The act of purposely clicking on ads (either banner ads or paid text links) on pay-per-click programs with no interest of purchasing the product. If ads are based on click-through (pay-per-click), the Web site publishing the ads and clicking the ads countless times can make a dishonest profit. This can be done manually, by automated tools, robots, or other deceptive software.

Google's Process of Detecting Invalid Clicks:
Google is dedicated to a number of resources to protect account against invalid activity. Google examine each click on an AdWords ad by looking IP address, the time of the click, duplicate clicks and various other click patterns to isolate and filter out invalid clicks. This detection and filtering occurs over a number of levels including Real-time systems filter out activity fitting a profile of invalid behavior (such as excessively repetitive clicks) and Clicks and impressions from known sources of invalid activity are automatically discarded.

Various unique and innovative methods are applied at each stage of the filtering process, to maximizing proactive detection of invalid activity. Google engineers are also constantly improving monitoring technology, enhancing filters, and examining a growing set of signals.

Continu Reading......!

By: Mandeep Sethi

It's the page your website visitors arrive at after clicking on a link. It could be your home page, or any other page in your site. Also known as a lead capture page. It appears when a user clicks on search engine result links or on an advertisement.

The main objective of a landing page is that, "Each page of a site indexed by search engines is ranked for any term and propels traffic to the site from search engines."

You can customized the landing page to measure the effectiveness of different advertisements. You can control where people will be coming from. By adding a parameter to the linking URL, marketers can measure advertisement effectiveness based on relative click-through rates.

Landing Page should do wel. It should provide a customized sales pitch for the visitor. While making landing page Keep in mind that from where the person has come from, and who they are. It wil increase the chances of appealing the visitor and automatically your conversion rate will also goes up.The interest level of the visitor is maximized by matching the right visitor, the right place, and the right time.
Landing pages are useful for checking the effectiveness of paid ads and to supply copy, images.

There are two types of landing page, reference and transactional.

The main motive of 'reference' landing pages is to presents information that is relevant to the visitor. Pages may include display text, images, dynamic compilations of relevant links, or other online elements. Reference landing pages seek to fulfill the objectives of the publisher, whether it is content management in the case of associations, organizations, or public service entities. The effectiveness of reference landing pages can be measured by the revenue value of the advertising that is displayed on them.

A 'transactional' landing page will attempt to convince a visitor to complete some sort of activity such as filling out a form or interacting with advertisements or other objects on the landing page,or any other form of measurable action which would be desired by the advertiser, with the goal being the immediate or eventual sale of a product or service.

A visitor taking the desired action on a transactional landing page is referred to as a conversion. The desired action can take many forms, varying from site to site. For example sales of products, membership registrations, newsletter subscriptions, software downloads, or just about any activity beyond simple page browsing. The efficiency or quality of the landing page can be measured by its conversion rate, the percentage of visitors who complete the desired action.

Read More....

By: Mandeep Sethi

Don't Make Ugly Site:

First impressions are vitally important! You have only a few seconds to create interest in your site and to build compatibility, when a visitor arrives at your site.Your goal is to create satisfactoriness, acceptability, and trustworthy attachment, with your visitor. Follow the design principles when you build your website to achieve success in affiliate marketing.

Don't Choose The IrrelevantAffiliate:

Instead of follow in the footsteps of others, choose the product of your interest. Then do some research and come to know that how demanding is that product in market. If the product truly appeals to you it will be much easier for you to sell it to your website visitors. Don't join an affiliate program or sell an affiliate product simply because they are TRENDY.

Don't Make Loads Of Banners On Website:

Don't load your site with number of banners without actually providing good detail on the product. The best way to get around this is to put a lot of detail WITH the banners. It is important for customers to know and understand the features of the products, and good content will help them do this. Keep your site simple, easy to read and navigate, clean and uncluttered.

Read Full Article Here.....!

By : Chris Winfield
Source : Searchengineland.com

Many people jump into social media marketing because they feel they "should be doing it". Many times companies don't take the time to identify their goals and why they want to engage in a campaign. Identifying and measuring social media metrics can be easy and inexpensive. Here are some simple things to keep in mind and free ways to track them. This list is based on a viral marketing / linkbait campaign where you are tracking one URL.

Traffic. Is your goal to get more traffic? Are you looking for more brand recognition? Do you have CPM based advertising on your website? Measuring traffic generated by a viral campaign is one of the simplest benchmarks. Simply measure the traffic generated to the specific URL through your web analytics package.

Links. Are you looking to naturally build links to help with your search engine optimization efforts? Linkbaiting can be extremely effective for this but you should track where the links are coming from and whether or not they are helping you. I recommend checking links at the 1 and 7 day marks using either Technorati or Google Blog Search. Then at the 30 day mark using Yahoo! Site Explorer or Google Webmaster Tools (use this FireFox plugin from Joost de Valk for extra info). Simply put the full URL (yourdomain.com/viral-piece.htm for example) into any of those engines and see who is linking back to you.

Buzz. Are people talking about you or your company due to the social media work you are doing? You need to know who's saying what and most normal search engines won't track this. You can use free services such as Serph to help track what's being said in places like forums and social networks. You can use Serph to search for things like your company name, the title of your linkbait piece or tool, etc.

Bookmarks. Bookmarks will tell you how many people felt your content was important enough to want to revisit at a later time or share with their own network. There are tons of online bookmarking sites out there but I like to use del.icio.us to gauge the overall interest level. Simply go to the del.icio.us URL page and input your full URL (as explained above) - it will then tell you how many people have bookmarked your site and the different tags they used (which is important to see if people are tagging it with what you had intended).

Conversions. At the end of the day everything should come down to this and many people want to discount direct sales via social media marketing but that should never be the case. I firmly believe that you should craft your viral pieces in a way that will help to generate conversions and track them closely for such. Sometimes this might have to come after you have launched you have promoted your piece via the major social networks but other times it might be the whole goal. Define what conversions you want to have happen and then track each. Do you want more people to sign up for your newsletter? Subscribe to your RSS feed? BUY YOUR PRODUCTS? You can do this simply and for free using Google Analytics.

With these different metrics, its important to put a realistic expectation for each in place before you launch your campaign. Think about what you want to accomplish and define your goals as specifically as you can get. Tracking your results and measuring them against your goals is the most effective way to tell if your efforts were successful and had a positive return on your investment (whether that investment be through time or money).

Read More Article Here....!

By: Mandeep Sethi

1. Keyword Stuffing

This is a technique to over stuff the Web page with repetition of a given keyword to get influencing search engine results. Keyword stuffing should be in boundaries. Search engines caught this trick very easily.

2. Similar Pages With Different Title

Don't Spread the similar pages in your site. For example if you have a travel site with different pages but same information for two cities, collide them in one.

3. Link Farms

"Google hates link farms"links farm is a huge set of highly interlinked pages, either with a fake content or some content scraped anywhere in little bits. The primary purpose of creating Link Farms is to give high number of links to a given Web site or increasing their link popularity score.These links are not "real" and so they are trying change search engine results.
The process of exchanging reciprocal links with Web sites in order to increase search engine optimization.

4. Duplicate Content

Search engines "Hate" duplicate content. They don't want to spend their resources to index duplicate content. Creating unique content takes long time and great energy. Just because of this some may try to creep content from other sites and republish it for search engine to index their pages. "It's unethical".

