Devour The Web

Search Engine Secrets: Using Tags
 by: Mark Lawson

In your web pages, there are hidden areas of the page that the casual browser doesn’t see, but that the search engines sure do. These are called tags, and come in two basic types: first the header tags, which are found at the top of web pages, and second the heading tags, which mark the parts of your text in the page that will be used as titles and subtitles in articles. One other form of tag, alternate text, should be filled out as well.

Header Tags

Most of the tags in your header are called metatags or meta tags; they apply to the entire page and, in HTML, are at the top of your document. In graphic web page design tools like Frontpage or Dreamweaver, if you right-click and select page properties, you’ll find these in the first tab that opens.

When the web first opened to the public, metatags were a critical tool enabling the primitive spiders and search engines of that time to determine how to catalog a page. The idea was that you’d tell the spiders where your page was supposed to be catalogued by how you filled in your metatags, and they’d ensure you were listed properly.

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Tis the season to leverage customer interest data for successful email marketing.

All of the information gathered throughout the year from customer purchases, customer feedback surveys, and other behavior offers direct marketers necessary direction for conceptualizing a successful email campaign.

Further, these customer data strengthen email promotions, ensuring the best possible message targets each individual customer. In the audio book, "Sound Advice on Email Marketing," author Peter McCormick sites the example of a sporting goods retailer that uses customer knowledge to devise a series of successful promotions. Offers for discounts on golf clubs, golf vacations, and pro golfer apparel specials speak to a particular set of customers’ affinity for golf.

As with any direct mail campaign, one key to optimizing customer response is compelling each customer to open the email. Here, McCormick says attention to the email subject line is crucial, and suggests one winning strategy is to incorporate the call-to-action ? what you want your customer to do ? into the subject line. McCormick says, "Don’t let your message get lost on the customer. The key to making the message obvious to the customer begins with a dynamic call to action in the email subject line that is carried throughout the body of the email."

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Tags: bending the web, howie schwartz, jack humphrey, web 2.0 marketing

We have a new case study available showing the results for one of our newer members. His site, Fitness Black Book, is really taking off well with over 500 visitors per day. I am impressed mostly with his mature outlook on building an authority site. It takes a certain kind of entrepreneur to develop quality into a business first rather than try shortcuts which only ever amount to short money.

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Here is our original Case Study 2007 with several ASC members participating in case you missed it. (Adobe PDF, 37 pages)

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Tags: authority site building, authority site center, authority sites, case studies

Yes, it’s sad but true… today is my 40th birthday.

The good news is I don’t feel old. And I surely haven’t started acting my age… just ask anyone who has been around me this weekend.

So, I’m at an undisclosed location doing undisclosed things to celebrate this momentous occasion. But I wouldn’t think of leaving you without some links (after all, it’s better to give link love than receive… mostly).

Sketchcast — How to blog like John Madden.

Ten Tips for Lead Generation Landing Pages.

29 reasons you need to stop blogging right now.

100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write.

If you think the average web user is sophisticated, read this…

Are you using the Mullet strategy when you go fishing for links?

Is blogging passive income? Yeah, right.

The Secret to Massive Digg/StumbleUpon Traffic Without Spamming.

How Darren produces video blog posts.

SEO is like music.

How to tell a story.

Why “dumb” people are making more money than you.

Don’t click here.

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The search engine giants are locked in an all out power struggle to get your attention and patronage.

Over the past 6 months there have been many changes. The big guys are getting even bigger, but there are a number of new players vying for your patronage too.

The top three Search Engines are Yahoo, MSN and Google. It would seem that Yahoo serves the most searches followed by MSN and then Google.

Only a year ago Google supplied both Yahoo and MSN with search listings. Yahoo has progresses from a Directory to a fully fledged search engine as has MSN with the launch of their new Search Engine. However Google still supplies search results to many other search engines including AOL, Alexa and a host of small and medium sized search engines.

