People in the SEO business who act like magicians — as if they have some kind of secret SEO trick or hidden method — are merely carnival workers, hawking their booths to the midway. Unfortunately, the web is still a place where these folks can run around from town to town, virtually speaking, staying just ahead of the cyber-cops.

Of course there ARE legit web marketing companies who do search engine optimization SEO work. You can tell who they are by one essential fact… they make absolutely NO guarantees about results. They tell you what they are doing, everything they are doing and that is their marketing strategy to you. Some of them actually operate web-sites where they openly publish the how-to and tutorial techniques. They have no secrets.

Instant SEO Tune-Up Only $99

So, why would you hire someone who tells you there is no magic trick that guarantees success, and merely charges for their time to apply commonly understood, proven (relatively of course) web design and SEO technologies? Why?

Because they may be able to do a more complete, and faster job of this work than you could. They have more experience, etc.

But, given enough time, with enough reading and research, you could do about as good as most SEO firms. Problem is, do you have the time and energy to devote to this? It may take months or years for you to (1) discover what is needed, what techniques actually work, and (2) then do the work.

That’s what drives the success of legitimate SEO companies. They don’t hide anything. They aren’t magicians. They’re just workers in the vineyard.

And, workers who actually get something done will always have a job, even on the ‘net.

Samples of our Search Engine Optimization work:

IdeaPro Online Marketing – SEO & Web Marketing, since 1996 — #1  and also #2 in Google for main keyword “generate backlinks” — outranking millions of competing SEO gurus and Internet Marketing websites. Click the keyword to see our ranking in Google.

Level1Diet.com – Leading authority on the Anti-inflammation Diet & Health Research — #1 to #3 in Google for main keyword “anti-inflammation diet” — outranking millions of competing health oriented websites. Click the keyword to see our ranking in Google. We are beating famous health and diet gurus like Dr. Sears, Dr. Perricone, Dr. Oz, Dr. Green, the South Beach Diet, the Atkins Diet, Jenny Craig, Overeaters Anonymous, and all the rest.

Let us do our successful SEO work for you — Our “Instant SEO Tune-UP” costs only $99 and will be completed in only 3 business days. If you have questions, feel free to call us during business hours (Pacific time 8am to 5pm) at 323-203-0150 or you can also Email us with your questions. Get your own website Search Engine Optimized using our tested, proven, successful SEO strategies, starting now…

Instant SEO Tune-Up Only $99

An unknown secret about web marketing is this — you only have 5 seconds to accomplish 3 things after a visitor clicks into your home page. Research proves that if customers don’t see what they’re looking for immediately, they simply press the back button and you lose them. If you give what they need in those few seconds, then you can easily keep them onsite for another 30 minutes or even longer. And, during that much longer visit, your chances of making a sale are immeasurably bigger.

That means on the very top of your front or home page “above the fold,” you must present these 3 main ideas simply, dramatically, and persuasively — and do it fast!

Here they are — the 3 things that must be done for every new visitor, in only 5 seconds

1. Establish what it is you do, what is the nature of your business — not just its name or logo design, not just a feeling about something, but actually precisely what you do. This best done with a story telling photograph. Mottos and slogans, descriptive text or blurbs… none of these will do the job. Everyone ignores self serving slogans and claims. Photographs are perceived, believed, and remembered. A good story telling photo beats a thousand fatuous, adjectives about how expert, famous, friendly and wonderful you are. Simply show them what you do, period.
2. Next, you must show them WHY what you do is better than the unnamed competition. Telling them is not enough. You must show them. Can you photograph the MAIN ADVANTAGE you have over your competition? If you can’t, you haven’t thought things through. There is always a way to photograph a product or service benefit — a comparative advantage over the “other guys.” Remember, photos are perceived, believed and remembered. Drawings and so-called ‘graphics’ aren’t believed, simply because everyone knows they are artificial. Since they aren’t believed, they aren’t filed away for future reference. They are quickly forgotten. An advantage photographically illustrated and dramatized by a story telling photographic illustration is an impression made that is both understood, and filed away in the customers’ memories. Dramatize and memorialize your main advantage over your competition with clear, easy to understand and dramatic color photographic presentation. Put it at the top of your front page. Once done properly, your customer is ready to take action — they are ready to buy what you’re selling!
3. Now make it easy for them to immediately buy something. Don’t merely link them to a distant page that walks them through long tedious details and lists of endless charts and graphs and more pages of needless arguments. Assume they are already convinced. In many cases they are! Take them to a page that CONFIRMS their buying decision. Let them buy what they already understand, and what you have dramatically illustrated and proven is in fact better. Many people will do so at once! Experience proves this. Should you have a more detailed page that answers every conceivable question? Absolutely. You could have dozens of these detailed pages, all thoroughly jammed with photographs showing each and every single imaginable detail about your product and service. You can have FAQ pages, comparison charts, spreadsheets, and on and on. But, on each and every one of these pages at the top and the bottom, you should make it extremely easy for your readers to dive out of the arguments and jump into the buying of what you’re selling.

