By Donovan Baldwin

Whether for business or personal use, before there can be a website, there must be a domain name, and one of the most important steps of a search engine optimization plan is to pick the right one.
So what IS a domain name? A domain name is that thing that people give you when you ask for their website. anything.com, for example, is a domain name.

Some things to consider in choosing a domain name are:

Link Popularity

Link building has always been a hot topic. In the beginning of the web hyperlinks were virtually the only way to get visitors to a site, because search engines were in their infancy. When search engines grew to be the major source of the web traffic, links didn’t lose their weight, as search algorithms started to rank sites according to the quantity and quality of their incoming links. And today links become increasingly important with the growing significance of the new Web 2.0 social networks.

Link Popularity Building Strategies

Every business relies on effective communication with its customers. Communication doesn’t just convey information, it inspires trust, builds credibility, stimulates involvement and generates loyalty. But in today’s global, hi-tech, rapidly changing business environment, how do you ensure you’re communicating effectively?

The Benchmark - Face-To-Face

There’s no doubt that face-to-face communication is the most effective method for most people. Why? Because of its two-way nature. It’s about dialogue. Listeners are not passive participants. When someone talks to us, we send a continuous stream of responses back to them. Some are verbal, but many/most are not. These responses have the power to actually change the message being disseminated by the talker. What’s more, they have the power to change how other listeners’ interpret that message. (Similarly, other listeners have the power to change your interpretation.)

By Kim Roach (c) 2006

Have you ever become overwhelmed by the number of documents accessible via a search engine? If you’re like most people, then you probably have. There are often millíons of results and not every result is likely to be of equal importance to you.
In addition to that, there is also ambiguity of language. Words often have multiple meanings and people can have different interpretations of the same word. How does a search engine know the difference? Well, at this point, they don’t.

These are what I believe to be the top 10 most important things (not necessarily in order) that you need, in order to get your website found in the search engines.

There are many other factors as well, but if you follow these guidelines, you’ll stand a much better chance, and you’ll be off to a good start.

1. Title Meta Tag
The title tag is what displays as the headline in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). It’s also what displays in the top blue band of Internet Explorer when your site is displayed.

By Gerry McGovern

Like all great self-service organizations, Starbucks knows that you should never keep the customer waiting.

The July 2006 like-for-like sales for Starbucks were lower than expected. This was rare for such a high performance company and resulted in an 11 percent decline in the share price after the news was announced.

According to Starbucks’ chief executive, Jim Donald, the reason why sales had not met expectations was because Starbucks was keeping its customers waiting too long. “We believe we are losing some espresso business due to longer than normal wait times in both cafes and drive-thrus during peak morning hours,” he stated.

There are certain guidelines that companies should bear in mind when undertaking new ventures into the blogosphere. For starters, an effective blog should be a springboard for conversation as opposed to merely an information resource.

The blogosphere has become a virtual hotbed of information dissemination in today’s digital landscape.

Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, Matt Cutts… the list goes on and on of industry insiders who provide a deepening glimpse into the realms of technology and search by means of their widely popular blogs.

Major names such as Google, Microsoft, and Intel have also taken up residence in their own respective corners of the Blogosphere.

Like most of you guys, I too am always on the look-out for that leg up needed to give me that essential competitive edge to stay in the web design & development game. With that in mind, I thought I’d share with you what I’ve managed to learn about web design & development, SEO & SEM as well as web standards & accessibility in the hope that what I know is of use to someone else.

Words that walk the fine line

It has been one of my continual themes when talking with clients about their websites that their site needs to serve their business. When I work with a client, I look at their website as an extension of their business model. I take a look at their overall business and evaluate:

* How do they make their money?
* Who is their public or target audience?
* How can their public be promoted to?
* How can the web be used to help automate their business?

I’ll listen to what they want to achieve with their website and then recommend options to help that website achieve the points above: making money, automate and promote to their target audience.

Okay, so we have all learned about the 4P’s of marketing in undergrad: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. If not, you can open up one of your old marketing text books, blow off the dust and read about it there. The 6 C’s, however, is a not a concept that replaces the 4 P’s; rather, it just expands on the promotion element and provides a more granular approach to consumer marketing.

CUSTOMER: