Video and SER's

Did you know that submitting a video to YouTube or Google, along with your keywords, can
shoot you to the top of the search engines, in less than 24 hours?

If you're not using video yet, now is your chance to get started. You don't need to be the least bit technical. You don't even need a camera.

Seriously, if you can talk on the phone and download photos from your digital camera (or copy and paste stock photos) you have all the skills that are required.

What actually is RSS?

I get asked this consistently by my client when they have come across this three-letter acronym in the course of their surfing.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication; syndicating means republishing an article that comes from another source such as a website. A RSS feed is a means of publicizing updates about websites. It normally includes a summary and photos of the latest posting. But those that provide summaries allow users to skim through the article so that they can decide later on if they want to access the website source. The RSS feed usually starts with the title of the post originating from the website. It is normally the link to the website source.

What are the Benefits of RSS?

RSS provides benefits to both readers and web publishers.

1. It gives you the latest updates from news sources. Whether it is about the weather, software updates, news, or a new posting from a seldom updated site.

2. It saves on websurfing time. An RSS feed provides a summary of the related article and it saves the reader's time by helping him/her decide on which items to prioritize when reading or browsing the net.

3. It gives the power of subscription to the user. Users are given a free-hand on which websites to subscribe to in their RSS aggregators which they can change at any time they decide differently.

4. It lessens the clutter in your inbox. Although your email address will be required to enjoy the services of online RSS aggregators, RSS does not use your email address to send the updates.

5. It is spam free. Unlike e-mail subscriptions, RSS does not make use of your e-mail address to send updates thus your privacy is kept safe from spam mails.

6. Unsubscribe is easy. Unlike e-mail subscriptions where the user is asked questions on why he unsubscribed and then the user is asked to confirm unsubscribe, all you have to do is to delete the RSS feed from your aggregator.

7. It can be used as an advertising or marketing tool. Users who subscribe to or syndicate product websites receive the latest news on products and services without the website sending spam mail. This is advantageous to both the web user and the website owner since advertising becomes targeted; those who are actually interested in their products are kept posted.
The Web's Most Comprehensive News Source!

What are the Drawbacks of RSS?

The disadvantages of RSS stem from user-preference concerns and the fact that it is a new technology.

1. Some users prefer receiving e-mail updates over an RSS feed.

2. Graphics do not appear in RSS. For conciseness and ease of publication, RSS feeds do not display the pics from the site in announcing the update except for some web-based aggregators.

3. The identity of the source website can be confusing. Since RSS feeds do not display the actual URL or name of the website, it can sometimes get confusing on what feed a user is actually reading.

4. Publishers cannot determine how many users are subscribed to their feed and the frequency of their visits. Moreover, they do not know the reasons why users unsubscribe which could be important in improving their advertising.

5. RSS feeds create higher traffic and demands on the server. Most readers still prefer the whole update over a brief summary of the entry, thus they still access the site.

6. Since it is a new technology, many sites still do not support RSS.

How Do I Start Using RSS?

There are two things needed: an RSS feed and an RSS aggregator or reader. The RSS feed comes from an RSS-supported website. There are also websites that provide a directory of RSS feeds from different websites. An RSS aggregator is used to read the RSS feed from the source website. It scans and collects data on the latest RSS feeds from the worldwide web.
Forget Expensive PPC Advertising - There is an Alternative!

An aggregator comes in two forms: a downloadable program, also known as a desktop aggregator, and an online or web-based aggregator. Downloadable aggregators may require payment before they can be acquired, while internet-based aggregators are usually free. All you need to do is to register an account and you are ready to use their services. Both versions allow you to customize, or choose, which RSS feeds to enter. Paid aggregators are usually chosen by more experienced users and they usually allow more freedom in customizing feeds.

1. Choose an RSS aggregator to use. For beginners, web-based aggregators are recommended since they are usually user-friendly.

2. Scan the homepage of your target website for the RSS or XML button. It contains the RSS code you need to enter in the aggregator. Copy this code. Syndic8 provides a directory of websites that support RSS.

3. Paste the code (which contains the URL of the website) in your aggregator. There is a space provided for pasting the code.

After you have done these three easy steps, you can start reading the RSS feeds coming from the website. New postings appear as they are published in real time at the source website.

