AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo… even Outlook users listen up! I have been a long time loyal AOL user. My AOL email address spans back a decade. Though it can be easy to switch e-mail addresses, I have always seen the importance in keeping my e-mail address the same, so as to maintain connection with my valuable contacts in the process.

Moving away from AOL has not been a quick or easy decision. That was before I learned the virtues of Gmail.

I have become a Gmail (Google’s email) guru. Google products help me to save time, money and ultimately improve revenues. Gmail is Google’s solution for bringing email, chat and (with their newest addition BUZZ) social networking to one place. The Google site states, “Gmail is built on the idea that email can be more intuitive, efficient, and useful. And maybe even fun.”…and I agree. This is why I want to share some of the key benefits that I enjoy.

Best Benefits of Gmail

1. The Price is Right! Gmail is free. And you will not be bothered with desktop software (i.e. Outlook) to purchase, update or upgrade!

2. Gmail Goes with You! Gmail is web-based. You can access your email anywhere you can get online unlike a desk top software solution.

3. Gigs of Space! Gmail offers users abundant storage space; over 7 GB (and counting, because Google keeps improving its product) meaning most of us won’t ever have to delete a message. This amount of storage is double the amount of space provided by its competitors. They even provide a premium service option that allows businesses to raise their storage and enjoy up to 33% savíngs by converting to Google applications. Compare for yourself. Use a Calculator to project your business savíngs.

4. Gmail Chat – Conduct real time communication with Gmail subscribers. Build your base of Contacts, Customers, and (staff) Team members. You can opt to save chats and later access them through the search feature. This is useful when sharing web links and other details.

5. Less Spam – Gmail filters spam so you do not have to.

6. Contained Commercial Ads – Google does not incorporate advertisements into the message body as AOL does. Related advertisements appear in the side panes, although these do not interfere with your message. These advertisements are predicative matches populated by key words in the current emails. Ads are machine-matched.

7. Reliable Retrieval of Information – Email is searchable by topic, sender, keywords, date, etc. Google does not search spam or trash which means your results are more inclined to be relevant.

8. Greater Organization – File topics under multiple labels for ease in searching. For those who are used to working with folders, this transition may take some time. Emails can be filed under multiple labels: For example: Future interest, Past Customers, Possible Recruits, and Spring Call Backs. The ability to classify emails with multiple labels gives you fast access to archived information. Archived emails are still searchable. Use filters, stars and constantly archive incoming mail to reign in your inbound communication.

9. Maximum Mobility – Receive Gmail on your mobile phone. My Gmail arrives on my Blackberry, which has pleasantly eliminated the need to tote a laptop.

10. Mesh Your Other Email Clients – Integrate Gmail with your other email clients so that all of your email goes to one account. Reply to emails from your originating email address. You can automatically reply from the same address or reply from the account of your choice. (For example, I forward my personal email and my business email to my gmail account. You can automatically reply from the same address or reply from the account of your choice.

Google Calendar Saves You Time and Helps You Organize Multiple Schedules

Combine Gmail with Google Calendar

Google Calendar is a free (The Price Is Right!) Internet based calendar where you can organize your time and share your appointments with others. You can import events from Outlook, I-cal or Yahoo calendars.

Benefits of Google Calendar

1. Create Multiple Calendars – Whether you are managing direct reports, training team members and staff, or balancing your personal and business calendars, the Google Calendar helps you to organize more efficiently by using color coded calendars. You can maintain separate calendars for personal, business, team and family engagements. These calendars can all interface into one so you can see the big picture.

2. Use Event Invites – Schedule team meetings, events and one-on-one coaching. Send Invites for family events, conference calls and parties and collect RSVP. This is similar to evite.com without the graphics.

3. Track Team Performance - Follow goals and objectives of your team members and staff.

4. Online/Offline Visibility – Print and view your Calendar in a variety of formats (agenda, daily, weekly, monthly)

5. Determine, Decide & Delegate – Determine what needs to be done. Decide who will do it. Delegate activities. Assign tasks to team members, staff and participants for team meeting preparation.

6. Share the Responsibility – Google has superiority in this area. You can transfer calendar ownership and grant or deny permission rights to allow others to manage and update information. If you are part of an organization and want to schedule meetings, collect RSVPs and arrange meeting locations like we did for our NAWBO round table, calendar sharing makes this easy.