After all, people only need ONE good reason to buy.

But, there can be hundreds of reasons that could possibly convince them NOT to buy. Everytime you bring up another discussion point, that’s an argument you could lose. When they’re convinced, let them buy!

When the customer says “yes,” the sale is over!

That means there needs to be a huge “buy now” button everytime you turn a page, every time you scroll down or up a page, everytime the customer pauses.

You don’t have all day. You have about 5 seconds to inform your visitor about precisely what you do, why it’s better, and to let them ACT on your offer.

Ten Clues You May Be Missing 99% of Your Potential Customers

1. Are you hiding your front or home page behind a “welcome” flash animation movie? These pages generally take several seconds to load, even on the fastest connections. You have only 5 seconds. The clock is ticking…

2. When customers come to your site for the first time — from a search engine like Google, Yahoo, or MSN, etc. — do they have to press an ENTER button to come in the front door, where they can finally see something about what you do, why it’s better and take action? Remember that every browser has a back button. The chances are, no matter how pretty and fancy your “doorway page” might be, most of your customers will simply press the BACK BUTTON instead of your ENTER button. If they do, you lose. So, don’t give them that chance. Bring them right to your main content page, immediately. Don’t be shy. They came to see, to understand, to be convinced, and yes — to buy! Let them do it and do it easily — and do it in seconds. The clock is ticking!

3. Have you filled your home page with off-the-shelf, cookie cutter graphic drawings and sketches — with “original” creativity and crazy layouts? Are wild colors and shapes dominating the front page landscape? Have you neglected taking actual photographs of what you and your staff does? No product photography? Nothing actually illustrating with clear, distinct photography what you do and why it’s better? Then nothing you say matters. People believe what they see, and only part of what they read or hear. Seeing is believing. No photographs? Then get ready for no customers, no business, no profits.

4. Are your pages filled with beautiful illustrations, but nothing tells a story? Good photographs are not nouns. They are verbs. Action is what you do. It’s what makes you better. A product or service product photograph that is “standing still” is one that is dead. Dead products don’t sell. They gather dust and sit on the shelf. Then, at some point, a banker comes along and puts a seal on your door, and your business becomes a tomb, full of dead stuff. Not a good picture? Then make your products and services come alive — make them MOVE and tell a story. What’s the story? Why your products or services are BETTER than the competition. Products (or services) in motion, that’s what a good website is all about. That’s a verb, not a noun. That’s alive, not dead. And, that creates real buyers from mere visitors, informs them, convinces them and drives them to ACTION. Motion — that’s what we want. Motion is the single driving force that unites your web design, that propels and persuades your customers, that raises your bottom line!

5. Are your pages full of long lines of text, more than 3 inches wide? Research demonstrates that readers read, comprehend, remember and act on text content that averages LESS THAN 3 INCHES across. The longer your lines of content, the less people read and ultimately act on. The longer the lines get, the more readers you lose — up to 30% or more readers drop out, for really wide column widths of several inches or more. Keep those lines or column widths short.

6. Are you using “full justification” or nice even edges on both the left and right of your columns? Bad choice. Research consistently shows that “ragged right” text alignment is more easily read, comprehended and remembered than fully justified paragraph alignment. You may lose 15% of readership due to this alone. Make those lines jaggedy on the right side. You’ll make more money!

7. Are you using one of those “modern” font faces like Arial, Helvetica, or another “san serif” text style? Think that it looks cleaner, easier to read, more stylish? Expect to lose another 20% or 30% of your readership, comprehension and visitor-to-buyer conversion ratios. For over 70 years, readership research has consistently shown that font styles with those funny little curly-queues at the ends of letters are more easily read by the vast majority of readers. Why? Scientists theorize that the brain is getting more visual clues and more easily defined shapes, so that letters and words can be more easily recognized and remembered. These “serifed” or more complex letter styles are actually easier for the eye-brain-connection to decode into ideas. In this case, fancier is better, not simpler. Use the serifed fonts like Georgia, Times, Garamond, Caslon, and similar font faces. Keep to the standard fonts that are included on most computers. But, keep them curly to increase sales!

8. Did your designer tell you that “reversed text” is more dramatic than all those boring white pages your competition is using? So, did you end up with huge areas of black, red, blue or some other dark color — using white or some light colored text over the dark backgrounds? Think that makes you more dramatic? Dramatic, maybe. Readable, comprehensible, memorable and persuasive — absolutely NOT. Those reversed fields of white text on colored or black backgrounds are simply not read, not remembered, and almost NEVER acted upon. How bad is this? Research shows that only a very small fraction of potential customers will read and act on large areas of reversed text. You could lose 80%, 90%, 95% or even more of your customers — compared to the same content as black text on white backgrounds. This has been true for all print media for many decades. This is not about design or style. It’s about how the eye and brain work to do the work of reading, comprehending, remembering and then acting on the data being presented. Keep your text in black, and make the backgrounds a very bright white. When the designer complains, tell them nothing is prettier than profits — those profits pay their salaries!

