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.

Great interface for seeing what’s up with the election…and don’t miss the button at the top called, “Create your scenario”.  You can view past electoral voting by State, change States from Red/Blue to see what would happen if…

Seriously…I can’t go on facebook and not see an Obama ad.  I couldn’t even read an article about McCain and not catch a glimpse of Obama on the sideline in a banner advertisement.

Between that and then Obama announcing his running mate over text messaging, I don’t even think the question of who is better utliizing technology is a fair question.  Obama is going after the tech friendly crowd and his Campaign Manager (David Plouffe) is doing a great job of it.

Check out this cool iPhone app…talk about grass roots marketing!

It’s almost like a virus that gets into your email client and spams all of your contacts…this little application makes you hound your friends and family by battleground states.  Is this the new “sign in the yard”?

So, We have been working on a new product over the last 8 months and it’s going to launch on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 12 noon (MST)!

Here’s the skinny, since someone already leaked info anyway, we have been doing a lot of Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Optimization, and plain Internet Marketing and we’ve been seeing some FANTASTIC success.

The problem is that we end up gaining a lot of clients that have already been through the wringer and truthfully “screwed” by other SEMs (not all SEMs use black hat techniques, just some – shame on them).

We decided that yes, we can grow our SEO/SMO Marketshare but we would have to grow our core group to handle the additional load – that’s fine but it doesn’t fit our business model, so instead we decided to create an Education Course called “Serious Internet Marketing.”  In this course we are actually using the same tools that we use to train in-house and selling licenses to other Web Developers, SEMs (Search Engine Marketers), Business owners, Marketers, etc. so that they can do the following:

1. Educate themselves so they do not fall into the lure of evil SEMs

2. Know what to look for in a Good SEM so that they can distinguish the reputable SEMs out there.

3. Increase their knowledge of verbiage, tactics, what’s good, what’s bad, etc.

4. Even start doing Internet Marketing themselves.  There are a lot of startups that can use this information but can’t afford to hire someone to do it.  Our course will go step by step (including videos).

Our only hesitancy is that we did not want to upset Development companies with these insider secrets being available to the public, so we are limiting the number of licenses to this course by State.  This way, the market will not be saturated but we can still help educate and give a small number of businesses and edge in the Internet Marketing game.

300 licenses per State…that’s it, 300 in each State and that State gets cut off from anyone else purchasing the course.

Serious Internet Marketing – A Web Development Insider Shares their Internet Marketing tactics – 300 licenses per State, opening on 10/28/2008 at 12 noon MST.

Stay tuned…

Mozilla calls Firefox the safest web browser…

http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/security/

So, how is open source safer than proprietary code?   Well, it all comes down to motive.

For example…Microsoft has a specific amount of resources they are willing to pull in to code Internet Explorer in order to make it cost-effective and keep ROI where they want it.  There is a limit to the number of programmers they can hire.  Now, that limit is very high and that programmer base is quite large, but there is still a limit.

Open source leverages desire.  Anyone can help code or help test, and they aren’t paid for it.  So, Mozilla can rally the same number of programmers but at a much lower cost.

So, what’s this about intent and motive?  Well, if you are volunteering your time, then you’ve bought into the vision.  If someone is paying you, maybe you bought in or maybe you just like the paycheck, who knows.

So by Mozilla’s statement, their browser rocks…check out their risk chart:

An independent study shows that, in 2006, IE users were vulnerable to online threats 78% of the time. Firefox users? Only 2%.

When are you at risk?

Ah look at this…Android the Google Cell phone operating system is nearing release!  T-mobile may carry the first phones, but they’ll come with a marketplace just like Apple’s “App store” on the iPhone.

But Android is open source so you can get some really cool applications for it.

For example:

How about using the camera in your phone to take a photo of a bard code on the product you are looking to buy…then having it go out on the Internet and bring back comparative prices?  Yeahhhhh baby.

“Bye bye” new iPhone market share…I’m holding out for Android.

MSNBC News link about android: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26674814/

We all remember back in the day, having a walkman…a personal music player.  “Walkman” was created by Sony, they had the market and grew into the DiscMan, so what happened to Sony?  Anyway, this post is about Microsoft and Apple.

Everyone is talking about the new iPod Nano introduced today…it’s just a few more bells and whistles aimed at making you shell out your hard earned cash yet once again (The announcement wasn’t big enough obviously – Apple shares fell 4%).  Seriously, Apple…can you not do a hardware update for a while so that we feel like our iPod’s and Macbooks are not out of date the minute we buy them?

I’m in the market for a new iPhone…but when will the new ones come out?  When will they introduce the 32 GB model?  Rumors stated that due to the cost of Memory, we wouldn’t see a 32 GB iPhone until late 2009…but here we go with an iPod nano with 32 GB of memory…I figure it’s 4 x 8 GB chips, but who knows…maybe they’ll figure out how to fit that into an iPhone.

Steve…give us a break!

Microsoft (Zune) vs. Apple (iPod) in the portable music player market.