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  1. 2 Ways to Find Out if Links to Your Site Carry Value

    There are two things to look for to see if a link TO your website from another website is sending you Pagerank value to boost your position in search engines. Both methods keep search engines from following that link. However, keep in mind that even though a link may not pass Pagerank, no link is a bad one (unless maybe it’s a link from an unscruptulus source), as it can still still drive a live person to your site. Most social media sites use one of these two methods, so they do not provide true links back to your site which improves your ranking in search engines (Links back to your site improve your ranking in search engines – Read more here), BUT there is still value because people can see the link and if they like what they see when they visit, they may elect to manually link to your site themselves or socially bookmark it which shares it with their friends and increases your exposure.

    1. NoFollow – View the source of the website you are on. If you use a
      web browser that allows "View Selection Source", like Firefox, that
      makes this easier. If you use Firefox, highlight the link back to your
      site and right-click and select "View Selection Source." You’ll see
      some HTML code, but you want to look for something that looks like:

      rel="nofollow"

      This tag tells search engines to not follow that link, although people can still click on it.

    2. Redirects – Many sites will use redirects to avoid passing Pagerank
      to your link. You can identify that by turning on the "Status" bar at
      the bottom of your browser if not already on (Look in menu "View –>
      Status Bar") and then hover your mouse over the link on the page
      without clicking on it, look in that bottom status bar to see where the
      link points to. If the site is redirecting, you’ll see something like:

      socialmediasite.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eyoursite%2Ecom

      What this effectively does is links to themselves with a parameter
      telling their site to then forward to your site. Again, search engines
      will not see the redirect to you and instead just sees a link to the
      site linking to you.

  2. Internet Advertising Dominates Traditional Means in Economic Downturn

    Here we are a good way through 2009 and an interesting trend has emerged. Despite the national economic resession, studies are showing that online advertising has not decreased, unlike most other traditional advertising means such as television and radio ads, which have dropped by approximately 15%. Many attribute this stability in the internet marketing industry to the fact that most website advertisments are charged per-click rather than a blanket charge per month regardless of success, as is the case with other advertising avenues.

    That means that advertisers aren’t spending money if potential customers are not clicking on their ads, and anyone that has run a TV or radio ad knows that there are times when it’s questionable whether your ad is getting noticed and if it’s worth the significant investment. Another advantage of online advertising is the wealth of statistics you get on clicks, amount of time someone spends on your site, what time of day the most clicks occur and more. That allows advertisers to make more educated decisions on how they run their online advertising campaign.

    So if you’ve not already taken advantage of the wonderful advertising programs that Google, Facebook and other internet advertisers have to offer, it may be a good time to get in the know.

  3. 7 Great Articles on Link Building

    Stepforth is a great website with tons of resources on online marketing. Here is a a page of theirs that lists seven really good articles on link building. If you have any interest in improving your ranking in search engines by building links to your website, give these a read:

    http://www.stepforth.com/blog/top-posts-on-links.php

  4. Google Chief Economist Video Explains PPC Advertising

    Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian, explains in this 10-minute video the basics of search advertising with Google’s Adwords program. Some of the key concepts covered include bidding against competitors, click-through-rate, or CTR, the ever-elusive quality score of an ad and how that all affects an ad’s "Ad Rank."

    What many people don’t know is that you can outrank someone who bids more on a key phrase than you if you have a better quality score. Quality score is determined by how closely your key phrase, ad copy and website’s landing page relate to one another. Google wants people to get relevant results when clicking on advertisements, so this is how they achieve that.

    The video is very basic, but it is a wonderful illustration of how a very complex system works.

  5. Good Website Design Really Does Matter

    According to a recent poll done by Webcopyplus, the aethetics of a website design has a significant effect on how long users stay on your website. Almost 25% of web users indicated “poor visual presentation” as the number one element that drives them away from websites, up from 6.6% in 2007.

    When users were asked what’s most likely to drive them away from a website they said:

    • 50.9% indicated “slow load times”
    • 24.8% noted “weak web copy”
    • 24.2% specified “poor visual presentation”

    This trend seems to indicate that as the web continues to mature, simply having a web site is not enough. To compete you must have a website that stands out from the rest and focuses on what you need your visitors to do, IE: sign up for your newsletter, buy a product, fill out a contact form, etc.

  6. Another Good Site to Syndicate Articles

    3 Things to Look for When Syndicating Content

    One of the best ways to market your website and get more traffic and links pointing to it is by writing great articles about your field and then syndicating them. We’re always on the lookout for good places to syndicate content. But there’s so many sites to choose from…how do you know where your time is being well spent? Read on to find out!

    We recently ran across a site, Go Articles,  that has a good page rank, allows links back to your website (and they don’t use nofollow tags) and is free to post to – the three main things you should look for in an online syndication site.

    Page Rank

    Google assigns a page rank from 0-10 on all pages on the internet. That score gives you an idea of how well linked that page is. Building your own page rank depends on you getting links from other sites that have a decent page rank, which you can find out by using the Google Toolbar for your browser.

    Links

    Although it is suspected that you do get some minimal boost to your site for be simply mentioned on another website, but actually getting a link from another site to yours is where the real value is. But, in addition to having a link from a site with a decent page rank, you want to make sure that the link to you does not use the rel="nofollow" tag. That tag basically tells Google not to follow it, therefore removing any "link juice" that you may get from that incoming link. To check a site to see if they use nofollow tags on their links view your page source in a web browser and wade through the jibbersh until you see something like:

    <a  href="http://www.yoursite.com">This is a link</a>

    What you don’t want to see is this:

    <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.yoursite.com">This is a link</a>

    If you do, don’t bother getting a link from there. It’s mostly a waste of your time and you could be spending it at sites with more link "bang for the buck." Read this post for more on link building.

    Free

    There are plenty of places to pay to syndicate articles or post press releases, but in our experience the paid ones are only marginally better than the free ones, so if you can find free ones that meet this three-rule criteria,they are a good place to start.

    Also, don’t forget to check out an earlier post of ours about syndication that lists WAY more places to syndicate your content at! Note, every site in that list has not been checked for our above three-rule criteria, so use at your own risk!

  7. Google Apps Outlook Sync

    Google has just released a new product called "Google Apps Sync for Outlook" that allows people on Google Apps to continue to use Outlook, but not need a Microsoft Exchange server. See the details here. That is a great new addition as this could save businesses a lot of money by not requiring an Exchange server anymore to sync up company contacts, email and calendars.

    The only bummer is you have to have the Premiere Edition of Google Apps and not the free, "Basic" edition. 

  8. Tasks: My Favorite Google Apps Addon Now With Calendar Integration

    Google recently added an addon feature for Google Apps called tasks which shows a list of to-do items in your mail view. You can turn it on by going to Settings –> Labs and look for "Tasks." I love this addon because it puts a list of to-do reminders where I spend a good portion of my time – in email. Tasks can even be viewed on your phone.

    Even more recently, Google added task integration with Google Calendar, so you can schedule tasks and easily refer to them when in Calendar view as well – here’s more information from Google about it.

    Did I mention Google Apps is free for 50 accounts or less? Once you see what it’s capable of, it will revolutionize your workflow.

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