7. Generate Task Lists – Tasks will show up on your calendar by due date. You can satisfyingly check off the items you accomplish.

8. Publicize Your Calendar – Embed your calendar into your web site and visitors can see your upcoming events. See my public Google Calendar.

What’s the Downside?

Periodically Google’s server is slow, however this is rare. Some of the features and functions may take familiarizing time, but it is worth the investment to learn about these tools. Once you learn your way around, you will find the technology is created with simplicity in mind. So you can see – Gmail is much more with it than AOL and other competitive products! Enjoy the speed, simplicity, search-ability, spam-LESS, storage, star features and functionality. It is time you consider a change.

Links referred to in this article.
1. http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/details.html
2. http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/messaging_value.html
3. http://mail.google.com/mail/

About The Author
Barb Girson, International Direct Selling Industry expert, trainer and coach, is a highly interactive, creative speaker & author offering professional skill development programs for workshops, leader retreats, annual conventions & teleclass training programs. Need a speaker for your next event? Contact Barb Girson 514.855.0446 . Visit www.MySalesTactics.com for sales resources and ezine sign up.

The truth of the Google duplicate content penalty is quite simply that there is none! If that confuses you, then you have been reading too many misinformed forums or blogs where people get stuck on some popular term that they have no idea what it means, and then profess to be experts.

The only experts on the Google duplicate content penalty, and the only people who are qualified to define it, are Google, and in Google’s own words “There is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty”. This comes directly from Google’s Webmaster Central Blog.

That should be the end of this article, at precisely 96 words excluding title as I define my word count. But it is not. Why? Because even though this blog is operated by Google, and even though much the same has been stated by Matt Cutts, Google’s main software engineer, and other Google experts, people still argue and complain about the Google ‘duplicate content penalty’.

So here is the truth: you might ask who am I to know the truth, but I read all the Google blogs and their official statements, and in applying what I learn, I achieve excellent results for my web pages on Google search engine listings: and those of Yahoo, MSN and Bing. So I am coming from a sound base that my results can prove.

As a professional article writer whose customers trust to get them the best results from the articles I write, I have to be very aware of the policies and the way the algorithms work of each of the major search engines, and so I am as qualified as anybody to comment on myths such as this.

The Truth of the Google Duplicate Content Penalty

There is no duplicate content penalty. Google’s major search engine function is to provide a customer the best possible results for a search, based upon the search term (keywords) that the customer has used in the Google search box.

Google’s customers are not:

1. You, who use it to get your web pages listed.

2. Adwords advertisers that use Adwords to advertise their products.

3. Corporations or individuals that use it to have their web pages listed.

4. Internet marketers who recommend others to use Google for advertising or searching.

Google’s customers are those seeking information, whether that is to solve a problem, where to purchase a product at the cheapest price, find a sports result or to get directions to a specific location. Everybody that uses Google uses a search term to find some information that they need. That search term is what you and I refer to as a keyword.

If Google detects several web pages offering exactly the same content, its algorithms will select that which best offers the information required and list that. It might also list one or two other pages offering exactly the same content if there are good reasons for it doing so (e.g. more links to other relevant websites, more other relevant pages on the domain, and so on).

So, not all duplicate content pages will be refused a listing. If these duplicates are articles, then the algorithms that the spiders carry on their backs will take the links from these articles into consideration, the authority of the directory on which it is published, and other factors, before deciding which should be listed. It is wrong to believe that this decision has a chronological factor, but, if you include a link in your article Resource section to your web page that contains the same article, then your page is liable to be listed above the others, partially because of a greater number of links back to it from the other copies, and partially because your entire site is liable to be more relevant than these others to information being sought by Google’s customer.

This is not because yours was created first, but because it better meets Google’s criterion for authoritative back-links. However, if the rest of your website is not equally authoritative, your page might be listed behind another with the same content or even not listed at all.

All of this is designed by Google so that its customer is offered the most relevant range of results to the keywords they used. That is what Google is for, and is its ultimate objective. Google will not penalize any individual or any website for publishing what you refer to as ‘duplicate content’, and it will take your version into consideration for publication just as any other version.

