Here is a great straight forward video on the major Google SEO changes coming fourth in the near and far future. As always a lot is quite vague and secretive but for the most part you can weed out some important details. As always they are discouraging away from buying links that claim to raise your PageRank.

Cutts is careful to note that any of this information is subject to change, and should be taken with a grain of salt.

Penguin

He does not specify any of the changes but says a new big version (2.0) is getting closer.

Updates To Panda

It sounds like they are becoming more friendlier in the new update. Sites in the grey area will not just get thrown to the wolves. They also claim links will not be as bad if they are from a spammy site. As long as it’s not your main source of identity, after all it’s not rocket science to submit your competitors sites to hurt their Rank.

Authority Sites

They will be adding more weight on the sites that have an “authority”. We have no idea what this is based on but my guess is the companies with the highest ad-words revenue lol. Bigger rarely means better in my experience, in fact it’s new independent thinkers that keep the internet perpetual.

I assume this authority will put more emphasis on forums and blogs, so track down the top ones in your industry and get involved!

Of course those are probably ran by an objective competitor anyways, just tread lightly and you might be able to talk a little about your site.

Searches with high spam rate.

Terms that get the highest spam will be targeted as well, hopefully web hosting will be added for our sake lol. Half the front page for the term “Web Hosting” is fake top ten web hosting sites!

My two cents.

It sounds like they are getting smarter and a little less cruel to the little guy. I also really liked how they mention that one site will not have more then one link on the first couple pages of Google. I feel like Matt Cutts is a well grounded person and understands the importance of helping new webmasters, hopefully we will see a new system that can separate new domains with spam and new domains with real sites trying to work their way up fairly.

For organic SEO help check out our services here: SEO

Good luck!
Charles Yarbrough

Getting inspiration for entrepreneurs is like getting gas for a car. Without it you can’t can’t anywhere with a new start up yet a growing business. There is thousands of ways to get new ideas but without inspiration they will just spin in circles. Here is ten recent must see great business documentaries all business owners and entrepreneurs should watch at least once.

Freakonomics The Movie (2010)
Startup.com (2001)
Steve Jobs: One Last Thing (2011)
Beer Wars (2009)
Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001)
The Call of the Entrepreneur (2007)
Ayn Rand: In Her Own Words (2011)
Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002)
Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos (2006)
We Live In Public (2009)

1. No written plan. Don’t believe the myth that a business plan isn’t worth the effort. The discipline of writing down a plan is the best way to make sure you actually understand how to transform your idea into a business.

2. Slim or no revenue model. Even a non-profit has to generate revenue (or donations) to offset operating costs. If your product is free, or you lose money on every sale, it’s hard to make it up in volume. You may have the solution to world hunger, but if your customers have no money, your business won’t last long.

3. Limited business opportunities. Not every good idea can become a blockbuster business. Just because you passionately believe that your product or service is great, and everyone needs it, doesn’t mean that everyone will buy it. There is no substitute for market research, written by domain experts, to supplement your informal poll of friends and family.

4. Can’t execute. When young entrepreneurs come to me with that “million dollar idea,” I have to tell them that an idea alone is really worth nothing. It’s all about the execution. If you’re not comfortable making hard decisions and taking risks, you won’t do well in this role.

5. Too much competition. Having no competitors is a red flag — it may mean there’s no market — but finding ten or more with a simple Google search means your area of interest may be a crowded. Remember, sleeping giants can wake up. So, don’t assume that Microsoft or Procter & Gamble are too big and slow for you to worry about.

6. No intellectual property. If you expect to seek investors, or you expect to have a sustainable competitive advantage against giants in your industry, you need to register for patents, trademarks and copyrights, as well as enlist non-compete and non-disclosure agreements to protect trade secrets. Intellectual property is also often the largest element of early-stage company valuations for professional investors.

7. An inexperienced team. In reality, investors fund people, not ideas. They look for people with real experience in the business domain of the startup, and people with real experience running a startup. If this is your first time around, find a partner who has “been there and done that” to balance your passion and bring experience to the team.

8. Underestimating resource requirements. A major resource is cash funding, but other resources, such as industry contacts and access to marketing channels may be more important for certain products. Having too much cash, not managed wisely, can be just as devastating as too little cash. Don’t quit your day job until new revenue is flowing.

9. Not enough marketing. Having a slick word-of-mouth marketing strategy isn’t enough to make your product and brand visible in the relentless onslaught of new media out there today. Even viral marketing costs real money and time. Without effective and innovative marketing across the range of media, you won’t have customers — or a business.

