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Every business needs to do everything it can to stand out from the crowd, to differentiate itself from the competition. This is a major challenge for companies that sell substantially the same thing as their competitors.

The average business does not have the resources of a multinational corporation that often uses its substantial marketing muscle to buy market share or to drive competition out of the marketplace. Big business also uses its deep pockets to flood various media with advertising, making them a pervasive presence.
The Web has always been an egalitarian environment where smaller companies could present themselves using the same techniques as the big boys, and if these companies did it well they could stand side-by-side with their competitive behemoths.
One thing that small and medium sized businesses should take some comfort in is that many large corporations are notoriously poorly run, relying on brawn rather than brain to get the job done. Many survive because over time they have acquired huge resources, become oligopolies, or they use predatory marketing practices to stifle competition.
As the Web becomes more and more a multimedia environment, corporations are starting to use their financial resources, and inventory of commercial assets and programming (not to be confused with computer programming), to deliver their marketing messages. The question is can smaller businesses compete, and if so, how?
Slipstream Marketing
Dr. Max Sutherland, a Marketing Psychologist and Professor at Bond University, has written about a concept he refers to as ’slipstreaming.’ Anyone who is familiar with motor racing or even bicycle racing understands that slipstreaming is a drafting method where a racer tucks behind a front-running rival reducing wind resistance and saving fuel and energy, and with a quick move, the challenger can slingshot past the race leader.
The clever implementation of slipstream style marketing campaigns can allow you to blow by your competition by using the momentum of well-known and instantly recognizable campaigns.

Slipstreaming references a collective audience memory, a kind of shared consciousness. Skillful execution draws ínstant recognition and an “Oh I Get It!” reaction without a lot of wasted setup or groundwork.
“Give Me The Same Thing, But Different!”
The key of course is how you make your version different. What’s the twist? Blake Snyder, a Hollywood screenwriter and author, writes about entertainment executives’ constant refrain, “Get me the same thing, but different.” What Snyder has learned and what he preaches is that movie moguls understand it’s easier to get people to go to a movie they understand and that was already a success, but the trick is making the new version different, that is different but the same.
If you think slipstreaming is an easy way to be creative you’re wrong. Being different but the same is not as simple as it sounds, but success can depend on it. Done poorly slipstreaming comes off as lame and imitative, but done correctly you appear clever and cutting-edge, and more importantly you deliver the marketing message in a way your audience will remember.
There are an endless variety of things you can slipstream: personalities, icons, slogans, music, advertisements, news events, pop culture phenomena, movies, television shows, commercials, and sporting events.
Personalities
One of our favorite personality slipstreaming techniques is the use of voice-over. It can be implemented as part of a video campaign or as a stand-alone feature. We have used sound-alike actors to portray Rod Serling, Sam Elliot, Steve Irwin, Paul Winfield, Tom Brokaw, and many others.
What makes this approach so valuable is that most people will relate to the voice as someone they know, or are familiar with, but not immediately recognize.
This method captures people’s attention with the familiar sound of a famous voice but without the cost of hiring the celebrity. Often the voice does not even have to be that close to the original, it’s the cadence, delivery, tone, and scrípt that makes people sit-up and take notice.
Cutting through the jungle of advertising noise is a challenge for everyone in business and this technique is a very effective method of getting heard and being remembered.
Television Shows
Another slipstream technique we’ve used is to play upon the audience’s knowledge and familiarity with certain television shows. We have created Web-videos, written scrípts, added dialogue and composed music that reminds people of the old ‘Twilight Zone’ series and the popular A&E show, ‘City Confidential.’
Commercials
One of our most successful Web-promotion campaigns was the ‘Multimedia Versus SEO Campaign’ where we took advantage of the well know Macintosh Versus PC television commercials. Nobödy needed an explanation or setup to understand what was going on in the commercials. We basically slipstreamed Apple’s television campaign.
Slogans
Slogans are another resource for slipstreaming and if you think only small companies slipstream, think again. The A&E Network used the slogan “Time Well Spent” for many years, while The Comedy Network slipstreamed it with their own twisted version “Time Well Wasted” - the same thing, but different.
Music
With the popularity of Hip Hop music, the milk marketing board developed a series of commercials with dairy farmers rapping to a catchy Hip Hop tune well prancing around their farm animals. Hip Hop was also slipstreamed by Smirnoff in their Raw Tea campaign and ‘Tea Partay’ viral video.
Pop Culture
With the popularity of poker and the World Poker Tour, we developed a Mike Sexton style character, host of the television show, for one of our projects. We’ve even created nostalgia radio-style audio pitches that hark back to the olden age of radio plays.
Movies
We created an entire campaign for a client based on the idea, “Life Deserves A Sound Track” where everyday situations were described in dramatic style with familiar voice-over announcers, which was our take on Will Ferrell’s hit movie ‘Stranger Than Fiction.’
Sports
We’ve created presentations using the personas of famous sports figures like Hall of Fame pitcher and broadcaster Dizzy Dean and Mel Allan. We created scenarios and scrípts using the voices and personas of World Champion racecar driver Jackie Stewart and one crazy scrípt fashioned in the style of college basketball analyst Dick Vitale.
Conclusion
As you can see from these examples, there are an endless number of ways to take advantage of the public’s shared experience. So the next time you need to come up with a new Web marketing campaign for your company, think like a Hollywood mogul: Come Up With Something That’s The Same, But Different.

Author:  Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, www.136words.com and www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

[ed note: Lisa Barone, Sr. Writer at Bruce Clay Inc. has been writing stream-of-consciousness coverage of ad|tech SF2007. Not only is it good information, the writing is hilarious. Notes from Susan are placed by Lisa’s editor.]

Are you dreaming of disruption? Do you call people late at night just hoping to disrupt their peaceful slumber? Do you spend your work days thinking of contraptions you can put over your coworkers office door to disrupt them and scare them half to death when they stumble in? Are you a mean, disruptive person in general?

I appreciate your honesty but that’s not actually what this morning’s keynote is about. It’s about the disruptive forces of digital technology that are transforming the entire industry. That’s why this morning’s keynote speaker David Clark (Joost) is here. As far as I know, he has no interest in your other mean-spirited activities. I, however, am appalled.

[Speaking of disruptive, if you’re reading this, are in the Bay area, and have access to some form of make-the-killer-headache-go-away medicine, I’d love you forever if you came and found me. It feels like chubby oompa loompas are jumping on my head.]

It’s another day at Ad:Tech and like all new days at Ad:Tech we start off with a few words from Chairman Drew Ianni. Drew’s talking about Kazaa and I got excited for a second because I thought he said huzzah. But he didn’t. Oh, well.

Time for David Clark to appear from the shadows. Good morning, David.

