What is going to change?

Of course, Google hasn’t revealed the details of Google Caffeine yet. However, the new index has been live on some test servers and some Google employees also talked about the next index. The following factors might play a larger role in Google’s next index:

• Website speed: if you have a slow loading website, it might not get high rankings on Google.
• Broken links: if your website contains many broken links, this might have a negative impact of the position of your web pages in Google search results.
• Bad neighborhoods: Linking to known spammers and getting a lot of links from known spammers isn’t good for your rankings in Google’s current algorithm. The negative impact of a bad neighborhood will probably be even worse with Google Caffeine.
• The over-all quality of your website: Google’s new algorithm probably will take a closer look at the over-all quality of your website. It’s not enough to have one or two ranking factors in place.You’ll probably need good optimized content, a good website design with a clear navigation, good inbound links, a low bounce rate, etc. The number of social bookmarks might also play an increased role.

Factors like the age of a website, its past history, authority etc. will still play a role in Google’s new index. However, the effect of the different factors on your rankings will shift.

How can you adjust your web pages to Google’s new Caffeine index?

Although Google’s Caffeine update hasn’t been release yet, there are some things that you can do to increase the chances that your website will get good rankings in Google’s new index:

• Remove all spam elements from your web pages. Anything that might be considered spam can and will have a negative effect on the position of your web pages sooner or later. This includes text that has nearly the same color as the background, cloaking and fully automated linking systems.
• Check your website design and the navigation of your website. Your website should have a professional look and feel. The navigation should be easy to understand and your web pages should easily be parseable by search engine spiders.
• Get links from social bookmark websites. Social bookmark links already play a role in Google’s current algorithm and that role might increase.
• Check your links. You shouldn’t link to websites that look like spammers. It’s better to focus on selected quality links instead of as many links as possible.

Google Caffeine is going to be released after the holidays. If you follow the tips above, your website will be in a good position when Google’s new index will be online.

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The importance of link building

The Bing engineers know that link building is important and they describe link building as follows:

“Link building is a very important form of self-promotion on the Web. You contact webmasters of other, related websites and let them know your site exists. If the value that you have worked so hard to instill in your site is evident to them, they will assist their own customers by linking back to your site. That, my friend, is the essence of link building.”

In other words, reciprocal linking is fine. They also remind webmasters that link building is an ongoing process:

“Think of link building as your chance to build your reputation on the Web. As your website is likely one of your business’ most valuable assets, consider link building to be a primary business-building exercise. Just don’t make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution. You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time. Good things come to those who wait (and work smartly!).”

Things that you can do to get good links to your website

Here are the things that Bing recommends:

• You should develop your website as a brand and brand it consistently. People like to link to high quality websites.
• You should find relevant bloggers, industry websites and product reviewers and make them aware of your website.
• You can publish concise and informative press releases online.
• You can publish expert articles in article directories.
• You can participate in relevant conversations on blogs and forums and add a link to your website when applicable.
• You can use social networks to connect to industry influencers. Your profiles should contain links to your website.
• You can use email newsletters to notify people about new content on your website.
• You can launch a blog or a forum on your website.
• You can participate in relevant industry associations and their online forums.
• You should strive to become a trusted expert voice for your industry while promoting your website.

Warning: the following things will get your website in trouble

Just like Google and other major search engines, Bing doesn’t like to be cheated. If they detect unnatural linking patterns, your website might be penalized. The following things can trigger search engine filters:

• Your website get a lot of additional inbound links a very short time.
• Many links that point to your website are from unrelated websites or blog comments.
• Your web pages contain hidden links.
• You get links from links farms or automated link exchange systems.
• Paid links point to your website.
• Known spammers link to your website.
• Your website links to known spammers.

Here’s what Bing does when they find suspicious data that is related to your website:

“When probable manipulation is detected, a spam rank factor is applied to a site, depending upon the type and severity of the infraction. If the spam rating is high, a site can be penalized with a lowered rank. If the violations are egregious, a site can be temporarily or even permanently purged from the index.”

Getting inbound links requires some work. The Bing engineers are very clear about this fact: “Make no mistake: getting legitimate and highly valuable, inbound links is not a couch-potato task.”

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http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/best_practices

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 www.costofdoingnothing.com

The calculator is currently being showcased at The American Society for Training & Development’s 2009 International Conference & Exposition in Washington DC, the premier event for training and workforce development professionals from more than 70 countries.

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Site Tutor is pleased to announce that it has entered into a strategic alliance with SiteLab Interactive of La Jolla California. As part of the alliance, Martin Fenton will join the SiteLab management team as the Director of Business Development.  This alliance will benefit both companies. Site Tutor and its clients now have access to an in-house team of over 30 individuals who live and breathe the world of interactive marketing. In addition, SiteLab Interactive, which has seen its business double in 2009, realized it needed to add a seasoned industry executive to manage their growing business and the addition of Martin Fenton has allowed SiteLab to achieve that goal.

SiteLab Interactive, founded in 1994 as Bien Logic, has been a pioneer in the interactive marketing business. They originally were founded as a web design company, but over the years they have been at the forefront of this developing industry by adding services as they have become needed. Today, SiteLab is considered one of the top interactive agencies in the country offering SEM & SEO and social media services in addition to web design and development.

If you have any questions about the Site Tutor | SiteLab alliance, please email or call Martin at the contact information listed below.

Real Knowledge for Real Efforts,

Martin Fenton III Director of Business Development | Chief Tutor SiteLab Interactive – Recent Work P: 858-456-4720 x106 P: 619-437-4700 E: martin@sitelab.com E: martin@sitetutor.com

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Top 5 Reasons for Shopping Cart Abandonment

Shopping cart abandonment has been a problem since Pizza Hut received the first online purchase in 1993. (Yep, 1993 and Pizza Hut, one would think their marketing department would know about that.) Several reasons exist as to why people leave after adding a product to their shopping cart; the following are the top five reasons for shopping cart abandonment.

1. Required to create an account prior to checking out
2. Window shopping
3. Too many steps in the checkout process
4. Shipping costs
5. The boss caught the shopper shopping

We recently completed a shopping cart study. Well, it’s a couple of years old, but we did it. Every shopping experience presents customers with “exit points” or barriers that cause enough pain or friction to cause them to leave the site. In an effort to understand how much the “create an account” requirement caused friction we presented 100 shoppers with the same sites.

Site #1: Required to Create an Account
Site #2: Create an Account or Checkout Anonymously
Site #3: No requirements or questions prior to the checkout page

The results were interesting. Site #2 presented an increase of 3% in conversions over Site #1. Site #3 resulted in an increase of 16% conversions compared to Site #1.

The conclusion was simple; remove the requirement to create an account and asking customers to make the decision to checkout anonymously.

After the study, we polled the participants to get their view about Site #2’s options. The participants that abandoned their cart without completing the checkout process said they felt they would still receive spam from company if they checkout anonymously. Of the participants that abandoned on Site #3, five stated they didn’t like the shipping costs.

Talking about shipping costs, I abandoned my cart at Best Buy when I discovered the shipping cost was $51.00. I decided to call a local store with the same item and get the item faster and at a lower cost.

Again, feel free to call us for more information on our Hosted Shopping Cart Solution.

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Site Tutor is a reseller of the merchant metrix ecommerce platform. As we are focused on utilizing an ecommerce product which is designed to maximize organic rankings in search engines, we only utilize this platform when working with clients interested in having an ecommerce website.

Shopping Cart Software Hosting

Merchant Metrix, Inc. provides a hosted service solution to help you get the most out of your shopping cart Web site by allowing your customers a smooth buying experience and easy checkout for purchasing products. You don’t want to lose customers after they have made a decision to buy! We will also scale the service to your growing business needs. We will also assist you with your shopping cart Web design with access to our unique Web design templates that can help create one of 54,000 available sites so your business is unique to you and your customers. Visit Our Web site

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With this company, I agreed to work 3 hours per day in their offices for a set amount.  This has worked very well as I have been able to focus my efforts every day for 3 hours to achieve the results we have set out.

Today, we achieved our first big success as we obtained the #1 organic position for the term “title loans” in google and AOL. 

Every time you take on a client, you never know how long or how fast you can achieve your goals.  You have an idea based on your experience, but you don’t know what your competition is doing or other aspects that are beyond your control.

Every SEO “expert” goes through phases wondering if they are ahead of the curve or behind the curve. In this case I don’t think I am either ahead of the curve or behind the curve, but this result gives me added confidence that by applying sound principles of SEO, I am able to affect the organic results of my clients.

This keeps me going and belieivng that even though you can’t guarentee results, your efforts will be worth the investment companies invest in you on their behalf.

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