photo credit: papalars
A couple of weeks ago a contest began here at SuperBloggingTips.com, in which there would be two lucky winners who each received one month’s worth of 125×125 advertising here at this blog. All you had to do to enter was subscribe to the feed via email (all subscribers prior to the contest […]
photo credit: nosha
Don’t forget that the deadline for the contest I announced a little while back is coming up very soon. In fact, it’s on March 13, which is Friday - giving you just a couple of days if you’d like a shot at the prize.
Up for grabs are a month’s worth of two 125×125 […]
Show of hands, how many of you have read through Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Mmmm, ok. go ahead and put your hands down.
Every now and then I find it useful to look and see what a href=”http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8522″Google has to say to webmasters/a about their websites. It’s been years since I was last in here and I’m amazed by the amount of new content Google has added to their webmaster helps.
pOne thing to keep in mind whenever reviewing information put out by the search engines is that the engines have a vested interest in being selfish. Sure, they want to be helpful, but at the same time the information they provide comes with a very distinct bias as to what will ultimately help emthem/em./p
pThat doesn’t make the advice bad, it just means we need to learn to sift what is really important from what Google wants us to think is important./p
pToday I want to revisit Google’s a href=”http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35291amp;topic=15260″Guidelines for selecting an SEO provider/a. Let’s take them point by point and I’ll provide my own analysis. You can click the link above if you want to read Google’s expanded explanations./p
blockquotestrongBe wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue./strong/blockquote
pNot all unsolicited emails are bad. I think it’s a shame that email marketing has gotten such a bad rap, however I will admit it is mostly deserved. The danger with this kind of solicitation is that they are usually sent from SEOs that have done little or no research and are just pounding out slightly customized mass emails./p
pTypically these emails claim that your site “isn’t ranking” or “could not be found” on the search engines. Of course, it begs the question how they found you order to send you that email. Often the claims will be legitimate in a very narrow context, stating they could not find you when searching for a particular keyword that may or may not be relevant or valuable to you./p
pKeep a healthy dose of skepticism when reading these emails. Most of the time you’re better off just deleting them any way. But the same time, these emails are not all from spammers. Google’s advice here to be wary is sound./p
blockquotestrongNo one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google./strong/blockquote
pI’ve blogged enough over the years debunking the a href=”http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-degeyter/do-seo-guarantees-protect-the-seo-or-the.php”myth of guaranteed rankings/a, so there is no need to go into it all here. There are things that SEOs can guarantee, but rankings are not one of them, outside of pay-per-click campaigns. However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t expect results either./p
pAvoid any SEO that offers ranking guarantees. There is usually enough small print that allows them out of any type of refund or continued service. On the other hand satisfaction guarantees our something that SEOs can provide, if they are willing. /p
blockquotestrongBe careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do./strong/blockquote
pSEOs that won’t share their processes with you need to be avoided at all cost. There really are no SEO secrets, just different strategies that can be employed. Any SEO you are dealing with should freely share their strategies with you and they should be able to give you comfort that they won’t engage in activities that are likely to get your site penalized by the engines./p
pThe better informed you are as a client, the healthier relationship you’ll have with your SEO. And knowing what strategies they’ll be implementing will help you keep your expectations in line with the results as well./p
blockquotestrongYou should never have to link to an SEO./strong/blockquote
pYou should never have to link to anybody, period. This includes directories that exchange a listing for a link, suppliers, agents, etc. Don’t get yourself in a deal where a link is required to be maintained at all times. /p
pWith that said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with anybody requesting that you place a link to their site, and doing so may be mutually beneficial. But linking from your website to another should always be a choice, and you should do it only when it is of benefit to your site visitors. /p
pWhen you lose control of who you link to because of the deals you make, you can often times find yourself associating with some less than reputable websites. The last thing you want is for the search engines to ding you quality points because of your shady associations./p
blockquotestrongChoose wisely./strong/blockquote
pDoing your research is important, especially when you’ll be investing thousands of dollars over several months for any marketing effort. There are a lot of companies out there that sound real good, say all the right words, but when push comes to shove they just don’t have what it takes./p
pby Mike Moran/p
