SEO Truth, SEO Blogs, from SEO Consultants @MyTypes.com

What happenned to our PR rank?

2008-08-21T21:34:00.000-07:00

Blog on SEO Myths

2008-07-12T12:04:00.000-07:00

Check the article that was recently published on MyTypes.com free blogs platform:

10 SEO myths and 10 net net answers — short and sweet

SEO Myth #1 - SEO is about secret tacticspeople that are in the know about SEO can tell you, there are no secret tactics in SEO, but they may not tell you all their methods the reality of doing SEO well is to cover your basics. using the information that your analytics provides you is a nice place to start. Start with your home page and work your way through out your site. Looking for SEO basics also look at Google’s Guidelines.

SEO Myth #2 - SEO means only optimizing for GoogleWhile we all know that google has most of the search traffic on the web, we shouldn’t forget about MSN, Yahoo, and niche/vertical search engines.how would one do that? CONTENT!! optimize your content for the audience you are intending to read it use the phrases key terms and catch phrases that your audience would use. these things are in addition to creating search engine friendly site.

SEO Myth #3 - Submitting your site to thousands of directories will help your rankingsWhile directory submissions can help your site rank better, be picky. Choose directories that are established, and are relevant to your site. doing directory submissions on a large scale can hurt your SEO efforts. here are some guidelines to use:

1) Quantity of inbound links

2) Quality of inbound links

3) Age of domain

4) Topical relevancy to your site

5) Human-edited is better than automated because editorial control tends to lend itself to quality

6) How frequently the directory gets crawled (check the Google cache)

7) The directory itself ranks in the search engines — this can be a sign of authority and can drive click through traffic

8.) Are their links direct, static links or are they redirected to your site?

SEO Myth #4 - SEO is free While SEO is not pay per click there are upfront and on going costs associated with SEO.possible costs include, SEO consultant, programmer, designer, link campaign and Most importantly YOUR TIMEdon’t forget about what your time costs to SEO your site your self. whether you hire out or do it your self SEO does cost. make sure your getting a good ROI by tracking your rankings, traffic, brand awareness, etc.

SEO Myth #5 - Keywords need to appear everywhereIn the past SEO protocol for ranking in a keyword called for the Keywords to be everywhere in the content. This is not true anymore because of relevancy algorithms. Google’s relevancy algorithm now favors more natural writing style. typically it’s not natural to have the same keyword appear in your page content 30 times all linked to your site. but it would be natural to add in modifiers to your keywords for example if you are tying to rank for the term “credit card” you might modify it in the following: “compare credit cards online”, or “apply for a credit card today” and then link these terms in your content in addition to your specific keyword. also try mixing in plural versions of your keywords. This strategy will help your site not to get filtered out and will broaden your reach to be found on multiple search terms.

SEO Myth #6 - SEO is a one-time event for a companyThe nature of SEO is a changing landscape, search algorithms, competitors, the current market “buzzes” are some of the things that you have to contend with. SEO consists of one-time and on-going efforts. Some of your one-time SEO efforts could entail keyword research, website structure and layout. On-going SEO efforts may include analysis of sites effectiveness, link campaign strategy, page editing and optimization. After you’ve set your site up to be search engine friendly make sure you are tracking your SEO efforts and adjusting them to create the best ROI.SEO Myth #7 - SEO will take years to return resultsThis not true, and SEO campaign could return some results within 30-90 days and lets qualify that statement. Results could mean moving up just a few spots in the rankings or even just showing up on page 100 for the intended search term when you were no where to be found. use common sense If someone tells you i’ll take years to get you ranked, get another opinion.

SEO Myth #8 - Page rank is the critical measure of a site’s successpage rank is 1 of 200 indicators that Google uses in search. while it does carry weight, if you are only focusing on page rank you are missing the boat, more importantly focus on your sites tools and content to being relevant to particular search terms you would like to be found for.

SEO Myth #9 - Accessibility doesn’t really mattercreating accessible webpages should be a forethought when creating a site. If googlebot and users cannot access your site because it is too slow or too much multimedia then the best SEO will not help. consider a user browsing from an iphone, can they use your flash navigation? nope. or the business user that is on the go and connects through a low bandwidth to make a purchase. If a site can’t be seen or loaded properly then no actions can take place. some best practices are:

1) make the bulk of your content and navigation text with multimedia dispersed throughout

2) test your page in mobile and a text base browser such as lynx, more details can be found on the google webmasterblog. check out these two links. Best uses of flash and a search engine spiders view of web 2.0

SEO Myth #10 - Google has an adversarial relationship with webmasters and publishersGoogle has done a great job with their webmasters central blog to help webmasters and publishers make the most of their sites. take a look and Webmaster Central, and take advantage of support from google.This was a summary of Michael Estrin’s article 10 SEO myths debunked from imediaconnection.com**sponsored by Rent Expert.com’s VRBO system, People Search and background check services by Peoplefinders.com, and website design St. Louis and web design St. Louis.Do something good for the enviroment, Air Purifiers @ greenisbetter.org. If you are interested in learning more about Internet Marketing, SEO, and the power of blogs, don’t be afraid to buy our Marketing book, and definitely create a blog on our free blog platform at MyTypes.com main page.

Don't be afraid to reuse old content, but

2008-06-14T16:12:00.000-07:00

you have to spice it up, and change it or duplicate content issues will get to you. Here is an SEO blog we just republished to make the point: Spice up your content, if you are going to reuse it. Just like our food tastes better when we spice it up, so does our old content. If you like the content below about SEO for bloggers, don't hesitate to check out our marketing book "Marketing is a contact sport" from Amazon.com. Here is a SEO blog from our blogging platform, enjoy:

Recycle old content for SEO value, spice it up

It’s not always easy to blog and write fresh content. But it’s important to keep writing and blogging for SEO effectiveness, therefore you should spice up the old content with creative insights. Or the other option is to just update the old content with fresher data or recent news or events, that can often make a blog obsolete. If you are looking for ways to Blog for your SEO effectiveness, read the following article. If you are looking for SEO Services, or want smart marketing insights, buy our marketing book. Good luck and be spicy!

SEO for Bloggers: The Summary (Part 6 of 6)

Blogging is uniquely suited for search engine optimization, because the search engines definitely favor websites that have lots of relevant, easily updated content. However, there are ways you can maximize your blog’s promotional abilities - SEO techniques you can use to “blogcast your brand”.

Here’s a rundown of my SEO for Bloggers series:

Part 1: Getting Started with SEO. Start here to learn exactly what SEO is and the basics of how to use it to promote your message, including choosing your keywords properly. If you only read one of these posts, read this one (but you really should bookmark them all!).

Part 2: Link Building and Link Popularity. This post covers a key component of any blogger’s SEO strategy: getting tons of incoming links. Search engines love websites that lots of people are linking too - after all, popular blogs are popular for a reason, and that reason is simple: people like ‘em.

Part 3: Link Baiting for Fun and Profit. Link baiting is the art of getting other bloggers and webmasters to link to your site by creating interesting posts that benefit your readers in some way, shape, or form. After all, people link to content they find compelling.

Part 4: Building Your Cornerstone. Strong flagship posts are the pillars of blog - they are your most compelling content, they bring in the links, and they naturally have an ultra high keyword density.

Part 5: Off-Site SEO and the Social Media. This post describes how to use the social media networks and the user-driven aspects of Web 2.0 to enhance and promote your blog. There are a whole lot of amazing tools and communities out there, so use them to your advantage.

There’s one more point to remember about SEO, and that point is that the results generally don’t happen over night. Yes, content can go viral, but building a popular blog with lots of readers takes time - you have to develop your keyword-dense cornerstone content, to build link popularity and generate incoming traffic, and to make a name for yourself in your niche.

All of these articles are in our SEO for Bloggers category!

Don’t forget these free blogs are supported by our clients at MyTypes and the SEO Services clients for Keith and Bennett. Our original co-founder Vipin Singh no longer works with our projects. He is off working full time at a high-tech company. Our clients include PeopleFinders for Background Check, VRBO for RentExpert.com, Web Design St. Louis, and Air purifiers by Steril Air Purifier. We also promote the marketing book our company published that has the simple SEO and blogging strategies for the average person. It’s for sale on Amazon and we would love for you to buy it. We are also launching a Vacation Top Spots blog as we are focused on the Vacations business not only through the VRBO services of RentExpert, but love to write about travel related topics.

SEO Marketing & Advertising Size

2008-05-22T21:57:00.000-07:00

The Online Ad Market size - SEO market size too?

The Online Ad Story in a Picture - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

The article above from the New York times discusses the trends and facts of the Online Advertising numbers, Why? The talks of Yahoo and MSN is not just important to SEO Services people, but to all advertising and marketing people. Here is a quote from the article, we are covering this as the SEO landscape will dramatically change if Microsoft and Yahoo combine.

“Of course Google is booming and the traditional portals are struggling. But the numbers are stark: Last year, Google’s advertising revenue of $6 billion was roughly the same as that of Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft combined.

Google’s growth is slowing, but it continues to be a juggernaut. EMarketer estimates that ad revenue at Google will increase by 32 percent this year. That makes it the only one of these four companies that will grow faster than the ad market as a whole, which is estimated to expand by 23 percent this year. (To be sure, the uncertain economy makes any predictions especially suspect this year, but the relative trends appear stable.)

So as we try to second-guess the mating games of the big Internet companies, this graph raises the question: Does combining two past-their-prime giants that are both losing market share really solve any problems?”

The reason we are covering the recent news about the Microsoft and Yahoo is that this combination could greatly impact your SEO, SEM, and Marketing strategies. The combined search advertising and organic results, if that is what the solution will be, will be difficult for most small marketing people to ignore. Large marketing departments and advertisers do advertise on Microsoft and Yahoo, not just Google. They could quite possibly be the driving force behind another big option, not just being too dependant on Google. So our hypothesis is that a bigger advertising network other than Google is needed, and we support Microsoft as we are from Seattle.

As always we are just trying to provide you simple information for marketing your blogs and web sites. And, mixing in some shameful self promotion of us and our SEO services clients and marketing products of our strategic partners. Reminder, that is why I like blogging so much, and we created this free blogs site MyTypes.com. We found SEO advice all over the place, but we wanted to provide people a blogging tool, that would them actually SEO their blogs and websites. That is also why we finished our Marketing book, about the power of blogs for SEO and search marketing.

So we are going to plug in our web design St. Louis client, ArtWorksDesign.com, and we are also launching a sister blog at MyTypes.com/WebDesign where we will talk about the web design techniques especially as far as they relate to SEO. Last year we launched, GreenIsBetter.org for the energy saving infrared heaters, and air purifiers by Steril Air purifier. We think the web design blog will essentially lead to a portal or blogs or forums of sorts for SEO savvy web design topics. We have incorporated our end to end SEO and blogging techniques in our marketing book, so this should just be a continuation of those topics, only with more focus on web design.

As we started to sell SEO services a few years ago, we knew that we had to work with third party web design firms. The owners of the website simply did not have the capabilities to make the small changes needed to SEO the site. These minor changes have to do with proper Meta Tags, content and footer links. The majority of the web design companies now days know the basics of SEO, but SEO Services provide a lot of off-site services such as content and link popularity assets. This is why most companies large and small need to use an SEO services firm. Usually off-site SEO work will yield better results faster, once the basics are done. But, that is coming from Internet Marketing experts at MyTypes.com, we did write a marketing book on blogs, SEO, search and Social. But how well do we rank, you ask? We are only ranked top 10 in Google and other search engines for very competitive keywords, such as “Create a blog“, “Blogging”, “Free Blog“, “Wordpress SEO“, and we are usually ranked #6-#13 for “SEO“.

High Page Rank Links are weighted higher than ever

2008-05-18T17:10:00.000-07:00

We have been blogging about SEO strength and links, but never have the high PR links mattered more. In the recent past, sure volume of quality links could have improved your rankings, not as much any more. It really is more about the High PR links. Therefore, we are promoting our own blogs and marketing stuff here. Can you blame us?:-)

Not thinking about heaters in May

So why am I promoting blogs below on the marketing of our marketing book? because this Infrared Heater and Air Purifier blog has a page rank of 4 and it’s a valuable property, and any links from here help to rank other sites. Getting powerful links from blogs to your website is one of the key’s to getting high rankings. But, you already knew that, if you read our marketing book:-), enjoy the blog and buy the book if you want to promote your business on the Internet and especially Google. Don’t forget to buy air purifiers or Infrared heaters from our sister site at GreenIsBetter.org.

We are doing a test of a couple of titles of our marketing book, here is a blog I wrote about it in our SEO blogs. We know a thing or two about SEO services, SEO, blogs, and internet marketing/advertising and marketing, but we still don’t know what to name the marketing book. Here are the two names we are testing, one at Amazon, and the other on Lulu.com. I am very upfront, my favorite is the first, “Marketing & Motivation; in the Internet Era, learn the secret powers of blogs, search, and social marketing“, second is “Marketing is a Contact sport: make contact through blogs, SEO, search and social marketing“. Which one do you like better?

Just to do a plug for our SEO Services, Keith and Bennett are looking to get a few SEO services clients, if you know anyone looking to get ranked in the top 10 in Google check out our SEO Services area by clicking Here at SEO, or do a search on Google for the keyword “SEO” we are currently ranked #12, was #7 for a few days last week. We are obviously one of the 10 best SEO and search and Internet Marketing companies in the world.

A Marketing Book or book marketing ?

Book Marketing - Research Competing Title Sales And How To Market Books Online

The article above covers the topic of Marketing a book, which is dramatically different than “A Marketing Book“. It’s amazing how sequence of words can make a big difference. Some times keywords confuse us and don’t provide the proper search results, especially regarding “Marketing book“. So we have a marketing book, as titled above by our blog title, “Marketing & Motivation in the Internet era“. We just published it through Lulu and soon it will be on Amazon, within days, well actually it’s already there for it’s Kindle ebook format. That marketing book title is “Marketing is a Contact Sport; make contact through blogs, SEO, search and social marketing”. You can say we are doing a marketing research test to see which title sells. We are also promoting the book, to see what works, and looking for testimonials for the marketing book. We wanted to position the book not just for Internet Marketing, SEO, and Search marketing, but for the wholistic marketing view.

The article linked above on marketing a book talks about promotion via your website, and another top book marketing expert talks about blogs as a way to promote a book. Back in 2003 when I started blogging, I had heard of a woman getting a $Million+ contract for publishing a book. Maybe that was one of my motivations for blogging and working on my writing. I can’t express the value of blogs not just in book promotion, but in SEO and Internet Marketing as a whole. That is why we created the MyTypes blogging platform, and turned it in to a blog promotion and social marketing site to help people promote their blogs and build community. We really do go by the saying “No Blogger left behind”. We have been busy, providing SEO services to clients, and they all want to be #1. The cheapest and the best thing they can do is write smart blogs and do quality linking, you don’t need an SEO Services company to rank you high, unless you really have a very competitive keyword.

So many people ask me the secrets to SEO and search engine rankings, especially as we are ranked in the top 10 in Google for some major keywords. My answer is always to start blogging, and of course to get links. There really are not too many secrets, but there is a lot of work building content and links. Page Rank is becoming more and more important in the quality of links. So start blogging, keep blogging on our free blog system, and get others to provide link to your quality content. And, do yourself a favor buy the marketing book, it really will be the investment you will make. I mean it, well you will be doing me a favor to, so thanks!

Oh, it wouldn’t be a promotional SEO blog, If I didnt’ plug in one of our hot clients such as the Air purifiers from Steril Air Purifier, these are a hot item folks.

SEO Truth is that Blogs drive content and SEO

2008-05-14T22:40:00.000-07:00

I have not been blogging much lately, I was too busy finishing up our book, and publishing it. This is what I wrote on our free blog platform at Mytypes.com yesterday. The introduction to our Marketing book is included below, enjoy:

Sidney Poitier Writes a book, “Life beyond Measure”, one of my favorite actors, and he is on Larry King Live at this exact moment, wow.

We all love National Geographic in our family, and we just finished watching the special “Battle of Kruger”. This was the video of the Calf escaping the jaws of a crocodile and 6 lions. Type in “Battle of Kruger” in YouTube and you could watch the 8 minute video. It’s all about “No Buffalo left Behind” the mentality of the buffalo herd, incredible video of showcasing the Buffalo will”. Well that is what the narrator said on the NatGeo channel, said and of course we say “No Blogger Left Behind”, I had to mention this on our blogs. I also wanted to plug-in our newest SEO Services client, ArtworksDesign.com, and our self. The premier “web design St. Louis” firm, has already started to refer client to Bennett, our SEO Services sales expert. Obviously they are very happy that we got them ranked #5 on Google (for the keyword “Web Design St. Louis” ) within days of providing SEO Services, how did we do it so fast you say? You have to read the marketing book, and you can buy it on Amazon’s kindle. The paper back copy will be available soon.

Why NASCAR again, you ask? Well, I watched my second Nascar race this weekend, and my favorite driver one this one too. It was my kids favorite M & M Car, owned by favorite ex-NFL coach Joe Gibbs, and Kyle Busch, is the driver. Nascar is fun to watch, but it really is an example of how marketing and advertising are hammered home on every inch of the car, the hat(helmet) of the driver, and even their driving suit.

So that is my report, I am still in the final revisions of the marketing book. It did get done last week, but we have some time before the first copy gets finalized to ship. Well update for you I am writing this blog mainly because we published the marketing book, and our proof copy is on it’s way. Here is the Final Introduction, in case you want to read it:-). We are obviously very excited about it.

Introduction: Marketing is a CONTACT sport

Introduction:
Why Blogs, Search and Social Marketing
Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.
- Leo Burnett

I am surprised that most people don’t know about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), search engine marketing, and Internet Marketing. But, they all know about Google, Yahoo, and MSN, right? These terms and others like “Keyword” and “Adword” need to be defined for the ordinary individual, which we will do in the course of this book, but that is just the beginning of understanding the revolution that is taking place right under our keyboard. The field of Internet marketing has changed dramatically in the Web 2.0 era, and I wanted to write a book that would serve to bring people up to date on the subject.

This proved a challenge in itself though as things are changing so rapidly. In the short time I have been working on this manuscript I have had to revise as well as add significant things because of the rapid rate of change. This is why I realized that I would have to name the book version 2008.01, like a software release that is intended from the start to be updated. I saw that I had to make this book more interactive. I’ll keep it updated via my blog and then when enough material accumulates, or a really big event changes the landscape in a major way, I’ll release the next version, say v2008.02 or v2008.03. And, yes, I’ll also continue to re-write the existing work in order to sharpen and clarify it.

Beyond just keeping up to date though, there is a second, and more important aim of this book. Yes, I wanted to highlight the major trends such as blogs, SEO, Search and Social Networking, but I did not want to create a book just on the latest information on SEO, Blogs, or Social media. I saw the need for something beyond that. I wanted to show the comprehensive nature of the shift that is taking place on the Internet Marketing landscape. I call it Internet Marketing 2.0. Truly, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Only by understanding all these elements individually, and, more importantly, how all these elements interact to form something larger, can one begin to grasp the immensity of the shift that is Internet Marketing 2.0.

Let’s take a step back to how we got here. It’s been a struggle to name the book, as it can be for any author. In the first working title of the book, I tried to use the word “Secret” as in, “The Secret to your success”. I pictured using a beautiful woman in a veil on the cover. However, the word Secret has been over used a lot lately, and while I do love the movie, “The Secret”, my intent was not to play on it’s message. The idea behind using the word “Secret” had less to do with the movie than with the fact that the people in the Search Marketing and SEO worlds are very very, secretive. They always talk about SEO secrets, and the secrets of Google rankings etc. etc.

The truth is that these hidden secrets for attaining high Google rankings, overall search rankings and effective search marketing are simple, though the SEO guru’s want you to think otherwise. They’d much rather have you believe that it’s too technical for you to master with out them. It’s really not that hard though, and it’s time the secrets were unveiled! Read on!

There is no reason, you should have to pay thousands of dollars to techies and search marketing guru’s to do something you can do for your self. It’s as easy as blogging with the right keywords every day, though you do have to be willing to learn and implement the simple strategies on a regular basis. And therein lies a key secret: No discipline, no results. Another important area I wanted to help people to understand is that traditional marketing is not dead, but now that the new media of Internet Marketing and web 2.0 is not a pipe dream any more, traditional marketing must be understood differently. As you will later see that traditional brand building exercises such as Press Releases and write ups in major magazines and newspapers, can actually help with the best Internet Marketing 2.0 strategies. So really, it is not just the interaction between all the elements of Internet marketing 2.0, but also how they interact with traditional marketing. With out understanding all these in their combined synergy and power you can’t begin to grasp what is going on much less be an effective player in an emerging and rapidly changing field.

The biggest most powerful tool of Internet marketing is no longer email, it’s not the web 2.0 or social media marketing, and it’s not just blogs or websites either. If we keep it as simple and direct as possible, one thing stands above all else as the biggest marketing catalyst of today, that is: ”The Google Effect”. Search engine optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Internet Marketing in that order are subsets of each other. These will be the new measuring sticks and metrics of measurement used for every marketing campaign, and every marketing initiative.

But, wait Live Search from Microsoft and Yahoo got a big leg up this week! Well not really, their numbers are only getting smaller. But even if they do improve, they are just riding on the coat tails of the big G. Eventually Microsoft will likely come back. At present they are trying to buy Yahoo, and MS Live recently signed deals with Digg.com and Facebook.com, which are two of the top 5 leaders in the Social media giants of the internet.

While the world of marketing has changed dramatically due to Google and other search engines, the most important driver of change at present are blogs, which have changed the news landscape. Seattle Times the biggest paper in Seattle just announced that they are laying off 165 people this week. But changes like that are peripheral. Blogs and Social Media are going to make a much bigger shift. Watch as the multi-media convergence reaches into mobile phones with the iPhone and more. Consider live interactions that are not just one to one but one to many. Imagine getting your news, blogs, videos, audios, from other people down the street, not just CNN. All this will be have a huge impact through Google. Call it the “Exponential Google Effect”.

At a more fundamental level, Google is the great equalizer. The biggest change in the world of advertising has been Google’s Adwords, it has actually turned the world of advertising upside down, not just impacted online advertising. Adwords, or pay per click, allow anyone to target a specific search term for their advertising dollars. When that term is searched for, two types of links come up on the page. One is the “Natural” ranking. These are not paid for directly but come up as the most valuable sites

according to the Google algorithms. This natural rankings is what SEO (Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing) is all about. It might as well stand for Search Engine “Ranking” Optimization, which is what it really means.

The same results page for a specific search will however also include paid for links on the top banner and along the side bar. These paid for ads incur charges from Google for each and every time someone clicks on those links. Hence pay per click (or PPC) advertising and Search Engine Marketing.

What adwords does is make it easier for small business to buy keywords to market it’s products to people searching for contextual information and products. And contextual ads being mapped to search results is the magic formula that makes everyone happy. Never has it been so easy for small businesses to target global markets, and that is the true power of Search Engine marketing.

However just because Google is the first to give the small business a chance by it’s adwords product, does not mean it will be the best. Ebay and Amazon have initiatives that are very successful for small businesses to market their products on their Mega Marketplaces. Ebay haa a great social shopping community, and Amazon has gone much further than just book reviews by it’s shoppers. Shopping is a social activity and you will see major players such as FaceBook and Craigslist, impact the Internet Marketing in a bigger way than most of your biggest traditional marketing investments. Think of shopping as a natural extension of social networking. Think of the highly coveted youth demographic, they go to the mall as much to socialize as to

shop. It’s a natural fit. Imagine even today, a Craigslist ad gets ranked higher for a specific product search than a major merchant or your own website. Why is that? We will explain all of this, but back to Google for now.

When an individual, a potential consumer, is looking for information and the search engine (Google or otherwise) provides it, that search engine helps by providing the right information. But it is also delivering highly targeted advertising to exactly the right customer.

Can you imagine how much cheaper and how much more accountable and measurable this is compared to TV and radio. Essentially the advertising is going to people who are asking for it! Traditional advertising is crude in comparison. People are less and less willing to have advertisements pushed down their throat or into their eyes, or their ears. People prefer to look for information, when they want it and if the advertising fills their need, they will voluntarily go for it. Deep down, we are all treasure hunters and want to find the most unique and personally appropriate stuff. And this is where Google made the search results better and created this huge adwords industry out of Search Marketing.

In fact, according to SEMPO.org the industry size is supposed to be at $7.8Billion dollars. We are not a member of Sempo, but we support its mission. SEMPO’s Mission: SEMPO is a global non-profit organization serving the search engine marketing industry and marketing professionals engaged in it.

So how do you have eSuccess in search marketing results? Well, you have to read the whole book first. Oh, all right, not really . Here are some quick and very powerful tips.

Search Engines want to provide the best contextual related results to consumers, so should you. They target news related websites first, and blogs are considered news. Blogs are considered news because (well you already know this, right?), each blog post has a time stamp on it, just like a news release. And you have heard CNN mention the word Blogosphere how many times a day? So for a blog to be found as a search result, it has to be written with the proper keywords that are being searched for. But, how do you write unless you know the targeted keywords? Well, that is easy once you know the “secret”.

What is the most important market research data you will ever want and need? You have to go back to the Search engines and start with what people are searching for. Go to Google Adwords to find out. Find their “Traffic Estimator” within their tools section, which will give you the forecasted clicks for those key search terms, also known as keywords. So it’s a full circle, search engines provide the information you most need to be an effective marketing savvy blogger in their keyword analysis tools.

Why do they do this? Because they want you to advertise and generate sales for your business, the better they do this, the more people click on your ads and the more you will pay them. Who does this better than all the rest? Who else? Google, of course. But you knew that, because now you are getting it!

But this is just one of the many tools required for your eSuccess via Search marketing and for Internet marketing. The tool sets as a whole are referred to as SEO and SEM tools. This is what the professionals use, and you as a small business can learn these too, especially for free SEO tools site such as our LinkMint.com, SEOMoz.org, and others such as Word tracker. We have a commercial site, and actually built our own SEO Tools last year, they have always been free, and will continue to be. Visit mytypes.com!

But remember the most important SEO tools you have are tools that help you generate custom content such as blogs, videos by YouTube, photos by Flickr, profiles at FaceBook, LinkedIn, and MySpace. As important or more so is to combine these with Social media sites such as Digg, Technorati, Delicious, and others which are essential to you promoting your content at the same time you are promoting them.

I have been studying search marketing and SEO since 2003, and have been blogging steadily since the same time. Why did I continue to blog, even though I had nothing to write. Because I knew the “secret” (here’s another one!) and that is that it’s easy to get over looked.

Blogging is the best way to SEO and search market for your products and services. So this makes Blogging the best SEO tool on the market, And to do it right, you have to blog often and with the proper keywords. Most people don’t know how to blog properly. We will help you write the best blogs and promote your blogs in this book.

Social Networking is a hot topic in the last 12 months due to the popularity of FaceBook. In the business social networking world, the leader is LinkedIn. Believe it or not MySpace has one of the biggest business groups, and it’s marketing power is certainly hot when targeting teens and the entertainment business. There are also other important social media sites, that have communities of their own, and are a subset of social networking such as Digg, Technorati, Mashup.com and Ning.

I joined my first Social Networking site called Tribe.net back in 2004, I actually got a couple of editors from the site to help me with this book. I have experienced the benefit of Social networking first hand. Social Networking as a whole is one of the biggest drivers of Web 2.0, and the degree to which it will help you grow you business is still unfolding.

But the most important thing is, that Social Networks will help you make friends, influence people and connect with prospects and customers. We believe blogs are at the heart of helping you develop community via content and helping you promote your business. And, Social networking sites are a great way to help you promote your blogs. Word of mouth, in the modern era is much more powerful and faster via these social networks, and we discuss “How to win friends and influence people” with the classic proven methods of Dale Carnegie, the author who first published a book on the subject. That book was required reading in my business school, and I recommend that you pick up that book, as the age old principles still apply and are just as important as ever.

That’s SEO, SEM, and IM in a nutshell, but we will go a step further. What you don’t remember those acronyms? SEO is Search Engine Optimization, which targets your ranking on the Organic (or Natural) Search Results and has nothing to do with ads. SEM is Search Engine Marketing, which includes pay per click advertisements such as Google’s Adwords. IM is Internet Marketing, and for our purposes it includes blogs, blogging, and promotion of your blogs and profiles on social networking and social media sites such as Digg, Facebook, and others. We close the book with the big Why? Marketing is really about motivation, motivating your clients to act on your proposition and to buy your products and services. We also talk about our motivation of why we wrote the book, to help you motivate yourself to achieve your dreams through the power of Marketing.

So, in summary, you need to know the particulars of how each of these aspects works and we will show you that in this book. But more importantly, you will learn what you really need to understand: the why and the HOW of making all these pieces fit together for the business and life altering marketing results you are after!

SEO vs SEM we favor SEO obviously

2008-05-01T20:23:00.000-07:00

I am working on a bigger post on SEO versus SEM, so be patient. But, I get this question from a lot of people, should I SEO first or focus on Adwords and SEM? The key difference between SEM and SEO is that SEM includes Advertising, and mainly advertising on search engines, which makes it Search Engine Marketing. There are main differences such as SEM is very expensive in the long term, SEO takes longer, but they both have something in common. Which is?

SEM and SEO both have to optimize keywords, and do a lot of keyword analysis. The ability to target keywords is the key, to change them, and to make sure the most appropriate keywords are being used. SEM has higher click through rates, and faster Return on Investment. But, SEO has a great returns if/when you get ranked in an ethical manner in the top 5 on Google. It's very important to know that the base commonality of SEO and SEM is the same, which is Keyword Analysis. SEM is very easy to execute, Google Adwords and eFrontier or Aquantive from Microsoft can help you optimize your Ad campaigns. SEO (search engine optimization) is a very difficult and time consuming process. It's very difficult to master, much more than SEM. Enough of the not so long SEO vs SEM post hunh? I can't stop writing, I love writing blogs:-).

SEO vs SEM here is the big key, when you rank in the top 10 for a keyword, and you advertise on the same page on Google for that keyword, guess what happens? My experience with the above example is validated and confirmed with SEM managers who spend millions on Google Ads.

Now for some shameless promotion of our friends companies such as thePS company,PF our clients such as Cross Jewelry and Designer Jewelry by LoveRelic.com, and our own Silver Jewelry properties. And, let's not forget the great Green Products site, Greenisbetter.org which sells energy Infrared Heaters and one of the best brands of Air Purifiers on the market. I can't believe I am involved in selling products such as air purifiers and infrared heaters, but since they are energy saving and good for our health, I am actually excited about it. For a not so similar reason, I am equally excited about my friend's company PS which has one of Web's largest PS databases. For a a very competitive keyword Silver Jewelry we are also inching up and moved to #14 on the big G.

Why are we promoting these sites on our blogs? Hello, we are an SEO Services company that is the business we are in? We have to SEO these clients and writing about them on our blogs is the what we get paid to do. But more importantly, we have to provide valuable content to you our readers, and I believe we do a good job of that. Thanks for reading!

SEO Blogging By Vipin Singh MyTypes.com

2008-04-27T16:24:00.000-07:00

I just wrote this on our SEO blogs, enjoy!

Blogs, SEO, Shameless Self Promotion and NASCAR

Why is there such a thing as Shameless Self Promotion looked down upon? People who promote themselves are fine, But if it is business related, promotion is required so people are fine with it. We write a lot of blogs about SEO, Search Engine Marketing and Internet marketing, but a lot of times, I write about subjects I love, and of my personal opinions. Our goal is always simple, we SEO our clients, this involved promoting their businesses.And some times we even promote friends companies without them being clients at all, via writing blogs to SEO their website. As in the case with our writing last week of my friends Dan’s company PS, which provides PS products. Think of them as the search engine to find people, PS, is really about having the best database and providing the best services. I write blogs about political topics, business topics, tech news, tech personalities. I write to provide my opinion, my insights, I have been a technologist since 1988, I have a degree in MIS, and I have had nothing but a laptop since than. I have made millions, I have lost millions, I enjoy innovation, and I love blogging, period. I write a lot on my blackberry, as I am doing right now, from my blackberry.

I am watching Nascar, which I never ever do. It gave me the idea to write about Self Promotion, and business promotion. Any one watching Nascar knows, that this sport has the most promotion of any sport. In writing a book about “Marketing is a Contact sport”, one has to mention Nascar. Super Bowl from the NFL probably has the biggest company making promotion. And Tennis is one of may favorite, especially as SonyEricsson, one of my good friends is a Director of Marketing there too.

Well talking about SEO and self promotion, I have to plug in some more businesses. One our mentors is a retired Colonel from the US special forces, and he owns and runs the best Air Purifiers company. You may have heard that Sharper Image has been hurt by the Air Purifiers, that produced Ozone. Well these Air Purifiers don’t do that, thank god, and Keith Jill and Bennett will start to market these Air Purifiers on Green Shop our GreenIsBetter.org.

News from Nascar, the race I am watching is called Sprint Cup, at Telladega, from Alabama has 250,000 fans watching this race, never even heard of this race. Now I have heard that Nascar has huge fans, but being a Obama fan, I don’t think the Nascar people would have a lot of love for me. I am glad to see Toyota’s in there along with the Chevy’s. I have always loved the Impala’s, they would be the classic car that I believe is the all American car. Talk about contact sport, these guys are going out at it, almost crashing in to each other. 30 some cars, all within 2-3 seconds of each other, within 16 laps to go, go Nascar go. They just showed Joe Gibbs the previous coach of Washington Redskins. They are going head to head at 195 miles per hour. Now there is a crash.

Let’s close this post, we write blogs, not novels here right. This one is like the minute by minute blogcast on Sprint Cup Nascar race. So what other companies do we SEO for? Their is the Silver Jewelry company LoveRelic that provides Designer Jewelry, but at the moment is just Cross Necklaces, Cross Rings, and Cross Jewelry. Jill Brahms is the designer, she is amazing, she is actually an ex-Boeing marketing manager. Wow from Boeing to Designer Jewelry that has made the cover of Maxim Magazine. Let’s see, I have covered friends from a PS company, PS.com.

I have talked about the Air Purifiers from Steril Air Purifiers and the colonel. Oh I did not talk about the Barter company, ITEX. That is because they don’t need any SEO help, they are ranked so high for their SEO keywords. We don’t really have any vested interest in Seattle Real estate for UrbanTango.com. But we should talk about some of Blogging keywords, such as free blog, blogs, create a blog, and blogs. Oh yes the SEO services, what a wonderful world that we have to work for clients and fit them in our blogs.

All of this would be called shameless blogs promotion, because it’s business promotion via SEO, it really is not Shameless self promotion. We do have to feed our kids and promote our blogs and businesses. So go buy an Air Purifier from Green Shop at GreenIsBetter.org, Silver Jewelry at LoveRelic.com. Oh, and go find some people at the PS company PF.

The SEO Truth by Vipin Singh

2008-04-22T17:30:00.001-07:00

User Behavior statistics on News within Google results and SEO Tip #11

A few days ago, we reported that Google started to add the News results in the middle of it’s search results. You may seen images results in the past, and YouTube video results in the past, but news is a fairly new addition. Being your SEO watch dog and experts, we try to bring these things to you as fast as we see the changes. We did this with the Dewey update as well, we think there will be changes to the Google Algorithms and the faster you learn about the changes, the better you will be able to SEO your own site. By the way, Dewey is not done yet and there is still some major testing and retesting being done by Google. How do we know, there are significant variance in the Google results, due to different server clusters not being in synch yet.

We talked about being news worthy, and writing about news stories that people are talking about. You can find that blog, about specifically how to write the news blogs for SEO value. The fact that you write your blogs often is important. Add the keyword “News” in your title of your post is SEO Tip #11. But, do make sure you cover the news at some level, don’t cheat anyone. The article below covers a thread by the SEO experts on SEORoundtable.com go to their site to see what the USER behavior is like on different segments of search results. As in the past, we have learned that Organic search results get clicked about 5-6 times more than ads, but Pay Per Click ads have a higher conversion rate. So do advertise on Google, that can never hurt your SEO efforts either.

User Behavior Influenced By Blended Search Results

I also want to add a couple of comments about SEO and SEO Services that I hear from clients and large companies. Obviously, I have an Enterprise computing back ground and a technology degree from a world class, well Wisconsin class University:-). I have been around technology for a long time, and I think most technologists can’t seem to get past this point. They always worry about the crawl ability, site structure, and think something is wrong with their site. They choose not to work with an SEO Services company until they feel that their ON-Site issues are solved. My suggestion to all enterprise or small businesses, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE listen to me, your site structure issues need only One small thing, and your techies can fix it within 5 minutes. That is you need the SEO Target keywords in the Title Tag. There are obviously many site structure issues that you need to address such as indexability, title tags based on URL and database fields to produce Search Engine Friendly Urls. And, you can do this internally, use an SEO services company and/or read the guide above from our Wordpress and solve this issues relatively quickly too.

What the big issue is that you need a high number, a very high number of quality contextual links, ethical blogs and content based links, from high Google Page Rank Sites. So is it really about the links for SEO? I hate to say that it’s as simple as getting more links than your competitors, but that is the fact folks. Now they need to be quality links from quality content such as blogs and contextual with proper Anchor text, but you really need more quality links. And, the best way to get them is to hire content writers to start blogging and get out and provide quality comments on popular blogs. So if you think some thing is wrong with your site, and you don’t want to hire an SEO Services, I don’t care if you do or you don’t. But, you need to get natural high quality links and blogging gives them to you. So take it from a biased SEO Services provider, but we are ranked pretty high for “SEO” and many of our blogging related keywords and for our clients. You need to get lots of quality links, and still clean up your site structure etc.

Vipin Singh on SEO and Reputation Management

2008-04-13T12:15:00.000-07:00

The best way to protect your name is to tag and blog your name on powerful sites, especially as there are unethical people who are out to destroy your reputation. Here is an article I, Vipin Singh just wrote on our SEO Blog, enjoy:

Ripoff Report Ripping Off Those Reported? Insight from Global Career Management Seattle

Ripoff Report Ripping Off Those Reported?

I just ran in to my friend Nancy from Global Career management Seattle branch, I asked how she was doing and she just told me about how Ripoff report has hurt her business. She said she lost two sales last week, because of false acquisitions on Ripoff Report. She also mentioned to me that there is an attorney who did the research on the founder of Ripoff Report. I will write about the article of the attorney, as soon as I get it from her. I am quoting the MarketingPilgrim.com’s article above to help consumers discount, what Ripoff Report is doing. Please click on the link above.

Nancy from Global Career Management Seattle branch just told me that the owner of Ripoff Report has not allowed them a rebuttal. To be honest with you, I have experience with Ripoff Report and I don’t like the site. I had to defend my self against them, but more importantly in their favor, I was honest and allowed to rebuttal, especially as we went through hard financial times last fall. The problem, I have with the site was the power rankings they have on Google and the lies that a person told about our me personally. I don’t want to mention his name, as I could destroy his reputation quickly, because of the power of our SEO and blogs. I am trying to stay above the negative energy.

Nancy with Global Career Management Seattle and her boss, had different experience, they were not allowed to rebut the comments by a negative customer. This gave me the idea of writing about reputation management, a growing segment of the SEO Services business. More on this later!

SEO Tip #7, Google Algorithm simplified

2008-04-08T16:05:00.000-07:00

Just wrote this on our SEO Blog at the MyTypes.com blogging platform, enjoy:

The Anatomy of a Search Engine

The link above will take you to the research paper by the founders of Google, it is hosted on the Stanford University website. It discusses in relative detail the problem that Google is trying to solve, and how it goes about doing so. Some of you are not technical SEO types, so you can pretty much ignore it. For some of you software engineer types, and the SEO Services people, it gives you real clues on what Google maintains as it’s core, which will never change, just enhanced. Those of you who want to know the intricate details of how the Google Algorithm ranks a page, it is explained in the above article. By in large the original system still is true within the Google back bone.

What has changed is the ability of the system to understand, spam links and many other types of tricks the unethical SEO’s have implemented over the years. Anchor text section is still in place as the most powerful SEO Tip, and writing good quality content is still king. So we will attribute Anchor text in links from high PR sites as the SEO Tip #7, the most powerful SEO strategy.

I was going to leave this post as is after the preceding paragraph, but I did some more searches on the “Google Algorithm”, and decided to add more clarity on what I see to be more accurate right now. If you are an SEO Services provider, and/or searching for the keywords “SEO“, you see us in the top 10. But prior to us, the kid genius as they call him, and Jedi SEO Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz.org was always in the top 10. He has written a good post on what he thinks is the Google Algorithm, he wrote it on 10-16-06, here is the formula as he sees it:

GoogScore = (KW Usage Score * 0.3) + (Domain Strength * 0.25) + (Inbound Link Score * 0.25) + (User Data * 0.1) + (Content Quality Score * 0.1) + (Manual Boosts) - (Automated & Manual Penalties)

KW Usage Factors:

KW in title tag
KW in header tags
KW in document text
KW in internal links pointing to the page
KW in domain and/or URL

Domain Strength

Registration history
Domain age
Strength of links pointing to the domain
Topical neighborhood of domain based on inlinks & outlinks
Historical use & links pattern to domain

Inbound Link Score

Age of links
Quality of domains sending links
Quality of pages sending links
Anchor text of links
Link quantity/weight metric (Pagerank or a variation)
Subject matter of linking pages/sites

User Data

Historical CTR to page in SERPs
Time users spend on page
Search requests for URL/domain
Historical visits/use of URL/domain by users GG can monitor (toolbar, wifi, analytics, etc.)

Content Quality Score

Potentially given by hand for popular queries/pages
Provided by Google raters (remember Henk?)
Machine-algos for rating text quality/readability/etc

Here is the link to the full post: Google Algorithm Post by SEOmoz.org

**Based on my understanding of the Google Algorithm, Here is a simple break down, the small factors are not as important for most people, so I am ignoring them. Also, I don’t see most people doing all four of them well enough, this is all we focus on and we consistently get ranked in the top 10 for very very competitive keywords. If you are not seeing your self in the top 10 for your keyword, than make sure you do all of the bottom four well.

(.40) Actual keywords in the domain

( for example for keyword “Weddding Photos” weddingphotos.com would rank very high, as long as it has proper title Tags, but mycompany.com/weddingphotos is ok, and still better than www.NorthernLightsphotography.com) This example is courtesy of our friends who run the Seattle Wedding photographers site, I always use them as example because for WeddingPhotos.com they are ranked #1 in Google. But, for their own keywords they are targeting “Seattle Wedding Photographers“, they are not in the top 10.

(.40) Anchor Text Links

( “Business Blog” Linking to MyTypes.com would be much better for ranking in “Business blog” than, “best business blogs“).

(.10) Meta Tags and Heading Tags of site

(Meta Tags are almost a requirement, and if you don’t have your keyword in the title it’s difficult to get ranked in it, but it is possible based on the other factors).

(.10) Content on site

(The more content the better, blogs are great, just the mention of the words such as blogs, news, report, reviews and forums helps a ton).

So much for the Google Algorithm, all I can say to the average person, (the non-SEO Services providers), don’t worry about the Google Algorithm, write lots of blogs, and promote your blogs in wikis’s etc, with lots of anchor text of course, of course.

SEO Tip #6 by MyTypes.com

2008-04-07T16:02:00.000-07:00

As always this is from our blogging site, and SEO Blog at Mytypes.com, enjoy:

Webmaster Guidelines and SEO Tip #6 - Quality of Blogs

April 7th, 2008 at 03:39 pm by Admin in SEO Seattle

Webmaster Guidelines

Click on the link above to go to the Google Webmaster Guidelines, you can’t ignore them, even if you are an ethical SEO Services provider like us. I saw a reference to them, when I was doing a search for Seattle SEO’s. I was wondering who would show up in Seattle SEO’s, And, Google’s Matt Cutt’s blog showed up within the top 30. Even though, his blogs are good to read, not very relevant though hun:-). So I decided to write this blog about quality. Google’s webmaster rules are important to know, but more importantly if you try to write Quality blogs and quality content, you should never have to worry about it. I do a lot of links in my blogs, you are wondering duh right?

Don’t worry you can too, Matt Cutts provides lots of links in his blogs, just make sure you write well, contextually linking is just fine.

Here are some SEO tips for writing Quality blogs:

1. Write as if you are telling a story, make it your story, your opinion, your feelings.

2. You can write about anything, but use photos to jazz up your blogs, yes I wrote about this a couple of days ago. Did I mention that our community blogs site got over 500 visitors just in one day, because someone uploaded a famous person’s wedding photo? Yes, don’t forget about pictures to SEO your blogs.

3. Write with numbers or bullets, when providing information, it keeps readers focused, and makes the flow easier.

4. Use Tags at the bottom, just the words tags are important.

5. Be Casual, means be conversational, that’s the beauty of blogs. I was reading a blog of a CEO of one of the best SEO Services companies this weekend, and I found his tone to conversational and professional.

6. You might write a lot blogs, but it’s the quality so keep your content focused, and always try to provide helpful information.

7. Be newsworthy? Blogs are considered news by the search engines, because the blogsphere really is a great way to get end user content. The search engines such as Google like to empower end users and unique voices not just commercial promotion. What makes your blogs news worthy? That could be a blogs topic of another day, maybe even a series. I heard a news commentator talk about news and what makes it to the news. I think he was right on, “SOMETHING UNIQUE, SOMETHING STRANGE, SOMETHING THAT MAKES YOU STOP AND SAY–Can’t be”. Usually these are emotionally charged human type stories.

I think one of the biggest attractive traits of blogs is that, it’s the perspective of an average person, not the washed down version of a politician. So get the truth out, go be newsworthy!

**By the way, since this is my CEO’s blog, I can talk about CEO or personal stuff. I am starting to write my blogs here first, and than edit them to make them even more impactful. Than, I will publish them on our SEO blog. I am trying to increase the quality of our blogs, can you tell. Also, Keith reserved a very cool URL for our Seattle SEO business, call iSeoServices.org and .com. Hopefully those will get us some Seattle SEO clients. One of our major contracts ended last week, and we are desperately trying to gain more SEO Services business. Yes, the Internet works, I am actually working on a proposal from a lead we got online.

Thanks to all of our supporters, we have a number of prospects and leads for SEO Services because of our network of friends. Keep an eye out for businesses that spend a lot on pay per click, there are a perfect match for our SEO Services.

SEO Tips #5, Blog a lot, don't need a SEO tool?

2008-04-04T16:11:00.000-07:00

SEO Tips #5, 3 features of an SEO Tool?

