VIDEO is taking over the internet world. I can’t explain enough how important it is to get on board. We will see more directories with video more websites with optional welcome videos and most importantly if you have a help page on your website make sure to have help videos!

Videos give the customer/visitor a sense of realism and that someone is with them during the process.  Really compared to text and a image it is a much more suyppeir way of getting something acomplished.

So why hasn’t everyone jumped on the band wagon? Well besides having a full plate it’s because the technology is still alittle cloudy. Do you use WMV, Flash, Quicktime, right.. Who knows.

Well I feel strongly that flash video is the best, it seems to roll with web pages better then the others and has more interactivity them the others.

So how do you start with video on the web?

1. Buy a camera, newegg and costco are good for this
2. Buy the video editor ulead
3. Export the finished video in flash
4. Add it to your website

Also green screens are great ways to spice up the video but don’t get cheesy. This is a business video and needs to not waste time and look clean.

The was written by Charles Yarbrough 

Getting your blog listed and see is becoming more dificult simply because more people are blogging. But on the flip side we are seeing more fair listing services like DIGG FARK and many more like it. Why are these lists in existence? SImply because it worked for Google and they want a similar process. Why Google worked is another story.

So with the millions of people you are against how do you get your article listed? Well first like with all business doing anything you need to see the people are doing it right and getting what you want already.

Then out do them or if you can’t out do them the most important factor in your article is to be something original. I can’t tell you how many lame articles got 500 digs I swear just because it was a original thought (idea ect).

I mean think about it, there is millions of people with hundreds of thoughts. It’s actually really hard to come up with something new in the blog world. Now redoing something already done is aoption and can work but you already 50% chance of getting burried just for what you are doing.

So what the solution, talk about your life and when you have something happen that you like build a list around it and find anything related to it so you can add to the list.

What’s so great about lists?

Well “I” love them, but universally they condense a lot of information in a straight forward easy to navigate process. They also sound very impressive during a dinner party. They also keeps most opinions at bay unless it’s about oppinions.

Anyways don’t get discouraged, your blog will always get love from Google it’s their favorite no business type of website.

Written by Charles Yarbrough

Our spam crazy forum gets a new look and hopefully in the near future a new sheriff to get it back on track.

Webmaster Forum

NOTE: When doing a banner exchange it is important that you have a banner stored on your server and on your hard drive. The most common banner dimensions used for exchange are 468×60 and 468×70. A growing trend for banner exchanges are the rotating banner exchange which uses a script and will rotate a new banner each time the page is visited. For auto Rank banner exchanges (friends page) The dimensions are 100×150 and you will need to have this specific banner served from your website. The auto rank script keeps track of visitors coming and going to your site through the exchange and ranks your banner by the amount of traffic that is generated. It is not necessary to have this one on your hard drive.

Part One: Standard Banner Exchange (Rotating)

Step 1: Open Notepad (Start Menu > Programs > Accessories > Notepad ) You will need  your banner URL (where your banner is located on your website ex. http://yoursite.com/banners/mybanner.gif), Your main URL (http://yourwebsite.com) , Title, Sometimes a description and or category, and a username and password for each exchange. Copy all of this information once and paste in the top of notepad. When signing up for these exchanges some may require you to upload your banner to their exchange from your hard drive. Locate the folder that contains your banner and familiarize with its location. By now you should know how to get to your websites folders on your hard drive that you downloaded via FTP.

Step 2: Go to to one of the banner exchanges below (examples). Read their rules and make note of any special circumstances they may have for their exchange (EX.. You may only have one banner on a page when using our banner)

Step 3: Fill out the form of the site you wish to submit your banner to.

Promoting your small business website in the search engines can be a daunting task. Use of free submissions and link popularity is a good starting point for your website promotion campaign.
Start with the basis of good search engine and directory listings. Make sure you read and follow each search engine and directory’s rules for submissions. Before making submissions, always verify that all your website links and pages work, with no pages “under construction”.

Search Engines and Directories

Begin with the Open Directory Project. ODP is free and provides secondary search results to many other search engines. (Secondary search results are search results that come up after the primary search results of a search engine are shown.) Google uses the ODP directory results in their search engine results.

It is preferable to secure a listing in ODP before submitting your website to Yahoo!, but it often takes time to become listed in ODP and may not be possible. If you can afford a yearly $299.00 subscription to submit to Yahoo!, do so. If you are a non- commercial website, you may be able to submit your website for free. You will find the rules about free submissions when you click on the “suggest a site” link at the bottom of your chosen category page.

Google is the top search engine and one you want to be listed in. Google provides secondary search results to other search engines and directories.

If you do B2B (business-to-business) with other companies, Business.com is a reasonable $99.00 subscription per year and gives you the opportunity to list not only your home page, but four other pages from your website. The Business.com search results are used by many other business sites for search results.

Inktomi is a good choice for a reasonably priced link (yearly fee of $39.00 for first page, $25.00 per page 2-1000 for additional pages) and will get you into secondary search results for the MSN search engine. Position Technologies has a good submission program available for Inktomi.

Many of the major search engines still include a free submission ection for their listings. Paid Inclusion and PPC (pay-per-click) are always the faster choices, but if your budget is limited you may want to consider submitting and waiting the 6-8 weeks (or more) it often takes to see your listings show up.

Major search engines providing free submissions include: Google, AltaVista, and AlltheWeb.

Secondary search engines you can submit to for free include Gigablast and ScrubtheWeb. One smaller directory is JoeAnt.

Link Popularity Methods

If you are a small business, seek out business directories to submit to, especially those directly related to your business.

Looking in Yahoo! and ODP categories for business directories can be very helpful in getting a start on your search for links.

For link popularity, searching in Google is a quick way to find suitable websites to request links from or submit to.

Search for specialty search engines. If your business is in the medical field, search for medical search engines.

When looking for link partners, select sites that reflect your website’s topic or subject. Links from sites that are not related to your site are not weighted as heavily by the search engines in deciding how to rank your site.

Visit your competition’s websites. See how they are ranking in the search engines and find out which keywords they are found under.

Link popularity is a very time-consuming activity, be prepared to spend a minimum of 10-20 hours in order to start building your link popularity. This may be a daunting enough task you might want to consider working with a search engine marketing professional.

Helpful Tools

It is always a good idea to keep in mind that many tools are not “exact” and can vary due to the search engine algorithms changing (which can be often). I like to think of it as an “approximation” of the information I am seeking.

The Google Toolbar shows you the approximate link popularity of other websites (note the green bar that says “PageRank” after downloading the tool), as well as giving you choices such as checking backlinks (who is linking to the webpage), similar pages, a cached snapshot of the page and more when you right-click on the web page. Visit your competition’s webpage, then use the toolbar to view who is linking to them.

The PageRank and backlink information is very helpful in regards to researching your competition. The backlinks you find via the toolbar may show you some quality websites to submit links to. Seek out websites with PageRank 4 and up to get the most out of your submitted or reciprocal link. Hovering your mouse over the Google Toolbar tells you the page rank of the website.

To learn about writing an email request for a reciprocal link and other linking strategies, visit Eric Ward’s website.

The Overture suggestion tool is a free way to check how popular your keyword phrases are in comparison to the monthly results of Overture. This will not give you a complete picture since Overture is used on many but not all search engines. It will help you decide which keyword phrases are the best choice, as well as as variations on your keyword phrases.

MarketLeap measures your link popularity, and that of three of your competitors. The report is free and gives you a benchmark showing where your popularity lies online vs your competitors.

Lastly, if you want to “do it yourself”, the top places I’ve found to research and learn from are Search Engine Watch and Webmaster World. Search Engine Watch and Webmaster World’s sister site, Search Engine World both have free newsletters full of information to help you promote your website.

Daria Goetsch is the founder and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation (www.searchinnovation.com), a Search Engine Promotion company serving small businesses. Besides running her own company, Daria is an associate of WebMama.com, an Internet web marketing strategies company. She has specialized in search engine optimization since 1998, including three years as the Search Engine Specialist for O’Reilly & Associates, a technical book publishing company.