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By Bill Platt in Featured

webtrafficFor a number of years, many online marketers honestly thought that the only thing they needed to do to be successful online was to build a website, and the buyers would come to them.

They heard all of the success stories from people who claimed that they had simply built a website, and people just started to arrive in huge numbers.

The story, as it is told, is:

These folks built a website, then the search engines found their websites and started showing people the link to their website. And the people using the search engines saw the link to their websites and saw that it was good. Search engine users saw the link and, as if it were the only link in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), they clicked the link by the thousands. And hoards of people came to the website with fists full of money, ready to buy what the website was selling.

Some people still believe this is how the search engines work. They have built their websites, and they are waiting anxiously for the “Traffic Fairy” to sprinkle his magic dust on their websites too, so that they can also make lots of money.

Are YOU Still Waiting For The Traffic Fairy?

I hope not.

By Debralee in Featured

editor2A recent video posted on SPN Videos brings to light the dilemma many small businesses face, “When is too much advertising bad for business?” The need to to cultivate a continuous stream of new business is a constant worry for all business owners and they repeatedly try different marketing methods and advertising campaigns, with little or no success.

Enter Groupon – Small businesses are taking their advertising dollars and putting them to test with Groupon to help build their clientele and provide a service or product at a “group” discount to those individuals who buy-in on the deal. A certain number must be sold for the discount to apply, but, unfortunately, what has happened to some businesses is they have not set a limit to exceed and they are inundated with business. Too much? Yes, too much when customers complain and businesses loose customers rather than gain happy, satisfied ones. Watch the video…

Other Worthy Items of Interest

Check out this website I came across recently…Ben the Body Guard. Quite the avant-garde web design. Not sure what the product is yet, but a very interesting site. Your comments?

Here is a great article on a common problem all web designers face – Why Percentage-Based Designs Don’t Work in Every Browser posted on the webmonkey site.

An finally….Jerry Bader’s newsletter article on Friday, How to Deliver a Marketing Message On Your Website, got some rave reviews…if you haven’t read it yet – take a moment, it is definitely worth the time spent.

Regards,

Debralee
Editor, SiteProNews

By Chris Holgate in Featured

windowslogoA couple of people recently have mentioned to me recently that I’m yet to review Windows Vista in follow up to the feature that I did regarding the beta (test) edition last year. This isn’t an oversight on my part but something I did intentionally as a true review of an Operating System requires the writer to use it day in day out for an extended period before giving his opinion. I’ve now been using Windows Vista since its launch date at the beginning of the year so I’ve now had a couple of months to get used to the replacement for Windows XP and am ready to give my opinion.

My first observation would be that I am completely unable to ascertain why such a development took so long – Microsoft started production on their new OS way back in 2001 and it seems bizarre to me that it took their best programmers until 2007 to come up with the finished product. As much as I liked Windows XP there is no escaping the fact that an update was well overdue and now we’re left asking ourselves whether was it worth the wait?

So that I can get them out the way I want to make my criticisms known from the start. First off Windows Vista eats low powered machines for breakfast; I had a relatively new AMD Sempron 2800+ with 512mb of RAM and a 64mb graphics card which Vista just annihilated. A couple of hardware upgrades later (1Gb of additional RAM, 256mb graphics card) and the new OS is running perfectly – for some this hardware upgrade cycle isn’t a problem but those with low powered machines on a limited budget should beware.

I also don’t like the fact Microsoft have given a choice of five different versions to choose from as this can only serve to confuse the end and additionally we in the UK we are paying such a disproportion amount extra when compared with our US cousins.

Despite having said the above, yes, I do like Vista and no, given the choice I wouldn’t go back to Windows XP.

When you first install Vista the only real differences you notice is the shiny new graphical interface which in many ways is more gimmicky than genuinely useful. For example there is an alternative to for cycling through the opened programs that displays all the opened applications you have stacked one at a time in 3D. Additionally items such as the tops of windows, the start menu and so forth are semi opaque and features such as these don’t really offer me any real advantages other than to look pleasing to the eye. I suppose if you spend your days, like I do, looking at a computer screen then such features will make serve as an improvement as if you’re to spend your time using an Operating System it might as well be pleasing to look at.

