The Internet Business Revolution Is Picking Up Pace

By Naz Daud

The internet has transformed the way many people do business. Twenty years ago the internet did not even exist and now if your high speed broadband connection is down you feel unconnected to the world, as if something is not complete in your life.

All big businesses now need to have a web presence not only to market their products but also to create brand awareness. Distance no longer matters in many types of businesses. The
world is your oyster but this also leads to more competition as somebody overseas can provide the same service but at a potentially lower price.

Communication is so quick and easy on the web that great new products spread like wildfire as people blog and chat about them on online forums.

Buyers have more power now to compare prices before they shop in their high street shops. Many do their ordering online and avoid the retail outlets completely. I always check online prices before making a decision where to buy.

Lead times are getting shorter as big companies fight to deliver your order within a couple of day for today's just in time society.

All the major manufacturers and retailers conduct business on the web. Some huge companies like Dell only sell their computers through their website. They have abandoned the normal retail channels completely.

Recently, in the last thirty days I have purchased a new mobile phone (next day delivery), a new computer (delivery within 4 days built to my specification) and purchased some airplane tickets (delivery instantly via email).

Did you know that the largest online retailer in the UK is Tesco?

Social networking sites are all the rage now. People no longer need to leave their home to interact with family and friends. Not only are they keeping in touch with people close to their hearts they are also building relationships which are just as strong as people they meet in real life.

So whether it's employment, business or socializing - the internet is here to stay.

The real internet explosion is happening now - not ten years ago as most of the pundits had predicted. Many people assume that everything that could have been created has been made and that the opportunity to exploit and do business on the web is now over.

Far from it! Over the next twenty years we are going to see new giants emerging… companies that have not even been born yet. This is the fastest moving medium and also offers the most opportunity to young entrepreneurs.

About The Author:

Naz Daud is the Founder of the CityLocal Internet Business Franchise Opportunity.
http://www.citylocal.co.uk
http://www.citylocal.co.uk/frontend/franchiseinfo.php?cityid=79
http://www.citylocal.ie
http://www.ecademy.com/account.php?id=120141

All Search Engines Love Spiders: How Meta Commands Can Help You Love Them Too

By Scott Buresh

Nearly all search engines utilize spiders (which are also known by their original name, robots) to go out and scour the web looking for web pages. These search engine spiders then bring the data back to be indexed by the engine.

Since roughly 1996, individual meta commands have existed that can be used on individual web pages to modify how these search engine spiders behave. The most useful of these commands are fairly universal and respected by almost all search engines. What follows is a list of some of the more popular spider commands and instances in which you might want to use them. (Please note all <> have been replaced with [] for publishing purposes).

[meta name="robots" content="index"]

This meta command is one of the most common ones used – and it is also the least necessary. It tells search engine spiders to come on in and put the page in their indexes. However, all search engines do this by default anyway. Basically, if you want to put it in there for fun, be my guest, but this command is not giving you any special treatment. All search engines are going to index your page, unless you specifically tell them otherwise.

[meta name="robots" content="follow"]

The follow command is different from the index command. It basically requests that the search engine spiders follow the links that are on a particular page. Again, however, this piece of code is completely unnecessary because all search engines are going to follow the links on a page, unless otherwise directed.

[meta name="robots" content="noindex"]

The noindex command, the opposite of the index command, tells search engine spiders not to index the content of a page. It’s important to note, however, that search engine spiders will still follow the links on a page that uses only this command.

When not used for legitimate purposes, this tag can be dangerous because it can put you at risk for penalization by most, if not all search engines. This is because you can use a noindex tag to hide pages with multiple links that you don’t want visitors to see but that you do want all search engines to index.

There are, however, some legitimate uses for the noindex command. For example, if you have a dynamic site, and you’ve created static pages to replace some of your dynamic pages, which can make them easier for search engine spiders to access, you could put a noindex tag on the dynamic version.

As Google mentions in its Webmaster Help Center:

"Consider creating static copies of dynamic pages. Although the Google index includes dynamic pages."