5. Bridge Pages

These are basically fake pages which are over loaded with content and optimised for one or two keywords which again link to landing pages. These pages redirect the user to the page that the Web site actually wants the user to visit. Bridge Pages (doorway and gateway pages) are illegal and not allowed on major Internet search engines.

6. Cloaking

Cloaking is a form of Bridge Pages. Web sites use this technique to show the content of the page to search engine spiders for indexing and present entirely different page to the users. This technique is used to mislead the search engine robot.
Cloaked Web sites even ban or blacklist by search engines because it completely cheat the search engine's algorithms.

7. Hidden Text

This is clouded content which usually invisible to user & only read-able by the search engine.
This technique is used to overload the keywords or keyword-phrases which are invisible to the user but helped in increasing ranking from search engine. Some time the we use White text on White background which a normal human user cannot see.
Avoid to use hidden text because you can play this trick with search engine for short period.
Their is a risk to having your site banned finally by search engines.

To Read More Please Visit www.thewebmarketingblog.com

Furl is a site for saving your favorites/bookmarks online. In other words Furl is a personal web site where you can store bookmarks and archive web pages. You can also learn what web sites others find interesting. Furl gives you 5 gigabytes of web space to store pages. Furl allows you to save anything you view on the web. You can also use it to share what you read on the web with other teachers or with your students. You can use it for many educational purposes :-

1. Web sites for student research or projects


2. Books recommendations


3. Professional research


4. List of books you would like to read


5. Placing web links on your school web page


6. Students can find resources at home and access them at school and vice versa


7. Share what you are reading on the web or view what your peers are reading on the web


8. Web site collections by school topic.

Furl is a social bookmarking site that makes it easy to save, share, and explore favorite web pages.

Advantage of using Furl: Click Here To Read...

The aim of your Internet marketing efforts is to find as many targeted leads as possible & getting those leads to visit your web site and then converting them into subscribers and lifetime customers.

To make people come and keep on coming back you have to have something to offer at your site. If you don't have a reason for people to go to your website then they won't come. If you are a source of information that people need then people will go to your site when ever they need that info. If they can find it better some where else then they will.

"FOLLOWING THESE TRAFFIC STRATEGIES U WILL GET THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE SEARCH ENGINE RANKING AND A FLOOD OF NEW VISITORS with INCREASED PAGE VIEWS, DECREASED BOUNCE RATE, INCREASED TIME ON SITE"

So To Get Leads Read Here.....!

Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to refer to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. Especially when they are used to link to individual postings, once a story is posted, the URL to it should be permanent, and never change - hence called permalink.

A permalink is a URL that points to a specific blog (or forum) entry after the entry has passed from the front page into the blog archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, it is less susceptible to link rot. Most modern weblogging and content-syndication software systems, including Wordpress, Movable Type, LiveJournal, RapidWeaver, Pivot and Blogger, support such links.

An entry in a blog with many entries is accessible from the site's front page for only a short time. Visitors who store the URL for a particular entry often find upon their return that the desired content has been replaced by something new. Prominently posting permalinks is a method employed by bloggers to encourage visitors to store a more long-lived URL (the permalink) for reference.

Permalinks frequently consist of a string of characters which represent the date and time of posting, and an identifier which denotes the author who initially authored the item or its subject. Crucially, if an item is changed, renamed, or moved within the internal database, its permalink remains unaltered, as it functions as a magic cookie which references an internal database identifier. If an item is deleted altogether, its permalink can frequently not be reused.

Permalinks have subsequently been exploited for a number of innovations, including link tracing and link trackback in weblogs, and referring to specific weblog entries in RSS or Atom syndication streams.

Blogging software creators and blog hosting websites have not agreed on a standard format for permalink URLs. Some within the blogging community feel that standardization would lead to the practice of meta-information about articles being mined from the URLs themselves rather than an associated RSS stream or meta tags stored within the content.

Continue Reading ...

Silicon Valley, February 10 - Internet major Yahoo Inc is likely to turn down the Microsoft Corp's $44.6 billion takeover offer, the media here has reported quoting an unnamed source.

The world's biggest software maker Microsoft had made the unsolicited offer to pay $44.6 billion in cash and stock to buy Yahoo on February 1. It is pursuing Yahoo to take on the world's most popular search engine Google.

The 'San Francisco Chronicle' quoting an unnamed source said the decision will be formally delivered in a letter to Microsoft on Monday.

Yahoo's 10-member board, which met on Friday to discuss the week-old proposal, determined that the $31-per-share was too low, the source told the San Francisco Chronicle on condition of anonymity.

Yahoo is also concerned about the risk of regulators blocking the deal because of the large market share the combined companies would have, the paper said.

"To me, it seems like a rejection of the Microsoft offer at its current price, not a rejection of Microsoft," the daily quoted Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst with Oppenheimer & Co, as saying.

Representatives for Yahoo and Microsoft declined to comment on the developments, it added.

Microsoft has held out the possibility that it could undertake a hostile merger attempt if Yahoo's board rejected the offer, the daily has reported. But it might require Microsoft to unseat some of Yahoo's board members, the report noted.

The Yahoo board is expected to meet again this week.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has said that Yahoo thinks Microsoft is unlikely to go for a hostile bid.

"Yahoo's board appears to be betting that Microsoft doesn't want to "go hostile" and try to acquire the company against the wishes of management and the board. Such a course could cause deep resentment among the rank-and-file engineers whose cooperation is crucial to the company's success," pointed out Wall Street Journal.

The paper added that Yahoo has taken "poison pill" provisions to prevent an unwanted takeover. Microsoft would likely have to oust the board in order to overturn them.

Continue Reading ...

If you know how to use Squidoo to achieve improved search engine rank of your web pages, then you have a tool at your disposal that can be just as powerful as using traditional search engine optimization, if not more so.

One important facet of your Squidoo lens is that it could be listed on Google, or any of the other search engines, for your major keywords, and you should not lose sight of any promotional techniques that provide you with free exposure on search engines. If you Blink your Squidoo lens, you can win every way. Not just with Blinklist, but you can have it listed on just about every social networking site you can think of, Technorati and Deli.cio.us included. Also Furl, Craigslist, Stumbleupon and any of the many others out there.

Simple, Powerful Email Solutions!
For those not totally aware of what Squidoo is, I don't intend to go into the ethos of the site right here, other than to state that it can be used as a promotional tool as well as a being a virtual website. Your lens can also be given a Google PageRank. You can use your Squidoo lens in place of a minisite in order to promote yourself and your product, and improve your search engine listing. You can use it as a showcase for your products, your blogs or even your websites, and draw traffic to it and hence to those other online ventures you are involved in.

In order to use Squidoo as a promotional tool for your main website you have to know a lot about the topic of your site. It is not a tool to use to sell an affiliate product, for example, unless you are an authority on that product. However, if you have written a book on a certain aspect of SEO, and want to advertise it, then Squidoo is ideal for that. The reason is that you can give in order to earn. Hence, Squidoo is great for me, because I can provide visitors to my lens with useful information on SEO, while at the same time advertising my SEO site that offers my product. I then get visitors and a link from Squidoo, both of which are great for my search engine rank, and also listing position.

It might be possible just to advertise the product directly, but I prefer to provide information. That allows your visitors to become confident that know what you are talking about, and are not just a 'fly by night' that is trying to sell a product that you know nothing about. The objective of Squidoo is to provide useful information on topics to others interested in that topic. If they go to Squidoo and click on a category, they should be able to find all the info they are looking for.

