There’s a new fad getting pushed by part of the internet marketing community selling paid one-way links on something called ‘Cloud’ sites or ‘500 words’ where there are just various words on their web?site up for bid/purchase as a link text for inbound links. These sites are selling the fact that more one-way inbound links help increase your link popularity and are factored into your ranking and site positioning for keywords used in your inbound link text.

This is reminscent of the recent ‘pixel’ page ad sites where the site owners sell one or more pixels on a website for supposed visibility and inbound links to website owners who want to advertise their website. However, the problem with these sites is that your inbound links are only as good as the site they are on.

First off, hundreds of these flash-in-the-pan sites are popping up and most of them have no ranking or traffic themselves. So you can’t expect to have these help YOUR ranking or traffic. In fact, in my opinion- you should never pay for a link on a site less than PageRank 4. I don’t think there is any problem having free links from sites with PR down to 0, as PR changes and not only is there no penalty for links for lower ranked sites, but search engines like Google expect you to have links from a mix of sites.

Second, many of the major engines often pull ’spammy’ sites from their results altogether. These sites have no real content and are just a bunch of links. They aren’t likely to be in the major engines listings- another indicator that you will not receive any real traffic from them.

Evaluate paid-link or banner ad opportunities wisely. Is the site content related to your site, therefore targetting an audience appropriate to your site? Does the site bring in real traffic? Get some proof of page views and unique visitors. Does the site have a good ranking in Google, MSN or Yahoo?
Don’t be a victim of the latest advertising fads. Use techniques that are proven winners.

Need help finding effective ways to prospect for new customers?
YNot Web can help. Call 916-225-5266 today.

I am trying out a new way to network- online social networking. The online network I was invited to and joined is called LinkedIn.com.  It has interesting potential to connect my friends, clients, and colleagues with each other and their friends, clients, and colleagues.

In the last year, I have often played ‘go between’ to help one friend’s company find qualified people to fill positions or refer one client to another for services one needs and the other provides.  I am testing out this online network to see if it can streamline that process a bit.

If you are a past client or someone who would like to refer me to others and would like an invitation into my network, just give me a call or drop me an email (if you know me, you have my address– I do not like posting it unprotected online).  If you’re already a member of LinkedIn, you can just put in my name and send me an notice to connect our networks together.

Check it out if you get a chance or let me know what you think about these types of online networking services (feel free to comment using the link below).

If you think your business would not benefit from having a web presence, think again. A new report by PEW/Internet describes how internet usage continues to rise in America, up almost 11% from a year ago. They also post a handy chart of internet demographics if you want to see a break down in ages and gender.

More and more people are turning to the internet as one of their main sources of information. Your business cannot afford to ignore this advertising, marketing, and networking venue any longer. Even search engines are using technology to favor web sites that have been around longer and appear to be in it for the long haul. Even if you must start small, start Now!

I’ve been seeing alot of hype lately about how local searches are the ‘next big thing’. This is nothing new folks.  I’ve been telling clients, friends, and colleagues to prepare for this for more than a couple of years by including location information on their sites and making sure they register for both a Google Local listing and a Yahoo Local listing.

Printed Yellow Pages are a thing of the past.  I throw mine directly into recycling.  There are statistics that show that nearly 75% of U.S. households use the Internet as a resource when shopping locally.  Google has been incorporating its Google Local results at the TOP of locality searches for almost 2 years.  That is, search for something like ‘internet in Fair Oaks, CA’ and you might find me.

So if local customers are one of your core target markets, it makes sense to address this geographical area in your web site’s optimization efforts.  It may seem common sense, but you’d be surprised about how many businesses with clearly defined local markets ignore this and don’t even include location information in their basic web page copy.

A search engine can only index your website according to the information your web pages provide. In order to encourage the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN to categorize your business within your locality, you must include specific local information on your web pages, such as your address and phone number, so that it is clear to the search engines which area your business serves.

There is a new branch of the Web growing like a well organized storm cloud. This recent trend on the Web can be used to strengthen your presence with major search engines and reach an active audience that is highly interested in your content. Welcome to the world of “tagging.”

What is Tagging?

Tagging is the process of labeling a piece data with metadata.

Using Tagging to Advertise

One of the most effective sites currently using tags is technorati.

If you have a blog, Technorati should become one of your favorite search engines on the World Live Web. Many Technorati Tags are beginning to dominate the Web by having constantly updated, fresh blog content on highly focused subjects. The beauty of Technorati is that blog application such as blogware and others are completely integrated with it allowing blog categories to be instantly tagged and syndicated into the blog search engine. Any blog can be manually added as well to technorati’s very open tagging system. Even if you only happen to get a trickle of traffic from technorati itself many times the link value alone will sky rocket the speed in which your site rank in the search engines.

There are many other tagging sites that can help you with “tag syndication.” With its encouragement to get users to submit their own RSS feeds as content, My Web 2.0 from Yahoo is a great way to increase traffic and links. Web applications like TagCloud integrates RSS and tagging while wikipedia.org is method of allowing social webpage and content development. Tagging is another way to give the power to reshape and categorize the Web to the people.

Watch for new venues for tagging to pop up and new ways to use the concept.