Social Networking can be a pain.  I mean, you have a blog, you have a twitter account, Facebook, LinkedIn, and a myriad of other accounts.  There are tools out there to allow you to aggregate all of the data but what about syndication?

Well, that is the brilliance of RSS.  Here’s a quick video about RSS feeds and what they are:

Here are 2 tools that will help you tie your social networks together:

1. Wordpress just announced a LinkedIn plugin.  Now, you can link up your Wordpress blog to LinkedIn so anything you post on your Wordpress blog will automatically be syndicated to LinkedIn.

Here is a quick video:

There are also a few others tools out there to keep you connected.

2. Here is a tool for connecting Wordpress to twitter…as you post on your blog, this little plugin can automatically create a tinyurl and post it to your twitter feed. Which can then be broadcast via text messaging, etc.

Click here for a twitter plugin for wordpress with tinyurl API support.  It sounds tough to install, but it’s easy

Thanks to OpenSocial…Social Networks are merging together…but it’s also another way for Google to track you down.

A piece of interesting data so you can see how Search Engines interact with one another.

I ran across a cool tool that I wanted to share with you guys:

It’s a little button you put on your site that someone can click on and share your site with their friends and colleagues.  Pretty easy to install as well.

Basic Features:

» Easy Bookmarking & Sharing
» Spreads Your Content
» Removes Clutter
» Fast and Reliable
» Easily Customizable
» For Websites and Blogs
» Completely Free
» Customizable (with your logo, service list, colors, etc.)

Get free statistics about how your content is shared and spread by your users:

» Most Popular Content
» Where Your Content is Sent
» Trends Over Time
» Geographic Breakdown

It’s easy enough for a beginnier and flexible enough for a pro.  Try it out.

Arif Gangji
Neon Rain Interactive
www.neonrain.com
Web Design - Application Development - SEO SMO SEM - Email Marketing

Search Engine Optimization is the process of gaining higher ranking in the result set of a Search Engine search.  Now for that to make sense, let’s do some defining of terms and processes.

Here’s the quick and dirty…

A Web site is born
You’ve just started a business and need to put your web site up.  Well, the first thing you will do is figure out your focus.  This usually comes from the products or services you sell, or the demographic of the clients you are servicing.

These are your keywords. Keywords define your site.  Now, sometimes keywords are setup in the META tags of a site, but sometimes the keywords are just generated from the content you’ve created.  Mostly likely, it’s the content that defines your site more so than the keywords.  Although, keywords are very important, so don’t neglect them.

A Search Engine finds out you exist
One way or another, A Search Engine will figure out you exist. You either submitted your site directly to an engine or you posted a comment in a blog with your URL…either way, the engine will see that there’s fresh meat out there and they will send their bots and spiders.

Bots and Spiders - no, that’s not my Halloween costume
Bots and Spiders are what Search Engines send through the Internet to scavenge your site.  These “Spiders” will “crawl the net” and index your content, and various other pieces of data.  They are the ones that check to see if content has been updated or not and will check your relevancy, etc.

Weights and Value
Each time a spider indexes your pages, they will rank you and provide a weight as to the value of your content.  This is the secret sauce for most Search Engines.  If you were to figure out what algorithms they use to figure out weights and value, you could trick them into putting you up top on any keyword you wanted.  It’s assumed that no one person at any company (Google, Yahoo, MSN), has that information; different departments share pieces of the algorithm so that it can’t be stolen.  In some cases, the Search Engine will also change this weighting system which may been after a change, that your site will jump up or drop down in rank just based on how they are looking at your site now.

A user is on the prowl
Now, we have a user on a Search Engine who puts in a keyword they are wanting to find a relevant site for. They type in their keywords and hit search, the Search Engine now goes through it’s database of indexed content and displays results for what they think is the most relevant web site to satisfy the users query.

This is based on data and content saved by the Spiders when they visited your site.

Now, the difference between SEO and SEM:

1. SEO is the process of making changes to your site so that the Spiders will give you a better weight and value based on what you’ve done internally. This means you’ll organically move up the Search Engine Results list.  When you think SEO, think slow, steady, and long-term.