Lately our blogs feel to be more sales and biased oriented towards our own products and SEO Services. We are cautious of trying not to be, and we are not journalists. We are a for profit company, and looking forward to the day we actually have profits:-). Things are much better than they were 9 months ago, it’s been the course of SEO services and selling some of our energy saving heaters and products that has elevated our revenues. We are pushing for a few more SEO Services clients, hence the focus on SEO related blogs the last couple of days. We do get a lot of comments on our blogs, so I do believe that we are providing good information.

Our SEO Tools at LinkMint.com are free, and we wanted to highlight some of the features, so below is a post from the SEO Tools overview. A lot of SEO services companies are getting in the SEO Tools business. We actually are coming from the SEO Tools in to the SEO Services business. Why? Because there are so many adequate Free SEO tools on the market, we felt that we didn’t want to charge for them. Also, we didn’t want to do SEO services, being a services company is hard enough, not to mention being a SEO Services Company. Before we talk about SEO tools features, I want to mention that blogging often with the most appropriate keywords in your blogs is the #1 SEO Tools you can utilize. So as always blog often!

Here are a few features that every SEO Tool should have:

1. Keyword Searches, no one can beat Google Analytics and Google Adwords, so in this case most SEO tools will never live up to the standards, they just don’t have the information.

2. SERP (Search Engine Result Pages), to see progress, we have to see our rankings even if they are not in the top 50. So instead of sitting their and clicking on Google and hitting next an SEO tools should have ranking checkers.

3. Submission Tools, automated submission should be done at a minimum, but having a tool do it for you is a lot easier.

**To be honest with you I can’t think of any more features, that are really imperative in a SEO Tool, so maybe that is why most SEO services companies don’t use one, and I personally don’t feel good about charging for it. I think providing SEO Coaching maybe a better way for us to do SEO Services in a scalable way, and we may offer than in the near future. I actually called up Rand’s Fishkin’s SEOMoz last year at this time, I spoke with his mom, who is a very very nice lady. Little, did I know at the time, that rock star of SEO blogs, was starting his premium services. And, still we have not launched our SEO Coaching, but some day, until than check out the free SEO Tools features:

Linkmint.com currently features 22 tools for SEO, SEM and Internet Marketing when you login to the linkmint tools page you will see 4 tool sections. Web site promotion tools, web site analysis tools, link popularity tools, and miscellaneous tools.
Getting started using linkmint Seo Tools .
1) Create an account – sign up with your email address on the linkmint tools page. After submission of your email address you will receive a confirmation email. Confirm your account and log in to linkmint.com by clicking the link in your email or by going to the linkmint.com homepage and clicking on the linkmint tools tab
2) Manage your account – After login to the linkmint tools manage your linkmint.com account by clicking the Manage Account link:
a) Input at least one web site in to analyze by clicking on the new website link under the manage account link
b) Input keywords or key-phrases, corresponding to the website you entered by clicking on the new keywords link, selecting the correct URL and entering keywords or key-phrases separated by commas. If you need some guidance in creating keywords selection visit our Keywords Search page.
3) Manage your search engines – click the Manage SE link under the Manage Account link. A drop down list of Search engines in our system are there. Select the search engines you are targeting for your sites then click submit
4) Manage profile – The Manage Profile link under Manage Account link contains all your settings for changing parameters on your account. You can make changes to your search engine selection, keyword selection for a given URL, and you password for your account.
Now that you are set up on Linkmint.com go ahead and start analyzing your sites to learn about the individual tools please click the pages on the left. For a general description of the uses of the tools in each category continue to read below.

General use for each SEO tool section

Web site promotion tools - This Section contains promotional tools for a web site. A webmaster would use this section to search keyword and keyphrase rankings and compare them to the number of pages that use the searched keywords and phrases. Calculate keyword density for each keyword given, get a percentage of keywords to other words in your site, optimize density for your prefered search engines standards. Create meta tags from keywords, That are ready to cut and paste in to your sites code. generate Submit a website to all the major search engines at once with a few clicks. Check a web sites ranking on a certain keyword or phrase on google***, yahoo, MSN, or other major search engines, see where you place. robots text telling a search bot to follow all your site pages or not to search certain pages. Optimize keywords / phrases that you have picked out for a site.

Web site analysis tools - Webmasters can use these tools to analyze various sites for meta tags of any given site, check out your friends sites or competitors sites. Check out the internal and external links in a site with a page link analysis. Use the website analysis to keep track of how many hits your site gets with a custom code generated for your site. Get a sites source code by using the page snooper tool. Want to know how your site will look in a search engine query? The search engine simulator will give you a good idea. Do a Whois search to find out who owns a domain. Is your site’s html valid? test it with the html validator tool.

Link popularity tools - This is a useful set of tools to see how a sites links compare relative to one another. It is also possible to see how friends and compeitors websites compare with link popularity. these searches are done specific to each selected search engine*** .

Miscellaneous tools - This set of tools is a webmasters mixbag of goodies. Get your domain name typos, and keyword / Phrase typos generated automatically. check how a search engine spider sees text on your front page. You can also access google dance. google dance can help webmasters figure out when google may be recalculating your sites PR ranking. google does this “dance” monthly where the servers www, www2, and www3 for google.com go through the calculation. you can determine when google is “dancing” with your site when the results within the three servers are not the same. Want to do a page rank search? use the page rank search to compare the page rank of web page results for a specifed keyword on google, or use a page rank lookup for a single domain on google. Use the site link analyzer to get how many links are external and internal on a site. then use the future tool to estimate where your site may end up for its PR rank in google next month.
***must have a google API Key to Search google for keyword / phrase ranking, get a google API Key. Check out FAQ questions on google API keys

Ten Questions to ask SEO Services providers

2008-04-02T17:26:00.000-07:00

Can you believe I wrote to blogs on the subject of SEO Services? Well, actually these two are just for our SEO services business, I also wrote a third for our seattle wedding photographers friends at Northern Lights photography. I did not publicize that one here, as it had nothing to do with SEO. The Questions below are very important to get answers to before you start a relationship with any SEO services providers.

Before I start to rattle off some great insights from our SEO tips and Internet Marketing vault, I want to be clear that you understand that we are biased. We are in the business of SEO Services, but we still want to provide you the most information as possible, to help you make the best decisions to grow your business. The objective of this article is to convince you that we at MyTypes, Inc. are very knowledgeable about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and that we are one of the best SEO Services companies in the world. Proof is in the pudding (well actual Google results), and our results should already tell you what you need to hear. We have engaged in SEO services for years, and we can execute ethical SEO strategies to get you top results, as our proof is in the pudding. We don’t advertise, here is a little self promotion on a minor note, we never wanted to do SEO Services, and until recently have alway just advised clients to do their own internal SEO services in the past. We have always wanted to just focus on our Blogging platform. We have delivered top results for large companies such as ITEX Barter, which is a public company. And for smaller businesses such as real estate website BoatCommunities.com, and LoveRelic.com a designer Jewelry company.

While we continue to engage with large and small companies for SEO services, we only want to work with/for a handful of clients. In the last year, we have also started to SEO for our own products in silver jewelry and infrared heater market segments. We have been providing professional SEO services for clients since Jan of 2006, and we have done it for our own products since 2003. We are pushing forth with a professional SEO Services strategy, and therefore we came up with the idea of Ten Questions to ask a SEO services company:

1. What is the most important factor in your SEO Strategy to achieve top 10 Google Results?

2. How many major Keywords do you have in the top 10 in Google for SEO and/or other related keywords?

3. Providing SEO Services for major Keywords is very difficult, how many keywords for your client’s major keywords do you have in the top 10?

4. What is your overall SEO services strategy and plan for us, your clients, what will you specifically do for us?

5. How do you help us pick the best keywords to SEO for our business? This is probably the most important question of our 10, if they shy away from major keywords, this is where you want to look for clues. Why not go after the biggest most traffic based keywords, make sure you get a straight answer, if not ask us!

6. What SEO Tools do you use, and for what?

7. What is your process for Link aggregation?

8. How much emphasis do you place on Google Page Rank, and it’s value in the SEO Process?

9. How do you SEO for Yahoo and MSN, not just Google?

10. What are your thoughts on Social Networking, Wiki’s, Blogs, and Digg?

**Notice we are not going to give you answers to these questions as other SEO Services providers and competition will use that against us. We are obviously very successful, but we work with you at y our level, we utilize simple but powerful SEO strategies, and if you read our SEO blog, and business blog, at our blogging platforms, you will see that constant focus on content. Google and the best in the SEO Services business world will/should help you develop a comprehensive content strategy. We just happen to have some amazing blogging tools and social networking and internet marketing strategies that simply work. And, for the most part we are willing to be compensated based on a mixture of performance and set hourly work, so you always feel that you are getting the best value.

SEO Services Blog

2008-04-01T18:37:00.000-07:00

A Marketing Social Network, and Google Now Selling SEO Services Via Performics

Google Now Selling SEO Services Via Performics

Check out the article above on Google and it’s acquisition of DoubleClick and the SEO services company that they now own called Performics. A lot of people are against Google offering SEO Services, but I am not totally against the idea. Read the Tech Crunch Blog above by clicking on the link above. Here are my reasons for Google to keep the SEO Services firm:

1 . If Peformics offers SEO services, it legitimizes the SEO services business as a whole for me. Some have said that SEO services should not offered as they are simply too unethical period. Obviously, being one of the best SEO consultants in the Internet Marketing world, I totally disagree. Ethical SEO strategies are part of good content development and web design strategy.

2. Google and Matt Cutts have always been forward and honest about what ranks well for SEO. Matt Cutts even shares in a video Ethical SEO Tips. They will only continue to be more honest with not only their clients, but the world, as they will be watched more carefully.

3. We need oversight and ethical SEO strategies right from the Google mouth, while I would like to think Google will share it with there peformics group, we all already know what ranks well. It’s the Title Tags, Keyword in URL, great content, and high PR links back to your website or blogs.

4. We need Google to continue and we need to watch what the clients of Performics are doing as far as their rankings. Whatever changes and they are doing it, we need to understand and emulate.

Why invent the wheel, let Google tell us what is the best SEO Tip, and let’s do it. For most of us that means we have to write lots of blogs, and get lots of people to write about our blogs or contents. On a side note, Did any of you notice a little more focus from us on our Internet Marketing and Social Networking lately? We are behind schedule in our launch of the marketing and business social networking site, but it got a lot closer today. Keith, did some amazing simplification of the front end and all seems to be working in our tech area.

Now the battle is between strategic position of the social network, should it continue as a business social network? Or should it position itself in to a marketing social network, a social networking site focused on marketing people, SEO consultants, and Search marketing, and Internet marketing professionals? Any comments, which is the best strategy?

By the way, did I mention that we are looking for a couple of SEO Services clients at the moment? We just had a large SEO Services contract get reduced as the project scope just changed, don’t worry they are still clients, and raving fans. If you know any one who need any SEO consultants or SEO Services, please pass on our information.

SEO Tip #4, Pick your Keywords wisely

2008-03-31T17:55:00.000-07:00

SEO Tip #4: Business vs Marketing choose wisely

A fews weeks ago, I wrote a blog about why I don’t know as much about SEO, as I thought I did. This was just after I learned about the Matt Cutts video about White Hat SEO tips. At that point, I did this in a tounge and cheek sort of a way, as that day I thought about writing an occasional SEO tip blog and making that a regular column of this site. I have been humbled once again, and this time by my friend Mark, who is a SEM guru, and knows a ton about about Internet Marketing, Marketing and sales. Thank god he does not know about SEO as much as I do, but no matter how much you know, you can always learn more. This is what he helped me learn yesterday, yes on a Sunday, we met tod discuss why it is so difficult to measure the return on investment for SEO, especially when SEM or Pay per click ads work so well so quickly. No matter what you do, you have to SEO for the proper keywords with high enough traffic, otherwise you are just wasting your time. This leads us to our SEO tip #4, which is to use the Google Adwords Tool, keyword Estimator to see the size of the traffic. I have used this tool before yesterday for our SEM campaigns, but not as our SEO Keyword Tool, and I think everyone should use it to figure out the right keywords to SEO for.

So what exactly is the difference? We all know that we need to SEO our websites or blogs for the best and highest traffic keywords that target our customers. In the past to get accurate keyword numbers on a monthly basis, we use to recommend Overture/Yahoo’s Search Marketing tool. We stopped recommending it last year, as it was inaccurate and did not seem to provide consistent data. Most Keyword Search tools are still using it and are therefore inaccurate. So SEO Tips #4 is that you need to use the Google Adwords account, and go to the Tools section, and use the Keyword Estimator to see how many clicks you will get for your keywords. For our purposes of building the business social networking site for b2b lead generation for ITEX, we are contemplating targeting the keywords business versus marketing. We just saw some major differences in traffic, as the keyword Business could get a whopping 30,000 clicks in a day, while marketing can get about 6,000. These are still huge numbers compared to even keywords such as SEO and blogging, which we focus on quite a bit. Which get about 100 to 500 clicks a day, so which one’s should we target? Go ahead and comment let us know, I will tell you out bias, at the bottom of the post.

Not that I want to beat this keyword thing to death, it is important to discuss the far reaching effects of this SEO tip of targeting high traffic keywords. Folks you have to drive enough traffic for your business, that is the bottom line, and we all have to focus on driving sales for our companies. And, that usually means our SEO efforts have to lead to higher targeted traffic leads. This world of lead generation and business marketing usually has to do with b2b and b2c companies. We as SEO experts are dealing with the ultimate goal of any website, to get any many leads as possible for the business. Which ultimately leads to more sales. Some times and often sales are conducted on the website without having to lead to leads, sales are the ultimate goal, leads don’t matter as much, and that is usually the case with b2c sites. So other than the world of b2b business products for businesses buying and selling things to each other, things usually fall in to b2c, which deals with business to consumers, rather than b2b which is business to business. You have undoubtedly seen that SEO is discussed in many SEO blogs for both segments and makes a difference for both types of websites.

For our personal Internet Marketing business, we are trying to decide which keyword to target, both marketing and business related keywords are being discussed internally. As they are probably the top 5 most related keywords to grab business related traffic. So who is searching for this kind of traffic and why should we care? First of all, SEO which stands for Search Engine Optimization is part of SEM, which stands for Search Engine Marketing, which is part of Internet Marketing, which is part of Marketing, which is one of the biggest components of Business. All of this makes sense if you are an SEO company which we are, so we belong in the world of business, but isn’t it important that we target the world of marketing first? Yes, it seems like I am thinking out loud, isn’t that the purpose of blogs, to make our journaling part of the interactive conversation with our self and our readers:-)?

So for marketing to be effective, it has to promote the business to sell products and services. And, for SEO to be effective it has to look at keywords from Google Adwords Traffic Estimator tool, and the bigger the targeted traffic the bigger your sales. I did need to confirm this SEO Tip and hammer it home, you need to target high enough traffic keywords.

So don’t get ranked high for the wrong keywords, as you won’t get the traffic, the leads or the sales. This is what will happen to you even if you did a great job as an SEO. I hope all of this makes sense, this is what I was trying to do to provide a wholistic view of SEO in the grand scheme of business and marketing. If you found this topic boring or too confusing drop me a line, I will go back and read and edit this article again, it was difficult for me to write.

SEO For Bloggers #5 of 6: Offsite SEO and Social Media

2008-03-25T14:44:00.000-07:00

Before I get in to the SEO for bloggers article, which is below, I wanted to mention a few things about Business Social Networking. What’s so interesting is that i’s at the intersection of B2B and social networking. So I was doing some research on the keyword Business Social Networking, and out pops this article below from 2005. The year of the start of Social Networking, with the screaming entrance of MySpace and Facebook making headlines, but most importantly YouTube.com. The article below talks about a site 43things.com, which I had known for a while, but had no Idea that it was heavily invested or owned by Amazon.com. Read the article if you need to but, business social networking is finally making a big leap towards businesses from the hype only social media aspect.

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Social networking: A link to like minds

I can’t wait to finish the series on SEO for bloggers, it’s keeping me from writing original content. So below is the article from our previous blogging coach. Yes, we are still working on our b2b and business social networking site, it’s getting closer, but running in to some design issues at the moment. The best part is that the business social networking technical features are all done, it’s just about the design at the moment enjoy the article below:

SEO for Bloggers: Off-Site SEO and the Social Media (Part 5 of 6)

June 27th, 2007 at 10:01 pm by Bc in Social Media Networks, Link Building, SEO for Bloggers, Blogging Techniques

So we’ve established the search engines love sites with tons of incoming links, and we’ve talked about a few different ways to earn them. However, I have yet to mention a major source of traffic - the social media sites. Granted, using the social media networks as a source of links isn’t typically considered part of SEO, but they can be very useful when used properly.

How to Play the Social Media Game:

Social media can be defined as the online technologies and practices people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives (thanks wikipedia!). Although social media is generally used as an umbrella term that encompasses everything from YouTube to Second Life, bloggers can utilize content-sharing sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, and Stumble Upon and social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and Linked In.* Here is a preview of our Business Social Network below:

First of all, syndicate your blog content on all the social media networks that you have profiles on, as well as any directories that index content related to your niche. You don’t have to reprint entire posts, rather, just copy the first few sentences - use it like a teaser or preview, and then be sure to link to it with “read more” or “continue”. After all, if someone is comes across your profile on any social media site, they’d probably be interested in your blog too. Be sure to get some of your keywords in the in the “teaser” part, however, so you’re playing to the search engines as well as the readers.

Second, become an active participant in social content sites like Digg, along with popular forums in your niche. You have to give some to get some, after all, and by reading and interacting on these, you’ll learn what kind of content is well received. Over all, however, it pays to be bold, to show off your passions, and to create content that has value for your users. This is where link baiting (in the altruistic “creating compelling content” sense) can really pay off.

Note: when you’re submitting posts to the social media networks, aim for “scannable” content - easily digestible article with bulleted or numbered lists, headings and subheadings, and charts and graphs. Reading on the web is not the same as reading a book - most people tend to just scan over things and pick up the main ideas.

Viral Ideas and Blogging

Viral marketing and viral content are major buzzwords these days, and for good reason. An idea, a post, a website, or an application can go viral and get thousands of links and millions of hits in a matter of hours. Of course, these can be shallow hits and non-targeted traffic, but the viral marketers do have a point - people spread ideas and share content that’s easily understandable, benefits the user in some way (even if it’s only to make them smile - look at how quickly things like lolcats get around), and neatly packaged (perhaps in the form of a concise, well-written blog post).

*This is by no means an exhaustive list, and it may take some research and trial and error to figure what communities are best suited to your purposes.

Posted by Bc in Social Media Networks, Link Building, SEO for Bloggers, Blogging Techniques

**As always, I want to be clear that we get our photos at a free stock photo place called www.Sxc.hu, these photos are allowed for free usage for blogging sites and free blogs. We also have bought photos from their StockExpert.com their pay for photo site. Please do support them, and know that 99% of our photos come from there, if you are wondering where to find them. We always recommend adding photos to your blogs, we even wrote a blog about it.

The Most Powerful SEO Tips, Also White HAT Tips by Matt Cutts of Google

2008-03-20T16:22:00.000-07:00

Matt Cutts’ Lecture - Whitehat SEO tips for Bloggers - One Mans Blog

I just checked Google Adwords to see how much traffic the keyword “SEO Tips” was getting. It was much, much more than I thought. I changed the Title Tags of this blog a few days ago to include “SEO Tips“, I felt that we really were passing on little tidbits all the time, and they really should be called SEO Tips. I knew not that it’s actually a keyword that people are searching for. Let alone, and long behold, there is actually a video (Whitehat SEO Tips) out there some where, well now you can access it here too, from the link above. If it’s coming from our main man Matt Cutts and and it’s SEO Tips, you better know them, inside out. And, I have to thank this nice man who’s blog’s titled “One Man’s Blog.com“, his name is John P. and I think you should visit his blog to watch the video. He is probably pretty happy that I am giving him a very powerful link. Why? It’s because he also helped me realize “I don’t know much”.

I also had no idea that there is such a thing as WordCamp, I guess he is speaking there. Way to go John, i wish I could come and visit Dallas, and see this Wordpress and WordCamp. We are huge fans of Wordpress as you all know. I have to try to make it to Mexico before I get to Dallas, budgets have been tight around here, since the housing crash. More about budgets later, Yes I am going to take a vacation soon. But this SEO Tips idea came to me today. Well before the John P. and Matt Cutt’s video thing, so I can’t give them credit. But I do have to say, keep on watching kids, you will soon see us and join us to do something special. Hint, hint, it will be within the b2b, business social networking, and SEO Consultants, and search marketing professionals space. It’s apparent today that his blogging fool (moi), doesn’t know as much as he thought. But thank God he has the Barter folks helping him blog and setting up a professional b2b business social networking site. Yes, it will probably promote barter to businesses, but you expected that. It’s going to be a great resource to promote your online businesses and especially in the professional b2b environment.

So do watch the Video above at John P’s OneMansBlog.com with the link above, as I am sure that is the mother of all mother SEO Tips. check back soon, as I will start out with SEO Tips #2 probably tomorrow?

SEO for Bloggers Part 2 of 6: Link Baiting for Fun and Profit by Mytypes.com

2008-03-19T21:44:00.000-07:00

March 19th 2008 Posted in Linkmint.com News

We have been stuck at #13 for the keyword B2b now for about 2-3 weeks. This is after steadily growing down from over 100 to 91 to 51 and so on. Every week we expect to inch closer, to be specific we have been inching closer. What makes us stuck at #13, actually feels like an eternity, but it’s only been a few weeks. When you are competing for major keywords such as B2b, the thing that separates you from the top is the number of top quality links versus your competitors.

Therefore after most SEO basics such as site structure, content, and many other non-trivial things for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), what you need to rank #1 is lots of Links and LinkBuilding is the key. Even when you have top links, some one else may have more than you, as is the case with our b2b SEO rankings. We also found this to be the case with being stuck at #4 for the keyword Barter. Though we have found this to be imperative, content is still key to get smart and powerful links from blogs and news sites. B2b or Barter we expected the keyword SEO to be tougher, and we found out that it is, but we did crack #10 for it:-(. I am only saying that SEO rankings for very competitive keywords can be very, very tough, and it changes all the time. Here is the great article from our previous blogging coach, part 2 in our series.

SEO For Bloggers: Link Building and Link Popularity (Part 2 of 6)

June 26th, 2007 at 12:46 am by Bc in Link Building, SEO for Bloggers, Getting Started

Search engine optimization is not all about keywords and optimized site design, although those are certainly essential. However, the number of incoming links your site has also matters. I’ve touched on the matter of incoming links before, but I didn’t mention how important they were to your blog’s rank.

Link Building and Link Popularity

Link Popularity is a score based on the number of incoming links pointed at your blog. Clearly, the more incoming links you have the better, but link reputation and page importance play a role as well.

You’re nobody until somebody links to you - link building is the single most important part of achieving a high ranking website in modern search algorithms. I repeat, link building is the single most important part of achieving a high ranking website in modern search algorithms.

So how do you get other bloggers and webmasters to link to your blog? First of all, create compelling content that others will be interesting in linking to - content is still king. Secondly, participate in the blogging community. Be active in relevant discussions, leave substantive comments on other blogs, post on related forums (as always, be sure to place a link to your blog in your signature), and trade links with topical hubs and related sites.

Third, link to other blogs in your niche - you can trade links, or just reward other bloggers with links and it’s likely they’ll return the favor. Fourth, write glowing testimonials and reviews of services and products related to your blogging topics - chances are they will link back to you when they post them on their own sites.

