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In an ever-advancing world of content creation, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is downright important. There are 54 million blogs being tracked by Technorati today. Where do you fit into that scheme? It’s an impossible amount of information for anyone to completely process, and it’s expanding every day. It is your responsibility as a blogger, reporter, or company to make your information findable; otherwise, your content will never find an audience and your product will never find customers.

SEO is an umbrella term that encompases several aspects of site design, information architecture, content creation, directory placement, and to some extent, algorthimic math. There’s something to be applied on every level, but today we’re breaking it down to what is probably most applicable to you - the software your blog is built on.

Choosing a blogging software can be daunting, but fortunately you shouldn’t have to sacrafice quality or features for the ease of an out-of-the-box-solution. Many respectable blogs are built on ready-made blogging software (including this one), but if that isn’t enough to convince you, the massive supporting communities often built on years of research should. And this is especially handy when it comes to SEO.

Your SEO goals should be clear to you. You’re trying to get the best results to maximize your brand, reach your customer base, or advertise your service. To that end, you want to choose a software that is going to help you effectively advance those goals. This is, admittedly, not a straightforward process. Like many things …

The goal of any website is to create stickiness. Stickiness means more ad revenue which equates to the survival of the company. So to create that stickiness you want your users to not simply be users but to be passionate users. You need your users to love your site, to wonder what they would do if your site didn’t exist.

What is the three easiest things you can do to help create those sort of feelings?

1) Remove the welcome mat.

A welcome mat is for your guests, it isn’t for friends or neighbors who pop by every few days just to see how you are doing. So please, take the word welcome off your homepage.

2) Create new content often.

Your own grandmother won’t come back week after week to read the same stale bits of information on your website, why should you expect your users to? Even if you run an e-commerce website– update content. Create a 5 piece series called “5 alternative uses for” (fill in your topic here).

3) Make it easy.

Listen, I hate to break this to you, but you are a developer. Your site isn’t for you. It is for your audience. Do not make them question how to navigate the site and scratch their heads and give up in frustration. This has been said 1,000 times. Keep things simple. Keep new content on your homepage, and make sure it engages your audience.

Honestly, at the end of the day there is absolutely no better marketing strategy than creating users who …

If you are a Pay Per Click (PPC) advertiser, don’t be surprised if you experience unusual fluctuations in your current Yahoo, Google and MSN campaigns. Recently, Google has updated its Quality Score methodology, which raises the bar on the need for keyword consistency between landing pages, ad copy, and keywords in Google Adwords Pay Per Click campaigns. We have experienced some delays in getting client ads served right away when ad campaigns go live, because it takes Google a little time to serve ads and then assign quality scores. Since Yahoo and MSN have both tried to mirror Google as closely as possible in the way they rank and serve ads, the same type of Quality Score requirements exist in both of those PPC engines as well. The old days are over - remember, when you could simply bid for position in Yahoo (or the old Overture…or if you’re really “old” in this industry, the old Goto.com)?

In simple terms, quality scores exist on a keyword level in Google and ad group level in Yahoo and MSN. The most interesting of the updates to these quality score indexes in Google is that they now consider the landing pages of your ads more seriously. So if your landing pages do not contain the same keywords being used in your campaigns and ads, then Google may not consider the pages relevant, and as a result, assign a poor quality score.

So what should you do?  Start approaching PPC …

Today I want to bring awareness to the subtleties of “Spillage” or “Switching Costs”. My definition of this is the energy that is lost every time we switch tracks or gears during the course of our days. For example, let’s say that I have four main tasks to accomplish today, within 8 hours, and my energy level starts at, let’s say 80 (out of maximum 100, with 20 being brain dead, 70-80 being highly productive, 50-60 being reasonably focused and productive, 30-40 being fatigued).

I start on Task #1 with great intention at 9am.  I am cruising until 9:30am, until a phone call comes in (WARNING: Spillage Potential).  It is from the client, about an “urgent” project that is the focus of my planned Task #3 for the day.  Feeling the pressure and not wanted to reject a call from a client, I take the call (Spillage!).  “Can you get it to me before day’s end?  We are really anxious to see the comps.”
I call the web designer to make sure the comps will be ready for my review, and he wants to show me what he has right now - so we go back and forth on IM for 30 minutes, reviewing comps (More Spillage!).
OK, it’s 10:30am now, where was I?  Oh yeah, Task #1, almost done.  Before getting back to Task #1, how about a “quick” scan of my emails - shouldn’t take too long.
11am, why am I responding to emails that have nothing to do with …

This is a great movie for entrepreneurs to see. It came to my mind this week, as Blueliner is launching two exciting new brands to the world. Too bad the film-makers of this 2001 documentary film don’t own the URL. Then, the movie could have spun off into a whole series of merchandising opportunities. Nonetheless, the low-budget film still grossed over $1 million at the box office, and I am sure it has done at least equally as much in DVD rentals and sales. That aside, it is a film worth seeing for anyone who has started or is interested in starting a business.
I believe that our two launches this week will be more successful than govWorks, the company featured in the film, which receives millions of dollars in funding during the late 90’s dotcom boom, only to squander it all. The main characters are the two co-Founders, Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman, who get challenged to the point of splitting up as partners in the film. The strains on their friendship, in the face of corporate greed and pressure, is one of the most interesting parts of the film. What I found funny and scary at the same time was the part when they are testing their website functionality after spending a ton of money on web development.
This reminds me of how challenging it is to build the …