, listen to a podcast or watch a video. This doesn’t have to be complicated. Some blogging platforms can auto-embed YouTube onto the page, and free or low-cost podcasting tools are available from the Web.

4. Make it simple: Popular blogging platforms are fairly simple to maintain without technical support. “It doesn’t get easier than using WordPress as a blogging platform,” says Nick Armstrong, a Loveland, Colorado, online marketing consultant. “Themes are getting better to the point where you almost don’t need a geek for anything but setup and major tweaks.”

5. Remember your website: The most fabulous blog ever written will suffer if its foundation, your website, stinks. You should be able to make edits to your site without a consultant. To drive optimal search results, you need deep understanding of metatags, search engine optimization and content navigation. “If your website isn’t sound, you will get hosed,” Armstrong says. “Hire a geek if you don’t have one on your team.”

Guest Author wrote:

The NBN will reduce costs and open up revenue generating opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses.

Many of today’s most dynamic businesses are the ones that recognised early on the great potential of the web – to generate cost savings, to provide information instantaneously, to deliver greater flexibility to employees and, of course, to open up new markets not just in Australia, but right around the world.

The benefits flow straight to the bottom line. Domestic online retail sales, for instance, are predicted to almost double to $33.3 billion over the next five years.

However there remains a curious hesitance about the web among Australia’s small and medium-sized enterprises. This condition manifests itself in the latest MYOB Business Monitor. According to the survey, two thirds of SMEs don’t have a website at all.

Yet these same companies in the very same survey demonstrate that they are not ignorant of the benefits the web can bring. The vast majority (62 percent) use internet banking. More than half (57 percent) of business owners agreed with the statement “the internet is a critical channel for marketing and promoting our business”. And those companies with a website said they were more likely to report increased revenues than those without.

More trouble than it’s worth?

All of which begs the rather fundamental question: If small businesses recognise the benefits of the web, why aren’t more racing to get online? What is holding them back? The reality is that for many businesses, access to the internet can be more trouble than it’s worth.

Outside the major cities the signal is often slow and the service unreliable, particularly when it comes to uploading information. And even if you’re one of the fortunate ones who is able to access high-speed broadband, that can be an expensive exercise. Not only is access to affordable and reliable broadband a problem, research by Sensis has found that some businesses are concerned about security, a lack of skills and the cost of going online in the first place.

Australia has the fifth most expensive broadband in the OECD and last year we slipped to 18th out of 31 nations for fixed broadband penetration. Just as we’re slipping behind our international peers with an ageing telecommunications infrastructure, within Australia all these different factors are contributing to a widening divide between those who are online and those who are not.

Fortunately the National Broadband Network has been designed to overcome these obstacles. NBN Co is building a network that will deliver a ubiquitous nationwide broadband service right across Australia. The vast majority of premises (93 percent) will receive fibre optic broadband capable of offering speeds of up to one gigabit per second.

But no matter what technology you use to receive the NBN; be it fibre, satellite or fixed wireless, the same basic service of 12 megabits per second will be available to all, regardless of location and at the same wholesale price.

In many parts of the country it will mean an immeasurably better service than many people receive today. For those three percent of remote Australians accessing broadband via satellite, broadband will be up to 12 times faster and deliver up to 20 times the broadband capacity currently available.

Households, schools, hospitals and businesses will purchase their broadband products from retail service providers: telcos, ISPs or maybe even a supermarket or a utility company, all of whom will compete to offer a range of services using the NBN. This competition will inevitably raise awareness and usage across all business sectors and communities.

But it’s not just about faster speeds. The NBN also raises the prospect of new revenue generating opportunities coupled with considerable cost reductions, for instance, by:

• lowering travel frequency and duration by using video conferencing;
• increasing flexibility for workers allowing high bandwidth home-based access for operations and administration;
• reducing the need for bricks and mortar stores in high-cost CBD areas as online B2B and B2C transactions increase in frequency;
• providing access to high quality video-based interactive training and professional advice; and
• access to cloud computing applications – why buy expensive pieces of accounting software or a hard drive for storing files when you can access programmes and services “stored” on the web?

It will also cut the cost of reaching potential new customers and reduce inventory costs with the ability to access just-in-time delivery. The NBN will also open revenue opportunities through immediate access to new and distant markets with the capacity to showcase products and services in high definition video.

Through an online presence on the NBN, businesses can expand their “opening hours” to 24 hours, seven days a week. The benefits will be felt nationwide but nowhere will they have greater impact than in rural and remote areas.

