By Richard Zwicky

Blogs are a potential goldmine of insights for readers, provided by business leaders, market leaders, innovators, philosophers, marketers, political commentators, and many other opinion makers who haven’t ever before enjoyed such easy access to a simple and unmoderated public forum in which to share their opinions, ideas and insights.

These leaders have taken to using the Internet to publish their thoughts for the same reason they make public speaking appearances; to build credibility for themselves and for their company, and to become recognized as a resource, usually with the expectation that it will lead to salë³® Blogging presents them with an easy, non-time consuming, and inexpensive way to quickly reach thousands of interested parties all around the world.

By Mike Banks Valentine (c) Nov. 17, 2004

Link building has become an integral part of search engine marketing and positioning. The topic is inevitably the subject of many web conference programs and the WebMaster World of Search conference was no exception. In a session entitled “Proactive Linking”, three experts in search marketing, Bruce Clay of BruceClay.com, Jim Banks of WebDiversity and Greg Boser of WebGuerrilla, shared their strategies and opinions on the linking campaigns.

Not too long ago, Google Inc. seemed little more than a pesky insect to Microsoft Corp.’s 800-pound gorilla.

No more. As Google rapidly rolls out new products, the company best known for its wildly popular search engine is muscling into the software giant’s turf, including its stronghold: the computer desktop.

Analysts say Google’s aggressive ambitions could pose a formidable threat to Microsoft because it gets to the heart of what drives Microsoft’s dominance: its control of the user experience through the Windows operating system.

By Jim Novo

Using Latency to Map the Customer LifeCycle

Let’s say you look at average behavior across all customers, and end up with a “Latency Sequence” that looks something like following:

Time between 1st - 2nd event: 90 days
Time between 2nd - 3rd event: 60 days
Time between 3rd - 4th event: 30 days
Time between 4th - 5th event: 60 days
Time between 5th - 6th event: 90 days
Time between 6th - 7th event: 120 days
Time between 7th - 8th event: 150 days

What does this pattern say to you? Think about it.

By David Derbyshire, Consumer Affairs Editor, Daily Telegraph
(Filed: 23/11/2004)

Online sales rose to a record £40 billion last year, more than double the previous year’s total, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The figures, the latest official data available, mean that internet sales have doubled every year since the start of the millennium.

However, analysts believe that the rapid growth of home shopping and online transactions may be slowing. This year, revenue created by the internet is expected to rise by 40 per cent

A second report, due out next week, is expected to show that the rise of internet shopping has not led to the demise of the high street store.

Inevitably, with the launch of a new search engine, especially one the size of MSN Search, there is an outcry of people wanting to know how to improve their result position. Questions like “How do I optimize my site to rank well?” and “Does this engine base more relevance on in-bound links or on-page content?” are quite common.

What steps are necessary to optimize your site for MSN Search? Do they favor on-page content or off-page links? Discuss at WebProWorld.

By Mike Banks Valentine (c) Nov. 18, 2004

At WebMasterWorld.com World of Search #7 in Las Vegas Greg Jarboe, President and co-founder of SEO-PR revealed a blockbuster secrët back door to top search engine ranking when he presented to a comparitively small share of attendees at WebMasterWorld.com World of Search #7 conference. Jarboe presented a case study of client WineZap.com showing their press release which was distributed online in July of 2004. Jarboe provides optimization and distribution of press releases for online companies seeking publicity and search engine positioning for websites.

By Chris Genge (c) Nov. 05, 2004
1st on the List Promotion Inc.

Rebuild Website or Perform SEO… Which Should You Do First?
A lot of website owners are interested in rebuilding their website and in performing search engine optimization (SEO), but can’t. Budget constraints won’t allow for both and so they struggle with which one to do first. Rebuilding a website is a great idea. Performing SEO on it is better.

The Internet is vast…truly vast. It is comprised of, at last count, over 3 billion web pages and that number increases daily. People need a map to chart this unimaginably large landscape and search engines are the maps. SEO provides pointers to your business on the maps; rebuilding your website does not.

The idea of good website design is to offer your viewer a logical flow while making it interesting and easy to understand. Lead your viewers to the starting point and then direct them through your site without confusing them.

Here are some excellent tips that can help you develop a user friendly site and please your visitors senses. Give yourself a chance before they get away.

Yahoo Inc.’s e-mail service will use the company’s DomainKeys authentication technology starting Monday, almost a year after Yahoo first unveiled this anti-spam project.

“This is a really big milestone for us, because with this authentication solution in place, we’re increasing protection from ID (identification) theft and phishing,” said Terrell Karlsten, a Yahoo spokeswoman.

DomainKeys attempts to tackle a practice called spoofing, in which a spammer changes an e-mail message’s header information to deceive recipients into believing the message was sent by a known and trusted personal acquaintance or legitimate business, such as a bank or credit card company.