What counts in the long run is which version Google’s algorithms believe to be most likely to provide the best possible information to the person seeking it, and if that means not publishing a whole host of duplicate information, then that is only fair, isn’t it? If you used Google to find some information, you wouldn’t want to find page after page saying exactly the same thing, would you?

No, and neither does Google. A Google listing comes from its indexing of billions of web pages that contain the keywords used by the searcher: both in relation to the entire phrase and to the individual words used in the search term. If you want your copy to be different, make some minor changes and perhaps change the form of the keywords, but most importantly, change the title and the introductory paragraph to which the crawlers will take special notice.

You then have a better chance of your version being listed along with some of the others, but remember: the next time you use the term ‘duplicate content’ you are using a term that does not exist in Google’s vocabulary for any reason than to deny its existence. The Google Duplicate Content Penalty does not exist: the truth!

About The Author
For more information on the mythical duplicate content penalty visit www.article-services.com where Pete will also explain how to earn money using article marketing.

Google has made some adjustments to it’s “Place Pages.” As Doug Caverly reported, they are now showing more specific details for reviews. They are letting people rate individual aspects of businesses.

Another update that Google made is the addition of verification to the Place Page. Google is letting users know when owners have verified their Place Pages. If it is verified, there is now a link with a checkmark beside it at the top of the page that says “owner-verified listing.”

If the listing has not been verified, users are now greeted with links that say “Edit the place,” or “Business Owner?”. The latter give you an opportunity to verify the listing if you are indeed the business owner. The former lets users make edits to the page. Obviously, you’re going to want to verify your listing to prevent any reputation-tarnishing information from appearing.

Google isn’t the only search engine that has recently made upgrades to its local business results. Yahoo has also done so. The company announced this week that it is now allowing users to find nearby places without having to give too many details.

“For example, if you are in the Palo Alto area and search for ‘evvia,’ Yahoo! Search displays the local shortcut for the restaurant, including address, phone number, and reviews,” says Nitzan Achsaf, a senior product manager at Yahoo.

You can also do this for broader categories. Users can now filter results further by neighborhood or nearby cities in one click.

It is growing increasingly important to pay close attention to changes in the local search landscape. Read this article for some tips to keep in mind.

About the Author:
Chris is a content coordinator and staff writer for SmallBusinessNewz and the iEntry Network. Subscribe to SmallBusinessNewz RSS Feeds.

In August, Google announced the upcoming roll out of the Google Caffeine infrastructure. Google was quick to point out that they would not launch the new infrastructure until after the Christmas holiday shopping season — giving many online retail stores confidence for the upcoming Christmas shopping season.

In the August announcement, Google described Caffeine this way:

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences…”

After Thanksgiving, Google said that they had taken Caffeine out of its “sandbox” phase, and that it launched Caffeine on only one of its Data Centers. Search Engine Land was able to confirm that Google had launched Caffeine on the IP address 209.85.225.103, and it was running on this IP address for at least half of its searches. However, the full roll out of Caffeine continues to remain in holding pattern, until after the Christmas season.

Analyzing Google’s Search Engine Result Pages…
Several online publishers and SEO companies jumped into testing the Google Caffeine search results in August, when the original announcement was made public.

The results of testing were somewhat mixed…

• Everyone pretty much agreed that the Caffeine infrastructure was faster than the original Google infrastructure, except for results that included Advanced Search queries, such as when you are using subtraction signs, quotes in query, etc. Mashable suggested that Google Caffeine actually doubled the speed of a Google search.

• Google Caffeine tends to show a larger data set for the number of search results for a particular search.

• The weighting of Video and Universal Search is scaled back in Caffeine.

• A slight value increase to exact match domain names.

• Google seems to be putting a little bit more emphasis on the age of a website.

• An increased weight for domain authority and tag pages on authority websites.

• A substantial increase in weight for social media websites. Currently FriendFeed seems to carry more weight than Twitter or FaceBook.

• Google Caffeine has shown a tendency to put more weight on keyword phrases or keyword strings, as opposed to singular keywords.

• Another major change, which is a reflection of how Google deals with breaking news stories, is that Google is willing to show the title and a description of a page, before it even caches the page in its index.