The British academic Dr Tim Williams and a number of regional development agencies see the NBN as a catalyst to rejuvenate the bush. Fast broadband, they suggest, could help end decades of depopulation and instead spur a repopulation of regional areas and an overall strengthening of society.

I know from my own experience of living in a country town that first rate transport links plus a good high school plus decent health services plus robust broadband connectivity all add up to a sustainable local community. If businesses with an affordable, reliable connection are able to flourish in rural and regional areas, they will be able to compete with their metropolitan counterparts and attract workers seeking a cheaper cost of living away from big cities.

Unlike other technologies available today, the NBN will provide a more reliable service with fast internet speeds that will remain constant no matter the location or the number of people using the network. The reliability of the NBN will mean that many businesses – large and small – will for the first time be able to consider using broadband for services that demand high reliability.

It’s for these reasons that the NBN represents a critical upgrade not just to Australia’s communications infrastructure but the ability of Australian enterprise to thrive and prosper.

- Kevin Brown is Head of Corporate Services at NBN Co Limited.

For more information about what the NBN will mean for your business, see Leighton Jenkins blog.

Rob Young wrote:

Google is facing a big problem with spam. That’s not a secret. In fact, it’s why Google released a bloodthirsty Panda into the wild to destroy as much spam as was physically (or electronically) possible. However, while some of the worst offenders were removed – especially when it came to content mills and more blatantly thin sites – the Panda algorithm update didn’t fix things. Here’s the way one of my Twitter followers so aptly put it: “Why does every Google search result I come up with redirect me to advertisers?”

By advertisers we’re referring to re-sellers of some outside product, subscription, or service. These are typically affiliate groups who get a big bonus (ranging from $15 to $100) when you sign up for something as harmless as a free trial. So, why do these affiliate sites so entirely outrank pages that, you know, actually answer the question? To answer this thoroughly, let’s take a quick trip in Rob’s magical time machine, visiting a time long, long ago: the mid 90s.

The Birth of Link-Based Algorithms

In 1993, the Mosaic browser was released and the world was given access to a graphical web. It wasn’t fast, it wasn’t real pretty, but it was visual – and that meant the start of a public internet. Sites were originally categorized and put into independently-owned directories, and major directories were the primary way typical users navigated the chaos that is the web. Then innovative search engines took the field, with key players at the time including Yahoo!, Lycos, and AltaVista (and feel free to give those names a moment of silence).

These original search engines looked through actual web pages, indexing the content found inside. It actually read text and matched it up to your query. The theory was simple: If a site uses the words you’re searching for, it’s probably on the topic you’re searching for.

Quickly, however, the search engine result pages plummeted into chaos. The reason was the first wave of search engine optimization, which recognized how the sites were being ranked and tried to put in the exact right number of keyword repetitions (that’s where the “keyword saturation” idea, and the obsession some SEOs still have with it, comes from).

The gaming got bad fast. Beyond simply optimizing their site for the given keywords, webmasters and first-generation SEOs were creating duplicate pages that had the exact same content but was located at a different address. An entire page of the search results could be from the exact same publisher.

That’s where Google came in. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were certain they could make a better search. This time they wouldn’t be using keywords found within a site as the mode of ranking (although it would, and still does, play a role). Rather, they were on a hunt for a method by which site popularity could be automatically tracked. What they came to was the idea of link popularity, and in the early phases, that was largely based on the site’s PageRank.

PageRank is, in the broadest (and admittedly least thorough) summary possible, a simple way of indicating how many links point to a site. Links are more powerful if they originate from sites that have a high PageRank themselves. So, theoretically, as people went around sharing the link – be it on their own site, on a blog, or on any other medium that could be indexed – those links would serve as evidence for the high quality the site being linked to.

Immediately, Google’s algorithm gave results that were substantially better than those on Yahoo! and other major search sites (which were basically just spam). However, it didn’t take shady SEOs long to catch up.

The Next Generation of Spam

Search engine optimization is, overall, a good thing. It’s a way by which webmasters can communicate with the search engines, telling them what their site is about, what they want to be discovered for, and so on and so forth. The problem is that there are certain optimizers who use a set of tactics that sabotage the aim of the search engines (which is providing high-quality content for searchers). In the Google era this spamming has happened in the form of link generation.

More inbound links bolsters your search engine ranking, so it’s not hard to see the solution to increasing rank: Get more links! Rather than getting these links by word-of-mouth marketing, providing guest content, or otherwise earning the links, however, most spam groups these days rely on the network of sites that sell links, the self-publishing article sites, and other mediums that allow you to push links by yourself.

