Smart - Search - Engineering

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2007-08-28T09:08:00.000-07:00

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Thoughts on Search Engineering and Advertising/Marketing:

2007-04-29T14:10:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on Search Engineering & Advertising/Marketing & Web 2.0:
(Where it's at... with the right type of message)

Identify the audience/market

This is the more 'inter-personal' marketplace that is more influential than mainstream commercialism
Mixed reinforcement (vs. leading) of conventional advertising to stimulate action

Confirm Where “they” are – establish all the numbers (size, keyword subset)

Understand the 'relationship keyed to words and links

Influence/Establish an initial 'relationship' (attention, interest)

- Proactive: Insert custom market 'messaging' in those channel
o Pay per Click - Search Engine Marketing and Custom Landing Pages

o Marketing 'Seeding' into into social networks including subcultures of discussion channels

o Pay per Blog: VERY effective for longtail marketing

o Email and custom landing pages

o Newsletter marketing (primarily generated dynamically - Newspaper-like)
- Natural: Establish/influence market associations by how people go about

o Web site page SEO Optimization (minimal overall effect but a requirement)

o Submit all content (like U-tube, site articles', blog posts, key site landing pages) to each's search engine “type” (Google video, news & groups, blog/technorati/social-networking (~70) and top 5 search engines/directories) respectively.

o Endorsement / Influence marketing: A reference from a celebrity's website (or on their personal blog) is VERY powerful (note this is a form of affilate marketing)

o RSS Feeds (relationship update anonymously)

§ Then server-side ‘publishing’ directly to the user’s browser

- Tracking/monitoring of user group types, new keys, etc.

- Everything is based on minimizing risk, using either current proven custom strategies, or clear identification of subcultures and new order marketing technologies.

Establishing Action or more permanent association:

Main market message

Focus: to establish relationship, with targeted actions - call, callback, email, take-away, education, etc.

Web 2.0

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Other thoughts to I keep in mind:

I see (az?) us as similar to a cross between:

o Influencing the leader of a industry thread or gaming "guild" (alliance, group, link-shell depending on the game or social network) or Celebrity MySpace site... or discussion group to start an opinion on something...

o The early radio operators, many amateurs in some ways, delivering news at the war front

o The Ipod marketer, cleverly inserting an amusing story that is very entertaining and consistent with the music genre and creates the reference of the idea with it's sponsor vs. presenting an obnoxious advertisement

technorati tags: Search_Engineering, , SEO, , PPC, , Advertising, marketing, NewsLetter, Affiliate, Blogs, , Groups, Web2.0

Social Bookmarking

Run FAST - without the OVERHEAD !!

2007-04-08T13:27:00.000-07:00

Everyone, and also a reminder for myself.... Look what I found....

I run definitely faster by running my target application in a Virtual PC Session than in the hosting environment. What you say ????? It's true. I run a Virtual PC session of Full XP Pro within my current XP Pro and the virtual session runs faster. Why? - Think about it.... no overhead. And if something goes wrong, I'm never hung and can recreate a completely fresh copy of XP Pro in less than ten (10) minutes
Similarly, running the free version of Logmein (.com), I can run a remote access session faster than VNC on my own network. What ??? That's right - it's faster to run everything out to the Internet where it's redirected to back to another station on my local network .... than to run as a direct connection via VNC to a machine 5 feet away from me.... AMAZING!!

That should be enough proof for anyone regarding that there was something in this observation.... try it for yourself!!

Thumbs up for Virtual PC (free Microsoft product now - non-Corporate) and Logmein.com

---- Message to the world from phil nakata -----

Social Bookmarking

technorati tags: speed, virtual, pc, remote

Clues to part of the 'New Order of Marketing, wispers...."

2007-04-08T01:23:00.000-07:00

Clues behind some of the most powerful Internet marketing, capable of establishing hundreds of conversations in hours, thousand in days on any topic.... so the market loves it?

Many times what you find is not what is labeled... or put another way.... the labels (names) and even descriptions of areas may be useless for targeting
Although people may come someplace initially on a common theme. after a while they get to see the same faces a lot and oftentimes the whole nature of the conversation changes... and depending on the crowds (like people on a corner), the profile of those social interactions may change over the day or days of the week
To maximize exposure, you may need to have multiple identities, each unique in title, message flavor and identity
The best message is only a 1-2 line opinion or comment, following by a request for feedback. It should not have any, any commercial reference for maximum response.
Brevity (and focus - 1 small thought) invites a broad range of response
Everyone likes to criticize vs. help..... you're in a game and everyone you ask won't give you directions.... but make an 'apparently' incorrect statement, and the corrective critics come crawling out to correct you.... giving you your objective of the correct answer
Put another way.... Know where and how to Ask for what you want and you'll find responses offering to help you (fulfill your needs) as well as others who are looking for the same thing as you are. And they are happy when someone responds to their needs also. Seed or stir the pot, just remember where you did it and fulfill others with similar needs
The best conversations get re-spawned by others like a virus but often keep some identifying feature (title, content, or signature)
Sew the seeds of ideas and return to collect the harvest (like needs)
Remember the 20 Google Bloggers and George Bush's resume?
While you might cleverly 'flavor' the tone (pro, neutal, negative), like the independent blogger, you really have no control on the response 'tone' (pro, con).... it's the chance to take to see if the public likes it.
All ads should always point to custom pages.

Social Bookmarking

technorati tags: internet, marketing, on-line, communities

Save the Internet and Equal Access for Everyone !

2007-04-07T11:21:00.000-07:00

Social Bookmarking

technorati tags: save-Internet, equal-rich-poor, Internet-Radio

The New Order of Marketing: On-line communities thru social networking, blogs, groups, RSS. podcasts & more!

2007-04-07T00:45:00.000-07:00

I just accept a position to lead search engineering and Internet marketing for a new cutting edge advertising agency. It's about embracing the changes that will be necessary to survive and prosper with Web 2.0 and 'the New Order of Marketing'.... why?

Perhaps one of the best references is an article I picked up the end of last year, from Strategy+Business Magazine, published by Booze, Allen and Hamilton , dated September, 2006. I've included some of the key early juicy stuff below:

“The methods by which consumers absorb information and entertainment – and the ways they perceive, retain, and engage with brands and brand messages – have changed irrevocably. As marketers take notice, their decisions are reshaping the media environment.

Magazines are losing advertising to the Web (with total revenues declining about 2 percent per year since 1998); radio broadcasters are losing listeners, talent and revenues to satellite upstarts and iPod playlists. Television networks also see the writing on the wall, as the penetration of digital television heralds the rise of video on-demand, video downloads, interactive game networks, Internet TV, and other broadcast- and cable-busting enterprises.

Broadcast advertising revenues declined in the upfront markets of both 2004 and 2005, according to the Jack Myers Business Report – the first-ever decrease in two consecutive years. In spring 2006, pundits predicted a third straight year of upfront price reductions”…….. and where are many of the former Advertising CEO’s? – out of a job….. because they just don’t get it!

§ Other notable references in the first article include:

· Long a standard setter in television advertising, Pepsi last year relaunched its PepsiOne product without TV

· Says Apprentice producer Mark Burnett, “The new prime time is 9 AM to 5 PM because more people have access to a computer then

· Although many longtime TV executive watch the erosion of channel-centricity with trepidation, others relish the opportunities

· The Industry many be on the verge of a metrics glut that transfers precious capacity away form productive activities and creates a cult of accountability

· There is no excuse for any marketer who fails to take advantage of the opportunities that have

technorati tags: web2, RSS, , podcasts, online-marketing, on-line, communities, social-networking, Blogs, , groups, usenet

Social Bookmarking

Landing Pages & a Glimpse of the Next Post

2007-04-02T23:54:00.000-07:00

If you think this one is good, wait till you see the next post...... Unbridled marketing power merging 1974 thru today's interfaces to..... deliver hundreds per hour.... to thousands in a few days .... spawning micro-centers of interactive discussion on almost any topic... with no rejections. And because it targets so correctly, based on getting others with similar needs to respond, that it is actually favored and never rejected...... no more on this idea till the next post.

