Ad Network, advertising network serves advertising (usually in the form of text links, banners links or video) on its members’ websites and shares the advertiser revenue with each publisher. The actual advertisers may have options to purchase advertising in a variety of ways including pay-per-click, impressions, pay per action, etc.

Ad server technology and services place advertisements on online inventory. Typically ad servers place ads, count them, choose ads that will make the advertiser the most money and monitor the progress of the various campaigns.

Affiliate Network A “middle man” or intermediary media company that connects advertisers directly with publishers (website owners) .

• What do the affiliate get out of it? Access to advertisers and new merchants reporting tools and easy / quick payment options.

• What the merchants get out of it? Access to a large base of sites that may offer any number of different advertising models include PPL, PPS, PPA or any of the other acronyms on this list depending on the particular network.

Contextual advertising advertisements that are served by an automated system based on the particular content being displayed by a media user (like a website visitor ).

CPA – Cost Per Action see PPA

CPL – Cost Per Lead

CPC - Cost Per Click

Demographic targeting – trying to pinpoint or direct specific advertisements or marketing campaigns at a specific subset of the population that share a desired characteristic (like “young male gamers”)

Interactive Marketing – Marketing that makes an effort to start a conversation as opposed to being completely transaction based.

Mobile marketing – marketing to users of mobile phones and other handheld portable devices

Online advertising inventory Anything online that advertising can be sold on, this includes websites, rss feeds, instant messaging applications, and software that also displays advertisements (called adware).

PPA – “Pay Per Action“ Advertising model where you pay whenever a particular action is completed (like a lead, a sale, a new user signup, etc)

PPS – “Pay Per Sale”

RSS – “Really Simply Syndication”

SEO – “Search Engine Optimization“ aims at increasing the natural search ranking of a particular website, recently though this term has expanded to include activities that increase the visibility and traffic to a particular website without directly paying for the traffic (for example, most people agree that PPC falls outside of the term SEO)

SEM – “Search Engine Marketing” – Marketing methods aimed at increasing the traffic and visibility of a particular website. This is a broad term that can encompass SEO and PPC as well as SMM, SMO and community building / viral marketing initiatives (I know lots of buzz words, but hey they’re all defined right here.

SMM – “Social Media Marketing” – Activities aimed at getting traffic and delivering messages to social media sites and communities.

SMO – “Social Media Optimization” – Modifying a website and its content to improve the opportunities to gain / warrant traffic and promotion from social media sites and communities.

SMS messaging – “Short Message Services” – sending short text messages across mobiles phones and other portable electronic devices. (PDA, personal media players, etc)

Social Media – online technology and practices that enable people to communicate with each other. Common examples include message boards, blogs, social networks, news and video sharing sites.

Social Network – common use of the term as referring to an online community ) A website that enables, encourages, or is built around the ability for its users to interact with each other. Most famous example would be myspace, where users can blog, put up pictures, videos, have “friends” message each other and do a host of other tasks.

Vertical market (also referred to as “vertical”) A similar group of customers or businesses that engage in commerce based on a very specialized or specific set of needs. Usually a vertical market is a subset of a larger industry. — Think niche market, like small-mid size independent hotel owners would be a vertical.

Web Analytics measurement of how visitors to a website or web application behave. This commonly includes return / unique visitors, navigation paths, what website or search engine referred them there, any available demographic information (like geography based on ISP) among many other detailed metrics.

XML Extensible Markup Language a standard web language used for formatting data in a usably way. Technical info here.

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1.  Assuming we care about any intro

2.  Not optimizing

3.  Not enough information on website.

4.  No referencing or no links to other areas when referencing.

5.  No social media optimization or the ability to consume and share content on major social media sites

6.  Too much text, not enough images or video.

7.  Only having 100% commercial content

8.  Not being niche enough

9.  Internal Pages are not structured to target any keywords so they’re invisible.

10.  Not updating often enough.

11.  No call to action

12.  No visual separation or a way to make the call to action stand out.

13.  Website doesn’t look good / load on common browsers and resolutions.

14.  Site links out to blog and other stuff on different websites, no internal blogging and social media features,…the list goes on – it is a specialty.

