Below is a quick table I’ve drafted up (in no particular order) of types of sites or applications (types/apps), brief descriptions of each (what), benefits (why), as well as measurements of success to consider after integration (measurement). Consider the measurement challenges before you integrate however as all Web 2.0 applications are not created equal.

Types/Apps	What?/Why?	Measurement
Blog	Websites where content is presented in journal style, displayed in reverse chronological order, and often includes a comment feature for visitor interaction. Create or develop relationships with target audience, and potential/existing customers.	Where does the traffic come from? Where does the traffic go? Does the traffic convert? Which reader segment is commenting? Does the traffic return?
Wiki	A web site that allows the visitors to easily add, remove, edit and change the website content, sometimes without the need for registration. Allows a specialized target audience to contribute to, or create, content.	Is the topic (and therefore the content) popular? Does it affect sales and conversions? Who visits the wiki? Who contributes to it?
Social Network	A social network website allows interaction between users – publicly or privately. Identify and advertise to finely targeted groups of existing or potential customers.	Are the users discussing products and/or services? How much traffic does this create to the product/service pages? Is the content indexed in the search engines?
User Review	Website that allows visitors to write reviews of products, content and/or services. Provides peer product reviews to new or existing customer base. Establishes the website as the resource for researching related products and services.	How many reviews per visitor are read/written? Do the reviews increase new traffic to the site or keep the traffic on the site longer? Does this content increase sales/conversion?
Forum	An online discussion site. Create or develop relationships with potential/existing customers.	Is the topic/content popular? Does it affect sales and conversions? Who uses the forum? Who contributes to it? Does it bring more traffic? Is the content indexed in the search engines?
RSS	RSS delivers information as an XML file (aka RSS feed). Small software programs (feed readers or aggregators) check subscribed feeds for a user and displays updated content. Publish time sensitive information, news, sales, or incentives to potential/existing customers.	How frequently is RSS accessed? By how many subscribers? Are links within RSS clicked through?  Does RSS increase website traffic? Increase visitor stay? Does RSS increase sales/conversions? Which content is most popular?
Podcast	A podcast is a multimedia file distributed over the Internet for playback on mobile devices and personal computers. Provide value added, topical content in an easy to digest form. Reach new audiences via podcast aggregators such as iTunes.	How many times was the podcast downloaded? How much website traffic did the Podcast generate? Did the podcast increase sales/conversions?
Comparison Shopping	A price comparison website that allows individuals to see lists of prices for a pre-defined or search generated product. Reach a wider audience.	How much traffic does this send to your product website? Does it affect sales and conversions?
Video / Multimedia	Multimedia rich sites use a variety of information sharing via text, audio, graphics, animation, and video, to inform internet surfers. Share content with potential/existing customers in video format.	How often was content accessed? How long was it viewed? Until the end? Is the content indexed in the search engines? Does it affect sales and conversions?
Ajax / Flash	Ajax enables small amounts of user generated information to interact with a website server ‘behind’ the page – the web page does not refresh based on a change via interaction. Flash was once most commonly used to create animation, animated advertisements, and to assist in the integration of video onto a web page. More recently however, Flash is being used to create an interactive web. Serve user friendly applications to potential/existing customers in a high-touch (not high tech) manner.	How has Ajax/Flash improved the process? Does it affect sales and conversions? Does it affect corporate brand?
Mobile	Online content accessed via mobile phones, PDAs, and other handheld devices. Enables users to access your content or interact with your site, from anywhere at any time.	Does it affect sales and conversions? Does it affect corporate brand?
Portal	A site that provides personalized responses, content, or other capabilities to visitors based on input. Provide a personal (yet overseen), one stop shop, for potential/existing customers to enjoy, aggregate, or create content.	What content or applications are being used? Does it affect sales and conversions? Does it affect corporate brand? Is the content indexed in the search engines?

eBay, one of the forerunners with Web 2.0 concepts, was one site that I had expected would take much longer to change. 6 years ago they were ahead of 99.9% of us, but now they’ve grown so large that making any changes takes as long as in any other corporation. 16 round table discussions, 14 tele-conferences, 795 shareholder votes (you do know I’m making these numbers up don’t you?) and before a year passes – innovation!

I saw four icons at the bottom of an auction. One was StumbleUpon. Since I was frantically bidding I didn’t stop to take a screen capture, or notice which auction, or if a set criteria caused their display.

Replicate it? Not at this hour. Perhaps it was a test. Only for email watch list updates. Or first time viewed. At any rate, expect to see those Web 2.0 icons to your auctions on a regular basis, soon.

