A nice contest - especially if you have a killer idea but not enough funds.

http://www.marketingexperiments.com/napkin1-010.asp

A collection of some informative blog articles.

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3585561

A nice article on Local Search and Yahoo.

http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/local_search/article.php/3585521

Enjoy your Weekend!!

A nice small article on how long it takes to start seeing some results with a campaign.

http://www.btobonline.com/article.cms?articleId=27048

A nice article on some alternative payment methods.

http://www.wilsonweb.com/art/ecomm/3rd-world-ecomm.htm

Like it or not tax time is coming soon - you can get some advice or help at the official IRS site.

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/

If you are digging out of the snow this morning I feel for you :o) - we got no where near the amount folks up north got but we did get 6 or so inches.

If you like sports you may want to check out the following links.

Medal counts -
Click Here

Whats on TV
Click Here

Some interesting things on Email patents - note get this one quick because free access is limited.

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=3182

We talked some about the Super Bowl earlier this week - the following article talks some about it as well.

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3583516

Especially interesting are the before and after search data from Yahoo.

Before Super Bowl
After Super Bowl

If you had a product related to those featured in the Super Bowl Ads - I think you could have really racked up quite a bit.

May you soon have to pay for your emails you send - hopefully not but maybe... some details on that can be found at the link below.

http://www.wilsonweb.com/art/email/goodmail.htm

So what did you think about the Super Bowl ads - for someone paying 2 million + a commercial, I thought they were bland. Another thing I'm curious about is how they tracked their success (or lack of it). Like them or not I think Go Daddy did well on their spot basically forcing people to go to their site to see the end of the commercial. The Hummer ad did well by giving you a specific link to go to. The others not so well.

Interesting notes -

BMW gets knocked from Google for using redirects -
http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/2642

It seems Google has been testing GBuy a rival for Pay Pal.
Click Here

Some speculation on the "next big Google Update".
Click Here

Hope you enjoyed your weekend. If you watched the Superbowl over the weekend, what do you think advertisers should have done better? I'll share my thoughts tomorrow.

A good how I did it story -

Click Here

If you use Firefox you want to make sure that you have the latest version -

http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

Some nice info on email marketing -

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=3175

A nice article on technology trends for 2006

http://news.hosting.com/feb2006_trends.html

Google has a new tool bar - more details can be found here -

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3581316

An excellent pdf report on shopping cart and improving your conversion rate.

Click Here -

Best way to do it is to click then save as and download it on your computer.

If you're interested in the next big thing (in web apps) - you may find the following site useful.

http://webreakstuff.com/blog/

Eight things that can be bad for your website -

Click here for details.

Enjoy your weekend.

If you do a lot of advertising with Ad Words then you will enjoy this new program from Google.

http://services.google.com/adwordseditor/index.html

An excellent article on what you should be doing / trends for 2006

http://www.clickz.com/experts/crm/traffic/article.php/3573016

A good article on the state of SEM that you may have missed -

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3575926

Have a good one.

A couple of good articles from a newsletter we like -

1) http://www.demc.com/artman/publish/article_82.shtml
on truths in email marketing.

2) Getting some traffic from the media -
http://www.demc.com/artman/publish/article_79.shtml

Looks like Google and Yahoo still number 1 in America -

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3578491

Also seems like search records will be under scrutiny -

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=9701

Enjoy your weekend :o)

Seems that Google may soon have Google Ads on the radio - if you have a podcast and are looking for ways to make some cash this would be excellent for you (or for anyone that wants to earn some cash from recordings).

Click Here
More
and More

Some nice words of wisdom - download - print it and start reading it today.

http://wisdom.marketingsherpa.com/

If you've wondered how to create a 301 redirect - what you should use if you change a page on your site. The following link shows you how to create one.

Forum post with comments -
http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29607

The tutorial itself -

http://ekstreme.com/webmaster/301-redirection.php

Hope you have enjoyed your week - and will enjoy the long weekend. We'll be back on Tuesday.

Till then a very in depth post for you to enjoy on SEO - one key point diversify.

Click Here

Interesting news bits from yesterday - tomorrow we'll try and add more of the "old" news.

