Baidu news Ecommerce platform
Baidu has launched “Youa”, its own consumer to consumer e-commerce platform, which has up until now only been available to 50,000 people in a closed beta. The current market leader, Alibaba’s Taobao has a 57% market share and is reportedly investing around $700 million over the next five years to strengthen its position. However estimates suggest that Baidu’s offering will do well – and form 3-5% of its revenues in 2009.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Gasta Organic Search Marketing
Organic Search Engine
Marketing - It Really Works! by Brooks Donner
While helping traditional ecommerce companies boost their organic search engine marketing, I realized that the services and techniques we apply to those traditional ecommerce clients can be utilized by Internet marketers anywhere and everywhere, including affiliate marketers!
My realization led me to write this article. My goal here is to outline the general process and techniques we employ for organic search engine marketing.I'm going to construct the body of this article with the following sections:
1. Organic search engine marketing v. paid search engine marketing (PPC)
2. Blogs v. static web pages
3. Long tail keywords v. short head keywords
4. Unique content and Web 3.0
5. Internet marketing and Web 2.0
1. Organic Search Engine Marketing v. Paid Search Engine Marketing (PPC)
Organic search engine marketing is marketing a website to improve the ranking for its web pages in the organic, or natural, search engine results pages (SERPs).
Paid search engine marketing is incorporating paid advertising strategies such as Google's Adwords or Yahoo's Search Marketing in order to be listed in the "sponsored" or "advertisement" sections of the search engine results pages (SERPs).
With the increasing costs of paid search engine marketing, advertisers have been suffering from a downward trend in return on investment (ROI). On the other hand, with more sophisticated and proven strategies for organic search engine marketing, the return on investment (ROI) for those who market to rank higher naturally in the SERPs is increasing. Therefore, we advise ecommerce companies, affiliates and super-affiliates alike to shift their resources from paid search engine marketing to organic search engine marketing.
2. Blogs v. Static Web Pages
Blogs have an inherent and distinct advantage over static web pages. Search engines like blogs better. Everything being equal (design, content, page layout, H tags, Alt tags, age, etc.), a blog page will outrank a static web page more often than not. However, all things are not equal! Blogs take advantage of plug-ins, or features, to be very search engine friendly. We create and customize "Power Blogs" for our clients. A "Power Blog" is a search engine friendly WordPress blog with tons of SEO plug-ins. Once we install a Power Blog we use it as a platform for Web 2.0 marketing, a.k.a. social marketing.
The benefits of our Power Blog include:
(A) Multi-Channel Visitor Strategy - Instead of having Google be responsible for 95% of your visitors, now you can also get visitors from all of the Blog Search Engines. Because blogs use RSS (really simple syndication), you will find that other websites are syndicating your content on their websites, bringing you more visitors and links. By having multiple streams of visitors you protect yourself in case one of your traffic streams starts to underperform.
(B) Free Links To Your Site - The amount of links that you have to your site plays a huge role in how highly you rank on Google. By utilizing the Trackback feature in Wordpress, you can automatically get other websites to link to you for free.
3. Long Tail Keywords v. Short Head Keywords
Remember, this is called "Organic Search Engine Marketing".....it's marketing, and marketing needs a focus. In order to focus in on what to market for, you need to have a solid foundation of the main keywords that describe your business and/or products that you are selling. These main keywords are one to three phrase keywords (or keyword phrases) generally speaking and are more than likely highly competitive. These types of keywords are known as "Short Head" keywords. For example, "car insurance."
Once you know your short head keywords, you will want to market directly to more specific, longer keywords related to the main short head keywords. These longer, more specific keywords are known as "Long Tail" keywords. For example, "car insurance discounts in Georgia."
Although the traffic for each long tail keyword is usually much less than its short tail relative, if you add up all the long tail keywords, they will usually add up to much more traffíc and most importantly, targeted traffíc, than the short tail keywords alone.
4. Unique Content and Web 3.0
Once you have targeted the long tail keywords for your business or niche, then you can start marketing for them.
The cornerstone for organic search engine marketing is unique content creation. Whether it's 500-word articles, blog posts, blog comments, forum posts, social snippets, or videos, you are going to want to be able to create unique content based on your long tail keywords.