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Update – January 28. The social marketing icons set out on ebay’s auction listings.

I’ve been anxiously awaiting the latest round of Google PR updates and although I know they’re recently updated, I’m not convinced PR is stable – yet.

Why?

Well none of my sites moved in their PR. Makes sense they didn’t go up because I haven’t been working much lately and certainly haven’t been striving for higher PR. What alerts me that PR update is not complete is that some of my sites and pages truly deserved to dip in PR (given that I’ve ignored them for so long).

I’ll give it a few more days before I update the August-September worksheets.

I’m not one to place huge value on PR – I prefer watching my stats and analytics more as I find those are the true measure of a page or site. However when launching a new site or product I do watch my competitor’s and alliance’s PR. And, when creating content off-site, I make sure I do it on a PR4 or higher page.

Getting More on Google – Page Rank Plus

If you’re up for a bit of reading and want to learn more about Google’s Page Rank, or something even more fun, some speculation on how google integrates data across its services (think this through if you’re using Google’s Analytics…is it a ‘conspiracy’ of sorts or a simple way for Google to re-purpose server power?)

You should stop into Garrett Roger’s ZDNET Google blog.

He found this comment about an Analytics outage:
“I would almost swear this happened last time right before they had the last PR update. I think they use that data in the algorithm if a webmaster has it. Either that or they defer the resources used to power it.”

Then wondered:
“Is it possible they re-purpose Google Analytics servers to do things like compute pagerank when the algorithm changes? Sounds plausable to me.”

Actually if you want to ‘know’ Google, Garrett is one of the best online voices on the subject. Some of the topics he’s writing about just this week are “Comments on Google News” (very Web 2.0), becoming a “Google Business Referral Representative” (a very easy way to make $10 from Google with just a few minutes of work), and “Google Suggest” (a way to tell google what a better search result might be).

And another one…

Visual Version of the Wiki on Web 2.0

For those of us who learn best by watching and listening, this short video was created and based on the current wiki of “What is Web 2.0″.

We’ll chat again soon,

“If a geek ever picked up some marketing skills we’ll all be in trouble…”

If you know who wrote that, or something similar please post a note below. I’d like to give credit for this insight where it is due.

Now you’re probably wondering why this rings so true to my ears and why I’m calling 2007 the Year of the Geek.

Let’s Talk About Geeks and Marketers

Long before Web 2.0, far back into the early days of the internet, you had to be a bit of a geek if you wanted to do anything more than send email. Web pages were generated from raw html code, people were ‘telneting’ into other’s computers and server networks, bulletin boards were clunky, and getting on (or off) someone’s mailing list required some weird majordomo commands. (Even I didn’t touch that one!)

Enter the marketers who had a vision of what people would want to see, read about and buy. Software programs to create pages easily, scripts to make email management easier, automated tools to shrink image sizes, and so on.

Marketers Innovate, Geeks Create

Marketers find out what people want. Geeks make the tools to make it a reality. Website designers are locked someplace in the middle – geeky enough to tweak existing applications to suit the ‘boss’, marketer enough to understand color and placement to appeal to various markets, but not skilled enough in either area to create applications or envision innovations.

For the first years of the web the geeks held the keys to the kingdom. But they worked themselves out of employment by creating the tools that allowed entrepreneurs to flourish without employing an in-house geek. Now, at least for the last 5-7 years, marketers and entrepreneurs have been in control thanks to the hard working, programming geeks.

But Web 2.0 brings the shift…

Whether geeks have been learning to think more like marketers through all the home study and ebooks we have sold them, or they’ve been playing in their spare time creating fun widgets and onling gadgets that broadband users want more of, these programming wizards are swinging back into demand.

Think about it. A marketer has an idea to build a 2.0 web site that allows user registration, automated billing, targeted advertising, user specific formating, send to a friend ability, plus a host of other bells and whistles. Can he or she do this with software that has already been built?

Absolutely not. I know this for a fact as I’ve been investigating.

If a tool exists that almost fits the bill of an idea, the hand of a geek must still be in the mix to tweak the code, the design, and the features that will match the marketer’s vision.

Good Web 2.0 Programmers are Hard to Find

Just try to find a skilled programmer to do all that for you at elance.com or any of the other freelance hangouts. Many of the truly gifted ones are charging top dollar, if they even have the time to consider your offer.

The tables are turning.

Marketers are starting to see that they need more of the right bells and whistles on their site to hold their position in the marketplace, and the only ones who can create those ‘extras’ are the geeky programmers.

It’s 2007, it’s Web 2.0, and it is most certainly the Year of the Geek.