How bad is this text vs. background color thing? Well, a look at the very best non-white background color scores for readership and comprehension reveals an astounding fact. As soon as you change the color from white to any other color, you LOSE AT LEAST 30% of your readers and their comprehension. What is the highest scoring non-white background and text combo?  Black text on a yellow background. The next best? A very light blue background with black text, and that may lose up to 50% of readership/comprehension. Want to lose half of your customers? Want to chop your profits in half? Okay, just slide a colored background under that product description or sales pitch you’re publishing. Or, decide to go with black text over white, and stay in business a bit longer. It’s your choice.

9. Are your pages jammed full of auto-loading animated graphics, videos, flash movies, and outrageous creativity? Do you entertain your visitors with automatically loading music or audio sound-bites? Think this is cute? Creative? Unique? Exciting? Well, your friends and family may love it. Your staff of “yes men” may tell you it’s wonderful, funny, and makes your website a great place to spend time on. Really? If you believe that, then I’ve got some terrific land to sell you in beautiful Winnemuka. But, you really know better. Keep that content off your site. At the very least, if you must put some of this stuff on a page, make the visitor click a button to get it started. Never, never, never allow a web designer to create auto-loading or running animations, videos, sound bites. flash movies and similar content for your site that slows down your page load times, blocks readership of sales pitches, and prevents or reduces profits. Remember the main rule… you have 5 seconds to accomplish 3 things. Only 5 seconds. The clock is ticking…

10. Do you have a wonderful bit of sales copy, but no way right there on the page for people to buy anything? You lose those sales. If you make the customers go to a “contact us” or perhaps an “order form” page to buy what you’re selling, you could easily lose 30% to 50% of your buyers. If your current site is doing that, you could easily DOUBLE your sales, just by placing a BUY NOW  button on each and every product or service description page. The best place for the button is right at the TOP of the page, and for long pages where the reader must scroll down a screen or two, there should be another button at the BOTTOM of the page. Remember — sending the reader to yet another page to actually press a buy now button can lose 1/2 your sales. Fixing that single issue could quickly increase your sales by up to 100%. All that without spending another dollar in advertising, another dollar for hosting, or another dollar for fancy-dancy web designers. It’s a simple job. Just paste another buy button here and there and — voila! — twice as much business.

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Want or need some help? You may wish to call us anytime at: 323-203-0150. Office hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific time.

In past meetings announced in similar emails, Google usually announced some new technology in the meeting, and chose the venue or location of the meeting to match the theme of the new technology. Since this meeting is to be held in a museum of art, the common conjecture is that the technology must be related to artwork, images, and perhaps video.

The email sent to invitees read:

We invite you to join us on Wednesday, September 8, to share our latest technological innovation and to get an inside look at the evolution of Google search. Speakers include:

• Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience
• Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management
• Ben Gomes, Distinguished Engineer
• Othar Hansson, Senior Staff Software Engineer

It’s an event you won’t want to miss.

While some of previous “special announcements” have been related to their locations, one notable event was not. So, maybe SF-MOMA is merely an interesting place to hold the meeting, and not related to anything.

A better guess about the meeting’s topic might be developed by looking at the work done by its 4 speakers.  Each of them appears to be related to the “user experience” or the user interface of the famously simple Google search system.

Is Google going to offer different ways to perform searches? Something to do with speech, or video, or images? Who knows. But it’s a pretty good guess that there may be some changes coming to the Google search page. And, of course this might also affect the display of search results, once your search is completed.

Got any ideas? We’ll report on the meeting on Wednesday and keep you informed. Stay tuned!

Among the improvements are more than 1,200 bug fixes — can you believe that? We’ve been using software with over a thousand bugs? Wow… anyway, there are also major functional improvements and new features in addition to the bug-squashing stuff. Here are some of the new features:

• Custom backgrounds
• Headers
• Shortlinks
• Menus (no more file editing)
• Post types
• Taxonomies
• New custom theme called “Twenty Ten” that implements these features
• Support for WordPress MU that enables managing almost unlimited number of WordPress blogs installed on one or many servers
• Auto-update feature for plug-ins, themes, and modules

New Video from WordPress.org Highlights New 3.0 Release Features and Improvements

We’re testing the software now on several different web-sites. You’ll read a full report of our testing here soon.

A Fix for Potential Memory Problems

Some of us have experienced out-of-memory errors after installing version 3.0. And, when we tried to fix the errors the usual way — by increasing the memory from 32mb to 64mb in wp-settings.php — we found no line for memory settings in that file.

A bit of searching the forums showed that some users had fixed memory problems on their 3.0 installations by inserting a new line into their wp-config.php file (located in the root folder for WordPress on your server, inside public_html or maybe public_html/catalog). Inside this file, you merely insert these lines:

/** increase memory to 64mb */
define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’);

Save the file back to your server, and reload the page(s) where the memory error showed up and you should see it go away. Everything should now work fine. Of course, you will need FTP access and the ability to edit text files and save them back to your server. Also, it’s only a temporary fix, since you’ll have to edit the same file again, every time you upgrade to a new version of WordPress in the future. Still, it appears to be safe and only takes a minute or two. This worked fine for us. Good luck!

For about 2 years or more, Google has been toying with the idea of reducing the SERP or Search Engine Results Positions for pages which take too long to load.

Well over a year ago, Google-watchers have been noticing that well known speakers from Google were mentioning page loading issues more and more often in their speeches to website design and marketing conferences. So, the warnings were out there for us all to notice.

Finally this April they lowered the boom. Suddenly new, much-lower SERPs for main keywords began to show up for millions of previously successful web marketing sites around the world. Sites which had been highly ranked — often in the top 5 positions — for popular keyword searches of only 2 or 3 words were slapped and slapped hard by Google’s new enforcement of page-loading time rules.

Content, and a Lot of It, Used to be King

If content used to be king, now it was merely a prince… SPEED is now king.

Yes, you still have to have good, relevant content, but now your page has to load fast, too… really fast!
How fast is fast enough for Google?

Well, from our preliminary testing, it appears that Google is enforcing some fairly arbitrary rules, at least as far as we can determine from looking at their Webmaster Tools pages.

When you register your site at Google’s Webmaster Tools, and let it run for a while to collect data like perhaps 2 or 3 days, then you’ll see their estimation of your page loading speed in their Site Performance -> Labs section. There will be chart that shows their testing of your page loading times, and a conclusion that ranks your site in comparison with other sites. Google will summarize your “page loading speed as averaging 5.5 seconds, which is slower than 89% of other websites…” or something like that. They also show you a line on the chart below which speeds are FAST and above which speeds are SLOW. The area above the line is pink or red, and the area below the line is light green.

So, of course, you want your site’s pages to test into the green. How fast is that? Well it looks like the line is currently set to about 1.5 to 2.0 seconds download time.

It may occur to you that the main factor in determining download time is the speed of the end-user’s connection. So, what connection speed is Google using? It appears that they are estimating that user’s are using very slow connections, something like 56k modems. So, they are giving you a “worst case scenario” that assumes that end users don’t have cable, DSL, T1 or faster connections. Okay, well, Google knows best.

Google Spokesperson Matt Cutts Says Speed Matters, but Relevancy is Still Important

Even though speed of page loading is now a major focus, one Google insider says that the relevance of your page to the keyword search is still the main thing. Of course, when we’re looking at the “top 10 results” on the first page of Google after a search, we’re looking at sites that are already winners in the relevancy contest. So, when Google adds a speed-factor to the mix as they did in their April re-ranking episode, many thousands of previously first page sites suddenly found themselves on page 2 or even lower in search results for their main keyword phrases. Here is a video from Matt Cutts explaining the “speed vs. relevancy” consideration:

The important thing to realize is that older, previously highly ranked sites that were heavy in content will now be lower in ranking compared to their previous successful page-one positions — and can be elevated back to their previous levels should they increase page loading speeds… at least in theory.

How to Speed Up Your Pages

1. Reduce the size of the text on the page. If your page used to have 100k or 150k of content in html, reduce it to only 30k or so. Provide links out to full “chapter pages” using a “Read More…” link under each of the main paragraphs, the way newspaper or magazine websites do. Then create that chapter page with the full story you have edited down from the front page.

2. Reduce the number of photos or images, and their physical size or dimensions. Remove any images or photos that are not vital to your page. Be tough on yourself. It is not absolutely required, throw it out! Move it to the chapter page. Use smaller thumnails and place a link around the smaller image to the bigger image for people who want to see the full size for more details… like this:

<a href=”images/reallybigimage.png”><img src=”images/thumbnailimage.png” width=”72″ height=”72″ border=”0″ alt=”description here” title=”Click to see bigger image…”/></a>

3. Reduce the resolution of your remaining images to only 72dpi, and then specify the exact width and height of these new smaller images in your image tag, like this:

<img src=”images/nameoffile.png” width=”144″ height=”72″ border=”0″ alt=”description goes here” title=”title goes here”>

4. Notice above that we’ve used a “.png” format for our graphic image file. PNG is now the preferred format for most images, replacing either GIF or JPG formats. The PNG format loads faster in most browsers, and usually produces smaller files for storage and transmission. Save your present JPG or GIF files into the new PNG format and change your onpage links so they will load properly. There are many online pages that will convert your existing GIF or JPG images into the more modern and efficient PNG format. One of our favorites is the Free Online Image Converter at CoolUtils.com. The CoolUtils.com converter also lets you change sizes of your new image file, and rotate it or flip it. You just click a browse button to upload the file from your computer, then make your conversion choices and then click the download button… only takes a few seconds. Very cool indeed!

5. If you have large images that you are almost sure are vital to your page, you should consider serving your images from a different domain that you purchase just for media files. Google does this for some of their own pages. Go over to GoDaddy.com or your favorite domain registrar and buy a new domain. That should cost you only $10 or maybe less. Assign the DNS for that new domain to your existing account where you can host more than one domain. If your hosting account does not permit hosting more than one domain, change hosts to someone who does, like Hostmonster.com — they should only charge you $6/month or less for an annual hosting account that will host unlimited domains. You can move your existing domains there easily. If you need help, call us and we can do it for you.

Load all your images into a folder on this new 2nd domain. Then change all your pages to get their images from that new domain’s image folder.

What does this do? It speeds up your image loading impressively, since all browsers can download both your text and your images at the same time… if they are coming from different domains! If they are coming from the same domain, then the browser gets your text and then it gets your images.

Neat trick, huh? Only $10/year and a bit of up-front work will do this speed up job for you. Then you can lay back and rest…

6. Turn on Gzip compression for your site or server. This may not be easy. If you use a shared host instead of your own dedicated machine or server, then you have to call your hosting company and request that they install “Gzip Compression” for your account. Most will do it for you at no charge. It may take a few days for them to get around to it. Once this is done, all your pages will be sent out over the internet in compressed format using GZIP technology that is recognized by all modern browsers, robots and crawlers. This will speed up your page loading dramatically. Your pages will appear to be only 20-30% of their previous size! Thus you absolutely MUST get Gzip enabled for all your sites, and you must get this done right away.

Dedicated Server Hosts May Need to Recompile PHP/Apache to Use Gzip

If you use a dedicated server, or share one with others, you may need to recompile PHP and Apache to use its built-in Gzip compression modules. If you’re using WHM Web Host Manager in a Linux OS system, then go into Easy Apache under Software and select Use Existing Profile, then walk through the setup to select the “deflate” option and have it perform the recompile. If this is scary or strange to you, then ask for help with your hosting provider administrators. They will sometimes do this for FREE and sometimes charge you a small one-time fee for their help. Under Apache 1.x, this function is called “mod_gzip” and under Apache 2.x and newer, it is called “deflate”. Recompiling needs to be done with care, because if the process is interrupted due to your browser running out of memory or you losing your internet connection or some other reason, the recompiling will stop and your server will need to have Apache reinstalled from scratch manually, and all the sites it hosts will be down… thus, you need to do this yourself ONLY if you know what you’re doing.

7. Combine all your little Javascript files into one file, hosted on your own machine. You can just copy all the code inside one of the files into one of the other files and resave it as a “combined-scripts.js” file. If you’re using a little javascript snippet program that you link to in your page that comes from another site… download that snippet and upload it to your own server and combine it into one big file with all the other .js files referenced on your page. Then remove all links to those old off-server separate .js files.

8. Combine CSS files. Just as you did with javascript files, take any separate .CSS stylesheets and code you may have referenced on you page and move the CSS code into one big file and get that served from your own server.

You should now have just ONE .js and just ONE .css file referenced on your page, and each should be served from your OWN machine, not from somewhere else or some other domain owned by someone else.

9. Now you should MINIFY or compress and cleanup these .js and .css files, so they are even smaller. There are free websites that do this for you. Here is a javascript that will do the work for you… and here is another free site for minify CSS work or… Just search for “minify css” and “minify javascript” to find them. Keep a plain, readable version of each for later editing, but use the minified versions as the final versions that you serve on your page. This process should save another 10% or so for each file in total size. Every KB matters.

10. Make sure you aren’t downloading any pixels or icons or logos from other sites. Often you’ll find that popular networking, social bookmarking, or tracking sites may give you a snippet of code to paste into your page that includes a small logo that loads from their own servers. This enables them to track your visitors and usage. Remove these, or you will suffer very slow page loading due to just these small logos! If you keep them, you’ll find that everything else you are doing may not work, and you may still be considered “slow” by Google. If you want to link to social bookmarking site, use just plain links, without their logos and tracking pixels. You’ll be glad you did.

And, eventually, Google will notice that you’ve done all this and re-rank your pages back up to their previous super-duper-high “first page” SERPs. And, you’ll be back in the money!

Google Wants to Speed Up the Entire Web

Now you’ve got work to do.

If all you plan on doing is copying what others are publishing on their websites, and then pressing a few buttons everyday, then forget it.

Nobody needs another copycat website, another virtual store reselling products that millions of other websites already sell, or another blog that isn’t linked to by anyone and isn’t read by anyone.

What then DOES the world need?

1. Another blog full of original, creative writing about topics that millions of people are interested in knowing more about, or interested in commenting on.

2. A blog that is linked-to by hundreds of other POPULAR blogs or authoritative websites that are “about” similar topics to yours, but not containing exactly the same articles or posts.

3. A blog or site that contains genuinely UNIQUE and DETAILED product reviews about “hot products” that millions or many, many people are actually interested in buying and knowing more about BEFORE they buy.