Drew says he’s been disruptive since high school and then starts talking about Dick Fosbury. Dick was the inventor of the Fosbury flop and showed the high jumping industry a new way to do things. He disrupted the norm and found a better way. His approach is still being used today.

Here’s the thing about disruption, says David, it’s too often associated with the term destruction. It’s used to explain a “better” world where only the new stuff is the good stuff. David believes that sometimes you have to let things stay the same. TV is one of those things, at least the parts of TV that make it a unique video.

You’re going to hear a lot of talk about how the Internet is going to disrupt and TV and that VOD may kill it, says David, but Joost disagrees. It’s forcing the TV to create better cinematic projects. Storytelling matters. It has mattered since the dawn of men, yet somehow it gets left out of every formulation of media. Well-told stories matter. Brands matter. Talent matters.

This is not easy stuff. TV is the most successful entertainment media invented, according to David. Joost is not betting against TV, however, they like the Internet too. It has what TV lacks – community, intelligence, accountability, etc. Plug yourself in from the right stream and you’re drinking from a firehouse. It’s incredible and addictive.

David says today we’re seeing a marriage of both. It will be the birth of a new medium. Viewers are already there.

What’s in this new world?

It’s founded on video content. That’s a no-brainer. With Joost, anyone with copyright ownership can create a channel and broadcast to the world. Joost has already received hundreds of thousands of emails from content producers wanting to set up a channel on Joost and the company has been around for about 10 minutes. The gates are coming down.

David brings up Ze Frank. Yey, Ze Frank! (I miss you, Ze.)

David says we’re going to see new kinds of entertainment models emerge. Your sister will ping you and you’ll be watching a show as it airs and chatting about it with her. [I do that already. It’s how my friends and I watch American Idol. –Susan] We’ll be using widgets and interactive overlays to create new features and functionalities. Your programming guide will become your community. Channels are playlists. The wisdom of a crowd will help you navigate a huge range of choices.

Or something like that. David says these are just educated guesses. We don’t have a time machine. David’s just providing the technology to see what’s going to happen.

The key to changing our sport the way Fosbury did is to know what’s sacred and what is not. You do this by looking at things through your consumer eyes, not through the eyes of your boss or your marketing department. When you do this you will find that storytelling, control, quality, copyright and the opportunity to share with your peers is sacred. Everything else is up for grabs. David likes those odds.

So how’s all this going so far?

Joost is still in the early days of beta. They’re going to open up the platform to everyone very soon. Joost feels a lot like TV. That’s deliberate. Just like the first car looked like a horse buggy.

To David, Joost is great if you just want to sit back and watch or if you want to dive in and get involved. There’s lots of powerful stuff under the hood.

TV 2.0 is not going to happen overnight. One of things holding it back is an ad model that makes sense for both consumers and advertisers.

The consumer is now firmly in control. This has become such a cliché that we risk not understanding what it really means. For the ad industry this spells disruption. We’re an industry that hasn’t really had to deal with consumer control. It’s ironic but it’s true. The ad industry has been organized as a command and control center for several years. The architecture of the entire industry now needs to be rethought. We need to have the consumer on speaker phone, if not in the media chair itself. Advertising is not a product and it’s not entertainment. It’s designed to snatch you away and give you a pitch.

Clutter and fragmentation drown out brand messages. The number of brands fighting for your attention has doubled. Compounding the challenge, media has fragmented and users are overwhelmed with choices. As a brand advertiser, where do you place your bets?

Never has a marketer’s job been so difficult, says David. The marketing tactics of today were designed for the consumer behavior of yesterday. This is not because marketers are fools. It’s because new models have not emerged fast enough. The tired old models are still the most powerful we have. But things are about to change.

This is where the fun begins. Everything looks doom and gloom but all it takes is a little willingness to experiment.

It goes back to defining what’s scared. Marketing and communications is sacred, advertising is not. Reach is sacred, frequency is not. Invitation is sacred, frequency is not. It’s invitation over interruption, relevancy and engagement over impression count, ROI over CPM. Selling products and building brands is sacred. Everything else is up for grabs.

Marketers will have to teach consumers and consumers are still interested. That’s not going to change. The platforms that can unite them will be fine.

David remarks that Joost is announcing a series of new launch partners today, including Proctor & Gamble, Coke, Nike, Kraft, General Motors, Warner Brothers, Purina, Visa, Motorola, Taco Bell, Sony, Intel, etc.

And that’s it from David.

Author:  Lisa Barone is a Sr. Writer at Bruce Clay Inc

Concluding a story first published here as a rumor from ad|tech on Thursday April 26, Yahoo! has announced it will purchase the remaining 80% of the Right Media Exchange for approximately $680mm in cash and stocks.  Yahoo! had already taken a 20% stake in the company with a strategic investment in Right Media in October 2006.

Based in New York City, Right Media is the largest emerging online advertising exchange. By brokering advertising across the tens of thousands of publisher sites associated with the exchange, Right Media helps publishers monetize their ad inventories and webmasters monetize their sites. Founded four years ago, Right Media uses an open auction system which allows publishers and advertisers sell and purchase online ad placements in real time.

“The acquisition of Right Media will further Yahoo!’s goal to create the industry’s most open, accessible and vibrant advertising marketplace, which will help democratize the buying and selling of digitally enabled advertising,” said Terry Semel, chairman and CEO of Yahoo! in a press release. “This acquisition is an important step in our long-term vision to build the industry’s leading advertising and publisher ecosystem. We believe that Yahoo!’s open approach is a clear differentiator from others in the industry and provides significant benefits to advertisers, publishers and Yahoo! itself.”

As the largest online publisher with one of the largest ad networks Yahoo! will increase both the distribution power and inventory depth of the Right Media Exchange.

“What we look forward to do as an owner is put more inventory into that pot to help create a more vibrant exchange and create better pricing for everyone,” said Semel.

According to the press release from Yahoo!,

• Advertisers will have greater inventory and audience options from Yahoo! and other participants in this exchange, as well as increased control and visibility into the buying process.
• Publishers will be able to bundle their own ad inventory with Yahoo!’s inventory and the exchange’s inventory - thereby boosting demand and generating the highest returns for each ad placement.
• Advertising networks will reap the same benefits as advertisers and publishers, and additionally, the exchange will benefit those ad networks with unique value propositions, giving them an opportunity to compete with the largest players, thanks to reduced friction and increased transparency.
• For Yahoo!, this more open approach will allow the company to increase liquidity, allow advertisers to more efficiently ascertain the true value of display ad inventory, and generate greater returns for Yahoo!’s own display inventory. It will give Yahoo! a new channel and inventory for excess demand and provide an opportunity to derive more value from non-premium inventory.