Most the real improvements won’t even be noticed by the end user but that doesn’t mean to say that they’re not important. Microsoft was hit hard in Windows XP with viruses such as the Blaster Worm which crippled PC’s all over the world and served as a nice little revenue stream for computer repair people everywhere. When it came to creating Vista Microsoft actually gave early versions of the Operating System to software hackers and simply told them to ‘break it’ so that hopefully any major security issues would be discovered before the software was finalized.

Two features I do particularly like are as follows. When using a flash memory drive you can allow Vista to use it to cache commonly used programs and data. This reduces the need for Windows to use relatively slow ‘virtual memory’ on your hard disk so your system speed should be increased as a result. Additionally the search functionality is so, so much better than under Windows XP – I found it infuriating how long it took to search for an item under XP but in Vista when I look for something it searches my hard disk and outlook messages in a matter of seconds rather than minutes.

There have been many improvements to the applications present within Windows which I’d like to cover but unfortunately as I have already overrun my space for this week you’ll have to wait until next Friday for the second part of this Vista roundup.

Chris Holgate writes a weekly article of all things tech related. He is a director and copyrighter of the online computer consumables business Refresh Cartridges http://www.refreshcartridges.co.uk An archive of the articles can be found at http://www.computerarticles.co.uk.

By Dirik Hameed in Featured

cloudtechGranted, cloud computing is a new technology and has a great many flaws. However without concentrating on the possible downsides, it’s worth considering the positives.

Using a cloud platform does hold a number of excellent advantages. These advantages are great as it means companies are taking on cloud computing for their internet presence as well as the infrastructure. Hosting companies are now looking at building more of there products around cloud platforms.

Scalability wise, there is no need to scramble a team to source, setup and then commission new hardware when you suddenly get a massive pick up of business. After a few weeks you don’t have to take your new hardware back out of service as demand has dropped off. Just sit back and relax instead and add and remove capacity as and when you see fit. Cloud computing has a pricing model which is based upon consumption. Thus companies only have to pay for what they have used, which is the downside with dedicated servers.

Implementation is easy, without the need to purchase extra hardware, software licenses or setup costs. A company can use a cloud computing solution for the fraction of the cost of an on-site solution. This streamlines your time and money by being able to have accurate forecasts of costs.

Being able to have skilled professionals available with any new technology that gets popular is important. With these new technologies large vendors will offer customers a quality service. The solution is large enough to be able to supply data centers with endless amounts of storage and computing power.

You also gain better control over your internal resources. By giving the cost and burden of managing the servers to a third party it allows for the in house team to work on more important things. There is also then less staff training to think about. Cloud computing makes things a lot easier.

You should experience a better quality of service. Particularly if normally you happened to have network outages you had to fix yourself, which can in some cases be simple or take hours or even days. A good cloud host will offer you an SLA and will take care of any issues. The company should therefore respond very quickly to any problems. You will certainly sleep better at night, knowing someone is taking care of things for you.

Security is of utmost importance in a cloud environment. People believe that because its not one machine with the hard disk inside it that the whole world and his dog has access to it. The data is held in a way that proven cryptographic services are involved to authenticate users. You could also opt to encrypt the data before transmitting it to a 3rd party. This extra encryption will cause considerable increased load on your cloud instance meaning that you could end up paying a lot more for the extra CPU and memory needed.

If you believe a cloud software setup is a good idea, then you may wish to log-on to Onapp at www.onapp.com.

By Rhonda Jones in Featured

BlogBlogs and websites are very prevalent on the web today.

Often it is hard to distinguish one from the other as both look and operate similarly. Because of this, it is not surprising that many people do not know the differences between a blog and a website; however, each has it’s own uniqueness and function. So what really differentiates a blog from a website?

- Structure. Websites are more complex in structure compared to blogs and may take a little more technical skills to create. Websites also give you more flexibility as you can easily change the types and looks of pages as you build them. Although blogs are easier to create, their designs are limited to the templates you find unless you hire someone to modify them. Building a website requires more in depth skills and knowledge in technologies such as html, AJAX, PHP, Java and many more. The good news is that there are many hosting companies that provide customers with professional website templates like Yolo, Homestead, and Web.com.

- Formality. Websites are more formal than blogs. Websites are usually created for business purposes to market products and services of businesses or companies. Here, the target audience is potential customers or buyers while in blogging, it is more personalized.