2. SEM can sometimes include SEO, but mainly it’s the process of paying for clicks or “Pay Per Click (PPC)”, paid inclusion, or paid placement, where you are buying clicks. If you pay G
oogle, Yahoo, or MSN for a sponsored link…you’ll show up at the top or the right side but you’ll pay each time someone clicks on your link.

In some people’s definition, SEM can also mean Search Engine Marketer, which is a person or group that provides Search Engine Optimization (Organic), Pay Per Click Management, Social Media Optimization, and other Internet Marketing Techniques.

Hopefully you learned something…we’d love to get your comments!

Cheers,

Arif Gangji
Neon Rain Interactive
www.neonrain.com
Web Design - Application Development - SEO SMO SEM - Email Marketing

I’m kidding…you actually want to be very selective when creating a title for each page of your web site.

1. It has to be relevant to the page…Make sure all of your pages do not have the same title tag.

2. It helps users distinguish between browser windows or tabs.

3. It may or may not help Search Engines determine what your site is about, the content will end up speaking for itself.

So here are a few guidlines:

1. Google.com truncates the title tag in search results to 66 characters.

2. Yahoo.com truncates the title tag in search results to 68 characters.

3. Ask.com truncates the title tag in search results to 68 characters.

4. MSN.com truncates the title tag in search results to 66 characters.

So, better to be safe than sorry…keep it at 66 characters or less.  Get your keywords in there but don’t stuff it like a turkey!

If you aren’t familiar with Inbound marketing, it’s the notion that instead of going out and trying to grab potential clients, you just make sure you have good exposure, and when that potential client is ready they will come to you.

Well, it works…but why?

The client has already chosen to contact you, they’ve made a determination in their minds stating that you are already one of the candidates even if they haven’t spoken to you yet.

Sharpecopy.com defines a qualified lead as someone who meets the following criteria:

• Need: They need your product or service
• Authority: They have the authority to buy
• Budget: They have the budget to buy
• Readiness: They are ready to buy now

Now lets look at a ‘typical’ direct mail campgaign…again the numbers are from sharpecopy.com:

Here’s how you calculate your Cost Per Qualified Lead.

Number of pieces mailed (for example): 10,000
Response rate: 1%
Number of inquiries: 100
Number that you manage to reach by phone to qualify: 70
Cost of qualifying by phone, per inquiry: $30
Number who turn out to be qualified leads (20%): 14
Total cost of qualifying ($30 X 70): $2,100
Campaign cost of $10,000 + phone qualifying cost = $12,200
Total cost of $12,200 divided by 14 qualified leads = $871.42

In other words, you must spend $871.42 to attract each lead who needs your product or service, can afford it, has authority to buy, and is ready to buy now.

Staggering to say the least…especially if you are just starting out.  And if your product doesn’t sell for $871 or more, you actually lost money.

Now, with Inbound marketing, you are only focusing on the leads that are already fairly qualified, now you are just developing a lead.

Imagine shifting the focus online…integrating online marketing, Internet marketing, INBOUND MARKETING with your other efforts.

You are now building an online reputation - this is killer for those possibly interested in your product, let reviews, posts, and blogs online pre-sell your service or product for you.

You are also catching the lead when they are looking, instead of bugging them 7 times with a postcard to hopefully stick in their minds, they find you when they need you.

Mediapost.com states the following:

Not all leads are created equal.  To illustrate this point, which lead generation program is more appealing? Would you prefer 1,000 anonymous email addresses where you eventually determine only ten to be good prospects? Or would you like one that delivers 100 leads, each of whom is an ideal prospect?

The answer is obvious, but the trick is how to find those 100 prospects without wasting time sorting through thousands of anonymous and irrelevant respondents.

Are you starting to get the point?

Inbound Marketing through Internet Marketing brings customers to you…

Now get out there and build your online presence

This may be obvious but it’s usually missed when developing content or putting together your initial website framework.  Here are 5 Elements to Optimizing your Global Navigation links:

1. Every link on your site holds some weight.

Think about it this way:

- If you link to an external site, you are casting a “vote” for that site….stating to the Search Engine that you value this site you are linking to.