Web 3.0 is a term that refers to the future of the World Wide Web. In our opinion, that future includes the "Semantic Web" or web use affected by artificial intelligence. Sounds kind of like Star Wars, Alien and E.T. all wrapped into one big and scary WWW...doesn't it?! Well, not really of course. Semantic Web in this case just means that search engines will be able to figure out what a web page is all about in a different, more intelligent way. The major idea here is that search engines will take a more encompassing view at a page and understand its meaning rather making a determination based on figuring out which keywords pop up most often. In this new Web 3.0 scenario, a search engine might find a web page on "sun tanning in Florida" to also be quite relevant to "sun tan oil application" and therefore líst this example page in the search engine results pages under both keywords.
What does Web 3.0 mean to you? Basically, when creating your unique content, keep the semantic web concept in mind and use synonyms for your target keyword wherever it's natural. Don't stuff keywords in your content, i.e. use a keyword just to use it and not when it should be used naturally...and don't stuff keyword synonyms either!
5. Internet Marketing and Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is the "Social Web," so naturally, the concept of social marketing should apply to today's Internet Marketing strategies.
Social marketing includes posting on social networking, social news and social bookmarking websites.
You can also think of blogging as part of Web 2.0, and of course you're covered because you have read Section 2 above.
In conclusion, whether you own your ecommerce business and sell your products, or if you are an affiliate or super-affiliate, organic search engine marketing must be on your "actions líst." In the long run, outranking your competitors in the search engine results pages proves to bring a higher return on investment (ROI) than trying to out-advertise your competitors in paid search engine marketing.
You now have the basic know-how to create your organic search engine marketing strategy.
Brooks Donner
About The Author
Want more visitors to your website? We can help you! Contact TopLine Media Group today to start driving unlímited & free targeted traffíc using our Organic Search Engine Marketing service. Plus, get a no-obligation Free Internet Marketing Consultation at http://www.TopLineMediaGroup.com .
Marketing - It Really Works! by Brooks Donner
While helping traditional ecommerce companies boost their organic search engine marketing, I realized that the services and techniques we apply to those traditional ecommerce clients can be utilized by Internet marketers anywhere and everywhere, including affiliate marketers!
My realization led me to write this article. My goal here is to outline the general process and techniques we employ for organic search engine marketing.I'm going to construct the body of this article with the following sections:
1. Organic search engine marketing v. paid search engine marketing (PPC)
2. Blogs v. static web pages
3. Long tail keywords v. short head keywords
4. Unique content and Web 3.0
5. Internet marketing and Web 2.0
1. Organic Search Engine Marketing v. Paid Search Engine Marketing (PPC)
Organic search engine marketing is marketing a website to improve the ranking for its web pages in the organic, or natural, search engine results pages (SERPs).
Paid search engine marketing is incorporating paid advertising strategies such as Google's Adwords or Yahoo's Search Marketing in order to be listed in the "sponsored" or "advertisement" sections of the search engine results pages (SERPs).
With the increasing costs of paid search engine marketing, advertisers have been suffering from a downward trend in return on investment (ROI). On the other hand, with more sophisticated and proven strategies for organic search engine marketing, the return on investment (ROI) for those who market to rank higher naturally in the SERPs is increasing. Therefore, we advise ecommerce companies, affiliates and super-affiliates alike to shift their resources from paid search engine marketing to organic search engine marketing.
2. Blogs v. Static Web Pages
Blogs have an inherent and distinct advantage over static web pages. Search engines like blogs better. Everything being equal (design, content, page layout, H tags, Alt tags, age, etc.), a blog page will outrank a static web page more often than not. However, all things are not equal! Blogs take advantage of plug-ins, or features, to be very search engine friendly. We create and customize "Power Blogs" for our clients. A "Power Blog" is a search engine friendly WordPress blog with tons of SEO plug-ins. Once we install a Power Blog we use it as a platform for Web 2.0 marketing, a.k.a. social marketing.
The benefits of our Power Blog include:
(A) Multi-Channel Visitor Strategy - Instead of having Google be responsible for 95% of your visitors, now you can also get visitors from all of the Blog Search Engines. Because blogs use RSS (really simple syndication), you will find that other websites are syndicating your content on their websites, bringing you more visitors and links. By having multiple streams of visitors you protect yourself in case one of your traffic streams starts to underperform.
