Archive for the ‘Information’ Category

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Jan252010

Doing Business in Melbourne

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Generally speaking if your wandering around Melbourne at cafes wearing a suit and have business cards handy, deals are very easy to come by.

Most people who are from Melbourne are very social people so network marketing is very easy and conversation with CEOs are not a problem, as they too also like to get out to their favourite restaurant or coffee for a business discussion over lunch or dinner.

I am originally from Australia and spent most of my life there, although I have invested 6 years overseas doing business in Bangkok, Thailand and London, UK, there is one thing about Melbourne that inspires me to continue business there. That is the fast paced lifestyle. It is naturally in me to be very hard working and around business minded people that take their work serious.

One thing about Melbourne is the cold weather which keeps you on the go. I really enjoy doing business there. I will be going back around March to set up a new office there, so should be exciting. I plan to make my SEO Melbourne business well known particularly around the Caulfield area.

When doing business in East Melbourne or the city, it’s very convenient to go from one client to the next as trams come and go every 5 mins or so. Just setting your day up for scheduled appointments is the key, as you want to meet at a specified time. I generally feel that early morning around 9-10am is good as it gives you a nice 1-2 hours if necessary before lunch if they have already something scheduled during this time.

In my field relating to SEO and Internet Marketing taking a laptop is vital for any appointment regardless if they have a projector or not, and remember that following up with a client over lunch or inviting the client to your office aswell is also a good idea.

And one big tip, if you want to get in your clients good books ask what is their favourite football team, no matter your interest, they will appreciate you asking!

Jan242010

Targeted Traffic with High Conversions

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I recently came across a site that suggests that they have very high conversions. That site is called Traffic Python. Although I am yet to see results as I just joined, the tutorials seem very promising.

The great thing about their system is that when you send referrals you get credits based on that and can use those credits for your own ads. Your ads can be targeted through the niche category you select. On top of this it definitely beats any other type of traffic exchange programs I have seen.

The way they display your ads are discreetly placed at the bottom of your sites pages and in a nice light box fade in effect which last for around 9 seconds and then fades away. It is not annoying like other ones I have seen.

You can set numerous sites of your own to display other ads on the bottom of your own sites then you refer the url’s you create. Then later once you earned credits you can use those credits to later advertise your own site at the bottom of other websites. Or you can buy credits directly to display your ads without referring at all. I will test this out and let everyone know how things pan out.

If anyone has or will use their system I would be interested to hear feedback and what you have also experienced.

Click here to get Traffic Python

Jan12010

Happy SEO in 2010

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Happy New Year everyone, and even happier for those who have been involved with SEO for some time. Obviously change is one of the hardest things to work with particularly when one is very set in their ways, but change is good and only for the strong minded. Now has come the time, for many years since 2003 Google had set a patent based on link popularity.

This algorithm structure is based on back links and calculates links, the good from the bad, the popular from the less popular, the authority links from the less authority and weighs up the links from high page rank vs low page rank sites and pages.

For 2010 all this is changing

It has been told recently Google have based their new algorithm on a social platform. For me personally change is good, I get bored easily and concentrating on back linking becomes tiresome and monotonous. Although this will not be totally eradicated there will still be some chance to progress and spend time on other areas. The other areas include:

  • Personalized Search Changes
  • Real Time Search
  • Growth of Android and Personalized Mobile Search
  • Social Search
  • Bing Growing into legitimate option 2

The recent patent is an interesting one as recently summarized. It shows that alot of attention will be focused towards Google Phone, or mobile in general and bookmarking and personalization along with user data information.

This actually tells us that social media is going to play a big role and that Twitter and other Social platform will also be contributing in the data that is shared and will carry weight accordingly.

Those SEO people who are already against social platforms have no option but to turn to this game. It is really a do or die situation. I believe SEO is already changing towards an overall internet marketing platform. To do and adapt in all the ways of marketing on the internet enables you to receive the highest search engine results.

To be successful particularly in 2010 you will need to stay ahead of the game. Working off old SEO ways will be half of the work and sooner or later fade out alltogether. So start getting social, mobile, in the media and above all user friendly becuase this is the way of the future folks!

Best of luck and success for 2010!

Dec252009

Broad Vs Niche Sites

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There is clearly a big diference in putting a site together for the long term or for the short term.

Alot of the big players that develop lets say a search engine or social networking site have a huge advertising budget because they know what they are getting into which involves huge competition, even if they are innitially playing with other less popular social networks lets give an example of Facebook vs say Friendster, hi 5 etc, there is still alot of marketing needed to prove to others that lets say Facebook is better.

When it comes to one man marketers or smaller agencies investing in smaller key area sites these days they have no option other then to focus on smaller niche sites.

The divide between the two areas are getting wider and wider, as the bigger companies like Google and Microsoft have so much power that they can buy their way into almost anything. The niche sites keep pounding away harder and harder as the only thing that is on their side is endless hours of time and effort to put into their work.

High risk, high return sites can be a lot more rewarding for the long term and can even end up as a public company on the stock market and making billions of dollars, where is the short term low risk sites gain thousands of dollars and is a lot more guaranteed.

This then leaves middle men sites like forum community sites, article sites, and sites that are related to webmaster, design, seo, travel which gain profits from affiliate programs, advertising and memberships.

Other sites that quietly make profits are the sites which are involved in porn and gambling. Other niche areas such as “buy today only” schemes and other quick sale sites are slowly weeding out.

Here you can see that the top 30 alexa list contains around 15 sites that are all related to the big competitive niches such as social networking, search engines, video etc.