- If you are linking internally, you are telling the Search Engines what your site is about.  The link itself adds to the relativity of your site.

Here is an example:

If you own a company that sells dress shoes or a company that sells horse shoes - you have 2 very different businesses. Hopefully

Now, on your Global navigation that shows up on every single page, if both businesses linked to their product page and the link in the Global navigation said, “Shoes”…well, Google and Yahoo would have to use different methods to figure out what type of shoes you were talking about.

But, if your links said, “Dress Shoes” or “Horse Shoes”, respectively.  That gives Google a much better idea of what your site is about and the link relevancy goes up because you provided better details about what you are selling.

Don’t make it any harder for the Search Engines to figure out what your site is about!

2. Make sure to include all of your important pages in your Global navigation.

Let’s pretend that in your Global Navigation you have a link called “About Us”, and that link is on every single page because it’s in the Global Navigation.  Now, after some time, you’ve posted enough articles that your indexed pages hits 200 pages.  You now have 200 pages each with a link to the About Us page.

In your Global Navigation you didn’t link to your main products, instead you put up some banner image that links to the individual product pages - you have 10 or so products.  And for the sake of the example, let’s say that you split up the links to your products evenly.  So, each page links to one of your products and they rotate…page 1 links to product 1, page 2 links to product 2, etc.  200 pages, 10 products…split evenly gives each product 20 pages linking to it.

By that example…with the same 200 pages indexed, you now have 20 pages pointing to each product.  Yet, you have 200 pointing to your About Us page.

What’s more important?  Unless you are a non-profit, the product is important!

3. Using dropdown menus?  Use a hybrid script…

Some dropdown scripts hide the actual navigation links in a Javascript file or a Flash file.  Search engines can’t read those and if that’s the only way you are linking to your important pages, you’ve just blinded the search engine from crawling through your site using links.

Look for hybrid scripts that use CSS with Javascript so that the links are coded in CSS.  Those can be read and followed by Search Engines.  You can do the same thing with Flash.

Tip: Use a text browser or turn OFF Javascript and Flash in your browser, then browse your site…if your links do not show up, you have a problem!

4. Using Images for your navigation?

Make sure you use Alt Attributes (Alt Tags) so that the search engine knows what your link is about.  Even though a search engine can follow the link, it won’t know what you feel is relevant about the link.  Therefore, if using images in your navigation, use some of your keywords to help guide the Search Engine to know where you are sending it.

Again, let’s make it easier for the engines as well as for people…usually content built for people works well for engines too.

5. Architecture is good but a yarn ball is bad.

When creating Global Navigation links, it’s good to plan out what’s really important.  And in most cases it’s good to interconnect your pages, BUT…there is an exception, isnt there always?  Don’t just link everything together for the sake of linking everything together.  You should have a method for the madness.

Example:

if you have a site that sells car parts and the first thing the user does is searches by Make and Model, say it’s an Audi A6…if you were to show all parts available for the A6, that’s great!  But if you created links on the same page to parts for a BMW M3, you are now diluting your relevancy.  That page may have ranked great for Audi parts, but you just messed it up by diluting your relevancy and adding BMW parts listed on the same page, that page is no longer as relevant for “Audi parts”, but it may be for “Audi and BMW parts”.

Keep that in mind and best of luck with your rank!

Note: This article was first posted on 10/20/2008 and updated on 11/10/2008.

Most of us know about Google Analytics, it’s a piece of code you put into your site and then you can use Google’s free tool to track visitors, time on site, where the visitors are coming from, e-commerce funnels, etc.

It’s a great tool, it’s free, and it’s widely used.

Well, it seems like Yahoo! is putting together an offering as well…it’s a rebrand of IndexTools.

Here are a few screenshots, since it’s not publicly available yet:

Seriously, who actually buys products from an anonymous spam email?

Authorities Shut Down Spam Ring

The Federal Trade Commission won a preliminary legal victory against what it called one of the largest spam gangs on the Internet, persuading a federal court in Chicago on Tuesday to freeze the group’s assets and order the spam network to shut down.

