Saturday, December 31, 2011

Professional Blogger - Professional Journalist Comparison


The journalist is – on average – a contributor to the publication of a publisher who sells news.

The blogger – in general – is a manufacturer and retailer at the same time, because the individual characteristics of most blogger.

And this double role of the blogger is the main difference compared to the journalist, where elements of both productivity more distinct.
Source: http://www.jasonpowers.org/103-profiles-of-productivity-journalist-blogger-versus.html


Blogging versus Professional Journalists  - Nov 2011

Defining the Journalism versus blogger debate - Scientific American Article - August 2011

Blogging versus Professional Reporting  - Suzanstmaur - July 2011

Am I a journalist or a blogger?  Mark Glaser - March 2008

Bloggers versus Journalists who cares? Chris Brogan Jan 2008

Use of Blogs by Journalism Professors and Schools - Chung - 2007 - Research paper pdf file

Top Internet Properties USA - 2011

Nielsen Picks based on data Jan - October 2011

Google tops as a brand 153,441,000+ monthly unique visitors (average)
Facebook follows with 137 million+

Blogger is top blogging platform with 45,712,000


Wikipedia had 62 million+.

Graduate From Novice Blogspot - Blogger to Professional Blogger

How many professional bloggers are out there.

In USA there are 450,000 professional bloggers. Even Bureau of Labor Statistics reported them. That number is as good as the number of lawyers in USA. So professional blogger, who writes for earning money either on his own, or as a paid writer for Blogging sites is an important income earner.

But how do you graduate into a professional blogger. By starting a blog as a novice on freely available blog hosting platforms.

Any role models?

Take Marshall Kirkpatrick


http://marshallk.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_marshallk_archive.html

Read his story as told in a 2010 article wherein he mentions his initial blogging effort as a blogspot blogger.

Interesting write up
How to become a freelance blog writer - June 2007 Leo Babauta
Mentioned that he makes $2000 a month extra apart from his full time job
Advises people to start with their own blog first


Happy New Year 2012 - Videos



Happy New Year 2012



Best wishes for the New Year
With hope for the best for near and dear
Expect a year of cheer
There will be progress in career

Your efforts will be sincere
If required sufficiently severe
Rewards will be grandeur
and recognition in your sphere

For you ideas, every one will have ear
To join your team, nobody will have hear
Let your dreams fly high in a dornier
Greet everybody  "Happy New Year".

Narayana Rao Poems Collection


____________
____________ ____________

Blogging, Blogs and Bloggers in USA


Hosted blog platforms were started in 1998.
Open diary was launched in 1998.
Live Journal was launched in March 1999
Blogger was launched in August in 1999
(Wikipedia article on blogs  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog   )


2012
12 essential tips for revitalizing your blog in 2012

Tumblr 39,163,985 blogs
50 million+ posts in a day (1.1.2012)
Wordpress say around 35 million+ blogs
Blogger does not disclose anything officially.

Million dollar blog project

2011
December 2011
Edublog awards 2011

November 2011
247,000 bloggers dies this year and leave 453,000 blogs from USA.
http://blog.entrustet.com/tag/how-many-bloggers-die-in-usa/


Blogging is decreasing and young ones are moving to Facebook and Twitter
Verne Kopytoff in New York Times - February 2011
Blogger in December 2010 had 2% less unique visitors at 58.6 million. But Globally still it had increase in visitors to 323 million.

2010
Teens and Young Adults are not Blogging - Moving away from blogs
Social media and young adults - Pew study - February 2010
Full Pew Report  - 2010  usage of various internet services

2009
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 452,000 bloggers
Business insider.com article



2006
Very Interesting Study on Blogging by Pew Internet

Important points
Blogging is bringing new group of writers and creators. 54% of the bloggers have not written any thing elsewhere.
Around 32% only are writing for audience. Rest are writing for their personal expression and satisfaction. Only 7% are writing with an aim to make money.
53% have a single blog.
17% have two blogs
26% have three or more blogs
Only 13% post in their blog daily
Typical blogger spends only 2 hours per week.
Income sources: Selling items, Advertisement, Donations, Premium content sales
13% have more than 100 hits per day.
10% of the blogs have received some sort of public recognition.
Half of the bloggers get traffic from people they know only.
Number of Americans who keep a blog: 12 million


Blogging in USA 2004


By end of 2004, there are 8 million bloggers in USA.
Pew Internet Report - 2005

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Making the first post in WordPress blog

Visit



http://www.thebloggingblog.net/writing-your-first-blog-post-in-wordpress/

Why Knol failed? - Lack of Traffic



Why Knol failed? Knol failed because adequate visitors numbers were not there.

Knol reached up to the level of 10 million page views per month.


Compare it with blogs on Sina.com. This website had 0.3 billion page views per day for blog posts contributed by public. 5140 adsense using bloggers and 26,974 non-adsense using users contrbuted to the blog posts.

These users contributed 4,359,000+ blog posts in during May 2007 to January 2008. 4 million+ posts in one year eight months. Knol could not reach one million posts at the end of three years.


Source for information on Sina.com
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1735696

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Search Result Rank Checking Facility

Principles of Management
24 (20.11.2011)
Value engineering
71 (20.11.2011)

Blogs updated today - 24.12.2011

http://nraofilms.blogspot.com/

Management videos

Google Gives Back in 2011

Google contributed more than 100+ million dollars this year to various organization to continue their good work. The four areas mainly focused are Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics education9STEM), Girl's education, Empowerment through technolgy, Fighting modern day slavery - Human trafficking


For more details and organizations supported visit

http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/givesback/2011/

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Management Theory Review Now has 5000 Page Views - 21-12-2011

The management theory review blog http://nraomtr.blogspot.com has now 5000 cumulative page views.

Articles related to Business ethics are posted today in the blog.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Advertising online - Evolution and Trends

http://www.intertic.org/Policy%20Papers/EvansEOAI.pdf
2009 paper detailed information.
$12.50 cost per mille high quality web content sites
$0.50 cost per mille for social networks
1 clicks per 400 viewers


Interesting information
Top bloggers and their earnings
http://www.thedigeratilife.com/blog/index.php/2008/08/12/make-money-blogging-top-bloggers-and-how-much-they-earn/
2008 article

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Blogs of Narayana Rao - Blogger Profiles

http://www.blogger.com/profile/05748254811752425330

http://www.blogger.com/profile/06910963946568975568

http://www.blogger.com/profile/00137977090611542246

http://www.blogger.com/profile/17200603552794374110

Management Blogs and Sites with Alexa Ranks

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Online Advertising Revenues Forecast 2012

2012
Global ad spending in major media will rise to $486 billion in 2012 (4.7% growth)(Adage)


References
Adagehttp://adage.com/article/global-news/forecasts-2012-ad-spending-revised-downward/231354/

2011

Total Internet advertising in 2011 will be $78.5 billion
(Source:http://printinthemix.com/Fastfacts/Show/506
Google's total advertising revenue in 2010 is $28.236 billion. In it $19.44 billion is from its own properties and $8.792 billion is from Network members' websites
(http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html

In the third quarter US internet advertising spend increased to $7.9 billion (IAB, Nov)

IAB (Nov) http://www.iab.net/about_the_iab/recent_press_releases/press_release_archive/press_release/pr-113011

PEW research on Online media types and advertising growth
http://stateofthemedia.org/2011/online-essay/

Digital advertising revenue of New York Times Media Group, which publishes the New York Time, increased 6.2% to $50.3m in the three months to September 2011, compared with a 10.4% drop in print advertising revenue in the period.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/oct/20/new-york-times-digital-subscribers

Demand media second quarter revenue is up at $76.6 million exclusive of traffic acquision costs. 13,000 writers contribute article to the sites of Demand media.
(http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/09/us-demand-idUSTRE7786WT20110809

2009
Advertisers spent $22.7 billion online in 2009 — 3.4% less than they spent in 2008.

http://mashable.com/2010/04/07/online-ad-spend/

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Virtual Schools - Cyber Schools - K12

K12 Inc. is a big private online education business. It was founded by a former Goldman Sachs banker and by William Bennett, and Mike Milken. Its teachers generally work from their homes, communicating with their students by e-mail or phone.