However, in recent years, bloggers are realizing the potential to make money with blogs as well and they are partnering specific products and service with their passions and dreams. In blogging, the personality, likes, dislikes, and tone often show through.

Most blogs are developed around a specific theme or topic that is personally chosen by the blogger and allows for a lot of flexibility. In contrast, websites are generally more focused, relates to one topic, and keeps more of a business tone.

- Features. Technically, blogs are just a subtype of a website and contain many of the same basic features. However, with a blog, these features are generally integrated into every page, meaning, when you make a change on one page, it will show up on all pages.

- Maintenance. Blogs are probably easier to maintain. One of the main reasons is that the templates are uniform throughout. When you make a change to one items, it updates all items in the blog. For many websites, you may need to make many individual changes in order to make the changes or get the look you want. Websites give you much more flexibility.

Generally, websites are for businesses who intend to sell and invite prospects and new clients while blogs are for private individuals who intend to share their thoughts, opinions, and ideas to others as well as interact with their readers through comments and feedback. You can make money with both and blogs are increasing in popularity for generating an income.

Websites and blogs can also be interchangeable. It is possible to create a website and include a blog for new posts and updated information.

A website promotes professionalism and a business-like atmosphere that encourages trust for your potential prospects that you are a well-established business or company.

Did you know that businesses that have a blog receive 55% more visitors, 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages than those that didn’t have a blog. Learn how you can Create a Blog in Minutes at www.blogyourbusinessnow.com and get a Free Blog Marketing Guide.

By Bill Platt in Featured

webtrafficWhen I browse forums, I constantly see webmasters asking the question, “What is the best way to drive traffic to my website?”

On the surface, this may seem a logical and simple question to answer, but the truth is that there is no one “best way” to drive traffic to any website.

In the forums, I will say that the “best ways” to drive traffic to a website are: article marketing, SEO, forum marketing, social media, paid advertising, etc.

But between you and I, that is a canned answer given to those people who are not yet equipped to handle the “big picture” answer.

What is the Big Picture of Traffic Generation?

The big picture is that there are literally dozens of methods to deliver traffic to your website, AND there are millions of sources through which you can get advertising.

Furthermore, no one can give anything more than a canned answer, until they fully understand your online business and its target market — the people “who are most likely to buy what you are selling”.

The big picture is that if you are not bringing the right kind of traffic to your website, your traffic is doing nothing more for you than feeding your hit counter and stroking your ego.

Traffic for the sake of traffic is vanity.

Choose Your Target Audience Wisely

Just because the word FREE is still one of the most heavily searched keywords online does not mean that your online business will be served well by FREE.

Back in 2000, I did a consulting gig for a small business owner. He was complaining that his website was getting 2000 visitors per month and people were signing up left-and-right for his mailing list, yet he hadn’t made a single sale online!!

I discovered that in order to “build his mailing list”, he was giving away one free office chair every month.

His site had a free link to it on hundreds of “giveaway websites”.

On the surface, this may seem a good thing, right?

Wrong!

An old girlfriend spent all of her time online, going from website to website, signing up for “free giveaways”.

She was winning about $500 per month in free stuff — ranging from computer hard drives to food.

Twelve years later, she still does not spend any money online!

She is a freebie-seeker, not a buyer.

And my client had a big list of freebie-seekers looking to get a chance to win his “free stuff”. Those people did not care that he was in the business of “selling office furniture”. They were not on his list to “buy”. They were on his list to “get”.

I advised the client to kill the “free office chair giveaway” immediately. He did. His traffic dropped 90% in 30 days.

I advised him to construct really cheap product offers for his freebie-seeker mailing list, but not to hold his breath. I also advised him to create a new mailing list for “buyers only”. He did both.

Then we started rearranging product displays on his website. Within 30 days, he was making money from his website, and 90 days later, he was making money from his buyer’s list too.

With 90% less traffic, he was finally making money, because he was able to focus his time and energy on the people who actually wanted to buy what he was selling.

Your Traffic Building Should Follow the Same Profit Principles

Traffic for the sake of traffic is a fools’ game. Don’t do it!

When people start to buy traffic from Google Adwords and other PPC (Pay-Per-Click) providers, the natural inclination is to construct the advertisement, so that MORE people will click the link.