Google increases their lead over Yahoo -
Click Here

How to add a Google map to your pages.
Click

Keyword prices fall - cost per clicks.
Click

An excellent article we found yesterday on SEO - it's pretty long so I won't burden you with more.

Click Here

I found these interesting -

On click fraud -

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050405-073942


Site maps expands -
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/051116-155209

Trusted links -
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/051111-102522

Hopefully you enjoyed your weekend. This week we'll continue to review some things we received over the break.

The one thing you need to do today is patch the recent WMF vulnerability

http://update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate/v6/default.aspx?ln=en-us

Click on the "Custom" link if you only want this update.

Enjoy your Monday.

A nice article on readability -
http://www.timetabler.com/reading.html

and about skimming -
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/helpingvisitors

Both may help you convert browsers to buyers which is always a good thing.

Some top searches for 2005

Ask Jeeves

Google

Yahoo

AOL

Lycos

A9 (the top 9 searches with 9 letters)

Nice article on local search -

Click Here

An excellent article with five tips on selling more online.

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/barrier.cfm?currentID=3149

So how to change (or not) your marketing efforts after the AOL / Google deal.
http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3572781

Hopefully you enjoyed your weekend / holidays. Happy New Year. This week we'll be posting some news from over the holidays. Enjoy!!

TimeWarner sold 5% of AOL to Google - remember whoever has the most eyeballs wins.
Click here
You'll need to log in.

A nice extension for Fire Fox -
http://quirk.co.za/searchstatus/

A nice explanation to librarians about how Google works.
http://www.google.com/newsletter/librarian/librarian_2005_12/article1.html

Have a good one.

Hope you are warm and toasty - it's pretty chilly here. Below are some things to check out. We hope you enjoy your weekend. My daughter is out of school starting next week for the holidays - actually she is out today because the roads are icy - so we'll be on a limited posting schedule (read that as maybe no posts) till Jan 2nd. During this time try to find some other ways to piggy back your ads. We'll do the same and post our thoughts in January.

We hope you and yours have a very Merry Christmas and Happy and Prosperous New Year. Thank you for letting us be a small part of your lives.

There seems to be a battle going on between Yahoo and Google over paid links.

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002955.html
http://battellemedia.com/archives/002123.php


A recap of the recent Chi town Search Engine Conference

http://www.searchengineguide.com/searchbrief/senews/006339.html

Ratings on the search engines - no surprise Google leads - interesting though more people are searching which is good news for everyone.

Click here

Top 99 search terms with 9 letters from A9.... hmmm

http://blog.a9.com/blog/2005/12/14/the-99-top-9/

Tim and Lisa

So did you come up with something you could use -

First an example of some good marketing - If you search for Auto Tape Measure in Google -

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=auto+tape+measure

Who do you see at the top of the list.... Black and Decker - excellent marketing. So what you want to find is someone that isn't doing it.

What do you get if you search for home depot elf... one result. If you had something related to hardware / gifts for me you could plug your ad in there and get some unexpected traffic.

If you search for Bud Light Venus - there are no results in the ad box - so probably for ten cents or so a click you could drive some traffic.

Hopefully this gets some creative juices flowing. The main thing is to think of things for your target market - and it doesn't have to be commercials it can be topics within a show. If it is a show topic you need to try and get the ads setup the day of the show. People have very short memories. Commercials usually run more than once.

Stuff you can use -

Tax time is coming soon - check this article out.
http://www.sbtimes.com/articles/05/12/2.shtml

Speaking of taxes this site gives some good info on mileage deductions.

http://smallbusinesstaxcenter.com/records/mileage1.php

So the commercials I found were -

Pre Game -

Fed Ex
Ford F 150 BCS
Comcast HDTV
GMC

1st Quarter
Budlight / Venus
King Kong
Energizer
Cardiezem HBP
Home Depot - Elf
--
Nissan Z
Best Buy (Games)
According to Jim
--
Dominos 5 buck deal
Nissan Frontier - shift offroad
Diet Pepsi - Vending Machine
Hope and Faith - Christmas Freak
--
Nissan Frontier - compact trucks
Michelob Ultra
Subway - Chicken Bacon Ranch
Auto Tape - Black and Decker
--
Fedex
Phillips - sense and sensability
In Justice
--
Subway - Chicken and Bacon
Visa Check Card
Snickers

So what do those commercials have to do with anything - these people spend huge amounts of money on their campaigns - I have found though that many don't branch out to the web. Let's face it, many people watch TV and surf. What stops them from searching Google for some keywords they find in ads. Using the commercials above try and find some searches where there are no Adwords - don't worry if it's not your niche - just use if for practice. I'll give you my results tomorrow.