About the Author:

Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, Organic Rankings, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

Advanced Link Checks

By James Mahony

You should be able to find several indispensable facts about SEO in the following paragraphs. If there's at least one fact you didn't know before, imagine the difference it might make.

View the source of each and every page: is there JavaScript and CSS on the page? Remember that spiders may not index pages that have more than 10k or so of JavaScript or CSS embedded in them. Spiders don't enjoy getting tangled up in JavaScript. So as a general rule you should avoid putting out prompts and alerts using JavaScript every time that a page loads. Because of this rule, it is also wise to avoid link partners who do so on the pages that they link to you from. If anything looks fishy, it probably is.

CSS won't give you many problems. If you are going to use CSS, it is best to link to it from another source. Create a separate CSS page and use the tag to work it into the head of your HTML. This method will keep your file size down considerably, and since you will probably be using the same CSS on several pages, decrease your bandwidth usage. Normally a large quantity of CSS within the document isn't indicative of any suspicious behavior on the part of the linker. If you feel that you are, indeed, suffering from the fact that the site uses such an excessive proportion of CSS on the page itself, suggest to the webmaster that he/she may want to create an external CSS document and link to it in his/her header.

Check that you're still on the domain you clicked on a link to, and you haven't moved to another site or a subdomain. Some people will move you to another domain while telling that's their site and your link is there, relying on you not checking the address bar. This trick is all too common and happens to folks who are new to SEO every single day. This sad fact will continue until people begin to catch it every time.

If you don't have accurate details regarding SEO, then you might make a bad choice on the subject. Don't let that happen: keep reading.

If the domain has changed, delete your backlink to the site in question immediately and then email the webmaster with your complaint. If the webmaster does not fix the problem you may
even want to request that they remove the link as the site may wind up discredited as a link farm or some such thing that you do not want to be associated with for fear of being banned from many popular search engines with technology used to combat link farms.

On a related subject, when you check your back links, make sure that these links appear in legitimate places. If the site is completely dedicated to linking to other sites and doesn't seem to be a directory or something similar you will want to get your link removed as soon as possible. There is no time when one link is worth the risk of being permanently banned from any popular search engine. Aside from the traffic that you will lose from that one search engine, you may wind up "red flagged" so to speak. It seems to be common practice among search engines that
if one finds faulty activity the rest seem to find out soon afterwards.

Overall, if it seems dodgy, leave it alone. It's better to sacrifice one link in caution than to destroy your site's rankings by accepting one you're not sure of. There are hundreds of situations aside from link farms that can and will give you trouble. It would be impossible to list every scam as there are people who make their living (or seem to anyway) in creating and executing these scams. Whenever there is a new form of "SEO" technology that "can't fail," you should watch out because it is almost guaranteed to blow up in your face. The only truly powerful and guaranteed method of SEO is to make your site valuable to your visitors and then let it fall where it may in the realm of the search engine.

It is difficult, after you have optimized your pages and submitted them to search engines and directories, to sit back and wait, but there is not much that can be done aside from attempting to accumulate links from good, solid places. The work that you have done is bound to pay off sooner or later as long as you stay honest. When it comes to the world of SEO, honesty is, indeed, the best policy.

When word gets around about your command of SEO facts, others who need to know about SEO will start to actively seek you out.

About The Author:

James Mahony is the founder of http://www.searchmama.com - A site dedicated to Search Engine Optimization SEO Tips http://www.thedomaintycoons.com
http://www.articlesforwebsitecontent.com

How To Beat The Google Sandbox And Make Some Cash At The Same Time

By Rob Sullivan

I stumbled across this quite by accident. I knew it was there because I'd seen it before but I forgot about it until today.

So I did some checking to see if it still does work and based on my limited test it appears that it does.

What I'm about to explain to you may not only help get sandboxed sites indexed and ranking quicker, it can even make the site owner a little money.

I've been blogging for a few years now. I started it as a hobby and the blog I had was actually a blog before there were blogs. In other words I was "blogging" with a regular website.

