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I like to think of SEO in the same way as I think of Nike:  Just Do It.

It’s like going to the gym:  Just Do It.

If you are new to SEO, you have several options, but if you are promoting a blog or your own small business, you don’t have the luxury of hiring an SEO consultant.  Hence, do it yourself SEO is probably your best option.  It’s certainly your cheapest option.

There are many kinds of SEO software on the market.  You need something that is easy to use, covers all aspects of SEO, but is also affordable.  That is the key to finding the right software for your needs.

If what you seek is search engine visibility, then getting an SEO program off the ground is what you need to do now.  So, don’t wait.  Do something about your SEO needs now, before it’s too late for your business.

If you are new to writing html or just posting a comment on a blog, sometimes you can create a link for yourself by knowing how to make a link with html.

First step is to know that you need to open the link code with “<a” and with all html, you need to end it with the symbol “</a>”.

Second step is to put the URL that you want to link to as follows:  href=”http://www.siteyouwanttollinkto.com”

Third step is to add the keyword that will be the actual link that the visitor will click on: “>linkkeyword”.

Fourth, be sure to remember to end it with the “</a>” which closes the link.

So, let’s put it all together now:

<a href=”http://www.siteyouwanttolinkto.com”>linkkeyword</a>

Many small and medium sized businesses are starting to realize the advantages to hosting their own web sites.  As more business get internet experts on their staff, they are realizing that hosting on a dedicated server is really not a difficult thing to do and that function can easily be brought in house.

On the other hand, managed hosting is a great addition to any company, because it allows you to be in charge, yet leave the heavy lifting to the professionals who do this every day.  This is ideal if you are a small office that doesn’t have technical expertise in house.  You don’t want something to go down and then have to wait several days for a consultant to show up at your office to fix it.

Another option is colocation of your internet hosting equipment.  If you wish to colocate, you get the best of both worlds.  You can purchase your own equipment, but have the technicians available 24/7 to fix any malfunctions.  You may not have a proper room at your office with air conditioning and this may be an ideal solution for your needs then.

If you are looking for an advertising agency and reading this blog, then you are probably looking for an advertising agency that has internet advertising and promotion experience.

That Advertising Agency (clever name) is such an agency.  Try going to a traditional advertising agency and ask them about new media such as mobile marketing, apps, or internet advertising and they’ll probably refer you to the young guy they just hired.  That’s because they don’t really know or understand digital media.

If you are looking for an advertising agency that does understand the internet, then look for That Advertising Agency.  It’s not a hard name to remember so I think you’ll find them.

This is one hip advertising agency.  You will not be disappointed with their setting up a clever campaign to promote your brand.  Don’t worry, they know that banner advertising is so yesterday.  They know about online games.  They know about search.  They know about all of the key internet promotions that will get the attention of your best prospects.

Perhaps you have somebody on staff who might be able to do some of this work.  But, let’s face it, if you are a small company in this tough economy, you probably don’t have a lot of extra hands hanging around.  Everybody at your company is busy and they are fresh out of clever ideas in most cases.

Sign on with That Advertising Agency and you’ll see just how creative and revenue-producing an agency can be.

If you are planning to do search engine optimization on your site, you need tools.  You need a variety of good tools.

This includes checking links.  Inbound links are the single most important factor in the ranking of your web site.  Contrary to what you might think, it’s not page rank which is deemed significantly less important than it once was.

The tools on Submit Express include a variety of linking tools, including a link popularity checker, a reciprocal link checker, a basic link counter, and a broken link checker.  If you desire to maximize links, running each of these tools will quickly help you find out how your site ranks and then be able to compare your site against your main competition.

One of the things that we do is we check the links on our competitors sites and then contact those sites that are linking to our competition and request a link from them.  This helps to nullify some of the advantage that a higher ranking site might have over ours.  It also gives us ideas of where to look for new links in similar vertical markets.

One of the other salty things in linking is exchanging links with other sites.  While reciprocal links are not the best links to begin with, they do carry some value, but only if the inbound link to your site remains active.  Many webmasters will give you a link, only to pull it away soon after. If you are not checking your reciprocal links, this is much easier to do.

