Google can, but probably won’t, force a sale of AOL July 3, 2008

Google, which has a 5 percent stake in Time Warner’s AOL, now has the right to force the media conglomerate to bring its Internet division to the market.

But Time Warner investors should not hold their breath if they think this is an opportunity for the media company to finally rid itself of the legacy of its disastrous 2001 Internet merger, once hailed as the deal of the century.

A clause in Google’s 2005 purchase agreement for the AOL stake gives the Web search leader the right, but not the obligation, to force a public offering of the shares or a repurchase at fair market value as of July 1, 2008.

But at current market valuations, Google stands to lose an estimated $500 million if AOL is taken to market, analysts estimate. The $20 billion valuation of AOL, established at the time by Google’s $1 billion investment, has been cut to as low as half of that in some projections.

“Under the current market and strategic conditions, Google is unlikely to rock the boat,” Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst for Bernstein Research, said.

Analysts and investors also say that Google is enjoying the estimated $70 million to $80 million it receives annually from AOL by providing search advertising services, and is unlikely to want to risk AOL’s taking its business to rivals.

The July 1 date was viewed months ago as a catalyst for the Time Warner board of directors to speed discussions to spin off or sell AOL to any interested party, including Yahoo, Microsoft or News Corp.

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Website design ‘should not overlook SEO’ July 2, 2008

Companies planning a new website design or redesign should not underestimate the importance of incorporating search engine optimisation (SEO) principles, according to one expert.

Writing for TechRepublic, Justin James highlighted the fact that many companies tend to “woefully” ignore the key areas of SEO, usability and accessibility.

In terms of SEO, firms should not assume that it will naturally occur during the website design and development process, he stated, adding that businesses may want to seriously consider bringing in help from a consultant.

“If you want to leverage your website as much as possible and minimise the amount you need to spend on paid ads, you might want to bring in an outside expert,” Mr James said.

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Why are SEO experts in high demand? July 1, 2008

With the rise in awareness in the public domain of the term SEO (search engine optimisation), SEO experts are now in great demand by ambitious website owners that want to increase targeted traffic to their websites. In order to generate leads, enquiries or sales via your website you need a professional that knows just how to get great results with a substantial ROI (return on investment).

SEO or search engine optimisation is the process of optimising a website in order to achieve top rankings on major search engines that attract vast numbers of searches every single day, which could be providing your website with lucrative sales.

While it isn’t rocket science, search engine optimisation requires some hard work, smart strategy and patience, in order to achieve the substantial growth in targeted traffic that is possible for your business.

As more and more website owners become aware of SEO, it is vital that you have an online strategy to market your website effectively using an SEO expert with experience in successful campaigns.

Some of the more common methods of SEO are listed below, and if you follow these, you could be well on your way to increasing your targeted traffic.

Keyword analysis
Often overlooked, this is the most critical stage of any SEO or internet marketing campaign or strategy. Knowing what your users are searching for around the world is vital to increasing targeted leads and turnover. If you are focusing on keywords that you think are important, instead of using professional tools to find out what users are physically typing into the major search engines, then you are wasting your time and money.

Analysing your keywords is of paramount importance and you should engage people around you for their ideas on keywords, until you build up a complete picture of possible keywords and thin filter out the ones that are not being searched for.

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The human search engines June 30, 2008

Investigative journalism has been one of the first casualities of a cash-strapped media climate – but a new website hopes to redress the balance

These are desperate times for traditional journalism in America. From east coast to west, media proprietors are competing to see who can panic the most and cut the deepest. McClatchy, the No 3 newspaper chain in the US, and even the the New York Times and Newsweek have announced redundancies. Sam Zell, the irascible chairman of the Tribune Company that owns the Los Angeles Times, has come up with the original idea of cutting pagination from his newspapers until news and advertising share equal space.

Slash and burn

Within a landscape scarred by slash and burn, a few buds of hope are appearing. One of the most unusual is blossoming on the 23rd floor of an office block in downtown Manhattan.

ProPublica.org aims to make up some of the ground lost to journalism by the current crisis of advertising revenues bleeding to the internet. In particular, it seeks to preserve the skills and value of investigative reporting – one of the first casualties of cuts by dint of its relative costliness.

It burst on to the US media scene last week with its first major investigation – an exposé of how the US-backed Arabic language TV network Alhurra is counter-productive to US interests, poorly watched and a waste of $500m of public money. The investigation was produced as a documentary and aired on the prestigious TV magazine 60 Minutes, causing ripples through Congress and shaking up the Bush administration-backed network.

To appear on something as hallowed as 60 Minutes is astonishing for so new a venture, but then ProPublica is not an ordinary start-up. By the time it is fully up and running in August it will have a staff of 27, mostly reporters, including some of the most experienced and eminent names in US journalism. It will be the largest dedicated investigative team in America, and one of the largest in the world.

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Is SEO Service Different From SEP? June 25, 2008

Search engine optimizing specialists are asked this quite frequently – is there any differences between Search engine optimization or SEO services and search engine positioning. A search engine positioning indicates key phrases or terms your potential consumers use to search your company or website or products/services through search engines. The keywords that bring prospective viewers to your sites after they type in the search box are actually termed as search engine positioning as per SEO specialists. So you understand that if an Internet user types in ‘online marketing’ at the search box, that two word key phrase or search query is a search engine positioning for your site.

While sailing business through Internet, you have to be visible, relevant and be clicked always – and these keywords play crucial roles in causing your business to adhere to these three factors. When crawling to the top of the chart of search engine result page is the first and foundation of success for an online business today, therefore, they must know what their users are typing. These keywords are the resources to know which users are interested in your products or site and which sites pose competition for you. So, determining search queries and search engine positioning enables you strike a balance amongst keywords to target, popularity of keywords and sites sharing same search engine positioning as yours. Now this is when you need SEO services.

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Internet Video Marketing – Get the word out to your audience loud and clear June 23, 2008

One of the most effective ways to market a product or service is through video marketing. This is such an effective concept that many businesses have been able to use it to their advantage. With the advancement of technology and penetration of internet, people expect you to show them why they should do business with you and what sets you apart from your competitors. It is a cutting edge tool that makes your website stand out of the clatter and noise of your competitors.

Why should Video Marketing be included in your marketing mix? Online video is one of the best venues to engage an audience – don’t even think about excluding it! This new medium allows the video creator to communicate a message on multiple levels – via visual imagery, the spoken word, music and visual text. With online video you can also reach a huge audience for a minimal investment, thus the ROI of online video marketing can be astounding.

Everything said and done what does it take to help communicate your message far and wide in a way that makes an emotional connection with the viewers in a way that motivates them to pass it along to others. There are various aspects to be borne in mind when creating a video for your website. Success of your video marketing depends primarily on content, production and promotion. Every video created should be effectively communicate with your target audience and they should identify with it. The goal is to create something remarkable, literally, something that causes people to remark – and in doing so to effectively convey your message. The idea is to create a viral effect of the message conveyed.

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How To Do SEO Web Design June 19, 2008

Whether you are running a business online, or running a website for any other reason, the design of the website is always important. It is especially important when you are trying to sell products and services. A major factor that plays into your business success is how much traffic your site actually gets. Something that helps improve the traffic and the popularity of your site is search engine optimization. The key to running a successful online business starts before you begin, and involves combining these two ideas to create SEO web design. There are several things you can do in order to make your site SEO friendly. This article is going to introduce you to some tricks to doing just that.

Whether you do your SEO on your own or you have a company do it for you, one of the most important things you can focus on are keywords. Keywords are the basis for SEO web design. They are the groundwork for brainstorming the topics you will cover on your site, and how many pages it will take to complete it. Knowing your basic keywords will also help you to know who your biggest competitors are. It seems like common sense but just knowing these few simple rules can make your site SEO friendly from the start. The next thing you will want to do is focus on the structure of your site. You basically want to develop themes throughout the pages using different URL designs. You want your pages and your URL’s to be as clean as possible, and easy to remember! SEO web design also relies on having solid content, and that begins by keeping your JavaScript down and not cluttered. If you don’t understand web design, the company working for you should know exactly what this means.