An interesting change in the Google Search Engine Results that I noted while doing the research for this article is that about half-way down the page, Google has added a real-time element to news items…

What they have done is to load a self-updating Iframe to the search results that shows updated news items on a topic as they become available. The image results are located just under this real-time news block. You can see it now, by doing a quick Google search for Barack Obama.

Also of interest about this real-time news window is that it is actually capturing some of its results from Twitter and other social media websites.

What This Means To Webmasters and SEO Providers…

If you have been relying upon video to push you to the top of Google’s search results, this is no longer a sure-fire method of achieving top search placement quickly.

If you thought that Twitter and other social media websites were worthless to you in Google, then you might start taking a second look.

If you are not getting listings or mentions on authority websites, then you may be missing out on some SEO opportunities.

If you have a keyword-heavy domain name, then your investment may start to help you more going forward.

If you have focused on single keywords and bypassed keyword strings for optimization, you may begin paying heavily for that decision going forward.

Domain age will become more important after Caffeine is fully rolled out, so it is in our best interests to seek links from older websites and to put more emphasis on older sites in our domain portfolios.

Old Google vs New Google Comparisons

Some SEO Providers have noted major changes between the two search engines, although in my own experience, the placement for my target keywords has not suffered, but I have not made major gains either.

In the Old Google, I could put a search result on page one of Google in as little as 15 minutes. I hope that remains unchanged moving forward into the future. Of course my stuff isn’t news, so I will be holding my breath that I can put a web page on page one of Google in only a few minutes.

The main difference we are going to see going forward is the emphasis on keyword strings as opposed to keywords in the new Google Caffeine roll-out.

If you have been targeting single keywords for your website or the websites of your clients, be prepared to scramble to overcome your losses in Google’s search rankings… But if you have been targeting those long-tail keywords for any length of time, then you will probably be dancing on the ceiling once Google Caffeine is live across all of its data centers.

In Conclusion…

We have seen a lot of testimony that Google will not change its appearance that much after the Google Caffeine roll-out…

But we have seen enough testimony to expect that some people will be crying rivers of tears, while others will be dancing the jig, after the Google Caffeine launch…

The only thing we can know for sure at this point, is that we really won’t know the impact of Caffeine until after the roll-out as 2010 gets underway.

About The Author
Trey Pennewell is a writer who has written about SEO and online business for a number of years. He encourages you to learn about and purchase the new SEO ebook titled, “Karma SEO and the Great Search Engine Ranking Dance” at www.LinksAndTraffic.com.

It’s long been possible to prove a business’s popularity by putting stuff in its window; newspaper reviews and/or a lot of customer’s written comments could do the trick. Google’s offering a higher-tech approach, however, with the release of bar code decals and a “Favorite Places on Google” program.

Google started by sending stickers to 100,000 local businesses. Business owners are supposed to put the stickers in their front windows, and then consumers can scan them with their smartphones and see reviews or access coupons.

A post on the Official Google Blog explained to people on the customer side, “This launch is part of our overall effort – online and offline – to provide you with the best local business results whenever you’re trying to figure out where to go . . .”

And business owners should know, “We plan to periodically send out new waves of window decals to qualifying businesses. . . . If you weren’t selected in this round, your first step is to claim your listing with Google’s Local Business Center for free. That will help us determine that your business information is correct. Then, you can enhance your local business listing by adding enhanced content like photos and videos.”

This program may not fare too well; it’s hard to imagine a lot of folks walking down a street, seeing a sticker, scanning it with a phone, and then doing a little light reading in order to make a buying decision. Still, now you’ve got the information, at least.

About the Author:
Doug Caverly is a staff writer for SmallBusinessNewz.

Google Caffeine is the name given to Google’s “Next Generation” search engine, which it will use to rank and index all the pages on the wonderful world wide web. According to all indications, this is not just another one of Google’s infamous Updates, but a major “Overhaul” of its index and algorithm – the complex formula and calculations Google uses to rank all web pages, including yours.

If that doesn’t sound ominous enough, according to Matt Cutts (Google Spokesperson) one database is already showing Google Caffeine, and the full blown version will be released after the holidays. The reasoning behind this – Google doesn’t want to upset webmasters and site owners during the lucrative holiday buying season. In the past, other major Google Updates have come around this time of the year, most notably the “Florida Update” which severely affected many web sites and webmasters.