Did you have a chance to do your homework from last night - if not don't worry I did. We're running behind schedule today and have some obligations later today so we'll talk about it more tomorrow.

I did find an interesting thing this morning - MSN may pay you to search - would you switch if someone did this???

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=2649

Hope you enjoyed your weekend - we had a pretty good weekend more on that in a bit - first some posts from the weekend.

A nice way to get out of the sandbox from Google -

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=57368

I watched two excellent football games on Sunday and it got me to thinking that I probably hadn't shared with you a good (cheap) way to promote your site and bring more traffic... which in turn brings more sales. It does take some work and some money - so if either of these are in short supply for you then you may not want check out the blog in a week or two.

To help learn about the concept you need to do a little work - tonight watch the first quarter of Monday night football. Even if you don't like football one quarter shouldn't be too much for you to wade through. As you watch the game write down all the commercials that you see - as well as any advertisements you may see. Even if your audience would hate football just bear with me. We'll talk some about those commercials tomorrow.

A Danny Sullivan Q and A from the Chicago conference -

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20051208DannySullivanCuttsUp.html

Enjoy your weekend.

Google's Ten Rules for business -

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/051206-114834

Search engine strategies is going on in the big C - here's a place to catch some updates on whats going on.

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/051205-141249

The latest issue of our Ezine can be found here -

http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz256-DEC05.htm

Enjoy your day.

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Some things that may get your tractor cranking this morning.

Google has now made it possible to seperate content bids and "normal" bids. Instructions can be found here -
http://perrymarshall.com/google/separate.htm

Some excellent info on creating niche sites -
http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18376

Matt Cutts has some good advice in his blog on software -

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-mistakes-software-mistakes/

We hope you enjoy your weekend - hopefully we'll get some Christmas shopping done today.

Can "good" content and grammar help with Google - check this article -

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=1874

So what might Google be up to with Google Base - this article might help to explain things a bit.

http://www.intuitive.com/blog/next_up_google_shopping.html

A nice post about holiday sales -

Click Here

A nice article on linking / link networks and the changes from Jagger -

http://www.webguerrilla.com/linking/the-truth-about-reciprocal-link-networks/

Hopefully everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

I had a lot of fun with my daughter - we goofed off on World of Warcraft quite a bit. Lisa and I also watched a bunch of sappy holiday movies (think Hallmark). It was a very enjoyable time away from the computer... and if you haven't taken a list a few days away, remember the old saying all work and no play.

If you've heard about Sony's "rootkit" and the hub bub surrounding it then this is interesting.

Click Here.

Some nice articles to feast on before turkey day -

Are you really targetting your customers ?

http://www.enquiro.com/marketing-monitor/know-your-target-audience.asp

People are still searching for stuff on the web - you can find numbers below.

http://www.dmnews.com/cgi-bin/artprevbot.cgi?article_id=34827

Some Thanksgiving recipe ideas
http://www.recipelink.com/thanksgiving.html

A nice article on Email open and click rates -

http://www.demc.com/artman/publish/article_66.shtml

Google analytics has halted new accounts for now - apparently they grew too fast....

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/wp-trackback.php?p=36

We hope you enjoyed your weekend - we'll be posting things till Thursday this week - then we'll probably snarf down some Turkey - enough to make us hibernate till Monday.

A nice thread on someone that is trying to start things off with zero cash - more info here -
http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3177

Some comments from the Google pub relations guy at a recent conference.

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=56221

Google has a new tool that helps detect timeouts, errors, unreachable urls etc., when they crawl your site. Want to make sure that Google finds all the good stuff on your site then check it out.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

Have a great weekend.

If appears that Google Base is now up - you can check it out here -

http://base.google.com

Want to know some search stats for your industry - click here.

What exactly is web spam - learn more here.