Then a friend turned me on to Movable Type. It is a software which allows me to automate the publishing of content on my website.

I was having problems getting my website/blog indexed by Google back then - this was about 3 years ago.

It was also around this time that I heard of a new program called Google Adsense (https://www.google.com/adsense) in which one could place code on their web pages that would display ads, and the website owner would earn money on every click.

I thought "what a cool idea" so I immediately applied for an account. 48 hours later I was placing ads on my blog.

Shortly after this while reviewing my server logs I noticed that I was getting Google referrals! That's right, within days of placing the ads on my site, it had been fully indexed by Google and it was actually ranking quite highly for terms related to the content I was posting.

I couldn't believe my luck. Here I thought all I was going to do was make a little money on the side yet I found that the Adsense may have actually helped get my site indexed.

Remember, this was before the Sandbox, but it was a time when link popularity ruled the web. But since it was only a hobby I wasn't worried about building links. Because I already had a few loyal readers, I wasn't trying to position this site.

Flash forward to December 2005 and a friend asks me to help him set up his own blog. Actually he wants two of them - each with their own topics, and both very different in nature.

I consult with him and on February 1, 2006 we register two new domains for him.

He proceeds to build out his blogs and as he's doing this I suggest placing ads on them. At the time I wasn't thinking that it would help with indexing, just another way to increase exposure of the ads to generate more revenue for me and him.

We agree to split the money and he places the ads on the two new sites.

I didn't think much of it until his visitor traffic started going up. He also placed Google Analytics code on the sites and gave me access to them so I could take a look to see where all this traffic is coming from.

Turns out, he's getting a few Google organic referrals.

Imagine that - two brand new sites, with no incoming links, but somehow they have managed to sneak out of the Google Sandbox in 3 weeks?

Imagine my surprise, considering I have another site that I started over a year ago, and have been dutifully building content and links, yet I can't get it out of the sandbox. In fact, the current Google cache is of pages that no longer exist, and haven't for months.

My explanation, however "out there" it seems to be is that somehow the Google Ads have allowed the site to bypass the sandbox and move into the index almost immediately.

The first Google organic referral came last week, just two short weeks after the site was tagged with the Google Adsense code. Since then, both sites have received a handful of Google organic referrals.

Based on this very small and somewhat limited test case, my gut is telling me that one way out of the sandbox and into the SERPs is to apply for and install Google AdSense onto your site.

At the very least you'll make some money - maybe not a lot, just a few dollars a month (Google only pays out in $100 increments mind you, so it may take a while to get that first Google check) and the best case is that you'll bypass the sandbox, get indexed quickly and even start driving organic referrals to your site.

Like I said, this isn't anything near a scientific study but it seems pretty clear to me that what has helped these two sites become indexed so quickly are the ads.

So if you're stuck in the sandbox, perhaps applying for AdSense is a good idea.

I know I'm going to be placing ads on my other site to see what effect (if any it has). My guess is that within a few days it too will start ranking.

About The Author:

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for http://www.textlinkbrokers.com. Textlinkbrokers is a link building company. Please provide a link directly to Textlinkbrokers when syndicating this article.

Improved Search Engine Ranks Strategies

By Paton Jackson

SEO is a new animal. Many ask me if SEO is a new science or mathematical discipline. Absolutely not, SEO is an art. That's why you have the same odds to be successful in SEO like me or like anyone else.

Yet, there are some improved search engine ranks strategies that you may use to get higher search engine ranks. I can not assure those strategies will always work but they may certainly help get into the big guys game. Let me describe a few of them:

1. "Links, links, links" - Even more important than the famous Donald Trumps' "Location, location, location".

You must set a network of as many quality links to your sites as you can get. What are those quality links, you ask?

Quality links are links to your website from other sites with a competitive key phrase in the hyper link text, linked to different pages in your web site from sites with high search
engine ranks. You can build links with many like strategies such as affiliate marketing, exchanging links, articles submitting and others.