Search by: marketing, Web 2.0

This is one of those posts.

Web 2.0, Is it Hype?

I’ve been reading some other writers, bloggers, and marketers articles on the topic of Web 2.0. You’ve probably run across a few of these yourself. I’m talking about the writers who say Web 2.0 isn’t real, it’s all hype, just a joke to get you to spend more money on website creation software and scripts.

“Hello? Is anybody home? What part of the astral plane are you on, man?”

Web 2.0 is real, yes it exists and not only that, it’s stealing your traffic (and likely has been for quite a few months now, insidious and wretched beast!).

Tell me, in the past few years as online users has nearly doubled, if your traffic has doubled and held? No? Not on any of your websites?

Likely not and here’s why…

Web 2.0 has been slowly sneaking in the back door as the new and improved sister. It’s feature-rich and a lot more fun than the text and image sites of yesterday. As business owners we’ve probably looked upon these sites as time-wasters. It doesn’t matter really what you think of or call them – you do need to take notice of them as they are holding your traffic hostage with all their bells and whistles, groovy graphics and personality.

Web 2.0 is not hype. It’s just a new name for a new website flavor.

Web 2.0 is also not hype because the very lifeblood of internet business – traffic statistics – prove that 2.0 is stealing the show in popularity rankings.

Finally Web 2.0 is not hype because even the big offline businesses are taking note. As they do, they build sites to match their market. As a matter of fact just last month I was watching a television commercial for a hair care line and they promoted their interactive 2.0 style site at the end of the commercial. (As soon as I find it again, I’ll post it for you as an example – I just don’t watch much television so the product and matching site have now escaped me.)

Web 2.0, What’s the Hell Part of It?

Here’s the ‘hell’ of web 2.0.

If you’ve been creating websites as long as I have been you’ve been using:

• raw html code (yes we did make sites that way back in 1994)
• web design software such as FrontPage, DreamWeaver, etc.
• automated portal scripts
• automated article sites
• blogging server-side scripts such as WordPress, Blogger, etc.
• blog scripts coupled with other scripts to create online stores
• rss scripts coupled with other scripts to create online shopping experiences

For over 10 years it didn’t seem to matter what turn the internet took, we could match the trend in a day’s time by learning the new software, script, or application to create websites that got results in the search engines and (hopefully) pleased the visitor.

But that ship stopped sailing at Web 2.0. This is where the ‘hell’ comes in…

You’ve decided you’ve learned enough now about Web 2.0, you’ve dreamt up a site, defined your target market for the site, and have a pretty good idea how you’ll make money from it. All you need is the scripting, or the software, or…

Hmmm, do a quick search on google or yahoo right now won’t you?

See what you can find for Web 2.0 site building software.

If you found a few good choices, go ahead and download/install/buy/try a few. Call me next week when you’ve ripped all your hair out.

That’s only the beginning of Web 2.0 Hell – site creation.

Once you’re over that hurdle you’ll then have to worry about getting your site to go viral (put that marketer’s hat on snugly, you’re in for a ride). And then, when the floods of traffic come, and after a few good site crashes, you’ll be porting it all over to a bigger, faster server…porting is it’s own brand of hell on earth for a webmaster.

Enough of the bad news! We’ll have lots of time to talk about those headaches later. What’s important now, while your idea is fresh, is to talk about the hope and the promises of a new internet surfing experience. The hope of your future on the wings of Web 2.0.

The Hope Behind the Web 2.0 Initiative

The ‘hope’ is in the window and right now it’s wide open.

Let’s say 10,000 web site entrepreneurs are building websites. They would be your competition; perhaps not in your direct target market but they are competing for visitors of some sort. Now 5,000 of those entrepreneurs are convinced Web 2.0 is hype (there goes half of your competition). 4,000 know it’s not, but they don’t have the tools, imagination, programming skills or funding to build a web 2.0 site (if you’re in this group fight tooth and nail to get out of it by learning what you need to know or finding funding for your idea). That leaves you only 1,000 out of 10,000 – 90% of your current competition could be blown away simply by you creating something that is innovative, interactive and fun for your visitors.

Therein lies the hope. The strong survive. Not the ones who have oodles of time to create junk site after junk site as we’ve seen in the past. The ones who’ll make it and make it big are the innovators, the hard workers, the ’strivers’ willing to go that extra mile for their end user.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about the steps to take to pull off such a feat and the new way of thinking about website traffic.

It’s being reloaded, rewritten, re-energized – with all the Web 2.0 Traffic techniques to keep your websites, blogs and sales pages busy with loads of targeted traffic.