Some Guidelines to Building a New Google Adsense Content Website

1. Don’t copy ANYTHING from another website, not even a product title or summary description. Rewrite everything. Everything.

2. Be sure you spell things correctly.

3. Check your grammar. Don’t use run-on sentences. Make sure the important stuff is high on the page.

4. In a post TITLE or PRODUCT TITLE, make certain the main keyword you are targeting is at the very front of the phrase. See the title of this post — “Internet Marketing” is our main keyword. It is crammed right at the front of the title, not down inside it. Page position matters to Google.

5. Being negative is okay, but don’t use bad language. Talk to the reader as if you were in Church. Be polite, even when you’re critical of something. Google likes content, but not rude content. It may be legal, but it won’t get high rankings for search terms.

7. If you must quote something, put it UNDER your own remarks, put quotation marks around it, and set it into a BLOCKQUOTE tag in your editor. This will make it obviously a quotation, and even Google will know it and not detract from your own article’s rankings because of it.

8. Be sure to ORGANIZE your articles. Use a main title of course, then sub-titles, then smaller sub-headings if your article is long enough to need them.

9. Use smaller paragraphs containing a topical sentence at the front, and a subordinate sentence or two next related to the topical sentence. When you start a new idea, create a new paragraph.

10. Longer is Better: More content means more readers, usually. This is especially true if your content is well organized. We grew up hearing “keep it simple, stupid”, but that isn’t true anymore. Write complete, helpful and highly informative articles that really help people.

If you need help in organizing your ideas or marketing your website, give us a call. We’re here to help! You may call us anytime at: 323-203-0150. Office hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific time.

And, that changing will affect, well… everything. Simply everything.

As we write this and as you are reading it only minutes, hours, days or weeks later, a silent explosion is taking place all around the world. Perhaps we should call it an implosion.

Information, together with the way we access it and communicate with each other about it, is changing.

Only a few years ago, Google didn’t exist.  A few years before that, today’s all present Internet didn’t exist. Now we are on the edge of an even bigger change.

Today’s Internet involves mainly text, images, video, audio and connections between those media.

Tomorrow’s Internet will involve mainly connections. The process will supercede its elements. The connecting will overwhelm the things being connected.

Previously, content was king. Soon, connections will be king. The saying “content is king” will become “connecting is king.”

Think about that. The way you connect will be more important that what you are connecting to. Usually.

And, the company making this happen is Google. Or, it will be Google if Google has anything to say about it.

And, they do. Read this report from Danny Sullivan over at SearchEngineLand.com. As an attendee of the Google conference on December 7, Sullivan details the many ways your future will have changed in a year or two or three. We’ve had libraries and indexed libraries for about 500 years. We’ve had shelves full of video tapes for a couple decades. We’ve had hard drives and flash drives with MP3′s and compressed videos for maybe 5 years or so.

Now, we’ll have a way to search these filing systems. And, we won’t have to type searches into keywords to do it. We’ll be able to speak our requests into a laptop microphone, or show the new Google an image or set of images, and ask it to find similar images by their content, by what the  images are displaying. Video will be next. Similar videos can be located by selecting a sample to search from.

And, we’ll be able to see and hear reports of search results anywhere, in real time, and for any location or region, limited by almost anything you can imagine.

Boomers can remember endless days spent in a university or city library, building lists of references by pulling index cards out of a long row of tiny filing cabinets. Then, larger libraries began to use computer terminals. Today even the smallest library uses computers. No more filing cabinets filled with hundreds of thousands of 4×6″ or 3×5″ cards. Everything is connected by wires and magnetic storage.

Tomorrow’s library has completely disappeared. Not only are the cabinets gone. Soon the library themselves will be gone. What will be left?

The world will be a giant ball of connections. Everything connected to everything else. Everything findable. Everything locatable. Everything connected… to everyone.

In every language.

In every media.

In every place.

Throughout all time.

And, as this process has started, it seems that nothing will stop it. We have seen the future. And, it is Google.

As promised, we’ve completed an initial testing as of December 10, 2009 between the new Google Caffeine search engine technology and the traditional Google we’ve known previously up until now. The old Google system will be in place through the holidays, with the new Caffeine search algorithm rolling out in early 2010.

From what we can determine at this time, Caffeine is everything Google promised in their announcements to webmasters about their new technology at the Search Engine Strategies convention in San Jose in August.

1. Caffeine is faster, sometimes by up to 50% or more.
2. Caffeine presents a much, much larger index of the total web universe. It will often show that they have indexed and analyzed up to 200% or even more of the web for any particular search term.
3. Caffeine appears to be more timely, or at least as timely as the current system. This means that even though they are much faster at indexing a much larger number of web pages, they are not missing stuff that has just happened or happened very recently. This is good news for news-oriented websites, and for site that present time sensitive information.
4. Caffeine is, if anything, even MORE accurate at presenting high quality websites relating to any specific keyword search phrase. This is probably the most important thing, together with the timeliness of the results, to most end users of any search engine.