2. BE natural - Search engines like natural behavior. The days of quick make money internet marketing cd are gone.

You will have to add pages and build links gradually and consistently. You must be patient to get higher search engine ranks.

3. Benchmark and audit - There is only one thing in common for all the SEO experts. They all learn from their mistakes. Each of them has his own techniques of auditing and benchmarking.

You could never stop researching and developing. Indeed, the internet market is almost endless. Yet, so is the number of potential competitors.

Personally, I have a set of auditing, researching and developing actions I do each month for each of my sites. Surprisingly, it works.

Finally, you may use some tools to make things easier for you - from meta tags optimization services to article submitting services. Yet, those services cost money. I suggest you start doing the hard work by your self and slowly outsource some of the work. Good luck.

About The Author:

Find more precious SEO info only on http://www.tigilet.com/c/Web%20content.php - Higher search engine ranks tools. Find more useful information on http://www.tigilet.com

The Surprising Maxim that Maximises Your Copywriting Results

By Kris Mills

Who was it that said, "Modesty is a virtue"? Whoever it was, I'm sure they weren't referring to the field of sales and marketing, where self-promotion is the name of the game ... or were they?

Take a good look at anyone who is a roaring success in sales, in copywriting or in marketing and you'll see that one of the secrets of their success is in being able to really connect with people one-on-one, on their level. Sure, that means developing a great rapport with them, being a great listener and being a great communicator and more. But there's one factor that separates these greats from the wannabes.

It's called the "Modesty Maxim". The people who master this element of rapport, achieve mastery.

Here's how it works in copywriting. It can be used in a very similar way in sales too.

When you're writing to (or speaking with) a prospect who has a certain problem that they want to solve, chances are they are feeling a little insecure about a certain aspect of who they are.

With that, it's important that your copy starts by coming down to their level, where they are now at emotionally and then bring them up to the level where they want to be.

Here's a story of Mary Bryant. Mary is a 42 year old mother of four from Atlanta, Georgia. She was 25kgs overweight and had been that way since her youngest child was born about 10 years ago.

Mary looked in the mirror everyday and hated the image that stared back at her. She felt ugly. She hated those extra rolls of fat around her waist. She hated her double chin. She hated the saddle bags under her arms.

She desperately wanted to lose weight. She wanted to be able to look in the mirror and like what she saw.

One day Mary decided to visit a weight loss centre. The weight loss consultant was friendly and asked her questions about herself, but as she did that, Mary felt about an inch tall.

Mary was embarrassed by her weight. What made it worse was the weight loss consultant was reed-thin and looked like she had never had an inch of fat on her bones in her entire life.

'She thinks she's better than me,' Mary muttered to herself. 'She is probably thinking to herself, "That fat slob. How could she let herself go like that?''

On and on went Mary's mind chatter then after about 15 minutes, Mary was fed up with the "high and mighty attitude" of the weight loss consultant, so she left.

Because Mary was so entrenched in her own problem, she was in a very emotional and not very rational state. In fact, her emotions were clouding her judgment.

After Mary left she recognized just how irrational she was being, so she decided to visit another weight loss clinic and try again.

Again, she was greeted by a 'reed-thin' weight loss consultant with a smile. Again, she was asked about her goals and her personal situation.

But what happened this time was that this weight loss consultant told Mary her own story of how she was a mother of five and just 18 months ago she was more than 30 kilograms overweight ... and how she had tried diet after diet and nothing was working ... how she hated looking in the mirror everyday ... how she just didn't want to get out of bed at all.

Mary's eyes lit up. Mary looked at this blonde, waifish woman and finally realized that just maybe she really could be like that too - that maybe if that weight loss consultant could lose 30 kilograms, maybe she could lose 20 kilograms.

See the difference?

The weight loss consultant in the second example shared her story with her and doing that achieved two things:

First - Mary no longer felt inferior to the weight loss consultant because the weight loss consultant had once been in the same situation that she is in now.