The Role of Keywords in Link Building

Think of each post and page on your blog as a building block - each is its own unit and has it’s own ranking potential and relevant keywords. Use some of your keywords in each post’s title (search engines index posts by title) and resist the urge to write cutesy or attention grabbing headlines that have little to do with the actual content. You may be successful at gaining some traffic, but it might not be the valuable kind that’s targeted to your blog.

Writing keyword rich titles and headings that are also crisp and concise can do wonders for your blog’s rankings. Not only will descriptive titles let search engine readers know they’re in the right place - they’ve found what they’ve been searching for - it will also help you out when others link to your site, even if they use the whole URL to cite your blog. Basically, you want people to know what they are clicking on, so you want your keywords to be part of the links that point at your blog.

The next post in my SEO For Bloggers series will cover link baiting and how to use your content as bait to lure in the linkers and readers.

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Link Baiting is huge for SEO by MyTypes.com

2008-03-19T21:20:00.000-07:00

As mentioned before, this week we are featuring old articles from our previous blogging coach, as we prepare for the launch of our Business Social Networking site, coming soon. Enjoy:

SEO For Bloggers: Link Baiting For Fun and Profit (Part 3 of 6)

Link baiting is a term that comes up a lot in SEO discussions, and it can be a very powerful component of your SEO strategy. Link bait is used to describe any sort of linkable content - a blog post, an image, a special feature - within a site that’s meant to catch attention and invite others to link to it. At the most basic level, link bait is something bloggers and webmasters deem interesting enough to share with their own readers. Successful link baiting can be an extremely potent form of viral marketing.

Despite the fact that link baiting is sometimes referred to in a negative manner (i.e. you’re “tricking” people into linking to you and coming to your site), it’s really about establishing yourself in your niche, creating useful and compelling content, and getting your ideas out there by reaching people who might be able to use them.

There are six basic types of link bait, or hooks

1. Breaking News - Be the first to break a major story or to share a unique piece of news, or just write up it in the clearest, most compelling manner.

2. Humor - People like to laugh, plain and simple. If you can make them smile, they’ll reward you in the form of links and clicks.

3. Inspiration - Uplifting quotes, stories, and personal triumphs can all inspire people to link to your site.

4. Controversy and Attacks - Stand out from the crowd by being contrary or negative, by being the only one in your niche to dislike something, or by straight up slamming someone or something. This is difficult to do well without reflecting poorly upon you and your brand, so it’s probably best left to the non-business or anonymous bloggers.

5. Flattery - Will get you everywhere. Write positive and genuine posts praising other bloggers, new products, and services, and anything else you really like. Be sure to link to whatever it is you are writing about, and they’ll probably return the favor. You can also create a comprehensive list of websites, blogs, and other online resources for your niche (this technique combines #5 and #6).

6. Resources and How-tos - Teach your readers how to do something, give them something valuable, make your blog benefit them in some way, shape, or form. This is probably the best form of link bait for a business blog to employ - you’ll get to show off your expertise to a whole bunch of potential new clients and customers.

Remember, the more incoming links you have, the higher your blog will rank in the search engine listings, so be sure to include a little link baiting in your overall SEO plan.

Posted by Bc in Link Building, SEO for Bloggers, Blogging Techniques

**Below is a blog highlight from our business blog section, rarely will I post one from our business blogs here, but you should go read it, here is an excerpt:

The blog covers an article from the Wall Street Journal on the topic of “Attention Bloggers: For small businesses that can’t afford a lot of marketing the blogsphere offers a cheaper alternative.
What Shelly (The author) is saying is that you should try to get professional bloggers in your target business community or topic to blog about your product. This is not easy, but by giving stuff away free stuff to them, by visiting their blogging site and commenting on their blogs, you can get their attention. And, their exposure is very valuable as these blogging communities are very active and can help spread the news about your products. The goal here is to be a participative member of the community where your potential customers are spending time online.

This to me is why business social networking makes sense, which truly is a B2b exchange is not? Not just a whole, but has to be for each niche industry. So imagine a business social network for each industry such as Dentists social networking, Lawyers social networking, massage therapists social networking? I think people in each professional industry do want to connect with each other, and usually do, especially as they have something big in common?

This can be done by commenting on major blogs, blogging about your businesses on a regular basis, on your separate domain, but we recommend doing it on MyTypes.com, Blogger.com, and on Wordpress.com. I actually just mentioned our website on the author of this article’s blog at WSJ, I actually posted a link to MyTypes.com too, by simply writing http://Mytypes.com just like it’s done here. If you comment on a news site or a major blogging community site, they will probably let you link back to your site, but you have to do the link back properly. The easiest way to add a link is by adding the URL such as http://www.ITEX.com, as in this case I did it for ITEX.com. Some times, you can also do links with hyper text to just the keywords without the www or http, this is preferred by most blogging sites don’t allow this with the html code. Link back from these sites are not only great for mention and a link back to your company, but they are the most important factor in Google’s view of the value of your site. We talk a lot about this in our SEO blogs site and I am sure you have read about this, if not just read any of our articles on SEO & blogging coach from our main page.

This article is interesting because matching businesses with other businesses (b2b) is what we are all about because of our relationship with the Barter company ITEX. We are actually in the process of building a b2b marketing and b2b business social networking site for them. We are in the final design and coding phases. The business social networking concept is nothing new, but it’s still not being full leveraged, we hope take our expertise with MyTypes.com blogging Social Network in to the business segment. We will see how this works, so do stay tuned…

SEO for Bloggers, Part 1 of 6: Getting Started with SEO

2008-03-18T15:02:00.000-07:00

This is from our SEO Blog Templates website, enjoy:

SEO for Bloggers, Part 1 of 6: Getting Started with SEO

Our previous blogging coach wrote this series of articles back in June of last year. This series may have been her best work. It’s quite lengthy so I won’t do much of an introduction, but I am curious if any one has feedback on our new look of promoting premium blog templates and SEO tools on the front page? Do let us know what you think of the buttons on the top bar, and or any other comments on this SEO Blog Templates sites design as a whole. Enjoy this great series, I am going to republish the series all week, as I am spending most of my time doing design work for our B2b, Business Social Networking site.

SEO for Bloggers: Getting Started with SEO (Part 1 of 6)

June 25th, 2007 at 07:35 pm by Bc in SEO for Bloggers, Blogging Techniques, Getting Started, Stickiness

You’ve probably heard the term search engine optimization , or SEO, being used before, but you might not have realized how simple it is to apply some of the techniques to your blog. By choosing the right platform, much of the nitty-gritty design work will be done for you, but it’s up to you, the blogger, to create quality content that uses SEO to target new readers and promote your brand.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site via search engines and search results. The goal is to achieve a high ranking, or to show up early (ideally in the top five) in the listings for relevant search terms, or keywords. Many SEO techniques can integrated in your blogging to ensure that your blog ranks highly in the search engine results for the keywords that are most important to you and your business.

Although SEO isn’t the only thing to consider when setting up your blog, it’s important to keep it in mind from the very beginning. First of all, you need to make a comprehensive list of all the potential search terms, or keywords that people could use when searching for your business, product, or service. Pay particular attention to synonyms, alternative phrases, and even misspellings (www.thesaurus.com is your friend here).

Next, you want to place your most important keywords in title and tagline. For instance, if you’re a real estate agent based in Chicago, use those words in your title - a possible title and tagline would be “A Chicago Real Estate Blog: From Lake shore Drive to Wicker Park”. Not only is the title the first thing your visitors notice when they come to your blog, it’s what the search engines display in their results listings. Be sure to place your text before your logo or any other images in order to maximize your site’s findability.

Once you’ve started actually blogging, be sure to use your chosen keywords liberally in your posts, categories, and tags. A high keyword density is key to search engine optimization. To continue with the Chicago real estate agent example, some obvious keywords for that blogger would be Chicago Real Estate, Chicago Condos, Wicker Park Real Estate, South Loop Condominiums, and other related terms.

If you’re blogging about your business, it’s fairly easy to place keywords within the content naturally, because you’d probably use the phrases while discussing those topics anyways. Aim for organic, natural usage instead of just repeating keywords for the sake of placing keywords amongst other keywords in your content (see how annoying that is to read?). You don’t want to counteract your SEO skills with unhelpful content.

Combining SEO techniques with compelling content will make your blog a powerful component of your brand. The simplest way to do this is to put yourself in your readers’ place - you want to make your blog easy to find (the SEO aspect) and beneficial for your readers (the compelling content). Quality content will also inspire other bloggers and site owners to link to you, and link building - getting others to links to your site - is absolutely vital for SEO success.

Organic keyword use in the context of interesting, informative posts is especially important in regard to link building, the next aspect of search engine optimization that I’ll be covering as part of my SEO for bloggers series, so be sure to check back soon!

MyTypes: AOL Buys Social Network and Business Social Networking by MyTypes.com and Vipin Singh

2008-03-13T17:40:00.000-07:00

AOL Buying Social Networking Site, and MyTypes plans one too?

This link below will take you to the recent news, and proves that Social networking is great for engagement marketing, and is all the craze that SEO was a few years ago, and yesterday. We think business social networking is also a category that is under served.

InternetNews Realtime IT News – AOL Buying Social Networking Site

Even without the big funding that major sites have, we have been focusing and growing our Social Networking site for bloggers and a blogging community as we call it. Last week, I started to hint that we are in the process of a launching a new exciting venture for the b2b, SEO, Search marketers, and B2b Marketing professionals. I never did say what it is that we are doing, but we had planned to let you know. And, here it is, we want to position our small but fast growing business social network, and position it for SEO professionals and B2B Marketing. We think it will be easy for us to position our business social networking site, just for the marketing, sales, SEO consultants, etc. This is not rocket science, and we did launch it last November.

The Wordpress blogging platform did not meet our business social networking needs, hence we launched with an open source platform, and have customized it greatly. You can visit this b2b, b2b marketing, SEO Consultants, and marketers of all sorts there. What’s nice about our platform is that it’s very democratic, the most recent people who are on our business social networking site show up on the front section. So the more people use it, the more exposure they get. We don’t mind certain people hanging out on the site all day. It’s just that they should have good content, or we will block them. It’s nice to have good spam control on our servers. So good job to AOL for making this strategic business social networking move. Here is a previous article our Blogging coach had written about social networks. We think Business social networks were just around the corner, as the space of LinkedIn, Plaxo, and Ryze were moving towards it, with the popularity of Facebook. These glorified contact management systems, did not want to be left behind.

Web 2.0 and You: Social Media Explained

Chances are you’ve heard the terms “web 2.0″, user-generated content, and social media networks being thrown around before, and you probably have a decent idea of what they mean (if not, check out my dictionary of blog related terms). However, you may not be sure how to use the social media networks for your business - to blogcast your brand, because blogging is the center of it all.

Think of your brand/business as a solar system - your blog is the sun, and the rest of the social media sites and applications as planets orbiting around it. You may have profiles on the other networks, videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr, and use social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and digg, but it all revolves around your blog (be sure to put links to your blog in all your profiles, but you already knew that, right?).

There are two main forms of social media that can be quite useful for bloggers - networking sites (Facebook, Myspace, Linked In) and bookmarking sites (Stumble Upon, Reddit, and my personal favorite, del.icio.us).

The networking sites are kind of self-explanatory; they are not that far removed from your actual network of friends, associates, and colleagues, except that they are virtual and you can see everyone else’s networks too. Besides the fact that it is simply convenient to have everyone’s profile info at your fingertips, these sites can also be useful when it comes to reconnecting with old colleagues and acquaintances, and for learning more about new friends. While you don’t need to maintain a presence on every social networking site on the web (you wouldn’t have time to do anything else!), it’s helpful to be involved in one or two that are popular in your business’s niche, e.g. fashion types with Iqons and anything music or entertainment related with Myspace.

Bookmarking sites are useful for bloggers in the both the promotional sense (having your content listed on the sites brings in readers) and in the personal sense - you can bookmark and tag your favorite sites and articles and access those bookmarks from anywhere, and if you work from multiple computers your bookmarks will be synched. I personally like to bookmark and tag any articles that would be good blog fodder, so bookmarking sites can help beat blogger’s block as well. Social bookmarking sites are also excellent tools because they enable you to check out what others in your niche are reading and what they thought of it. Popular forums can function in a similar fashion (be sure to put a link to your blog in your signature line!)

Last but not least, there is Technorati, the blog index that has become so much more. Technorati lets you see who has linked to your blog and how recently, what other sites they have linked to, who they have favorited, and so on. There’s also an authority ranking (how many sites have linked to a particular blog). It’s a good way to keep track of which bloggers are saying what, and how other bloggers are reacting to it.

The key idea to remember is that the social networks are a community - you have to participate, learn the mores, and in some cases, follow the rules (for example, many forums have certain codes of conduct and behavior, so check out the regulations before you jump in and post). Even if you’re a natural rebel, you have to learn the rules before you can break them. Like any other community, virtual or not, you have to learn to listen as well as speak.

Posted by: Blogging Coach

Truth about MyTypes Vipin Singh and MyTypes.com

2008-03-13T13:34:00.000-07:00

It’s kind of sad that I am blogging to knock off the top 6 blog results when people search for our company name, and to stay positive. But, if my lessons help people, why not write about SEO and reputation management. This is being done, because someone malicious goes out and spreads lies about me Vipin Singh and MyTypes.com our company. I am not going to take part in the negative nature, boy do I feel the urge to do it though. I could totally destroy his reputation, be just telling people the truth about his behaviors and lies. If he was telling the truth, I wouldn’t care as much. It’s that he is going above and beyond, lieing, and making stupid/nasty claims. The dumb thing is the more he writes negative malicious comments, the less likely I am to pay him. So words to the wise, don’t write negative stuff about people who owe you money. They will not be motivated to pay you. It’s only children that whine and say negative stuff, and the negative energy they sent them selves. Regardless, I am bothered enough, and will deal with it, by knocking him off the top 10.

So why should I care, mainly because his lies end up as #6 on search results pages. I guess, I taught him something about SEO, which he has learned. I can’t reward his dumb behavior by paying him before we pay any of our other company debts. We are super excited of paying debt to 5 different parties, and making a huge dent in our debt. Things are going really well here, and we are excited about the future prospects of MyTypes.com.

Reputation Management is starting to become a big part of SEO, and blogging. We started to see this trend a few years ago, but didn’t care to talk about it in our SEO blogs or do any kind of work on it. So in reputation management, and in staying positive, we just have to remember, that we can’t get caught in people’s negative energy. About a year and 3 months ago, someone said malicious things about us, on his websites. He is a notorious web and SEO person, we stayed positive and actually got clients out of it. I plan to chalk this experience up again as way to help me grow professionally.

For reputation management, when writing blogs to SEO yourself, I recommend staying above the negative chatter. Also, use the name of your company a couple of times, or your name a couple of times. The title of the post will help to create a Search Engine Friendly URL, which is one of the most important SEO factors. We have been making the connection and leading to b2b and business to business marketing from an SEO perspective. And, also in the process of creating a small business resource center as well as business social networking site. We are currently working on the branding and design lay outs. Here is our SEO blog from the Blog Templates and blogging coach section, where I write every day. But, you already knew that:-).

Photoshop vs. Illustrator, the Alt ego of web designers

Photoshop vs. Illustrator

Which one is better for web designers, I am sure comes up a lot. Read the above resource, of the two amazing tools, it’s a great explanation. I have had web designers and technical people answer this question for me, but after reading that source, it finally makes sense. A lot of you maybe web designers trying to learn about SEO, others maybe marketing people. I am not a web designer, I work with our tech web designer Keith all the time. He takes care of all our tech issues, and I have been asking him for the last few days the difference between Photoshop and Illustrator. I love design, and I am thinking about getting in to web design, to develop some pages for our b2b marketplace and business social networking site. It’s funny, I have been wanting to get in to some sort of a web programming or something technical. And it’s clear to me, I am going to get in to Illustrator and maybe Photoshop later, for web design and blog templates for Wordpress Themes. I am excited about my first project being a real one for our b2b social networking. So what does all of this have to do with SEO, well web designers need to learn SEO and employ that in their web design and technical Meta Tags etc.

They too often don’t think about SEO until after a marketing or advertising executive tells them that they can’t see their own website on Google. This is too common of a theme, this is where our SEO blog templates are such as great tool for web designers. Use our base and SEO guide to make sure your Wordpress Themes are SEO’ed. Also as a tip for today, don’t forget about Alt Tags, they are great tool for SEOing your site, but you have to use proper keywords in your Alt Tags. Alt tags, as most designers know, are used to describe pictures or images, even text especially within links. But web designers in my opinion often don’t link enough for SEO, and especially good web designers don’t use proper keywords for SEOing their site. Why is that? Could be that designers as a whole have Alt egos? I think so, designers and probably web designers on the lesser end are a unique bunch. I have said for years, that good or great web designers are harder to find, than actually technical people. I am probably suited to be a web designer more than I want to admit. And, that my friends is not speaking highly of my personality traits, which proves the Alt Ego scenario?

As a bonus for you, I am going to include another blog below today. Especially, as I had to go off topic from our usual b2b and marketplace topics of such as things as Barter, and online businesses, and tying them to SEO. I had to get to the basics of web design, and actually designer alt ego’s. Enclosed is a blog by our previous blogging coach, can I repeat we miss her great writing. I added the photos, just to add more color, photos Jazz up your blog as usual. I only wish I could write as well, enjoy:

Long Tail Searches and SEO

You’ve probably heard the phrase “long tail” before, especially in regard to business and marketing. Essentially, the long tail is the tail end of a demand curve - there may be lots of people who buy the latest #1 single, but there are many more people buying all sorts of different, obscure albums - the total number of the people buying the varied music is much greater than the people buying the #1 hit. The long tail is part of the reason why companies like Amazon are so successful - they offer tons of different niche items. The inter-connectedness and global scope of the web has made the long tail and catering to niche markets a viable business strategy.

However, the long tail is also relevant to SEO. Very significant percentage of searches are “long tail searches”, that consist longer, more specific queries that naturally tend to yield fewer results. For instance, if you’re looking for a newly built condo in Chicago’s South Loop neighborhood, wouldn’t you type “Chicago condominiums South Loop real estate new construction” or something similar into the search box? After, you’re much likely to find what you’re looking for that way than by just using “Chicago real estate”. Long tail searchers are looking for something very specific. This post on Search Engine Watch’s blog has excellent visuals illustrating long tail searches.

So how does this apply to your blog? Think about your niche and your own unique skills and characteristics. Narrow down your keywords - instead of only using “Chicago real estate agent”, make sure to write about the particular neighborhoods and types of properties you specialize in, for example. Or if you’re any kind of retailer (chances are if you’re an online retailer, you’re already very familiar with niche markets and the long tail), write constant posts about your products. Try to create the most detailed descriptions possible, and aim to be your readers’ source for the latest information about new products in your niche.

Targeting the long tail may end up benefiting you more in the long run - after all, long tail searchers tend to be looking for very specific information, and if you fit into their desired niche, they are that much more likely to bookmark your blog and/or become clients or customers someday.

**A little note from this best of all SEO Consultants blogging here, Moi the main writer here, Vipin Singh. Just kidding, I am the only one blogging here who works as a SEO Consultant right, therefore, I am I give my self all this great credit for my failures as well:-). Long tail kewyord phrases are also a great tool for SEO each individual keyword within the phrases. For example if we SEO for the Keyword “Silver Cross Rings“, we end up SEOing each keyword, “Silver” and “Cross” and “Rings”. And, we end up SEOing for each combination of keywords such as Silver Cross, Silver Rings, Cross Rings, Cross Ring. Don’t forget that all the major keywords which include our focus keywords such as “Silver Jewelry”, they benefit because the word “Silver” is being used in our “Silver Cross Rings“. Does this makes sense, I don’t think it’s too complicated, but most people don’t think of this Long tail SEO stuff. That is why so many Long tail keyword searches are used very often by all smart SEO Consultants, especially yours truly. This also includes writing contextually when blogging, and linking to appropriate keywords. We have done the same with our Barter, B2b marketing, and Online Marketplace for B2b and small business marketing strategies. As long as the topics are all related, go ahead and use them together.

Even in B2B SEO, blogging is important by MyTypes.com & Vipin Singh

2008-03-11T16:02:00.000-07:00

I wrote this in our SEO Blog templates blog earlier today, and as always I post these in our different blogs. This blog is from our previous Blogging coach at MyTypes.com and myself, Vipin Singh. As most SEO consultants know that we have to SEO our clients, who are not always in B2c, but also B2b, which stands for Business to Business. B2b Marketing professionals are constantly challenged with attracting business for their clients or business leads, and b2b marketing is a huge business. Most often B2b marketing is based on Infomediaries, and the models of lead generation is the most prominent. I like all the smart SEO consultants, like to use content that others have written to promote them.

Here are a couple of blog posts from our previous blogging coach, who stoped being our blogging coach back in August, she was very good, and we do mis her great writing. I have been going through her previous posts, and they are all very good. I want to provide an update with an emphasis on blogging for SEO and for our blog templates, and since there a lot of people here coming for B2b marketing. We have been promoting the connection between SEO, Google being the best B2B infomediary, not just for B2C. Here are the previous blogs:

Weekend on the Links #2

June 29th, 2007 at 03:54 pm by Bc in General, Links

Here’s some interesting weekend reading:

Webconfs.com has compiled an incredible list of SEO techniques, organized into categories and ranked with scores ranging from +3 (things you should definitely do) to -3 (things to actively avoid).

Suffering from blogger’s block? NorthxEast has a list of Twelve Ways to Turn a Boring Post into Pure Gold. First, however, they point out that in the end, it’s good content and good headlines that drive traffic.

The Copyblogger asks “Do You Make These Mistakes When You Write?” a continuation of his previous list of errors that can diminish a writer’s, or a blogger’s credibility.

If you’re a woman and a blogger, consider attending the Blogher.org Conference, but act quick, because it’s happening very soon - July 27-29 in Chicago. Attendees can register through July 20th.

Used to writing for print? Here’s a beautifully concise post from O.M. Strategy on the differences between online and offline writing.

Have an excellent weekend!

Blogging Your Business: The Two Way Street

June 29th, 2007 at 03:00 pm by Bc in PR Blogging, Blogging Techniques, Blogging Don’ts

No one really likes to be on the receiving end of the hard sell - it’s awkward and annoying for everyone involved, really. Fortunately, it is easy to avoid engaging in such off-putting activities, thanks to the many promotional tools and techniques out there on the net.

Blogging, is a particularly good way to set up a passive but constant soft sell. Now, you might be thinking: “Of course you’re going to say that! You write a blog about blogging!” Guilty as charged, but it doesn’t change the fact that blogging can indeed be a valuable marketing tool. It lets potential customers find you on their own time and get to know you and your products or services at their leisure.

See, blogging is a two way street. Instead of just broadcasting your message at a captive audience in the manner of most traditional advertising, you’re communicating with your readers instead of talking at your potential customers. The blogosphere is a community, and for your blog to be as successful as possible, you have to participate, even if you’re blogging about your business. Actually, especially if you are blogging about your business.