Those are the big conclusions, but there is more, especially with regard to the actual ranking for any one site for particular search terms — the all important SERP, or Search Engine Results Position.

If you are a website owner and sell something or publish information for Google Adsense, and depend on traffic from “free organic” search results in Google, then you are extremely concerned with your SERPs for your main keyword phrases.

Our analysis shows some interesting things about the new Caffeine search technology:

1. The first three SERPs don’t seem to change much when you compare the old system to Caffeine. This is especially true for the much envied #1 SERP for most keyword phrases.
2. Also, number two doesn’t seem to change much as we go into the Caffeine algorithm. Sometimes you will see a new or reordered #3, but it also seems to remain the same for most keyword phrases.
3. Postions #4 thru #10 do seem to change under the new system. All-new websites are appearing in these bottom seven of the top ten — sites that had been on page 2, 3 or even lower under the old Google algorithm.

The Old Google Algorithm — Postions 1 to 3

OLD GOOGLE: The first 3 positions for "Internet Marketing" have not changed.

The new Google Caffeine — Positions 1 to 3

The new Google Caffeine page, positions 1 thru 3 for "internet marketing"

So, in positions #4 through #10, we see big changes (see the screenshot images below). In many if not most cases, these positions reflect all-new websites showing up that had previously been relegated to pages 2, 3, or even lower. Obviously, the sites themselves hadn’t changed their on-page content, since the comparisons are made from the same index date. And, we can also assume that the other off-page factors like backlinks, linked phrases, and inbound pageranks haven’t changed either between the two systems.

So, what can be causing this difference? A look at the 2 screenshots below for the bottom 7 SERPs for the keyword “internet marketing” can reveal some interesting and subtle differences. First lets look at the screenshots, then we’ll analyze the differences between them and extract some conclusions.

As you can see from the comparisons below, the new Google Caffeine appears to be much more sensitive to whether the exact keyword phrase itself appears in the TITLE tag of the page than was the old system. Each page showing up in these #4 to #10 positions now uses the exact keyword search term in the title. Early in the title means higher ranking.

Also, the new Caffeine approach is much more reliant on whether the exact keyword phrase being searched for appears early in the on-page content. You can see pages that didn’t have the exact phrase in the old system, but not in the new Caffeine. Earlier in the page content means higher rankings.

These means that off-page factors that were given more importance in today’s current or old algorithm are now down-graded and less important to the new Caffeine approach. Those factors were the reasons that the old listings showed up. The de-emphasized off-site, and some on-site SEO factors might include one or any combination of these previous considerations:

1. How many backlinks any website has and the pagerank of the inbound page itself.
2. The linked phrase of the inbound link — meaning the underlined words you click on.
3. The in-site architecture or organization of the listed site — meaning the categories, sub-cats, and internal links pointing at the page showing.
4. The actual page-name that shows up inside the URL, including the domain name.

There are other factors that may have been de-emphasized, including image file names, alt tag inclusions, and other factors like keyword density and keyword frequency, etc. However, the overwhelming evidence is that at least the TITLE, on-page CONTENT, and word-order inside those elements is now more important than ever.

What can we conclude from this early and somewhat cursory examination of Caffeine? Here are our main recommendations for internet marketers, and general webmasters to take in order to get ready for Caffeine.

Internet Marketing Advice for Google Caffeine

Getting Ready for Caffeine: Our Recommendations

1. Make sure your main keywords show up early in your page TITLE tag.
2. Make sure your main search phrases show up early in the first 50 words of on-page contents.
3. Make sure your main search term key word phrases show up early in your H1, H2, and H3 onpage headlines.
4. Be sure these exact phrases are emphasized or italicized, and made bold inside paragraphs, early on the page.
5. Then, you can, as always, double check that you’ve got good internal website organization or architecture, and a good number of high quality topically relevant inbound backlinks on sites that you do not control.

So, in some ways, this is a return to good solid website building, like it was in the early days of the internet.

Old Google Results for “Internet Marketing”, positions #4 through #10 (click on each image to see Google’s actual results page)

Today's Google traditional or current SERP search result positions 4 thru 10 for "INTERNET MARKETING"

New Google Caffeine Results for “Internet Marketing”, positions #4 through #10 (click on each image to see Google’s actual results page)

Here's the way the SERPs #4 to #10 look under the new Google Caffeine results for "Inteernet Marketing" keyword searches.

The above video was originally published on WebProNews.com.

Google did not release the actual IP address of this single Caffeine data center, but webmasters have devoted themselves to experimenting with all the known IP addresses of Google search data centers, until they discovered a good candidate website at http://209.85.225.103/. You can test your main search term keyword phrases there and see how this new technology might affect you. We’ll do some testing of some of our own favorite keyword phrases soon and show you how rankings and search performance will be changing for web marketeers as the new search system rolls out over the whole Google network over the first quarter, next year. Happy testing!