Long Term High Risk High Return Sites:

  • Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu)
  • Social Networking (Facebook, Twitter, Myspace)
  • Blogging (Blogger.com, Wordpress)
  • Video Sites (Youtube)
  • EMail Sites (MSN)
  • Encyclopedia (Wikipedia)
  • Shopping (Amazon, Ebay)
  • File Sharing (RapidShare)

Short Term Low Risk Lower Return Sites:

  • Weight Loss
  • Stop Smoking
  • Hair Loss
  • Nokia Phones
  • iPhones
  • Wii (Nintendo)
  • PS2 (Playstation)
  • Religion
  • Politics
  • Soccer
  • Fashion
  • Auto

There is some odd successful sites and industries in between all this give and take. When Twitter became the talk of the town everyone started registering twitter domains and putting together  twitter background sites for example. Then developers started making money from facebook applications, they were and still are a great money maker. You can thrive off other popular sites success for some time also. The beauty about all this is there is always a way to make money online big or small.

Dec22009

On-Page Vs Off-Page SEO And What Works Best

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Really there is no easy answer to this, on-page is just as important as off-page. When doing on-page optimization I generally start off with keyword research of course and start then by going through meta tags and start implementing the right keyphrases from title, description and keywords, then I move up towards adding valuable content on the home page of the site including meta images and text. (There was a day that you could stuff words in your meta and hope for the best, those days are long gone, and Google and other engines are a lot smarter then that.)

You want to have your h1 introductory text on the main page and keep that similar to the title tag. With the text on the home page you want to  also make sure the text has a couple of links pointing to inside pages. For example if I have a treadmill page from my site that is called exerciseequipment dot com, you would want to have an inside page like exerciseequipment dot com / treadmill then a link pointing to the inside page from the home page.

You can add a sitemap on the site which will also get your site crawled better and index better, also concentrate on internal link structure and content. But although this is a good starting point there is much more to do on-page also which you can keep on improving and tweaking as you get better.

With Off-page I focus alot on link building, business directory submissions, article submissions, press release submissions and social media marketing. It takes alot of hard work in getting relevant sources to want to link to your site, and this includes natural links mostly in which are from high page rank sites and have authority.

As we all know having an .edu and .gov backlinks help, but put it this way, these will come over time. If your site is new and you all of a sudden obtain a backlink from an .edu or .gov site this will send off alarm bells to google.

With off-page it requires a certain skill, and requires creativity in knowing how to approach or gain your backlink in a smart way. Some of the best ways of gaining a backlink is from just being you and doing what you do best and over time sites will just link because they like what you have to offer. Most of all just by concentrating on both on-page and off-page simultaneously is key to gaining your highest level of success. To continually tweak, research and compete and stay ahead of the game!

Nov242009

Location of Your Web Host

web hostingHow important is the location of your web host? Here I explain how much more important it is then you think!

All the way from FTC regulations for blogging websites through to Global Warming, when choosing a web host you should really consider where their servers are located and if this effects the industry that you are in. Recent regulations say that Bloggers from USA need to follow the new FTC laws. So this also means if you are a blogger with a site on a US server you have to consider the legalities.

I recently started to use servers that are located in Canada because Canada is a cold destination and is a good way to keep the servers cool. There were recent talks from BBC that some countries such as Iceland are becoming more known now for IT hubs and server space. 100% of the country’s electricity is renewable and basically carbon free, much generated from water heated far below the ground. So carbon dioxide savings are enormous. Banks who have hundreds and thousands of servers are also looking at alternative re-location methods such as this.

Another example is if you are targeting website traffic from say New Zealand, then a server from New Zealand wil help you get your site more optimized for the New Zealand search engines. Search engines such as Google rank your site based on server location and IP. So for SEO purposes location plays a big role.

Also beware when having your server located in US. Never presume this is totally safe. For example, personally I wouldn’t host my websites on servers that are based in Florida as there are quite a lot of hurricanes, if your server is also located in earthquake areas then your chances of losing your data or sites are fairly high. There are alot of web host companies that have servers located in Texas and this area seems to be very safe.

UK Web Hosting companies are also another hot topic at the moment. Registration of European domain names are much easily accepted through UK host companies. Domain name registrations for .eu web addresses peaked at three million earlier this year. So this is a prime real estate area!

Be careful when having your websites located on Asian servers such as China or Thailand. If you state anything politically incorrect on your sites you can get fined big time, your sites will not only be shut down but you can also be imprisoned.

Having a local host is also an option for some as faster upload and download speed is a luxury for your websites and customer care is quicker for support.

Hope this is helpful for you for when choosing a host and remember to take into as much consideration as possible.

Nov122009

Google Launches Product Listings Ads In Search Results

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Today it was announced that Google product listing ads display in the google search results, a cost-per-action ad program:

Product Listing Ads is part of our effort to simplify the advertising process for merchants with large product inventories. Some of the key features of Product Listing Ads include:

  • Pay only for results: Product Listing Ads are charged on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis, which means that you only pay when a user clicks on your ad and completes a purchase on your site. Because Product Listing Ads is charged on a CPA basis, it offers a risk-free way for you to reach a larger audience on Google.com.
  • List your entire inventory: Product Listing Ads requires no keywords or additional ad text. Whenever a user enters a search query relevant to an item in your Google Merchant Center account, Google will automatically show the most relevant products along with the associated image, price and product name. Product Listing Ads makes it easy for you to promote your entire product inventory on Google.com.

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So far the ads display randomly around half way through the page and it is not yet defined exactly the point of preference. It may turn out in the future that the ads display just below the sponsored listings at the top.

For Affiliate Marketers it has been debated whether this would put them in jeopardy. Getting a product to display in the top of the search results is another story and something all SEO professionals Im sure will be studying more carefully along with the demand. Although it seems Google wants a slice of every action, they are always striving to find better search results but for me I some what think that their search results will end up looking very untidy.

What are your thoughts?