Representative Harry Brooks is the chief sponsor of the Virtual Public Schools Act. It gives local school districts the authority to start their own online education.


Vitual Public Schools Act, Tennessee'

Blog posts 18.12.2012

Knol article on introduction to Human Resource Management migrated to Management Theory Review Blog.

http://nraomtr.blogspot.com/2011/12/human-resource-management-introduction.html

Friday, December 16, 2011

Earning Adsense $100 per month - You are a big player in Internet

The average income that a web property can earn through Google adsense is $1.5 per month. If you are earning $100 per month, you are certainly a big player.

Supporting figures 400 million websites + blogs
Income available for quarter $1.768 billion

Internet statistics - 2010

Related post
Average Income for a top 50,000 blog

Internet 2010 - Statitics

Visit

http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/01/12/internet-2010-in-numbers/

Blogs 152 million blogs (tracked by Blogpulse_ End 2010.
websites 255 million
(Total sites looking for ad revenue; 400 million

$2.6 billion is the revenue generated by partner sites in third quarter of 2011.

68% of it is the income to partners approximately. It comes out to be $1.768 billion. This means on an average $4.42 are available for each web property for a quarter. It means $1.5 per month. So any author earning $100 has to be on to put in great effort.

How Adsense Ads on Blogger Pay?

In the blog post inside Adsense Google informed that it pays 68% of what is receives to publishers. But do publishers on Blogger receive 68%? Or ads on bloggers are paid less to take care of hosting costs on Blogger. Of course it will be good, if Blogger keeps a share and remains profitable business. May be Google can insert a blogger search facility and keep the revenue from the search results for itself. Actually, when we are publishing some ads are coming along with the posted message. But bloggers may not normally click those advertisements. They fear Google advertisements. So it will be good, if Google inserts search facility on Blogger landing page for visitors and inserts search ads in those results.

68% is content and 51% is for search advertisements.

Learning PHYSICS for IIT JEE - Blog

This is the second blog that I started. After a month of posting, I came to know that there is good interest to read the contents of this blog. My blogging for public reading started with this blog. The initial visitors gave me the push to write and that endeavor is still continuing (Dec. 2011). I could not continue with this blog as I shifted my attention to management and allied subjects. But now once again I am trying to rearrange the blog posts and probably improve the content to make it more useful.

IIT JEE Physics Blog

A page is created to show the notes prepared for the chapters in the syllabus

Details of study guides, concept revision notes, and formula revision sheets

Blogs with English Poems

Art- Poems - Stories

Thought by Nrao Blog

Thought by NRao is the first blog started by me in 2006. Interesting posts/articles in this blog are being assembled in a blog page

Interesting post - Thought/nrao blog

The blog helped me to me start my next blog on IIT JEE Physics as it showed me how to start blog and insert adsense into blog.

Indian Bloggers - A list in 2004

http://indianbloggers.blogspot.com/

Top Indian Bloggers and Adsense Income


1. Amit Agarwal
2. Amit Bhawani
3. Harsh Agrawal
4. Jaspal Singh
5. Arun Prabhu Desai
6. Nirmal
7. Rohit Langde
8. Rahul Bansal
9. Honey Singh
10. Srinivas Tamada


Visit

http://merabheja.com/top-10-indian-bloggers/

Top 250 Blogs of Indians
http://nraoblogs.blogspot.com/2011/12/study-of-250-top-indian-blogs.html

Page ranks of Indian Blogs - 2008 Analysis

Visit

http://binaryday.com/2008/12/28/pagerank-profile-and-other-details-of-6000-indian-blogs/

Top 100 Indian blogs according to Alexa Rank in 2009

Visit

http://binaryday.com/2009/01/01/top-100-indian-blogs-according-to-alexa-rank/

Recently Updated Blogs Link

click the link to see the blogs updated in the last 10 minutes



http://www.blogger.com/changes10.g

blogging.nitecruzr.net Daily 2000+ page views

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net
gets daily 2000+ page views.