Continue Reading ...

According to Michael Arrington at TechCrunch, today's the day Yahoo's board will make a decision on how to proceed with Microsoft's takeover bid:

"There are only two options left. Accept the offer in principal, and try to increase the price with no negotiating leverage at all, or do a deal with Google to outsource search advertising and, likely, search itself.

The board, we've heard, is basically being told by outside advisors to take the Microsoft deal. But we've also heard that a contingent of senior executives at Yahoo, who are willing to do literally anything to thwart a Microsoft takeover, are pushing for the Google deal and will present their case at the meeting."

One concern of Yahoos may be losing the company's identity and being assimilated by Microsoft. In an effort to assuage those fears, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave empty reassurances in an interview with Business Week. "Yahoo, the brand, will live," Ballmer said. He didn't elaborate on that, of course, so it could be anything from Microsoft's premier online brand to a token start page (think Netscape).

Yahoo's Panama platform will not likely be as lucky, if Tarek Najm, adCenter's general manager, has anything to say about it. He told Business Week there was nothing he liked about Panama that he would want in adCenter: "We're the leaders in technology," Najm says. "Ours is better."

Continue Reading...

Yahoo! News (AP on Yahoo News) scooped the world on the most amazing number ever reported for MicroHoo. Since all wait with linkbaited breath for the latest Microsoft-Yahoo bid, here 'tis:

$45 MILLION dollars!

Microsoft agreed to pay how much for Yahoo? Would the Yahoo board of directors accept this low-ball offer from Microsoft?

O who will save Yahoo from Microsoft? We need a white knight. Our suggestion, Sir Spamalot orSir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir Lancelot Maybe several bidders led by Leader of The Knights who say NI! And now for something completely different, a Black Knight.

Who caught this typo last week? Eagle-eyed Incisive Media creative manager, Drew Eastmead, creative genius behind SES Magazine - official publication of Search Engine Strategies shows noticed someone didn't get the copy right.

As Yahoo News warns us all:

"The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press."

"Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press."
"Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved."

And now we know why they want express written consent.

Continue reading ...

Source:Thewebmarketingblog.com

SMM (Social Media Marketing) is an amazing way to get yourself noticed if you have the right content. There are so many people out there trying to game social media and social networking services in order to promote themselves or their product. The problem with SMM articles is that very few of them argue the value of social media and instead focus only on what you can get out of it. But I have the one (and only) secret to utilizing social media properly.

The idea of free high PR backlinks, instant exposure, and potential virility attract everyone looking for instant success overnight. The truth is if you set out to game social media people are going to catch on and you're going to succeed in doing little more than smudging your reputation.

The Solution
If you really want to make use of social media marketing the one and only way you can do that is by registering and participating in the community, make real contributions, and use the service as it is meant to be used. That's it. That's the tip, that's the trick, that's the butter.

If you want a story to make it to the frontpage of Digg then build your reputation and submit good stories. If you want articles to be taken seriously on Reddit then build your reputation and submit good stories. If you want your videos to get noticed on YouTube then build your reputation and submit good videos. If you want your articles to rise through the ranks of Netscape then build your reputation and submit good stories.

Trying to take little shortcuts just doesn't cut it in social media like it did in the old web days or with SEO. The only way you can make social media work now is by actively engaging the community, immersing yourself in it, and yes actually becoming a user. If you try to game the system people will see through it and you'll accomplish little more than a couple wimpy click throughs and a backlink. Social media is powered by users. Users are much more capable of seeing through scams than AI. If you act like some old fart trying to game the system to increase your PR then they'll know it, and you'll accomplish nothing.

But How Do I Make the Most of it?
I'm tired of hearing people say things like "Yes, I know I have to be active in the community to succeed, but how do I make the most of it?" Why does this annoy me? Because the answers are so damn simple.

For example:

Q: How do I get a good reputation on Digg so that people will take my stories seriously?
A: Submit good stories and vote on ones that you enjoy reading.

Q: How do I get people to go to my blog from MyBlogLog?
A: Visit other bloggers and if you like their articles let them know, add them to your contacts, and join their blog community.

Continue Reading...

If you've never attended the Search Marketing Expo, you've been missing out on a great way to find more ideas and the latest trends in the SEO industry. This year, you can catch the SMX between February 26-28 in Santa Clara, California. If you decide to attend, here are a few things you can expect to find there this year.

• More than 50 SEO sessions designed for a variety of industries and skill levels


• An SEO "Boot Camp" that covers the basics of the search engine optimization industry: Link building, copywriting and other fundamentals are the focus of this group. This is especially useful for beginners trying to learn how SEO can work for their businesses.


• More than 20 SEO sessions designed to teach the latest organic techniques for those who already have experience in search engine optimization


• Sessions that explore the future of the SEO industry, such as Search 3.0 and Search 4.0: Internet user behaviors, trends and patterns are the basis for upcoming success in search engine marketing.


• Seminars and discussions led by people who have already achieved a great deal of success with SEO: Danny Sullivan, program chair and editor-in-chief of SearchEngineLand.com will be making a keynote address to begin the exciting event. Former founders of Google and other Internet powerhouses will also be on hand to give expert opinions and thoughts.

Continue Reading ...

To compete in competitive marketplaces you have to out-think the competition or invest more than they do. When you start from how little or how quickly you have the wrong mindset. Ask not what your search results can do for you, but what you can do for your search results.

Keep launching quality original content, keep working at brand building, keep making social connections, and watch the traction build. When you are new, can you predict what one idea is going to make the difference? For most people I don't think so. Some types of success are deliberate, but for most independent webmasters, I think they accidentally step into success by working hard, being ignored, and then watching something blossom that they did not realize the importance of when they first launched it.

How long does it take to rank?
Is your site brand new? If so, how old are the top ranked competing sites. If they are a number of years old then it is probably going to take at least a year to catch up unless they are bad at marketing and link building or you have a great marketing idea that will help you build many organic links. If the companies that are ranking are multi-billion dollar corporations then you can't outrank them with a one man website unless your site is integrated into the conversation of that marketplace and/or your site offers valuable tools and/or original linkworthy content.

If your site is brand new, you probably want to develop links over time in a fairly consistent manner. If you grow x links this month then you want to create x or more the next month. And that number sets the baseline for the following month. Months where you have no viral marketing ideas try to list your site in a few quality directories, join trade organizations, and get other clean links.

If you are sitting on an older site you may be able to grow links a bit more aggressively, and you may be able to get away with being a bit more aggressive with the anchor text you use in the inbound links.

In many regional search markets outside of the US the competition is much less fierce than it is in the US, and it is easy to rank for some fairly competitive keywords.

An exact match domain name may also provide ranking benefits in some search relevancy algorithms, which allows you to rank quicker without needing to build up as much link authority.

You Must Know the following :

• How hard are your competitors working? If you are unsure track their current link count and their link growth. Also look for signs of public relation and the quality level of their inbound links.
• How big is their head start?
• How much are they investing?
• Are there ideas they forgot to focus on?
• Is your brand more focused than their brand?
• How much risk are you willing to take?
• Are competitors weighed down by bureaucracy?
• Are you more passionate about your topic than the leading websites? Eventually people will discover that, especially if you are not afraid to market yourself.
• Ask not what your search results can do for you, but what you can do for your search results.