The key to using your blog as a marketing tool is not to think of it as such, at least in the traditional sense. Besides telling your readers about your business and products, share other details about your life and link to other blogs, articles, and websites that you like. By blogging about varied but related topics you can prevent your blog from being a one-note-wonder. After all, would you want to read a blog that only consists of tons of remarkably similar posts harping on the same product? It’s the blogging version of the smarmy, pushy salesman who gets in your face and refuses to let you leave without making a purchase - but on the web, readers can escape the hard sell with just one click.*

Think of your blog as a mini-portal to your niche. Let your readers start with your blog, check out your latest posts, and then continue on by clicking on your links (naturally, you should link to things that support your message and your brand). Remember that blogging is a dialogue, it is dynamic, and it is interactive, so update often and answer comments and questions. Also, remember that your readers are probably pretty savvy and they can tell when a blog is straight-up propaganda. The best way to draw readers to your blog is to create interesting, useful, and compelling content, and do it regularly. Of course, that is also the hardest way - but that’s what your blogging coach is here for.

*You may have already seen this, but the Cluetrain Manifesto is worth checking out - and getting on.

As always we talk about b2b marketing as technically SEO falls within that world, and our SEO blog templates site is growing. As some of you might have seen today, we are getting ranked very high in Google for the keyword “Blog Templates“, we wanted to not just provide SEOed Wordpress Themes, we are currently working on blogger templates. In the same vain, We signed up as a reseller account and are now selling Premium Blog templates through Template Monster. So do check those out, and go ahead and buy some Premium Wordpress Themes from us:-).

SEO Blog Templates @ MyTypes.com Blog

2008-03-10T16:48:00.000-07:00

We have used the No child left behind tag line in the past from President Bush, and turned it in to no blogger left behind. We used it for our Community blogs, if you visit our main site.

That is what I am most excited about, the blogging community, social network. What started out as a way for us to help our clients, through SEO, blog templates and blogging, has turned in to quite an exciting business model for us. We use the tools to develop our social networking site for blogging. And, now as we are part of the Barter Network at ITEX, we are soon building Social networks for Massage therapists, Lawyers, Dentists, Car Repair, Accountants, Vacation Rentals, and yes Restaurants. Boy that was a handful, I am not just saying this to use the keywords for SEO, I am really excited about MyTypes.com becoming a social networking platform company. Why am I excited? Not just for us, but to help online businesses, and to enable b2b eCommerce through social interactions. SEO is key component of any online marketing, and B2B promotion, as mentioned in the last blog.

I wanted to write about B2b eCommerce, but most businesses only utilize the Internet for information exchange such as website or Info-mediaries. Lead generation, which we also wrote about a few days ago, is more complex and is the main activity within b2b ecommerce. Yes you SEO wanna be marketing people, you want to get to the bottom of how to best generate leads so you can keep your jobs. We know what drives you, well most of you blog a lot, and you should to promote your business. Our message today is simple, Social networking within businesses is eCommerce as you get your suppliers, customers, vendors(employees), all interacting.

Social networking components within your blogging and web presence should drive your b2b ecommerce strategy. And, yes as always blogs and community blogs will be part of the trends are key components of social networks as is the ability to make and invite friends. Here is an article our previous blogging coach wrote, you will probably enjoy reading it. It got a lot of raving reviews the time it was posted back in July 2007, enjoy:

Don’t Blog In A Vacuum

Blogging is essentially a social, conversational medium, so it only goes to follow that you can’t successfully blog in a vacuum. You have to read and respond to other bloggers, link to outside websites, and be aware of what others in niche are talking about by participating in the popular social media networks.

Basically, you have to read at least as much as you write. First of all, reading and absorbing the work of talented writers is one of the most important things you can do when it comes to developing your own writing voice. It only goes to follow that, if you want to get the most out of your blog, you have to read other blogs as well. Besides, being aware of the current popular topics in in the blogosphere is valuable, and you’ll never know where you’ll pick up a great tip or two.

You don’t even necessarily have to read tons of blogs about blogging (although as your Blogging Coach, I would say that you should definitely keep an eye on a few meta-blogs); useful, well-written advice and positive examples can be found on blogs in any niche. It’s also important to check out blogs that discuss similar topics to yours, so you can pick up on market trends and see if anyone has written, linked to, or created anything interesting.

One of the key differences between blogging and more traditional forms of media, marketing, and public relations is that it’s a two way street. Yes, your readers can and will respond to your posts in the comments, but other bloggers can write responses on their blogs too. Reacting and sharing opinions are a key part of participating in the blogosphere, so it’s not only useful, it’s imperative that you read at least a few other blogs.

Don’t think that you have the time to read? Try subscribing to your favorites and scanning them in a reader (I personally prefer Google Reader, but there are tons of options out there), or tagging posts that intrigue you with a “toread” tag in del.icio.us and coming back them when you have time to spare.

What other blogs do you read? Do you read them for news, education, inspiration, or entertainment (or a mix of all the above?).

**Since this blog is about business and b2b, I wanted to mention some great websites. TechCrunch.com, SocialRank.com (which owns a b2b news site), Adage.com, and of course Cnet.com.

SEO helps Business promotion especially B2B

2008-03-08T19:34:00.000-08:00

A lot of SEO consultants help businesses, and a lot of B2b is about generating leads for their businesses. Most people don't put the 2 and 2 together, but Google and Search Engines could possibly be the #1 Information mediaries, called Intermediaries and Infomediaries. There is an old article quoted at the bottom, so do read this.

I wanted to write a snap shot about b2b and what it really is, but more importantly how it can benefit you, our readers. So I have to explain who our audiences are, SEO Consultants, SEO and internet marketers, Web Designers, and Marketing professionals wanting to learn about SEO. Does that sound like a group wanting to promote businesses? Promotion of business to business and helping online businesses get leads to sell products and services is what SEO consultants do? So if millions or billions of people are searching on the internet every day for products and services, could Google be the #1 B2b marketplace in the world? I have made a case for it in the past, but that is not why we are here.

I was gong to reference the article below from CIO magazine about What is B2B, but most importantly I want to make the connection of SEO, B2B and Blogging. All three topics are covered in this blog all the time, except B2B. The article below is old, but still useful, from a great resource. Also, I wanted to mention that I actually worked for Gartner Group from 1996-1999, the Analyst source mentioned below. It sure feels good to have my old company helping to make my point. By the way, for those of you who don’t know Gartner, they were/are considered by many in IT industry to be the #1 Analyst organization for IT Trends, Directions, and analysis.

Now back to the basics, blogging is a great a way to promote your business, you already know that, and SEO is a must for Internet Marketing today, especially for promoting websites. So B2b promotion really is made up of anything we use to promote our business, and on the internet it is SEO, SEM, and Blogs and maybe even Social networking. Social networking is probably the most B2C, but smart marketers like you are trying to figure out how they apply to B2B. Sorry SEO consultants and marketers, in my humble opinion B2C is usually at the forefront. Why, it’s the teen agers and trend affect. That is why we are combining the two in our b2b and online marketplace. Below is the article enjoy:

What is B2B? - a definition from Whatis.com - see also: e-biz, business-to-business
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DEFINITION - On the Internet, B2B business-to-business, also known as e-biz, is the exchange of products, services, or information between businesses rather than between businesses and consumers. Although early interest centered on the growth of retailing on the Internet sometimes called e-tailing, forecasts are that B2B revenue will far exceed business-to-consumers B2C revenue in the near future. According to studies published in early 2000, the money volume of B2B exceeds that of e-tailing by 10 to 1. Over the next five years, B2B is expected to have a compound annual growth of 41%. The Gartner Group estimates B2B revenue worldwide to be $7.29 trillion dollars by 2004. In early 2000, the volume of investment in B2B by venture capitalists was reported to be accelerating sharply although profitable B2B sites were not yet easy to find.

B2B Web sites can be sorted into:

Company Web sites, since the target audience for many company Web sites is other companies and their employees. Company sites can be thought of as round-the-clock mini-trade exhibits. Sometimes a company Web site serves as the entrance to an exclusive extranet available only to customers or registered site users. Some company Web sites sell directly from the site, effectively e-tailing to other businesses.
Product supply and procurement exchanges, where a company purchasing agent can shop for supplies from vendors, request proposals, and, in some cases, bid to make a purchase at a desired price. Sometimes referred to as e-procurement sites, some serve a range of industries and others focus on a niche market.
Specialized or vertical industry portals which provide a “subWeb” of information, product listings, discussion groups, and other features. These vertical portal sites have a broader purpose than the procurement sites although they may also support buying and selling.
Brokering sites that act as an intermediary between someone wanting a product or service and potential providers. Equipment leasing is an example.
Information sites sometimes known as infomediary, which provide information about a particular industry for its companies and their employees. These include specialized search sites and trade and industry standards organization sites.

Many B2B sites may seem to fall into more than one of these groups. Models for B2B sites are still evolving.

Another type of B2B enterprise is software for building B2B Web sites, including site building tools and templates, database, and methodologies as well as transaction software.

B2B is e-commerce between businesses. An earlier and much more limited kind of online B2B prior to the Internet was Electronic Data Interchange EDI, which is still widely used.

CONTRIBUTORS: Paula Jones
LAST UPDATED: 21 Jul 2001

Posted by Admin in B2B

from our MyTypes.com SEO Blog

2008-03-06T18:02:00.000-08:00

Here is a good post from our SEO Blog Templates blog, I wrote earlier today, enjoy:

The Power of Dumb Ideas

In the book “The Big Moo” Seth Godin writes one of his short chapters, one is titled “The power of dumb ideas”. I read it a few weeks back, and again today, it’s a brilliant piece on the changes in marketing today versus 10 years ago. But mainly it get’s to the core of my passion for marketing, he mentions a piece on how Google has opened up billions of channels. While he does not mention SEO, that is the true power of Search Engines and Google that they open up tremendous amount of marketing opportunity for marketers. But you already knew that, since you are here, for SEO Blog templates. You probably already know the power of blogging for SEO and Internet marketing too, but did you know that Seth Godin is the man on Internet Marketing, and marketing as a whole. And his blog is ranked #9 for Keyword “Blog”, he supposedly has 500,000 plus readers for his blog too, no matter how much SEO you do, it’s almost always better to be a great marketer and he proves it every day.

Now some SEO advice from the book plus my experience in marketing, internet marketing, search engine marketing, and SEO. Why did I repeat all of this, well that is the hierarchy of the field of marketing, and I started my marketing experience back in 1992 studying the field. You have by now, read some blogs here, and hopefully you like them all. One of my first marketing tricks was ground shipping a box of hot air balloons to an executive in New York to get him to pay attention to me. He did, and I got what I wanted and he saved me thousands of dollars. I picked that trick up from a marketing book I read, sorry can’t remember. But the lesson back than, and still today from Seth is, be different and get noticed, and it still works.

I want to tie in the title of the blog, the power of dumb ideas is the probably the number force for innovation. Because innovation is not obvious, and nor does it seem reachable. But, so many good ideas get rejected by executives and leaders, but I think dumb ideas really are the force of innovation. Smart marketing people and SEO consultants and experts know this to be truest. The other part of marketing, creativity, and SEO that excites me and a lot of people is, that it’s constantly changing. So what is it about Dumb ideas, again? That was not clear in the book either, but net net is that they often lead to Innovation, so don’t discount ideas. Innovation is that another hobby or passion of mine, so how does Innovation happen?

The secret is brining a great idea from another market or industry to your market or your industry. Seth says it’s “more Efficient and Effective Than Blue-Sky Creativity and Innovation”. There are two types of Innovations in the world, new technologies looking for a home/problem to solve. Or problems that no one else has solved, I tend to focus on the later, but that is rare to the be the first or among the few. This leads me to a concept we are working on, I can’t unveil it just yet, we are obviously talking about it here on a SEO and Marketing blog. And we know how you marketing people are, we tend to talk a lot, don’t we. But the concept is target us, with a focus on b2b, marketplace, social networking, marketing, SEO, SEO Consultants, and yes sales people. How crazy is that, all of these people in the same website, how can we serve them?

Well, let’s start with the biggest need of all businesses, not just online businesses. They all need customers, and need to market themselves. This platform or marketplace will allow us to do that, but don’t think it’s a marketplace, that is not the zest of it. It does involve B2B which is what most of SEO consultants do, right we are helping businesses promote themselves. But isn’t that what SEO is, and what could we possibly be doing that is different? Oh it’s not selling blog templates or anything to promote an online marketplace, no more clues now:-).

Well wait and find out, I honestly don’t think there is something like that out there. But many little pockets of websites, many thousands and millions of them, all over the web. Tagline of today, be different be good, but as always blog your way to the top.

Some great SEO Blog posts

2008-03-05T15:11:00.001-08:00

The Art of Capturing Online Leads

A blog I wrote today on our SEO Blog templates site, enjoy:

The Art of Capturing Online Leads

I rarely will write a blog on some other blogs of our sites, and publish it here. The main reason is that this is our most valued blog, as it gets the most focused visitors, which mainly is SEO and Internet Marketing centric. The standards I have set for this blog are pretty high, but I wrote a blog on my personal blog and it fits here very well. I do however publish posts from here to my other blogs, as I rarely write on those other blogs. I tell you all this, as you should always stick to the focus of your blogs topics and have different blogs. I see rookies make the mistake of mixing their business blogs with personal ones. The objective of any online business is to sell products or services, and if it’s too hard to sell the product online. The website or online businesses objective is to generate leads, that is why this article fits so well, so read on and remember to blog your way to the top, but stay focused on your keywords:

The Art of Capturing Online Leads

March 5th, 2008 at 12:52 pm by Vipin K. Singh in B2B

We just had a great meeting to discuss online lead capturing with our tech, marketing, and small group at ITEX. So this topic is fresh in my mind and makes for a perfect blog for our Online Marketplace, as the biggest Value we provide in the MyTypes and ITEX marketplace is for businesses to generate online leads . We are working on a lead capturing strategy to spotlight local businesses, such as Massage therapists, Lawyers, Dentists, and local restaurants. We are going to launch our online Businesses Spotlight pages today. One of the things that we were discussing was the benefits of memberships and getting people to actually sign-up, and capturing the online leads. This is a topic that is very near and dear to all online businesses. And, one that I have worked on and discussed professionally for years, especially back in 2003-2004 for my first real estate website, UrbanTango.com. The goal back than and still today has been pretty consistent, give visitors lots of free stuff online, but get people to sign up by giving them more benefits for signing up.

Capturing Leads is a tricky business, and some thing that all online businesses have to deal with. A friend of mine, did not give much away for free information, he was #1 on Google and wanted everyone to sign-up before they could access any of his information. He ended up capturing a great amount of leads, and did quite well, so there is something for not giving away anything until people give you some information. Regardless, both sides of the argument have a point here.

But at the end of the day, you have to have the Best Sentence or ways for you to capturing online leads, regardless if you offer information or not, and that is what we are focusing on here. The Art of capturing online leads for your online businesses. I am actually going to use at least one of these in one of our online businesses. So here are the best Sentences, some are futile attempts at being humorous, but for showing real value and capturing online leads:

1. Hey baby, you want some of this, give me your email? **it may work for some online businesses, such as Adult entertainment, but not many:-)

2. Wow handsome fellow, you want some of this cats meow, come on over sweetie pie? Well same genre but had to add the opposing view of the first sentence.

3. We offer our members the best secrets, the best products, and we will call you tomorrow to ask you to buy, and than the week after, and on and on, until you start hating us or buying from us. So sign-up and we will call you tomorrow? Do we wonder why most people fill out wrong information for online leads, yikes.

4. Today and only for the next 60 minutes, you have once in a life-time opportunity to get the best deal ever on our Widget, but sign-up now, because tomorrow the deal will be gone? Yeah right?

5. By signing up, you get access to our members only section, with the following benefits:; #1 You can browse all listings, #2 You can get detailed product information, #3 See who else is part of our community, #4 You can try before you buy, there is no obligation? This one is quite good, but needs to be shortened for our purposes.

I actually studied a course created by a very successful real estate agent on the art of capturing leads, he sells 450 homes a year, which is an amazing number, so his system actually is world renowned. His basic premise is to give people the sizzle and get them to sign up by offering report or more information. I actually learned the are of capturing online leads from his training seminars, this works for all businesses, not just online businesses. We have also studied a few other online lead generation companies, such as HouseValues.com and AllStarDirectories.com.

The net net is give them the benefit of signing up. Be upfront, be honest, make it short and sweet. Here is what we think is really good for our own site.

Allows Free/Temporary access, to view thousands of members like you, marketplace details, try before you buy and there is No-obligation.

Sign-up Now for a Free/Temporary access to full membership benefits.

Allows Immediate access to full members site, for a limited time:

Don't forget Footer Links

A blog I wrote yesterday, not bad for an SEO article, one of the most forgotten sources of links:

Don’t forget the Footer for great SEO Links

I was talking to a casual friend of mine earlier today, he owns and runs a very successful website with 13million page views, we rarely talk business. He and I have actually been talking politics lately more so. Some how the topic got to SEO and how he is not taking advantage of his powerful hundreds of thousands of pages on his own website. He admitted that he really never did SEO, his word mouth viral internet marketing has lead to his success. He makes a six figure income from the website, great job to him. I did a quick analysis of his site, and gave him a bunch of tips to increase his SEO rankings in major keywords. The biggest advice I give businesses or actually people who run them about SEO is that they need to focus on three things. Here are they are below, let me make my point now, I will get back to you the footer, just wait a second or two:-)

1. Meta Tags: This is what your website is about

2. Content: for which I always recommend blogs and possibly forums.

3. Contextual Links from blogs or News types sites.

Now after you do the first two well, you still usually compete with hundreds of websites in your SEO Rankings. To be #1 you have to do all three well, that is especially true in Google, which is the search engine we care about the most here, at MyTypes.com SEO Blog templates.

So what is the deal with a footer, you say? Footers on your own websites have the ability to provide you many powerful links. It’s as simple as that, footers are a great source for content and links for your online businesses. I often advice strategic SEO clients, businesses or friends, never ignore the footers. Here are too examples, read the realEstate.com content before their footers, you will see the proper use of Keywords within the content.

Salesforce.com’s Footer, incredible use of contextual links:

As always enjoy our blog templates, and if you are blogging use our platform. If you happen to be buying, selling, or trading (Barter), use our sites for those. Oh, How can I forget our Cross Rings, I can’t these are the best from one of my best friends wife’s site @ LoveRelic.com she has the only designer Cross jewelry.

Consistency of Blogging + Links = SEO Rankings Success

Consistency of blogging + links = SEO Rankings Success

After you have done all of your education of what SEO(Search Engine Optimization) is, what it takes to do the right thing, to avoid doing the wrong thing, and if you still don’t have the top rankings in Google? What to do? Worse yet, you don’t even see yourself in the top 100 in Google for your keywords, what to do? The world of SEO rankings, blogging, and Internet marketing can be very troubling and stressful, just like the real world. I have certainly have had my ups and downs, lost top rankings gained them back, and lost them again. I have been very successful, and have dismal failures. But, one of my biggest assets is that I never, ever give up. And, this trait of mind over matter stuff works, not just in business or life, but also in SEO.

Now days, I have less of this trouble of inconsistent rankings, why you ask? We consistently rank in the top spot or the top 10 of many keywords we target. How do we do it? And how can you, the small business owner, or a just starting out SEO consultant, how can you be the best in your world? Or at least rank high on Google for your keywords? It’s simple, you have to consistently apply the rules of success in your field, in SEO it’s about great content and contextual links. You may have noticed that Amazon, eBay, and craigslist pages get’s ranked higher than most other websites. This is a result of google respecting these online marketplaces, because of their deep embedded contextual linking systems. We are working on a similar system with our marketplace, if you have noticed that within our front page of MyTypes.com.

But the question becomes how? It’s usually never the What and Why? But, how? I want to talk a little inspiration here, I did blog at 7am today on our new Spirituality blog, about the spiritual laws of success. The ancient secrets are as true today as they were back then. Success is not rocket science, it takes action, proper actions, focused actions. Success in any endeavor requires patience, persistence, hard work, and most importantly consistent effort. Now where is this more prevalent than in SEO, no where, but I am sure you can find your field to be tough. Any way, SEO is a very, very tough business, with competition breathing down your neck and constantly changing, it can also be a very difficult business.

Some times the competition on keywords is very tough, so many companies trying to achieve high rankings in the sake keywords. And the mechanics of SEO are constantly changing, Google is always trying to enhance it’s system. Sorry, I don’t care about Yahoo and MSN too much. I just play the numbers game here, and try to go for the most traffic. The other search engines just don’t have the traffic, and they usually copy what Google does any way. So be consistent with your efforts, don’t give up even if you don’t see results in weeks and months. Do try to learn what is happening, with your circumstances, with Google’s algorithms with the current keywords, who is coming up, who is going down. In Internet marketing and in the world of technology things are happening at a very fast pace. Reading journals, reading amazing blogs, and reading special books are important to keeping your rankings and maintaining your edge. No matter how tough it is don’t ever give up, just do whatever it takes, and to do that you need to keep your spirits up. By the way, when I say do whatever it takes, don’t ever be unethical, it will come back to bight you, Karma goes both ways always.

I want to give you an edge, because SEO business can get you down, and it can be very addicting. One minute you are doing really well, the other minute you are not in the top 10, in fact you may loose all of your rankings. What to do, you ask? Just like anything and everything, always do the right thing. Try to never break the Google rankings, it’s easy, don’t try to cheat the system, create great content, and own your own link sources. This way, if you ever need links, go blog about certain topics, own your own blogs and you will have your links. Create great and interesting ways to write great content. I have been a fan of blogging for ever, since I learned about it back in 2003. I have been preaching about the use of it in SEO, this is nothing new to SEO consultants, but the simple person doesn’t seem to get how easy and how difficult it can be.

So my message again, is blog a lot, on different platforms such as ours, ebay, blogger, and use your proper keywords, and hyperlink them to the sites or blogs you are trying to SEO. It’s that easy, but if you are not ranked in the top 10 or top 100 for those keywords, it’s simple, it’s because you don’t have more Contextual links coming to your blog/site than your competitors. The more contextual links from blogging type sources, news sites, from high Google PR rank sites you have, the better. And, to make sure you have sources for those links, you need to have enough blogs and places where you blog. It’s best if they are yours, it’s good to have partnerships, but the more you own the better you can control your destiny. If you are trying to SEO a site, you need to blog and add links every day, and if you just blog for about 2-3 hours a day, and go to certain sites of your own, you will accomplish your goals. This is for some of the most challenging of sites, but only an hour or less is required if your keywords are not very competitive. You see SEO is simple, just like the beauty in the picture. Keep it simple, blog a lot and add contextual links.

You see the power of accumulation of links, of blogs, of SEO rankings comes from the ancient secret wisdom of the law of success. Which is, tada, drum roll please, CONSISTENCY!

MyTypes.com has one of it's best SEO weeks

2008-02-29T19:08:00.000-08:00

I am excited because we had a great week of progress, some of our top keywords got ranked really high, “SEO” #19, “B2B” #14, “Online Businesses” #30. Blogging we are ranked #6, which is not bad I want us to be #3. Previous rankings prior to this week for “Free Blog” #3, “Create a blog” #1, “Wordpress SEO” #1. If you have known me for the last few years, you know that the higher our website rankings, the better I have felt.

But the truth is that I am also happier that we paid of some more of our company debt, and are making progress to pay everyone off. Here is one of my best blogs of the week:

Blogs = Great Content = Higher Rankings, but how?