As your site’s popularity or Google Pagerank increases, you will find that it ranks higher for searches in all the search engines, including Google of course, but also Yahoo, MSN, Alexa, Ask, Metacrawler, and so on.

And, as your search engine result page listings improve, your visitor count or traffic will increase, and that after all is what we all want.

This Google page-rank is a complex formula that they don’t reveal to us, but they do admit that one of the biggest factors the number of non-reciprocating links on other sites that point back to your site, the pagerank of those sites themselves that are doing the linking to you, and the topic or subject matter being discussed on those linking pages.

So, if you can get one-way links on highly ranked pages that are topically related or similar to your site, then the relative Google Pagerank of your own site will increase.

The issue is simply “being in with the in-crowd” — to quote an old song from the 1960s.

There are thousands of sites that let you list your site free, or at a very small price. We recommend using only the free sites, of course, for obvious reasons. And, you should concentrate only on the sites with good Google pank-ranks themselves. We’ve researched to find the best ranked sites that let you generate a high quality link without charge, and present 100 of our picks below.

Some of these free directory or press release sites below were free at one time, but have since changed their policy. Visit them to see whether they still offer FREE links. For those that still do — which is most of them — the free link you get will still be relatively ‘high quality’ — meaning that there will be a topical page related to your own site’s content, so that the link is likely to be considered by Google to be worth something. For years, these types of free directories have been a mainstay for web marketeers. The time you spend in adding your site to these directories is well worth the sweat investment.

Start with the highest ranked sites, and work your way down the list. Links from higher pageranked sites are worth more to you.

Here they are, showing their Google Pageranks, as of today — March 12, 2009.

PR-8
*	www.dmoz.org
*	www.lii.org
PR-6
*	www.accoona.com
*	www.buzzle.com
*	www.ezilon.com
*	www.maxpromo.com
*	www.surfsafely.com
*	www.clickey.com
*	www.geniusfind.com
*	www.infotiger.com
*	www.spheri.com
PR-5
*	search.able2know.com
*	www.abacho.co.uk
*	www.netinsert.com
*	www.123kidzarea.com
*	www.canlinks.net
*	www.gimpsy.com
*	www.illumirate.com
*	www.info-listings.com
*	www.information.com
*	www.internet-web-directory.com
*	www.mastermoz.com
*	www.prolinkdirectory.com
*	www.re-quest.net
*	www.resourcehelp.com
*	www.searchsight.com
*	www.searchwiz.com
*	www.turnpike.net
*	www.wikidweb.com
PR-4
*	www.admcity.com/search
*	www.odp.in
*	www.pegasusdirectory.com
*	www.searchtheweb.com
*	www.strictlycss.com
*	www.worldsiteindex.com
*	www.consultant-directory.com
*	english.hispanoempresa.com
*	homepageseek.com
*	mkdir.anchorbase.com
*	www.aardvarkbusiness.net
*	www.ablazedirectory.com
*	www.add-url.googlepagerankings.com
*	www.all-linkdirectory.com
*	www.amray.com
*	www.anaximanderdirectory.com
*	www.anywhere.ca
*	www.arakne-links.com
*	www.automotoforum.cz
*	www.bhanvad.com
*	www.directoriobus.com
*	www.directorystorm.com
*	www.earth-directory.info
*	www.earthstation9.com
*	www.jayde.com
*	www.linkaddurl.com
*	www.gmdir.com
*	www.littlewebdirectory.com
*	www.massivelinks.com
*	www.mavicanet.com
*	www.onemission.com
*	www.pedsters-planet.co.uk
*	www.premierdirectory.org
*	www.searchwebworld.com
*	www.sitesondisplay.com
*	www.verticaldirectories.com
*	www.websavvy.cc
*	www.websitespromotiondirectory.com
*	www.zeezo.com
*	www.zunchdirectory.com
*	www.abilogic.com
PR-3
*	www.urlcable.com
*	www.zensearch.com
*	www.directory.ldmstudio.com
*	www.diroot.com
*	www.mostpopularsites.net
*	www.linkcentre.com
*	directory.cipinet.com
*	invo.info
*	www.best-websites.net
*	www.exactseek.com
*	www.fx1.co.uk
*	www.hedir.com
*	www.linksmatch.com
*	www.software-pointers.com
*	www.surfdirections.com
*	www.webolink.com
*	admart.ca
*	directory.trout.pl
*	fabaroo.com
*	www.4-every-1.ws
*	www.abydir.com
*	www.addlinksuggest.com
PR-2
*	www.1abc.org
*	www.achx.com
*	www.01webdirectory.com
*	www.friendly-links.com
PR-0
*	directory.ticketretriever.com
*	www.muslimmatrimonial.com
*	dir.mymaldives.com
*	www.nonar.com

If you find more free press sites you want to check, visit PRTool.info to check their pageranks all at once. Enjoy!