Continue Reading ...

Source : http://www.thewebmarketingblog.com

Once upon a time, there was a company called Urchin that made web analytics software. As tends to happen, that company was acquired by Google (in early 2005), the software became Google Analytics, and the price became free.

Google Analytics grew in popularity, and many people forgot that the original Urchin product was still around (and those who did remember thought Urchin might never be updated again).

The primary differences between Urchin and Google Analytics seem to be that Urchin runs on a web server (and thus provides web log processing) and is more highly customizable, while Analytics is web-based (and easier to configure, but not as robust), and Urchin is $2995, whereas Analytics is free.

Now Google has announced a new beta release of Urchin, for those who require server-based analytics.

During the 90-day beta period, this latest version of Urchin is available for free to try. This beta was announced in October but is just being made available now.

This new version adds some of the features available already in Google Analytics (such as a new interface and and new cross-segmentation options).

Urchin Software from Google is a web analytics product similar in scope to Google Analytics, except you install and manage the software on your own servers.

Urchin 5 remains the current supported production release until Urchin Software from Google comes out of beta. This beta software should only be used for evaluation purposes, and is not recommended for production environments.

Use of Urchin Software?
Urchin is suitable for organizations that have content behind a security firewall or have other restrictions that prevent them from using the Google Analytics service. Urchin is also useful for those who want to perform ad-hoc historical log processing, who want to store their web analytics on local servers, and those requiring third-party data audits. Urchin Software from Google features the following upgrades from Urchin 5, among many others:

• More accurate geo-identification of visitors
• Cross-segmentation options similar to Google Analytics
• E-commerce and campaign tracking included (no longer requiring additional modules)
• Vastly improved embedded scheduler to more easily manage processing and re-processing jobs
• Improved user interface
• More robust log processing engine

Continue Reading ...

Source : http://www.thewebmarketingblog.com

SEATTLE, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Monday it may borrow money for the first time in its history to fund a portion of its $44.6 billion unsolicited offer for Yahoo Inc.

Microsoft also said it expects Yahoo's board to agree to the deal quickly, but Yahoo said over the weekend that it expects to take "quite a bit of time" to weigh all of its strategic options including remaining independent.

A source familiar with Yahoo's strategy said it is considering a business alliance with Google Inc to fend off Microsoft's offer.

Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said the software company may take on some debt to finance the cash portion of its 50-50 stock and cash offer for Yahoo, instead of drawing down its entire $21 billion cash pile.

"It's likely we're actually going to borrow for the first time," said Liddell in an annual strategy meeting with analysts. "It's going to be a mixture of the cash we have on hand plus debt."

Liddell declined to say whether Microsoft was already buying Yahoo stock on the open market. He also did not give any information on what form of debt Microsoft will seek in the capital markets.

Microsoft made public on Friday its offer to pay Yahoo shareholders either $31 in cash or 0.9509 of a share of Microsoft common stock. The deal aims to create a formidable number two to challenge Google Inc's dominance in Web search and digital advertising.

Analysts applauded Microsoft's decision to take on debt.

Continue Reading ...

Source : http://www.thewebmarketingblog.com

NEW YORK - Shares of Google Inc. on Monday fell below $500 for the first time since in August, days after a lackluster fourth-quarter earnings report and a $42 billion buyout offer from Microsoft Corp. for Google's largest rival, Yahoo Inc.

In afternoon trading, Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) shares fell $19.11, or 3.7 percent, to $496.79. They have ranged from $437 to $747.24 over the past year.

Shares of Mountain View, Calif.-based Google have fallen 12 percent since Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people )'s $42 <billion bid for Yahoo (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) was announced Friday. Google reported its quarterly earnings after the market closed Thursday.

Stephen Houck, a former antitrust enforcer in New York state, predicted that Google could have a hard time raising antitrust concerns over the deal.

Additionally, on Sunday Goldman Sachs (nyse: GS - news - people ) analyst James Covello removed Google from the "Goldman Sachs Technology Favorite Growth" list, citing a recent sell-off in the shares. He noted the stock has fallen 14.1 percent since it was added to the list on Jan. 18, exceeding a stop-loss threshold.

In a note to clients, Covello attributed the sell-off to concerns about Google's exposure to an economic downturn, particularly in light of the company's fourth-quarter results, which missed Covello's estimates and the Wall Street consensus.

However, the analyst maintained a "Buy" rating, and called the stock's valuation compelling.

Continue Reading ...

That's a one word summary of Microsoft's statement Sunday rebutting Google's statement earlier in the day that said Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo could raise antitrust concerns.

"The combination of Microsoft and Yahoo will create a more competitive marketplace by establishing a compelling number two competitor for Internet search and online advertising," Microsoft lawyer Brad Smith said in a statement. "The alternative scenarios only lead to less competition on the Internet."

Smith argues that Google already has three-quarters of the paid search market and about two-thirds of U.S. search queries and 85 percent in Europe.

Meanwhile, Reuters is reporting that Yahoo is considering some type of tie-up with Google, potentially something smaller than an all-out acquisition. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt phoned Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang on Friday to discuss how to avoid a Microsoft takeover, either by offering money or guaranteed revenue in exchange for Yahoo outsourcing its advertising to Google, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. A Google spokesman said the company had no comment on the report, and Yahoo representatives could not be reached for comment.

Continue Reading...

Google's top lawyer has penned a letter outlining a number of concerns it sees if Microsoft's bid for Yahoo goes through.

In the letter, "Yahoo and the future of the Internet," Google chief legal officer David Drummond says that Microsoft's offer "raises troubling questions" given the company's monopolistic past.

"This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another," Drummond said. "It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.

Drummond warns that Microsoft could attempt the same things it did in in the PC market, ultimately stifling new ideas. It also says a combined Microsoft-Yahoo would have an "overwhelming share" in instant messaging and Web mail.

"Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions--and consumers deserve satisfying answers," Drummond wrote.

Google and Microsoft frequently trade complaints on how the other is a monopoly and shouldn't be able to do whatever the other wants to do.

Perhaps, they just need a proper introduction to one another.

Continue Reading...

SEATTLE (AP) -- Yahoo's walls are awash in bright purples and yellows, while Microsoft's campus is coated in drab neutrals. Yahoo's co-founder holds the cutesy title of "chief Yahoo," while Bill Gates was "chief software architect."

Yahoo epitomizes California cool; Microsoft is still trying to get over its competition-crushing past. But the culture clash may not be as big a stumbling block to the software giant's rich buyout bid as some critics may think.

Yahoo Inc. is still mulling over Microsoft Corp.'s offer, worth about $42 billion based on Microsoft's closing share price Friday. Even if Yahoo's board and shareholders approve the takeover, U.S. and European antitrust regulators must still sign off.

Google Inc. stirred that pot Sunday with a blog post that called a combined company "troubling" from an antitrust standpoint; Microsoft followed with a statement of its own that the deal would actually improve competition.

Yahoo might appear more laid back, but the two are culturally closer than one might expect. For instance, while Google Inc. foots the bill for employees' meals, Microsoft and Yahoo both make their work forces pay in the cafeteria. And while some associate afternoon soccer and cricket matches with Yahoo's startup ethic, Microsoft's campus is dotted with playing fields.

And their similarities extend far beyond the perks.