++++++++

100% Custom Mass Landing Page 'Generator':

That's right.... you heard it first here! I've been developing 2 - level Custom Landing pages, optimally SEO'ed in the HTML-meta tags correctly, each keyword and Prime keyword rich, and matched to be 100% consistent one to one .... to a specific Keyword AD Group (Adwords or Panama)... since 4th quarter, 2002..... BUT, it was never till merging it with a multi-tiered publishing database that I used to produce free city marketing business directories (2003 - mthoodinfo,com prior to the domain acquisition of it by our local Chamber)... that it became ....

Capable of delivering hundreds of 100% custom landing pages, each optimized for a single AD Group
It is critically important today, especially after Yahoo's announcement of the transition from Overture to Panama, to:

Improve a PPC AD's positioning 2-4 places w/ no additional costs (both)
Lower PPC AD's applied CPC (cost per click) on average 25-50%+ (AW)
Improve acceptance, relevancy and with less reviews (both)
Improved landing duration and propensity to purchase

These are enhanced with 2 uses of XML extraction and feed technologies:

Dynamic data extracted live from any URL whose source can be read, and re-rendered dynamically in the browser memory - allowing any set of pages to become the king of their focused content (all dynamic - no 3rd party data on your server)
RSS Feeds from site-related, industry similar, or even totally external sources, that serve as publication feeds for visitors to the latest updates of that focused information stream. In layman's definition for RSS Feeds - These are Cool updates, delivered as the updates happen (apparently), published directly to their brower (no loading) like a bookmark.... Anonymous, trackable (see RapidFeeds) and a definite publication with an active following... this is 100% more popular than a newsletter signup, but in publication architecture, it acts similar to a Newsletter.

In a recent engagement, on one day, we initiated in excess of 400 custom landing pages, and that program currently runs with ~1000 custom pages matching to PPC ADs. In addition to leveraged lower CPC costs (Allowing you to bid very high with 25-50%+ reduction in applied costs - Adwords), it speeds AD acceptance initially and helps to improve the PPC Ads position in the sponsored search results... on averge 2-5 positions (and with Google, ADs are often promoted to top center relevancy ads).... ooo baby.

Only qualified prospects who contact me directly will get all the details at this point. I'm promoting this externally, but for the time being.... if you read this and are interested... please contact me directly.... see my data on my site... www.ebizguru.netfirms.com

Till the next post..... (and that one is sizzling HOT!)

technorati tags: landing, pages, ppc, rss, dynamic, data

Social Bookmarking

Back from the depths.... GOD, it's been too long !

2007-04-02T22:33:00.000-07:00

If for no one else than myself.... I gotta put this all to pen and move to the next step (next blog will be the ideas this all stirred)

On March 26th, 2006, Matthew Ives announced his intent to force termination of my written contract (complete with well defined termination and exit instructions) to serve as his Managing Director of Internet Search technologies for Ivestech, Inc... citing his internal business money troubles related to his other expansion, as well as my failure to deliver on a guaranteed 400 major influential blog or other similar reference contract he pressured me into agreeing to support, unsatisfied with my IBM-like analysis and detailed delivery plans (more a best efforts project for a few months, engineered in that time to a well-defined process with feedback).... interesting.

While others may view this to have two side to an argument, in a ruthless, immature and totally unprofessional manner, he also put a stop payment of the last check he issued to me for services performed two-weeks prior, refused to pay for the week prior, and refused to pay the contractor (my son) for over four (4) weeks of backpay, as well as a week that was still unpaid on another invoice. This created hundreds of dollars of overdraft for me, as well as affecting my son so much, that he nearly got kicked out of his student residence in Colorado. Thank you Matt - for being so foolish as these are unjustifiable to almost anyone. save outright theft.

A day later, he misdirected another client to see only my apparent (??) oversight that allowed a doubling of the contracted budget in the management of a PPC campaign, prior to remembering that he was the one who ordered me to not comply with the customer's requests as a matter of conflicting interests with the web development side of the business. Until ordered to shift full attention to the project cited in the previous paragraph (requesting deliverables immediately for the 2 weeks prior????), we were still running a little rich (? - 30-40% over) in the these PPC campaigns, but a unique thing happened:

As managed expenses dropped by pausing all non-productive AD Groups, the productive ones kept increasing in productivity, albeit slowly at first.
On the weekend prior to all this, I'd reviewed the 3rd week stats to find we were on track to nearly double our goals related to high closure leads and a bit more.... and with about an equal rise in additional expenditure.
Perhaps things fell apart in that last week, but the history of this business tells another story.... Car dealers do most of their business towards the end of each month, related often to promotional manufacturer related price arrangements with the manufacturer's related finance practice...... and if things were still the same.... the closing rates should have increased the most in the last week of any month.
More that double the business for double the investment... and all some other folks see is what they spent... go figure... It shook me so that I called my other PPC clients (all whom I've been recently let run a little rich for promotion... provided it shows good return)... no one else questioned my judgement... Still, I could have been wrong.

Perhaps this is all well and best in the end.

Funny things about Intellectual Capital:

Many times you never realize what it is and it could be beside you
It's hard to claim ownership if you never realized you had it

My landing page generator got much better (soon another story)
I've came out of it all, in the midst of calamity, with a startling service that can get hundred in hours and thousands in a few days of micro social-networking parties (spawns) to focus on discussing an opinion actively. .... like stirring the pot.... Considering the dynamics of social networking (that are based to a certain extent on 2-4 degrees of separation,,, and the use of very short single thought chatty message info-bytes (leaving lots of room in type of responses to attract)... oh, I've already said too much for public record on this one.....
Best of all on the last idea was that it came within days after these irreconcilable differences made it clear that my best interests (nor consideration to just ask first) were not to be served by maintaining that relationship.
More on this in future posts.....

Here's an interesting close to this post:

In my second life with IBM, I once met a dynamic professional hire VP (not internally grown) who told me that if you always lookout for your customer you'll have a job for life (they remember and most recognize your best intentions) ,,, but if you work only for 'the company' that pays you (and often has their own set of internal conflicts), you're just a number and sooner or later you'll lose yourself. That is how I choose to live my life!

....
....
....
Well, perhaps not..... I keep forgetting that Matt also causing me a lot of pain this last week by dishonoring his verbal agreement for services contracted to my son.... to the tune of some 5 weeks.... that's a lot for a student to bear.,,, Some Christian he is, eh?....

Yahoo, like Google... moving to relevancy & quality

2007-02-10T10:32:00.000-08:00

As I've predicted in the past, the focus on search result 'relevancy' continues manifest itself. I'm sure you're all aware that almost all the major search engines consider link popularity and apply some measure of 'rank' to their influence, related to 'relevancy'. But how many of you are aware that Yahoo now has geo-targeting.... or even more importantly... look at their latest announcement.... buried in the Yahoo Search Marketing site at:

overview_newadrank.html

Here what it reads:

Overview: New Ranking Model

Overview

In the U.S., both bid amount and ad quality will determine an ad’s rank in search results beginning February 5, 2007.
This will replace the current method, in which ads are ranked by bid amount only.
This is designed to allow you to focus less on competitive bidding practices and more on the quality of your ads.
By improving the quality of your ads and making them more relevant to users, you may be rewarded with a better ranking and lower cost for your ads.
This change will impact all U.S. advertisers whether they’ve been upgraded or not.