Recently, Google has been more aware and much more generous to webmasters by being more open and forthcoming in regards to how it indexes its pages. This time around, webmasters were even given access to a beta version of Caffeine which Google released last summer (’09) where webmasters could check to see how well their keywords and site would fare in this new search index. This beta site (www2.sandbox.google.com) has now been taken down by Google.

Like any professional search engine marketer who works online, I was constantly checking my sites and keywords in Google’s new search engine. I have drawn some conclusions from what I have observed, but please be aware it is often very foolish to draw conclusions and make predictions from a small sampling of results. You can end up with egg on your face very quickly, especially when you consider Google is probably still making adjustments and refinements on Caffeine as it analyzes the results.

However, there are certain ranking factors that even Google is telling us about, mainly “Site Speed” or how fast your site loads will play a part in how its ranked. We have also heard a lot about “Broken Links” and if your page or site has them, then it will probably be ranked lower. Of course, linking out to “Bad Neighborhoods” will probably still not be a good practice, if you want higher rankings within Google.

It should not come as a shock or a surprise, that “Over-All Page Quality” will play a greater role in how well your page ranks. Keep in mind, Google is like any other company putting out a product, if that product doesn’t have a high standard of quality, it reflects badly back on everybody concerned. Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) are the key to all their online revenue, they must do everything in their power to keep that product fast, relevant, current and above all high quality.

Therefore, expect “OnPage Factors” to play a much greater role in Google Caffeine. Quality unique content, page design, good navigation, title, meta tags, description, keyword density, alt tags, page views, bounce rate, traffic numbers, time spent on page, and the number of social bookmarks may play an increased role in achieving high rankings. A perfectly optimized keyworded page, with the keyword in the title, description, meta tags, alt tags, on the page… will probably get you ranked higher in Caffeine, as well as most search engines on the web.

This may be pure speculation on my part, but one of the areas Caffeine will be addressing or incorporating is “Social BookMarking”, that is the number of social bookmarks a page receives will determine how high it is ranked. I also believe one of the major reasons these bookmarks will become much more important has to do with the whole nasty issue of link buying.

Now, the integrity of Google’s index is not in question, but any savvy marketer or webmaster knows any individual or company with deep pockets and huge resources can buy their way into the top spot. Despite Google’s attempt to stop it, link buying and keyword positioning, is a thriving industry on the web. Rightly or wrongly, money and unlimíted resources will get you or your company to the top in organic search, regardless of which search engine you’re targeting.

All moral and ethnical issues aside, the small webmaster and/or online marketer is stuck right in the middle, with Google on one side and these major multinational competitors on the other. Looming on the horizon is Google Caffeine, a new sheriff in town!

What New Rules Will This Sheriff Bring?

The major question here is this: has the importance of backlinking been downplayed in this new index in favor of the keyworded domain and onsite content and optimization? Has there been a major shift to listing more quality content rather than relying on the number of backlinks a site is receiving, even from important related themed sites? The major problem and question to Google is this: if links can be bought, how do you keep your organic results democratic and fair, which was the original intention of Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they started Google in 1998.

One Possible Solution is Social Bookmarking

Will we see an ever growing importance of social bookmarks and links in this new index. It is quite easy to buy 1000 links, but getting 1000 or 10,000 “re-tweets” is a little more difficult. Similarly, getting two or three thousand “diggs” may be a little harder to pull off. Same goes for Del.icio.us bookmarks, Facebook fans… well you get the picture. Will Google’s use of these new social sites make Caffeine faster, more relevant, more current and most importantly of all, can it bring some democracy back into their index?

Of course, nothing in Google’s new index will be that cut and dry, that black and white. Other ranking factors such as age of site, past history and reputation, traffic numbers, authority branding… will all play a role in whether your site gets listed on that all important first page. However, on page factors may play a greater role – title, meta tags, description, keyword density, alt tags, page views, bounce rate, time spent on page, and the number of social bookmarks may play an increased role in achieving high rankings. Website speed or how fast your site loads may also be a new ranking factor.