Second - Mary felt that getting results was now achievable because she was talking with someone who had been in her situation and won.

Here are some other situations where the Modesty Maxim applies:

1. Wealth Creation

If you're a multi-millionaire who wants to teach the "Average Joe" how to get rich, it's important to show how rich you are now, but it's also vital that you tell them how you were like them once. For instance:

--- "How a lazy high-school dropout went from dead broke to $10 million in assets in 7 years" ---

Some Classic Headlines that Employ the Modesty Maxim

--- The Man with the Grasshopper Mind ---

Anyone who has loads of mind-chatter can instantly relate to this headline and subsequently the man mentioned in the ad. They want to know ...

How much is his situation like theirs?

What did this man do to fix the problem?

What is his life like now?

--- How a new discovery made a plain girl beautiful ---

Again, a great example of "before and after".

Most women want to look more beautiful but many feel that it's something you need to be born with. This headline promises that beauty is available to even "plain girls".

--- "They laughed when I sat down at the ---
--- piano but when I started to play" ---

Many people who want to play the piano don't learn for fear of looking ridiculous. This headline resonates with those people.

See how these examples connect with the reader?

What other examples can you think of? How can you apply the Modesty Maxim in your marketing efforts.

About the Author:

This article is written by Kris Mills and is part of the Freelance Copywriting Success Home Study Course developed by Words that Sell and the College of Copywriting and Marketing. Kris is an internationally recognized direct response copywriter and author who has produced record-breaking results for clients in dozens of industries. For dozens more interesting articles, more information about the course or about Kris' copywriting services visit http://www.collegeofcopywriting.com/ or
http://www.wordsthatsell.com.au/

6 Internet Marketing Myths

By Paul Penafiel

Every day thousands of people go online to make money but most of them fail miserably because they either truly believe one of the 6 Internet Marketing Myths or or all of them. You can read them below and discover the grain of salt in all of them.

Myth #1: Internet Marketing is EASY

This is probably the biggest myth of all, and let me tell you Internet marketing is hard, takes time, effort not mention money and anyone who suggests otherwise is trying to sell you a bunch of horse hockey. Granted that it's comparatively easier to brick and mortar in that there's no inventory to carry, no shipping of goods no sales staff and virtually no overhead, but a lot of work is still involved.

Myth #2: ANYONE Can Make Money Online

Folks, this is simply not true. Unless someone gets off their lazy boy recliner and download/read everything they can about internet marketing, and put an action plan in motion, they will never make a dime on the internet. DO NOTHING, MAKE NOTHING.

Myth #3: You Can "GET RICH QUICK" On the Net!

This is the trap that a lot of newbie internet marketers falls into including myself when I first started, why? because scammers make it sounds so easy and let me tell you, chasing "get rich quick scheme" is a WASTE OF TIME!, money and energy. It just won't happen overnight, instead do some research and find out what people really want and need then give it to them especially a sense of reality.

Myth #4: It's FREE to Do Business Online

This is one of my favorite myths because I believed it during my first year of internet marketing and it just wasn't true then, it isn't true today. Compared to opening your first coffee shop or gift shop in downtown Los Angeles, internet business start-up cost and maintenance cost is pretty low. Once you have your domain set up, you only pay for internet connection, advertising and ongoing educations, that's it. You can't expect to make money selling free stuff and ask others to do the same. Folks! it takes money to make money.

Myth #5: It's TOO LATE to Start an Internet Business

Most super affiliate marketers would love to hear people say "It's too late now, too many competitions, I should just pack my bags and go home, the internet is too complicated, etc...". You know why? the less people they have to compete with the better which in turn will make them more money.

The fact is, it's never ever too late to start anything and that includes internet business. I firmly believe that the internet is not going anywhere and you should too. Every year the stats will show you the number of people shopping online are increasing, their spending dollars are growing and the number of people going online is increasing also.