10. Giving in too early. In my experience, the most common cause of startup failure is the entrepreneur just gets tired, gives up and shuts down the company. Despite setbacks, many successful entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison kept slugging away on their vision until they found success.

The obvious conclusion to changing the name of your website is that it will lose it’s popularity quick.

“You are going to lose traffic,” a SearchEngineLand blogger warned would-be name changers in 2009. “That is a fact. Even if you only perform a domain change and preserve the exact same site structure and content, you will lose some traffic.”

If that’s true, it spells bad news for MSNBC.com, which on Monday changed its name and URL to NBCNews.com following a split from Microsoft, the technology giant that had partnered with the U.S. news network to produce the website.

But maybe that assumption is outdated?

NBC, for its part, said it doesn’t expect the move to affect traffic. All existing URLs, including those linked on social media sites, will still work or will redirect to the new NBCNews.com URL, Vivian Schiller, NBC News chief digital officer, said in a conference call with reporters Monday. (The MSNBC cable channel will launch a new website in 2013 as an extension of its on-air brand, NBC News said.)

If you take a look at a few of the sites that have changed their names — it’s really rare for a site to do so, by the way — you see that many of them not only survive a name change but are able to thrive after it. Or maybe because of it.

Here’s a look at a few that have come out better on the other end of a URL switch:

Facebook: If you’re under 30, or if you saw “The Social Network,” you probably know that Facebook used to be called thefacebook.com. The company officially dropped the “the” in August 2005. That’s universally regarded as a good move, but it’s worth pointing out that the switch occurred before Facebook was a household name.

IMDB: The Internet Movie Database, now super popular and owned by Amazon, started in 1990 as a USENET group with the domain rec.arts.movies. The site then was hosted by Cardiff University before it migrated to IMDB.com, according to a feature in Total Film.

PerezHilton: The pop culture and gay news blog started out as PageSixSixSix.com, a reference to the New York Post’s gossip column. Now pretty much no one (except a friend from HLN’s website, who sent this reference) remembers the previous blog.

Overstock.com: The Internet retailer changed its name to O.co in 2011, but switched it back, as CNET reports, because of brand confusion. Consider this the warning for NBCNews.com, although NBC is already a recognizable brand in the United States. O.co, by the way, still redirects to Overstock’s site.

PayPal: Elon Musk founded a site called X.com in 1999. The next year, it would merge with Confinity to become PayPal, the well-known online payment system. According to PayPal’s official blog, the “X” was a reference to that “universally recognized programming variable” — a reference to innovation and creation. This may be the only example of a site’s URL actually getting less cool because of a change.

Twitter: The micro-blogging site launched in 2006 as Twttr because a “bird enthusiast” already owned the URL for Twitter.com, according to CNNMoney. Six months later, the company had enough money to buy some vowels.

Ask.com: Remember that fashionable digital butler from the ’90s? Ask.com began in 1996 as AskJeeves.com but fired Jeeves in 2005 to become Ask.com.

So simply put YES it can help and in some cases in needed to get over whatever plateau you may be at right now. I would suggest that you make sure the name can be remembered or catchy and is somewhat short. Unfortunately any domains like this will cost money, most likely lots of money.

Brought you by DWHS Website Hosting

A big, fat Yellow Pages landed in my driveway the other day with an audible whomp. I promptly picked it up and deposited it into the recycling bin with a second whomp. Harsh, right? But when I’m searching for something local–be it a snow shovel or a cinnamon roll–the last thing I’d do is flip through the phone book.

Chances are, you feel the same way. A study last year by Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 51 percent of U.S. adults get information about local businesses from the internet, rather than from newspapers, word-of-mouth, TV reporting or those tragic phone books.

So, the question becomes, How good is your local business at generating online leads? Here are the basics.

Build a website with your own domain.
This is obvious, right? But according to stat site Statistic Brain, up to half of small businesses don’t have a website.

One business owner told me she didn’t need one because she has a thriving Facebook page with great customer interaction. That’s awesome, for sure.

But think of any social platform as an “in addition to,” not an “instead of.” Why? You wouldn’t build a house on rented land, so don’t place your sole web presence on a platform you don’t own.

I’m a big fan of WordPress for building websites. The software is highly customizable–you’d be surprised how many WordPress-powered sites don’t look like typical blogs–and fairly straightforward to update and maintain. It also allows for easy integration of social widgets, so your site feels more inherently “alive” with customer engagement and interaction. You might consider importing a calendar of local events your business supports, too.