div class=”zemanta-img” style=”margin: 1em; float: right; display: block;”a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/42209973@N00/2948904316″img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3215/2948904316_aa78836327_m.jpg” alt=”personalized cupcakes” style=”border: medium none ; display: block;” width=”240″ height=”180″/ap class=”zemanta-img-attribution” style=”font-size: 0.8em;”Image by a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/42209973@N00/2948904316″she_ra/a via Flickr/p/div
pMany marketers are asking me about personalized marketing, which you should expect to see more and more of in the next few years. We’ve already seen a class=”zem_slink” href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_targeting” title=”Behavioral targeting” rel=”wikipedia”behavioral targeting/a in display ads and personalized search, and we’ll see more personalized advertising emerge. But are we marketers just assuming that users will allow all this personalized marketing in? What if they clean their cookies regularly? Will that prevent those users from being exposed to personalized ads?/p
pThese are good questions. To answer them, we need to understand a bit about how a class=”zem_slink” href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personalization” title=”Personalization” rel=”wikipedia”personalization/a on the Web works. You can expect that any personalized approach depends on at least one of three basic techniques:ulliiCookies/i. This is the most common approach, and it can be interfered with when people “clean out” their cookies (by deleting them)./liliiUser IDs/i. This is an increasingly popular approach, where users have registered with a Web site, so that Web site can personalize whenever they are signed in. Deleting cookies can somewhat affect this approach, because users would surf anonymously until they signed in again./liliIP detection. By examining the network location of a user, Web sites can determine your geographic location and possibly even the company whose location you are working from./li/ul/p
pSo, how does cleaning cookies affect these types of personalization techniques? /p
pBehavioral targeting generally depends on a combination of cookies and IP detection. If users are iblocking/i cookies (ensuring they are never set), that would affect behavioral targeting a great deal. If they are cleaning cookies, it would erase the memory that behavioral targeting depends on, but behavioral targeting could work in between cleanings./p
pSearch personalization generally depends on User IDs and IP detection, but uses cookies to remember the User IDs so that users are automatically signed in. Cleaning cookies means that personalized search would not work until users signed in again. Because the act of searching itself does not require signing in, users might not sign in until they want to see their Gmail or their Yahoo! Finance page. /p
pPersonalization can use many different methods, of which cookies enable just some. Personalized marketing is coming, even for those who clean or even block cookies./p
div style=”margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;” class=”zemanta-pixie”a class=”zemanta-pixie-a” href=”http://reblog.zemanta.com/zemified/79bcef01-b3ff-47f4-886e-3a7530e320ce/” title=”Zemified by Zemanta”img style=”border: medium none ; float: right;” class=”zemanta-pixie-img” src=”http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=79bcef01-b3ff-47f4-886e-3a7530e320ce” alt=”Reblog this post [with Zemanta]”/a/div
pbr /ba href=”http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com”Check out our small business news site./a/b/p
pa href=”http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/6RtsEng_1jQfR5slh6ATWdNExZM/a”img src=”http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/6RtsEng_1jQfR5slh6ATWdNExZM/i” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare”
a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=wLN0y0Xr”img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?d=41″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=pv0j1U9E”img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?d=80″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=L7WS6Lpo”img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?i=L7WS6Lpo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=niBQURtG”img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?d=133″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=xAokh9CN”img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?d=52″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=jlNAnJjk”img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?d=124″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=zlPbkfPr”img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?d=131″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=EvJ2Kyma”img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?i=EvJ2Kyma” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=Xw0jQ2Cw”img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?i=Xw0jQ2Cw” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=QXiHUFHr”img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?d=129″ border=”0″/img/a
/divimg src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~r/searchengineguide/~4/v3JXNfU3beo” height=”1″ width=”1″/
Only 42 percent of companies calculate return on investment for applications they develop, according to a survey.
The survey, conducted by PreEmptive Solutions in early December, finds that companies just don#8217;t measure return for their internal applications. News flash: I seriously doubt these companies are exactly ROI sticklers for packaged apps either.