Posted Feb-29-08 18:55:07 PST

You have heard this from so many SEO experts, blog often, blog this and blog that. They are constantly talking about blogging, but the average person, well even I don’t know what to write about. And trust me, you need to write meaningful content or people won’t read it, and if they don’t, you won’t get high rankings on Google either. So how should we blog, how often and long, on what platform and Why? I am going to keep this post short, as I blogged earlier about our Marketplace and the ITEX announcement, which is attached as a promo about our business. Getting back to how why blogging helps your SEO Rankings:

1. How? Blogging is the same as writing, but it involves writing online. Just start writing, it’s easy, add some pictures, from sites such as www.sxc.hu and off you go a gorgeous blog.

2. How often? Usually once a day is awesome, but 2-3 times a week, 2-3 paragraphs max keep it relative short and keep your blog to the point of your business and keywords.

3. What platform and Why? On MyTypes.com (We are biased that is our platform), Wordpress.com, and Blogger.com. On MyTypes blogging platform we automatically get your content indexed by Google and other search engines. Wordpress.com and Blogger.com are both free and quite amazing too.

Here is the blog from my Business blogs:

B2B Marketplaces go SaaS..Sassi with ITEX

February 29th, 2008 at 07:41 pm by Admin in b2b

B2B stands for Business to Business, but you already knew that. What it is, does not concern us in this blog post. What does, is the fact that many businesses are starting to utilize B2B marketplaces and b2b hubs as they were called to Buy, Sell, and Trade. In contrast to the amazing reception of online marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon, the b2b world is quiet, maybe even boring? Well how do I say this, less exciting maybe, but Go B2B, kind of has a lack of tone to it doesn’t it? Regardless consumer online businesses are not the only one’s benefiting from b2b trade exchanges.

Hundreds of thousands of distributors, sales, marketing and millions of businesses are buying, selling, trading on sites like Alibaba, TradeKey and soon our b2b marketplace. By the way, ITEX a major investor in our company has 24,000 businesses in the trading community. A friend of mine often visits Alibaba.com and works with trade manufactures from China and helps further international trade. He is a professor of Internation business at a local University, and he often gets excited about the progress of businesses trading via the Internet Trading for B2B. It’s amazing how many products you can find from suppliers over seas. It’s good for them, it’s good for us, it helps the little businesses compete with large multi-nationals. Often this cuts out a cumbersome process of middleman and creates a global marketplace where everything is transparent.

Alibaba made a huge splash a few weeks ago with it’s IPO, it instantly turned this multi-million dollar b2b marketplace in to a billion dollar company. It didnt’ hurt that it was approximately 38% owned by Yahoo. Besides Alibaba, I don’t really see a lot of marketplaces for b2b and businesses to buy, sell, and trade with each other. It’s nice that international companies are using the Net to trade, but what about US based b2b marketplace to help businesses, and especially small businesses. I am sorry but I just don’t see too many of those. That is why we launched our Beta online marketplace a few weeks ago, we are in a non-stealth mode, as we do have to start the SEO process to promote it. The marketplace is developed in concert with ITEX and to promote the barter exchange of ITEX, but as we get deeper and deeper in to it, the more we are focusing on the b2b needs to help businesses with Buy, Sell and Trade. On a secondary note but probably more Saasy, ITEX made an amazing announcement yesterday, to help vertical Industries of all sorts leverage it’s marketplace platform and grow their businesses b2b or business to consumer.

ITEX CEO TO PRESENT AT MONTGOMERY TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE

Software as a Service Strategy to be Announced

Bellevue, WA – February 28, 2008 – ITEX Corporation (OTCBB: ITEX), The Membership Trading CommunitySM, a leading marketplace for cashless business transactions in North America, today announced that ITEX Chairman and CEO Steven White is scheduled to present Tuesday, March 11th at 8:30 AM (PST) at the Montgomery Technology Conference in Santa Monica, CA.

Mr. White is expected to discuss ITEX’s current operations and announce the Company’s strategy to enter the Software as a Service (SaaS) market. A video replay and copy of the slide presentation will be available on the ITEX website (www.itex.com), under the Investor Relations section, from the end of the day on March 11, 2008 through May 31, 2008.

Steven White, Chairman and CEO of ITEX, stated “We are pleased to be invited to present the ITEX story to this technology-savvy audience and to announce our entrance into the SaaS market. ITEX has grown revenue 50% since fiscal 2005and is expected to reach $15,000,000 in fiscal 2008. Operating income has increased on average 25% annually; more than 142% what it was in 2004, exceeding $1,500,000 in fiscal 2007. Part of our success is attributed to our dynamic and robust internet based technology platform which has proven to be practical, easy-to-use, efficient and scalable. For the last couple of years we have enhanced our platform in order to capitalize on a large opportunity for our Company - to offer our technology platform, and the many features and benefits it provides, to other businesses; so they may enhance the value proposition and revenue streams for their marketplace or community, while at the same time creating new revenue streams for us.”

Mr. White continued, “ITEX launched its internet based platform in 2003, internally named TEAM (Trade Exchange Account Manager). More than just Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, the platform has payment processing, record-keeping, and billing functionality and provides comprehensive transaction data on
24,000 active members within the ITEX trading community as they complete over 1,000 transactions each business day. Our web interface can be customized and branded for a variety of online marketplaces or communities. What makes our platform unique is its ability to track both cash transactions and those based on non-cash currencies, such as rewards, points, units or other consideration a vendor decides to use.”

Steven White’s presentation at the Montgomery Technology Conference will be the first opportunity for ITEX to showcase its new SaaS strategy.

About Montgomery Montgomery & Co. is a leading provider of merger and acquisition advisory, private placements, and private equity for companies in the media, communications, information technology and healthcare sectors. Montgomery
& Co. has emerged as the premier investment banking alternative for growth companies in the United States by offering its clients in-depth industry knowledge, financial expertise, access to key relationships and a high degree of customer service.

Montgomery & Co.’s primary offices are in Santa Monica, San Francisco, and San Diego. Montgomery & Co. is a member of the National Association of Security Dealers, Inc. (NASD), and its professional associates are registered with the NASD-SIPC. For more information, please visit www.monty.com.

The 5th Annual Montgomery Technology Conference will gather a highly select group of 750-plus venture, private equity, public institutional investors and senior technology executives from around the world. Conference highlights include 90 high-quality private companies, 50 industry-leading public companies, industry keynotes and panels.

About ITEX - ITEX, The Membership Trading Community SM, is a thriving community of member businesses buying and selling more than $270 million a year in ITEX dollar transactions. Member businesses increase sales through an exclusive distribution channel managed by franchisees, licensees and corporate-owned locations, by
utilizing ITEX dollars to exchange goods and services. ITEX is powered by ITEX Payment Systems, the leading payment technology platform for processing cashless business transactions. ITEX is headquartered in Bellevue, WA.

What's the #1 way to SEO and get thousands of Links?

2008-02-28T15:22:00.000-08:00

I wrote this a few minutes ago in our SEO Blog templates blog, which is my #1 blog that I focus on , this SEO Truth blog and other spots are there to categorize and promote that blogs content, enjoy!

I have been a fan of PRWeb for more than two years, because we received thousands of links with our Press Releases and quickly got a good Google page rank for our previous blogs and real estate websites. Every SEO expert knows that sending out a professional Press Release through a wire service is the best way to get thousands of contextual links. One of the other things you can do, is to go to our b2b and online marketplace and submit your business information. While it won’t give you thousands of links, it does get get good traffic and it’s a sure way to promote your businesses! But recently I learned that PRNewswire says that they SEO press releases, but they did not provide contextual links within their press release, in fact they only provided one link. I had my client check with his PRNewswire rep to make sure that he got what he paid for. He paid the extra $250 but never got the links, his rep said that they SEO but don’t provide links. This was the silliest thing I have heard.

But, I wanted to do some research and make sure that PRWeb and PRNewswire were fully researched before I provided my SEO and Internet Marketing verdict. I read a few blogs, I did some research and my past experiences to make my judgement, which is. PRNewswire is an old company, with old ties and if you want to be seen as a Fortune 500 company, use them. They are expensive and worthless for SEO, because they don’t provide any contextual links back. PRWeb is the #2 company for Press Releases and does so much to SEO your news that it actually helps you get thousands of links in a week or less. The online tools for PRWeb are not super easy to use, but who cares, they give you THOUSANDS OF contextual links from news sites, which is amazing for SEO. Every business should do press releases, but only when they have news. B2b marketing finding customers is now much easier, so you don’t have to constantly push, sites like Alibaba and Trade Key are great sites for b2b Exchanges and online businesses to promote themselves.

Every SEO expert also knows that you need more Contextual links than your competitor, especially from news worthy sites, and blogs. Well guess what folks, PRWeb delivers, thousands of links for the price of about $130. But don’t take my word for it, spend hundreds of dollars, lots of time, and than you can email me later saying, YOU WERE RIGHT Vipin. No, don’t do that, take my word for it, and read the following links and search results:

Prweb Vs. Prnewswire - High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum

Prweb Vs. Prnewswire, Is one better than the other for SEO? Options V … Does this make them better for SEO tactics than PRNewswire? Any advice is welcome. …
www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=26155 - 51k - Cached - Similar pages

PRWEb vs. PRNewswire Press Release Service for SEO - SEO Tip Week 38

PRWEb vs. PRNewswire Press Release Service for SEO - SEO Tip Week 38. Written on September 25, 2007 – 6:31 pm | by Shell Harris | …
www.bigoakinc.com/blog/prweb-vs-prnewswire/ - 33k - Cached - Similar pages

PR Newswire vs. PRWeb From an SEO Perspective » Slicksurface …

PR Newswire vs. PRWeb From an SEO Perspective. A client of ours distributes “soft news stories” for their corporate clients. These can range from product …
www.slicksurface.com/blog/2007-05/pr-newswire-vs-prweb-from-an-seo-perspective - 25k -Now you have the secrets of the top SEO Experts, you should be sending out Press Releases every week on PRWeb.com.

How to attract customers, tip from the book "Marketing to the Social Web"

2008-02-25T15:47:00.000-08:00

Just wrote this one the blog templates blog at MyTypes.com. This is a good business blog, especially as it covers sound social marketing t's a good one, one of my best.

Last night I was reading a good book that a friend of mine returned to me on Friday. “Marketing to the Social Web” by Larry Weber. It’s a good book on the subject of Social networking, and what I call Internet Marketing 2.0 if you have read my recent blogs. What makes it a great book for me personally for SEO and other business owners is that it has sound strategies and simple statistical value. Before I get to the paradigm shifting marketing strategies of the web 2.0 concepts of “Marketing to the Social Web”, I do have to say Larry’s cover of Jookster is what made it a favorite of mine. You see Jookster was co-founded in Seattle by a friend of ours, Othniel Palomino. Do read the book as it’s has a ton of information, and it’s as up to date as anything on the subject. He also has great testimonials on the back cover, from experts whom I value and respect.

So last night as I am reading the book, I run in to some great stats. I skim through most of the topics of most books I read, sorry too much to do, too little time. Even if no one loved my SEO articles and blog writing work, I do consider my self a SEO expert and Internet Marketing 2.0 expert. Hey we are #32 on Google for the keyword “SEO” that is out of 60million plus sites, and we just started to focus on SEO last week. You will see us in the top 10 soon, we hope. Social Web or Social networking is the key aspect of web 2.o arrival as you have probably heard. Online communities such as MySpace, YouTube, FaceBook, and even our small community of bloggers at MyTypes.com are all the rage. Why you ask? Because no man or women is an island, we are social beings. In my opinion, no one, Yes, I mean no one likes to eat alone. Very few if any, like to shop alone, and most people like to live with others, that is why Urban centers have so many people.

Now getting back to the subject of the book, marketing to the social web. How Larry how? I actually have not read that far yet, but I am sure there is no holy grail for every business, on how to attract more customers. But we do have an advantage over Larry in the fact, that we always talk about how to attract more customers via SEO (search engine optimization). We won’t go hammer the SEO mantras here once again, but Larry does mention that search marketing via proper keywords is great way to attract and invite members to your social web. The key to providing value is another topic, and I am sure that book covers it in detail. It’s a good book, based on what I have read so far. Here are the stats (4 things from Compete Inc. research) of what people are looking from Online communities based on the book:

“1. Meet people. Some 78 percent of the people who visit online communities join them to communicate with others, either colleagues or new acquaintances with whom they develop relationships.

2. Entertain themselves. Another 47 percent join to find entertaining content such as photos, music, or videos.

3. Learn Something new. Some 38 percent join because they want to obtain information about topics that hold particular interest to them.

4. Influence others. And 23 percent join to express the opinions in a forum where their ideas can be discussed, debated, or acted on.”

Now the hard part is to put this data in to practice, you are already here at a SEO blog community, learning to use SEO information, learn everything you can about this amazing subject. Do join our blogging community at Community.MyTypes.com? Why we actually promote the most recent 50-60 people on the front page of that site, check it out. Also, those pages are heavily indexed by search engines due to our SEO expertise. In the last 2.5 months we have been able attract over 3,100 people to that site, with nothing but SEO efforts. Now that may not be much, but I am proud of it.

SEO enables b2b commerce?

2008-02-23T15:00:00.000-08:00

I wrote this on our main SEO blogs, so here is the full article, any comments, is this true?

B2B means Business to Business, but what’s the deal with SEO in it?

B2B is all about businesses, buying and selling goods and services, basically trade exchanges, communities, and promoting products and services business to business. SEO is about promoting online businesses, and often that requires trading links and being part of directories and link exchanges. While SEO does not have to trade links, and most smart or past SEO companies don’t do that. Do you see the similarities between SEO and b2b yet? Back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s there was a lot of hype around business vortals as people called them. They were business portals for vertical business segments, such as SteelNet or AlmuniumNet. But what problems were these websites or portals trying to adress? B2B Exchanges such as Alibaba, TradeKey, and others have come a long way. What do these sites really do except for pass on leads to sellers and buyers. B2C is the second cousin of B2B and we actually used the term B2b2C, business to business to consumers. So in the world of SEO, which really is the #1 keyword in my opinion for Business marketing, it ties the whole purpose of b2b. Which is to enable business to business commerce, which is greatly enabled by Google as a platform, not just a search engine.

Google has become probably the biggest and best intermediary of information, all information not just consumer. B2b aspects of Google and it’s search and information indexing have to do with small businesses utilizing the Adwords advertising program to advertise all over the internet, not just on Google’s search site, but on millions of blogs, business directories, shopping sites, you name it you can advertise on the internet unlike ever before. So the advertisers now have the largest variety of sites and pools to advertise on.

Now imagine thousands and millions of online businesses and models that have sprouted from this advertising (business promotion) engine. Starting to see the connection of SEO and b2b yet? Businesses buy and sell services to each other not just consumers right? Well millions of businesses are doing that through the google adwords, but wait that is only half of it. Imagine online businesses, blogs, or websites, that could not find enough advertisers to advertise on their websites, having a way to generate revenues. yes, that is what the Google b2b exchange does that for them, Google AdSense allows any blog or website or businesses to place ads and make money. It’s pay for performance, so the more customers business blogs or websites have the more money it makes. SEO is the art and science of getting ranked in search engines and getting organic traffic. Some businesses have learned that Organic SEO is 5 times as effective for ads to gain targeted traffic. While click through and conversion rates for ads tends to be a little better than organic SEO, a 3.5 for ads versus 3.07 for SEO traffic. But the five times as much traffic certainly makes up for the small difference in coversion ratios.

So b2b advertising exchange of Googles adwords to buy ads, and sell ads via adsense complete’s the full spectrum of the supply and demand channels of businesses. Because what do businesses do, they buy stuff, and they sell stuff, and any b2b platform has to accomplish that. Now our online marketplace is setup just for businesses, really it is already a b2b exchange of 24000 businesses in the US and Canada. Our marketplace has 31 categories ranging from Jewelry to Automobile to Industrial businesses. There are 300million dollars worth of transactions being completed through the ITEX trade exchange. Hopefully our b2b exchange with the SEO skills of our team will grow that to billions of dollars that is already being done off-line. What is our niche, and the main value of our online marketplace? read more next time..this is a blog not a commercial:-)

B2b eCommerce and Marketplace Marketing

2008-02-21T14:55:00.000-08:00

On my morning walks I usually think of what I am going to do for the day, the specific tasks etc for our blogging platform, for the ITEX Barter System, and often what the days blog post is going to be about. As a professional SEO and Marketing expert, I have to tie every thing back those points and provide helpful tips for online businesses. Because if you are not an online business, I don’t really care about you, just kidding. I care about you, but I would care more about you if you were one the Online businesses using our online marketplace. So folks todays topic is about B2B, what is it and why an online marketplace for online businesses? To make my point stronger, I would love to cite any professors papers on the subject, the b2b eCommerce trends etc. To do that, I was luck to find the following report. Here it is, I am going to give you the abstract version, not the full details, and high light in Bold the most important aspect. This is basically as long as I would want to read, to give you enough detail, it is still long.

RETHINKING B2B E-MARKETPLACES AND MOBILE COMMERCE: FROM
INFORMATION TO EXECUTION

Mahesh S. Raisinghani , Ph.D., CEC
University of Dallas, Graduate School of Management
mraising@gsm.udallas.edu

Hanns-Christian L. Hanebeck, Dipl.-Kfm.
University of Dallas, Graduate School of Management
hchanebeck@aol.com

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the interface between the exchange relationship in the digital economy and the emerging and continuously improving wireless technology. Exchanges become highly relevant when we look at how collaborative processes are performed. A special emphasis is placed on enabling collaboration between multiple business partners. In most cases, companies require standardization of information flows and business processes to be able to collaborate. Here, trading platforms, private and public exchanges will play a much more important role due to their increased ease-of-use (as opposed to EDI for example). The key line of thought is that collaboration is essentially based on information sharing, information sharing enables exception management, exception management relies on near real-time data, and real-time data can be collected through wireless technologies. The key ideas of online marketplaces are discussed along with the evolution and future of exchanges in the digital economy, to help management rethink the exchange relationship in the digital economy.

Introduction
B2B is about connecting the existing buyer and sellers. It is not a disintermediation play. It is about intelligently implementing Internet technology to improve business processes. The online B2B market across the world is increasing in value rapidly, but there are some hurdles and limitations to be met in the near future. The report, from Strategy Analytics (an international research and consulting firm), notes that s global B2B e-commerce transactions will grow from $226 billion in 2001 to $2.02 trillion in 2006 [Bellomy 2002].

The B2B eCommerce revolution includes eProcurement, B2B exchanges, and business infrastructure relationships. eProcurement involves firms selling supplies, equipment, materials, and services with a streamlined online purchasing function that often eliminates traditional intermediaries, thereby reducing costs and cycle times
while offering greater flexibility and responsiveness to changes in demand. Web-based supply chain management networks improve coordination between trading partners by linking a firm’s forecasting and production planning systems with its suppliers’ and distributors’ systems. They can create dramatic savings and quality improvements.
B2B exchanges include various categories of market spaces, including vertical market portals (”vortals”), hubs, and various types of auctions.

A single Infomediary (industry consortium or 3rd party) brings together many buyers and sellers within a specific vertical market, such as plastics, steel, or industrial chemicals, charging a commission on all transactions. Hundreds of industry-specific exchanges have now been launched, and more are being developed every day. Some of these ‘market spaces’ operate with posted pricing models, while others employ collaborative negotiated prices, auctions, reverse auctions, Dutch auctions, and other pricing mechanisms. Many are used in spot markets for industrial materials, overstocks, and perishable goods, as well as business services transactions. More important is the development of entirely new eBusiness infrastructure industries. Many firms support online activity by facilitating the interaction between various parties in eCommerce as preferred outsourcers for eBusiness processes. They have become integral to the effective operation of Internet-based activities and may account for the largest source of profits from the future growth of eCommerce. They provide digital content or improve its delivery, bring new customers to websites, finance acquisitions, and provide many other services. They include application services providers, content maximizers, wireless service providers, and payment processors.

The key questions addressed in this paper are: What does the exchange landscape look like in the digital economy and what can be inferred from the past to chart the direction and value proposition for the future? This paper is structured as follows: Following this introduction, we will describe the characteristics and differentiators of online marketplaces followed by the evolution of e-marketplaces. In the next section we conduct an in-depth assessment of e-marketplaces and discuss event management and wireless-enabled exchanges. The concluding section tracks the transforming future of exchanges in the digital economy and provides a summary of the more general lessons, in terms of rethinking the exchange relationship in the digital economy.

Online Marketplaces: Characteristics and Differentiators

The possible forms of B2B marketplace are point-to-point connections (extranet), or e-marketplaces (Independent Trading Exchange (ITE)). As shown in figure 1, e-marketplaces can be either one-to-many or many-to-many environments. The key pricing mechanisms are fixed/static pricing (i.e., catalog-type/aggregator sales), and
dynamic/variable pricing which includes both exchanges and auctions where price is negotiated in real time. An auction is one buyer and many sellers, or one seller and many buyers, whereas an exchange is many buyers and many sellers. However, caution is advised since almost everything is calling itself an exchange. Most are simply catalogs where buyers can search across multiple suppliers.
Buyer Auction Exchange
Seller Auction

Traditional Electronic Relationship

Fig. 1: Types of E-Marketplaces

As online marketplaces proliferate, a bewildering array of subvarieties and hybrid exchange models will emerge. Here the term ìmodelî is referred to as a general case through a typological meta model (as illustrated in figure 1) and then we discuss the distinguishing characteristics of models. These variants can be distilled into six
primary flavors of online marketplaces, serving both the B2B and B2C markets [Kaplan and Sawhney 2000; Bakos 1991; Malone et al. 198]:
1) Online Buying Services
2) Auctions
3) Functional Exchanges
4) Vertical Exchanges
5) Industry-Sponsored Exchanges
6) Net Markets

The salient characteristic shared by all six is that they increase the ease with which buyers perform one or many steps of the purchasing process, from product consideration to demand generation through to the transaction itself.
Specifically, online marketplaces deliver:
• Price and product transparency (i.e., the ability to easily locate and compare products and prices).
• Supplier and seller discovery, or the ability to aggregate demand and supply.
• Convenient and reliable transactions, by matching buyer and seller orders, and enabling a wide variety of pricing and market-making mechanisms.
Ultimately, value-added services to enhance the selling process, including logistics, inventory management, financing, forecasting, advertising, catalog management, and more.

Raisinghani & Hanebeck: Rethinking B2B E-Marketplaces and Mobil Commerce
Information Service

Fig. 2: Four dimensions of E-Marketplaces

As shown in figure 2, each type of marketplace differs fundamentally along four axes:
1. Level of information provided (e.g., price, availability, and range of substitutes).
2. Breadth of services offered (e.g., quality assurance, financing credit risk, and customer support).
3. Type of market-making mechanism (i.e., the way transactions occur, such as Dutch auctions,
reverse auctions, real-time transactions, and collaborative negotiations).
4. Enabling technology (e.g., web shopping agents, content management, levels of database, and transaction infrastructure).

Next the taxonomy of online marketplaces, i.e., its six flavors are described in detail below:

Online Buying Services
These services offer support during the awareness and demand generation phases of the selling process. Specifically, they provide price and product transparency (e.g., via shopping agents and comparison sites), buyer and seller discovery (e.g., shopping agents, price aggregators and industry catalogs), and quality recommendation and selection aides (e.g., analyst and review sites). Online buying services are targeted primarily to B2C markets, such as big-ticket consumer retail (e.g., electronics) and one-of-a-kind novelty purchases, as well as small business markets. The individual services that make up online buying services will be absorbed into more mature exchanges and net markets over time. Examples include mySimon, CarPrices.com, and CNET.