As a response, I have just developed:

A very customized Landing Page generator (to be revealed in my next blog entry)
Dynamic content
RSS feeds

technorati tags: yahoo, ppc, sem, landing-pages, web-scraping, rss, relevancy, search

IvesTech Search Engineering - Why it Used to works - w/me at the Helm !

2007-01-29T14:37:00.000-08:00

... till Ivestech dishonored their contract, cancelled backpay and in so doing committed a felony as well as losing license to my Intellectual Capital... update 3-27-2007

My Search Engineering

The analysis and service that we do in the beginning with accounts is designed to give accounts an idea of the extensive focus we provide for them.

It's an indepth scan of their market (and changes), the mainstream 'keys' and marketing 'incidences' by which a prospect finds their site, even if that is via articles written about their radio announcements. On the other hand, it shows affiliate marketing, newsletter marketing, PPC activity, references to external marketing from radio, TV and much more.

It goes further with detailed competitive profiles showing each company's strategy, and typically includes in the marketing, competitive acquisition of each competitors paid keywords and their complete sponsor ad text. We also go after trade-marking like 'Hillsboro Hyundai'... for any dealer with Hyundai's in Hillsboro'... or more direct and clever.

In addition to (1) trade-marking, (2) Competitive ad profiling, we also leverage (3) extensive 'Longtail' marketing - the bits and pieces that today often ad up to more than the leaders (less of more) - the emerging real markets of 2007 and beyond.

The foundation of what we do is to not only pinpoint the market, but significantly lower costs, improve ad placement (center vs. side), and most importantly, amplify conversion into multiple channels of response (and publication) at your website.

Landing pages for the majority of ads that lower costs and improve reception

Matching ads sponsor-to-landing page to improve conversion

Dynamic industry/need content (in addition to your own)

Valuable RSS information 'feeds' - The lastest Updates - this is a business
almost in itself - 2nd sydication channel)

Thus our diffentiators are that:

We are not only more aggressive and pin-pointed in finding the best proven and relevant keys (currently under the 80/20 rule) competitively, that includes leveraging longtail marketing.... but

ALL the things we do (landing pages, feeds, dynamic content, tracking) to insure better reception/conversion/fulfillment/feed on the first visit and 'dynamically' get the prospect to revisit for follow-on sales.

My General Market Proposal

For these services that are proven to be more effective and the secondary syndication (revisits), it is a service that is easily worth $Xk a month to manage bw. Y-ZK/mo worth of PPC spend. Even if that doubles the apparent PPC cost, the difference in initial conversion rate (ex: did you know that.....?) and the effective total conversions (from revisits stimulated from the sydicated publication of new feed items directly to the prospect's browser).... is easily a great deal.

To help get the client started, and show our committment, we offer the service component to building this strategy, based on a 50% discounted rate for a short test period (say 3 months), that includes a 'performance' bonus based on either discretion of the customer (or some target, say 75% of the estimates, adjusted for localization) targeted to be the other 50% of our standard service charge. We 'expect' our customers to offer more for exceptional performance.

Compared to a retainer and a monthly percentage of the PPC spend (that does little to provide incentive to seek the most cost effective spend), this proposal offers minimal risk (pin-point targeting and better conversion) and significant incentive for IvesTech Search Engineering to promote the max. cost effective visibility combined with the best conversion rates, driven by our attempts to deliver exceptional results!

Search Engine Optimization - Natural Search:

The same analysis reveals the strategy to achieve long term, the most prominent strategy in natural search.

For SEO On-Page optimization, it shows which keys and spread (Count, priority and proximity of keys on a page) are needed for each of the major search engines

For SEO inbound links, it identifies the most influential and meaningful links on competitor sites to target (with better and more relevant) influencing better links to your site. That's why you typically implement SEO after SEM activities (as you not only get more immediate response with PPC, but you also need to build the relevant content as linkbait to get more important sites to link to you.

technorati tags: seo, ppc, sem, overture, adwords, longtail, landing_pages, RSS, dynamic_content, relevant_content

Dynamic Data and Novafeed

2007-01-15T02:17:00.000-08:00

I've been developing a number of demos regarding the use of Dynamic Data for different industries. The current demos cover possible uses of search technologies, tagging and very targeted, selective 'extractions', aggregations and 'styled' 'conversions' of RSS-type 'feeds' for:

http://ebizguru.netfirms.com/dynamicdata1.html

Mixed Odd News Items from Feed43
Telephony - Manufacturer FAQ, Products and Support
Automotive Wheel Manufacturer Specification pages
Graphics and long description feed sample
Symantec Support Resources, IBM Software Product lines

http://ebizguru.netfirms.com/women_shoes.html

Women's Fashion Shoes
Samples of integrating 'Widgetbox' and Articles feeds and hosting

Novafeed.com: While re-reviewing feed converters (formatting feeds into dynamic content) for web pages, I ran into novafeed. Essentially, it's the best overall converter I've reviewed (including an option that removes advertising - without having to pay). Furthermore, unlike most of the other RSS converter options, it provides a visual display validating all options selected.

The only drawback is that it is necessary to normally use the custom or regular width and length options vs. the auto-size option.

technorati tags: rss, dynamic_data, rss_extraction, rss_converter, javascript

10 minute to a New Image of Windows XP Pro SP2

2007-01-15T00:16:00.000-08:00

Imagine being able to create a fresh image of your Windows XP system in just 10 minutes? That's all it takes to copy the two files needed to recreate a Virtual PC copy of your XP CD installed.

I recently needed to temporarily use the services of a demo program that I'd formerly installed, tested and un-installed while evaluating programs for another client, about half a year ago. When reinstalling the application, though the former un-install reported a complete removal, the subsequent re-install maintained that my 'evaluation' period had expired.

What I really needed was a fresh hard disk image. Now I've been working with virtual PC from both Microsoft (Windows on windows only) as well as Moka5's Virtual PC (self-booting full OS loading linux and/or windows xp). And while the attractions of Moka5's implementation, centers around the Linux and/or Windows OS packaged with 'distributed' applications in self booting portable or desktop formats... Microsoft's 'Virtual PC' (no charge) allows you create virtually 100 pure implementations of DOS, Windows 3.1/3.111, Windows 9x, Windows NT, W2k, Windows XP/2003 and Vista... using sections of your hard drive to hold two files needed for any virtual Windows OS.

I've evaluated XP running under Moka5 for the portability of a ~350 mgb install of Windows XP Pro on a USB stick, as well as Microsoft's 'Virtual PC' to run old Windows 98 applications, but I couldn't see the value of being able to run a copy of Windows XP Pro within another copy of Windows XP Pro SP2 (thought it would be VERY slow).

Installing a copy of XP Pro SP2 as a Virtual PC under a existing copy of Windows XP Pro takes about 1.5 X as long as a regular install, and fully simulates an empty unformatted system, requiring you to virtually partition and format by default a 16 gig partition (assigning up to but in reality using an expanding metaphor).

Unlike Moka5, with one option you can drag/drop files between your real and virtual pc 'session' , and it's typically unnecessary to provide additional support for such issues as 'wireless networking' (Wifi hardware and drivers) in the 'virtual' install; Rather in the 'Settings' section of Microsoft's Virtual PC startup-control menu, if your hosting pc supports both hard-wired network connections as well as access via Wifi (or bluetooth), assign it to the additional network devices (be sure to select the pulldown that says how many network devices are supported, before selecting from the available devices in the 2nd network device pull-down there.