“Right Media will be the crown jewel in Yahoo!’s battle against Google,” said Leron Cohen, founder of Quired Media, an ad broker working through the Right Media Exchange. “For us, this is good news. I hope Right Media sticks to being the open and fair marketplace that has made it (and us) so successful over the years.”

CEO and founder of Right Media, Michael Walrath added, “We share Yahoo!’s vision of a more empowered marketplace, where efficiency, transparency and accountability in online advertising become the norm. We are very excited by the prospect of becoming part of Yahoo!, the market leader in display advertising, as it looks to revolutionize the media buying and selling landscape.” 

In an open letter to Right Media advertisers and publishers, Walrath writes, “It’s important to reiterate publicly that the acquisition will in no way afford Yahoo! any unfair advantage in the Exchange. A level playing field is one of the foundations of the Exchange and its success–it remains level. The fact that the Right Media Exchange will operate as an independent division of Yahoo! ensures this.”

Yahoo! plans to sell all non-premium ad space on Yahoo! through the exchange.

While many in the industry will see the purchase as a reaction to Google’s pending acquisition of Double Click, Yahoo! had already started the process in the autumn of 2006. Google’s entry into the display market merely accelerated what appears to have been planned for some time.

“Yahoo! is the largest online publisher and one of the leading ad networks on the web, and we believe it is in our strong financial interest to make sure there is a widely adopted, neutral, frictionless exchange that enables publishers and advertisers to benefit from a basket of the best solutions rather than having to accept a single solution from one of the larger players,” said Susan Decker, head of advertiser and publisher group and CFO of Yahoo!. “Furthermore, as the industry’s partner of choice and as a leader in both search and display advertising, we believe that we are well-positioned to rally the industry support to make the promise of Right Media a reality for the entire digital media community.”

Yahoo! will host a conference call to discuss the deal at 11AM eastern time today. A live webcast of the conference call can be accessed through the Company’s Investor Relations website at http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/mediaRegister.cfm?MediaID=25393. In addition, an archive of the webcast can be accessed through the same link.

Author:  Jim Hedger is the Executive Editor of SiteProNews.com.

I found this interesting post from “Dr. Pete” at SEOmoz.org discussing his experience rescuing a client’s website from the vastness of Google’s supplemental index. Pete provided a great deal of detail on how he succeeded with his particular client. In this case the client was definitely in a bad state beforehand where even the most basic SEO strategies were not in place. The most basic fixes he implemented consisted of creating unique Titles and Meta Description Tags which in my opinion would definitely reduce supplemental results.
The gist of his posting is that the following changes seemed to have the most positive results:

• Shortening and increasing the search engine friendliness of the site’s URLs
• Apparently when a 404 page was discovered it provided search engines with an improper response - essentially that the page was “A-okay” (a 200 server response). They fixed this issue which allowed many ‘bad’ pages to be removed from Google’s index.

  On a personal note I noticed this same issue with another client of mine recently by reviewing the client’s Google Webmaster Central profile… lots of valuable information can be found within that toolset - be sure to use it!

• He implemented a robots.txt file to block various parts of the site that provided duplicate content (such as print versions of articles, etc.). The impact on supplemental results appeared to be profound from his standpoint which makes sense. You see supplemental results will often occur when Google notices repetitive content within a website. After all, the supplemental results is by nature meant for results that are already found elsewhere or for pages that offer little or no value to Google.

If you are concerned that your site has too many pages in Google’s supplemental index then I suggest reading and applying the advice in our instructional article “is your website search engine friendly - your personal checklist” because that article digs deep into many of the issues that also cause supplemental index issues.

Auhtor:  Ross Dunn is the founder and CEO of StepForth Search Engine Placement. Celebrating its tenth year in business, StepForth is one of the oldest and most trusted brands in SEO. He can be reached at 1-877-385-5526 (toll free in North America)

[ed note: Lisa Barone has been writing stream-of-consciousness coverage of ad|tech SF2007. Not only is it good information, the writing is hilarious.]

Drew Ianni followed me from the keynote presentation into this morning’s State of the Industry discussion with panelists Ted McConnel (Proctor and Gamble), Sheryl Draizen (IAB), Barry James Folsom (Motorola) and Bob Moore (Publicis USA).

Okay, I’m a little flustered. I wandered into the wrong room (gaming? What do I care about gaming?) and by the time I found the right room it was filled and the nice security lady refused to let me in despite my pouty lip, blazing dimples and me stuffing my press pass in her face. So, instead of learning about behavioral targeting, we’re going to get updated on The State of the Industry. You still love me, right?

By the time I got here, Drew was questioning the panelists on what’s on their top of mind and what’s keeping them up at night. If I remember correctly, this is one of Drew’s most favorite question to ask Ad:Tech panelists.

Bob shows us what’s on his top of mind today by showing us a picture of an important consumer — his 9-year-old daughter Elliot (today’s her birthday. Happy Birthday, Elliot!) eating an ice cream cone. What’s keeping him up at night is that if marketers aren’t careful, the industry is going to become more about algorithms and less about creativity. Zing to the search marketers out there!

What’s top of mind for Ted is yesterday’s MySpace event where he learned that to users MySpace is like home. It’s lovely. He says you can take that to the bank about how to do good marketing on MySpace (take that to the bank? Who says that?). What’s keeping Ted up at night is the idea of the business model. Creative and media need to collaborate much more deeply than they are today.

The message and “the what” is also keeping him up at night. He says it’s typically crafted into taglines that are nicely condensed. It’s what you do, not what you say that’s meaningful on the Web. Ted wants to find better ways to do things for people rather than by carefully crafted words.

Barry’s top of mind is the psychological contract that the consumer has with the device or the box that they use. (Say what?) What keeps him up at night is how we can create serendipity where an ad reaches a consumer at the exact moment they’re thinking about that product. It’s the “Oh, I was interested in that and now there’s an ad for it” effect.

What’s on Sheryl’s top of mind is how do we build a medium that has world class measurement guidelines and help marketers leverage a medium in a way that makes the most sense for their brand. What keeps her up at night is how it’s easier to get guns than it is a driver’s license but she’s not going to go there. That’s good; it’s far too early to talk politics. The other, more relevant, thing that’s keeping her up at night is about rich media applications. How do we stay ahead of everything that’s going on in the industry and make sure we’re educating the marketers and the agencies about what’s happening? It’s not an easy job. Every day something else is coming up. Sometimes we forget that this is a new medium and that we need to catch up to where the other media are.

Drew restates from his keynote that 99 percent of ad revenue is going to the top ten sites. He says that unless this proliferates a little more the rich are going to get richer. What says the panel?

Ted suggests that if this is happening it’s because in electronic media the rule has always been “winner takes all”. It’s been standard in anything that’s electronic. If it’s the best everyone can have one they do. People will tune into the best content.