It is on various issues related to blogging on Blogger.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Backlinks: Distribution and Marketing Outlets to Your Blogs and Online Articles

I am an online author with 100,000+ page views per month.





I realized the importance of backlinks when I read a hub by ryankett. He mentioned that he makes at least three book marks on social book marking sites and one on his person blog. He also gives twitter messages and makes sure that tags are there. (How to get 100,000 visitors per Month ). I captured the advice in the knol and am informing knol authors about it. I started giving twitter messages regularly.


Embedding a Knol in my Blogs



21.2.2011

I embedded the knol Knol Books Catalogue in my blogs yesterday (20.2.2011). My blogs are popular with around 500 page views per day. Today morning my analytics showed that there 103 visits in 18 hours. This is the first time I am observing the strong power of backlinks myself. If the information that you are providing is interesting backlinks work as distribution outlet for your online articles and blogposts. So the idea of my knol collection is well illustrated by this incident.

(Backlinks: Distribution and Marketing Outlets to Your Knols ) .


16.12.2011

I get 100+ page views for my embedded knol every day.



To read number of articles on backlinks on Knol visit
http://knol.google.com/k/narayana-rao/backlinks-distribution-and-marketing/2utb2lsm2k7a/3939


Updated 5.1.2012

Adding meta tags to Blogspot blogs

Visit the article by Nayan Banik


http://infoistic.blogspot.com/2011/12/how-to-add-meta-tags-to-blogspot-blog.html

Blogs posted 15.12.2011

Updated http://iit-jee-chemistry.blogspot.com/


Updated http://nraomtr.blogspot.com with articles on industrial engineering.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Augmented Reality Application by Nivea

http://mashable.com/2011/11/01/rihanna-nivea-augmented-reality/

Sixth sense applications being used by marketers. Sixth sense application is based on images. You show an image to a camera connected to a computer and computer does some processing and gives you information on a screen. The screen may or may not be a computer monitor. When the screen is not a computer monitor but any real item, it becomes augmented reality. The virtual image is superimposed on real surface or real object.

Augmented Reality Application by Starbucks

http://mashable.com/2011/11/08/starbucks-ar-app/

The application starts when people point out their camera to starbucks cups and other specified objects in Starbucks retail outlets.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Interesting Blogs Economics and Management

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

NRao Blog Posts - 7.12.2011

An Interesting Blog/Site - Einstein21.Org

Top Blogspot Blogs with Alexa Ranks

An Interesting Blog/Site - Einstein21.Org

http://einstein21.org/About.htm

The site was started by Hardyna Vedder who advocates use all features/facilities of Internet to provide multiple views on any topic to be learned. She calls the method butterfly method or papillon method. The learner flies like a butterfly in the internet space and drops on the right flower that has the nectar of knowledge that he will find tasty. His knowledge is strengthened by that nectar. The site provides various book chapters that provide students the learning experience and teachers and writer the example to create more such internet books

Interesting Blogspot blogs

jntuworldportal.blogspot.com Alexa rank 60,552

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Performance of a HR Blog

http://www.simplehrguide.com/hr-project-summary-april-2011

25,000 page views a month

Human Resource Management Blogs

HR Management Guide

Project Management Blogs

http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/introduction-to-project-management.html

http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/articles.html

Nrao Blog Search Engine

developed on 4.12.2011
To be reposted everytime there is configuration change. Every time more blogs are added to the engine
________________


Loading





_________________

Blog posts 4-12-2011 - Marketing Management Online Book

Marketing Management Online Book has now more chapters with topics and articles. Once all chapters are filled in the initial round, more articles will be added.