A full install of Windows XP Pro SP2 takes approximated 1.37 gigs of space between the two files it creates.

Create a folder at the same folder level as the one that holds current version of Windows XP Pro SP2

Right click on your target folder and drag it over the backup folder. When releasing select to 'copy' vs. 'move' the selected folder there.

Whenever you need a fresh copy of Windows XP, make sure your Virtual PC session menu is not running, then delete the main folder and select - right click - drag to the higher folder level - release selecting 'copy' vs. move

It should take about 10 minutes to copy the 1.37 gig files

Restart your fresh copy of Windows XP Pro

technorati tags: windows, virtual_pc, xp

Instant, Dynamic, Custom Content & Linkbait for ANY Web Site !!!

2007-01-06T03:50:00.000-08:00

Instant Dynamic Custom Content for your Website ! ... No matter how you put it, Creating relevant content is the best way to increase targeted traffic to your website bar none !

Now ANY web site can become KING of CONTENT ! (the ones with the most knowledge of the business wins ! )

By dynamically merging in extractions of information lists from ANY OTHER WEB PAGE (as long as it has a URL), where you can see source code ! (IMAGINE:

Product or service listings of information on "Industry authority" sites
Blog/Support_Forums updates for specific categories,
Product configuration tables and references from mfgs,
Lists of 'how to advice' from mfgs sites,
Lists of the latest jobs off various jobs sites,
Lists from your own ecommerce pages, etc. (Get the Idea yet ?)...

filtering it, and apply style (css) for form or table insertion into your web pages dyamically... DO You Realize What This Means ??

KEYNOTE: It's important to note that, similar to services that list 'reference links' to foreign archives of licensed software/personal registration codes, by hosting virtual or physical access to the XML 'feed' file, you are not physically hosting possibly copywritten intellectual on your website, but rather only customized lists w/references 'links' to those materials (optionally opening separate 'windows').

On the other, if you wish to host the (possibly copywritten) ' contents' (web page, article pages, etc.) referenced by one of those 'links', you download (or request email w/authorization) and insert the 'contents' directly into your web page(s). This requires proper authorization and credit/copy write notices may need to be observed.

Essentially you can create 'dynamic' unsyndicated RSS feeds, by mapping an editable, sophisticated extraction pattern to a URL's source code (using one or more free third-party converter sites), then adding 'style' (color, fonts and effects like rolling displays and graphical thumbs) to finally "merge the 'dynamic' results" into your page, producing custom dynamic content (if the external source changes, so does your page).

Resulting in only 2 bits of code (1 css and 1 javascript snippet) for each page/section of merged information !! AND single sections of information can be from mergers of multiple RSS feeds (syndicated or totally dynamic)

Of course you can also merge the best 'syndicated' feeds also into your pages: (this is a list of the very best 2nd sources for merging - vs. targeted extraction)

Create and Publish yourself (from your blog, ecommerce system or other software..)

Request sophisticated 'search queries' as a RSS feed (major web, news, blog, image, media-a/v, tags, shopping, articles at rssfeedsgenerator)

Get RSS feeds from directory or tag (keys) feed search engines like feedster, rssmicro, feed miner, jamespot or syndic8 (as opposed to more general category feed search engines that abound

Articles list feed (general categories) at goarticles or amazines (free lists by category or host individual article w/author-notice)

Press and News RSS feeds from prweb or nytimes support

Major RSS/Feed search engines with searchenginewatch.com

Personally, the best mix I've found:

Extracted Feeds from VERY relevant site(s) you reference (as an expert in your field and filter) PLUS

Dynamic Feeds you create from sophisticated query with rssfeedsgenerator and/or

Directory or tag-based feed searches

goes a VERY long way to producing extensive, relevant content for any site.

TTTTTTTTT
LINKBAIT: You can also use RSS technology (visitors 'subscribing' on an anonymous 'opt-in' basis for on-going update to that information 'thread') as 'linkbait' -- This is VERY popular with visitors, link parters and search engine ranking alike.

Using many of the same sources, you use a semi-automated process to 're-host' (as the feed publisher of updated/merged items - essentially like posting edited bookmarks and descriptions) feeds that establish an opt-in subscriber to that information from web site visitors who actively grab these popular 'feeds' (auto-discovery enabled) that act as 'live' bookmarks - automatically populating the updated contents of the short feed directly into the visitor's bookmark.

Alternately, you could just host the reference to the external RSS feed/XML file. It might make your site appear to have more value (generally) BUT the subscription effect (who publishes the feed itself vs. hosting the link to the feed) and bookmark effect are directed to the feed publisher (hoster and last editor of the feed file).

To "host" a feed (created new or cut/adding new items, 1-2 that should reference something special on your site), you often start by downloading the 'source' code of any well developed existing feed; For multiple feeds input, you can 'merge' feed URLs into a common single feed URL via an aggregator (third party service maintaining the 'association' to call the multiple feeds and 'aggregate' the merged results as a RSS feed from the aggregator's site; You then edit the merged or single XML file via any good (most are free) RSS editors, and post it, along with 1-2 items references back to your your web page... then you also promote the RSS feed URL to feed search engines.

To "host" a website (real html, asp, php, etc.) comprised entirely or in-large part of feeds, you insert your topic-focused 'feeds' (the XML file contents or 'source code of the feeds) back into regular HTML pages on your website typically using special software. Then you optionally re-edit/enhance the content otherwise manually. Alternately, a few applications can also interlink multiple pages from a sitemap-like tree (as well as aggregate multiple feeds, sparing you from editing the individual page template interlinks).

SERVICES/SOFTWARE: To take best advantage of this technology, in addition to the URLs that will give you the right feeds, you'll need to access from one - six types of services/applications online or as software:

Dynamic Feed Extraction "services" from feed43 (dynamic, template), feedyes (d, keyed, culled) or feedity (d, simple) along with a list of targeted web site URLs) - to create CUSTOM syndicated or unsyndicated but dynamic RSS industry standard "feeds" with ANY URL (where the source is readable). Alternatively you can create static (on-demand or scheduled) extractions of web URL with a XML file output via tools like RSSxl (wotzwot), RSS Wizard (by Extralabs and the marketleader) or RSS Feed Editor (Extralabs) .

Dynamic Feed Aggregation (Merge) services like FeedJumbler, FeedFindings, or FeedBlendr (in order of personal preference)

Dynamic Feed 'Converter' "services" like RSSfeedConverter (simplest), Feed2js.org (w/css), or Widgetbox (css, library). These all support converting the XML file(s) (feeds) for for display as an HTML web page (and most can filter title, source, limit #, force external windows, etc.). Most provide editable CSS template for each feed or aggregated feeds, at the page level.

Alternately, you can access a number of ASP and PHP scripts, most resolve feeds dynamically (not search engine friendly) and most of these server-side scripts, you also 'host' on your own server

Ad-Hoc or On-Schedule XML (feed contents) to HTML Converter services or software: For hosting the aggregated or single, syndicated or unsyndicated, RSS-style content feeds as:
- "Real" (static and search-engine 'friendly vs. dynamic pages that are for visitors but not search spiders) html web pages (asp, php or jsp server side pages require server-side code for the insertion template, whose source code cannot be referenced externally)
- Changing/updated as frequently as you request updates of your 'dynamic' feeds, re-inserting feed updates thru template software to update (or ftp), updated/republished HMTL based pages.
- Services/software like RSS2HTML.com (text feeds prefer.), xPress Software's (xssoftware) RSS2Web or RSSContentGenerator windows applications and FeedforAll's RSS2HTML2 (server-side) are the primary choices

GENERAL: Any good RSS Editor (2.0 compliant, to create, open, edit, save) and an ftp client: Too many options exist to mention all, but I use either FeedSpring (free) or RSS Feed Editor (Extralabs) .