Regardless of all that, Ted doubts Drew’s stat is actually correct (fight!) and says he doesn’t know where it came from. He argues that it creates an unfair view of the Web economy to simply say the big players are winning. He also takes a shot at PPC guys due to a conversation he had at SES in 1999 but I won’t repeat it because it will only make you angry. [1999? Is he serious? Does he know it’s been a million years in Internet time since then?–Susan (Lisa’s editor)]

Sheryl says in terms of the top ten sites getting the majority of the revenue, it may be a truism, but what’s really happening is that marketers are becoming smarter in how they’re spreading and allocating their budgets. A few years ago we saw auto marketers just marketing on auto sites. Today they’re branching out and targeting lifestyle sites, teen sites, etc. As a result, it’s given smaller sites additional opportunities for inventory. I think we’ll start to see this spread more, says Sheryl.

Drew asks about the consumer generated media craze and how marketers should approach that. How do we add value to the content that’s out there?

Bob says it’s a tough question. He asks how many people are really creating things?

Um, I think a lot, Bob.

Ted heard a quote that said the single thing driving the Web is access to publishing. It’s powerful; especially if you think what consumers have going with the virality of this stuff and consumer generated syndication. It’s a new kind of editorial and has made way for the development of an organic video business where the best stuff will rise. He says that there are perfect metaphors available but that we haven’t reached that bridge yet (huh?). It meets the need somebody has. He’s looking forward to the new models that reward people from their CGM. Yes, aren’t we all, Ted, aren’t we all?

Sheryl says we need to be careful about defining digital video as just UGC. If we do that, we miss an opportunity at leveraging what digital video can do as an advertising medium. In terms of professional created video content, we’re going to start seeing more and more being created. Stuff like, “if you missed Lost tonight, watch it on ABC.com”. Marketers should think about the enormous opportunity they have to combine the sight, sound and motion of TV with the increased targeted measuring and accountability of the Internet. That combo creates a very valuable proposition for marketers. Digital video is NOT only user generated content.

Barry says that words create worlds. If you don’t have the right word to frame it you’re misusing it. It’s not UGC video, he says, it’s short form video. It’s about video snacking. (Speaking of snacking, there are doughnuts in the lobby. Doughnuts!)

Drew asks what’s the ad model that supports video snacking? Is it sponsorship oriented?

Ted doesn’t really answer the question but says television is so totally far ahead of the Web. Video snacking is about the story and how compelling it is. The production quality doesn’t matter if the story is compelling.

Bob says brands need to know what story they want to tell. If you’re connected to your consumer, they’ll jump into the story and help you create it. The story has to start from someplace though and it has to start from you.

Drew asks if the conversation is shifting from brand to consumer? Can you calibrate how much control you give to consumers? Or do you need to just let it go?

Bob correctly responds that consumers have a lot of say and a marketer’s ability to manipulate the conversation is gone. There’s no limit to it. You can’t put handcuffs on it and the minute you try, you’ll have open rebellion.

Ted says you have to either try to stop it, try to support it or leave it alone. (Ted confuses me each time he says something.) He argues that we’re missing a legal framework for how to deal with this as a society in terms of who benefits and who gets hurt and what kind of recourse to people who get hurt from.

Closing things up, Bob says it’s a golden era for marketers. There are more interesting ways to reach people than ever before. Given that there are so many ways for users to opt out, marketers really have to create brands as destinations. You have to offer people something and form an emotional connection with them. You have to create a brand that people want to hang with. Like the Mac guy. Who doesn’t want to hang out with the Mac guy? He’s totally adorable.

Author:  Lisa Barone is a Sr. Writer at Bruce Clay Inc.

So I find myself in San Francisco on a warm mid-spring night. I am attending yet another internet marketing conference (YAIMC), the second major event I’ve atteneded in two weeks. Like New York City, San Francisco feels like a whole world away from my sleepy little west coast town. In the case of this conference, the differences are even more pronounced. My background is primarily in search engine optimization and marketing and that makes me feel somewhat different than the other attendees, sort of less relevant. This show isn’t about search marketing per se. ad|tech San Francisco is primarily about media buying.
It feels like search is being a recognized but only as minor component with just two sessions directly relating to search. Back in November at the NYC ad|tech conference, search seemed far more important. Here, not so much. In New York, several sessions were dedicated to search optimization and search marketing. I feel like seismic shifts are happening all around me and that isn’t because I’m in San Francisco.
Perhaps it’s all the Google they put in the water around here but everyone seems to be talking about display advertising. As you know, Google is likely going to acquire a large advertising network called DoubleClick for $3.1billion. The announcement was made almost two weeks ago and now everyone who isn&rsquooogle is thinking deeply about the potential and/or the consequences. For hundreds of companies represented here, the deal could cause critical problems in the mid to long-term future. Many meetings of minds have converged here to talk about it.
A rumor has been circulating saying Yahoo! was going to fully acquire online advertising exchange Right Media for $600 - $800mm. Yahoo! currently holds a 20% stake in Right Media. I briefly met VP of Sales and Business Development Ramsay McGrory at Right Media’s cocktail party on Tuesday night. When I later asked him about the rumor, he suggested the media would know before he did but was adamant in saying he had no knowledge of a pending sale. Nevertheless the rumors persist with several people either asking me what I know, or telling me what confidential sources told them. That’s the problem with rumors. Nobody wants to be the one to substantiate them.
The business strategy for medium to large ad or content networks seems to be to merge, acquire, conglomerate or cooperate as partners in order to build larger content provision and distribution networks. Yesterday, Pixsy.com announced a strategic partnership with one of Europe’s leading advertising networks, ad pepper.
Earlier this week I met with the management team from media search platform Pixsy.com in their Bryant St. offices. CEO Chase Norlin and VP (corporate communications) Lauren Karp also spoke about the need to grow distribution networks through cooperation and partnerships, partially in reaction to Google’s growth. Under the agreement, ad pepper will use Pixsy’s technology to introduce a number of private-label customized video and image search engines. Contextual performance based ads from ad pepper will provide monetization opportunities.
ad pepper is both older and larger than Pixsy. It has been around since 1999 and serves over five billion transnational advertising contacts each month. Pixsy, which has been in business since 2005 is one of the best media search engines on the web.
The partnership between the two firms stems from the realization that the only way to compete with Google is to go full throttle, pushing your content to as many eyeballs as possible. While very few companies can cover the same sort of ground Google does, an immediate growth strategy for other media companies is akin to a survival strategy. Since Google virtually owns the house, smaller companies in similar markets feel the need to be bigger. In the case of Pixsy, bigger means far wider distribution of their media search technology and the integration of a network monetization method.
ad|tech is billed as “The Event for Interactive Marketers”. Interactive is an understatement and a half. Between the chaotic networking on the trade show floor, the scheduled speeches and sessions, the face to face power meetings with long-term partners and the packed-room parties, there are literally thousands of conferences happening at the same time.
Meetings are an important aspect of ad|tech shows. The conference hall the trade show is being held in has several balcony areas and a central café/meeting area. I have had the opportunity to meet hundreds of new people and actually speak with dozens of them. I have a pocket full of business cards, pages of interview notes and have given hundreds of my own business cards to others. ad|tech, like all major marketing conferences is the place to meet a good cross-section of the web publishing and advertising sectors.
I spent most of my day on the trade show floor exploring the booths and interviewing some pretty interesting people. I didn’t get into many of the sessions, and whenever I did, I was only able to hang around for a few minutes before running off somewhere else. Luckily, Lisa Barone, Sr. Writer at Bruce Clay Inc. is here and has been publishing excellent stream-of-consciousness coverage of the sessions she’s been to. We’re republishing a few of them in the coming editions.
There are a lot of start-up social networks here. Everyone’s building a better social network and I think I spoke with at least six of them. The online marketing industry is changing, at least as most search marketers knew it. Now that richer, more robust media files can be created and distributed by pretty much anybody, new methods of storing, classifying and finding information are necessary, hence the advent of the social network. What started as a way to represent user-specific communities is quickly becoming a dominant model for building communication platforms.
There is not a lot of pure search in social networking. While there are several components that can be affected by effective SEO or SMO, social networking, by and large, is driven by the members of the various social communities themselves. Display advertising works well in social networks, as do other revenue models such as auctions, paid-subscriptions and expanded paid features.