Pretty cool - Google is now offering free stats for your site -

A nice article on this can be found here -
Click Here

Or you can check it out from Google here -
http://www.google.com/analytics/index.html

I kind of feel sorry for those programs that cost hundreds of bucks a month.

An excellent paper concerning page rank -
Click Here

Hope you enjoyed your long weekend - can you believe that next week is ThanksGiving... I can't either.

Is the Jagger dust settling???
Click Here

Ebay is now offering some pretty awesome marketing research stats - more details can be found here.

A nice article on links - more info

A nice interview the Brett Tabke founder of Web Master World.

Click here

We'll be taking a break tomorrow since it's Veterans day - and hey I'm a vet... good excuse anyway for a day off :o).

I served in the 3 ID - in Schweinfurt Germany when there was still an East and West Germany.

Wal-mart scared of Google ... hmmm maybe. Check out the following story from NY Times (might have to register to view the page)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/technology/06google.html?pagewanted=1

Enjoy your day.

A nice article by someone that makes a lot of money with Ebay -

http://www.demc.com/artman/publish/article_58.shtml

Lots of tidbits over the weekend.

Google has filed another patent - apparently soon they will be individual results for each searcher....

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=8547

The "official" patent can be seen here -

Click here for the patent link -

Is Yahoo in the process of a big update?

http://webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=55461

Enjoy your Monday!

I don't know about you but I'm glad it's Friday.

Some good info about Jagger Changes -

http://webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=55306

How Jagger may affect your holiday season this year.

http://webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=55284

And Jagger part three isn't up just yet -

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

Our newest newsletter is out -

http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz255-05nov.htm

An excellent article on creating passwords -

http://www.antionline.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=271347
(scroll down to post three)

Firefox has an excellent program that lets you check useful SEO stats as you surf.
http://www.pandia.com/sew/105-check-seo-stats-while-you-surf.html

Hopefully you enjoyed your weekend - we had some excitement at our house as the cows invaded. :o) -

That's me - looking rough after all it was early Saturday morning. My daughter Haley and "Bessie". Bessie brought along 7 or so of her closest friends as well.

Well it appears that the second part of the "Jagger" update has begun - some folks are now calling it the "Joker".

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=54970

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/31688-65-10.htm

Google is up to something... besides the update. They are in the process of starting Google Base - you can find more details here -

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/2013

and the "new" site can be found here -
http://base.google.com/

although I got a database error - so maybe it's not ready just yet.

More Jagger stuff -

How did XML site mapped sites fare -

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=54883

It's not over till its over - make sure to check out Google Guy's post on this page -
http://www.searchengineworld.com/forum912/4-2-20.htm

More conversations on the "update" - I think Google actually said it wasn't an update.... hmmm.

Part 1 -
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/31509.htm

Part 2-
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/31688.htm

Couple of more notes on Jagger -

How to contact Google if new results are full of trash -
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/update-jagger-contacting-google/

An excellent conversation is going on here as well - next week - after some more dust settles we'll give some observations.

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=54379
You'll have to register but it takes about a minute to do that.

Well looks like Google is definitely doing a big update - details below -

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=8261

http://www.searchengineworld.com/forum912/1.htm


Just don't PANIC until after the dust settles.

An excellent article on improving your sites navigation can be found here -

http://www.wilsonweb.com/art/design/menu-builder.htm

If you haven't subscribed to their newsletter yet, you should.

Is there another Google update going on - maybe... maybe not. Details can be found here.

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002654.html

Hopefully you enjoyed your weekend. If you are looking for a place to find keywords without having to pay - then you may want to check out Nichebot -

http://www.nichebot.com/

If you use windows XP and it seems to have slowed down - then these tips may be just what you need. One reminder before you try new things make sure that you BACK UP your files.

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/1949

We mentioned before about Google and dupe content - check out this -
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/4091

hmm it appears that Google is going to get involved as a payment service (like paypal) - what better way to streamline their payments to affiliates etc. More can be found at the link below.

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/1940

The link below has 12 tips for growing your newsletter subscriptions -

Click Here

The service we use to send our newsletter is offering free leads - you may be interested in that so here's the link -

http://www.demc.com/artman/publish/article_50.shtml

Enjoy your Columbus Day!

What happened today in history - you can find out at the following link -

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/

Enjoy your weekend.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before - a good place to learn about recent changes in the SEO world can be found here -

http://www.seroundtable.com/

A nice article on Indexing and Ranking can be found here -

http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/results/article.php/3552906

Also if you didn't get a chance to check out the October issue of our Newsletter you can find it here.
http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz254-05oct.htm

An excellent article on competition and what it can mean for you -

http://www.businesslyceum.com/compete.html

It seems like that the states want in on income they may be loosing from taxes more details here -
http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/3552921

Enjoy your day.

A pretty nice "debate" on some useful things to include with SEO -

http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=16848

An excellent article on finding the right platform to run your ecommerce site can be found at the link below -

http://ecommerce-guide.com/solutions/building/article.php/3551461

Enjoy your weekend.

The war is over... maybe... you know the one where search engines say they index the "most" content. Details can be found at the following link -

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3551586

We talked last week I think about being prepared for an emergency - so what if you have pets - this site may help you get them prepared as well.

http://www.hsus.org/hsus_field/hsus_disaster_center/disaster_preparedness_for_pets/

Hopefully you enjoyed your weekend - DEMC had an informative ezine over the weekend which included an excellent one on Pay per clicks -

http://www.demc.com/artman/publish/article_41.shtml

Make sure you check out the other articles as well.

A nice tool to find out if you've been banned from Google -

http://123promotion.co.uk/tools/googlebanned.php

A nice list of video and audio downloads from business leaders - best thing no charge to download.
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/av_speakers.html

Have a great weekend.

A nice search engine that will help you find out how you're doing for terms in multiple search engines - find out more here -

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3550681

Fine tune your keyword research from Wordtracker with this free report -

http://www.wordtracker.com/keyword-research-guide.html

How big is Microsoft - pretty big -

http://www.rjdudley.com/blog/TheMassivenessOfMicrosoft.aspx

An interesting article about Blogs and will Google visit your site more often because of one.

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/does_googlebot_visit_more_often_because_of_my_blog.html

An excellent free report on keywords / finding the right keywords.

http://www.KeywordWorkshop.com

If you like crosswords / cryptograms then you'll enjoy this site -

http://oneacross.com/

Some good ideas on running your newsletter / email campaigns.

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=3076

Don't forget to send your estimated taxes in tomorrow ... Bah Humbug.

A great resource for disaster planning (for you and your business) can be found at the link below.

http://www.youngandsuccessful.com/newsletter/ys_weekly_090805/

We've talked some about usability in the past - you can find some good info at the following link -

http://webreference.com/authoring/design/usability/

Some good stuff there if you dig for it a bit.

If you like to keep on top of the latest trends I would highly recommend the following newsletter.

http://www.trendwatching.com/

A newsletter I look forward to getting.

Unfortunately when you have a disaster scammers come out of the wood work. The link below may help keep you safe (from scammers).

http://www.scambusters.org/hurricanekatrinascams.html

Have a wonderful weekend.

Couple of good links today -

1. Protect your computer - 8 good hints about keeping your computer safe.
http://channels.lockergnome.com/windows/archives/20050907_eight_steps_to_system_security_2005.phtml

2. 20 things you can do to make sure your website is accessible.
http://devwebpro.com/devwebpro-39-20050825TheTop20ThingsYouCanDotoMakeYourWebsiteAccessible.html

It seems that Google did a PR / backlink update over the weekend - guess they didn't take the holiday off - some details on that can be found in the following forums.

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=7673
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/31072.htm

The Sept. issue of our newsletter can be found at the following link -

Building business relationships, interesting newsletter stats and more.

We hope that you and your family had a wonderful holiday weekend.

A few good tidbits today - note we won't be posting tomorrow or Monday so enjoy your holiday - hug your family and have a bit of fun.

Are alt tags worth it -
http://www.searchengineguide.com/aws/2005/0830_aws1.html

An excellent guide to wordtracker - click save as since it is a pdf file.
http://tanny.com/keywords/keyword-research/Wordtracker-Guide.pdf

Earlier we said that Yahoo was going to be creating a service similar to AdSense - you get paid for your traffic. Their beta is open and details can be found here -

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/nl/aug05tu.php

Again enjoy your weekend.