Underlying this whole issue is the fact which many experienced webmasters/marketers already know, Google’s SERPs are not a one-trick pony anymore. For very lucrative (monetized) keyword phrases, Google’s results are broken up into Five categories… Info listings, Video listings, News Listings, Shopping Listings and Corporate Listings. Forget Caffeine, this is probably the fairest move Google has made in the last few years to make its SERPs more democratic.

Another even more puzzling issue for me concerning Google Caffeine is how much emphasis or ranking power will it place on “Keyworded Domains”, domain names which have your keyword or keyword phrase in them. Will these domains be ranked higher? Webmasters and marketers for years have been telling us we should always pick domain names which have our major keywords in them. Just common sense really, someone searching for “brown widgets” will more likely than not find that item at a domain called brownwidgets(dot)com or brownwidget(dot)com. The major SEO reasoning, all your backlinks will inherently have your searched keyword in the URL, thus bringing it up in the rankings.

About The Author
The author is a full time online affiliate marketer. His livelihood is derived from & dependent upon search engine marketing & daily monitoring of targeted keywords, mainly within Google. He runs numerous sites, including: Free Marketing Tools & Internet Marketing Tools
Titus Hoskins Copyright 2009. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Do you really want your website on page one of Google for your chosen keyword phrase(s)? What do you want your marketing online campaign to accomplish for you?

I asked a potential new SEO Coaching client last week this first question. From my end of the phone call, it sounded as if he almost fell out of his chair!

I followed up by asking him if he could ever think of ANY reason for his website pages NOT to be found on page 1 in the Google SERPs (search engine results pages).

How ’bout you? Can you think of any reasons you’d NOT want your pages to be found for your targeted keyword phrases on page 1?

Keep in mind, I’m talking about your chosen keyword search phrases.

I can think of at least 3 reasons. Maybe you can come up with some as well.

Is there Commercial Intent?

Let’s say you have not just a page 1 Google result, but you’re actually the first result. Here is an important question for you to ask yourself.

What is the commercial intent of this keyword phrase? Do the words contained in the keyword phrase give any indication of someone getting ready to spend money on a product or service like you provide?

For instance, compare these keyword phrases: Keyword Research, Keyword Research Specialist and Keyword Research Consultant. The latter 2 phrases give an indication of someone who is getting ready to spend money.

You can also Google the Microsoft Commercial Intent Tool and consider its results when evaluating your keyword search phrase choices.

If you are targeting a keyword phrase that has questionable commercial intention at best, is there any reason to really be found on page 1? Wouldn’t it be better to target more appropriate phrases instead?

If there’s no commercial intent, how does that help your online marketing?

Can you see where I’m going?

How Much Traffic Really Matters

Now, I’m giving you a choice: you can have a first page result (with commercial intent) and your position number is 4.

Your other choice is a different keyword search phrase with a second page result, position number 12, also with commercial intent.

So, the choice is obvious?

Well, I forgot to give you the rest of the details.

The first page choice has monthly search queries for its phrase of 3,240.

The second page result choice has monthly search queries for its phrase of 22,167.

Do you still believe that the best choice in this example is the first page result?

According to numbers from Aaron Wall’s site, approximately 6% of search users will click on that number 4 result in Google. That’s 194 visitors in a month.

This is figuring average title and description tags of typical online marketíng ability to convert to a click. “Your mileage may vary.”

And for that second choice, the second page result? Over 1% should click on the search result, but let’s use just 1%. That’s 222 visitors per month.

Last time I checked, 222 is more than 194, so the second page result trumps the first page result, because the second page result has greater traffic that can convert to a transaction.

How Many Google AdWords Ads Show for your Chosen Keyword?

If you don’t see many AdWords ads, this should be a warning!

One of 2 problems exist (or both):

1. There isn’t enough traffic for AdWords advertisers to target the phrase. 2. There isn’t commercial viability for the phrase. Either way, is a first page result going to help you? Probably not.

The Value of a Committed Searcher

Want a recipe to waste your time (or your employees’)? Get a first page result in Google for your keyword search phrase and place your toll-free phone number in big numbers on the top right of each of your Web pages.

People clicking the first result in the SERPs are often less serious than those who go through the first few results or who continue searching onto the second page.

There may be something to be said for avoiding people who almost randomly click the first result and who may have impulse control “issues”.

Now, if you have a large staff to answer your incoming phone calls AND if your conversion rate from those calls is strong, then the potential problem I described probably isn’t a problem for your business.

On the other hand, if you are a solo professional, this strategy can be hazardous!

How are you going to perform your paid work when you get “Internet lookiloos” asking you questions they could get answered, if they would simply read a few words on your website?

Are these the best potential clients for your services or products and the best use of your time?

A second page result could bring you more serious potential customers, people who might be more likely to actually READ your website content, understand your products or services better and who might be more likely to convert to a transaction.

It’s sure something to think about. :-)

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against first page rankings for your marketing. I’m just for thinking a little further down the road than JUST first page rankings.

About The Author
Marketing online since 2004, Paul Marshall can help you market on a budget. He’s an Online Marketíng Consultants expert, offering marketing services (and d-i-y Coaching). You can learn more about Paul on his Affordable SEO LinkedIn profile and at Strategic Web Marketing.net.

Where do you want to be? On the first page of Google results of course; it’s where every one with a website wants to be, especially if their website is part of their business. There are a lot of search engine optimization firms out there, with new ones popping up out of the woodwork daily in order to meet the growing demand for SEO services.

Naturally, real estate investment is like every other economic sector in that investors and brokers are taking to the web in the attempt to improve their visibility and to gain a larger share of the market. If you’re in the real estate business yourself, you almost certainly have a website by now – and you probably receive a lot of come-ons by SEO companies who are trying to convince you that they’ll be able to get your website into the coveted top spot in Google’s search results.

Before you pull out your wallet in response to their pitches, think for a minute. There are so many of these firms out there and a lot of them make these kinds of promises. Obviously, they can’t all be right and the vast majority of them can’t deliver any kind of results, let alone what they claim.

Before we go any further, I’d like to provide this little nugget of advice: don’t do business with anyone who promises you a spot on the first page of Google’s search results, especially if they tell you that they can get your website into the Number 1 spot.

Why? Because no one can guarantee this with 100% certainty; search engine optimization is not an exact science, since the algorithms used by Google and other search engines are closely guarded trade secrets and are constantly evolving. What this means is that what worked to improve a website’s page ranking six months ago won’t necessarily work today. This is why no reputable SEO firm will make these kinds of promises; but of course, there are a lot of SEO firms and consultants out there who are anything but reputable businesses.

But what about the proof these SEO “experts” provide you to demonstrate that they can really get your site into the top spot on Google? Let’s look at the kind of keywords they tell you can get you onto the first page of Google results.

The search terms which these SEO consultants and companies tell you they can get you top rankings for tend to be what are known as long tail keywords; these are essentially what they sound like. For example, something like “stop foreclosure fort myers” – and yes, there is a real estate broker whose website ranks Number 1 for this keyword.

You might also see companies or consultants making promises about Google rankings for phrases like: “Chicago discount home” or “Sell my house in Dallas”. Number one rankings for keywords like these can be valuable, though more often than not the SEO firms who assure you top rankings for a certain phrase can do so for a very simple reason: there is no competition for these phrases.

Isn’t it a good thing to have little to no competition? You might well ask this; on the web, it isn’t always good to have no competition, since no competition for a keyword means that no one is searching for this phrase. It doesn’t matter if you’re #1 for a given search term if no one is ever going to use this keyword in a Google search, since no one is going to find you. It’s always a good idea to do some research on any search term that a SEO company or consultant tells you is going to secure you the top ranking – you can use free tools (Google has one in fact) to find out if anyone is actually looking for this phrase on the web. In any case, you should avoid SEO firms who make promises like this.

People don’t all search for the same thing using the same keywords; every one brings their own approach to Google or any search engine. There are trends in online behavior that you can count on to some degree, but again, there are no guarantees when it comes to search engine optimization, at least if you’re being honest about how the web works.

So what really will work to give your real estate investment business a higher profile online? You should pay attention to SEO, absolutely; but you should work with SEO consultants who have a good reputation and an established track record of getting results for their clients. What you should hear from these companies is that they can help your page ranking improve over time, not that they can instantly get you on to the first page of results; it just doesn’t work that way in real life.