Management Theory Review site nas now more articles in the area of marketing management. Almost all articles in Marketing Management are now posted in the site.

Marketing Blogs Collections

Marketing Management Blogs

Marketing Management Online Book

http://dangalante1.wordpress.com/

Marketing articles in Management Theory Review

Marketing Management

The Blog of Prof Czinkota

Dr. Neil Hair

Prof Harsh Verma's Blog

John Svlokla - Former Professor, Marketing, HBS

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Updates to Management Theory Review Blog

http://nraomtr.blogspot.com/search/label/Marketing%20Management

Added more knols of Marketing management. Still 10 to 12 knols are to be added to complete the migration of marketing knols to this blog collection. Then they will be posted in the online marketing management book http://bbmktgmgmt.blogspot.com/

Global Agricultural Marketing Management - Online Book

FAO, 1997

http://www.fao.org/docrep/w5973e/w5973e00.htm#Contents

Online Books

World Academy Courses

Top Blogspot Blog - Fosspatents

Alexa rank 72,675 December 2011

http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/

Statistics sources for some sites

Nitie.edu http://www.checksitetraffic.com/traffic_spy/www.nitie.edu
(nitie rank 310,251)

Alexa 19999 rank blog http://www.checksitetraffic.com/traffic_spy/aessuccess.org

Alexa 30511 http://www.checksitetraffic.com/traffic_spy/karodalnet.blogspot.com

Wordpress.com http://www.checksitetraffic.com/traffic_spy/wordpress.com

Motilaloswal.com http://www.checksitetraffic.com/traffic_spy/www.motilaloswal.com

iit-jee-chemistry.blogspot.com http://www.checksitetraffic.com/traffic_spy/www.iit-jee-chemistry.blogspot.com
(iit-jee-chemistry blog rank 3,340,554)

How to get blog listed on search engines and get visitors?

Discussion in Google forum

Friday, December 2, 2011

Free lessons on Yoga

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Visit the site on advanced yoga practies AYP
http://www.aypsite.com/

Google+ page of the site

Do Right Things Today - Swamy Chinmayananda

Tomorrow we will be what we are now plus what and how we faced life's challenges today. This is the law of cosmic justice.

Quotation of Swami Chinmayananda

At all time send our thoughts of love to all; kindness to all; blessings to all.
Soon you will find all including your enemies, showering you with love.

To know more about Wordpress

http://www.michaelmccallister.com/


Michael McCallister wrote a book on WordPress

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Value Engineering Online Book

Developing the book

http://bbvae.blogspot.com/

Blog book on value analysis and engineering

A new blog started

Marketing Management - Online Book

Safety Engineering and Management - Online Blog Book

A book framework is created. The book will have chapters and chapters will have sections. Each section will be an online article available on the web.

Safety Engineering and Management

Blogger help tips

Keyboard shortcuts

Blogger has several keyboard shortcuts you can use while editing posts. They definitely work in Internet Explorer 5.5+/Windows and the Mozilla family (1.6+ and Firefox 0.9+), and might work in other browsers. Here they are:
• control + b = Bold
• control + i = Italic
• control + l = Blockquote (when in HTML-mode only)
• control + z = Undo
• control + y = Redo
• control + shift + a = Link
• control + shift + p = Preview
• control + d = Save as Draft
• control + p = Publish Post
• control + s = Autosave and keep editing
• control + g = Indic transliteration


There are lots of easy HTML tags that you can add to your text to change its appearance. This page lists some of the most common tags. If you want to learn more, please see: How can I learn more about HTML?
Code Examples
Text
TEXT This text is bold.
TEXT This text is italicized.
Surround text with tags to make it bold, or with to italicize it.
TEXT
Regular text goes here.
This text is in a blockquote.
Surround text with
tags to indent it and set it apart from the rest of your text. Useful for quoting longer sections of other pages.