Many people believe that all they need to be more successful is “more traffic”, but that is dangerous thinking — especially when you are buying traffic by the click!!

“More traffic” is NOT the answer. “Better targeted traffic” is the real answer to profits and success!!

Instead of using the word FREE in a PPC ad, I always pre-qualify the people clicking my paid ads!!

If I am paying for traffic by the click, I want to make darn sure that the people clicking my ad are more likely to take the action I want them to take!!

For example:

* Our $27 Ebook.

* Submit Your Email Address.

* Submit Your Telephone Number.

* Our inexpensive service.

* For a one-time payment.

As you can see, I am telling people what to expect when they land on my page, before they click my link and make me pay for their visit.

When people know you are going to expect them to take a specific action, they will decide how serious they are to learn about your offer, before they click. Those “stop words” in your PPC ad copy will STOP the freebie-seekers and tire-kickers dead in their tracks! The freebie-seekers and professional tire-kickers will go to your competitors, instead of to your site…

This is to your benefit on two counts:

1) You don’t have to waste your advertising budget on untargeted visitors. After all, you want buyers and action-takers to visit your sites, right? And,

2) Your competitors get to waste their advertising dollars chasing people who have little or no commitment to buying the offer or opting in to the sales funnel.

Let your competitors spend their advertising dollars and time serving those people who are least likely to take the desired action, so that you can focus on closing more sales.

When you are paying for traffic by the click, pre-qualify the people who are going to look at your offer.

When you are paying for your advertising by a set price, such as with daily placement or display advertising, then it is fine to pursue those people who are a little less targeted, with a FREE offer.

Warm Up Your Prospects With Your Promotional Copy

There are dozens of free and paid traffic generation methods you can use to build traffic to your website.

Regardless of the traffic methods you choose, if you can pre-qualify and “warm up” your prospects before sending them to your website, you may find as I and others have done — that you can increase your conversion rates for the traffic you do receive.

This is why professional article marketers take so much time to fine-tune and perfect their articles. When you utilize article marketing to its fullest potential, you can talk directly to those people in your target market, pre-qualify your prospects, and warm up your readers to the possibility of purchasing what you are selling.

But honestly, article marketing is not for everyone.

If you don’t fancy yourself a writer, there are still dozens of additional methods you can use to deliver targeted traffic to your websites.

With experience, you will find that the better you target your traffic, the more likely you will be to close the sale.

And with a better closing ratio, you might even find that you have more advertising dollars available to grow your business at a faster pace.

Unless You Sell Clothing, One Size Does Not Fit All

While “one size fits all” seems to be a “perfect fit” for clothing manufacturers — pun intended, it should never be considered as a workable marketing plan for any real business.

Article Marketing works for me, but it may not work for you.

But the good news is that there are more than three-dozen free and paid traffic generation methods available to help you drive traffic to your websites — get acquainted with them. Then figure out which ones will be the “best fit” for your business.

The first step to learning how to increase your traffic is discovering the diversity of traffic sources available. Reviewers are praising Bill Platt’s new Traffic Generation Report for its quality and attention to detail. One reviewer called it, “Comprehensive!!” Another said, “You could always spend $1500 or more for one of the ‘guru’ courses and still get less info.” Get your copy here: http://thephantomwriters.com/multiple-traffic-streams/.

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

webtrafficThis is a summary of the presentation given by Alan Long, from Experian Hitwise at SMX Melbourne last month, about how to make conversion optimization work for your business.


Survey of Australian Marketers

Conversion optimization is basically like product placement in a store, says Alan. In retail stores, you switch your products around, change signage etc. to see where/how they are best placed to produce the most sales. This is what Conversion Optimization is all about, but using your web site content.

Experian researched 300 Australian marketing professionals from multiple industries about conversion optimization via an independently commissioned study. The idea was to explore how Australian organizations are using online marketing channels and assess their understanding of conversion optimization.

The study showed that 2.043 billion was spent in Australia on online marketing to the end of June 2010. That’s a 13 percent increase over last year. Aussie marketers are pumping more budget into online marketing to drive higher volumes of traffic.

Are marketers missing a trick when it comes to boosting web ROI? Yes, Alan says. Lots of money being spent, but very little of that is put into converting visitors into customers or measuring success.

At the moment, site visitors are the main measure of web site success for many marketers. However, conversion is a more a valid measure of success, with conversion rates typically running at 1-5 percent. The trend in Australia is towards boosting traffic rather than reviewing site performance to drive conversion.

But, Alan says, why attract large volumes of traffic to your website if no-one is buying or doing what you wanted them to? This failure likely stems from a lack of awareness around conversion optimization and how to measure success.


Six Signs Your Business Should be Doing Conversion Optimization:

1) You have a high spend on attraction activities or advertising that drives consumers to your website.
2) You have a high spend on website content look and feel.
3) You have a large amount of online traffic.
4) There is pressure to increase profitability but you’re unsure how to measure it.
5) You’re frequently making website changes based on guesswork.
6) You’re operating in a highly competitive industry.


Warning, Scary Statistics Ahead!

Almost half of Australian online marketers surveyed spend over 40 percent of budget driving traffic to their sites. Their biggest increase in spend will be on website updates (55 percent).

Of annual budgets allocated to online marketing:

  • 17% = creative and design
  • 13.5% = content development and updates
  • 13.2% = hosting, software and licenses
  • 11.3% = usability
  • 10.4% = programming and development
  • 8.2% = SEO
  • 7.1% = analysis and measurement
  • 7.1% = conversion optimization

Despite ongoing investment in web site design and traffic generation, 90% of marketers surveyed spent less than 10 percent of their budget on persuading existing visitors to take action! (conversion optimization). You need to compliment traffic generation with a website that provides the right experience, leading visitors to the desired action, says Alan, otherwise your web site is as effective as a billboard in the desert.


Big Brands Make the Same Mistakes

It wasn’t just the small companies making the mistakes either. The study showed that large brands throw big bucks at getting traffic with conversion rates of less than 5 percent. They have large volumes of traffic, however, they continue to compete for more online traffic by investing in expensive advertising and marketing, despite low conversion rates of sales or customers – many less than 5 per cent.

By focusing on attracting more customers to your website you are competing against your peers who often use similar tactics (e.g. display, pay-per click and search engine optimization). Instead of competing with others for traffic and squandering the traffic you get, you should be competing against yourself by optimizing your site for more conversions. This is a competition you’re guaranteed to win. How much better could you be doing? Why does one change work but another doesn’t? How much impact could it have on traffic and conversions if you tweak your landing pages or checkout process?


Lack of Understanding About Conversion Optimization

There is a significant lack of understanding of conversion optimization in Australia – 89 percent do not do ANY. Most of these companies don’t have the tools or knowledge to accurately measure it, let alone act on it. Meanwhile, 62 percent of those surveyed have never even heard of conversion optimization or don’t understand what it is.

Research found that 30 percent of Australian marketers either do not evaluate the success of their website or only evaluate it on an annual basis, while 26 percent don’t know what factor/s contribute most to the success of their websites. Almost 45 percent of marketers surveyed that DO evaluate the success of their websites believe total visits/unique visitors or page views per visit are the key indicators of success. Wow.

Of those marketers that know about and conduct conversion optimization, over half have a website conversion rate of over 11 percent – double the figure claimed by respondents who have never heard of it. Marketers who are using conversion optimization are gaining competitive advantage by maximizing the engagement and sales opportunities of their sites. They understand what impacts the performance of their web site and what needs to change in order to increase sales and/or participation.


Getting started with Conversion Optimization

Conversion optimization doesn’t require significant budget or a fresh online marketing strategy to be effective. The critical factors are using web expertise to research and identify what online clients want and taking the necessary steps to build engagement, says Alan. Here are 8 ways to get started:

1. Know what your customers want.
2. Present an appropriate call to action.
3. Design your layouts & forms with users in mind.
4. Test your processes.
5. Use reviews, ratings and endorsements.
6. Use promotions and find synergies.
7. Improve navigation search and filtering functionality.
8. Increase credibility.

By Jerry Bader in Featured

voiceHere’s a question for you? What do you need to be successful? What will it take for you to climb out of that deep, dark, dungeon of despair and mediocrity? What are you willing to do to be the best you can be?