Obviously these ROI-phobic companies need […]br clear=”both” style=”clear: both;”/
br clear=”both” style=”clear: both;”/
a href=”http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=cd0d1433459e232ca3db4c5f1f13eb10p=1″img alt=”" style=”border: 0;” border=”0″ src=”http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=cd0d1433459e232ca3db4c5f1f13eb10p=1″//a
img src=”http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=cd0d1433459e232ca3db4c5f1f13eb10″ style=”display: none;” border=”0″ height=”1″ width=”1″ alt=”"/div class=”feedflare”
a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=EVOL0K.P”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=EVOL0K.P” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=DbQuNC.p”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=DbQuNC.p” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=zlCF3m.P”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=zlCF3m.P” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=FJ360L.p”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=FJ360L.p” border=”0″/img/a
/divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/zdnet/BTL/~4/524468491″ height=”1″ width=”1″/
EMC joined the growing list of companies that can#8217;t see beyond a quarter. The storage giant said Tuesday that it expects 2009 IT spending #8220;will decline as a percentage in the mid to high single digits compared with 2008.#8221; Meanwhile the company couldn#8217;t provide an outlook for 2009 due to the many wild cards facing […]br clear=”both” style=”clear: both;”/
br clear=”both” style=”clear: both;”/
a href=”http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=774e52e6208886db139f1afa40ac27c4p=1″img alt=”" style=”border: 0;” border=”0″ src=”http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=774e52e6208886db139f1afa40ac27c4p=1″//a
img src=”http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=774e52e6208886db139f1afa40ac27c4″ style=”display: none;” border=”0″ height=”1″ width=”1″ alt=”"/div class=”feedflare”
a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=2r5ZQf.P”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=2r5ZQf.P” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=TzWwBs.p”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=TzWwBs.p” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=Kx6iP3.P”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=Kx6iP3.P” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=aDY8Q7.p”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=aDY8Q7.p” border=”0″/img/a
/divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/zdnet/BTL/~4/524428685″ height=”1″ width=”1″/
Verizon on Tuesday delivered a mixed bag for the quarter. FiOS TV additions were stronger-than-expected and wireless subscriber additions were on the light side. Meanwhile, the company didn#8217;t break out how many BlackBerry Storms it moved in the quarter.
The telecom giant reported fourth quarter earnings of 43 cents a share and 61 cents excluding items […]br clear=”both” style=”clear: both;”/
br clear=”both” style=”clear: both;”/
a href=”http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=56d2621649c9852629e162ab139c6213p=1″img alt=”" style=”border: 0;” border=”0″ src=”http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=56d2621649c9852629e162ab139c6213p=1″//a
img src=”http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=56d2621649c9852629e162ab139c6213″ style=”display: none;” border=”0″ height=”1″ width=”1″ alt=”"/div class=”feedflare”
a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=0BjVbK.P”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=0BjVbK.P” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=6vK1DV.p”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=6vK1DV.p” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=onPZaL.P”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=onPZaL.P” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=l7pStm.p”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=l7pStm.p” border=”0″/img/a
/divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/zdnet/BTL/~4/524397230″ height=”1″ width=”1″/
A depressing string of layoff announcements across the corporate world has gotten 2009 off to an inauspicious start. So what do the trends mean for IT employment in 2009? Here’s a sober look at both the good signs and the bad.
