SEO (search engine optimization) is the practice of optimizing web pages to achieve higher rankings in the search engines. Whether you hire a professional or choose to go at it alone, there are a few things you should know before starting out.

Google Rules

When searching for content on Google, you will notice sponsored advertisements along with general search results. Keep in mind that attempting to pay your way to the top of the rankings doesn’t always work. In fact, Google looks down on such things and may actually disqualify you for doing so. You can however, achieve natural rankings by learning the importance of keywords and link popularity, which will cost you nothing.

All Links Are Not Good Links

Link popularity involves creating links for other sites on your pages and most importantly, having your pages linked to other sites. The key here is to make sure the links are relative. Seek out people in your industry and look to exchange links them.

No Guarantees

Regardless of what a company tells you, no one can guarantee specific search engine rankings. SEO is essential but you should also focus on building the best site possible and marketing your business.

Have you been to a Website where you wondered just what in the world the site owner was talking about? Have you passed on ordering something from a site because of the wording of it was so bad you were afraid the owner might sell your credit card numbers to a third world country?

Likely, you have. Everyone has. What’s unfortunate is that many of these Websites might actually be owned and operated by good people – they just aren’t good writers. What’s more unfortunate is that they have somehow failed to realize this, and it’s costing them business!

If you’ve got a Website, you need a writer to provide you with quality content. Internet consumers are getting much more savvy than they were in the past, and because of that they are avoiding Websites that are full of grammatical and spelling errors or that just don’t have anything interesting to say.

Don’t get caught up in that because you don’t want to pay a writer to do a decent job of writing content for your site – the money that you pay that writer will very likely be much less than the money you are losing by having low-quality content as the first thing that your prospective buyer sees.

Elevator pitches might seem difficult, but they’re really not. The best way to write one is to remember one simple rule: situation, impact, resolution.

First, you need to talk about the situation that your prospective client is in now. If the person doesn’t realize that he or she has a problem that needs to be solved there will be no need for the help that the business making the elevator pitch has to offer.

Once the situation is spelled out for the prospective client, that person will start to wonder what he or she can do to correct that situation, and that is when the business can step in and talk about the impact that the problem – and its lack of resolution – could have on the prospective client and his or her business and earning potential.

The key after that is to show that there can be a very satisfactory resolution, and the company who indicated that there was a situation to be addressed is the one to provide that resolution.

If you want your site to do well and if you want people to use your services, an elevator pitch is important. There are some people who would argue that the elevator pitch is dead, but most people who do well on the Internet still feel it’s essential. It ensures that anyone who finds your site understands not only what you can do for them, but why they need you.

So, you buy an iPhone and then you buy games for it because you want something to play – and let’s face it, you’ve got to keep up with your friends. What you didn’t sign up for, though, were advertisements.

Now when you buy a game for your iPhone you’ll get ads on the front of that game from places like Wal-Mart and Best Buy. Some people think it’s great, some think it’s annoying, and some think it’s just a natural progression of technology and companies who are trying to keep their name in front of as many potential customers as possible. Whatever your take on it, it’s here to stay, whether the games are free downloads or purchased.

Greystripe is the company behind the advertising, and it has stepped into the arena because developers for the highly-addictive games that can be downloaded to the iPhone often get little compensation when you look at how many times their games are played.

Until the ad idea came to light, these developers only received compensation when their game was first downloaded, no matter how many times it was actually played. Next time you’re tempted to get mad about that ad running on your iPhone when all you want to do is play your game, remember that it’s helping to compensate the developer who created that little piece of electronic enjoyment.

Even though Facebook has tried to be polite, eventually the company decided that it had to crack down on other Internet and social networking companies who were trying to create sites that were too close to their specific design.

As its target, Facebook has chosen the German company StudiVZ, saying that the company has infringed on the look, the feel, and the features and services of Facebook in a way which has become a copyright problem. In other words, Facebook is saying that the other company copied them, and they’re mad about it.

Whether they win will depend on whether a judge thinks that the German company really did infringe on Facebook’s copyright or whether their design was unintentional.

What is decided will send a message to other social networking sites, but it seems that Facebook probably has a case. The German site looks as though someone took Facebook, translated it into the German language, and changed the coloring to red. Beyond that, the sites are startlingly similar from one page to the next, showing that there is a good chance the judge in the case will rule in favor of Facebook over StudiVZ.

Whatever happens, it could change the rules behind social networking for sites all over the world.

If you want to sell online and do well at it, you can’t just assume that you can get some SEO articles written for the search engines, throw them on a Web site, and rake in the money. It would be financially wonderful if life worked that way, but it doesn’t.

SEO can actually be a problem for people who are unfamiliar with how the Web works because too many keywords can get your articles flagged as spam by the search engines instead of getting your site highly indexed. And most SEO articles are written for search engines and not for people – they turn visitors off very quickly because they are hard to read and sometimes don’t even make sense.

If you want to do well with SEO, you need a human being to write your articles for other human beings to read, but that alone won’t do it.

You also need to utilize the video and audio capabilities that the Web has to offer. Bland, boring Web sites don’t interest people in a place where there is so much else to see and do. They want to see color and movement and hear things that interest them.

Part of a good sales strategy is to balance holding a visitor’s interest with having a site that is not so busy that it becomes a distraction. Give your site visitors what they want.

People who advertise on the Internet and who sell their goods or services there often get used to where they were in the beginning and they’re not that interested in making changes or moving into new venues.

With the advent of Web 2.0, these people have to make some changes or risk being left in the dust by their competitors. Social networking is becoming a huge part of the lives of a lot of these people and others are still playing catch-up.

Some people are uncomfortable with too much social networking or Web 2.0 because they think that it is only for people to share personal information. What they don’t know is many sites exist in cyberspace for professional networking too.

The idea behind Web 2.0 is not to be juvenile or overly personal, but simply to help people connect with one another in whatever manner they want to. They can share as much or as little information as they want with each other, and they can branch out and meet new people, learning about others as they go. This is the beauty behind Web 2.0 – the idea that there are so many different options that, with a little research, you can find exactly what you need and connect with people who share your goals and interests.

According to most ‘techies,’ new technology isn’t that exciting if you can’t get YouTube on it. TiVo was revolutionary when it first came out, but it did lack YouTube, and now the new versions of TiVo will no longer have that problem.

If you have TiVo series 2, though, you’ll be out of luck, because it will only be available on series 3 and HD models. By the end of the month, TiVo owners who qualify for the YouTube ability should see the download option they can use to get the service. Whether this is really needed is arguable, but like most of technology needed is not really the issue.

The main issue is what people want and demand from the technology that they have and will buy in the future. YouTube is one of the most popular sites in existence today, because almost everything can be found there.

Are you looking for a music video from a one-hit wonder? Do you want to see hip-hop from another country? How about a video of someone having a medical procedure?

No matter what your interest is, there is something on YouTube that will catch your attention, and mixing it with TiVo only seems to be a natural choice that will appeal to a very large number of people.

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