Written by Glenn Murray and published in SEO News

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a foreign field to a lot of people. Rarely does a day go by when I don’t get asked a few questions on the subject. So I’ve decided to post this FAQ article in the hopes that it will help people understand the basics, and make them a little more comfortable with the whole domain.

Q: Why are Search Engines Important To Me?

Written by Jason L Miller and published in WebProNews

Former Feedster CTO Scott Johnson has a new mistress. Her name is Ookle. Less than a week after his sudden exodus from Feedster, Johnson and Australian IM buddy Michael Air (yes, he’s never met him in person) have set up Ookles.com, a stealth mode webpage with an information sign-up screen. And that’s it. Mum’s the word until at least January 31st.

The first rule of Ookles is you don’t talk about Ookles. And even in an interview with himself, Johnson speaks in riddles.

Written By Dave Davies and published in SiteProNews.com

Ranking your website highly on one of the “big three” search engines (Google, Yahoo or MSN) is a daunting task let alone ranking your website highly on all three. Three engines, three algorithms, three different sets of rules - and yet there are websites out there that have first page rankings across them all – how do they do it?
While all of the major search engines use different algorithms, the end goal of all three is the same: to provide the searcher with the most relevant results available. It is this one common thread that makes it possible for an SEO to rank a website highly across all the major engines. While there are a variety of factors at play and an even wider variation in the weïght each of these factors are given – the possible variations that can produce relevant results are limited.

Written by Mark Daoust and published in SiteProNews

It nevër ceases to amaze me how one company (Google) can literally support hundreds, if not thousands, of other companies and industries. What I am referring to hëre is the unbelievable number of sub-industries that have developed around every nuance of Google or the other search engines. Think about some of the aspects of SEO, and undoubtedly you will find a niche industry with several companies who focus on that specific aspect, and make good monëy doing so.
One such sub-industry is the linking industry. As you all (undoubtedly) know, Google bases part of its ranking algorithm on the number, quality, and variety of inbound links to a website. Lately Google has thrown in the wrinkle of looking more heavily at authority links, but the concept is still the same, and more importantly, the message is still the same to website owners: linking is important.

Written by Brian Medini and published in SiteProNews

Setting up a wireless router is easy. Essentially you turn your cable or DSL modem off and your wireless router on. Then, you connect the router to the modem with a cable, and turn the modem back on. You are more or less done. The wireless network wizard on your computer will pick up the router and, if your ISP does not have any special requirements, away-you-go, you are on the Internet.
For ease of setup and configuration, manufacturers ship wireless routers with all security disabled. Therein lies the problem. If you do not take any further steps to secure your router, and a surprising number of people don’t, your network will be wide open to all passersby and strangers. It’s like you’ve hung out a sign, “The door is open. Please come in and help yourself.”

Written by David Utter and published in WebProNews.com

Doc Searls wrapped up his Syndicate Conference in a keynote that discussed the Live Web of content, and some strange elevators in New York’s Marriott Times Square property. Only in California.

WebProNews publisher Rich Ord sent along notes from Doc Searls’ closing keynote at the Syndicate Conference, and the notes opened with Searls’ observations about the hotel elevators at the Marriott in New York, the site of the last Syndicate Conference.

Written By Robert Moment and published in WebProBusiness

If you’ve used the Internet at all this year, you’ve probably heard of podcasting.

It’s the one word that’s almost guaranteed to come up in discussions of small business marketing, and with good reason too: podcasting has become more and more popular over the past 12 months, and is set to become the most powerful marketing tool of the future. But what exactly is it?

What are marketing podcasts?

Written by David Utter and published in WebProNews.com

A lot of people write blogs and place affiliate links on their sites, and we have a few suggestions to help make them work better. It’s easy enough to create a blog and toss some affiliate links into the blog’s site template.

Creating posts every day proves a tougher challenge, and the vast majority of blogs don’t last for very long. Non-writers who think writing is easy find out that one to three entries a day, every day, doesn’t just roll out of the brain and into the ‘post comment’ field of a blog.

Written by James Anderson and published in WebProNewsUK

SEO can seem like a long hard slog with little to no reward at times. Your mind often racing, constantly thinking about keyword phrases, H1 tags and links as you lay in bed trying to catch a few winks.

Six months down the line your SEO efforts are nowhere to be seen, not even a trace, except in the redness of what used to be the whites of your eyes. But what if, it didn’t have to be this way. What if, there was a method of seeing results sooner rather than later.