—————————————————————————————————————————————-
January has been brutal for U.S. workers. Company after company has announced layoffs, salary freezes, […]br clear=”both” style=”clear: both;”/
br clear=”both” style=”clear: both;”/
a href=”http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=339df2dd63960e24d24cd3754b123600p=1″img alt=”" style=”border: 0;” border=”0″ src=”http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=339df2dd63960e24d24cd3754b123600p=1″//a
img src=”http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=339df2dd63960e24d24cd3754b123600″ style=”display: none;” border=”0″ height=”1″ width=”1″ alt=”"/div class=”feedflare”
a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=23uHKB.P”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=23uHKB.P” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=N5nEAx.p”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=N5nEAx.p” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=0×7tjx.P”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=0×7tjx.P” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=8PpPUg.p”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=8PpPUg.p” border=”0″/img/a
/divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/zdnet/BTL/~4/524298389″ height=”1″ width=”1″/
Here are today’s notable headlines. You can get News To Know via email alert and RSS daily . For continuous updates see BNET’s around-the-Web tech coverage
Tech earnings:
Larry Dignan: VMware#8217;s fourth quarter solid; Better than expected
Tech layoff parade continues: TI cuts 12 percent of workforce
Sam Diaz: Netflix bucks trends, beats for Q4
Mary Jo Foley: Near-final IE […]br clear=”both” style=”clear: both;”/
br clear=”both” style=”clear: both;”/
a href=”http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=8e1b3cb8861f81f4e0e971ec504589a9p=1″img alt=”" style=”border: 0;” border=”0″ src=”http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=8e1b3cb8861f81f4e0e971ec504589a9p=1″//a
img src=”http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=8e1b3cb8861f81f4e0e971ec504589a9″ style=”display: none;” border=”0″ height=”1″ width=”1″ alt=”"/div class=”feedflare”
a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=qner1a.P”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=qner1a.P” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=dZzAWU.p”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=dZzAWU.p” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=fKKjV2.P”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=fKKjV2.P” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?a=cZtxqy.p”img src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/zdnet/BTL?i=cZtxqy.p” border=”0″/img/a
/divimg src=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/zdnet/BTL/~4/524286192″ height=”1″ width=”1″/
pby Jennifer Laycock/p
PRemember back in the day when graduation was all about sitting in a stuffy auditorium while some Ben Stein clone in a robe read off a list of a few hundred (or worse, a few thousand) names? Booooooooooooring. These days, Web 2.0 has kicked it up a bit and made things more interesting. At least that’s what the team over at Market Motive is telling me in regards to the upcoming graduation ceremonies for their first class of Master Level Consultants./P
Pimg src=”http://www.searchengineguide.com/images/marketmotive.gif” border=”0″ align=”right” hspace=”5″ vspace=”5″I wrote about A HREF=”http://www.searchengineguide.com/jennifer-laycock/knowing-your-seo-certification-options.php”Market Motive’s certification program/A last month, not long after they announced the program. This month, they’re preparing to graduate their first round of students and they’re putting an interesting spin on the ceremony./p
POn Tuesday, January 27th at 12pm EST (9am PT), the Market Motive team will bring together eight students and eleven faculty members to have A HREF=”http://www.marketmotive.com/master-certification-graduation.php”graduation ceremonies via a live webinar/A. The faculty members will pepper the students with questions over the course of the event and will then grade the students to determine whether or not they graduate./p
PThe faculty is comprised of a pretty impressive list of marketers including Matt Bailey, Bryan Eisenberg, Todd Malicoat, John Marshall and Avinash Kaushik. I spoke with Michael Stebbins about the event earlier today and he said there will be a few surprise guests popping up with some questions and input as well./p
PBetter yet, attendees will have the chance to get some input on their own sites and will also have a shot at winning some excellent prizes, including an impressive discount on future certification courses. /p
PIf you’ve been thinking about going through a certification course or signing up for some online training, this will be a great chance to listen in on the faculty and to hear from some of the students. /p
PA HREF=”https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/307893901″Registration is free/A, you can sign up online./p
pbr /ba href=”http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com”Check out our small business news site./a/b/p
pa href=”http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/NYKN6ZY6roTZrnle9pEK8l11zQ0/a”img src=”http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/NYKN6ZY6roTZrnle9pEK8l11zQ0/i” border=”0″ ismap=”true”/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare”
a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=8lvEI7ik”img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?d=41″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=cpzmelm7″img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?d=80″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=kuQ4uVlE”img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?i=kuQ4uVlE” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=jVKDjlxz”img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?d=133″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=KiDn4ToD”img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?d=52″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=bt1EwkK4″img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?d=124″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=h1SKOIfQ”img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?d=131″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=xnxgUV90″img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?i=xnxgUV90″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=lzapuTE2″img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?i=lzapuTE2″ border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?a=j0bVBVPu”img src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/searchengineguide?d=129″ border=”0″/img/a
/divimg src=”http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~r/searchengineguide/~4/pqXDBR7iZmk” height=”1″ width=”1″/