If you are providing your own SEO services, or using an agency to do the work, you are going to need tools.  And, you are going to need tools that are conveniently in one simple place.  Submit Express provides this for you.

And, one thing no webmaster has enough of is time.

What happens when a surfer visits your site, doesn’t buy, and then goes on to other sites.  Will he remember you the next time he is searching for your product?  Probably not.

Maybe the prospect just was in the fact finding stage for now and doesn’t need your product for several weeks.  You want to remind him of your product so how do you do it?

Getting that prospect back to your site is known as retargeting.  It’s an up and coming field in the internet marketing world, because it simply makes sense.  Isn’t somebody who has been to your site before a better prospect than one who hasn’t?

One retargeting company is Recrue Media.  Recrue is able to reach about 90% of internet users in the United States.  Now, that’s what I call reach!

Remarketing to prospects who have previously been to your web site makes sense.  In fact, I think I am going to try it soon.

Which one of us hasn’t searched for Cameron Diaz, Jessica Biel, or Julia Roberts?  Unfortunately, they don’t hang out at the same joints that we do.

SAFE SEX: This picture of Cameron Diaz is safe.

So, you have to find them online.  LIke we had a chance in real life anyway.

But, there is danger lurking out there (especially if you add “nude” to the end of the name).  One, in most cases with gorgeous mainstream actresses like Diaz, you won’t find nude pictures and even if you do, they are Photoshop Phakes.  Even worse, however, you just may get a nasty virus from clicking to sites that prey on frisky guys looking for this kind of virtual celebrity action.

Clicking onto strange sites is not a good idea in the first place, but many people do.  And, how are you supposed to know the legit gossip sites or crazy fan sites from the nasty ones.  (Here’s one that I know has a lot of sexy pictures and is legit — Stripped Superstars.)

Once a computer is infected, criminals can steal victims’ online banking passwords, e-mail passwords, and do other kinds of nasty deeds.

Attaching famous people’s names to malicious sites is a well-worn ruse, to fool people looking at search results into thinking they’re heading to a legitimate site.

According to McAfee (which studies this kind of thing), the most dangerous celebrities to search for are Diaz, Biel, and Roberts, followed by Gisele Bundchen, Brad Pitt, Adriana Lima, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, Heidi Klum, Penelope Cruz, and Anna Paquin.

Why so many actresses and less actors?  I guess its further proof that women aren’t as dumb as men can be sometimes.  At least when it comes to computers and search.

No Bull: Generation Y Loves Facebook.

Here’s some interesting stats regarding Generation Y and their use of social media sites.

• 99% of those 18-24 have a profile on a social networking site (Seems high to me.) (Source — Participatory Marketing Network; May, 2010)
• 75% of Americans 18-34 have a Facebook or My Space account (Harris Interactive; April 2009)
• 66% of marketers used social media marketing in 2009.  That’s up from 20% in 2007.  (Association of National Advertisers; August 2009)

Editor’s Note — When hiring Generation Y employees, consider blocking Facebook in the office.

Atlanta: Most infected city in USA

If you want your computer to work well, don’t move to Atlanta.

According to a study by Enigma Software Group, malware infection rates are highest in Atlanta followed by Birmingham, Denver, Chesepeake, VA, and Madison.

The best place to avoid malware: Jersey City, NJ.

Go figure.

Look for her on Facebook.

One of the sites you may want to block at your workplace is Facebook.  I have seen it be the biggest time sucker in the workplace today.

And, it’s not stopping anytime soon.

comScore reports that Facebook gained more than 8.5 million unique monthly visitors in May.

Kind of makes the 30,000 who de-listed under the privacy controversy irrelevant.

Doe Library -- University of California

What is the fastest wired city in the world?

1. Berkeley, CA
2. Chapel Hill, NC
3. Palo Alto, CA
4. Masan, South Korea
5. Oxford, England
6. Iksan, South Korea
7. Taoyuan, Taiwan
8. Durham, NC
9. Ithaca, NY
10. Ann Arbor, MI

No doubt that college towns dominate the fastest internet cities in the world.