Search engine optimization is a process, not a product – it takes time for a website to work its way up the ranks and you will have to be patient, at least if you want real, lasting results. Beware of anyone who tries to tell you otherwise: and there are a lot of people who will do exactly that these days. There are multí-level marketing schemes (or scams, as I would term them) which are predicated on selling people a pre-made SEO business; generally the people who have fallen for this are the ones trying to sell you on a package of SEO services which they promise will allow your business to instantly dominate your market. Don’t believe them – it’s just not as simple as all that.

About The Author
Duncan Wierman is an Ex Software company CEO turned Real Estate Investor and Marketer. Discover how to outsmart your competitor, ethically dominate the search engines, and legally siphon off tons of cash in hand buyers from your website! Get a customized Free report on what is wrong with your website! internetmarketingconsultinggroup.com

By Michael Gray

In the past few months all of the search engines, but especially Google have released or started supporting new ways of fixing site architecture issues. However IMHO these are band-aid solutions for bad site architecture, and not something you should rely on … at all.

In 2009 some of the big advances we’ve had the major search engines announce support for are things like the “rel=canonical” tag which allows you to tell a search engine this content at this URL may exist in more than one place, but you should credit it to one URL. Another new item is the ability to tell the search engines to ignore certain URL parameters. So if you’re using tracking parameters, session ID’s or other items you can now tell the search engines to ignore them entirely. There are many people who are happy to have these new tools, as it allows them to fix “issues” they have had for years. However I think these tools are crutches for lazy and incompetent programmers and developers, and should be avoided like the plague … and I’ll tell you why …

In the dawn of the public internet there where dozens of search engines that webmasters and publishers had to deal with, combine this with a lack of standards and the online publishing community had a lot of growing pains. When the dot-com bubble burst and the market consolidated we where really left with four big search engines. As Google pursued it’s relentless market domination, under the guise of a garage start-up bathed in the light of primary colored lava lamps, they stole the thunder of everyone else (coincidentally of course) and, established themselves as the ruling organization and defacto standards setting body, the rest of the world be dammed.

This is bad, as sloppy publishers and slip shod developers, now use google’s band-aid solutions, instead of developing websites and applications that don’t introduce problems that don’t need to exist in the first place. Case and point look at this URL from Forbes Magazine:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/20/live-well-cities-lifestyle-real-estate-hermes-paris-london-new-york.html?feed=rss_news

Notice the [feed=rss_news] part at the end, that enables Forbes to track where visitors came from, in this case RSS, most likely a feed reader. But now there’s the problem of that same content existing at two URL’s, remove the feed parameter and it still works:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/20/live-well-cities-lifestyle-real-estate-hermes-paris-london-new-york.html

Not to worry we can use the “rel=canonical” to point to the URL without the parameter, we can also use webmaster tools to tell it to ignore the “feed” parameter and we’re good to go right … wrong junior that’s two band-aids you needed to use instead of solving the problem properly. What you should have done is issue a 301 redirect at the server level to the correct URL, and not rely on the client or bot to figure things out. Need that parameter for tracking drop it in a cookie.

Why does this matter … as publishers we want to foster and build an environment that’s friendly for more than one search engine. Here’s an experiment, go try and append a meaningless imaginary parameter or two to a URL and submit it to a social site like Digg or Stumbleupon and see what happens. The simple fact is they aren’t sophisticated enough to parse it out as tracking parameter. Lots of other social sites are trying to gain access to your content as well, and by using substandard architecture you aren’t helping yourself. Your story will get votes in two places, decreasing its ability to go “go hot” or “popular” as its votes are spread over two URL’s.

While social search may be in it’s infancy, and may never overtake traditional search, the easier you make your content to crawl and understand for everyone and not just google, the better off you’ll be in the long run. Get out of the habit of relying on the crawling and indexing band-aids of search engines for your survival, learn to write clean code that makes you self reliant for your long term lively hood and success.

About the Author:
Michael Gray is SEO specialist and publishes a Search Engine Industry blog at www.Wolf-Howl.com. He has over 10 years experience in website development and internet marketing, helping both small and large companies increase their search engine visibility, traffic, and sales. Michael is a current member of Internet Marketing of New York ( IM-NY.org) and a guest speaker on Webmaster Radio. He is also an editor for the popular search engine new website Threadwatch.org.