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As in any community, there are the trend setters: the visionaries and the superstars. They’re the ones that are quoted, read and referenced most, the movers and shakers of their particular realm. Blogging is no different. Pick any topic or industry and you’ll find at least one super “A” list blogger, who is most often a prolific poster who has devoted large portions of his or her life to developing their online presence. I read a post recently on problogger that claimed the top 10 bloggers on Technorati post an average of 20 times per day! Crazy stuff.

Why should you care?

Well, for one, they may be saying something interesting, if you need content ideas you can comment on what they write and use them as a source of inspiration when you experience writers block. Two, if you can get them to notice your blog or website and to it, that link will be extremely powerful, not only in bringing you traffic, but increasing your brand and trust factor.

Some A-list blogs have so much link power that just ONE link can result in many other bloggers also linking to you and your entire search engine rankings going up. Now you could wait for an A list blogger to happen upon your site, or you could try to strategize and be proactive.

Here are a few ideas and strategies to get an A-list blogger to link to your site; of course they involve a lot of hard work, but are worth it in the end.

1. Pick the specific A-list blog that you want to mention you, and then start serial commenting (not spamming, just leaving daily valuable comments). They’ll start responding and, over time, visit your blog. At first they’ll just respond to some of your comments, but if you keep it up, eventually the OTHER people on their blog will start mentioning you by name; when that happens, prepare for a link. Of course you can also just ask them: how do I get a link on your website? Keep in mind, though, that you have to write something worth commenting on, and worth being noticed for.

2. Get some posts syndicated by sites that get more traffic than your blog does and sites that can help your articles show up in news searches. Webpronews.com is a good one if you are in the SEO industry.

3. Write an on-topic post that makes it to the front page of Digg, or any of the other popular social media sites. It’s easy for them to link to that article (you can even e-mail them and ask them to), even if you’re completely unknown.

4. Publish posts that directly comment on topics and posts in the A-list blogs you want to gain links from. If they blog a lot I guarantee they check their referrers/ track backs and will see that you’re writing about them. Don’t be afraid to disagree with them or strongly add your two cents. Be innovative, be bold, just don’t be boring or another me too; there’s too much competition for that.

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1. Make sure a new visitor can discern the who, what, where and why of your website within three seconds
2. Write original content
3. Make your posts scan-able
4. Use pictures and other visual content
5. Use a custom theme
6. Have easy and multiple subscribe options
7. Include blog author information
8. Don’t use too many categories
9. Reference old posts and topic history
10. Use spell check
11. Link out to other relevant material, but not too many on the front page
12. Have an opinion
13. Use humor
14. Write lists
15. Make sure your blog’s top post has content that will appeal to a first time visitor
16. Use categories and keywords that actually describe your posts
17. Identify the look for your blog, e.g. whether you want a corporate or informal look
18. Market your blog content
19. Encourage community building with third party services
20. Respond to comments in the comments section of your blog
21. Give links to other interesting blogs and articles
22. Don’t overload the site with ads
23. Have a blogging strategy
24. Use a unique domain name
25. Brand your blog
26. Don’t steal or duplicate other people’s content
27. Organize your categories
28. Cite your sources
29. Join conversations on other blogs and continue them with follow up posts on your blog
30. Be controversial, but courteous
31. Use a personal voice
32. Write with passion
33. Tell stories
34. When writing about tips, show examples
35. Try to merge advice with examples and stories whenever possible
36. Write series of posts
37. Write consistently
38. Don’t apologize for your opinion
39. Provide resources to on topic sites
40. Update your old posts and pages if possible
41. Post updates to old posts and pages in new “update” posts
42. Join on-topic communities and get involved in other conversations
43. Be friendly
44. Moderate spam comments
45. Moderate overly negative or flaming comments if it’s a business blog
46. Don’t go off on religion (unless it’s a religious or strictly personal blog)
47. Don’t go off on politics (unless it’s a political or strictly personal blog)
48. Talk to your readers in second person occasionally, e.g. “what do YOU think?”
49. Use humor to liven up dull material
50. Use personal anecdotes to liven up dull material
51. Get the audience involved
52. Ask for contributions
53. Listen when you get contributions
54. Encourage user generated content
55. Always have comments turned on
56. Check your anti-spam software for false positives (everyone hates it when they spend time to comment and it disappears)
57. Link to direct sources
58. Give credit when you reiterate other people’s ideas
59. Recognize other quality bloggers and sites
60. Don’t be afraid to critique low-quality competing blogs or companies; the Blogosphere thrives on conflict
61. Use catchy titles and keyword strings so you have sexy content as well as posts that can be found via a keyword search
62. Use bulleted and numbered lists
63. Use the bold and italic styles, but only one sentence or less at a time
64. Use offbeat sources as well as the MSM  (it’s the Blogosphere; talk about other people’s opinions)
65. Write about what you know
66. Write about what you’re learning (just make sure to disclose that you’re still learning to avoid backlashes if you misrepresent something)
67. Write about where you think things are going.
68. Write about where you think things have been
69. Simplify complicated concepts, use easy language
70. Cut the fluff
71. Enable full feed
72. Write content that isn’t completely disposable
73. Don’t overdo the sensationalism
74. Provide easy social bookmarking options
75. Provide easy social media voting options (e.g. digg, reddit, netscape)
76. Manage your blogroll or links
77. Change things up once in a while
78. Leverage new technologies
79. Change your blog’s look and theme at least every few years ( web design trends change)
80. Keep the same naming conventions
81. Have consistent navigation
82. Use sub-navigation when appropriate to break general categories and pages down into more specific ones (categories pages, etc.)
83. Use breadcrumb navigation
84. Comment on press, links and awards the blog has received (let the readers know how you’re doing)
85. Disclose sponsorship or paid advertisements
86. If you provide top ten lists or link lists please include why you found those resources valuable compared to the infinite other sources online
87. Put sources, posts, and other information in context for new users / visitors
88. Don’t assume readers or visitors understand every acronym and neologism. Link niche words to Wikipedia or other references.
89. Make your links stand out so they’re easy to find
90. Make your call to action stand out
91. If you don’t have a call to action, then make the blog’s purpose very apparent.
92. Monitor the Blogosphere for news and info on your blog topic; information moves faster through blogs than in the MSM (main stream media).
93. Avoid sweeping generalizations
94. Check facts; they are online and easy to find.
95. Don’t blog pissed off; remember your words are permanent, so least attempt to calm down or be rational
96. If you need to rant (we all need that sometimes) label it a rant so visitors know what to expect.
97. Bait people when appropriate to encourage discussion and conversation
98. Promote yourself (hey, it’s your blog) but don’t over do it.
99. Don’t be overly commercial unless that’s what you want your blog to be.
100. Appeal to multiple audiences (customers, other industry professionals, other bloggers etc) so that people link to you
101. Disclose potential conflicts of interest when you write about a product or service to which you’re connected
102. Be social and have fun!

Have anymore that you would like to share? Please leave them in the comments! And make sure to leave a name and url: and  we will add the best ones to this list and cite the source!

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The ‘nofollow tag’ is a tag added to links that nullifies their value for search engine rankings. Search engines treat links as “editorial vote,” so a link from web page A is treated as a vote for the quality or at least noteworthiness for web page B. I say noteworthiness because links to negative pages (like scams, controversial postings) are still votes for relevancy over other pages even though they don’t necessarily infer quality (this is used incorrectly in almost all SEO blogs – see my post here for more info). In summary, links do not equal a quality editorial vote; they equal a noteworthy editorial vote.

Here is what I don’t like about its implementation: if you make everything else equal, should a site where the owner goes around and comments everywhere, outrank the other site just because of these links? What value does a link in a comment have?

Well, this depends on what your comment philosophy is.

When did it start?

Google first announced the nofollow tag in their blog in January 2005

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html

Why it started:

To discourage comment spam from positively affecting the search engine rankings of offending websites.

What it has become:

A way to link to stuff without giving it a noteworthy vote, which is especially useful in “free for all” link-type setups or anywhere where non-edited links may appear, like sites that show referrers or track backs, or have un-moderated comments on their blogs.

A major tool in Google’s war against paid links in an attempt to keep search relevancy high and to maximize profits for Adsense (this is one of the number one reasons why many website owners despise the tag.) Google has threatened to prevent sites from passing on page rank if they are caught selling links or linking to bad neighborhoods and says that any websites that want to sell links for advertising value should add the rel=nofollow tag to those links.

Google has also used the nofollow to threaten sites that sell links, demanding that unless they put nofollow on all sold links, they are at risk for having Google take away their ability to pass page rank.

Current situation of nofollow:

Almost all the popular blogging platforms, including WordPress and Moveable Type have built in nofollow to their default installations for comment, meaning most links in the comment on modern blogs (and other social sites) are automatically no followed.

Note: while comment spam has not decreased, advanced plug-ins and services have effectively eliminated it from most sites (including all of mine, which use to equal more than 100 spam comments a day!! Now I get one, if that).

Why some people like it:

It gives less benefit to spammers using comment spam like forum spam, Wikipedia spam, and most other types of link spam. They don’t feel that comments and other links have any inherent relevancy value for search rankings.

Why some people hate it:

It hasn’t reduced the amount of comment or link spam; as long as some blogs / forums / website don’t use nofollow there is still enough benefit from

It reduces the rankings of blog readers who comment A LOT. They believe that website owners who make astute comments in other people’s blog should receive “link juice” or a benefit for their contribution to that sites content in the form of links that pass page rank.

The problem with counting link comments for Search Engine Rankings:

The problem is links in comments don’t relate to the relevancy of a particular site for particular keywords. Given two sites of equal value, content and links, with one having 100 times more comment links – I mean should one site out rank the other just because they comment in blogs more often?

What does the fact that the website owner comments on a lot of blogs have anything to do with the editorial quality of his or her website? It doesn’t! In a perfect world for the search engine user – only links that were sure indicators of noteworthiness would count for search engine rankings; of course, we don’t live in that world and although Google is getting better all the time at only counting valuable links, they still give major advantages to websites that spend a substantial amount gaining links, even ones that technically shouldn’t pass relevancy, but still do.

The problem with not counting link comments for Search Engine Rankings:

Website owners want to encourage users and other audiences to comment and participate in their blog. They feel these website owners should be rewarded for their efforts. In fact, they feel that all forum participants and user generated content in general should be rewarded at the very least in terms of tangible links.

What I think:

I love having the nofollow tool available to me, because allows me to

Link to people / companies without promoting them on the search engines.

Eliminate the SEO benefit for artificial link farming methods like comment spam or mass commenting (making it easier for me to outdo less sophisticated SEO firms and keep my clients ranked above them)

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Intro to RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

Sometimes it feels like the whole world is using RSS, but then I talk to someone who works outside of the tech arena and I wake up from geek land, I realize that a majority of people still don’t use it. Currently, the average (if you can have an average or normal anything) person isn’t subscribing to RSS feeds like mad and doing most of their online reading with a feed reader; they’re still surfing and searching for the sites they like.

But this is slowly changing everyday; instead of having to visit a website over and over again to see if any new updates have changed, people are discovering the value of using RSS subscriptions and being able to see any updates via a feed reader or e-mail. Yet another benefit to using a content management system or blog is that they enable you to produce RSS feeds which in turn allow visitors to subscribe. More subscribers = more returning customers / clients = more money for you and your business.