MISC: The last major categories of RSS tools include ones like RSS2Email (by Xpress, actually publishing newsletters from feeds), RSS 'publishers' (that typically handle the ftp uploads with optional RSS file edit capabilities), and products like RSS2SQL and SQL2RSS (Feedforall.com)

technorati tags: dynamic-content, xml, RSS, rssfeedsgenerator, feedster, rssmicro, feedminier, jamespot, syndic8, goarticles, amazines, searchenginewatch, feed43, feedyes, feedity, rssxl, rss-wizard, rss-feed-editor, rssfeedconverter, feed2js.org, widgetbox, feedjumbler, feedfindings, feedblendr, rss2html, rss2web, rsscontentgenerator, feedspring

CARTOONS..... DON'T SWAT A FLY

2007-01-05T02:24:00.001-08:00


A Hillbilly Father gives his son some strange advice!....More Weird Animated Cartoons at www.hoyboys.net

The Future of Marketing in America, PPC markets, and localization:

2007-01-04T14:13:00.000-08:00

The Future of Marketing in America, PPC markets, and localization:

The future of search Engineering and marketing continues to evolve primarily as:

1) Web Search engines learn to integrate 'relevant' feeds of Directory, News, Groups, etc. and relevant promotion (for each feed type) into our everyday search results and categorization of information (this is one to think about)..

2) Information indexing, literally the 'meaning' (or most relevant relationship of words to links) becomes 're-constructed' by search authorities based on relationships of ranked inbound linking (the metaphor is similar to the 20 bloggers who got Google to accept the keyword relation of "miserable failure" with George Bush's resume URL at the whitehouse website)... to influence the current relevant meanings of words to something on the Internet ...

3) Valuable, popular and Constantly updated feeds provide website 'stickiness' (branding, latest specials, highly focused content), improving conversion ratios, as well as influencing search engines ranking, and inter-linking attractiveness (again influencing rank)

- Google considers Blogs as websites, and blog / rss search engines scan your site and update their indexes as well as rss subscriber notifications in minutes vs. getting a submitted URL indexed at Google/DMOZ.

- Blogs and RSS feeds represent current information that is being regularly updated. As such it can be highly relevant. The 'blogosphere is 60X as great today as just three years ago. Blog daily updates are common, vs. average 1-2 mo. website updates.

4) Google continues to drive thought leadership in promoting relevancy and meaningful links (creating meaning - keys - for links) promotes the most relevant search results.

- The other major search engines are following Google's lead in inbound linking, applying some type of 'ranking' by relevancy strength - realizing that it does indeed support better searches

- For PPC marketing, this means additional SEO and copy writing skills are needed, as Adwords-based landing pages require more consistency, topic relevant, stronger copy writing for landing pages vs. short PPC ads and SEO skills, that translate to higher clickthru, visitor reception, and better potential for conversion.

5) New technologies drive additional meaningfulness and value based on improving 'relevancy' even more:

- Localization in PPC promises targeted reception of visitors limited by the geographic presence - This means that Internet advertising can now be very cost effective for any business that gets all their prospects and customers in specific local geographic areas.

- Localization in SEO terms is more about tailoring target site with a localized flavor in addition to it's target keywords, so searches extended with localized city, state, or regional keywords, are optimized for those pages. Top industry and localized ranked site also often get top search results positioning.

technorati tags: SEO, PPC, Search_engineering, local, localization, marketing, Internet_marketing

Setting Up An Effective PPC Campaign

2007-01-04T14:06:00.000-08:00

Setting Up An Effective PPC Campaign - Bullet Points:

1) Getting the "right keywords" and "right keyword filled messages" to "active, highly targeted, popular or nich'ed search requests" OR relevant content promotions vehicles:

- This planning and periodic review entails standard keyword popularity and pricing analysis, market keyword and associative-pairing of ongoing search engine monitoring (and back-end search engine reporting systems), along with competitive matching (to see you found how the market finds you and your 'brand' competitors)

2) DEEP competitive analysis of your competitors’ SEO on-page strategies for multiple landing pages (key pairs and densities/proximities) as well as the complete DETAIL of EVERY PPC AD keywords, PPC AD Text, TARGET landing page and competitive PPC costs - per AD placement and traffic-Total_Costs:

- The detailed keyword competitive analysis along with a detailed backlink analysis by rank, exposes the competitive SEO strategy, and well as often providing clues to yet untapped keyword markets.

- The PPC competitive data not only helps write better competitive ads, but in combination with matching for specific traffic 'spikes' (related to keyword-influenced traffic from search engines AND other referred - redirected traffic), it shows both the most influential and competitive niche markets

3) Full leverage of PPC localization and filtering:

- Localization in PPC offer to limit market reception to tight geographic visitor targeting, resulting low cost ad fees, with localized relevant reception

- Filtering out query extensions to not show ad also for visitors offering no value - ex: 'free' or crack, sex, etc.

- Filtering may address PPC fraud protection.

4) Well coordinated AD-to-landing-pages processes and compliance, with enticing conversions, and other properly managed fulfillment:

- Matching sponsored ad to landing page text

- SEO optimized landing pages

- Lower costs and intial PPC bids

- Action fulfillment as phone numbers should be different to separate identification of marketing programs leads

- Detailed tracking of visitor experience to influencing source for marketing and costs

5) A well managed strategy and on-going managed service process:

- Whereas with Yahoo SEM, the best semi-automated positioning may be to support 'bid jamming' in 2nd place, Google Adwords' multi-page sidebars responses in positions 4-7, by clickthru rating and applied cost breaks, may be more favorable than jockeying for positions 1-3 (old metaphor)

- Sometimes, for example resulting from high clickthru and relevancy, a very high initial competitive bid pays only a fraction of that rate.

- Constant searches, reviews for new, emerging, spot, seasonal changes in market keyword search activity as well as aggressive ongoing competitive traffic analysis.

Disclaimer: It should be noted that although PPC marketing works for virtually every market, there are some very dynamic markets like real estate where virtually all ‘search-referred’ traffic is SEM (PPC) based today (and where newspaper ads are virtually dead)

technorati tags: Search_Engine_Marketing, Internet_marketing, SEO, PPC, Search

Custom RSS Feeds: Linkbait and SearchEngine Food!

2006-12-30T16:32:00.000-08:00

RSS feeds are most valuable as 'linkbait' for web site visitors - giving them something of value that is an 'active' publication channel and bookmark (important as most web purchases or contact does not occur on the first visit). In addition, RSS feeds are accepted like websites for submissions, and also serve as excellent 'linkbait' to get other websites to link in.

You can create your own RSS feeds by hand, or use the RSS feed that is generated from most Blog editors, but you can also create valuable content feeds, by aggregating the content of others feeds, add in one or two items of your own (sales specials ?), save the feed, and then publish and promote it from your own web site.

It's not hard to do (although you might consider contracting for a service to outsource your RSS feed productions that you host on your website, if you want to keep them regularly updated). Here are the steps:

1. CREATING THE FEEDS: Let's say you wanted to create some feeds, specific to individual lines of autos (mazda, chrysler, audi, etc.) that related all the latest news on 'audio'. From each search engine, a good feed might come from the query 'audio site:audi.com' - that should give all the news related to 'audio' on the audi.com website. You could then copy and paste (or use a web screen scraper) to create individual feeds by hand.... or you could use a service like rssfeedsgenerator.com to create appropriate feed URLs

Select the feed sources...