Auctions
Auctions are online markets that aggregate demand and match buyers and sellers for a wide range of B2B and B2C products. They employ a variety of market-making mechanisms (e.g., reverse, Dutch, English, and sealed-bid auctions) to meet specific business objectives such as demand aggregation and price maximization. Auctions serve B2B, B2C, and C2C markets, including retail, novelty, maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) purchases, distressed inventory/perishables, spot purchases of commodities and raw materials, and secondhand capital equipment. In the B2B space, auctions are generally targeted to small business customers that lack both purchase power and sophisticated purchasing operations. Examples include Amazon.com (auction) and Mercata (demand aggregator).

Vertical Exchanges
Vertical exchanges are trusted intermediaries that facilitate B2B e-commerce with vertical market and product-specific expertise. They offer real-time pricing and complete product information. Eventually, they are to offer a range of value-added services across an array of vertical markets (e.g., MRO, spot purchases of commodities and raw materials, capital equipment, secondary markets, distressed inventory and perishables, and some direct materials such as semi-finished and engineered products). Examples of vertical exchanges include PaperExchange.com and FreeMarkets.

Functional Exchanges
Functional exchanges are trusted intermediaries that facilitate mostly B2B e-commerce involving process, functional, or channel-specific expertise. These exchanges market an array of primary services or solutions that automate or support specific business functions or processes (such as HR benefits or energy management). Functional exchanges offer real-time pricing, complete product information, and value-added services. Examples include tradehub and Celarix.com.

Industry-Sponsored Exchanges
Limited to B2B commerce, these exchanges have equity participation or sponsorship from major industry buyers and (frequently) technology partners as well. They act as intermediaries to facilitate B2B e-commerce in industries with high concentrations of buying power. Industry-sponsored exchanges offer the same range of services as other exchanges, including real-time pricing, complete product information, and value-added services and information. Over time, these exchanges will accommodate more highly engineered products and direct materials. Examples include COVISINT (the GM-Ford-DaimlerChrysler joint venture) and Globalnet Exchange.

Net Markets
The holy grail of online marketplaces will be Net markets, or federated Net markets. These markets are sophisticated networks and combinations of online marketplaces that will emerge over the next three years. Net markets will develop from the quilting of functional and vertical exchange capabilities and expertise, and the assembly of value-added services across the supply chain (e.g., logistics, inventory, demand forecasting). This type of market will deliver more value-added services and will require high levels of buyer collaboration to conduct complex transactions. Because Net markets will demand the integration of many industry supply chains and the coordination of multiple large and small markets, they will not mature for several years. In the short term, each of these online marketplaces creates value by facilitating the sharing of information about products and pricing, matching many buyers and sellers and improving the ease and speed of transactions. Longer term, value will arise from greater levels of purchase-process integration and through the delivery of value-added information and services.

Vertical hubs with market focus in industries such as plastics, steel, chemicals, paper, telecom and so forth. Vertical Net operates over 40 exchanges that attempt to serve nearly all facets of one niche industry, such as Chemical Online, a chemical industry portal; MachineToolsOnline, a machining industry portal; and Aerospace Online, an aerospace industry portal.

Horizontal or functional hubs may ìhorizontallyî cross several different vertical hubs, while providing vital services to different industries with process focus such as logistics management; maintenance, repair, and operations
(MRO) goods or services procurement; project/capacity/HR/credit management; or auction applications. A private exchange is driven by a single seller or buyer and it typically involves a company automating its own supply chain. The customer base and participation is generally open to suppliers or customers of the company. Companies that have perfected this model include Dell, Cisco, and Wal-Mart. A public exchange is an industry consortium or a third-party dot-com forming an entity (such as Covisint and e-Steel) to aggregate the buying behavior of a group of buyers and their suppliers, with an emphasis on the buy side.

The Evolution of B2B E-Marketplaces
The evolution and diffusion of B2B e-marketplaces has occurred in three distinct waves [Berryman and Heck 2001; Swahney 2001].

In the first wave of B2B, there were approximately 1,000 independent online marketplaces for commodities such as paper and steel (e.g., PaperExchange and e-Steel) to specialized components such as airplane parts (e.g., MyAircraft.com). Unfortunately, most of these independent, fee-based marketplaces such as Aluminium.com inc. and Ventro Corp.ís Chemdex and Promedix were not able to maintain their liquidity since a
few large organizations that generated most of the transaction volume could negotiate with the suppliers and vendors on their own and save the transaction fees. Others, such as Vertical Net Inc. and SciQuest Inc. have transformed their business models from charging fees for online B2B transactions to positioning themselves as B2B software
vendors [Hicks 2001].

PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR THE REST OF THE REPORT:

Rethinking B2B Marketplaces(PDF)

The possible forms of B2B marketplace are point-to-point connections (extranet) … relationships, and decent profits for sellers since unlike B2B marketplaces, …

www.csulb.edu/web/journals/jecr/issues/20022/paper8.pdf

**A few points to remember, we placed the abstract part of this report for detailed definition of b2b and online marketplace. We think you should go download the full report if you want to the full scope of the report. This is a blog, so we chose to shorten, and we are not the authors of this report. Also, we write this blog so we could provide information on the topics, and therefore the links go back to our Online Marketplace. We are partially owned by the barter system of ITEX, there are 24,000 businesses that are part of our b2b trade exchange, so we know a thing or two about building an online marketplace. Thanks for reading all of our blogs and commenting, as always we really, really appreciate your feedback. Best Wishes!

Yahoo Keyword tool is back for SEO?

2008-02-20T20:57:00.000-08:00

To get ideas for a blog post for today, I was reading Seth Godin’s book “The big Moo”, it’s quite good, not just for Internet marketing, but for SEO too. But I really wanted to write about our new Market Place, that has built in SEO so your online businesses get promoted. So much of SEO is rooted in Internet Marketing and vice versa, did also know that the Keywords are almost searched just as much, about 1.8 million searches a month or more. So my idea for writing a blog on SEO was about our Online Marketplace, but I have to write about the Yahoo Keyword Search tool. So do go read the Seth Godin book, he is a marketing genius and quite inspiring. One of the ideas that I got from him, was that comprise often slows down innovation. Leaders and management have to deal with issues of compromise all the time, especially in the era of employee retention. The key is to innovate and be unique, can’t please all of the people all of the time, so go be a rogue cowboy or whatever suits your fancy, go Innovate, but promote your online businesses in our online marketplace.

And this SEO blog you are reading is ranked #42 for “SEO” in Google as of today. Why is that, because so many of your download these wonderful SEO blog templates and give us links back, and visit this blog often. So keep doing that, and we will keep providing you valuable insights and tools to help you promote your businesses.

Here is a tip for the day, some of you know that Yahoo’s Search Marketing Keyword tool became defunct last year. They have launched a new version at Searchmarketing.yahoo.com, check it out and click on the #3 Tab on the right, for the budget tab. Than you can type in your Keywords you want to SEO and it will give you a specific number of how many impressions, clicks and budget you should forecast for. I noticed it two days ago, so I am thankful for the keywords search tool. While the old tool was much better, the fact that it broke and had outdated information, it was of no use at all.

Why do I like the Yahoo SEO search tool better than the Google ad words tool? I don’t, but it does have one fair advantage, it gives you specific information about the keywords you are searching for. For Example on the Yahoo tool, it says SEO is searched for about 596,000 times today, times that by 5 and you get the idea. What is the hottest thing in Internet marketing, SEO, and our blogging website? It’s our Online marketplace in collaboration with ITEX Barter System. We are starting to get ranked in the top 15 in Google for Online Marketplace, b2b marketplace, business marketplace etc. The key to promoting your business is to be found on the search engines and to sell products where the buyers are, such as eBay and Amazon, that is why they are so successful. Yes, this is a weakness of our system, but we are less than 1 month old on this project. The items for sales in the online marketplace has over 5,000 items from 24,000 businesses. Just so you are aware, these items are all barter items for trade or exchange from ITEX members, you can join ITEX and start trading today for no cost. Or you can place your items for sale or list your business in our directory and it will get an amazing level of SEO value and traffic to your website. This marketplace is not just for Barter items, but for all online businesses, suppose it can be for off-line businesses too, but why would an off-line busenesses promote online? Ah, it’s called promotion, duh:-). We built it with Search Engine friendly URL’s, title tags, and a ton of SEO promotion, because we get indexed and rank high many ways. You will find out online marketplace to be ranked in the top 5 within Google and start to get traffic to your site.

We are starting to launch the first three categories of local businesses such as massage therapists, lawyers, dentists, and restaurants. Here are some pictures that we will use within each online marketplace landing pages and categories, enjoy. They are from StockExpert.com and SXC.hu, as some of you know we use them all the time, as Sxc.hu is free for blogging sites and individuals to use. So if you want to promote your online businesses, you certainly want to place a free listing in our online marketplace, but if you want to try Barter check out ITEX.com too!

What is the Google Dance? Must know for SEO and SEO Tools

2008-02-16T11:36:00.000-08:00

What is the Google Dance? It’s nothing more than the different clusters of servers that provide search results. It’s very important to your SEO, as your search rankings very day to day. And, if you have a powerful SEO tools, or use a free seo tools like ours you can check it easily. I am writing about this, as on this Saturday, I am not seeing the main Google server updates with big changes. Google’s 2nd cluster seems to be off, and lately on Friday’s I see Google’s 2nd server cluster go in to effect, while the main servers go do their database updates. On Saturdays, you see the big updates, or a glimpse of it. We see the major updates show up on Wednesday mornings too.

A little bit of surprising thing happened to me today, I found out that our SEO tools at LinkMint.com are ranked #37 for keywords “SEO Tools” and #52 for “Free SEO tools“. We have not been focused on them at all, as our developers who worked on them are not on our team any more, and there is broken feature. We left the links to the site, and I blame my self for not even using it. Our keyword searches are based on Yahoo’s search tool, which I don’t like either. If it used Google’s I would love it. But, I still find it to be one of the best SEO Tools on the market, the best thing about it is the fact that it’s a Free SEO Tool. I just used our Google Dance feature, to check all of our rankings on Google for all of our keywords. It was more accurate than the SEOBook - free SEO Tools, meaning it was more accurate. Sorry, Aaron Wall I was very disappointed this week, when I wanted to use your SEO tools and I could not find our sites in it. We were clearly in Google for search results. Accuracy in ranking results is key for any SEO Tools, I don’t care if it’s Free SEO Tools, they need to be accurate. We still support Aaron Wall’s SEObook as probably the best SEO book on the market. We have not been SEOing the LinkMint.com site either, not for months any way. So natural links do work, but I am sure the links from this page won’t hurt:-).

Our SEO Tools do have issues, they are not 100% accurate, but closer than most, but most importantly, it’s an immediate results are from Google. We will improve on them some day. But we are ranked #1 for Wordpress SEO for this Blog Templates site, so we keep this going too. Our Free SEO Tools business model did not make much sense, we don’t think people pay for SEO Tools, maybe they do, but we see so many free SEO Tools, why bother to charge right? We do need to make money for our online businesses, but we never really wanted to be a SEO Tools vendor. We might rethink this strategy, but for now we are focused on our b2b marketplace, and online marketplace in concert with our Barter company ITEX. By the way, we have been SEOing their website for the keywords of Barter and Bartering and we got them in the top 10 in Google within 30 days. I guess we are good at SEO, even though we never really wanted to be a SEO tools provider or SEO consultants.

As far as my Online Marketplace blog of yesterday, Some of you know that I am not a fan of the Amazon Web Store tool, I do want to say that I do know a lot of people there, and I do support the company. I use to love the company, It’s just that last fall, I had some bad experiences, and too many disappointments with them. I don’t want to rip on a company, and I think if there are bad experiences I had, I do want to share with people about alternatives. I think it’s best to provide positive solutions. So I want to say to all of my friends who work at Amazon I do like you, but I think people should have their online businesses on Yahoo, eBay or our online marketplace when it’s fully launched at MyTypes.com/marketplace.

I do ask that some of you please check out our SEO tools, they are one of the best free seo tools on the market, and it’s an easy signup, with just your email. Would any of you pay for any SEO Tools? If yes, how much, only a monthly basis? If we get enough of a response, we might work on making them better and help provide you all 24 features. They really are worth while and good for SEO consultants too!

SEO is #4 for Top Technologies for Small Businesses

2008-02-14T13:18:00.000-08:00

Before we start telling you about these top 5 technologies, I want to make it clear these are my opinion, and not based on research institute of small business administration or the US Chamber of commerce. Last week I read the state of the small business report from the US Chamber published recently, and it was too long and not helpful. I think small businesses like all businesses have similar challenges of efficiency, lack of financial resources, lack of people resources and lack of time. If technology could help them, they would love to use it, but if it’s not easy to use, they will not! We think every one should use technology to help them, not just online businesses.

They are not usually very tech savvy, and don’t have huge corporate arms training them on the latest version of Powerpoint, word or the sales force automation tools. If you don’t know this, large corporations spend billions of dollars a year training their employees on technology tools. In my professional opinion small businesses have a major disadvantage here. I use to work for Gartner Group’s learning division where I have 2 years of experience in the online business and corporate technology training area with large and small organizations. Bottom line is that today, small businesses can compete with large companies because of simple technology initiatives and tools available. You no longer need to work for a large company to have similar online tools, or be an online business. Look at Google, they just announced a suite of applications for small businesses, read the Boston Herald articled linked at the end of this blog. But here are the top 5 technology tools all small businesses should utilize to grow, why not use the advantages that online businesses use?

1. Mobile email device, such as a blackberry is a must. You shouldn’t have to go back to your computer and go check email, you should be busy spending time with your customers, employees, and suppliers. Do not check email back at the computer, and waste your time. Instead Save time, by using a blackberry or something similar, check email and send email from any where any time. I am a blackberry user of over 7 years now, there is nothing better, yes I have tried Plam and Treo products. It’s important to remember, You don’t have to check your email all the time, or respond to all of your emails all at once. Have some self control folks! You should be out and about doing your business, and check it when you have a moment. Do not set it to buzz every time you get an email. Control your time, save time, and be connected, not be a mess. There is no better tool for small businesses or actually any online business or not, than a mobile email via blackberry.
2. Having a business blog is a must! And you should be using a free business blogging system such as Blogger.com, Wordpress.com or MyTypes.com, as those blogs get indexed by Google every day. What does that mean, and Why you say? This whole website and company is based on blogging, and we wanted to develop a business blogging platform that had built in SEO for you. Blogs are the #1 way to promote your businesses on line, because search engines such as Google consider them news, you need to blog about your specific products and services and generally what is going on about your businesses regularly.

3. You need a website ( or blog site ) with a custom Domain, that has your professional representation with a custom design for you. First thing we recommend is that if you have the money, you hire a custom html web designer and have it done. Next best thing is for you to find a industry based solution, one with templates already built in for you. For example in the real estate or mortgage industry there are specific solutions, and there is so much specific content and application tools, that one really has to consider those solutions first. Next for a blogsite, in addition to your website or within your URL. For example: blog.MyWebsite.com, Great place to start is Wordpress.com or Wordpress.org. Ask your tech person for help, if they don’t know about these tools, have them take a look for find another tech person.

To find a tech person, If your needs are custom and complex you may want to look at Joomla.org or Drupal.org to find a great solution. These systems have thousands of programmers that know them very well, and they are totally free to use, you don’t have to pay in licensing fees at all, or give them your code. Chances are you are not very technical, so go to one of those communities websites and hire a programmer for about $2k or less you should get a full Joomla or drupal based site custom designed for you. All of the tools such as blogs, templates, shopping cart, and online business needs should be there for you. Best of all they are free, this new wave of Open Source technologies really is changing the world.

4. Learn about SEO (which stands for Search Engine Optimization), Online business marketing. It’s not just about mail marketing with news letters, SEO, blogs and Google Adwords based Search Engine Marketing are key to help you target key customers. Again there are many great resources on the web, including our SEO blogs and main blogging and SEO blogs coaching areas from the front page of our website at MyTypes.com.

5. Join an online businesses community such as a Barter system at ITEX.com. Why should small businesses join any online business communities, especially active one’s like Barter networks? No man is an island, neither is a women, or are any businesses. We all need each other to succeed, businesses need customers, suppliers, employees, not just owners:-). There are number of challenges and situations that you may want to get advice on. The chances are there are owners of businesses out there that have dealt with those issues, and often times they want to help you. You may have some advice that may help them, this is what online businesses communities do in an efficient time saving way. Barter services company like ITEX also have an online marketplace, such as eBay. eBay has been immensely popular due to it’s online business community of checks and balances of buyers and sellers. It almost forces you to have references, and that gives businesses credibility, and makes them more successful.

Bonus technology advice, you probably use Quick books to manage your books via your accountant already. If not, you should have a book keeper accountant do that, but you should use the online version of QuickBooks, not just the desktop. This way, your accountant can work remotely, yes you can just mail them your receipts, save time, save hassle!

Technology usage to grow your small businesses is not just about being efficient, it’s about saving you time so that you can spend it with your clients, employees, friends and family. Remember relationships are usually the most important things in life, especially the friends and family kind. If you treat your customers and employees like family, which most successful businesses do, you will succeed. And, our technology advice above is catered to help you do just that. Yes you can!

Here is Google’s free applications article promised earlier:

Google releases new online software for businesses in latest swipe at Microsoft - BostonHerald.com

How to Attract profitable customers?

2008-01-28T22:47:00.000-08:00

This may be the most important question any business has to answer. But in my opinion it’s not enough, it’s important to have profitable customers. Some of you SEO for clients, some of those clients I am sure you wish you could fire? And if you had enough profitable clients, you probably would. I learned that lesson long time ago when I worked for a large company, but as a small business owner, it’s been hard for me to deal with. But, as I have fired a client or two, the key is to not worry about firing bad clients. It’s getting enough profitable customers, so you have a successful business. How do you do that? Well SEO is a great way, probably one of the best ways, so is Barter, but we are biased. As, we seek active buyers as SEO consultants. We never push via email or calling or bothering people, read the Barter article below, but here are my 5 points on attracting profitable clients:

1. Make sure you have more than enough clients, this will always help you price high, as you will never ever be desperate, easier said than done. But, SEO well, Design well, and sell, sell, sell, or advertise, advertise, advertise.

2. Charge a lot, be known as the best, always charge a lot, this will make sure you will make money, and take care of your clients.

3. SEO, well Duh, but SEO for specific keywords, research your keywords well maybe even do some Google Adwords SEM.

4. Get more customers through testimonials, provide information, join an online marketplace like eBay it almost requires you to get Testimonials, focus on one to many marketing not just one-on-one, this will drop your cost of sales.

5. Automate your selling process, join eBay, didn’t we already say that, well we like eBay! Not the other Seattle online marketplace, starts with an A–they are terrible and too expensive. These marketplaces will promote your products, Oh yeah blog on MyTypes.com and Blogger, oh on Wordpress.com too..Blogging as you know is the #1 key to online marketplaces right now, why, they all want to build communities, even FaceBook!

As some of you know that this small business blogs and blogging company recently partnered with ITEX, a Barter system. We are also helping to create an online marketplace for them/us to help small businesses sell and buy products on line. Well to my SEO surprise we got ranked #54 for online marketplace, in our first 2 weeks of focusing on this wonderful keyword, well maybe 3. I love the speed of our SEO, but I have been waiting for this for a while. Some times we have to be patient, as the results do come, especially with very competitive keywords. Our goal for the online marketplace is not just to help b2b companies but to help them create the best online marketplaces and sell more goods and services, in an easy and beautiful system. Well more on this online marketplace and small business community of ITEX later, here is the blog and an article on How a Barter System can help you attract more customers. It’s all about exposure isn’t it!

“Barter system can help attract new customers:”

I wrote a blog article earlier on how Barter can help you increase profitable sales. it got erased, we are moving servers and databases today. Upgrading for all the increased traffic that we have been getting. Increasing your profitable sales can happen, when you follow the secrets of the successful small businesses. They know that no matter what, they have to build a reputation that their customers adore and their friends recommend their small businesses. The article below shows how a professional Barter network can help you attract new customers. It’s an old article, but barter has been around for centuries, and it’s as old as business it self. By the way, the article mentions a Barter company called Bxi, you may be wondering what happened to Bxi, well Bxi is part of the ITEX barter company. The key to any barter network is the size of it’s business marketplace and the number of barter items available. If you check out our online marketplace by going to our new marketplace, you will love it. But, let’s get you to read the article on how to attract new customers first. We will discuss online marketplaces and barter items you can check by visiting our marketplace by clicking here.

Bartering system can help attract new customers - Pacific Business News Honolulu:

SEO and blogging

2008-01-25T17:42:00.000-08:00

Here are top 10 reasons why blogging is the best for SEO and promoting your businesses, from our My Life On A Pier series of small business tips blog:

In case some of your are new to this series of blogs, we are comparing being on a pier to being out on a Limb (*where we are out on our own, taking risks, waiting for our ship to come in, trying to catch fishes, basically being an Entrepreneur). When I am out on a Pier, I am looking out, waiting to catch a boat, usually a fairy, I do live in Seattle:-). So this tip is about SEO blogs and Blogging, why do we do, how you can do it, and how to best promote your businesses. So here are top 10 reasons why all businesses should be blogging and must have blogs for SEO!

1. Blogging is a great way promote your message, and your businesses. Especially for SEO, as Search engines love blogs content as each post has a time stamp on it.

2. Blogging and blogs help you add content to your website easily, most blogs are very easy to use, and websites are very hard to add content too.

3. Blogging regularly adds up-to-date information about your products, your supplies, your customer testimonials, or whatever you want to communicate.

4. Blogs are the best way to create community around your store, your marketplace, and your customer base.

5. People can comment on your blogs, unlike your comments, and you can control your comments, which is better than forums.

6. Make it multi-media, most if not all blogging platforms all you to add photos to your blogs, and It’s very easy to add videos from YouTube etc.

7. Blogging platforms such as Wordpress, Typepad and Blogger all have the best Site Structure and follow W3c standards. As mentioned before many times, Site Structure is the most important first step for SEO.

8. Blogging tools have many many features to enhance the web experience for users, which most companies cannot develop on their own.

9. Blogging platforms such as Wordpress which are Open Source, usually have an amazing number of blog templates available for free and for purchase. We are talking thousands here folks, and the can help you personalize your website easily.

10. Blogging is like journaling and it’s fun, most people who blog often love it! The community of bloggers is an amazing force that is not only driving our businesses, but our political campaigns and decisions. The blogsphere and blogs are the #1 tool for most web 2.0 applications, and Social networks.

***As always this blog is sponsored by our small business community of ITEX, the Bartering System and b2bmarketplace. Also, Comfortzone Infrared Heaters which are better than most Eden Pure Heaters, and lastly Cross Jewelry by LoveRelic.com. And as always our true passion from small business blogs of MyTypes.com blogging platform.

My Life On A Pier: #3 being Nice, by Vipin Singh of MyTypes.com

2008-01-22T17:26:00.000-08:00

This is one of my main blogs to write every day, so if you happen to see it, read why I started this series of inspirational blogs!

My Life On A Pier: #1 Key to Success “being Nice” by Vipin Singh of MyTypes.com

January 22nd, 2008 at 03:25 pm by Admin in small business blogs

I wrote this blog yesterday, so this one is a little older, the one for today will come out tonight. I don’t know how to catalog these small business inspirational blogs, but I guess since we are the blogging people, we will figure this out.