(Source — State of the Internet Report)

We’ve been doing trade shows for many years.  While some things have stayed the same in successful trade show participation, many things have changed dramatically.

One such area where great improvements have been made is in the trade show display world.  I remember lugging three large boxes through airports to get to our destination trade show.  Then, having to pay union workers to put up our booth.

Today, however, with pop up displays, the trade show booths are light and can be put into the trunk of your car.  What a difference it has made to now have a trade show pop up instead of those bulky items from the past which are now rotting in our basement.

With pop up trade show displays, the cost of shipping the booths is greatly reduced, because the weight of the items is so much less.  It’s amazing how much easier it is to display at trade shows with pop up booths.

A lot of cool tools have been created for Tweeters out there. 

Cool Twitter tools

For example, if you want to find out who has the most followers on Twitter, check out Twitaholic.  Britney Spears, Ashton Kutcher, and Lady Gaga are currently the top three.  You can even sort results by your home city and see who is most famous in your city.  Heck, they give the Top 1000 so you may even be ranked!

How powerful of a Twitter member are you?  Check out Twitter Grader and see where you rank.

Then, there’s just funny tweets.  FunnyTwitters.com has some of the funniest ones you’ll ever see.  And, we all need a laugh every now and then.

Radio Ink gives an interesting list of facts about social media and the digital media boom.

• 96% of generation Y’ers have joined a social network.
• 1 of 8 couples married in the USA met through a social networking site.  I wonder if this includes internet dating sites?
• The fastest growing segment on Facebook is women 55 to 65.
• YouTube is now the second largest search engine in the world.
• There are over 200 million blogs.
• 54% of all bloggers update every day.
• 90% of those with a DVD forward through the commercials.
• 25% of of Americans have watched a video on their cell phone.
• 94% of all text messages, even promotional ones, are opened immediately upon receipt.

Mobile marketing works for Hispanics

You say that you recognize the importance of marketing to Hispanics, yet how many businesses are actually doing it?

If you are figuring that most Hispanics read English anyway, perhaps you are right, but don’t you think your company would have an edge if it marketed its products to Latinos in their native language?  

A full 82% of businesses have no plans to market to Hispanics.

• 38% don’t think the ROI would be justified.
• 29% figure their current marketing is sufficient and effective.
• 21% say they don’t have the budget.
• 2% simply don’t know where to begin.

3 Words find these girls.

We’ve all been hearing about long-tail keywords for some time now.

An interesting study was recently done by Chitika which indicates that 3 word keywords are the most popular to drive SEO search traffic.

Here’s a full breakdown of organic search volume by query length:

1. 3 Words — 26%
2. 2 Words — 19%
3. 4 Words — 17%
4. 1 Word — 14%

If anybody thinks that Google has reached its zenith, think again.

According to ComScore, there were 131 billion searches in December, 2009.  That’s a 46% increase in searches over the previous year.

What if you could see into the future?  And, I’m not talking about calling a 900 number for a psychic.

What if you could see the future of the internet and what will be the hottest product next week, next month, or next year?  If you are a shrewd businessman, you are already speculating on what will be tomorrow’s hottest niche marketing products.

By analyzing data and trends on what people are searching for, you will have a leg up on your competitors.  Online niche marketing requires data analysis that is second to none.  And, that’s exactly what you’ll get with the Internet Time Machine.

Search is changing dramatically every day, especially with the introduction of Google Caffeine.  But, many people forget that there are other search engines out there and they only use the leaders.  The use of a new search engine that can tell you what are the most  popular sites in the past two weeks is a step in the right direction for you to be ahead of the pack.

In recent years, buying directories for SEO purposes has been downplayed by many experts.  This is not, however, to say that you should never do it when the directories are niche directories.

Take business directories, for example.  Those are specific niche directories that can not only help your SEO value, but can also help generate additional traffic to your site.

The great thing about the Universal Business Listing site is that it costs only $30 per year.  That’s a real value when you can write your own business listing for the directory and add whatever description you want.  For example, let’s say you want to get into a new business, then this is the place to promote it.

If you want to increase your search engine rankings, then getting listed in a top business directory like this is the way to go.