(B) Free Links To Your Site - The amount of links that you have to your site plays a huge role in how highly you rank on Google. By utilizing the Trackback feature in Wordpress, you can automatically get other websites to link to you for free.
3. Long Tail Keywords v. Short Head Keywords
Remember, this is called "Organic Search Engine Marketing".....it's marketing, and marketing needs a focus. In order to focus in on what to market for, you need to have a solid foundation of the main keywords that describe your business and/or products that you are selling. These main keywords are one to three phrase keywords (or keyword phrases) generally speaking and are more than likely highly competitive. These types of keywords are known as "Short Head" keywords. For example, "car insurance."
Once you know your short head keywords, you will want to market directly to more specific, longer keywords related to the main short head keywords. These longer, more specific keywords are known as "Long Tail" keywords. For example, "car insurance discounts in Georgia."
Although the traffic for each long tail keyword is usually much less than its short tail relative, if you add up all the long tail keywords, they will usually add up to much more traffíc and most importantly, targeted traffíc, than the short tail keywords alone.
4. Unique Content and Web 3.0
Once you have targeted the long tail keywords for your business or niche, then you can start marketing for them.
The cornerstone for organic search engine marketing is unique content creation. Whether it's 500-word articles, blog posts, blog comments, forum posts, social snippets, or videos, you are going to want to be able to create unique content based on your long tail keywords.
Web 3.0 is a term that refers to the future of the World Wide Web. In our opinion, that future includes the "Semantic Web" or web use affected by artificial intelligence. Sounds kind of like Star Wars, Alien and E.T. all wrapped into one big and scary WWW...doesn't it?! Well, not really of course. Semantic Web in this case just means that search engines will be able to figure out what a web page is all about in a different, more intelligent way. The major idea here is that search engines will take a more encompassing view at a page and understand its meaning rather making a determination based on figuring out which keywords pop up most often. In this new Web 3.0 scenario, a search engine might find a web page on "sun tanning in Florida" to also be quite relevant to "sun tan oil application" and therefore líst this example page in the search engine results pages under both keywords.
What does Web 3.0 mean to you? Basically, when creating your unique content, keep the semantic web concept in mind and use synonyms for your target keyword wherever it's natural. Don't stuff keywords in your content, i.e. use a keyword just to use it and not when it should be used naturally...and don't stuff keyword synonyms either!
5. Internet Marketing and Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is the "Social Web," so naturally, the concept of social marketing should apply to today's Internet Marketing strategies.
Social marketing includes posting on social networking, social news and social bookmarking websites.
You can also think of blogging as part of Web 2.0, and of course you're covered because you have read Section 2 above.
In conclusion, whether you own your ecommerce business and sell your products, or if you are an affiliate or super-affiliate, organic search engine marketing must be on your "actions líst." In the long run, outranking your competitors in the search engine results pages proves to bring a higher return on investment (ROI) than trying to out-advertise your competitors in paid search engine marketing.
You now have the basic know-how to create your organic search engine marketing strategy.
Brooks Donner
About The Author
Want more visitors to your website? We can help you! Contact TopLine Media Group today to start driving unlímited & free targeted traffíc using our Organic Search Engine Marketing service. Plus, get a no-obligation Free Internet Marketing Consultation at http://www.TopLineMediaGroup.com .
Gasta News :socialmedian election widget
Help us test the socialmedian election widget
By Jason Goldberg on October 28, 2008 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
socialmedian blog readers: I wanted to provide you with a first look at http://election.socialmedian.com, a site we are launching with the Washington Post and other partners like The Guardian to help people track and participate in election 2008 coverage.
We will formally announce the new site tomorrow (Wednesday)...you can use it now but it is still a work in progress.
The http://election.socialmedian.com site aggregates news and user-feeds related to the election and enables users to join in the election coverage and discussion. We created this site with The Washington Post to enable people to track all the election news from thousands of news sources as well as from Twitter feeds, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and more all in one place, and (importantly) to join-in and add their own feeds from their favorite sites to provide user reports leading up to and on election day.