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New WebTrends Analytics: More Insight, Less Effort June 18, 2008

WebTrends Inc., a leading provider of Web analytics and online marketing solutions, has reduced the time and effort needed to generate Web 2.0 and other business insight using the industry’s most powerful and open analytics platform.

With the release of the new WebTrends Analytics 8.5, marketers can quickly assess the results from their growing investments in online video, blogs, social networking and other interactive media – and then use this business-critical insight to increase visitor engagement and conversion. Available now in an on-demand hosted format and later this month in software, the new release adds dynamic reports to a host of existing capabilities for testing, tracking and measurement of Web 2.0 media.

“WebTrends Analytics continues to make it easier for our growing number of business users who rely on WebTrends data to help run their online businesses,” said Julian Brewer, head of Online Sales and Content, Digital Banking, for global financial services provider Barclays PLC. “The latest Web 2.0 reports provide the quickly actionable reporting that we need to understand our customers and deliver a compelling and engaging web experience.”

The new release reflects WebTrends focus on providing marketers a flexible, open foundation that they can build upon as their online strategy grows and technology evolves. WebTrends Analytics 8.5 significantly expands the ability of marketers to:

• Take charge of Web 2.0. Dynamic reports add standardized tracking and reporting, along with graphic views of results, to WebTrends Analytics existing Web 2.0 capabilities.
• Create calculations on the fly. Marketers can compare the results of online activities and web site performance by dragging and dropping these metrics in reports. New ratios are automatically calculated and added to reports.
• Increase control, reduce administration. New user roles and groups provide administrators granular control of user rights, along with time-saving, preconfigured user-access rules.
• Manage analytics in Asian languages. Enhanced support for Japanese, Korean and traditional or simplified Chinese enable global enterprises to manage and share analytics reports from Asian markets worldwide.

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7 Free Ways to Manage Your Online Reputation June 17, 2008

Have you “Google’d” yourself lately? What do people find when they do? Your online reputation can be intentionally managed by way of social media marketing. For example, I regularly say “Google me” to potential clients, confident in what will appear because I have built online social media profiles to ensure this. What’s more, in my practice, I typically ‘Google’ any potential clients before I take part in business with them because in business, reputation is everything.

According to Wikipedia.org, a free online resource, “one’s online reputation is similar to the conventional concept of reputation, but in cyberspace. In cyberspace, reputations can be easily made due to the high transfer of information. But they can also be easily broken, due to the lingering, semi-permanent nature of the World Wide Web, especially the general existence of sockpuppets (easily created pseudonyms). An online reputation is often achieved while in a pseudonymous state. A digital reputation can be useful in situations where credibility must be established…”

So, how what are the best ways to manage one’s reputation? Type “Israel Rothman” into Google as an example. In addition to my website, you will find:

1. My Associated Content profile where I brag a little about my success with my clients.
2. My WebProNews profile where I write for the Jayde Search Engine Newsletter.
3. My Active Rain profile
4. My MySpace Profile
5. My Linkedin profile
6. My MyBlogLog Profile
7. Biznik Members (a group I am no longer in)

Additionally, you will also find two listings for my website and a listing for associated content. All of these sites covers the first page (top 10 organic results).

While this takes a little time and effort, all of these sites are completely free. And you now have your list to begin managing your reputation online when somebody “Googles” you!

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Content ‘key for organic rankings’ June 16, 2008

The content of a website is one of the most important aspects of an organic search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign, one firm suggests.

Online marketing agency High Impactnotes that SEO is hugely important as consumers are unlikely to trawl several pages of results and will usually click one of the top ranking results.

Furthermore, the content available on a website is what attracts users to it, the company continues.

“Judicial use of the most appropriate keywords and relevant content is a winning combination when optimising a site for search engine success,” it adds.

However, High Impact warns that in order for such information to make a real difference to a company’s position within search results, it must be both unique and regularly updated.

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