Look around. Things are nuts, the economy stinks, politicians are goofy, people are addicted to cell phones, businesses are obsessed with Twitter and Google and Facebook; everything is made in China, and it’s all CRAP! You’re lucky if anything you buy works the way its suppose to and god help you if you complain. You’ll spend hours on the phone with some clown who doesn’t know, doesn’t care, and doesn’t get paid to really help you. They are the purveyors of frustration and creators of cynicism. Athletes pretentiously thank God for their base hits and million dollar contracts, and we watch in astonishment. Trust me, God doesn’t give a damn about who wins the next Nascar race, or that you get an even bigger flat screen plasma for your birthday. He’s got bigger fish to fry like global warming, child starvation, and deadly pandemics. You’re on your own fella. So get use to it.

So what’s a poor entrepreneur to do? Follow the big boys as if they were The Enlightened Ones. Right, how’s that worked out so far? Do you really want to go down the same road as GM or Lehman Brothers? Nobody is going to bail your ass out of trouble; you can count on that.

People have stopped thinking. We educate our kids to be engineers and technicians, but they don’t understand the world, they don’t understand people. Unable to get into med school or law they become Web entrepreneurs because they think it’s an easy way to make a buck. You never have to see or hear from customers, they’re not people they’re just digital ghosts with credit cards. Well maybe that’s the problem. Maybe that lack of communication skill is what’s wrong? So how do you communicate, how do you serve your public, how do you become a success?

By John Sylvester in Featured

In “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” by Charles Mackay, he treated many psychic states as that of the economically hackneyed word of today, “random”; the new bubble meme of demographic herds.

Will Self postured in an article for the New Statesman in 2009 that the word “random” has become a “nonce phrase” and ventured that ever since the credit crunch it registered with him that the word “random” has insinuated itself into British vocalisation by responding to the universal, but imperfectly acknowledged, awareness that it was bankers’ willingness to accept systematically flawed calculations of risk that led to the near-collapse of the Western financial system. “Random,” he asserts, has resurged like a talismanic word in a form of prayer.

While European banks are busily extending loans to bankrupt states on the basis that “they cannot go bankrupt”, bailouts have been issued to European governments like the burgeoning underclass of celebrity; as Greece and Ireland receive their billions, Portugal and Spain are under pressure to request even more.

And this has led some observers to note that the whole financial system seems to be tottering on the precipice, with Bloomberg predicting that as the global financial crisis moves on to Spain, the “big elephant” will spell Europe’s conclusive financial chapter over.

At the same time as the random meme takes hold of the instability in the Eurozone, it is causing the value of silver to spike, according to CNBC. A Manhattan coin dealer admitted: “This is probably the strongest demand there’s been in the last 25 years for silver,” as gold is now so expensive.

There is also talk of Belgium and Italy “being in danger”, and that if France and Germany continue to extend these “guarantees” they’ll get sucked into the maelstrom of the damned.

In “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,” there is a history of such national follies, such as England’s South Sea Bubble and Holland’s Tulip Frenzy. The Scottish historian Charles Mackay observed: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.” And that “money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of the multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper.”

These words take on their own peculiarity when one looks at the Dutch tulip mania of the early seventeenth century. At the time, the Dutch aristocracy was extremely wealthy, while the average Dutch worker in the 1600s made about 150 florins annually; a rare tulip bulb, however, could easily be sold for 1,000 florins. Tulips were worth more than gold.

But then the market crashed because the unregulated futures market or derivatives market for tulip bulbs had skyrocketed. Tulip bulbs had bubbled and the market abruptly collapsed. It was decreed that futures in tulips could no longer be traded as an investment, but only as an actual product in the marketplace. How strangely familiar.

Among the crowd syndrome of bubbles and financial manias, as described by Mackay, are the South Sea Company bubble of 1711–1720 and the Mississippi Company bubble of 1719–1720.

Bubbles had all seem so rare at the turn of the millennium, but the first recorded bubble case in England was that of the State Lottery in 1569. The South Sea Company had a monopoly in trade with South America, which underwrote English National Debt, which stood at £30 million. Shares immediately rose to 10 times their value; the country went wild and vast fortunes were made.

Then the bubble burst; stocks crashed and people all over the country lost all of their money, mostly the moneyed clergy, bishops and gentry, who lost their life savings. The whole country suffered a catastrophic loss of money and property. Suicides became a daily occurrence and the gullible mob, whose innate greed had lain behind this mass hysteria for wealth, demanded vengeance, much like it is today towards bankers in particular and elected governments (some unwittingly like the Obama’s inheritance of the global ponzi scheme) in general. Socially, the South Sea Company bubble caused frantic bankers to throng the lobbies of parliament until the Riot Act was read to restore order.

Will Self referred in another of his articles to The Stockholm Syndrome. When landing at the airport one day he observed guys with mobiles phones that were “either talking to Wotan or were schizophrenics”. He could not tell which. What is it nowadays with civil society, he mused, that anyone with a portable phone now believes they have an inalienable right to “yatter on in public, at inordinate length and as loudly as a trombonist”? As an antidote to this random meme, when “deranged persons” begin to “Samsung-soliloquise”, he tries to bring them to their senses by reading aloud from Schopenhauer…” The mobile bubble; the communications centre of the insane.

About a year ago I read, dubiously now, that the only country ever to go bankrupt was Newfoundland. Now I see that Spain defaulted on its financial obligations seven times during the 19th century alone; Argentina’s bankruptcy in 2001 was caused by a run on the banks following a collapse of the country’s national currency; Germany has the dubious distinction of having gone bankrupt not once, but twice in recent memory, the first during in the 1920s as a result of losing World War I; Britain was bankrupt after World War II; and Russia went bankrupt in 1998, when the former communist country suffered the “ruble crisis”.

In J.P. Chaplin’s “Rumour, Fear and the Madness of Crowds”, on 24th August 1926, one of the worst riots in the history of New York erupted, with between sixty to eight thousand people involved. And the cause of these unruly legions in the heart of New York City was the dead body of Rudolph Valentino as he lay in state.

It is said that it was an outbreak of mass hysteria in an era celebrated for excess and exhibitionism. In his words: “There seemed to be no limit to human ingenuity in contriving masterpieces of sheer stupidity.” The riots today seem so redolent of this one event.

Similarly, the exaggerated newspaper reports of wild grief and the long delay between the actor’s death and his departure for Hollywood added fuel to the fires of madness in conjunction with panic and fear.

Today, the financial auditorium, the false sanctity of grief, is fuelling another random meme. And in the words of Shakespeare, “the blind monster, with uncounted heads, the still discordant, wavering multitude” social media would do well to abandon its interactions on this subject lest it actively drives dialogue into fear and panic into the random meme.

John Sylvester is the media director of V9 Design & Build (http://www.v9designbuild.com) and an expert in search engine optimization and web marketing strategies.

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

QuestionDear Kalena

I have a question regarding google alerts. I have used them before to follow a topic or to stay informed about other articles regarding my website/blog niche. But can you find out your web ranking with this tool? I have had a look but I can’t get my head round it.

Thanks
Luis

————————————–

Hello Luis

You can’t really track your search rankings using Google Alerts. Such alerts are really only useful for tracking a specific topic or mentions of a brand / company that then get listed in the Google search results. They’re really handy for keeping track of a company’s online reputation.

For example, I have a client for whom I prepare a Social Mentions report every week. These social mentions consist mainly of web sites, blogs and social networking posts (e.g. tweets, Facebook status updates etc.) that mention their brand name. I use a combination of Google Alerts and Raven Tools for this purpose.

Speaking of Raven Tools, they DO offer a way to track your search engine rankings, as well as powerful historical ranking charts that can track your position in the top search engines for a particular keyword/phrase over a time frame set by you.

They have a 30 free trial and then a $19 per month option for tracking up to 3 websites – might be worth a try?

I should note here that I am a BIG fangirl of Raven Tools and a Pro member. I am also an affiliate, so the link above is my affiliate link if you want to use that (I get a small percentage of any sales that result) or you can use the normal link which has no affiliate ties.

The other (more time-consuming) way to check your rankings is manually, conducting a live search at a set time period on each of the main search engines and keeping a record via spreadsheet. Just remember to log out of any Google account before you check Google rankings, or else they might be skewed by Google Personalized Search.

Another very useful tool I’ve been using a lot lately is Google Insights for Search. With this Google tool, (still in Beta), you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. This type of data can tell you a lot more about your web site performance / niche potential than your search positions can.

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Got a Reader Rescue question of your own? Post it in the comments and you might see it featured here on the blog.

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