TEXT


TEXT


TEXT


TEXT


TEXT

TEXT
Header 1
Header 3
Header 6
Header tags are used for various levels of headers, titles and subtitles on a page. The size choices are 1 (largest) through 6 (smallest).
Links
TEXT This is a link to Blogger.

The text between the tags will be what your reader sees and clicks on. The URL indicated by href= is the address they will be taken to. For more information on links, please see How can I do more with links?

TEXT This is an email link.

Email links work like webpage links. Just replace http:// with mailto: and replace the URL with an email address.
Lists

  1. TEXT

1. First list item.
2. Second list item.

  • TEXT

• First list item.
• Second list item.
You can create ordered (numbered) lists with the
    tags and unordered (bulleted) lists with the
      tags. In either one, individual list items are contained in
    • tags and get numbered or bulleted automatically. You can also nest lists, by including the complete code for a second list within the
    • tags for the first list.
      Dividers

      TEXT


      TEXT

      First paragraph.
      Second paragraph
      Paragraphs are blocks of text separated by blank lines.
      TEXT
      TEXT First line.
      Second line.
      Break tags start a new line where ever you enter them. Note that it is just a single tag, so it doesn't have to surround any text.
      TEXT
      TEXT First line.
      ________________________________________Second line.
      Horizontal lines can be used to separate anything you want. Like break tags, this are single items that don't surround text.
      Colors, Fonts, Alignment and anything else you can think of...
      You can adjust the precise appearance and positioning of all the elements listed above and more, through the magic of CSS. See: What else can I do with CSS?


      To write a tag that opens in a new window

      Visit W3Schools!

      http://w3schools.com/html/html_links.asp

      Visit W3Schools
      http://www.w3schools.com/TAGS/att_a_target.asp

Monday, November 28, 2011

Focus on our tribe helped us to stand up to Knol - Seth Godin

We had discomfort when Knol was launched. But quickly decided our users have not interest in. We continued to focus on our tribe and survived. But Google closed Knol.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/11/surviving-google.html

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Blog Posts 28.11.2011

Peter Drucker on Scientific Management - Industrial Engineering
http://mbarevision.blogspot.com/2011/11/peter-drucker-on-scientific-management.html

Government's Authority to Review Acquisitions in USA
http://nrao-m-a-handbook.blogspot.com/2011/11/governments-authority-to-review.html

Case Study: The Challenges of Post-Merger Integration

http://nrao-m-a-handbook.blogspot.com/2011/11/case-study-challenges-of-post-merger.html

Top Blog - Entrepreneurs Journey. Com

http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/advertise/

Alexa rank 15,658 in 2007

http://www.thomsonchemmanoor.com/top-blogs-ranked-within-25000-alexa-rank.html

Traffic of the site according to Google Analytics and Feedburner

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

As at September 2011

Unique visitors: 101,000+
Page Views: 145,000+
No of Articles/Pages: 1300+
RSS Subscribers: 30,000+

Top Blog - Daily Blog Tips

http://www.dailyblogtips.com/about/


alexa rank 15,768 in 2007


http://www.thomsonchemmanoor.com/top-blogs-ranked-within-25000-alexa-rank.html

Top Blog - Zenhabits

http://zenhabits.net/about/


It has 230,000 readers and had a rank of 23,391 in Alexa in 2007

http://www.thomsonchemmanoor.com/top-blogs-ranked-within-25000-alexa-rank.html

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Management Theory Review - New Posts

Peter Drucker on Scientic Managment
http://nraomtr.blogspot.com/2011/11/peter-drucker-on-scientific-management.html

Plant Layout - Efficiency

SEO Basics - Search Engine Optimization Made Easy

Author
Aaron Wall

Source: Article posted on Knol under creative commons 3.0

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art and science of publishing and marketing information that ranks well for valuable keywords in search engines like Google, Yahoo! Search, and Microsoft Bing.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art and science of publishing and marketing information that ranks well in search engines like Google, Yahoo! Search, and Microsoft Bing. If you run into any new jargon while reading this Knol consider looking up their definitions using the Search Engine Marketing Glossary.

