2 Ways to Find Out if Links to Your Site Carry Value

There are two things to look for to see if a link TO your website from another website is sending you Pagerank value to boost your position in search engines. Both methods keep search engines from following that link. However, keep in mind that even though a link may not pass Pagerank, no link is a bad one (unless maybe it's a link from an unscruptulus source), as it can still still drive a live person to your site. Most social media sites use one of these two methods, so they do not provide true links back to your site which improves your ranking in search engines (Links back to your site improve your ranking in search engines - Read more here), BUT there is still value because people can see the link and if they like what they see when they visit, they may elect to manually link to your site themselves or socially bookmark it which shares it with their friends and increases your exposure.

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Internet Advertising Dominates Traditional Means in Economic Downturn

Here we are a good way through 2009 and an interesting trend has emerged. Despite the national economic resession, studies show that online advertising has not decreased despite most other traditional advertising means such as television and radio ads have dropped by approximately 15%. Many attribute this stability in the internet marketing industry to the fact that most website advertisments are charged per-click rather than a blanket charge per month regardless of success, as is the case with other advertising avenues.

That means that advertisers aren't spending money if potential customers are not clicking on their ads, and anyone that has run a TV or radio ad knows that there are times when it's questionable whether your ad is getting noticed and if it's worth the significant investment. Another advantage of online advertising is the wealth of statistics you get on clicks, amount of time someone spends on your site, what time of day the most clicks occur and more. That allows advertisers to make more educated decisions on how they run their online advertising campaign.

So if you've not already taken advantage of the wonderful advertising programs that Google, Facebook and other internet advertisers have to offer, it may be a good time to get in the know.

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Get Listed On Technorati xwrie9m5u5

Technorati is a directory of the most popular blogs on the internet. If you have a blog, make sure that it's set up to ping Technorati when you post to make sure that your posts appear on their site. Most content management systems such as Wordpress, or my personal favorite ImpressCMS, offers modules or plugins that will do this.

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7 Great Articles on Link Building

Stepforth is a great website with tons of resources on online marketing. Here is a a page of theirs that lists seven really good articles on link building. If you have any interest in improving your ranking in search engines by building links to your website, give these a read:

http://www.stepforth.com/blog/top-posts-on-links.php

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Google Chief Economist Video Explains PPC Advertising

Google's Chief Economist, Hal Varian, explains in this 10-minute video the basics of advertising with Google's Adwords program. Some of the key concepts covered include bidding against competitors, click-through-rate, or CTR, the ever-elusive quality score of an ad and how that all affects an ad's "Ad Rank."

What many people don't know is that you can outrank someone who bids more on a key phrase than you if you have a better quality score. Quality score is determined by how closely your key phrase, ad copy and website's landing page relate to one another. Google wants people to get relevant results when clicking on advertisements, so this is how they achieve that.

The video is very basic, but it s a wonder illustration of how a very complex system works.

 

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Good Website Design Really Does Matter

According to a recent poll done by Webcopyplus, the aethetics of a website design has a significant effect on how long users stay on your website. Almost 25% of web users indicated “poor visual presentation” as the number one element that drives them away from websites, up from 6.6% in 2007.

When users were asked what’s most likely to drive them away from a website they said:

• 50.9% indicated “slow load times”
• 24.8% noted “weak web copy”
• 24.2% specified “poor visual presentation”

This trend seems to indicate that as the web continues to mature, simply having a web site is not enough. To compete you must have a website that stands out from the rest and focuses on what you need your visitors to do, IE: sign up for your newsletter, buy a product, fill out a contact form, etc.
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