A number of attendees I spoke with are giving up on the traditional search engines, especially the PPC engines. With rapidly rising costs per click and a subsequent decline in ROI, many advertisers are looking for other ways to spread their ad-spends. Purveyors of rich media content, display and banner advertising are seeing, (for lack of a better pun), banner years.
This week, talk of PPC or CPC is replaced with speculation on effective CPA (cost per action), CPM (cost per thousand), and the virtual commoditization of CTR (click through rates). The most serious ad-buyers here can tell you exactly where the best click trough returns will be found at any given time. Some have the ability to instantly shift enormous ad-spends on a minute-by-minute basis to eek the maximum margin on their (or their clients’) investments.
During the trade show, I stopped by the ISEDN.org booth to give one of the two reps a break. The activity in and around the booth was so heavy two people had to be present at any given time. During the two hours I spent in the booth, I probed people about their experiences with traditional PPC programs. I found far more interest for the flat-fee contextual ads offered by the ISEDN.org at this show than any previous SES or ad|tech conference. Advertisers are looking for a solution to the rapidly rising costs of their campaigns and the flat-fee method struck them as fairest (and safest) of all.
Many writers in the search marketing community have been predicting changes to the market in the coming years. Much like the warnings of the dire future circumstances to come due to global warming, these changes are often not apparent until they are actually happening. After the second day of ad|tech San Francisco, I get the sense that those changes are starting to happen.
Perhaps the biggest thing I have learned since being here is there is a lot for me (and likely many other search marketers) to learn about another side of the online marketing sector. There is a renewed interest in display ads in the greater marketing space. Despite the obvious differences there are serious synergies between search and display advertising. As the online marketing industry matures, those synergies are likely going to cause greater conglomeration in the industry, much like the one undertaken (for good or for ill) by THNK inc. two years ago. That’s a lot to think about going into Day 3.
Tomorrow is the last day of the conference and the trade show. At 5, the lights go out on ad|tech and nearly ten thousand weary attendees will make their ways home. I will be home on Friday around noonish. Hope the cat’s not too ticked at me for being away so long again.
Auhtor:  Jim Hedger is the Executive Editor of SiteProNews.com.

As a full-time online marketer and webmaster I try to keep my eyes peeled to what is happening with the search engines. These complex creatures control the Internet. They truly are the heart, soul and brains of the web.

Unfortunately, they also control the faith of many struggling webmasters who are clawing their way to the top of SERPs in organic search. Being listed on these first page results for your chosen keyword phrases is the ultimate goal and it is often the determining factor in the success of your site.

Recently, I have noticed some strange movements with my closely watched keywords, especially in Google. Which shouldn’t alarm anyone because there are often sudden movements and adjustments as Google tweaks and refines its algorithm, the complex series of formulas it uses to determine which pages and sites get featured.

(Ed. note: An excellent resource on Google’s Algorithm and ranking factors can be found at: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#f41

It’s way too early to jump to any conclusions but the big question on everyone’s mind: Is Google Moving Towards Semantic Search?

Or more precisely will Google have to move to semantic search if it has any chance of surviving in our ‘here today - gone tomorrow’ search world. Most of us old folks can easily recall a pre-Google web. Is a post-Google web possible?

That’s very hard to swallow but stranger things have happened on the net. But the real question should be: will Google have to embrace semantic search or perish?

Wikipedia defines Semantic Search or Semantic Web as the evolving process of taking all the content on the world wide web and “expressing it not only in natural language, but also in a förm that can be understood, interpreted and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily.”

As can be imagined, finding the formats and framework by which all this data can be processed into meaningful responses directly related to a search enquiry is mind boggling. Technologies such as RDF (Resource Description Framework), data interchange formats (e.g. RDF/XML, Turtle, N3, N-Triples), RDFS (RDF Schema) and OWL (Web Ontology Language) will all probably play a role. Many believe microformats will be very important in this evolving semantic web.

New Semantic Search Engine

We now have our first search engine supposedly based on semantics or meaning: Hakia. Is it the first in a whole new wave of search engines generated and powered by the Semantic Web which is now tagged as Web 3.0? More importantly, can it compete against a more text based search engine such as Google?

Hakia has some great features such as highlighting potential answers to your posted question. For example, ask it a question like: What is the population of Seattle? And you will get an answer. But you will also get a gallery page featuring all the relevant information about Seattle: How to get there? Local Hotels, Restaurant Guides, Local Weather…

Of course, do the same search in Google and you will also find your information along with images and maps of Seattle. However, using Hakia will show you the relevant information faster because it is highlighted and easier to find. And in my opinion having a whole gallery page of information somehow makes your search more relevant and useful.

Can Google Compete?

Is this a better mousetrap? Maybe, maybe not… but it is definitely pointing the way to a better method of searching on the web.

Granted, this type of search engine has a long way to go to match Google’s massive resources and obvious dominance in the search market. But even the most devoted Google user like myself must admit Google’s method of ranking pages and content on the web is not without some flaws. Take for example the issue of Google Bombing where different webmasters influenced the listing of the keyword ‘miserable failure’ to point to President Bush.

Google has now solved that problem but Google is basically an elitist system where sites and content are judged by the PR ranking system and its algorithm and filters. One would like to believe it is a democratic system where the best and highest quality content rises to the top. One would like to…

Information is one thing but opinions and the quality of those opinions is something entirely different. Will the new semantic web/search be able to judge quality content and rank it as good as Google presently does?

Problems For Webmasters

Regardless of how the whole Semantic Web scenario plays out, it may have some consequences for webmasters and marketers. At least in the initial stages until you can adjust or optimize your sites to this new 400 pound Gorilla on the block.

One major concern is how will the literal translation or semantic meaning of your site’s title and URL determine your placement in a semantically themed search engine? Most webmasters know to place their major keywords in their site’s domain name but, if you cover many topics within your site, this is not always possible.

Plus, does a Semantic Web mean everything will probably have to be tagged to the nth degree as we are seeing in blogs, social media and Web 2.0? Thankfully this can be easily done with free software such as WordPress which has tagging already built into its programming.

If we do get truly semantic search, wouldn’t on page factors play an even greater role for ranking? Special care would have to be taken as regards to your keywords and keyword variations. Great care will also have to be taken with page Titles, Meta Tags and your URLS.

I notice I am listed in Hakia for certain keywords but those have the direct phrases in the URLS.

Keen observers will also note that Google is now listing five or six related links in the number one SERPs position for certain keyword phrases. All these links come from the same site but are they more semantically related to the search enquiry than traditional links we have seen in Google? Or are they more in line with the gallery pages we see in Hakia?

Of course, jumping to any conclusions based on just one or two examples is foolhardy to say the least. Especially where search engines are concerned.

Brave New Internet

No doubt, Semantic Search or a Semantic Web poses some difficult obstacles and challenges as we seek a more human response from all those bits and bytes. For example, will semantic search mean we will have more closely focused sites strictly sticking to the topic of the url or domain name. Will the semantic web be more restricting than liberating?

When it is all said and done, will we really be able to devise a computer/machine/system that will be able to truly interpret the vast stored knowledge and give us the right meaningful answers to our questíons? Will it be able to be programmed so it’s human enough to not only understand but also interpret the subtle differences and meanings we have for different words in the whole context of a webpage?

Perhaps the most intriguing question, can someone take the present day ‘www index’ and then apply microformats or even new technology to this massive data and build a supplemental exclusive extension of the present day web? Turn it into a more semantic ‘natural language search’ accessible index. If such a gigantic feat was even feasible, you would also have to wonder who could have the resources to make such a creature possible!

As we have seen from Google a dance is not necessarily a dance and a slap is not necessarily a slap. Could an index be more than an index? It may be too early to tell, but Google will probably be better equipped to quickly adjust than anyone to this new Semantic Web whatever shape or form it takes.

Author:  Titus Hoskins is a full-time online marketer. For the latest and most effective web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Software Or for the most powerful marketing software try: Internet Marketing Tools

Search engines read text and not much else. Because they can’t generally index graphics, search engines rely on the text in web sites to provide information about the site content, which they can compare with search queries.

Webmasters therefore need to use body text on any pages on the site that they want indexed by the search engines and ranked highly for matching search queries. Not graphical text that was created in design software, but actual, visible body text. Not sure if your site uses graphical or body text? A good rule of thumb that I learnt from search engine guru Danny Sullivan is to try and highlight the text with your mouse. If you can drag your mouse over individual words in the text when viewing it in a browser, chances are this is body text and the search engines can read it.

(figure 1 - What site visitors see on non text-heavy pages)

(figure 2 - What search engines see on non text-heavy pages)

The most important page on which to use body text is the home page. Above is an example of a home page that uses graphical text instead of body text. Figure 1 shows what content the site visitors see, while Figure 2 shows the content a search engine sees and indexes.
How much information about a site’s content does a page like the one above provide a search engine? That’s right, very little. With next to no text to be found, the search engine would have to rely on the page’s Title and META Tags to tell it what the page is about. With such little information to go on, it is unlikely that a search engine would consider this page a relevant match for search queries relating to its content. To remedy this, it is widely recommended that each web page you want listed in search engines should contain at least 250 words of visible body text.

Keyword-Rich Text
While it’s a good idea to use plenty of body text on web pages, if that text doesn’t contain relevant keywords and phrases that people type in to the search engines, there’s not much point, because a site isn’t going to be found for logical search queries anyway. Many web sites make the mistake of including text on their site that is either unrelated to their products and services, or full of marketing-speak like “Internet solutions” or “superior services”. The Internet is plagued with web sites selling particular items without once making reference to those items in their site text. Weird huh?
For a search engine to find a site relevant for a particular search query, it MUST find that search query somewhere in that site. The easiest way to ensure this is to include logical keywords and phrases within the visible text on web pages, as well as in the Title and META tags. The best way for webmasters to find keywords that searchers are actually using is by conducting keyword research of their target market on a site such as Keyword Discovery or WordTracker.
Once it is determined what search terms perspective visitors are commonly typing in to search engines, they can then be compared to the goods and services offered on the site and the body text can be adjusted accordingly. Sites lacking any keyword research tend to use very generic, unfocused body copy, or sales-oriented “hype”. Neither style contributes to high search engine rankings.
Target keywords and search phrases placed strategically throughout your body copy give your pages a much higher ranking potential on search engines for related searches. But it’s not as easy as throwing the keywords into your site text willy-nilly. You must ensure that the keywords are integrated seamlessly so their repetition is unobvious and so that the text flows smoothly for the reader.
Don’t compromise the readability of your copy to achieve this - hire an expert copywriter to strike the right balance if need be.

SEO Copywriting

Before writing your web site copy, you should research potential keywords and phrases that your target audience may use in search engines and then narrow the list down to your priority terms for each page, sorted in order of importance. You should then use those target search terms as a basis for the creation of optimized Title and META tags for each page on your site. Once you’ve done that, it’s time to integrate those same target search terms into your visible web page copy. We call this SEO copywriting. But exactly how do we do it?

Speak to Your Audience
Don’t lose site of the reader when writing your body copy. Integrating your keywords is important, but not if you are sacrificing the readability of your site and losing the attention of your audience. Put yourself in their shoes like you did when researching your keywords. What are they looking for? What do they need? How will your product/service help them? Does it represent value for money?
Be emotive when describing your products and services. Describe how your product/service will make them feel or look, how it will improve their lives, give them more time etc. Use trigger words that people respond to such as “free”, “success”, “you”, “cash” etc. Not sure what these are? Check out Words That Sell reports. These reports are perfect if you are targeting a specific industry or profession because they define what keywords people in over 38 industries respond to and what they expect when making a buying decision.
Not sure who your audience is or what they’re looking for? Why not ask them? Use a free survey service such as Survey Monkey to learn more about them so you can write “to” them and not “at” them. You could even draft various styles of body copy and obtain feedback from your site visitors to determine what copywriting style works better for them.

Use Easy to Understand Language
The Internet is no place for verbosity. People are in a hurry - they want to find what they seek quickly and easily with the least hassle possible. You can help them in this quest by ensuring your site pages use simple language and easy to grasp concepts throughout. For example instead of “brand-building web information architects”, use “website designers specializing in brand promotion”. Keep the large chunks of text on each page to a minimum, using bullet points, white space, graphics, lists and sub-headings to break it up and make it easier to read. This rule of thumb is especially important when creating landing pages for pay per click and other advertising campaigns.
Use examples to get your main points across or to demonstrate your product benefits. Use the old WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) adage when composing your body copy to keep the user’s interests at top of mind. Remember your international visitors by incorporating regional word usage (such as organize versus organize or jewelry versus jewellery) and avoid technical jargon that could alienate. Want your visitor to take a particular action? Spell it out for them in plain English, for example Click here to Buy Now, Subscribe to our free newsletter, Bookmark this page now etc. These references are called “Calls to Action”.

Build Your Copy Around Your Keywords
You should always build your page copy around your keywords and not the other way around. If your existing page copy doesn’t contain any of your target search keywords, you’re going to have to rewrite it! Start from scratch if you have to. The secret is to focus. Search engines aren’t going to rank your web site about socks highly if your body copy talks about foot sizes. You need to get specific. It sounds really obvious, but if you sell socks, make sure your site copy has plenty of references to the word socks! If you sell green wool socks, target the phrase “green wool socks” and not “foot apparel in lovely shades of emerald”! Who’s going to search for socks using that phrase?
At the risk of sounding like Dr Seuss, if you want to be found for, big socks, small socks, cotton socks and wool socks, then mention them all. Better still, sort your copy into categories based on your various products and services. If you sell wool socks AND cotton socks, then have a page dedicated to each kind. This allows you to target niche keywords within your copy and meet the search engine’s relevancy guidelines for related search queries.

Keyword Integration
So imagine you’ve added plenty of text to your pages and the copy flows well for the reader. You’ve researched your keywords and phrases and now you’re faced with the dilemma of integrating the keywords into your copy. So how do you satisfy the search engine’s craving for keywords without interrupting the copy flow for the reader? The answer is: very carefully.
Let’s take a look at a practical example. We have a client that specializes in luxury adventure travel. Before I optimized their site, part of the home page copy read like this:
“We specialize in providing vacations for people who want a personal service. We bring to our efforts a fanatical obsession with quality and exclusivity. We also bring a freshness, an outward-going passion for discovery which justifies our growing reputation as one of the world’s top travel providers. We can put together packages that include all adventure activities, accommodation, transport and food”.
Extensive Keyword Discovery keyword research for the client had determined that the site should target the following key phrases:
• adventure travel

• best adventure vacations

• tailored travel

• overseas adventure travel

• luxury travel packages
So taking our original home page text, the challenge was to integrate these keywords carefully and naturally so as not to disturb the logical flow of the copy and lose the interest of the visitor. Here’s how I did it:
“We specialize in providing the best adventure vacations for people who want a personal and tailored travel service. We bring to our efforts a fanatical obsession with quality and exclusivity. We also bring a freshness, an outward-going passion for discovery which justifies our growing reputation as one of the world’s top overseas adventure travel providers. We can put together luxury travel packages that include all adventure activities, accommodation, transport and food”.
Note that the key phrase “overseas adventure travel” accommodates the phrase “adventure travel” too. Voila! The search engines are happy because the site contains text content relevant to related search queries, the client is happy because we were able to integrate the keywords without distracting the visitor and I’m happy because I know the site is going to rank highly for the client’s target search terms.
Now it’s your turn – go tackle your web site copy!

Author:  Kalena Jordan is the search industry’s first (and most loved) “agony aunt”. She is also one of the longest-serving search marketers in the world. As Director of Studies at the Search Engine Collage, Kalena welcomes challenging or tricky questions about search engines.

Beginning on April 14th, 2007, a firestorm blew through the Internet community with the search engine optimization (SEO) community burning the hottest. The embers were warm and waiting for a strong wind to blow and kick up the flames, but it took Matt Cutts, the Google engineer extraordinaire to fire the flames with an off-the-cuff comment about “paid links.”

The flames raged and in most forums, the wind quickly shifted moving the firestorm back towards Cutts and Google. Thread Watch offered the most biting rebuttal to Cutts’ comments: Google Wants Reports of Paid Links… What a Joke and The Real Reason Google Doesn’t Like Paid Links.
Aaron Wall at Thread Watch is a respectable fellow, and he tore into Google with a ferociousness that I had not anticipated. Matt Cutts tried to answer some of Aaron’s questions, but it seemed that Cutts’ rebuttals only added more fuel to the fire.
I would not have wanted to be in Matt Cutts’ shoes that week. Oh my, it was brutal!
Even on Cutts’ own blog where the “paid link” comment originally surfaced (Hidden Links), Danny Sullivan posted a question that went unanswered, so Sullivan commented about it on his site: Time For Google To Give Up The Fight Against Paid Links?
Search Engine Watch even mentioned this issue and linked to additional forums where the debate was raging: Google Goes to War on Paid Text Links
What Most Readers Took From Cutts’ Comments
There were only a few readers who took Matt Cutts’ comments to be brotherly-advice.
The vast majority of people were screaming that Google intended to exercise their “monopoly control” over the Internet to run all of their competitors out of business.
Generally, I am not a “reactionary” type person. But for about an hour, even I had a ball in the pit of my stomach.
The ball passed from the pit of my stomach when I read a post that mirrored an opinion I have openly written about numerous times before: How does Google determine the “intent” of a person making a link? They can’t!
Understanding The Nuances Of Similar Items
Some people suggest that I should be ashamed of myself for speculating about the future of Google’s algorithms. There is even one clown, who has suggested that I should fear mentioning Matt Cutts’ name in an article, because I am bound to draw Cutts’ ire against me and my businesses. But, I am not worried.
I am simply laying out my “speculative” opinion about what Cutts’ comments might mean to my business and yours. You are free to use your own brain to judge the value of my words.
Am I playing a double standard when I say that Google cannot determine the intent of the person placing a link, and then I comment on how I interpret the future of the Google search algorithms? I don’t think so, and let me tell you why.
Google uses algorithms (software programs) to make distinctions about what a web page is about, how they value that page, and to judge the nature of a link.
I use my intellect (or as some would suggest, my lack thereof) to make a judgment about what Google has told us we should expect from them in the future.
I trust software to a certain extent, but software cannot always read the nuance that separates two very similar items. So, how can the Google algorithm be expected to determine the intent of a person who placed a link?
It has always been my contention that humans are “required” in any process that must make an interpretation of nuance. In my businesses, we refuse to trust computers to make judgments of nuance, because they can’t. That is the reason we employ human beings to process orders.
What Is Google’s Intent Behind The Paid Links Issue?
The whole of Cutts’ argument seems to hinge on nixing “paid links” that are designed to manipulate or “game Google’s PageRank” and to a lesser extent, their organic search results. Google seems to be really agitated that webmasters are “selling links based on the PageRank value of a page.”
The problem is that webmasters are selling an intangible asset that is wholly owned by Google and maintained for “Google’s benefit.” Webmasters are selling this Google asset, but Google will not receive any of the proceeds from that sale.
As a result, Cutts suggested that webmasters should use some method that Google’s spider can use to recognize and distinguish “paid links” from “given links.” Since Google’s algorithm is based on the theory that links are given to websites that deserve those links, the paid links on high PageRank pages can really skew Google’s PageRank values and its organic search results.
Here Is Where It Gets Ugly
Both honest and dishonest people inhabit this Internet.
Google wants webmasters who are selling links to distinguish paid links from given links, so that Google can ignore “links purchased to influence PageRank.”
If honest people distinguish paid links in a way that Google can recognize, then the market demand for those links will dry up. Once the PageRank value of a link is taken away from the buyer, the buyer will be forced to purchase links based only on the traffic that the specific web page receives. If all paid link decisions were based only on a web page’s traffic, then the market value of a link would be decimated.
Once a webmaster tells his link-buying customers that his or her links will no longer carry PageRank value to the buyer’s website, then the value of that link will drop in most cases by 80% or more. Why would a webmaster want to reduce the market value of his links by 80%?
Although Google’s links do not pass PageRank to the websites that are in their index or paid listings, we have to ask ourselves one thing. Would Google be willing to take a step that would reduce the market value of their own links by 80%? They certainly would not do anything that would cut their own bottom line that deeply, yet they are asking webmasters to do just that.
This is the reason people are teed off at Google. At least 80% of the market value of a link is driven by the PageRank value of the web page where the link will be placed.
Dishonest people don’t care to play by the rules; they will continue to sell their PageRank value, as long as they continue to have buyers. Only the honest will suffer.
Link Buyers Are Green With Envy
Link Buyers are envious of the PageRank value given to other web pages, and they want a bit of that value passed over to their own websites.
Link buyers are green with envy, because they can see that little green bar in the top of their browser that tells them how much value Google gives a web page in its algorithms.
If Google were to keep PageRank as a private value, known only to them, then “paid links” would not be an issue for them to manage.
If the public cannot see what a page’s PageRank value is, then link buyers would not be able to use PageRank to influence their link buying decisions, and webmasters would not be able to market their PageRank value to other websites.
How Simple Is That?
All Google has to do to solve this problem of theirs, is to take away the indicator people use to buy and sell PageRank.
Someone suggested to me that Google would never do away with the PageRank indicator in their toolbar, because Google feels that it is the only thing that ensures that people will keep the Google toolbar in their browser. Personally, I will continue to use the Google toolbar for my searches, even if the PageRank indicator was not there, because I like the search results Google gives to me. But that is just my opinion, and I am only one person out of millions of Google toolbar users.
What it boils down to is this. If Google is serious about nixing schemes to buy and sell PageRank, then they would simply take their PageRank indicator away from us. But will they take it away? Only time will tell.
Author:  Bill Platt offers article ghost writing and article distribution services through thePhantomWriters.com. He also offers a guaranteedlink building service, utilizing article marketing as its foundation, through LinksAndTraffic.com. If you have any questions about Bill’s services, you can reach him by phone from 9am-6pm, Monday through Friday at 405-780-7745.

When it comes to HTML, you can always count on accuracy and detail delivering your website’s content in proper order to the search engines. If you are new to website building, or are struggling to understand why your website is not performing this article may be of tremendous value to you.

First, let’s look at meta tags, these are the main points of interest to the search engines, they do not look at a webpage as humans do, so meta tags are the brail, if you will, to what they see. Meta tags should always be between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags, like so:

<head>

<title>(Your Website Title)</title>

<meta name=”description” content=”(Your website’s description) “>

<meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword,keyword,keyword,etc “>

<meta name=”Author” content=”www.your-website.com”>

<meta name=”owner” content=”www.your-website.com”>

<meta name=”classification” content=”(The main subject matter of your site) “>

<meta name=”copyright” content=”copyrighted 2006″>

<meta name=”rating” content=”General”>

<meta name=”revisit-after” content=”15 days”>

<meta name=”ROBOTS” content=”ALL”>

</head>

The <BODY> section is where all the content goes about your site, closed by </BODY>

The next step is to have the search engines focus on your main points of interest. You can call attention to these words or phrases inside your content section using HEADING symbols;

<H1> Making Money Online </H1>

<H2>Top Paying Keywords</H2>

<H3> Landscape Rock </H3>

Just encase these phrases with the <H1></H1> etc, wherever they fall within the content.

This draws special attention to the search engines and helps your site rank higher in the search engines. Do not use more than 3 <H> tags or it will only distract from what the search engines consider important on your webpage.

In your keyword meta tags above, adding the right keywords is important. Use keywords that highlight your subject matter, but avoid using, a, and, the, more, less, again, those type of words are frowned upon by the search engines. Search engines don’t actually read, they just want to know the relevant words in your content.

Using Top Paying Keywords is a way to increase your Adsense Ads revenue, if you use them to benefit from the content or subject matter of your webpage. This is a very valuable asset you can add to your site, if you apply the right keywords.

Alternate tags is another great way to align your website for optimum display for the search engines. Alternate tags are used with images or pictures on your webpage. They allow the search engines to recognize the picture with words you provide. For example;

A picture html description would look like this:

<img border=”0″ src=”internet-traffic-2.gif”>

By adding the alternate tag, you can add keywords that are relevant to the picture or the content of your page, like this:

<img border=”0″ alt=”website traffic” src=”internet-traffic-2.gif” >

Anchor Text is a way to focus on keywords that link to another page or website. Again, search engines really like this and it draws attention to the relationship of keywords and relevant webpages or other websites.

< a href=”http://www.Your-website.com”>Making Money Online < /a>

For more priceless information like this lesson article, visit http://wealthsmith.com.

Author:  Jim Wilson is an online writer,entrepreneur, and all round knowledgeable kind of guy, that enjoys sharing his discoveries both on and off the web. “Life is short, and whatever we find, we can’t take with us, so why not leave a trail for others to follow.” Visit Jim’s site at http://wealthsmith.com and see what affiliate programs are great sellers and other valuable information that will improve your website’s performance.