It is my belief that any small business owner should know the basics of search engine placement and it is surprisingly easy to list your Web site, but even easier to get it ignored or even black listed by search engines.

What I’m about to explain to you will change to way you do your online marketing Today, Tomorrow and Years to come with little effort on your part.

This simple But effective technique involves the use of a ‘Pop-Up’ on your website, but, the difference between this technique and just a standard ‘Pop-Up’ or ‘Exit Pop-Up’ as we all see them is that when your potential prospects see them they are more then willing to give you there Name and Email address.

Why you ask?

Because your offering them something of Value for FREE.

As you well know the word ‘Free’ is one of the most Powerful words on the internet when used correctly and when combined with an ‘Pop-Up’… it could make you alot of extra money with little effort.

As a marketer myself, a simple Name and Email Address is worth hundreds, if not thousands of extra dollars a year if I collect and follow-up my leads properly, but, the questions that always seem to arise are…

…How do I do it? …What steps do I need to take?

So… now that I have your attention, let me explain to you how this can be achieved in a simple ‘Step-By-Step’ fashion.

Have you ever got one of those silly emails that offers to let you own a keyword? Silly question. How many such emails do you get every day?

A number of such services regularly email me offering keyword ownership of premium keywords for $300/year. They say that anyone can type the keyword I bought in the address bar of Internet explorer, instead of typing in a URL, and they will be sent directly to my site. In total it seems that there are about 2% of Internet users worldwide who have enabled one type or another of this system, spread out between a few competitive services.

Data shows that between 4% and 7% of search queries are performed by entering something in the address bar. By default for IE users, these searches are automatically routed through to MSN search. Many of us however have installed so much software over time, and unknowingly, some of this software has re-routed these search queries to other search portals, such as iGetNet, or others. This often happens if you’ve installed any file sharing software. We have all heard / read about how many extra ‘features’ come with programs like Kazaa. This means that your default search from the address bar may no longer be MSN, and may have been rerouted elsewhere, but the basic principle still applies. Of the queries that are actually run from an address bar, at least half of them are unintentionally instigated by people mistyping the desired URL. This means that between 2% and 4% of Internet users actually search via their address bar.

Denuo chief executive Rishad Tobaccowala advocates a simple strategy for hiring and retaining talent: don’t be cheap.

“We make certain we have profit margins that allow us to pay better than anybody else,” he said at a panel discussion during Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX conference this week. “I tell people: Money is tall, talent is short in this world. Pay your agencies well, otherwise, you’ll have a bunch of mediocre people.”

ClickZ asked Tobaccowala, who’s also Publicis Groupe Media’s chief innovation officer, how digital media executives can ensure their creative teams don’t dismiss analytics as a diversion for number crunchers. Talent emerged as an issue aired by other executives during Advertising Week, as well.

Tobaccowala, in an e-mail, offered these insights.

ClickZ: How can organizations that embrace creative people learn to work with metrics?

Tobaccowala: Metrics are not necessarily creative unfriendly. Creatives love feedback and knowledge if their work is having an impact. The key is to make sure that the right things are being measured. If the creative’s goals are a, b, and c and a and b are measurable and c is not then we should measure a and b. Often we measure c or d and e and then disparage the work by measuring the wrong thing.

The Power of Article Submission
 by: Dr. Tim Ong

If you’re a webmaster, one of the best and most cost effective ways to generate traffic to your website is through article submission. Sometimes one well written article is all that it takes to propel your website to new heights, as is the case with one article I wrote called “Achieving Optimum Health”.

After almost five years of webmastering a website for self improvement and doing all kinds of things to get my site noticed, this article literally transformed my online life from one on life support to a progressively profitable online business.

I wrote this article sometime back and submitted it first to SelfGrowth.com and a few other sites. From there, the article was picked up by other webmasters who posted it on their websites. From these new websites, the same process repeated itself… other webmasters picked it up, posted it on their sites and more webmasters picked it up and it goes on and on. It has a viral effect.

How does that benefit me or my website?