Myth #6: The BIG Money Talk is JUST HYPE

As I've told you before, "it takes money to make money?" Well it's true, although you will be hard pressed to find experienced internet marketers to tell how much they spend on promoting and advertising. Sometimes, you have to dig a little deeper to find the truth in every hype you read. It's a fact that the people that makes alot of money online also spends alot of money on advertising, tools, resources and know how to get the job done.

If you are willing to take the necessary action to make 'big money' happen for you - it will. It takes time. You can criticize, be skeptical and sure that 'big money' can't happen for you - and it won't. Sit down and write a financial and a sound business plan. Local Chamber of Commerce can give all the info you need to get started.

If you believe that you will succeed you're right, if you believe that it won't work, you're right also.

To summarize, you have heard people's story how they're making a fortune on the internet and how easy it is but the reality is some stories are NOT out of this world or unrealistic but it just doesn't happen overnight. You just have to apply a bit of common sense into it, find what you love to do, have a game plan, stay focus and you my friend might find the right opportunity to make all your dreams come true.

About the Author:

Paul Penafiel surfs the best traffic exchange programs to build a list of contacts and grow a residual income. For more info please visit http://www.paulpenafiel.com/lsn.htm

What Is Black Hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

By Dana Goldberg

SEO has been very useful and famous in internet marketing. There are many techniques that make boosting your site a success through different seo strategies. But despite the success of SEO, there are some black practitioners who tend to see the field of search engine optimization as war, and the search engines are doing anything to beat the competition whether it is fair or foul. Those white hatters market with the other search engines as associates or partners who can help them drive links and business to their client's sites.

Cloaking happens when a website or a web page displays different content for a certain search engine spider in opposition to a human user. Cloaking is the one that delivers a version of a page to an Internet user and a different description to a search engine. You will notice a cloaked page is filled with keywords and phrases that the site wants to make them rank high.

This is done by cloaking the programs that weigh the IP address of the other party to a database of the known IP address which comes from a definite search engine spider. If there is a match in the IP address on the list, it serves a page which is particularly written for the search engines.

Cloaking has several good reasons which include increasing advertising and promotion. If you are trying to control your rankings in the different search engines, it might result to penalize your site or it might be banned.

Spamming or the keyword stuffing is a long list of keywords placed in the content and also the code on the page which makes it unreadable. Have you seen a page that repeatedly displays an ad with certain words? It is obvious that the site is trying to rank its page. This is known as keyword spamming but it is just one tip that most SEO companies are trying to do to increase page rank.

You might not notice the page may have invisible text, title tags, meta tags and comment tags. If a page repeats a certain keyword repeatedly, google might place a filter to lessen the ranking or much worse, ban the site. Keyword density can be quite tricky but following the general rule, 3% t0 12 % is the percentage to which a site can use the targeted keywords.

You will notice there are some hidden texts in SEO strategies. This happens when a text or link is invisible to the website visitor but can still be seen by the search engines. If this happens it is considered hidden. Before, people used small fonts to hide the text or they would even use the same color for the background.

This makes them able to put some links which are unseen, but has long been noticed by the search engines that is why they have come up with another strategy this time. Spammers are using the cascading style sheets in order to hide the text. Some are also using tags which are set to hide the text on the page. These strategies are considered hidden if they are left unseen but search engines have their own technique of spotting invisible links so better not do it at all.

The doorway pages are those that exclusively exist to rank well in the different search engines. You may notice some of the pages being ugly and some contain paragraphs which do not have any relation to the topic. Most of the time these doorway pages are not part of the regular navigation of the site which are called orphaned pages.

A black hat SEO can use very good software to filter or generate the doorway pages. This happens when they plug a few keywords and search the page.

You may notice some sites linking to other sites which are have no relation at all. Some sites just link to other sites which is part of their strategy. Now, you will find this truly spamming.

If you are going to put up your own website, make sure that you will avoid these things and keep SEO marketing fair and do not think of competition. Think of how you can increase your site ranking fairly.

About The Author:

D. Goldberg is editor of Make More Money Easily. Insider tips on creating wealth online.
http://www.makemoremoneyeasily.info