So these are the basics of RSS, and how you access them.

Add yourself to Wikipedia Business Pages

Something you will notice if you search for the big corporate brands in Google is that Wikipedia pages for those businesses show up in the top 10 results very often. Most businesses do not know that you can create a Wikipedia page for your own business.

However, these business entries do get deleted sometimes, so try to make yours fairly informative and complete, not just profit driven!

If it offers real information or you are a well known business then it is a lot less likely that one of the editors will delete the business page you've created. Deletions still do happen, but if you can get it to stick it is almost guaranteed to rank on page one in Google for your business's name. This will put more and more of YOUR pages on the Top 10 pushing competing agents and commission earning websites down.

Some Wikipedia pages for the BIG businesses include:

• Walmart
• Pepsi
• Wendy's

AboutUs.org is similar to Wikipedia, except that its entire focus is for businesses to insert their listings. Creating a page for your business on this site will also tend to rank very well for your business name. And your chances of getting deleted are much lower. A walk in the park compared to Wikipedia, but not as strong...

Google - Flight Status Now On Results Page

Our flight stats search feature can now deliver real time status and info on your flight directly on the search results page.

Just type the name of the airline and flight number ( e.g. American 123, ua226, aa 1018) into the search box, and we'll return the most up to date information from FlightStats.com.

http://www.google.com

Free BlogSpot account and splogs...

Ha, this really is what we're fighting!

SPLOGS:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Blogs designed to host spam. For spamming made through comments in legitimate blogs, see Spam in blogs.

Spam blogs, sometimes referred to by the neologism splogs, are artificially created weblog sites which the author uses to promote affiliated websites or to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites.

Britain's queen takes up YouTube

Britain's queen takes up YouTube - Yahoo! News

LONDON - Britain's 81-year-old Queen Elizabeth II, considered an icon of traditionalism, launched her own special Royal Channel on YouTube Sunday.

The Royal Channel: http://www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel

he queen will use the popular video-sharing Web site to send out her 50th annual televised Christmas message, which she first delivered live to the nation and its colonies on Dec. 25, 1957.

Buckingham Palace also began posting archive and recent footage of the queen and other royals on the channel Sunday, with plans to add new clips regularly.

YouTube, which allows anyone to upload and share video clips, was founded in 2005 and bought by Google last year.

"The queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people," Buckingham Palace said in a statement. "The Christmas message was podcast last year."

The palace said, "She has always been aware of reaching more people and adapting the communication to suit. This will make the Christmas message more accessible to younger people and those in other countries."

The royal page — which bears the scarlet lettered heading "The Royal Channel - The Official Channel of the British Monarchy" — is illustrated with a photograph of Buckingham Palace flanked by the queen's Guards in their tall bearskin hats and red tunics.

Its modern video clips show shots of garden parties, state visits, the queen, the many British prime ministers who have served during her reign and a day in the life of her son, Prince Charles.

The footage of the queen's 1957 Christmas TV broadcast will remind viewers that TV once was as groundbreaking a creation as Internet is today.

"I very much hope that this new medium will make my Christmas message more personal and direct. That it is possible for some of you to see me today is just another example of the speed at which things are changing all around us," the queen said of television at the time.

The Royal Channel also shows excerpts from Lord Wakehurst's film "Long to Reign Over Us," which has never been publicly released. Wakehurst, a member of Parliament who died in 1970, was an avid amateur film maker, charting events such as Queen Elizabeth II's accession and coronation.

The color images convey the historical events from the public's perspective, showing crowds holding street parties and camping out on The Mall — the wide boulevard outside Buckingham Palace — to catch a glimpse of the queen on Coronation Day.

The Royal Channel also includes rarely seen silent news footage of the 1923 wedding of the queen's parents, then known as the Duke of York and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

On Tuesday, Queen Elizabeth II's annual Christmas speech can once again be downloaded as a podcast from http://www.royal.gov.uk.

It also is being made available on television in high definition for the first time.

The Royal Channel: http://www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel

Network Marketing Scam - How To Tell If It Is A Scam

Network Marketing Scam - How To Tell If It Is A Scam

There are a lot of people who automatically think that network marketing is a scam. This is not true. There are companies out there that are legitimate network marketing companies that are not scams. However, there are also ones that are a network marketing scam. This is why you need to be careful about what you sign up with on the internet. Here are some things that you can look for to find out if it is a network marketing scam or not.