By default, many search engines show only 10 results per page. Most searchers tend to click on the top few results. If you rank at the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), business is good, but if you are on the second or third page you might only get 1% of the search traffic that the top ranked site gets.

The two most powerful aspects of search engine marketing are:


users type what they want to find into search boxes, making search engines the most precisely targeted marketing medium in the history of the world
once you gain traction in the search results the incremental costs of gaining additional exposure are negligible when compared with the potential rewards, allowing individuals and small businesses to compete with (and perhaps eventually become) large corporations

While many people consider SEO to be complicated, I believe that SEO is nothing but an extension of traditional marketing. Search engine optimization consists of 9 main steps:

market research
keyword research
on -page optimization
site structure
link building
brand building
viral marketing
adjusting
staying up to date

Market Research

Do you have what it takes to compete in a market?

The first step is to search the major search engines to see what types of websites are ranking for words which you deem to be important. For example, if mostly colleges, media, and government institutions are ranking for your most important terms it may be difficult to rank for those types of queries. If, on the other hand, the market is dominated by fairly average websites which are not strongly established brands, it may be a market worth pursuing.

You can extend out the research you get from the search results by using the SEO for Firefox extension with the Firefox browser. This places many marketing data points right in the search results, and thus lets you see things like

site age
Google PageRank
inbound link count
if any governmental or educational sites link at their site
if they are listed in major directories
if bloggers link at their sites

The blue area under this CreditCards.com listing shows a wide array of marketing information.
Keyword Research

What keywords are people searching for?

Use the SEO Book Keyword research tool to search for popular and Long Tail keywords related to your industry. This tool cross references the Google Keyword Tool, Wordtracker, and other popular keyword research tools. Notice how our keyword tool provides daily search estimates and cross references other useful keyword research tools.

Keyword research tools are better at providing a qualitative measure than a quantitative measure, so don't be surprised if actual traffic volumes vary greatly from the numbers suggested by these tools. When in doubt you can also set up a Google AdWords account to test the potential size of a market.

In addition to looking up search volumes for what keywords you think are important, also take the time to ask past customers how they found you, why they chose you, and what issues were important to them in choosing you.

You can also get keyword ideas by doing things like

checking your web analytics or server logs
looking at page contents of competing websites
looking through topical forums and community sites to see what issues people frequently discuss

Site Structure

How should you structure your site?

Before drafting content consider what keywords are your most important and map out how to create pages to fit each important group of keywords within your site theme and navigational structure based on

market value
logical breaks in market segmentation
importance of ranking in building credibility / improving conversion rates

You may want to use an Excel spreadsheet or some other program to help you visualize your site structure. This mini-screenshot from an Excel spreadsheet shows example data for how you might align keywords for a section of a site focused on home based businesses, start ups, and franchise opportunities.



Make sure

your most important categories or pages are linked to sitewide
you link to every page on your site from at least one other page on your site
you use consistent anchor text in your navigation
you link to other content pages (and espeically to action items) from within the content area of your website

If you are uncertain how deep to make a portion of the site, start by creating a few high quality pages on the topic. Based on market feedback create more pages in the sections that are most valuable to your business.

On Page Optimization



It is hard to rank for keywords that do not appear in your page content, so each page should be organized around the goal of ranking for a specific keyword phrase, with some related phrases and related keywords mixed into the page copy.

Unique descriptive page titles play a crucial role in a successful search engine optimization campaigns. Page titles appear in the search results, and many people link to pages using the page title as their link anchor text.

If possible create hand crafted meta description tags which complement the page title by reinforcing your offer. If the relevant keywords for a page have multiple formats it may make sense to help focus the meta description on versions you did not use in the page title.

As far as page content goes, make sure you write for humans, and use heading tags to help break up the content into logical sections which will improve the scanability and help structure the document. When possible, make sure your page content uses descriptive modifiers as well.

Link Building

Search engines view links as votes, with some votes counting more than others. To get high quality links (that help your site rank better) you need to participate in the social aspects of your community and give away valuable unique content that people talk about and share with others. The below Google TouchGraph image shows a small graphic representation of sites in the search field that are related to SeoBook.com based on linking patterns.

In this post Matt Cutts suggested that Google is getting better at understanding link quality. Search engines want to count quality editorial votes as links that help influence their relevancy algorithms.

Link building tips


try to link to your most relevant page when getting links (don't point all the links at your home page)
mix your anchor text
use Yahoo! Site Explorer and other tools to analyze top competing backlinks
don't be afraid to link out to relevant high quality resources

Link building strategies


submit your site to general directories like DMOZ, the Yahoo! Directory, and Business.com
submit your site to relevant niche directories
here is more background on directories and SEO
if you have a local site, submit to relevant local sites (like the local chamber of commerce)
join trade organizations
get links from industry hub sites
create content people would want to link at
here is a list of 101 useful link building strategies

Brand Building

Brand related search queries tend to be some of the most targeted, best converting, and most valuable keywords. As you gain mindshare people will be more likely to search for your brand or keywords related to your brand. A high volume of brand -related search traffic may also be seen as a sign of quality by major search engines.

If you build a strong brand when people search for more information about your brand, and other websites have good things to say about your brand, these interactions help to reinforce your brand image and improve your lead quality and conversion rates.

Things like advertising and community activity are easy ways to help improve your brand exposure, but obviously branding is a lot more complicated than that. One of my favorite books about branding is Rob Frankel's The Revenge of Brand X.

Viral Marketing

Link building is probably the single hardest and most time consuming part of an effective SEO campaign, largely because it requires influencing other people. But links are nothing but a remark or citation. Seth Godin's Purple Cow is a great book about being remarkable.

The beautiful thing about viral marketing is that creating one popular compelling idea can lead to thousands of free quality links. If your competitor is building one link at a time and you have thousands of people spreading your ideas for you for free then you are typically going to end up ranking better.

In SEO many people create content based around linking opportunities. Many of us refer to this as Link Baiting. You can learn link baiting tips from


In SEO many people create content based around linking opportunities. Many of us refer to this as Link Baiting. You can learn link baiting tips from


SEO Book
Stuntdubl
Performancing
Copyblogger
Wolf Howl


You can search social news or social bookmarking sites like Digg or Del.icio.us to see what stories related to your topic became popular.
Measuring Results

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.
- John Wanamaker

How can I tell if my SEO campaign is effective? The bottom line is what counts. Is your site generating more leads, higher quality leads, or more sales? What keywords are working? You can look at your server logs and an analytics program to track traffic trends and what keywords lead to conversion.

Outside of traffic another good sign that you are on the right track is if you see more websites asking questions or talking about you. If you start picking up high quality unrequested links you might be near a Tipping Point to where your marketing starts to build on itself.

Search engines follow people, but lag actual market conditions. It may take search engines a while to find all the links pointing at your site and analyze how well your site should rank. Depending on how competitive your marketplace is, it may take anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of years to establish a strong market position. Rankings can be a moving target, since at any point in time,


you are marketing your business
competitors are marketing their businesses and reinvesting profits into building out their SEO strategy
search engines may change their relevancy algorithms


Keeping up to date

How do you track the changes in the SEO market? In my SEO tools I also offer Google Gadgets that make it easy for you to embed keyword, competitive, and link research tools inside any webpage. You can track your ranking changes using this free keyword rank checker.
If you want to keep up with how the SEO market as a whole is changing, consider using any of the following resources


SEO Conferences
SEO Blogs
SEO Forums

We also offer guides to blog SEO and charity SEO. And if you want an up to date training program, consider joining our SEO training program.

Best of luck with your sites!
Aaron Wall

Source Article:
http://knol.google.com/k/seo-basics