By Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc.

Repeatedly my salës and consulting staff find themselves explaining that using duplicate content can and will negatively affect search engine rankings and it is heartbreaking to see clients having to rebuild rankings due to such a simple mistake. As a result, I felt it was time to write this article and hopefully dispel many misled website owners.
Why write an entire article on something as simple as duplicate content? Well probably because it is not as simple as it sounds and many website owners find themselves in the grey area of duplication; where they don’t know for sure whether they are risking rankings or not.

By Linda Bustos

Many small business owners have a hard time seeing the value of a website redesign. They believe “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” And this is understandable. Unless you are eating, breathing and sleeping technology and staying up to date with the moving target of Internet business, you’re not likely to know intuitively if your site needs a redesign.
And as a small business owner, you may be concerned about the up-front costs of a website redesign. But once you understand how a redesign can help you drive traffíc to your site, convert more users and even save monëy, you’ll feel more positive about making the ínvestment in your business.

If you have a website that provides free information or a free service, you may be sitting on a potential goldmine. It is possible to generate ad revenue with any website, even if it is just a blog or a message board. For our purposes here, we will review each of the different income streams available to you as a webmaster so that you can formulate a plan to turn your free service into a money making business.

The simplest way to get some ads running on your website is by displaying banners or text links for affiliate programs, strategically placed on your webpage where people will see the advertisements and subsequently click on them.

If you pay attention to online marketing, you are constantly inundated with people who sell the so-called “secrets” to brand new marketing techniques on the Internet. Each and every day you are bombarded with new e-books, teleseminars and software alleging to hold the “secrets” of blog and ping, or the “secrets” of the death of Google Adsense or the “secrets” of content is king for Search Engines.

However, the truth of the matter in nearly all cases is that most of these products are expensive and endorsed solely by the gurus who get paid for every item they sell. Real testimonials are rare and the pressure you are under to purchase these products is enormous.

When people refer to “organic SEO” (search engine optimization), they almost always use it as a blanket term to describe the unpaid, algorithm-driven results of any particular engine. However, a sophisticated search engine optimization company will often take the meaning of “organic” one step further. To such companies, the description of “organic SEO” is not to limited what shows up in the “natural” search engine results - it includes the methodologies used to achieve such rankings.

By Donald Nelson (c) 2007

When the Internet was new to me, I was fascinated by following links and going to new sites. It was like an adventure. And when I had my own website the first thing that I wanted to do was to place my site’s links on other sites. I began reciprocal linking (trading links with other sites) way back then, but 11 years later things have changed and now I dread getting a “reciprocal link request” in my email inbox. I have a few pet peeves with reciprocal linking, as it is practiced today, and here they are:

By Scott Van Achte, Senior SEO,
StepForth Placement Inc. (c) 2007

As an SEO I am asked a number of questíons covering a broad range of SEO related topics and one question in particular is asked quite often. This question holds answers which, when ignored, could see a once well ranked website spiral into depths of the search engine rankings forever.
“I am in the process of redesigning my site, what should I look out for in order to maintain the SEO (and rankings)?”
In a word, the answer to this question is relatively straight forward, but depending on the intensity of the redesign, it can become very complex. In most cases there will be specifics for each site, and it is near impossible to cover all scenarios in a single article. With that in mind I will describe the process that would apply in most cases for a site which is currently enjoying great rankings that they do not want to disturb.

By Linda Bustos

“Sinning” is an archery term, which literally means “to miss the mark.” If you’re blogging to establish a two-way dialogue with the world, the “mark” is the optimal reader experience. The following is a líst of ten things that can hurt your blog’s usability.

10. Sending Mixed Messages

The focus of your blog should be decided before your first post and then committed to. Random blog entries about a melee of topics might work for a personal blog read by friends and family, but is not a good approach for a serious, professional blog. The lifeblood of any blog is in its loyal subscriber base. And readers are more willing to subscribe to blogs that talk about their area of interest on a consistent basis.

An essential element of the success of any Internet Marketing campaign is the ability to analyze the traffic to coming to your Website. A key business mantra is that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

The are a number of techniques that the best Internet Marketing Strategies employ to jump-start Website traffic building. These strategies include article marketing, blogging, search engine optimization and email marketing.

Luckily for the Internet offers a wealth of excellent and accessible tools for analyzing the success of each of these strategies.

What do you see when you search for your company or brand name? Is there anything on the first page of the search engine results that you wouldn’t be proud to display on your home page? Consumer review sites, blogs and forums have made it easy for anyone to say whatever they want about your company, whether they be disgruntled customers or competitors who like to play dirty.

If you’re in a situation where negative publicity is front and center in search results, there are ways you can reclaim search engine real estate for your corporate identity. Though you can’t make negative results disappear from the search engine indexes entirely, the following strategies can help them slip off the first few pages of search engine results.