"Yahoo is not the sort of strapping startup it was 10 years ago. It's a corporate organization with its own bureaucracies," said Charlene Li, an analyst at Forrester Research.

Continue Reading...

For those wondering how long Yahoo may take to respond to Microsoft's unsolicited $44.6 billion takeover bid, Yahoo says don't hold your breath.

In a brief FAQ posted to its Web site, Yahoo says it is "undertaking a deliberate review process" and warns it could "take quite a bit of time."

Yahoo said its process "will include evaluating all of the Company's strategic alternatives--including maintaining Yahoo as an independent company."

That could include pursuing bids from other companies, Yahoo said. "That process will take some time, but the Board will ultimately pursue the option that it believes can best maximize value for our shareholders," Yahoo said.

The FAQ marks the company's most substantive comment thus far on the bid. The company issued a brief statement on Friday morning, but said only that it was reviewing Microsoft's offer and the company declined all further comment.

Of course, it's unclear how much of Yahoo's statement is reality and how much is bravado. The Wall Street Journal noted that while Yahoo may seek other bidders, none immediately emerged. Some say Microsoft's big wallet and determination may deter others from pursuing Yahoo.

Meanwhile, Silicon Alley Insider blogger Henry Blodget on Friday wrote that at least one New York-based private equity firm was said to have been preparing an offer for Yahoo when Microsoft announced its bid. And on Saturday TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrignton cited rumors that News Corp., which had considered merging its MySpace social-networking site with Yahoo, was trying to assemble a group of investors to challenge Microsoft's offer.

Continue Reading...

Source : Thewebmarketingblog.com

Update Microsoft went public Friday with a $44.6 billion cash-and-stock bid to acquire Yahoo.

In its response, Yahoo called the Microsoft bid "unsolicited" but did not reject it.

Microsoft's offer, which was contained in the letter to Yahoo's board, amounts to $31 a share and represents a 62 percent premium over Yahoo's closing price on Thursday. Microsoft said it will offer shareholders the option of cash or stock.

"We have great respect for Yahoo, and together, we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers, and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online-services market," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in a statement.

Yahoo said in a responding statement that its board "will evaluate this proposal carefully and promptly, in the context of Yahoo's strategic plans, and pursue the best course of action to maximize long-term value for shareholders."

The deal comes as Microsoft and Yahoo have both struggled to compete against Google.

Microsoft didn't mention Google by name in its announcement, but it did indicate that its acquisition bid was aimed squarely at its rival.

"Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player, who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition," Microsoft said. "Together, Microsoft and Yahoo can offer a credible alternative."

To Read Completely, please Visit : Thewebmarketingblog.com

Source : Thewebmarketingblog.com

"Internet Marketing" is a word which can be the perfect definition for a successful online business". The latest trend of online businesses considers Internet Marketing as one of the best techniques for generating remarkable revenues through the websites.

E-Mailers: E-mailers are simple e-mails which we use to send to our friends. In case of business e-mails we send information about our services or products to a potential client who can be a possible buyer for that service or product. By using any e-mailer software you can send emails in bulk containing special offers which can be provided with your product. This particular technique of the Internet marketing is called E-mail marketing.

Affiliates: Affiliates is one of the most popular methods over the Internet. In this you can offer money to a person, if he is able to sell your product over the Internet through his/her website.

Paid Listing on Web Directories: Most of the web directories offer the facility of submitting your website within their relevant categories. They charge some money for that which can be annual or on monthly basis as per their policy. After paying, your website will appear on their directory within the relevant category.

Pay Per Click Advertising: Now days the most demanding technique for Internet marketing is Pay Per Click Advertising. Pay per click advertising is offered by all the major search engines. By paying some money for your choice of keyphrases which is called bidding, your website will appear in the search engine´s sponsored listings. This is an easier technique to get instant returns on investments.

Search Engine Optimization: Search engine optimization is another globally accepted technique for making any website visible on search engines. Search engine optimization takes time and tremendous efforts. Search engine optimization is another name for enhancing a website according the algorithms of search engines. Your website should follow the criteria made by the search engines to get top rankings. In case of search engine optimization you need not to pay any money to the search engines for showing your results.

The results which come through ethical search engine optimization will be reliable and stable for a long time period if you will be updating your website time to time according to the search engines algorithms.

Source : Thewebmarketingblog.com

Although search engine optimisation (SEO) is constantly changing, there are a number of techniques which are constantly viewed as against the rules, it has been claimed.

Barry Hurd, president of Social Media Systems, reports that "unscrupulous" SEO methods will result in punishment from the big search engines.

"Making sure that your company is aware of certain basic standards and not accidentally infringing on discouraged techniques is essential to making sure your online brand is a flourishing asset that is building value," he said.

Dishonest- or "black hat"- techniques include hiding a wealth of irrelevant keywords on webpages or page cloaking - showing search engines visually unappealing but maximised keyword pages that it would not intend for consumers.

Submitting identical content on different pages and providing multiple pages with a particular phrase for SEO is also frowned upon, alongside misspelling common words, brands or websites in order to appear when a web user submits a typo to a search engine.

Leading search engine Google has also publicly penalised websites which pay for reciprocal links, branding them unethical.

By : Thewebmarketingblog.com

A great many companies are using search engine optimisation (SEO) tactics which Google considers to be black hat, meaning they risk losing their ranking entirely, an expert has warned.

Patrick Altoft, director of Blogstorm, made his comments in an E-consultancy article, cautioning companies to double-check the strategies their SEO firm is employing to boost their ratings.

As Google now possesses 90 per cent of the UK market, companies cannot risk flouting the guidelines, he asserted.

Websites which are ranking highly as a result of link buying or selling or large-scale reciprocal linkers are most at risk of being noticed and penalised by the search engine, Mr Altoft commented.

"The key is to develop long-term strategies for sustainable rankings that will help sites ride through the inevitable Google ranking alterations without major trouble," he urged.

Last week, Stephan Spencer, founder and president of Netconcepts, claimed marketers using risky SEO tactics now may find they are penalised by Google in the future if it retrospectively reviews web content.

He made his comments to online resource Search Engine Land, arguing that in the long run, the "pearly white hats", which have always kept to Google's rules, could be the only sites with a high search presence.

The premier event for search engine marketing and optimization will be taking place in London between February 18th-21st.

Search Engine Strategies (SES) will be holding a conference and expo in London next month with hundreds of exhibitors and experts coming together to discuss the latest in search marketing technology.

Attendance at SES London was up by over 50% last year as search marketing continues to become one of the most talked about areas in Internet marketing.

Search Engine Strategies, which will be held this year at the Islington Business Design Centre, is a leading global conference and expo series that educates attendees on search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO) and online advertising strategies and tactics.

Delegates will have the chance to network with one of the largest gatherings of search engine marketing professionals, in addition to attending the most comprehensive SEM/SEO learning opportunity in the UK or Europe.

The line-up of speakers includes experts in a wide range of Internet marketing fields as well as representatives from search engines themselves. Guest speakers include Mike Grehan, Kevin Ryan, Nick Carr, Kristjan M. Hauksson and Dr. Ralph Wilson.

A number of highly-specialised sessions on search engine marketing will be offered, such as 'Dynamic Websites: Beyond the Basics'. Guest speaker Kristjan M. Hauksson, director of a leading.

Scandinavian Internet marketing company, and his colleagues will discuss a wide range of SEO tactics used in dynamic websites, including page titles, metadata, page headings, content, keyword embedded URLs, page rank and sitemaps.

The Search Engine Strategies conference and expo is geared towards online marketers, business owners, executives, webmasters and SEM/SEO and general web technology professionals.

Source : Thewebmarketingblog.com

Gaining a high Google ranking is all about building quality links, it has been claimed.

Patrick Altoft, director of Blogstorm, commenting on his e-consultancy column, explained that a newly-launched website is not trusted by Google at all, and that the site must attract links in order to gain trust.

However, according to Mr Altoft, the best links are not always to similar products or services.

Major blogs and news sites, alongside anything that receives a certain amount of attention from the mainstream press are more valuable, he claimed.

He explained: "These can also be quite relevant as usually the article linking to you is related to your niche - even though the rest of the site isn't."

Mr Altoft added that linking to already trusted sites is often a successful move, alongside submitting links to directories such as Business.com and the Yahoo! Directory.

Google is currently the market leader in search engines, performing 58.4 per cent of all US searches in December, according to digital measuring service comScore.

Source : Thewebmarketingblog.com

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) January 28, 2008 -- Leading search marketing software firm Engine Ready, Inc., announced the receipt of an industry coveted award recognizing their leadership in managing paid search accounts. Microsoft awarded Engine Ready with the exclusive "adExcellence" certificate signifying that Engine Ready has attained expert status in managing paid search accounts.

"We are very excited that Engine Ready has been granted the adExcellence Certification, in return for our contributions of testing, documenting, and providing feedback to Microsoft regarding their AdCenter technology," reports Engine Ready's Senior Search Marketing Manager Mike Poserina.

Designed especially for Microsoft's advertisers, the adExcellence program is Microsoft's official accreditation program that gives advertisers the opportunity to become a Microsoft adCenter expert.

The latest credential is added to Engine Ready's "AdWords Qualified Company" certificate from Google and Yahoo's "Search Marketing Ambassador" designation. These Internet marketing certifications compliment the firm's strong knowledge in strategic search marketing and web analytics.

Even in a relatively new marketplace like Internet Marketing, old-fashion business rules still have their place. "Our backgrounds are rooted in web analytics", comments Jamie Smith, CEO. "We have a strong affinity for numbers, and base all of our decision-making on in-depth analysis. It's the combination of our depth of experience in search marketing and web analytics that makes us uniquely qualified to meet our client's needs."

About Engine Ready, Inc.
Engine Ready, Inc. is a recognized leader in providing online marketing services and software, helping organizations achieve unparalleled success on their web initiatives. Managing paid search accounts in excess of 15 million keywords, and just over $8.1 million in annual media spend, Engine Ready was the first organization to combine the power of website analytics with search marketing.

Source : Thewebmarketingblog.com

Blog clean up must be done once in a while. Some parts of your blog tend to be used over and over again. Your blog might need to pay a visit to pump in fresh air to these places. These places won't annoy your readers at large but you might lose some of your readers who entered your blog via other points rather than your main entrance.

Another reason for a clean up is to boost server loads. Every time your page loads, it might be slowed down by some "behind the scenes" elements which I will show you in this list as well.

10 Important Clean Up Sections For a Blog

Plugins
When we stop using a plugin or a plugin seems to be bugging our blog, we tend to deactivate it. Considering the fact that we might need to use the plugin in the future, we did not delete it from our FTP folders.

Plugins section in the admin panel will tend to have a reminder column under a plugin if we did not update the plugin to its latest version. Deactivated plugins tend to have such reminders as well if they are not updated, making the list long and messy.

Categories
Long categories definitely is not a good thing if you are blogging on a niche blog. Also, targeted traffic might be chased away when at one glance you offer something out of their expectation (unrelated contents). Cleaning up your list of categories will mean regrouping your posts, changing the names of the categories and deleting of categories.

Before you go ahead and modify your categories, be sure that search engines have not indexed your categories pages. You can do this by adding meta tags to stop indexing of such pages, editing the robot.txt file in your server or simply check the box "noindex for Categories" on the All-In-One SEO plugin (if you don't have it on your blog, get it now!) options page.

Old Post
Posts in your archives might have covered historical events and you might want to link forward to later posts, update the information, correct minor but once undiscovered spelling and grammatical mistakes, recycle and make it your posts for another round or even delete it. Old posts have their own value and they might be the materials that assure new readers that your writings are worth subscribing or coming back.

One thing about revisiting old posts and updating them is that you will pick up some inspiration of what to blog along the way. Resuscitating your old posts by putting in on the front page again can reduce the workload on content creation and capturing new readers with these old but useful posts is an effective method.

Links
Revisiting old posts will also ensure the outgoing links in the posts are in good conditions. Excessive broken links can have bad effect on a web page according to search engine experts. A link might be working alright at the day you give out the link but as time passes by, a site might be closed, redirected or moved and your links will only lead to a "page not found" page.

Internal links that are properly described with the TITLE tags can boost search engine keyword ranking position of the our blogs' internal pages. We might once rushed a post and have ignored small bits like this.

Continue Reading ...

Do a quick search on Google, Yahoo, or your favorite auction resource site, and you'll quickly discover there are several software programs targeted to vendors who want to promote hot selling products on eBay.

The infatuation with hot selling products exists because sellers believe if you target items that have a robust sales pattern, you'll have a better chance at profiting on eBay. This is both true and false.

Yes... hot selling products can improve your bottom line. But unfortunately by the time the average eBay seller (a) realizes what the hot selling products are, (b) purchases stock to sell on eBay, and (c) actually puts the items up for sale, the demand is already being met by other eBay sellers who probably started the hot selling product trend some time ago.

Not only that, with thousands of people also having access to the same hot selling product lists, you'll have to contend with other eBay vendors who have the exact same ideas that you do. So you'll be up against the original sellers who are currently feeding the demand, AND doing the tango with newer sellers who have jumped on the same hot selling product bandwagon that you did.

Okay maybe this won't happen to you.
But suppose it does.

Continue Reading At : Thewebmarketingblog.com

Increasing the performance of your online banner ads is essential for improving your Internet marketing ROI. By following these simple steps, you can optimize the performance of your banner ads and improve that rate at which prospective buyers take action.

1. Design Your Banner for Specific Sites.
Targeted marketing outperforms mass marketing 2 to 1. If you're planning a specific banner advertising campaign, then choose a specific website where your prospects are visiting and design your banner for that website.

Banner ads that closely mirror the look and feel of the site upon which your ad is placed usually have the highest click-through rates. However, you may also try a design that is of stark contrast, to see if it produces greater results.

2. Animate Your Banner.
Research supports the fact that animated banners outperform static ones by a significant margin. This is because an animated banner is more likely to get noticed. There are various techniques you can employ such as blinking or movement when designing your banner. Try to stay away from static banners that only change when the page is reloaded.

3. Keep Copy Brief and Provocative.
Using words like "Free", "Act Now", "Click Here", and so on are effective at getting a browser's attention and encouraging them to click through to your offer. Try a number of different headlines or action verbs and see which results in the highest click-through rate.

Read Complete Story At : Thewebmarketingblog.com

Article Marketing is one of the best ways to advertise your business online. Here are just some of the reasons:

• You can reach a global audience for promoting your products.


• You can effectively sell whatever product or service you have - however expensive or inexpensive it is.


• You are establishing your and your business' credibility by exhibiting your knowledge on the subject.


• You can create a brand identity for your business.


• You can make sure your brand gains in re-sell value, opening a whole new avenue of business for you.


• You can pre-sell your product to your potential customers.


• Article marketing costs almost nothing, but can gets niche-based international promotion for your products.

Several of the companies are already investing significantly in article marketing. There are hundreds of article directories on the Internet with millions of articles on them promoting businesses. It is an undeniable fact that Article Marketing is the way to go.If you have an online business, you should consider using articles to drive traffic to it.

To Read More Please Visit : Thewebmarketingblog.com

Making efforts to optimize a site is great but what counts is how search engines see your efforts. While even the most careful optimization does not guarantee tops position in search results, if your site does not follow basic SEO truths, then it is more than certain that this site will not score well with search engines. One way to check in advance how your SEO efforts are seen by search engines is to use a search engine simulator.

Spiders Explained
Basically all search engine spiders function on the same principle - they crawl the Web and index pages, which are stored in a database and later use various algorithms to determine page ranking, relevancy, etc of the collected pages. While the algorithms of calculating ranking and relevancy widely differ among search engines, the way they index sites is more or less uniform and it is very important that you know what spiders are interested in and what they neglect.

Search engine spiders are robots and they do not read your pages the way a human does. Instead, they tend to see only particular stuff and are blind for many extras (Flash, JavaScript) that are intended for humans. Since spiders determine if humans will find your site, it is worth to consider what spiders like and what don't.

Flash, JavaScript, Image Text or Frames?!
Flash, JavaScript and image text are NOT visible to search engines. Frames are a real disaster in terms of SEO ranking. All of them might be great in terms of design and usability but for search engines they are absolutely wrong. An incredible mistake one can make is to have a Flash intro page (frames or no frames, this will hardly make the situation worse) with the keywords buried in the animation. Check with the Search Engine Spider Simulator tool a page with Flash and images (and preferably no text or inbound or outbound hyperlinks) and you will see that to search engines this page appears almost blank.

Running your site through this simulator will show you more than the fact that Flash and JavaScript are not SEO favorites. In a way, spiders are like text browsers and they don't see anything that is not a piece of text. So having an image with text in it means nothing to a spider and it will ignore it. A workaround (recommended as a SEO best practice) is to include meaningful description of the image in the ALT attribute of the <IMG> tag but be careful not to use too many keywords in it because you risk penalties for keyword stuffing. ALT attribute is especially essential, when you use links rather than text for links. You can use ALT text for describing what a Flash movie is about but again, be careful not to trespass the line between optimization and over-optimization.

To Read Complete Article, Please Visit : Thewebmarketingblog.com

It is famous chant in web that 'content is the king'. But, how far is it true to believe that a single tool can make your website popular and desirable. What if you have a content rich website written on white sheets without any design? Will content be the king in that situation also? This and many more questions must have bugged you before designing your website. In this article you can find a brief discussion of the point that content is not the king in SEO.

Unique Content
Content is certainly not the king, at least always. You need to have unique content to make it royal. If you have simple content written for long then this can't help you in getting traffic. Here your king fails to give you a royal welcome. When your visitors come to your website they look for information which should be fresh not stale. This makes you different from your competitors. You just don't need to write content but to update it so that your visitors can have unique, informative content in your website.

SEO Writing
Many website companies hire professional writers for content writing, which is certainly the easiest way to get fresh and appealing content. But the problem comes when you don't update your content and rely on your technical experts to write the content. Be concise in your approach. Make sure your copy should be search engine friendly. Edit your copy intermittently keeping your target audience in mind. If your destiny favors you and you get a professional copywriter then half of your content responsibilities will be covered.

Black Hat SEO
If content is every single alphabet featured in your website then it's also the keywords which many SEO forcibly gorge in the website. Since content is the king so many website companies hire writers who can write the content which is a simple replica of the available content. This comes when the companies hire a third party content provider. This can lead you to copy right infringement. So avoid stolen content. Unique original content is the king so being original is giving your content the right treatment.

Spamming
Many SEO companies claim to give original content and end up giving stolen, copied content. This is what search engines avoid the most. If you repeatedly do the same then it may list you as a spammers, which is certainly worse than having a 30+ ranking in search engine pages. If you ignore the search engines then also this kind of content is less desired by the visitors. Hence have a clear idea of your content and use it to get traffic not unsavory reputation.

For More Information Please Visit :Thewebmarketingblog.com

Affiliate marketing programs have never been as popular as they are today. Why? There are a number of reasons. The most probable reason, however, is the fact that the benefits of affiliate marketing have become clearer to a lot more people than they ever were before.

Today, both merchants and affiliates can see clearly that affiliate marketing works for both of them. The merchant sees affiliate marketing today as the chance to advertise their products at a lower cost. The affiliates, on the other hand, sees affiliate marketing as an easy way of earning profits online by doing what they like most, and that is creating websites.

Just as the popularity of affiliate marketing has shifted to greater heights, so has people's outlook about it. No longer is affiliate marketing considered an alternative method for the merchant to advertise his products, or as a source of additional income for the affiliates. For merchants and affiliates alike, affiliate marketing is now considered a main source of profits and revenues.

So the question now is what type of affiliate marketing will work best for you? Are all affiliate marketing programs the same? Are the benefits the same? Or are there affiliate marketing programs that work better than others?

There are actually different types or classes of affiliate marketing, and the number of types will depend on how they are classied. The most basic affiliate marketing programs, however, fall under two categories: pay-per-click (PPC), and pay-per-performance (PPP).

Pay Per Click (PPC)
PPC is the most popular type of affiliate marketing for affiliates with small websites, and probably the easiest way for them to earn money. With PPC, the merchant pays his affiliates whenever a visitor is referred to his site, that is whenever someone clicks through the merchant's banner or text ads. The affiliate gets paid a certain amount even if the visitor he referred does not purchase from the merchant's site. However, typical fees for PPC affiliate programs are small, usually not exceeding a dollar for every click.

Pay Per Performance (PPP)
PPP affiliate marketing is the most popular among merchants and is also the most lucrative type for the affiliates. With PPP, the merchant only pays the affiliate whenever his referral translates into an action, that is whenever the visitor he has referred actually buys something from the merchant's site or when the visitor becomes a lead. This means a lot of savings for the merchant. On the other hand, it becomes the most lucrative type for the dedicated affiliate, for commissions in PPP affiliate marketing usually return around 15% to 20% of the actual product sales.

Pay-per-performance affiliate marketing can be further classified into two popular types: pay-per-sales (PPS) and pay-per-lead (PPL).

Pay Per Sale (PPS)
With pay-per-sale, the merchant pays the affiliate a certain fee whenever the visitor he has referred to the merchant's site actually buys something from the merchant's site. Affiliates are often paid on commission basis, although other merchants will opt to pay a fixed fee. No matter what the basis of the fee is, it is generally higher than the fee paid to affiliates in a pay-per-click affiliate program.

Pay Per Lead (PPL)
The pay-per-lead type of affiliate marketing is a slight variation of the PPS type and is often used by insurance and finance companies and other companies who rely on leads for their company to grow. With this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever the visitor he referred to the merchant's site fills out an application form or any similar form related to the business of the company. Compensation for this type of affiliate marketing is based on a fixed fee whose rates approximate that of the fixed fee in the PPS type.

To Read The Complete Article, Please Visit : Thewebmarketingblog.com

HTML Problems Can Prevent Indexing
This is a common problem. Your web designer has created a beautiful page with nice graphics and great Flash animations. Unfortunately, it seems that search engines won't list your website no matter what you do.

This can have several reasons:

1. The HTML Code Of Your Web Pages Is Meaningless To Search Engines
   Search engines use very simple software programs to index your web pages. A web page that looks great to the human eye can be totally meaningless to search engines.

   
   

   Search engines cannot see content that is presented in images (GIF, JPEG, PNG, etc.), Flash elements, JavaScript and other script languages or other multimedia file formats.

   
   

   If you use JavaScript links for your website navigation then search engines might not be able to find your website page.

   
   

   Solution: Check your web pages with a search engine spider simulator. Spider simulators will show you how search engines see your web site.

   
   

   If you use IBP's search engine spider simulator, you can even enter the name of the spider, so that you can test if Google and Yahoo get different results when they visit your web pages.




2. The HTML Code Of Your Web Page Contains Errors
   Some HTML errors can prevent search engine spiders from indexing your web pages. While most search engine spiders can deal with minor code errors, some of them will send faulty information to search engine spiders.

   
   

   For example, your web page could contain a tag at the top of the page that tells search engines "the web page ends here" although your main content has not been reached.

   
   

   Solution: Check the HTML code of your web pages with an HTML validator tool. You can find an HTML validator in the free IBP trial version.

Read Complete Article On : Thewebmarketingblog.com

Are you looking to boost your website's traffic? Why not try joining on-line forums. There are a number of benefits:-

Credibility
Forums are useful places to chat to more experienced users in their field, forums allow for the free exchange of ideas. Also they are usually friendly places and you get a feel for the subject.

Regular posts in forums gives you credibility as you are showing your knowledge and experience.

Page Rank
Google crawls forums, and certainly the smaller ones can have good page ranks. Page Rank is Google's measure of the links between pages, and is a key component of Google's search algorithm.

If possible post in Forums with a higher page.

Signature file.
Make sure you complete the signature file, with a link back to your site.

Continue Reading At : Thewebmarketingblog.com

Widgets are things you can put in your WordPress blog's sidebar without knowing how to edit a web page. In easier terms we can say, Widgets are those parts which are broken down the sidebars in themes into discrete blocks of goodness, and created an interface for user to add, delete, and rearrange them by simply dragging and dropping. It's as easy as falling off a blog.

"Widgets" is buzzword chosen for this sidebar-chopping plug-in. They could have been called Gadgets or Gizmos or Wizbangs or Whatevers. On the surface, they are just things you can use to personalize your WordPress site without knowing HTML. Way down deep, they may be something entirely more significant.

The widgets are basic right now, things like search, categories, pages, etc, but the process of going on for anyone to create their own widgets. (It's as writing a single function and wrapping it in a WordPress plugin.)

By installing the Widgets plugin by Automattic and using a widget-ready theme, you can bring the popular customization feature from WordPress.com to your very own.

Not all widgets are available on blogs hosted by WordPress.com. You can install any widget you like on your own blog WordPress version 2.2 includes the Widgets feature. There is no need to download the plugin if you are running WordPress 2.2 or later.

At last, Widgets are an easy way for you to arrange and rearrange your sidebar to your hearts content without touching a line of code. One can arite its own widgets. Writing a WordPress Widget is as easy as writing a plugin.

Read complete Article on : Thewebmarketingblog.com

SEO has to always integrate (connect) with 7 important person. They are Content Writer, Web Designer, Web Developer, Server Administrator, SEO Industry, Market and User. Following are the reasons why every SEO has to integrate with them:

Content Writer:
As an every SEO knows that content is very important for Search Engines and for User. I think content is king. So every SEO has to always integrate with content writer. They have to give the suggestion for content writing to the content writer, that how to write content, in how many word they have to write content and in which how many percent primary keywords and how many percent secondary keyword they have to include. So we can get the Search Engine friendly and user friendly content.

Web Server Administrator:
Every SEO has always to integrate with web server administrator. Because when server side issues are arising at that time web server administrator can help you. Web Server administrator is also helpful at the time of purchasing domain and web space, how many web space we need? Which type of hosting we should purchase?, Email Creation, and many more server related works. Because if there is any error in our website from server side then it is bad for search engines and also it creates bad impression of our website in users mind. So it is necessary for every SEO to always connect with web server administrator.

Web Designer:
3rd integration of SEO is web designer. Web design is very important thing in SEO and in online marketing industry. In internet marketing industry website is working as your virtual shop or virtual office or virtual showroom. So if your design of website is not good and attractive for user then it is difficult to get the business from that website. Sometimes website comes in top 10 in major search engines on highly competitive keyword and due to dull web design they can't get enough business, though having a high traffic on website. SEO has always to integrate with web designer for suggesting them that how to design SEO friendly and user friendly website. So every SEO has always to connects with web designer.

Continue Reading ..

Who said forums are only good for getting help and advice?

There is often so much activity on certain forums that a normal forum-less website can only dream of.

While you can help other members and ask for help on the discussion forums, you can also tap into the abundant traffic of forums and drive it back to your blog.

Following are a few ways to get other forum members to notice you and visit your site at least once.

Start an argument with another member
And by this, it doesn't mean you start a nasty kind of argument. Just a normal debate between you and another member where you quote each other and try to disprove your opponents' claim or point of view.

When a debate starts in a particular thread between two members, other members usually don't interfere. But this doesn't mean they are not reading. They silently read the debate and derive their own conclusions.

If you wisely pick a weaker opponent to debate with, or you simply have more knowledge than your opponent to easily win the argument, you'll get a lot of people clicking on your signature link, eager to read more of your thoughts on the subject.

Become an active member in a sub-forum
Pick a certain sub-forum (a forum category) that relates to your blog, and actively participate in all its discussions. Be the first one to solve a problem in a new thread. Always be eager to offer help and advice to fellow members. And Be welcoming to the new members.

This will definitely get other members to appreciate your help and altruism and have them wanting to know more about you on your blog.

Source: Thewebmarketingblog.com

1. Regional Web portals
   Along with the development and success of international Web portals such as Yahoo!, regional variants have also sprung up. Some regional portals contain local information such as weather forecasts, street maps and local business information. Another notable expansion over the past couple of years is the move into formerly unthinkable markets.
   
   "Local content - global reach" portals have emerged not only from countries like India (Rediff), (MswPower.Com) and China (Sina.com) but also like Italy (Webplace.it) and so on. Such portals reach out to the widespread diaspora spread across the world. [[A good Portal-www.chembur.net-Information & Business Portal Its regional portal from Mumbai-India,free for all for placing Information]]





2. Government Web portals
   At the end of the dot-com boom in the 1990s, many governments had already committed to creating portal sites for their citizens. In the United States the main portal is FirstGov.gov; in the United Kingdom the main portals are Directgov (for citizens) and businesslink.gov.uk (for businesses).
   
   Many U.S. states have their own portals which provide direct access to eCommerce applications (e.g., Hawaii Business Express and myIndianaLicense), agency and department web sites, and more specific information about living in, doing business in and getting around the state.
   
   Many U.S. states have chosen to out-source the operation of their portals to third-party vendors. The most successful company to date for this is NICUSA which runs 18