What Does RSS Stand For?

I've been trying to think of a good way to relate RSS and email to people who know nothing or very little about it, and have been a little stuck. I'm a huge fan of RSS, and get a ton of targeted, useful information via the RSS feeds I subscribe to about online marketing, other data related to my job, and even food recipes. Meanwhile I basically use my email to filter out 5 pieces of spam to read one "real" message.

I'm sold on RSS and look forward to it becoming more popular and easier to use when the new version of Windows comes out and more people start using IE7 and other browsers with RSS readers built in. However, the majority of Internet-users do not use RSS, and probably most don't know what it is. And even after explaining to someone how the technology works and what i...Read entire article

Alexaholic - Alexa Traffic Analyzer

In a previous post, I talked about how Google PageRank and Alexa Rating might be linked somehow. With all the talk that Google PageRank doesn't really mean anything anymore (which I don't really agree with), it would make sense to look for another, perhaps more precise, top-level traffic indicator.

Enter Alexa. Alexa has been around for awhile but still seems to be something new to many Internet-users. Indeed Alexa even mentions on their site that their numbers are based on only 10% of Internet-users whom they believe have their toolbar installed. While 10% is nothing to scoff at, it is a smaller sample of overall Internet usage. However, by using the Alexa toolba...Read entire article

Corporate Blogs Vs. Content Updates

Ok, so the title of this post is a little deceiving. You'd think I'm implying that there is a difference between corporate blogs and regular content updates, but I'm not. My whole point is that "blog" in the corporate world is simply a catch-phrase.

I've been seeing a number of sites and businesses rise on the Internet that claim to offer corporate blogging services. These services claim that by adding a blog to a corporate website it can bring in new traffic and increase exposure. While this may be true, the term "blog" is completely superfluous.

I guess the first thing we need to do is define the term "blog". To me, a blog is a website that is run by an author who posts ideas and opinions about whatever subject they think is appropriate to post about. That's it! I gu...Read entire article

Website Statistics - Finding Your Peak

The goal of every online marketer is to increase website traffic, which means that you are in essence creating more exposure. The more exposure and traffic, the more page views, hits, visits, etc. you will accumulate.

One of the functions involved with online marketing is website statistics analysis. This is key to determining how successful different marketing campaigns and optimization techniques are performing. Without a measure of success, you may as well haphazardly try different approaches to increasing exposure. However, by analyzing your stats you can wisely consider which is the next most logical step in trying to increase your website traffic.

Let's say you start off with a brand new website. Any online marketer worth their weight in salt should be able to in...Read entire article

Black Hat SEO vs. White Hat SEO

The debate continues about black hat and white hat seo, and with the recent addition of a supposed black hat seo practitioner at SEOMoz.org, I thought I would comment.

I think the best analogy of black hat/white hat seo is to compare it to anti-virus and computer network security vs. "hackers". Hackers, virus creators and distributors, phishing scam creators, etc. are going to cause trouble and mayhem. But one could argue that these types of people also have a purpose in mind, to prove that they can successfully put together these types of programs and campaigns without getting caught. In doing so they are "foiling" an information security program and can claim some sort of notoriety and sense of self-accomplishment. The info...Read entire article

Writing a Web Design Proposal - Know Your Customer

Being involved with "web design" for quite some time, I've written my fair-share of web design and marketing proposals. While I think a template sort of approach may work for any project, the language you use, the length of the proposal, and the amount of information you present all play heavily into how well the proposal is taken by the possible client.

For example, while working for a marketing company for about 5 years, I often wrote proposals for small businesses. These businesses were all over the map as far industries were concerned, but they were all small businesses and none of them had much time to spend on their website development, let alone going through a lengthy indepth proposal. So long as I stated the basic parameters of the site or marketing plan, and the bott...Read entire article