What is RSS?

The acronym “RSS” is usually defined as “really simply syndication” or “rich site summary.”  Notice that there is more than one definition, but no matter what you call it, an RSS feed is just a type of text file that contains a list of items.  Usually these items contain a title, summary or full text post and a link to the URL for that individual site.  They may also include creator’s names etc.

It’s just a list of items?  Why is RSS so cool?

If you read a lot of websites, it can be an incredible time waster and inefficient to continually browse them to try and see when one of your favorite sites has changed.  In addition it takes a long time and you can only view one page at a time in your web browser.  With the acceptance of RSS, sites can publish an RSS feed, which users can subscribe to with a feed reader.

Whenever the website is updated, the feed is updated. The feed reader scans the RSS feed and spits out the list so the subscriber can choose to visit the site or not and be able to see everything that’s changed since there last visit / read.  The other thing RSS allows for is for other sites to syndicate content.  They simply republish the RSS feed and news sites can publish hundreds of separate RSS feeds and contain information on thousands of articles all automatically.  This is a lot more efficient then having humans manually submit everything.

What software do I need to subscribe to RSS feeds?

None. Well, that depends on your preferences.  Many of the websites you already use provide RSS readers including Google and Yahoo.  In addition to web-based feed readers there is a huge collection of stand-alone software based readers available.  If you’ve never used one before I would seriously recommend using one f the simple web-based readers like google’s personalized home or Google reader and if you’re more adventurous and want to look through very large lists of feeds check out bloglines. You should also note there is a very limited feed readers built into firefox.

Can I subscribe to RSS feeds via e-mail and receive updates just like a newsletter?

Absolutely, unfortunately many sites with RSS feeds don’t publish easy options for e-mail subscriptions.  There are many sites that can syndicate feeds into e-mail for you. Just do a quick search for RSS to email.

How do I subscribe to a blog or website?

First you look for a link to their RSS feed, luckily it should b easy to find, because of the universal and official adaptation of the bright orange feed icon.  If you don’t see an icon, then look for a text link that reads either RSS or XML.  For most blogs this is contained in both the sidebar and at the bottom of the footer near the end of the page.

After you’ve found the RSS feed you either link it and it should automatically load your feed reader application or you copy the address into the “add this feed” box or button on your web based reader (like google or yahoo.)

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Viral Video -

You may have heard this term before, in the news, online, or even in daily conversations. It describes something that spread very quickly from people passing it on to their social circles. If you create a video that goes viral, you can receive an amazing amount of traffic and links which can result in higher search engine rankings.

Characteristics:
Viral videos do not usually sell products or services because people usually do not spread those types of videos amongst their social circles. Companies do create them to build traffic to their website or to feed a different marketing campaign that will sell a product or service. Viral videos are usually not the highest in production value, but very funny or shocking. They also commonly depict a fake reality.

Who Should Get One:
If you’re launching a brand-new website, and you have a unique position amongst your competitors, you may want to think about creating a viral video and trying to get it to spread- especially if your competitors do not use video effectively. If you’re successful, a single viral video, can put a new website on the map, even against competitors who’ve been there for years.

Sales Presentation
Introduction to a Website Video

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Video is the new online frontier. More people search YouTube than any other search engine other than Google. People are watching more videos online than ever before! Thanks to the digital revolution, creating digital video content is accessible in any budget range. By adding video to your website, you can appear more modern, keep the user’s attention, and make it easier for those with disabilities to get your message! Video sharing sites like YouTube can reach audiences in the millions for free: If you can create something popular, that is.

Video is still a relatively untapped resource on the web, especially for small businesses. Although Youtube, Google Video and 100 plus other video distribution sites are growing exponentially and seeing enormous traffic, almost all of their current content is taken without permission or more often stolen from traditional broadcasting sources. This will eventually change.

Most websites contain most of their important information in text and images. The average small business websites has no audio or video whatsoever. As bandwidth and familiarity with the Internet increases so will the use of video as more than just a website decoration. I imagine an Internet where even the average medium size website will contain a full 25% – 50% of their content in the form of video or audio. That’s a huge change. The fore-runners and technology enthusiasts that break into the market early will see huge gains due to the limited competition.

If you have the resources necessary, you should definitely be considering grabbing a piece of the market share, as online video is going to skyrocket sooner than later. Once the market is popular enough and TV advertising dollar spend decreases, millions of videos will probably be produced for the web only and they’ll be made with high production value and professional interactive content. If you can get into the video revolution now, you’ll be competing with thousands instead of millions and get an early jump at the marketing.

Time waits for no-one: the time to get in on this ‘video arbitrage’ is right now!  A video never sleeps, never gets a day older, does not eat, does not commute; your website video does the best possible presentation each and every time: that alone will double conversion, as it did ours, instantly.

ROI!

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Now you worked really hard and got the rankings you were after; now it is time to diversify your approach to online marketing and increase traffic levels from different sources.  You could focus more extensively on getting traffic from social media sites, or build some value in a particular industry niche community site. There are endless possibilities. However, don’t think that once you rank that that’s it. Your Internet presence is a live, dynamic thing that is constantly changing and there are always new areas and markets in which to break in and build value. You can also leverage the power of your website and any branding you have to negotiate strategic partnerships with other websites and share traffic.

The actual results and traffic are where you really drill down on what the value of your content really is: using Google Analytics to track many things, including the bounce rates on each page, and the value of the traffic from specific sources:

• Referral from other sites linked to you
• Organic traffic from key word click through
• Direct traffic (they already know your address)
• Paid Advertising – if it does not cash flow, why do it?
• Click around traffic – the average number of pages per visit
• Content specific traffic: for instance Solomon wrote about mailing list plug-ins for WordPress years ago and we still get over 1000 unique visitors per month, sometimes 2,000 from that one post (some may call this a link-bait post)

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Ok, it’s to the point where I have so many online profiles I don’t know what to do with them all. It would be great if one of the profiling services caught on and the majority of sites started linking to that. There have been a bunch of attempts but the marketplace is still completely splintered and every sites wants their own database of users, so your stuck repeating the same bio over and over and over and over again. On the plus side, it’s easier to acquire more links and present a stylized or custom marketing message for each web community than it used to be.  Some things to ask yourself to make sure your getting the most out of your profiles include:

Does it have a call to action (CTA)? This doesn’t have to be a sales pitch, but you should give some hint at what you would like your visitor to do after reading about you. The simplest call to action is just “if you need professional XYZ services visit my website www.websitehere.com.” It’s surprising to me how many profiles I read that don’t even say what the profile’s author’s website is about, much less direct viewers to visit it.

Is it short? People don’t spend that much time reading profiles, it’s mainly clicked on by people glancing or scanning through, so you have to get to the point quick. You can write a longer profile, but many sites have character limits and you’ll still want to have some form of CTA near the top.

Is it unique? The Internet is often referred to as de-humanizing, so put something unique in your profile and let them know they’re looking at a real person’s profile not a robot, some quirk, something that sets you out from everyone else.

Do you include a good picture? If you’re building a business or online community use a good professional photo of yourself or an avatar that represents who you are and what you do. People are visual; don’t forget the photo.

It’s possible that each of your profiles may be viewed thousands of times if you’re a member of an active community so the next time you fill out a profile be sure to give it some thought and don’t be afraid to use different profiles for different sites. Corporate or professional sites may do better with more formal third person language while blogging directories or other communities may give better results with a first person perspective with a little humor thrown in.

This is Israel Rothman, I have done a great deal of editing here but let me take credit for this one little nugget all myself: ask yourself: “So what?”  when you say who you are, what you do, SO WHAT?

Whether your website is a sales site or a government information site, the purpose of the site is usually to be used.  Tell people to use it, and add the answers to the “so what?”

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