The Capital Power Conundrum

So the quick answer to why Google provides spam results is that, since they have an automated system, people are always trying to go through and game the SERP. It’s impossible to afford a manual management system and it’s impossible to spam-proof an automated one. But there’s one other question that deserves attention: Why is it just spam sites doing this?

Well, obviously, it’s not just spam sites, but the sites that are re-selling for someone have a huge advantage: an advertising and SEO budget. Since they can make a huge amount of money with every signup on the site, they generate hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars each month that can be turned inward for buying links, article submission packages, and so forth. As the profit (i.e., capital) generated is re-invested, they become more profitable and more powerful.

What about the sites you actually want to see? What you’re probably looking for is an informational site that provides direct, honest, and unbiased information. In other words, you’re looking for a group who will charitably give you information with little hope of a large return. While you may be fine with an ad or two on these sites, the overall revenue for the publisher and for each advertisement you click on is substantially lower. So the honest, informational sites have less incentive to hire SEOs and they have less starting and ongoing resources to invest in optimization.

Why Social Web, Curation, Etc., Won’t Stop Gaming

There have been numerous propositions for how this situation can be improved or fixed. Social sharing as a ranking factor (including Twitter shares, Facebook likes, and Google +1s) sounds great. Human curation and contributions (such as we see on Blekko) are fantastic conceptually. Here’s the problem: The moment one of these factors becomes significant enough, it absolutely, definitely will be gamed.

The social web is on the rise and once its hit the mainstream, you bet that there will be groups who create hundreds – even thousands – of social accounts for the simple purpose of selling you their “likes.” In the same way, if Blekko became popular, then SEO groups would hire third parties or develop networks to game the human contributions.

For every step the search sites take toward “fixing” the problem and establishing countermeasures, the SEOs have come up with one more way to get around the countermeasure. The only long-term fixes would involve either an idealistic (probably impossible) way to detect those who are gaming the search sites or full, single-group human curation (which is far too expensive to pull off). Sadly, there isn’t a quick fix. The search sites will continue to create well-rounded algorithms that are more likely to surface good results, but it’s impossible to “kill spam” completely – at least in today’s world.

The good news is that webmasters who don’t invest in gaming will still see the best long-term results. Focusing on quality, basic promotion through guest blogging or social sites, and honestly providing value will get organic results over time – and won’t be tossed to the sidelines with algorithm updates.

And, on the whole, we’re improving. The number of spam sites filtered out of the top results has multiplied like bunnies, and upcoming ideas such as social feedback, site blocking, and other user contributions will have a valuable role to play. The mistake is thinking that these new ideas are solutions, when in fact they’re just one more territory where the search sites will do war with the black-hat SEOs. But each one of these territories gives Google, Bing, and other search sites an additional advantage – and the overall picture, believe it or not, is getting gradually less spammy.

Darren Dahl wrote:

Gone are the days when .com and .net were your only options when registering a URL for your business. Here are some tips for developing a domain extension strategy.

Choosing a name for your business used to be easy, at least compared to the kinds of things you need to think about today, especially as it relates to your company’s web page. Sure, you can try and register your company’s name as the URL, but what should you do regarding all those domain name extensions that are now available? Obviously a .com extension remains a default option, but what happens if someone is already parked there? Should you change the name of your URL or is it a viable alternative to own one or more of the other 20 extensions currently available, such as .biz, .net, or .info (or others such as .jobs, .mobi, or .pro, if applicable)? Or, should a good domain extension strategy include all of the above?

What follows are some suggested answers to these questions culled from a roundtable of small business owners and branding experts.

Start with Dot-Com and Go From There

While ICANN, the organization charged with regulating the global domain name system, has tried to open up the ability for individuals, companies, and organizations to register new domains by creating new extensions, the unfortunate truth is that unless you run a nonprofit, where .org should be more than suitable, the .com extension still rules them all both in people’s minds when they type in a web address and, just as importantly, in the kinds of search results returned by Google.

While you might be disappointed to find out that someone has already registered your company’s name with a .com extension, that doesn’t mean that you should settle for just registering your name with .net or .biz, says Edward Yang of Firecracker, a public relations firm in West Covina, California. “Of all the extensions, .com is a must-have,” he says. “That’s because most people don’t remember .net, .info, or .biz. So to come up with a company name, it’s imperative that you make sure you work backwards: ensure the domain name is available before falling in love with a company name.” The last thing you would want to do is spend money building up a your .net or .biz brand only to drive traffic to your competitors .com site simply because that’s where most customers default to. In other words, you may need to think about rebranding your company around your ability to secure a .com URL.