My Life On A Pier: #1 Key to success–being Nice, by Vipin Singh of MyTypes.com

There is nothing worse than a whining looser, or an ungracious winner. While I love and appreciate the under dog, as I rooted for the Giants yesterday, I am always looking for a champion with gracious attitude. I do find that so many of the winners actually are nice and grateful people. In my experience of watching almost all championship matches, I have seen many more nice people than mean and selfish whiners I will call them.

Why is it important to be a nice person, that is being genuienly kind, rather than being a politically correct polite person. Some of you know that I live in Seattle, a place I call very polite, but not necessarily nice. People from other parts of the country, usually comment on this Seattle trait. Jill my wife and I were shocked at the lack of kindness, and often selfish/self centeredness of this rainy depressed city. We came from Minnesota, a place known for it’s compassion and kind nature. The Minnesota nice is actually a genuine caring kind, and a lot of people from Minnesota and Wisconsin have settled here, so there is plenty of kindness.

You see being nice does not mean being a push over at all. Some times being nice actually requires having courage enough to do the right thing, and be a little angry, but in a compassionate way. So be honest, be kind, conflict is ok, but try to be graceful and kind. Being nice means often to do the compassionate unselfish thing. I find that no great person ever succeeded alone, especially in business and politics. We need each other, especially if we are going to accomplish something significant. Usually successful people want to help others, and they are looking for the leaders of tomorrow to nurture and show the way. Being nice to all people is just One Of The Most Important Ways to get their attention.

Go ahead be nice on your way to the Top, you will make more friends on the way there, to party with!

**As always this small business blog is brought to you by the kind folks who choose to help us pay our bills, the cross rings folks of Designer Jewelry @LoveRelic.com, the Online Marketplace of the bartering system ITEX.com and lastly the folks at Comfortzone Infrared Heaters, which are significantly better than Edenpure Heaters.

Posted by Admin in small business blogs

To SEO you just have to keep blogging

2008-01-15T16:41:00.000-08:00

What is the SEO truth #1, well it's getting quality contextual links, that is why we recommend blogging so much, especially for small business marketing, which is the easiest thing you can do to promote your business.

Here is a blog I wrote on our other blog.

The best things in life..mean business

Are not usually free, but freedom to think what you want and be is often one of the most desirable things, especially if we don't have it. I was looking to write some thing substantial about small business and or vacation rental software or cross jewelry and cross rings by LoveRelic.com, all of our favorite clients. Well, why don't I just add the Comfortzone Infrared Heaters, which are better than edenpure heaters. As I really want to help to SEO our blogging clients, with our MyTypes.com small business blogs, the most important aspect of marketing in my opinion. I don't know why I started to write about free things, I just wanted to start blogging about what would make me feel happy tonight, I guess being productive is what makes me happy, besides hanging out with my family.

Not that I am depressed or anything, I just wanted to write about feeling better or figuring out what I should do rest of the evening. I watched football earlier today, walked for my exercise prior to that and spent time with my family. Life is good, but it's only 7pm on Sunday, the Australian Open is on, but I don't want to watch TV, i would rather be traveling to Australia or some other place, hopefully my friends at vacation rental software will allow me too. So I started to write on this blackberry. Oh if you are a small business person, well business person, you really should have a blackberry, why you ask? I don't care how long it takes you to get use to it, but email and phone are the two most important small business tools, and a blackberry combines them in to it. This tool will also save you time, and add quality to your life, by freeing you from your computer. Imagine you can follow up on your email from any where, instead ofhaving to be stuck in your office.

I want to feel productive, what is this uneasiness that I have about not doing anything. I mean, tomorrow is Monday, and I will be going to work at bartering company ITEX, surely will have enough time to work there. It's a big week at work, I have a presentation I will be doing to come up with the best solutions for small business, especially my recommendations to grow registerations and signups for ITEX barter network to grow our small business online marketplace. This includes building business community features to either MyTypes or ITEX, I think it is easier easier to build any features. But the key is to know, what small business owners want and provide it to them, and hopefully for free.

To provide the best online services to a small business we have to understand their issues. What are the most important issues they face, and what specifically can we help them with? I am sure they face many issues such as legal, administrative, accounting, marketing and sales. You can read more small business help issues and solutions on our new SBA and small business blog at http://sba-smallbusiness.blogspot.com

SEO your blogs, but you might loose your rankings for no reason

2008-01-12T16:49:00.000-08:00

Some times life throws us a few twists, don't panic though. Just like that Google and the search engines can throw you a twist to. You can go from #7 to #101 for a keyword, and still stay #9 to the similar keywords. So what is the SEO truth in this situation? My guess is stuff happens, and some times there are no reasons? Anyone have any ideas?

Here is a launch of our subject matter site at hand. Yes, I am pumping it up for the keyword "Cross Jewelry", that was the keyword that we lost our rankings on this week. It totally baffles me.

January 11th, 2008 at 09:03 pm by Admin in Silver Jewelry

Our friends at LoveRelic.com have just launched the cross jewelry collection! What does that mean you say? Well, it actually means the first product of this designer jewelry collection the cross rings are ready for sale. Jill Brahms is such an awesome silver jewelry designer, and I think her blog is going to get huge accolades.

Designer Silver Jewelry Sighting: Sharon Stone

Author: Loverelic January 4th, 2008

Earlier this week, Sharon Stone was spotted donning a great example of everyday silver cross jewelry at the Lakers vs. Boston Celtics game. We love her casual silver cross necklace. It looks like it is heavily oxidized (blackened) silver. This process usually involves taking the silver piece and heating it up with a torch to oxidize the metal. The end result is that the normally very white sterling silver turns darker, which basically speeds up the tarnishing process. There are other ways to oxidize silver, such as painting Fungicide directly on the silver. Yes, the kind people use on plants. Don’t try this at home, kids.

Sharon has had a thing for cross jewelry lately, and she has been spotted all over with them, particularly the cross necklaces.

We at LoveRelic are very excited to be debuting our new line of silver cross necklaces soon. We promise, they are unlike anything you have ever seen!

SEO truth, be smart, develop a community

2008-01-07T20:35:00.000-08:00

Just like this article says don't forget to blog often, but remember business is an old fashion deal. Be smart with your use of keywords, learn about your website users behaviors, help your clients understand the value of SEO and social networking and blogging.

Not every small business has or needs a website

Remember just because you are techy, doesn’t mean every one else is. A lot, I would say the majority of the business about 60% or more happens without any online interaction or websites at all. How can that be? I am not going to sit here an explain that, but my friend Steve who we quote below mentioned to me today that 15% of all transaction of Walmart are all Cash only, and did you know that 20% of American’s don’t have bank accounts? I am willing to bet that 60% of all small business don’t have a website? Most business happens the old fashioned way, hard work and mouth to mouth and in person, so make sure you remember that when you want to work smarter online. People like interaction and communications, that is why Social networking is such a big phenomenon.

I recently started writing more focused blogs not just on SEO or blogging and Internet Marketing 2.0. A few months ago, I started to write about small business marketing, as we have been focused on business blogs and small business blogs. Why? When we created MyTypes.com blogging platform,

my wife asked me “What is a blog?”. I realized back than, that most small business marketing people don’t know about SEO, fact is, they didn’t even know about blogging. Most successful small business people or most people in any major business community,

don’t get the connection of SEO and Blogging. So that is why the article below on small business marketing makes sense to print here not just in our small business blogs section. Enjoy the blog below, it does make sense, and bartering may be new to some of you folks but it’s been around professionally for a long time.

Barter, blogs, and websites for small businesses?

January 7th, 2008 at 08:28 pm by Admin in Barter Items, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Networks

Why do small businesses barter? That is the ultimate question, and which we got the answer from Steve White the CEO of ITEX, the Bartering site, barter network and trade exchange with 24,000 small businesses as it members. The first reason he said is that they join a professional trading community, which is interested in growing their business. Second is that they instantly get exposure to the members via the online marketplace of members barter items listings and membership directory. Third, they save cash and get a currency that helps them save their cash and grow their small business. Now we know that to get maximum exposure to your barter items, the small business needs to join a large trade exchange or barter network, and Steve reminds us that ITEX is the largest Barter Network in the US and Canada. After talking with Steve for a few minutes you will quickly realize that he is focused man with a lot of enthusiasm and passion. And, you understand that he is determined to help small business people. Steve said today the passion comes from the desire to help people live the life of their dreams.

I heard very similar comments from a very successful business person last year, this guy is worth well over $100M and helped to start companies as large as Starbucks ( Starbucks was a small business by the way at some point wasn’t it? ). Steve mentioned that having a million members is just not enough, we have to help small business succeed. I couldn’t agree any more, and it’s not just about barter and trade exchanges, it’s our goal to create the world’s most successful small business community. That is why since our first week of blogging, we have said “Blogcast your brand”, and as much as possible we want to be about free blogs, business blogs, and small business marketing. It just happens that ITEX is in the Bartering business, and it’s barter network has the largest collection of barter items in the world.

So what is the goal of our small business blogs? To help you provide small business marketing help, internet marketing help, Seo Blogs help, and blogging tips to help you rank high on search engines and gain more business. That is why we spend so much of our time talking about SEO (Search Engine Optimization–getting ranked high on Google), and Blogs and blogging with the proper keywords. There is no better way to help you promote your business than to help you with blogging tips and that is why on the front page of our site we have so many blogging and seo coaching tips. I want to hammer this message home, again and again and again, it’s real simple blogging = SEO = Higher rankings on Google and means more customers for your small business.

So what is the #1 thing we can help small business with? We can help them with getting more customers!

How do we do that?

We do this via our free blogs and blogging platform @ MyTypes.com which has SEO built in to it. Well, we also help you with Bartering and help you sell you barter items in our barter online marketplace at ITEX which has 24,000 small business members in it’s small business community.

Do we help you save cash, and reduce costs? We at MyTypes.com provide free blogs, all you have to do is just keep blogging. ITEX does a better job of this because of Bartering and it’s ability to provide you a cashless marketplace. Thanks all and stay tuned, small business help is coming your way!

Posted by Vipin in Barter Items, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Networks

Site structure is paramount to your SEO success

2008-01-03T21:48:00.000-08:00

Why is site structure important to SEO?

As I have mentioned before, the most important base for SEOing any site or blog is site structure. It actually can also help you get the most contextual links, without even trying. Here is a real life example. We are just in the process of helping to SEO a very popular small business cashless marketplace. It’s a Barter network of 24,00 small businesses with many more thousands of barter items in it’s trading community. It’s a trading community where cash is not required, but it’s a secure private business network that is professionally managed. Why am I mentioning so much about the details, well they have at least 24,000 web pages, and they could all be very valuable link inventory. This asset needs to be indexed by search engine friendly URL’s, title tags, description tags, content keywords, and footer text, all of them can be done by a proper site structure.

Guess what folks, you already know that, as you are probably big fans of Wordpress, and it’s incredible SEO site structure capabilities. Do you have any idea what 24,000 contextual links will do for your SEO rankings? If you could get 24,000 pages worth of links, you would get top Google rankings for sure, pretty much for any category. But, guess what in this case, these pages are not being indexed properly by Google. Don’t worry we will soon fix, that through Mod Rewrite, SEF, and proper Title Tags and Descripton tags, etc. I wrote this blog earlier today, on my small business blogs, really folks Barter works, I think we might be getting a client, and we have only joined the ITEX bartering network for 2 days. Wow!

Barter Network, Trade Exchange helps small business
January 3rd, 2008 at 04:10 pm by Admin in Barter Items, Small Business Marketing

How can a Barter Network and a trade exchange help small business achieve success? Bartering has been around for a long time, and a Barter Network such as ITEX with thousands of Barter Items and a Trade Exchange community can help any small business by Increasing sales and increasing cash flow. How? Read on, as you already know we have been talking about Barter and online marketplaces such as ITEX barter network for a couple of weeks. We want to hear from you about your small business success stories, if you have tried Barter or not. Or if you ever belonged to a business networking group such as Business Networking Intl. or La tip.

What are you doing ot increase your small business sales and to reduce your small business marketing costs? We also want to hear about any other ideas for your online marketplace ideas any barter items that you would like to see more of or anything else you have in mind as a small business owner.

Here is a press release from ITEX CEO Steve White about the value his trade exchange provides small businesses. I am going to add my comments in italics and reinforce some main points.

Press Release

Source: ITEX Corporation

A Message From the Chairman of ITEX Corporation
Thursday December 6, 9:00 am ET

BELLEVUE, Wash., Dec. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — ITEX Corporation (OTC Bulletin Board: ITEX - News), The Membership Trading Community(SM), a leading marketplace for cashless business transactions in North America, today released a letter from Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Steven White to shareholders reporting on 2007 achievements and looking ahead to the Company’s future.

                    THE YEAR IN REVIEW AND A LOOK FORWARD

   December 6, 2007

DEAR VALUED SHAREHOLDERS:

I am pleased to report that ITEX has continued to maintain its solid record of performance. Today, I will summarize our fiscal 2007 achievements, our strengths and challenges, and the steps we are taking to move the company forward.

What we do

For 25 years we have helped our members attract new & small business through our trading business community. Our identity is encapsulated in our slogan: “ITEX, The Membership Trading business Community(SM) is a leading marketplace for cashless business transactions across North America.” We generate revenue by charging members percentage-based transaction fees and subscription fees. These two revenue streams generated 99% of our $14 million in revenue last year.

Initiatives

Every day, we work to grow our business and maintain a profitable marketplace that assists businesses in becoming more successful. As our members succeed, they are motivated to transact more business and refer new members to our trading community.

This past year we endeavored to more clearly refine what we do, improve our processing methods, and attract more business. Surveys and focus groups provided valuable insight into the needs, wants and expectations of the small business owner: our core customer. We sharpened our message to existing and potential members. We analyzed our value proposition and determined we could offer more. New revenue streams were explored and the groundwork laid to start testing our ideas.

As a result of our efforts this year, our messaging to existing and potential members is more concise, our marketing material and website has been redesigned, and we introduced the Executive Privileges Program. I wonder if there will be any initiatives to help grow small businesses, by building a more powerful online business community.

We seek to expand our presence in the small business services sector and accelerate the velocity of transactions in our trading online business community. In a challenging national economy, we are convinced small businesses can benefit even more from the valuable services we provide. We believe a credible and effective online marketplace for small business is still one of the most needed, it certainly an area deficient within the small business marketing segment.

Strengths

ITEX has three primary strengths — our 24,000 member business base, our proprietary payment processing and trading platform (”Trading Platform”) and our ability to manage our capital and the operations of our business efficiently and profitably.

Our Trading Community has grown more than 50% in the last 30 months. We believe the relationship with our member base is underused and undervalued, but is a significant asset with tremendous potential. To enhance this asset, additional partnerships and services are being explored. Hello, does an online marketplace, and an online business community, of benefit to any one in small business marketing?

Our Trading Platform provides excellent tools for our members, our best franchises network and our corporate staff, and benefits from a steady stream of enhancements and support. This platform can be expanded to attract many payment processing or private currency systems. In the future we may license our Trading Platform to other businesses to manage their private, closed-loop business models. We do not anticipate licensing the Platform to competitive barter exchanges, rather to the growing business opportunity of cashless, private enterprise transactions.

We manage our capital efficiently and continue to generate strong cash flow. Our cash flow in 2007 exceeded $2.5 million. We retired the acquisition debt that originated late in fiscal 2005, funded a new acquisition we completed August 1, 2007, and repurchased and retired shares of common stock. Both acquisitions increased our member base and our revenues, and are expected to contribute to net income. In the near term, we plan to use our capital to either pay off the recent acquisition, buy back more shares at an opportunistic price or fund new acquisitions.

In addition to our cash revenue streams, we generated more than $4 million ITEX dollars in fiscal 2007 and expect to generate more than $5 million in fiscal 2008. The ITEX dollars were primarily used as revenue share and sales incentives with franchisees, and for incentives for existing members. This year we will utilize some of ITEX dollars to offset cash expenses and provide opportunities to enhance our trading community.

Challenges

Our primary objective is to increase member count and generate broader acceptance by the small business sector. Although our revenue has grown 34% and member count by 50% since 2003, this growth has occurred primarily through acquisitions. We are focusing on organic growth, which will help continue our overall successful track record. I am pleased to report we are seeing signs of this growth in the first fiscal quarter of 2008.

    Achievements in the past fiscal year include:
   -- Strong profits, allowing us to realize a sizeable tax benefit
   -- Introduction of Executive Privilege Program
   -- Launch of free online member registration
   -- Placement of educational videos on website - useful for members and
      prospects

A look towards our future

In the almost five years since I began serving as Chairman and CEO, we have overcome several hurdles and mended legacies inherited from the past. I am proud and grateful for the support that has been afforded me by shareholders, our staff and our broker offices. We continue to build a stronger company and find ways to grow and prosper. And, yes a big thanks to all of our small business members in our marketplace and business community!

Many have fore casted onerous economic conditions for the coming year. During times such as these, our Trading Community can flourish as businesses utilize services to not only survive, but prosper as we assist them in selling their goods and services. There is a dynamic energy in our Trading Community that keeps commerce rolling, their ITEX dollars working and their calendars full.

It is our mission to put ITEX on the financial map and to see its greatness achieved. Whether by organic growth or further acquisitions, or both, we will strive to become an expanding force that will benefit our trading community members, assist our franchisees and increase value for our shareholders. Being successful in business requires a lot of endurance, tenacity and resolve, not to mention constant care for your clients, in our case small business barter network. We are resolute in continuing our efforts to maintain your trust and confidence.

On behalf of ITEX Barter Trading Community, I would like to thank our diligent employees; the best franchise network (and their staff), whose dedication and drive is a vital component in our success; our small business members, to whom we strive to deliver value and service; and our valued stockholders for your continuing support and interest.

    Sincerely yours,

   Steven White
   Chairman of the Board
   Chief Executive Officer

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties concerning our expected performance (as described without limitation in the quotations from current management in this release) and comments within the safe harbor provisions established under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted and reported results should not be considered as an indication of our future performance. We believe that these potential risks and uncertainties include, without limitation: the continuing development of successful marketing strategies for our concepts; our ability to increase revenues and sustain profitability; the availability of adequate working capital; our dependence both on key personnel and our franchise network; and the effect of changes in the overall economy and in technology. Statements in this release should be evaluated in light of these factors. These risk factors and other important factors that could affect our business and financial results are discussed in our periodic reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Forms 10-KSB and Forms 10-QSB, which are available at http://www.sec.gov., including under the caption, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.” All information set forth in this release is as of December 6, 2007, and ITEX undertakes no duty to update this information.

For more information, please visit http://www.itex.com

**This News Release was modified with minor comments in “ITALICS” for the purposes of this small business blog!

Spending time with your keywords?

2007-12-31T23:30:00.000-08:00

I wrote this blog, while being on the couch all day watching the Travel channel. Not a bad life, but I was certainly down and out with the Flu. Hopefully you all had a better day. This year is going to be much better than last, so many things were up in the air last year. We certainly know what we are doing now, and have specific goals for 2008, at least for the first 3 months. Little by little, a little train engine that could, will make it up the hill. For those of you trying to achieve a goal, don’t give up, don’t ever give up. Just find a way, no matter what you have to do, keep the goal in sight. I thank my dear friends at RentExpert.com the Vacation Rental Software people and ITEX the Barter Network for their support and help. Ok, I want to thank the Comfortzone Infrared Heaters people and LoveRelic.com silver jewelry people too, thanks all!

I find my self spending more time analyzing keywords to SEO my blog or one of our friends and clients websites, way more than I ever thought. Is this what my life in 2007 has come to? I do this by visiting adwords.google.com on a weekly or daily basis, way too much. How much time will you spend on analyzing keywords to SEO your favorite blog or website? Well, that depends on your intentions and professional goals of being an Internet Marketing person. The world of SEO has changed a lot, Overture for keywords is dead, it died in 2007, their system showed errors for weeks, it had in accurate data going back to Jan. 07 for months at a time.

No worries, Google is the key and top search rankings, every one knows that. And if you use any keyword SEO tool, please, please, make sure it uses the Google Adwords keyword API’s (tech speak for Google technology and data). It’s free, but it’s not perfect either, you have to use acronyms, thesauruses, and a dictionary for a comprehensive research. If you want to be a smart SEO, you have to look for differences in key word search volumes, and do your home work. The best way to figure out keyword search volume is to compare those bars. What you don’t know about these Google traffic Bars, have you been to adwords.Google.com yet, and done a keyword search yet? Do this first, but to get better results you have to actually buy Google ads for top 10-20 keywords. Why do I limit it to top 10 keywords? As a blogging guru and SEO expert, you have to manage things, and after 20 of any thing, it gets very hard. To start out any project, I actually recommend to go with 5 to 10 keywords tops. Focus is the key to achieving success in top rankings and promoting your business, not just in life.

No blog written on Dec. 31st is complete without mention of a New Year coming upon us. Yes, what a year it has been. We started 2007 with SEO‘ing for keywords “Real Estate IDX”, guess who is #1 on those keywords? Yes it’s us, and our success started with a top 10 result for Seattle real estate website UrbanTango.com back in 2004. That forced me to learn about SEO way back in 2003, because I paid some schmuck $300/month to get my site ranked on search engines, and I couldn’t even find UrbanTango.com, any where in Google. Forget about finding it under any keywords for “Seattle Real Estate“. This actually started my passion for SEO and back in to technology. My passion for marketing and for high rankings on Google drove me to many late nights reading and applying. Finally the day arrived when UrbanTango.com was ranked in the top 10 on Google for “Seattle Real Estate” and “Seattle Real Estate agents“. This feat, was already achieved with MSN and Yahoo months ago, but Google was the goal, and since those days in 2003, I have been following and learning everything I can about SEO and top rankings. This has led me to start promoting our vacation rental software and online booking software site Blog.RentExpert.com and ITEX the Trade Exchange Network and Barter network for small business success.

We actually got out of real estate websites business back in May/June 2007, we were more passionate about blogging and blogcasting (which we called SEO and promoting your brand with Blogs). We are so thank ful, as we had no idea that the Housing bubble was going to pop this big. Thank God we are no longer selling software and services in the Seattle Real Estate or any real estate websites business. We have kept our websites around just for history’s sake, and we never thought we would get in to SEO as a service providers. But now days, we actually have SEO Clients, they are mostly friends who have businesses, we never wanted SEO clients. We have just been trying to promote our own properties, MyTypes.com for blogging, Free Blogs, GreenIsBetter.org for Infrared heaters, and MyTypes.com/Jewelry for our Cross Jewelry. Now I am an SEO for hire I guess, anything to continue our passion for blogging and to create community blogs.

That is why as a serious SEO, I check and recheck keywords, because I have a lot riding on this. Our clients are not just clients, they are our friends and our own small business blogs. I think any internet marketing 2.0 person today, checks and constantly analyzes his/her keywords quite often. Will you do it enough? You should, especially as you get ranked in the top 10 of your choice keywords to grow your business.

As always we thank our friends at ITEX Barter and Trade Exchange Network, LoveRelic.com for Cross Jewelry, and ComfortZone Infrared heaters which are better than any Edenpure Heater. We also have to thank our friends from Blog.RentExpert.com, they provide Vacation rental software that has the most comprehensive features of any online booking software. But this is not just our humble opinion, check them out, thanks for supporting this blog and our financial supporters.