Select the query to be used...

Get a list of feeds.....
2. MERGING MULTIPLE FEEDS: To combine the feeds, use a tool like feedjumbler.com:

The output URL from feedjumbler.com, a combined feed is shown below:

3. SAVE THE SOURCE AS AN XML FILE: The trick here is to not bookmark this feed, but rather view the source code for the page, and save it as an "XML" file:

4. EDIT THE COLLECTIVE FEED FOR MARKETING: Next, Load the output xml file info a feed editor like feedspring.com, change information on the 'Channel' (about the whole feed, vs. individual items) - remember to rename it and fill in the file URL as an XML file that will be hosted on your website. Remember to add one to two 'items' that relate to something on the web site - possibly a limited special or a special coupon.

5. UPLOAD FEED AND LINK TO THE WEB SITE:

Each RSS feed needs two references - one in the header, and one on the page. The header link tells the visitors browser that RSS feeds exist on a page (that can be subscribed to without going to the second visual link on the page)

The Header link looks like this:(start '<' and ending '>' brackets removed):

link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="title of the RSS feed" href="http://yourwebsite.com/yourXMLfeed.xml" /

By contrast, the visual RSS feed link uses a standard RSS graphical file for a standard image link, and the standardized RSS feed icons can be downloaded from www.feedicons.com

6. PROMOTE YOUR RSS FEEDS:

Promote your RSS feeds as linkbait:

a. Throughout your website where appropriate, to get visitors to anonymously 'optin' to receive updates of the feed

b. Submit the RSS feed URL to key search engines as well as to feed search engines. Good bulk submitters include (a) feedshark.brainbliss.com and (b) Dummysoftware's RSS Submit.

c. Promote your RSS feeds as linkbait in your link building campaigns

technorati tags: RSS, Search, SEO, Blogs, marketing, search_engineering

Don't get rid of those old Windows Applications !

2006-12-27T23:01:00.000-08:00

In reviewing the Moka5 Virtual PC concept...

....that promises the best of server-centric distributed applications environments (complete operating environment and apps) with desktop off-line operability... highlighting VMWare and Linux 'packages'...

I extended my search back to what "Virtual PCs" means to Microsoft. I was familiar with the 'virtual PC' product for the Mac environment which allows Mac users to run "most" Windows programs in a Mac window, but Microsoft also has ...

...their Virtual PC product that allows all versions of DOS to any version of Windows to be run in a later version of Windows... And the push is on to drive the that 'virtual PC' product into the market at no charge.... why? - while the 'environment' to run multiple 'virtual PC' sessions may be free, each installs like a new PC install, and requires a separate 'licensed' version of the operating system to install.

That means at best, you can re-install your Windows current or old versions once per virtual environment install technically....unless you install the copy once and copy only the virtual hd 'image' (hint).

The real benefit of the existing (and free) Virtual PC product by Microsoft is of course, the ability to run a 100% (well almost) version of former operating systems, allowing many personal old favorites (that may never have gotten popular to survive) to continue to run. If you're running old DOS (or even software that ran in the DOS - Windows 3.1 environment), you'll also have need of a DOS printing support programs (as programs coming from the pre-Windows environments expected more direct control of printers rather than being managed from Windows).

Here, just 'google' for 'DOS Windows printing' and you should find immediately, (a) DOS freeware 'prn2file', (b) DOSPrint - freeware emulation of an Epson matrix printer, (c) DOSPrn and (d) Printfil.com.

The unfortunate part is that with the poor upward or backward compatibility of Windows versions over the last ten (10) years, most people have discarded or abandoned even very useful applications that hereto have not been able to be run on todays basic desktops and laptops.

Virtual PC's by Microsoft may be nice for running old applications, or supporting virtual licensed emulation, but they aren't portable like Moka5 LivePCs, and weren't developed with a 'server-side' distribution, or updating strategy.

Nice try (and personal thanks for keeping old software useful) Microsoft, but Moka5 got it right - Server-Side distribution/maintenance, small infrastructure profile, self-contained, configures - maps resources upon startup (boot), and application focused - go MOKA5!

technorati tags: virtualPC, Virtual-PC, windows-31, windows-88, Microsoft, Moka5

Multiple Sites Drive massive traffic but are not conventional Doorways !

2006-12-21T07:51:00.000-08:00

For reasons of confidentiality, I will not go into any level of detail, but suffice it to say that I've recently run into a few interesting web marketing industries where the leaders have 5-6 times as many product info (essentially great linkbait) sites as they have to commerce sites, many with appropriate but long and cumbersome URLs.

The traffic even to the smaller information (authority?) sites establishes them all via Alexa as being in the top 100,000 - translating to some pretty reasonable traffic (at least thousands daily), with a strong balance from natural search and revisits, supplemented with moderate, but not aggressive PPC terms that are industry slang.

During a review with that site manager, it was surprising to see their reaction after looking more closely at the big picture. Initially, the client thought the competitor was spending money foolishly, somewhere on the order of several times what the main commerce site cost (and with hundreds to thousands of inbound links to even the smaller site) ... but as we ran assessments with some reasonable speculation (based on related data), it became evident that the strategy works well.

When building links for larger industry organizations, with participatory memberships that span many companies and geographies, it is not uncommon to request 5-10 outbound separate links with a single party (imagine the economies of scale).

The other question that came up was "Aren't these doorway pages" - and I would say "Absolutely NOT!" - these other sites provide valuable if not at least helpful information and essentially serve to support 'authorities' (experts) serving under multiple domain, that reference or filter from many to a few commerce sites.

technorati tags: Internet-Authority, Multiple-Domains, Doorways, Links, eBusiness

Moka5 LivePCs - Wave of future Software Distribution and Portability

2006-12-21T07:16:00.000-08:00

This is one way to take about a week of your life out - get too interested with both interesting applications and a whole new paradyne for future computing...... It all started off looking for better environments to do software testing... where it ended up was about a week, getting to know in depth, the ins and outs of of virtualization (ala 'players' that seem more interesting than VMWare client emulators) and linux to the multiple versions of windows.

Most people will just find the application themselves and their portability appealing. But there is also a much bigger picture (and a very tough challenge for software licensing) in play.....

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

Moka5 has created a new vision for both:

Safe, instant, managed 'computers' on a pc or USB stick
A new Software distribution paradyne balancing the benefits of desktop functionality with server-side consolidation

Windows and Linux virtual computers on the Go and on the Web.

Essentially, they've taken the concept of the 'virtual pc', VMWare's 'Player' (vs. VMWare Client-Server), and Linux or Windows to create virtual environments called 'LivePCs'.

For the desktop user, this creates a way run applications locally that are safe, because they run in a completely isolated boot up environent and without additional mapping, cannot affect any of the existing data on your computer. Typically, this means you have Internet access, and access to network resources and external drives.

While a LivePC can host the same copy of Windows XP Pro (or Vista), and contain any windows applications in that environment, it can also host any current Linux distro OS along with applications for that environment.

All LivePCs are based on having been downloaded (distributed) from some server on the Internet, and upon starting the Moka menu, all applications has the option to updated by the hosting copy of the application - this is very quick only updating changes. Optionally, the application can run remotely (standalone) and also not get updated.

LivePCs can be run on your desktop, or be portably run on most USB devices including USB sticks and iPods. Portable applications on USB devices autoboot into the Moka LivePC menu when plugged into any USB slot of a remote computer, using that computers' remote peripherals but without seeing the hard drive.