Traffic that will equate to more subscribers, more sales, higher page rank in google and all the other blessings that go along with working on your online business. The same type of finely-tuned, highly targeted traffic I helped you get in 2004-2006 using RSS feeds and blogs!

You have happened upon the site during the official launch phase (January-February 2007) so it will be a few weeks until there’s lots to see, read or learn from, however I am putting my favorite Web 2.0 traffic talks, ebooks and resources behind the Recommended Resources tab above. If you’d like to go off on your own journey as soon as possible learning about 2.0 they’ll take you along a solid path of discovery! If you can wait a week, stop back in at that time.

There will be lots here for you as I’m finally ready to disclose everything I’ve learned, tested and discovered regarding Web 2.0 traffic for 2007!

More coming soon,

Laura Childs

Search by: Web 2.0 Traffic

As I am deep in my own training and testing on Web 2.0 I have decided to devote full attention to traffic techniques that will serve you best for 2007 and have taken the original, the updated, and the best selling ebook with tools product off the market!

If you have an interest in the new course and tools coming from the Stampede Secret, simply leave a comment on this post and I’ll be sure to let you know when it’s released. You’ll need to leave me your email address on the form, but don’t worry, it won’t be publicly posted and only I can access it!

More coming soon!

Laura Childs
Stampede Secret

It’s been one of my pet peeves for years, as far back as 2000, when one of my clients asked me to optimize his site for a term that no one ever typed into the search engines. I told him there was little sense in me performing the work since no one ever searched for that term and provided him with a list of viable options. But he wouldn’t budge. He wanted to come up #1 for the most obscure keyword phrase, so I fired him. (Have you ever fired a client? It’s a very enlightening stance, “I won’t take your money anymore because the work you want me to do is futile.”

Shortly after I fired all my $/hour clients and started out on my own and never looked back. The money’s been rolling in ever since at a much higher rate, and I’m never tied to my work. I do still work a lot, but it’s ‘my’ work, on my terms and the time I invest in other website owners are humanitarian reasons – never at a billable rate.

But I’ve side-tracked here…

Today is about the very basics of a search engine strategy.

If you don’t know these, then you won’t be going very far with your website.

Keywords, tags, phrases – are used in all marketing whether you’re paying for clicks, soliciting higher ranks on the search engines, or performing some very creative marketing on video, network, or bookmarking sites. Once you have these basics down, the world is your oyster.

I once read a series of blog posts from a highly respected, website traffic expert. He was optimizing her site for a three word keyphrase. I wondered why on earth he was after that particular phrase and performed some preliminary research of the term. Guess what? No one was looking for that phrase either!

He did make it to #1 in the king of the search engines (google), but so what? No one was ever going to land on that search page in google!

Be very careful who you take advice from. For all intents and purposes, the writer above seemed on target. Hooray #1!

Who would know that all his time and trouble was a complete waste of time? Who would know not to follow those strategies?

I’m hoping that you will know, now that you’re investing some serious time into your online marketing training.

All caveat emptors aside, there is a small group of marketers who are teaching the basics, past the content on this page, and they’re doing it for free by email. I’ve give you that link at the bottom of this page. For six days you must invest 10 minutes of your time reading and thinking about what you’ve just learned. At the end of it you will need to apply an hour or so of your time to apply what you have gleaned. Got two hours to invest if it will make a world of difference to your traffic, rank and sales figures? I hope so…

Back to Search Engine Basics

Search engines are the first stop for most internet surfers looking for information, products or services.

Your website needs to be in the top results.

If your website is on page 6 or higher of the results, the chances of ever seeing that visitor is right next to never.

It gets worse. Even once you have a high search engine position, you can’t rest on your laurels. You must keep track and ensure that keep the high ranking you worked so hard to achieve.

How to Get Top Rankings

I may talk about this in future posts, I may not. I’m not in the business of giving away my success secrets for free to all. On any of my blogs I let out only a few of my best ranking, and most of the sites I operate are registered under a different name. I have found that anytime I talk about my personal success someone reads my strategy and results, uncovers my domain names and niches and moves into my market. I’ve learned the hard way.

“Never re-invent the wheel,” my father taught me. So if you want to learn how to get high rankings by taking that free course, follow the instructions at the end of this post.

Right now, I want to talk about search engine strategy…

A strategy to monitor your search engine positions – the climb, staying at the top, and recognizing when you’re slipping.

Strategy is a crucial component to the success of any marketing event. Since top positions are crucial for your business, then letting them slip would be a horrendous mistake. Stay on top of it. A #1-40 is money in the bank.

Search Engine Strategy

At the beginning of your search engine campaign you should see a continual upward climb. Then you’ll plateau and find your toughest competition just above you. At this point you’ll need to dig into your next bag of tricks – the second stage of your strategy (at this point, and only this point, it is time to drop cash on training ebooks to take you to the next level – you should not be sinking $97 over and over again into a business that hasn’t been able to generate some of it’s own based on sweat equity).

Once you’ve reached your plateau based on research and work, you’ll want to protect your achievement while striving for something higher. As you work on your site and follow the advice in the high end traffic trainings of trusted writers, the climb will be natural. Your actual search engine focus during this stage is simply monitoring the results – that in itself is ongoing and a part of your strategy that is revisited monthly.

Be aware and fore-warned that some fluctuation is normal. Moving up and down 2 or 3 positions over the course of a few months happens. What you do want to watch for is the long-term (4-6 month) changes – especially if the change is downward!

If and when you start slipping, you’ve got to get back in the game – analyzing keywords again, employing a new strategy, learning the latest algorithms and techniques. It’s your business, you’ve got to work at it if you want to stay on top.

If you’re not, or haven’t, stayed on top of it and you slip to obscurity in ranks (and yes it has happened to me) it’s time to get a system into place to monitor your progress and positions monthly. Set up a chart or spreadsheet to keep track of your pages, your page rank, your keywords and your positions. Begin the climb again and stay in the ‘know’ this time.

What’s A Search Engine Algorithm

A few readers have said “HUNH?” when I mention the word algorithm. They think it’s something new and hard to figure out. They don’t want to know about all that geeky stuff and the geeky words that go with it. Okay. See ya.

For those who want to know what an algorithm is, without getting into the nitty-gritty, here goes…

Every search engine uses a mathematical formula to determine web page rankings. Each search engine’s algorithm differs. That’s why you can have a #1 in google but only a #32 in yahoo.

Algorithms may or may not contain statements (equations) regarding:

• percentage of keywords in the content,
• length of content,
• theme of site related to the page’s content,
• semantic (related) words within the content,
• originality of content,
• number of related sites linking to the page,
• meta tags employed,
• spelling errors found,
• IP address,
• trouble free coding,
• dynamic urls,
• number of parameters used in a dynamic url,
• and so on, and so on.

Don’t be dismayed by that list. You don’t have to labor every point in an algorithm. But you should be aware of some or most of the statements on an on-going basis.

I know I’ve said on-going enough times here. I’m just trying to get the point across that you cannot just create a website, get it to number one and then forget it altogether. You cannot just learn what worked for 2004 and get good results and then expect everything to look after itself for years to come.

Life doesn’t work that way.

Real business doesn’t work that way.

Web business doesn’t work that way.

And certainly search engine positions don’t work that way!

Here’s the main reason why…

Search engines are rewriting their algorithms all the time! When a search engine changes the formula, your ranking will likely change.

It gets worse. Some search engines have a variety of formulas that they rotate and rewrite. So depending on which formula is being used, your search engine position will likely change.

Did I say keep learning, check your ranks monthly, and apply what you learned? Good. That’s strategy.

Your search engine marketing strategy is an investment into your business. It’s continual. It costs you time and money continually.

To your ongoing success,

Laura Childs
StampedeSecret.com
_____________________

Here’s that free search engine traffic strategy course I talked about above – sign up on the left of the page, about 2″ down. Day one will have you wondering what the heck you signed up for and you’ll ask yourself if I’ve lost my mind. But on day 2 you’ll see the course really delivers and on day three it starts sinking in just how valuable this stuff really is! And no, not everyone has these concepts down already (thank goodness!) – apply what you learn and you’ll be ahead of 99.9% of the rest!

Search by: Search Engine, internet, top, Top Rankings, search engine strategy, algorithm

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1. The latest WordPress update is 2.0.3
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The update fixes trackback and security issues.

Step by Step Upgrade Notes: http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress

Latest WordPress Download: http://wordpress.org/download/

——————————————-
2. Optimizing WordPress for Search Engines
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Blogs are quickly flooding the marketplace and the search engines are adjusting. It’s time to ‘take it up a notch’ and the task is easy with a few simple tools and these WordPress tricks…

Read the complete article at: http://www.smartzville.com/marketing-help/?p=101

To Your Continued Blogging Success!
Laura

p.s. If you’re looking for something to make your blog ‘look’ spiffier to your website visitors you have to check out all the free WordPress templates here: http://themes.wordpress.net/theme-viewer.php

But please remember that the search engines don’t reallly care how pretty your blog is, they want to see optimized content and tags before they give you high marks!