Use keywords to attract local traffic.
There are numerous ways to increase the likelihood your site will be found–a search-engine expert could fill this magazine with information on that topic alone.

But I’ll leave it at this: At a minimum, your site should have your physical address and phone number (don’t smirk–you’d be surprised how many overlook this!) and should contain geographically specific keywords in various combinations. (For example, a roofing company in Glendale, Calif., should include phrases like “Glendale roofing company,” “greater Los Angeles roofing” and “Glendale, Calif., roofing business.”) Place keywords in the page title, header tags and, where appropriate, in the content of the page itself. Use online research tools like Google AdWords, Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery to research the words and phrases people use when they are searching for the product or service you sell.

Convert visitors into customers.
A “contact us” form is a nice start toward giving the public a way to reach you online. But how do you juice up your efforts to convert visitors into leads? One way is to offer free, downloadable how-to kits, guides or worksheets with an eye toward becoming a resource–a trusted advisor who can help potential customers as they inch toward a purchase decision.

I like the way Los Angeles architecture firm Modative offers nicely designed resources to would-be clients, including a site evaluation sample report and a design process guide. Both are free of charge at Modative.com in exchange for providing your contact information.

Create local profiles.

Claim your profile on search engines and online local business directories like Google Places, Yelp and, yes, YellowPages.com. A great list of 50 online directories is available on HubSpot.com’s blog.

If you don’t claim your profile, you’re either needlessly invisible or you risk letting others publish faulty information about you. Writing at MarketingProfs.com, Jon Schepke, president of digital marketing agency SIM Partners, tells of a family restaurant that failed to capture its town’s brisk tourist trade because Google had it listed as a grocery store, Yelp described it wrongly as an Italian restaurant and Bing had an inaccurate address. Don’t let that happen to you!

Search engines like consistency, Schepke says, so be sure your business’s name, address and phone number are listed the same way across the web.

Encourage reviews.
Customer testimonials (presumably positive ones) enhance search rankings and increase click-through and conversion rates. Positive reviews validate your business not only to search engines, but also to actual, well, people.

When you want to start an online business, the first thing that you need to ask yourself is where you want to sell your product. If you’re really serious in running the business, creating a website will give you an advantage better than any other means. In order to have good quality website, having to choose good website hosting is a must. As a result, you’ll find many companies running business hosting these days.

Getting good hosting doesn’t always mean you need to pay lots of money for it. You can pay cheap hosting and receive good service instead. The key is to find hosting that is enough for your business. Make sure that the capacity that is being offered to you is enough for your website so that your website will be able to function perfectly.

If you don’t want to take a risk for finding good hosting, you can search for information on what is the best hosting these days. There are plenty of reviews given for many hosting companies that you can take advantage of. Do your homework by comparing them all. Choose the one that is in accordance to your budget and of course to your need.

Most people surveyed recently were just as likely to turn to the internet, as they were to ask for personal recommendations about local businesses. For business owners, this is a good indication that now more than ever, it’s important to have a strong online presence. We’ve highlighted a few key takeaways from the survey below:

1) “There has been a significant jump in the number of consumers using the Internet to find local businesses, and the regularity of their ‘searches’ has also increased.” In fact, only 15% of consumers surveyed have not used the internet to find a local business in the past 12 months. This number is down from 21% in 2010.

2) The majority of consumers surveyed use online reviews to make spending decisions. 27% of consumers are regularly reading online reviews, while another 49% are occasional readers.

Local directories like Business Faves is a great place to get a free business listing to help SEO for your business and to help local customers find your business on the internet.

Are you close with your business? Ask yourself what really would you answer to big questions asked about your company. We will have found the must know questions all business owners need to be able to answer about their company business.

This is also useful for starting your business and getting prepared for new business ideas.

1. What are your business’s greatest strengths and weaknesses?
2. What are your biggest challenges and opportunities?
3. Who are your current customers, and why are they patronizing your business?
4. Who are your competitors’ current customers, and why are they patronizing their businesses?
5. What changes or new programs would have the greatest potential to boost your sales?

Answer all of these every six months to keep track of new shifts that happen to most businesses.

The holiday shopping season got off to a strong start on Black Friday, with retail sales up 7 percent over last year, according to one survey. Now stores just have to keep buyers coming back without the promise of super savings.

Buyers spent $11.4 billion at retail stores and malls, up nearly $1 billion from last year, according to a report released Saturday by ShopperTrak. It was the largest amount ever spent on the day that marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season, and the biggest year-over-year increase since 2007. Chicago-based ShopperTrak gathers data from 25,000 outlets across the U.S., including individual stores and shopping centers.

Online shopping was strong as well, with a 24.3 percent increase in online spending on Black Friday, according to IBM, which tracks sales at 500 online retailers.

Bill Martin, who founded ShopperTrak, said he was surprised by the strong showing. He had expected the weak economy to dent consumer confidence and keep more shoppers out of the stores, or at least from spending much. Instead, he said, consumers responded to a blanket of promotions, from 60-percent off deals to door-buster savings on electronics.

“I’m pleased to see it. You can’t have a great season without having a good Black Friday,” Martin told The Associated Press in an interview.

Still, he suspects things will quiet down this weekend, as promotions end and the buying frenzy subsides. ShopperTrak is expecting holiday sales to be up 3.3 percent overall through Christmas.

There were few shoppers at Pioneer Place Mall in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday.

“This is great, I’m glad I waited,” said MaryJane Danan, who drove two hours from Corvallis, Oregon, to go shopping with her teenage daughters. She stayed home on Black Friday because she thought the crowds would be huge. But she was surprised by how few people were out Saturday.

Internet Traffic

The first part of the equation, internet traffic, is possibly the most fought over and hardest part of affiliate marketing. It is best summarized as the quest to get those elusive surfers to your site. Traffic is the foundation of e-commerce and no website is successful without it. There are two fundamental ways people can find you online. The first and most popular is through a search engine.

Search Engines

When most consumers go online to find a product or service, they use a search engine. Popular search engines include Google, Yahoo, and Msn to name a few. Generally, the consumer will go one, maybe two pages deep in their search for a website they’d like to visit. Logically, the better your rank in a search engine, the more consumers that will come to your site. Because surfers won’t go 10 pages deep in a search engine’s results, site ranking is VERY competitive.

SEO

There are two ways to get ranked with a search engine. The first is referred to as SEO (search engine optimization). This is by far the most competitive (and profitable) route. Google, for instance, places a great amount of emphasis on your website’s links. The more links you have going out and coming into your website from other “like” websites, the more “relative” your site becomes. Consequently, the more relative your site is, the higher your page rank. There are numerous other ways to optimize your site for SEs. Our team will be happy to give you with this and point you to more resources.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

The second method by which a website can get ranked with a search engine is using a pay-perclick (PPC) campaign. Above, you can see the PPCs on the right side of the google page. Instead of competing for page rank, these listings pay to get listed here. PPCs are beneficial, because the owner of the ad ONLY pays when someone clicks on their listing. So you’re only paying for surfers to come to your site who’s interests were sparked by your ad.

Most PPCs allow you to write your ad and bid on different keywords of your choice. For example, if you are running a penis enlargement review site, you might choose keywords like “longer penis” or “penis extension”. You could then bid on the keywords, specifying that you’d be willing to pay $0.20 per click. Submit your ad and away you go. Again, a word of caution. If done poorly they can take you to the cleaners. A good rule is to make sure you get sales before buying PPC.

Alternative Traffic Marketing

There are virtually no limits to where you can get traffic for your website. You can set up reciprocal links with other like websites and trade traffic (this also helps your SEO). Email campaigns, as long as they are targeted and are not spam, can work well. Snail mail mailers, flyers, and traditional advertisements can also work. Just like building your site, be creative in its promotion. This helps you stand apart from the crowd and will lead to more traffic to your site.

Product Promotion

So once you have the surfer in your site, what do you do with them? Your task is to get them to want to click on the links to our sites. Different affiliate programs have different ideas on how to do this. A lot of it depends on the products or services that they offer and the site having call to actions done correctly.

Product Matching

A big part of affiliate marketing is matching the products you promote to the site you run. If you can do this well, you can convert well.

The Informative Site

The second and more successful way to market a product is to build your website around it. An example of this is a review site. This kind website is devoted to giving the surfer as much information as it can. It gives information about the different types of products available and then reviews the different products that are out there. It will usually pick one of the products (the product with the best website – OURS!) to be its number one pick. Surfers will come to your site, become educated on the subject and move on through your link to buy a product.

This type of site is successful for a few different reasons:

1) People like to shop around. This site gives them the opportunity to shop around without ever having to leave.

2) Information builds trust. The more information you have in your site, the more the surfer will perceive your site as an authority. Trust = conversions

3) Penis Enlargement, for example, is possible. However a lot of people don’t believe it. Yet, they are still perusing your site in the hopes that it is. The more informative your site is, the more likely you’ll convince them that they CAN enlarge their penis. This will lead to more sales.