Currently available (published) LivePCs include but are not limited to:

Browsers with email,
Office-togo,
Quake,
LAMP environment(s)
Gimp graphical editor

New LivePCs can be:

Downloaded from Internet servers (for most users)
'Created' simply modifying an existing LivePC - just using it, OR 'republishing it' (re-distributing) on any host
Created by loading your own OS and applications - it starts with a emulation of an empty hard disk ready to load Windows XP or a Linux distro.

The framework for this is ~25 mgbs of VMWare's free Player environment (hosting-shell vs. emulation) and ~114 mgb of Moka's code that manages everything. On the other hand, the size of the distributed app is not a download drain - streaming, many can be started before being fully downloaded.

The overall Moka5's framework stands to potentially become important for corporate as well as general software distribution in the future. It's all about Internet based applications (assessable but optionally run remotely after downloading), automated and streaming distribution of updates, and the ability to more easily create new distributions.

Software distribution and management of the future...

PostNote: Microsoft Virtual PC is now a free offering also - and although not so portable, it performs all versions of full Windows emulations - vers 3.1 to 9x to NT/2000 to WinXP. This is real emulation starting from the fdisk and formatting, unlike Windows compatibility. This allows you to run the many programs that only ran in those environments

technorati tags: Linux, Windows, software-distribution, VMWare, VirtualPC, Virtual-PC

Pando for Internet Marketing: Large Email Attachments

2006-12-12T13:18:00.000-08:00

Periodically I download something, only to forget about it for a while... then during some review later you think to yourself.... wow - how did I miss this one !

Today, it's such a hassle to send large files via email:

- It can often grind the email engine almost to a halt !

- It keeps a large file attachment in your email files - filling up the email system.. slowing things down over time... especially for backups

- Many mail clients, server, filtering mechanism, etc.... all get in the way

- Then you find the free Pando client that can either run standalone, as a helper-type application (for pando attachments), or as a plugin for Outlook 2003.

- Normally for use in sending files from 2 mgb to a couple of gigabytes, Pando uploads the files and folders you specify to a private area, that can be accessed from the receiving PC via calling the receivers' browser to download the file like a FTP - and they hold it exactly 14 days.

- For security you can encrypt the data pre-hand or apply a password that you only give to the specific recipients

Check it out.... it will send to virtually any email client. It will also supply the link to give them the Pando client to get the files you sent, as well as the ability to also use Pando to send others any files via an email attachment to the referenced files.

Marvelous ! A gem for everybody !!

Daily SEO through Blogs and RSS Opt-in

2006-12-07T11:50:00.000-08:00

What are you doing everyday to improve your
search ranking ? Even with search engine marketing (PPC), I find the majority of programs are often respectively static regards active changes to the central web site pages.

Landing pages may and should be altered to have titles and SEO optimization that match identically to the PPC ads, but other than that.... most web sites only reflect significant changes on the scale of weeks to months...By contrast, blog "web sites" are more like daily news channels, and extremely popular. They address very tight targeting or large topic driven communities.... and INVITE feedback (action) which others can get involved with - sort of the exponential spin-off effect ... Your blog 'feeds' are just one of the many RSS channels every business should be hosting - similar to the effect of newsletters - but again, much more proactive...

One 'GREAT' idea is a to host a special blogthat reviews daily specials from the point of view of a 'consumer-reports' -style product or service review.... and requesting comments back from industry users on how their systems compare? This might even be a review of competitive products requesting feedback (remember you do get to moderate/filter the responses, and this could also be a great spot to consider putting a few customer testimonials online - hint)...

Just some daily thoughts....

Oh, also to you techy fans.... I just updated my software listing (all the 1000's of products I've personally reviewed and tested) on my "e-business" website

technorati tags: Blogs, SEO, Search, Dynamic, RSS

Blog 101: blogger, technorati & blogrolling

2006-12-07T10:05:00.000-08:00

Setting up a blog - install, self-hosting, tags and links

Install notes for a remotely hosted blog, managed by Google’s blogger… beta.blogger.com:

Blogger.com is one of the most popular sites that offers free hosting OR allows you to host it on an web server of your choice (for example in a directory accessible via your web address…. And provides very reasonable service and support for NO charge, although premium paid services exist. As a measure of helping you gain a good understanding of the basic information required of you, as well as a get-started quicker personal guide to avoiding some of the little ‘gotcha’s’ in the file-to-path names, I provided this short outline of a full install, including reference to setting up secondary services … all tolled, about a few hours to setup and be publishing - This includes blogger.com, technorati.com and blogrolling.com:

1) First…. BLOGGER.COM

- ftp server: No 'ftp://' required and do not add trailing '/' sign
- blog url: start with 'http://', but do not end domain name (and opt. subdirectory) with a trailing
'/' sign
- ftp path: Do not start with a leading '/' sign, but it's ok to end with one
- blog filename: blogger.html or index.html
- days or posts to display on main page: suggest 7?
- multiple time formats, zones and languages supported
- comments by anyone, only registered users, only members of this blog
- comment moderation available by email notification and control panel approval; comment
notification email
- archiving now outdated as it's built into the architecture
- site feed url: start with 'http://', but do not end domain name (and opt. subdirectory) with a
trailing '/' sign
- site feed url: sugg. atom.xml
- site feed path: Do not start with a leading '/' sign, but it's ok to end with one
- Blog Posts, Comment and Per-Post Feeds to be either full, short or none
- Custom feed item footer
- BlogSend Address: email where blog is mailed whenever you publish
- mail-to-blogger address: realname.secretname%blogger.com --- Used to post by email,

o A VARIETY OF TEMPLATES: All with multi-post dated displays, indiv. pages, header,
and sidebar (description, aboutme, links, previous posts, archiving, Atom Opt-in
subscribe

- Customizable template with blogxml that looks like html but is case sensitive
- Insert customizations in their server side publishing template

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

- Added:
- SEO updating to support
- meta dynamic title,
- meta description (from page),
- meta keywords

- Tags to support blogrolling (inter-linking of links sidebar)
- applied with div tag attributed class='blogrollmain

- Tags to footer to support Technorati functions:
- Search this blog, blogs that link here, view profile
- Add this blog to my Techorati favorites

2) Then onto Technorati.com (note: some activities had to go in sequence… create web site basics w/o template modification….. then go to technorati first and then blogrolling second… then back to blogger to add the stuff from Technorati and blogrolling, plus other SEO updates… and lastly back to the associated web site to put in links to the blog, and also RSS/Atom feeds…. Then begin… train build, respond, create, manage…traffic

- Signup free denoting:
-- first, last, username, email, password
-- Need to create ~ 20 startup keyword sets (most 1-2 words)
-- Code to insert on web page for lookup and favorites
-- Primarily code for technorati support added per-posting by any blog authors…. Or
those cleaning up afterwards

3) Blogrolling.com

- name, email, blogroll name and URL of your blog
- add a script, enclosed with a div tag of with parameter class='blogrollmain' and the
CSS supporting scripts for a number of nice styles

4) Web site links to blog and feeds

- Simple text link to blog web site
- Simple File links to reference Atom feed vs. RSS feed with/proper RSS icons
- Changes to web page header to support feed autodiscovery by major browsers:

- For Atom Autodiscovery
link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="feed title here" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/feedurl.xml"

- For RSS Autodiscovery
link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="feed title here" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/feedurl.rss"

5) Create new postings – compose, tags - publish to web site – Ping all search engines to pickup (avg. 5 min) Submit all feeds to feed, blog and other search engines and advertising services.