See here for full post: Marketing eBooks

Google says Using ALT attributes in images smartly helps SER's

Using ALT attributes smartly does indeed help search engine results... DUH!

Written by Ríona MacNamara, Webmaster Tools Team

Here's a video blog posts showing the famous Matt Cutts, the head of Google's webspam team, providing some useful tips on how to optimize the images you include on your site, and how simply providing useful, accurate information in your ALT attributes can make your photos and pictures more discoverable on the web. Ms Emmy Cutts also makes an appearance.

The Importance of Profiles on Social Sites

Damn near any popular site which lets you create a user account works, as long as those user accounts are search engine accessible. If you're not sure about this then find some of the other profiles on the site and search Google for the web address where the profile is listed. If the page shows up in Google, then you know Google is indexing the individual profiles from that site.

An Amazon reviewers account is a good example. Make sure your reviewer name is the same as your business name . Since these profiles are subpages of the Amazon-Amazing-Url they rank well, especially for keywords such as business names.

The easiest and best in ,my opinon are the following. And yes I do have a user account on these sites for myself and one for each of my clients (sometimes 2 if they have a couple of niches, e.g. diving and fishing).

• Flickr profile — http://www.flickr.com/
• LinkedIn profile — http://www.linkedin.com/
• MySpace profile and blog — http://www.myspace.com/
• Friendster profile — http://www.friendster.com/
• Yahoo profile — http://profiles.yahoo.com/
• Yahoo 360 page — http://360.yahoo.com/
• Technorati profile — http://www.technorati.com/
• Bloglines blog — http://www.bloglines.com/blog/
• 43 Things page — http://www.43things.com/
• Typekey profile — http://www.sixapart.com/typekey/
• GooglePages page — http://pages.google.com/
• Blinklist page — http://www.blinklist.com/
• WordPress blog — http://wordpress.com/
• Blogger blog — http://www.blogger.com/
• LiveJournal page — http://www.livejournal.com/community/
• Geocities page — http://www.geocities.com/
• Fortunecity page — http://members.fortunecity.com/
• Tripod page — http://members.tripod.com/
• AOL Hometown page — http://hometown.aol.com/
• Freespaces page — http://freespaces.com/

Use your business name as the profile name, blog name, or page title, as instructed by the site. For example, if your business name is Adventures Fiji, create pages such as:

http://www.myspace.com/adventuresfiji/
http://www.flickr.com/adventuresfiji/
http://adventuresfiji.wordpress.com/

...and so on and so on....

Creating a Squidoo page about your business can also be very effective. Here's a list of other sites where I have used to create a personal or business profile that will often rank highly in the search engines:

• http://www.google.com/coop/
• https://www.naymz.com/
• http://tagalag.com/
• http://www.emurse.com/
• http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/
• http://www.epinions.com/
• http://digg.com/
• http://www.metafilter.com/
• http://reddit.com/
• http://furl.net/
• http://www.jookster.com/
• http://www.newsvine.com/
• http://rollyo.com/
• http://www.netscape.com/
• http://www.zazzle.com/
• http://www.yoono.com
• http://www.shoutwire.com
• http://claimid.com/

These are some of the best ones, but there are many others. They're all easy ways to get your business name on an authoritative domain where it's likely to rank highly. Adding links and additional content to these pages makes them even more powerful.

ENN: Google plans renewable energy push

Great news that the big IT companies are taking the environment seriously.

Stuart

============

ENN: Google plans renewable energy push

/sci-tech/article/25967

By Eric Auchard

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc. said on Tuesday the Web services and online advertising group plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in coming years to promote a new push to encourage cheap renewable electricity.

The project, known as Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal, is hiring engineers and targeted investment financing at advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, enhanced geothermal systems and other new technologies, Google said.

Google is, in effect, taking advantage of its growing mountain of cash, global brand recognition and mushrooming market capitalization as a pulpit to campaign for alternative energy. The company's leaders argue that the time is ripe for investments in innovative research to cut energy costs.

Read full article here: