Friday, June 19, 2009


Are You Ignoring 80% Of Your Market?
Why You Should Be Reaching Out Across The Globe!

Did you know that by mid-year of 2008, the worldwide number of Internet users had grown to more than 1.46 BILLION people, with the total amount spent online estimated to grow to $263 billion by 2010 from $170 billion last year!?

With those figures in mind, consider that although the U.S. led the pack as of July '08 for the percentage of its population online (73.6%), that number still constitutes only 17% (and shrinking) of Web surfers worldwide—a fairly small segment of online users!

The true current and future online growth is and will be in the world's most populous countries, such as China, India, Brazil, Russia and Indonesia. In fact, the Asian continent ranks first worldwide for the number of Internet users—578 MILLION and growing. Moreover, since 2000, Africa and the Middle East have witnessed what can only be described as a phenomenal increase of online users: a cumulative, eight-year 1,031.2 % and 1,176.8 % growth rate, respectively!

Make no mistake about it: China, India, and these other rising economic powerhouses around the globe represent a HUGE POTENTIAL for every home-business owner. MASSIVE developments in technology, improvements in standards of living, and increasing disposable income are opening the floodgates to a vast array of virtually untapped business possibilities.

That said, it's important to realize that this trend represents MUCH MORE than an interesting sideline marketing strategy for your business. Ignore this burgeoning source of increasing profits, networks, team members, prospects, and resources, and you do so at your own peril. If the U.S. is still your sole online market and source for customers, prospects, and team members, you're GREATLY limiting your reach...AND your profits. After all, what business owner would willingly turn away 80% of the possible customers coming into his store? Answer: The kind of owner who won't be in business much longer!

Fortunately, the worldwide growth and reach of the Internet has leveled the international playing field for the small-business owner. Home-based entrepreneurs no longer have to leave international markets to the "bigger" companies and enterprises with deep pockets.

Additionally, you can find a plethora of budget-friendly resources online to help you reach across the globe to prospects, customers, and team members in other countries. Pay-per-click pricing for the popular Google Adwords service and other PPC search engines has risen dramatically for U.S.-targeted advertising. However, many offer country-specific search engines and PPC ad opportunities—often for a fraction of the cost!

Take a few moments now and check out these Websites. They'll make a great starting point for planning your international business focus:

  • Google International

    • Adwords: Regional and Local Targeting —Target your PPC ads to appear only in specific country, region, or city searches. This allows your ads to appear only for people searching for results in regional areas you choose.

    • Looking for good online advertising sources in a specific country? Try this Google search page. Simply enter the country in which you want to limit your search results, enter your keyword (i.e., online ads, classifieds, etc.), and click the Google Search button.

    • To find a Google search engine for a specific country, click HERE, then scroll down to the bottom of the page.

  • Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture): International— A nice overview for using Yahoo!'s PPC offering to reach the world.

  • International Search Engine Directory—A list of search engines per country. A great place to start for finding country-specific ad sources.

  • Search Engine Watch: Pay-Per-Click Search Engines—Get information on major PPC search engines, second-tier PPC players, and more.

Start developing your international focus today. Don't make the mistake of ignoring 80% of your potential market—you can bet your competition won't!

==================================

Statistical Resources:

Internet World Stats - INTERNET USAGE STATISTICS, The Internet Big Picture, World Internet Users and Population Stats

Computer Industry Almanac - Worldwide Internet Users Top 1 Billion in 2005. USA Reach Nearly 200M Internet Users.

Posted By Chris Keenan
www.bizmancan.com
Visit us to learn more about starting your own home business.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Has Google A New - 50 Penalty?

Webmasters in an online webmaster forum observed an anomaly in Google's results that might indicate a new Google penalty. Which websites have been penalized and could this affect your own website?

Google penalty

What has happened?

Many webmasters reported that their websites lost all of their top positions on Google and dropped to position 50 and below.

The problem is that the usual metrics shows that the websites are okay. For example, one of the websites was older than two years, the inbound links did not change and the Google PageRank in Google's toolbar also did not change. Another penalized website was older than 10 years.

Why have these websites been penalized?

There were several theories in the forum thread:

1. Spam on another websites

One theory was that the websites could have been penalized because the webmaster used spammy methods on another of his domains.

Even if your websites are not linked, Google can still know that you are the owner of both websites. They have several ways to find this out, including WHOIS information and Google accounts.

2. Links to spammy websites

Your website might link to spammy websites even if you don't want to do that. Website widgets, counters and other plugins sometimes put invisible links to other sites on your website.

The server might have also been hacked and there could be a link that you don't want on your website. (Editor's note: You can find a link checker in IBP: Tools > Broken link checker).

3. Paid links from .edu domains

A theory that looks very likely was the use of paid links from .edu domains. It seems that there are many hacked .edu servers that host websites on which these links can appear.

Paid links from other sites might also cause problems. If paid links from .edu pages really can cause a ranking drop then this would enable your competitors to harm your website by purchasing these links for your website.

What should you do now?

We think that it's likely that Google is working on its paid link filters and that paid links from .edu domains and other sites are the reason for the problems.

Stay away from paid links. Google doesn't like them and chances are that your website will get problems if you use them. Better focus on high quality organic links.

Sunday, June 07, 2009

How To Create Trust For High Google Rankings

Trust is a major factor in Google's ranking algorithm. Some websites can get high rankings on Google for nearly any content they publish while other websites cannot get high rankings at all although they have optimized web page content.

A high trust level is crucial if you want to get high Google rankings

The reason why some websites do better than others is trust. Some websites have managed to reach a very high trust level with Google. That helps them to get higher rankings on search engines than you do.

Google doesn't want to list spam sites in the search results. For that reason, it is important to show Google that your website is for real, that you're not a spammer and that you plan to stay in business for a long time.

trusted

Here are some things you can do to show Google's algorithm that it can trust your website.

1. Things you should consider about your domain name

The age of a domain is important to Google. When you start a new online business, consider buying an old domain name if a suitable name is available.

If you start with a new domain, buy it with a renewal period of two years and more. You show Google that your domain is not a throwaway domain by doing so.

Check your WHOIS records and make sure that the contact information is correct. Do not use exotic top level domains. If you are in the USA, use .com, .net or .org. If you're in another country, use the official top level domain of your country.

Don't overuse hyphens in your URL. For example, www.keyword-keyword1-keyword2-keyword3-keyword4-keyword5.com might look spammy.

2. Things you should consider about your website content

Make your contact information easy to find on your website. List a full address and not only your email address on your website. The more information about your company can be found on your website, the more likely it is that it will be considered a real business.

Your website should have a privacy policy and terms and conditions (if applicable). Both should be linked from your sitemap.

Don't use doorway pages. They annoy search engine spiders and website visitors. Doorway pages are a clear indicator of a low quality website.

If possible, keep the HTML code of your web pages below 100 KB so that search engine spiders can crawl it easily. Regularly update your web pages to show Google that your website is alive.

3. Things you should consider about your links

Do not participate in automated linking schemes. If your website gets 2000 inbound links on a single day then Google might think that you try to game the algorithm with a link system.

The links to your website should contain your keywords but they should not all contain exactly the same link text. If all links to your website used exactly the same link text then this would be a red flag for Google.

Do not use paid links. Google does not like paid links and they might penalize your website if use them.

If Google trusts your website then it will be much easier to get high rankings. Of course, your website still needs optimized web page content and good inbound links. IBP can help you to get both.

Thursday, June 04, 2009

Microsoft's new search engine Bing


Microsoft's Bing search engine has just become publicly available, allowing you to decide whether Microsoft's latest effort has the goods to take on Google. Bing is available at www.bing.com and replaces Live Search.

Bing Search

Microsoft is expected to spend $80 million to $100 million on Bing marketing which would be a nice hedge against Yahoo! because Bing will most likely take market share from Yahoo!.

Whether Bing ultimately succeeds or not, it will push Google to keep innovating search, and the new pay per click competition will ensure that Google doesn't get too greedy.

How is Bing different from Google?

Bing is not dramatically different from Google, but some people have found its results stronger. There are some visible changes:

  • Bing shows a preview of the web pages in the search results when you hover your mouse pointer at the right side of the search results.

  • Bing displays fewer results if it is certain that it has understood your intent. The search for "Facebook", for example, brings up just one result linking to the site itself.

  • Some search results are divided into categories. For example, if you search for the popular musician "Justin Timberlake", you'll get results in the categories news, songs, movies, biography, wallpaper and downloads. In addition, the search results show images, videos and the popularity of the musician.

  • Wikipedia searches can be displayed inline in the search results without leaving the Bing site by clicking the "Enhanced view" link.

  • Bing features a different background image every day. The image contains special hidden hotspots that lead you to more information (soon advertising?) about the image.

  • Despite the background image, Bing's homepage loads very quickly in your web browser because the search box and logo load first. You can turn off the background image.

  • Bing's video search lets you watch videos without leaving the search engine.

  • Bing offers specific health, shopping and travel search engines, as well as instant answers to travel searches. For instance, the search "Vegas hotels" displays a selection of hotels in Las Vegas, including hotel stars and prices.

  • Bing's search history lets you return to your most recent searches of the last two days. This feature can be turned off to protect your privacy.

  • Some of Google's features are missing, for example, Bing doesn't seem to recognize misspellings and returns no results in these cases.
Posted by Chris Keenan
www.bizmancan.com

Tuesday, June 02, 2009