Case in point: When Jacqueline Gikow started her business, JacquelineJewelry, she found that both .com and .net were already taken, so she settled for JacquelineJewelry.biz. But, when Gikow performed Google searches for her domain name, she found was always fighting with the other two names. As a result, she changed the name of her business to ChelseaRainbow and got a domain name of ChelseaRainbow.com, which has yielded better results for her business. “I don’t think there’s anything that can be done to make either .net or .biz more popular,” says Gikow. “People are just more familiar with .com.”

Of course, if someone is parked on your preferred .com, you could consider trying to acquire it, says Nathaniel Broughton, owner of Growth Partner Capital in St. Louis, who has used search-engine optimization to launch a series of businesses like Suretybonds.com and vacationrentals.com. “Finding the owner of a domain can be hard sometimes, but you can use the WHOIS search or try to hire a broker, he says. The stories people tell about tracking a site owner down are legendary. I’ve mailed people a letter with a $5 bill in it and said, “Here’s $5 for five minutes of your time, call me.” I know guys that have hired private investigators to track down owners. It’s all about one-to-one contact, and a domain name is always, always, always only worth what someone will pay for it.”

Next Steps Beyond Dot-Com: Cover Your Bases

Once you’ve acquired your .com URL, it then behooves you to spend the money to acquire not only other extensions surrounding it, but other variations as well, says Alex Marinov of TennisRound.com, a San Francisco-based company which helps tennis players connect with each other. “We own about 40 different domain extensions and misspellings of our URL,” he says. “We don’t mind throwing $300-$400 per year at this to save us cybersquatting headaches and provide better customer experience.”

For example, Marinov made the decision to purchase the .org, .net, .biz, .info, and .tv extensions to TennisRound (which can redirect visitors back to the .com site) to both head off domain squatters and competitors who could have drawn traffic away from his main site and to plan for future expansion, such as showing matches over streaming video on the .tv site.

Marc Mattox, principal at Southwest Strata, a consulting business in Dallas, says you could even take it a step further by snapping up extensions based on your competitor’s names and forwarding the URLs back to your own site. “Clients have told us on numerous occasions they were originally looking for their competition only to type in the wrong extension,” he says.

Dig Deeper: How to Protect Your Domain From Cybersquatting

Go Global (If It Makes Sense for Your Business)

If your business operates in or sells internationally, it might also make sense to snap up extensions of your URL for countries like Canada (.ca), the United Kingdom (.co.uk), and Australia (.au) as Google will rank country specific domains higher than a .com and people based in those countries are more likely to click on a country specific URL than on a .com, says Marinov.

You can also consider using global domain extensions in strategic and creative ways. For example, there are businesses that leverage the extension as part of their brand name like Page.ly, says Chris Perry, a marketer and brand manager who also runs the site, CareerRocketeer.com. “Despite the .ly extension being the country extension for Libya, Page.ly, a WordPress web hosting service, uses it as part of its brand,” he says.

A similar example is the relatively new .co extension for the nation of Columbia which some companies have begun to capitalize on, says Mattox. While it’s not often that a potential customer forgets to type the “M” in .com, it does happen. “And when it does, you can capitalize on that opportunity,” he says. “And acquiring those customers will only cost you $20 a year to register the URL.”

Dig Deeper: The Truly Global Business Plan

Keep Your Eye on What’s Coming Next

If all that wasn’t enough, ICANN is set to really shake up the realm of domain name extensions this June when it is expected to approve new rules for individuals and companies that would take effect later this year and would enable customization of so-called generic top-level domain names (gTLDs). For example, Canon and IBM have already made it plain that they plan to acquire the extensions, .Canon and .IBM, respectively, says Steve Stolfi of Corsearch, a global brand management provider based in New York City. The new rules might also make it possible for companies to become registries themselves, where they can administer extensions such as .movies, .law, and .music. While such rules have the potential to create upwards of 500 to 1,000 new domain extensions, says Stolfi, there is a stiff barrier to entry: Any entity wishing to create a new gTLD needs to pay the $185,000 application fee. Worse, if two or more entities apply for the same extension, an auction will be held where the highest bidder would acquire the rights: a process that could get expensive in a hurry.

Given the high costs, Stolfi says that means that many companies, especially smaller businesses, face a dilemma: Sit out the first round and see what happens over the next two years when the registration process is reopened, or potentially watch your competitors jump in and secure a stranglehold in your industry space. “Every company needs to be aware of these changes if they take place,” he says. “Or you could see your competitor exploit this opportunity while you can’t do anything about it.”