The group, which used several names but was known among spam-fighting organizations as HerbalKing, sent billions of unsolicited messages to Internet users over the last 20 months, promoting replica watches and a variety of pharmaceuticals, including weight-loss drugs and herbal pills that supposedly enhanced the male anatomy, according to the commission.

“This is pretty major. At one point these guys delivered up to one-third of all spam,” said Richard Cox, chief information officer at SpamHaus, a nonprofit antispam research group.

The investigation provides a clear window into the business of modern spam, which by some estimates accounts for 90 percent of all e-mail sent over the Internet.

To pepper Internet users with its solicitations, the HerbalKing group used a botnet, a global network of computers infected with malicious software, often without the knowledge of their owners.

The security firm Marshal Software, which assisted the F.T.C. with the investigation, estimated in court documents that the group’s Mega-D botnet — named after one of its pill products — was made up of 35,000 computers and could send 10 billion e-mail messages a day. In January, the botnet was the leading source of spam on the Internet, the firm estimated.

F.T.C. investigators also said they monitored the group’s finances closely and that it cleared $400,000 in Visa charges in one month alone.

The commission has brought more than 100 cases against spammers and spyware vendors over the past decade. But officials and investigators said this spam operation was perhaps the most extensive they had ever encountered, with ties to Australia, New Zealand, India, China and the United States.

“They were sending extraordinary amounts of spam,” said Jon Leibowitz, an F.T.C. commissioner. “We are hoping at some level that this will help make a small dent in the amount of spam coming into consumers’ in-boxes.”

The commission asked the federal district court in Chicago to freeze the gang’s finances, arguing that its members were using unfair and deceptive advertising practices and violating the Can-Spam Act of 2003. That federal law provides civil and criminal penalties for spammers who falsify information in e-mail messages and fail to offer ways for consumers to refuse further messages.

The government is also pursuing criminal charges against the group. F.B.I. investigators in Chicago and St. Louis have executed search warrants against members of the spam gang, the commission said.

Jody Michael Smith, 29, of McKinney, Tex., was involved in the group’s finances, according to the F.T.C. Reached at his home, Mr. Smith said: “I don’t even know who these people are who I have been tied to,” and referred all inquiries to his Dallas lawyer, John R. Teakell. Mr. Teakell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

United States officials are also working with New Zealand authorities in the case against Lance Thomas Atkinson, 26, a native of New Zealand who now resides in Australia. Mr. Atkinson has a history in the spam business. In 2005, the F.T.C. obtained a $2.2 million judgment against him and a business partner for running a similar operation selling herbal pills online.

In conjunction with the investigation in the United States, the Department of Internal Affairs in New Zealand asked a court on Tuesday to impose a fine of 200,000 New Zealand dollars, or $121,000, on Mr. Atkinson, his brother Shane Atkinson and a business partner for violating the country’s own spam laws.

The activities of the HerbalKing group, like those of other criminal groups online, were remarkably international in scope. The group was shipping drugs like Propecia, Lipitor, Celebrex and Zoloft out of India. The F.T.C. also said the group based its Web sites in China, processed credit cards from the former Soviet republic of Georgia and Cyprus, and transferred funds among members using ePassporte, an electronic money network.

As part of its investigation, the commission purchased the “herbal” pills from the group and asked the Food and Drug Administration to test them. That agency found that the pills contained sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra, which can be risky for some people with heart conditions.

Antispam researchers lauded the crackdown and said it would send a strong message to other spammers. But they were not confident that spam volumes would decrease.

“This will send some real shock waves through the spamming industry, but even if these guys were running a substantial botnet of compromised computers, there are always spammers looking to take their place,” said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, a spam-fighting security firm. “It wouldn’t be a surprise if people don’t notice any difference in their in-box tomorrow morning.”

So, here’s an interesting case.  When Technology finds significance in humanity, it usually serves a need of great measure. When Technology is forced into humanity, most of the time it is a gadget and ends up being a fad…it’s not sustainable.

Here is an example of technology that is bound to never make any impact on someone’s life:

A sneaker with a Wi-Fi detector built in…as if you’ll just want to walk around and stare at your feet for connectivity.

And here is an example of technology as it strives to serve a purpose:

One Laptop Per child

Mission Statement: To create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.