4) If you slap an enlargement banner ad on a website that has no relation to penis enlargement at all, the majority of your click-trough’s will come from surfers satisfying their curiosity, not because they are genuinely interested. The informative site mitigates this and ensures only quality surfers get through.

An informative site can be built for ANY product out there. It may take a little more time than throwing a banner up on your site, but your effort will be amply rewarded.

The Psychological Sell

The following tips are meant to help you sell your surfers on the products you are reviewing. The more you pre-sell them before they get to a product site, the higher your conversions will be.

1) Identify your audience
Ask yourself who are they? Most importantly, why are they at your site? What are their fears and what are they hoping to accomplish? The answers to these questions will enable you to write your site’s text with your specific audience in mind. The more your text speaks to them, the more likely they are to buy.

2) Identify your audience’s problem and exploit it
It may sound bad, but you want to foster a feeling of insecurity in your surfers. You must include a section on the problem your surfer’s are there to fix and it’s hazards. Highlight what happens if the problem goes untreated and its detrimental affects. Convince you surfer that it is imperative that they fix this problem.

3) Assure them that their problem is treatable
Fairly self-explanatory, but let them know there is help on the way.

4) Include as much info as you can get your hands on.
The more in depth you go, the more the surfer will trust you as an authority and get lost in your site’s information.

5) Include specific information about each product you review
Again, gains trust.

6) Build their confidence
Once you have selected a product as your #1 pick, include information about it’s guarantee, the company’s reputation, etc. Shout from the rooftops why this is the best product out there. A word of caution – do not bad-mouth any product. It’s negative, amateur and unprofessional. Read “Website Development” for more website tips…

PPC Campaigns – Product Promotion the Easy Way

Reviews.

The benefit of this new system is that instead of having to build your own informative site, we’ve done it for you!
This system is now available to you to use in any way you wish. If you are using a PPC campaign, you can plug your affiliate code and special link directly into the PPC ad’s url. Surfers will click on your ad, go to our feeder site, move on to our product site, make their purchase and you will always get credit. You can also use our feeder sites as supplements to your own site. Add a link or menu option on your site and link it to our feeder. Our site will do all of the work for you by educating your surfer on our HUGE range of products. You’ll get credit on any product they buy.

Website Development

There’s no arguing it, there’s a lot that goes into developing a quality website. Hundreds if not thousands of books have been written on the topic. Here, in a “do’s and don’ts” format, we’ll give you a few of the most important features your website should incorporate.

Do’s

1) What is your mission? Every company has one and so should you. It doesn’t have to be complex, just figure out what you want to accomplish through your site. If you want to promote ClearPores with an information site, your mission could be something like this –
“Create a website that will inform consumers in a clear and concise format about how sleep works, causes of insomnia, the detrimental effects of losing sleep and include reviews and suggestions of products that are available that can help cure sleep disorders.”

2) Just like writing a paper in college, map out what you want to do first. Get a good idea of the layout of the site, where buttons and images will be located, and how you’re going to organize your information. Once you have an idea of this on paper, move onto doing the html.

3) Make information easy to get to and organized logically for your surfer. One word – usability. Nothing is more frustrating than being on a website and not knowing where to go.

4) Check out other product websites, including your competition, and see what they are doing well. The best places for website ideas are other websites.

5) Spend time on your text. Anyone who is interested in your website and wants to use it as a source of information will read your text. Make sure you spell check, grammar check, and use your words to your advantage. The text is what will sell your surfers on trusting you and using the products you recommend.

6) Post your site on forums and let other take a look at it. You’ll get some great advice on what you could do better.

Don’ts

1) Do not use too many colors. The more colors you use, the more amateur your website looks. Amateur = no trust = no conversions.

2) Do not use too many fonts, same reason as above.

3) Do not make a website that is one looooooooong page. Again, amateur.

4) Do not have HUGE blocks of text. Break up your text with key points. Use headers, bulleted points, etc. for the major statements you don’t want your readers to miss. Surfers will skim through looking for your main points and will be more likely to read your text if you spice it up and make it look interesting. Besides that, breaking up your text makes your site look better.

Alright, now you’ve got the basics. There’s a lot to know about this business and always something new to learn. It’s a dynamic marketplace and those who survive, learn to roll with the punches. Learning, changing and adapting are the keys to making it. If you’re trying something and it’s not working for you, stop, get some advice and try something else.