ZillionBits-Its about number$ and te<h^0!0gy

I get to talk to a wide variety of prospective clients about search engine optimization and internet marketing in general. The amount of information about what search engine optimization is, is as varied as the motivations of the companies that employ it. To help companies understand the various aspects of SEO, I often make comparisons to things just about everyone can relate to. So here are a few reasons why effective SEO is like successful weight loss.

1. No pain, no gain. Losing weight takes work. You have to make changes in order to make a significant improvement. If your web site doesn’t rank well, you will have to make changes and those changes will cost time effort and money. In most cases there is not a simple, “painless” solution. Same goes for weight loss. For a great SEO program, expect to make an investment.
2. Changes must be long term. The current fads for weight loss often involve quick solutions like pills, concoctions and other “magic” programs, but they don’t work long term. The most successful weight loss programs include lifestyle changes, not some kind of quick trick. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I fielded an emailed question from a reader as to which is better home for a blog: as part of the company web site (www.company.com/blog/) or as a separate domain (www.companyblog.com)? I get this question often and see it mentioned in the forums as well.

There are many factors that influence whether your blog should be part of your site or it’s own domain name including:

• Branding
• Hosting platform
• Blog application (software or hosted)
• Resources for promotion
• Resources for content production
• Purpose of the blog
• Timeframe for expected results
• Target audience

For the most part, I recommend that a blog should be a subdirectory of the main company web site. The reason for this includes branding as well as the SEO benefit of having the blog and RSS feed use the main company URL. Having a blog and feed on a web site is one of the most productive things you can do to satisfy search engines’ appetite for fresh, themed content that attracts links. Read the rest of this entry »

SEOMoz.org has developed a fantastic tool that calculates something they call “Page Strength” which can be used in to gauge the importance and visibility of any Website or Webpage.

I think it’s a great tool for any budding entrepreneur or marketer to have, as the Page Strength score is probably a much more accurate reflection of a Websites importance than Alexa Rank or Google PageRank alone.

Page Strength is based on a number of factors:

• Links pointing to the URL & domain
• Position in Google for the first four words of the title tag
• Age of the Domain
• Links from .edu and .gov domains
• Age of the Domain Name
• Links from Wikipedia, del.icio.us, DMOZ.org
• Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, and more

Give it a try.

This article provided by sitepoint.com.

Just as with email campaigns, or any other form of advertising, it’s not enough to just throw it out there. You need to measure the results so you can track your efforts against conversions and sales. Ultimately, you want to measure ROI (Return on Investment).

Video ad effectiveness measurements are in some ways similar to other ads, but they also have their own unique metrics. At minimum, you need to measure clicks, views, and viral.

The effort put in to producing a video ad isn’t solely to provide entertainment, though that helps create search engine rank and traffic. Measuring clicks helps you determine popularity, and as with other kinds of ads, forms one component of a conversion calculation.

Unlike traditional online ads (but similarly to page views) you also want to measure the length of time viewers spent watching the video. In a 30 second video, did they ‘change the channel’ or go get a beer from the fridge after 10 seconds? That gives you a good idea about how compelling the content is, and forms another piece of an objective measurement of conversion.