You can sign up for the page immediately and add your feeds. Add your Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, blog site etc. and we'll automatically add your relevant contributions on those sites to this page.
Starting Wednesday users will also be able to eaisly grab a widget of this page to put on your own websites and blogs. The WashingtonPost and The Guardian are just two of the first websites that have signed up to use this widget. The widget will highlight user submitted news and reports --> so this is a great way to get your election day coverage on these and other leading sites.
By Jason Goldberg on October 28, 2008 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
socialmedian blog readers: I wanted to provide you with a first look at http://election.socialmedian.com, a site we are launching with the Washington Post and other partners like The Guardian to help people track and participate in election 2008 coverage.
We will formally announce the new site tomorrow (Wednesday)...you can use it now but it is still a work in progress.
The http://election.socialmedian.com site aggregates news and user-feeds related to the election and enables users to join in the election coverage and discussion. We created this site with The Washington Post to enable people to track all the election news from thousands of news sources as well as from Twitter feeds, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and more all in one place, and (importantly) to join-in and add their own feeds from their favorite sites to provide user reports leading up to and on election day.
You can sign up for the page immediately and add your feeds. Add your Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, blog site etc. and we'll automatically add your relevant contributions on those sites to this page.
Starting Wednesday users will also be able to eaisly grab a widget of this page to put on your own websites and blogs. The WashingtonPost and The Guardian are just two of the first websites that have signed up to use this widget. The widget will highlight user submitted news and reports --> so this is a great way to get your election day coverage on these and other leading sites.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Gasta News:Microsoft, Google and Yahoo
Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have signed a global code of conduct promising to offer better protection for online free speech and against official intrusion.
The Global Network Initiative follows criticism that companies were assisting governments in countries like China to censor the Internet.
The guidelines seek to limit what data should be shared with authorities, in cases where free speech is an issue.
"This is an important first step," said Mike Posner of Human Rights First.
He told the BBC "What this is is a recognition by all these tech companies, the human rights groups and social investors that there has to be a collective response to this growing problem.
"Companies need to step up to the plate and be more aggressive in challenging unwarranted government interference," he said.
The initiative states that privacy is "a human right and guarantor of human dignity," and the agreement commits the companies to try to resist overly broad demands for restrictions on freedom of speech and the privacy of users.
They will also assess the human rights climate in a country before concluding business deals and make sure their employees and partners follow suit.
"These principles are not going to be a silver bullet, but the most important point for me is to provide transparency," said Danny O'Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"We have joined this initiative because we know that a wide range of groups working together can achieve much more than the company acting alone," said Andrew McLaughlin, Google's director of global public policy.
'Valuable roadmap'
The impetus for such an agreement follows years of criticism that a number of businesses, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have complicity built what has been dubbed the "Great Firewall of China".
Google has been accused of complying with Chinese government demands to filter internet searches to eliminate query results regarding topics such as democracy or Tiananmen Square.
Microsoft has come under attack for blocking the blog of a prominent Chinese Media researcher who posted articles critical of a management purge at the Beijing News Daily.
Canadian researchers uncovered that a Skype joint venture in China monitored users' communications.
And a Chinese reporter Shi Tao was jailed for 10 years after Yahoo China provided his personal information to the Chinese government.
Today Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang welcomed the new code of conduct.
"These principles provide a valuable roadmap for companies like Yahoo operating in markets where freedom of expression and privacy are unfairly restricted.
"Yahoo was founded on the belief that promoting access to information can enrich people's lives and the principles we unveiled today reflect our determination that our actions match our values around the world," said Mr Yang.
While China has been painted as the worst abuser, Colin Maclay of the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University said there are other countries and governments all over the world at fault.
"The number of states actively seeking to censor online content and access personal information is growing.
"And the means employed - technical, social, legal, political - are increasingly sophisticated, often placing internet and telecommunications companies in difficult positions."
'Business case'
The Global Network Initiative was drawn up by the internet companies along with human rights groups, academics and investors.
Adam Kanzer who is the managing director and general counsel at Domini Social Investments said as well as being the right thing to do, it also makes good business sense.