That's it... start posting...

technorati tags: blogs, technorati, blogrolling, SEO, marketing

Multiple IIS on XP Pro SP2 - for SEO Testing

2006-12-07T09:10:00.000-08:00

While this may seem like 'techy' stuff, for a Search engineer, successful search conversion in marketing requires some web page technical skills combined with web copy writing ... validated to run in server environments. For example, page headers and footers are often assembled server -side so what the search engine and humans 'see' is not how the pieces exist physically on the server...

Another way of putting this is that you cannot often 'view' SEO code changes on your local machine unless you have a copy of IIS server (for ASP code) running on your machine. And if you have Windows XP Pro (very popular)... this isn't a standard load or pre-load option... for a number of reasons.

I've provided the full details of how to get multiple copies of IIS server (only limited to 10 concurrent users for testing), running properly on a Windows XP Pro client machines for remote testing.... on my web site.

Multiple IIS 5.1-XP Pro-SP2-.NET2.0.50727

Sometimes by just seeing the title, you get a good idea
of what this is really all about:

Chances are most likely that when you first got XP Pro installed (perhaps as an upgrade from a pre-installed XP Home) you didn't install the included copy of IIS (version 5.1, a 'slightly' crippled copy of IIS limited to 10 concurrent users and 1 web server definition). Nevertheless, if you were able to remove the 1 web server definition, for the purposes of a test site and especially for remote development (and co-development), a working copy would be nice to test .NET applications as in many ASP pages.

Also, when testing and removing applications you may have un-synchronized (or de-registered) certain dlls' that you didn't realize might be needed to support these services (remember the warning that certain files may still be shared by other programs?... so you said no, but that doesn't mean that they might have been un-registered ? ..... in any case, most likely the files have just been un-registered to Windows.

In any case, here are the short notes to the fast and dirty, set it up for multiple server support, with 2nd work-arounds to many other issues. There are literally hundreds of notices with partial applications of these notes ... and except for the initial security db setup reinitialization, the rest of the steps just insure everything is working together correctly.

So here goes:

IIS (5.1) on XP Pro SP2 w/.NET 2.0

Windows XP Pro, similar to Windows 2000 Pro, provides a copy of IIS (Internet Information Server) version 5.1, that can be very useful in localized testing. It only differs from the IIS versions on server editions of 2000 and 2003, in that (1) It is limited to 10 users, (2) by default it only manages one server, and (3) there are minor limitations in server maintenance like the ability to create new application configurations (to new extensions).

The difficulty in the installation and setup of IIS version 5.1 on XP Pro with SP2, running under .NET 2.0 regards the following issues:

Key database security files are often not created or corrupted, creating symtoms of install disk failure initially
Other programs such as Anti-Virus, Firewalls and Spam control cause conflicts with the IIS install, often related to forms of ‘script blocking’
Often times critical windows dynamic link libraries get messed up (for example when working with sql server) and need to be re-registered (system32, system32/inetsrv)
.Net (either 1.1.4322 or 2.0.50727 versions) need to be re-installed and sync’ed with IIS
IIS Users (anonymous-IUSR and internal processes-IWAM) and ASPNET ‘permissions’ need to be applied to both code as well as to physical folder and files (ACLs, IIS User/Groups, NTFS)
IIS 6 Resource Kit extends diagnostics
XP Pro IIS Admin provides for support for multiple web server instance (although only one can be active)

Details:

Fix: Only apply these if the CD fails to fully install: (two calls to 'esentutl' a windows programs for managing windows security database)
Fully uninstall Norton (anti-virus), Zone Alarm (firewalls) and Spy Sweeper (anti-spyware) , then reinstall IIS Server from CD
Re-register DLLs - nothing gets hurt: (7 dlls total from windows\system32 and windows\system32\inetsvr)
.NET version 2.0.50727 Reinstall and Sync (.Net often unsync'ed) :Respective aspnet_regiis from proper version of .NET framework, changes to .NET machine.config, security access to iis server from ASPNET
Computer Management – Users, Groups, Components: Coordination of both IIS Security from within Computer admin's User-Groups definitions and selective share-ipaddr/folder/file level NTFS security
Fix Sample IIS files to match:
Reinstall anti-virus, firewalls, and spyware controls... then Diagnostics and Enhancements (multi-servers)

o Extensive IIS diagnostics via MS IIS Resource kit for version 6 – works on 5 also: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=56FC92EE-A71A-4C73-B628-ADE629C89499&displaylang=en

o Free – XP Pro IIS Admin software at:
http://www.jetstat.com/iisadmin/

Best luck to all... please feel free to visit my website...

technorati tags: IIS, XPPro, SEO, Marketing

Getting this hosted blogger account up

2006-12-05T02:19:00.000-08:00

My interests in channels like RSS started while evaluating 'push' and 'pull' technologies for IBM (somewhere in the '96-'97 timeframe). This deviated into two distinct channels - 1) that became publish and subscribe, messaging - data - and business processing/logic between BIG service architectures - machine to machine or service to service, and 2) those applications delivering more and more updated content to people (or rather to the interface / program receiving the 'subscribed' updated content).

Today's RSS, that's gained tremendous response in the last few years (the next generation up from Backweb or Pointcast) is a now mainstream 'anonymous' 'opt-in', like taking your seasonal catalog or weekly flyer. Essentially, I believe that the technology just had to wait until there was a better channel to 'categorize' active data feeds (the changing... up to date... real side of life from real people.... and a way for marketing to extend its' true creative hand into active marketing)

With early push and pull technology, the updates and interfaces were obnoxious, always coming up at the wrong time, and each competing to gain eyeshare and mindshare in the consumers' eye - there were just too many even if you only had a few auto-updaters. Today by contrast RSS is organized and categorized via special readers, or much more likely - within the browsers themselves ---- live bookmarks they call them.

Blogs today are one of the main sources of RSS/Atom 'feeds' but what they represent to websites is critical. I've written a dozen articles evangelizing the use of blogs, primarily for special support, but their value to your visibility related to search engineering was never made more clear to me as when I started this blog on Google's blogger.com.

There are a lot of definitions of what a blog is today... all agree it is chronological, proceeding latest to prior... and that the site today often supports each posting with a separate page attached to a main body startup page with a limited (5-15 or aweek or a month) number of entries. There is archive support built into this always 'shifting' page, and often also the ability to add additional functionality in the sidebars. Lastly, most blogs support external ATOM and/or RSS feeds.

There are a number of key things that blogs do for any company's search efforts, but the most important thing is that while Google often makes you think that they distinguish between 'web sites' (that often don't change much monthly) and 'blogs' (that may change and be re-published up to several times per day)...it may not just be so. Blogs are typically content packed entries that literally invite feedback and commentary - isn't that just perfect spider food? .... hot and current but less overall 'flavored' compared to what we call news or advertising.

Most important is that when you start a Blogger.com account, you realize where Google is eventually going with this. They don't seem to 'judge' a difference.... they say, in fact, I quote:

" A blog is your easy-to-use web site, where you can quickly post thoughts, interact with people, and more. All for FREE.

... notice they said a blog is a website... or maybe that was just 'figurative' speaking ?

Lastly on the SoapBox for blogs... major search engines like Google and Technorati have a more aggressive schedule for updating indexes, and index keywords like blogs with Technorati tags. There a lot of blogs but it's small compared to the number of websites, and blogs are chronologically based (not often a long set of changes in old posting). Blogs also have separate but very coordinated channels for submitting blog updates and RSS feeds.

OK... that should be enough.... ready to RSS ? .... consider a weekly specials update ! Best luck to all...

technorati tags: SEO, Search, Search_Engineering, Blogs, Internet_Marketing