He told BBC News "When you see the industry being caught up in the tactics of various regimes around the world, the business case is very clear. Freedom of expression and privacy is core to their business.
"They depend on a wide open, freely accessible and secure internet. That's what they are about. If people don't trust the internet and believe they are secure, then that is counterproductive to their business."
The effort is already being seen by some as not going far enough.
"After two years of effort, they have ended up with so little," said Morton Sklar executive director for the World Organisation for Human Rights USA.
"It is very little more than a broad statement of support for a general principle without any concrete backup mechanism to ensure that the guidelines will be followed."
Mr Posner of Human Rights First disputes that and said this agreement has not been set up as a "gotcha system" but as a way "to work with companies to get them to improve what they are doing, credit them when they do it and call them out if they fail."
While it is hoped many more companies will sign up, two European telecommunications firms, France Telecom and Vodafone, are already said to be considering adding their names.
The Global Network Initiative follows criticism that companies were assisting governments in countries like China to censor the Internet.
The guidelines seek to limit what data should be shared with authorities, in cases where free speech is an issue.
"This is an important first step," said Mike Posner of Human Rights First.
He told the BBC "What this is is a recognition by all these tech companies, the human rights groups and social investors that there has to be a collective response to this growing problem.
"Companies need to step up to the plate and be more aggressive in challenging unwarranted government interference," he said.
The initiative states that privacy is "a human right and guarantor of human dignity," and the agreement commits the companies to try to resist overly broad demands for restrictions on freedom of speech and the privacy of users.
They will also assess the human rights climate in a country before concluding business deals and make sure their employees and partners follow suit.
"These principles are not going to be a silver bullet, but the most important point for me is to provide transparency," said Danny O'Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"We have joined this initiative because we know that a wide range of groups working together can achieve much more than the company acting alone," said Andrew McLaughlin, Google's director of global public policy.
'Valuable roadmap'
The impetus for such an agreement follows years of criticism that a number of businesses, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have complicity built what has been dubbed the "Great Firewall of China".
Google has been accused of complying with Chinese government demands to filter internet searches to eliminate query results regarding topics such as democracy or Tiananmen Square.
Microsoft has come under attack for blocking the blog of a prominent Chinese Media researcher who posted articles critical of a management purge at the Beijing News Daily.
Canadian researchers uncovered that a Skype joint venture in China monitored users' communications.
And a Chinese reporter Shi Tao was jailed for 10 years after Yahoo China provided his personal information to the Chinese government.
Today Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang welcomed the new code of conduct.
"These principles provide a valuable roadmap for companies like Yahoo operating in markets where freedom of expression and privacy are unfairly restricted.
"Yahoo was founded on the belief that promoting access to information can enrich people's lives and the principles we unveiled today reflect our determination that our actions match our values around the world," said Mr Yang.
While China has been painted as the worst abuser, Colin Maclay of the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University said there are other countries and governments all over the world at fault.
"The number of states actively seeking to censor online content and access personal information is growing.
"And the means employed - technical, social, legal, political - are increasingly sophisticated, often placing internet and telecommunications companies in difficult positions."
'Business case'
The Global Network Initiative was drawn up by the internet companies along with human rights groups, academics and investors.
Adam Kanzer who is the managing director and general counsel at Domini Social Investments said as well as being the right thing to do, it also makes good business sense.
He told BBC News "When you see the industry being caught up in the tactics of various regimes around the world, the business case is very clear. Freedom of expression and privacy is core to their business.
"They depend on a wide open, freely accessible and secure internet. That's what they are about. If people don't trust the internet and believe they are secure, then that is counterproductive to their business."
The effort is already being seen by some as not going far enough.
"After two years of effort, they have ended up with so little," said Morton Sklar executive director for the World Organisation for Human Rights USA.
"It is very little more than a broad statement of support for a general principle without any concrete backup mechanism to ensure that the guidelines will be followed."
Mr Posner of Human Rights First disputes that and said this agreement has not been set up as a "gotcha system" but as a way "to work with companies to get them to improve what they are doing, credit them when they do it and call them out if they fail."
While it is hoped many more companies will sign up, two European telecommunications firms, France Telecom and Vodafone, are already said to be considering adding their names.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
