Many businesses put all of their eggs in one basket when it comes to marketing, often because of their relatively smaller budgets and constraints on manpower. This can put you in an extremely precarious position in the event that something goes wrong. No single marketing medium is more prone to this than search engine optimization, or SEO. This is because despite the amount of work that you or your marketing company puts into your campaign, many external factors can adversely effect on it. If a search engine’s algorithm (the formula that determines the importance of a particular web page) changes, your ranking can plummet. Likewise, if one of your competitors pours a ton of money and manpower into their SEO campaign, they can often take your position in the SERPs leaving you with nothing but memories of the business you used to get from your web site.

While there is no way to completely stop things like this from happening, you can minimize the effect they have on your business by diversifying your marketing plan. Instead of relying solely on search engines to deliver prospects to you, add a few additional channels, such as networking, print advertising or email marketing. In doing so, you’ll have a more stable business model, sleep better at night, and generally run a more profitable business.

Technology can be a great thing. It can be used to help make our work easier, more productive, and faster. It can also be used to make us look stupid, as is often the case with article re-writing software. Article re-writing software is used by web site owners trying to add a lot of original content to their web site without actually creating a lot of original content. They will usually write one version of the desired content (if they don’t steal it from someone else) and then use the software to create multiple versions of that content. It’s also sometimes used in the same manner for article submission.

In either case, the new versions of the content are almost always so poorly reworded that no visitor would ever become a customer. Take the following headline that was recently submitted to one of our article directories as a perfect example:

Great New Discovery Helps You Abuse Drugs!

Well, I don’t know about you, but that sounds like just what I need…help to abuse some drugs. Where do I sign up? And do the drugs come with the program or do I have to buy them separately?

A properly optimized web site is not something that you can create overnight. When you take shortcuts, this is what ends up happening (along with unstable ranking). On the other hand, when you take a marathon approach to your web site’s optimization, you end up with a web site that has a good conversion rate and stable ranking. Which would you prefer?

It could be any number of things, but quite often it’s the fact that most people fail to use powerful headlines. So what’s the secret to a powerful headline? Well, shock value can obviously play a part in it (proven by the fact that you are here reading this), but if you want to be a little more subtle with your message, you could simply tailor it to be unexpected rather than shocking. Another technique is to phrase your headline as a question instead of a statement. Leave the cute and funny headlines to other people, since it usually doesn’t work.

The Justice Department has ruled that Google’s complaint regarding the default settings for the search box in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7?do not violate their antitrust agreement with federal and state governments. Google claimed that the default settings in Internet Explorer favoring MSN Search would give Microsoft an unfair advantage. Ironically, this is exactly what Firefox?does for Google in their browser’s search box.

We’ve been using the beta version of IE7 here for a while, and while it offers a lot of features that none of the other browsers out there offer, the current beta does not live up to the reputation that Microsoft execs have built up for it?? especially in terms of it’s utilization of RSS. The new browser has made up for a lot of previous shortcomings, but I’m a bit disappointed in the way that RSS ended up being implemented. It seems to be more of an afterthought than anything.

Business owners are always looking for ways to increase their web site traffic, and more importantly, ways to keep their visitors coming back. One of the ways that we recommend to all of our clients is to utilize a blog?and post to it on a regular basis, such as JB Translations Spanish translation blog, but another powerful way is to implement a forum on your web site where your visitors can communicate freely amongst themselves, such as Generator Facts portable generator forum.

A forum gives your visitors a sense of community and provides information that they are looking for, while increasing the amount of relevant content on your web site to boost your organic search engine rankings. Keep in mind, just like anything else, a forum will require some work on your part to ensure its growth. You will also have to be vigilant in deleting the spam posts that other web site owners make to promote their own web sites, but the end result is quality traffic that is worth the extra work.

Most forums are powered by either phpBB or vBulletin , but there are a few other options out there. Once your forum is set up, visit The Admin Zone for tips on managing and growing it.

In a previous post regarding Trump’s new premium vodka, the Donald (as he like to call himself) was quoted saying:

“By the summer of ‘06, I fully expect the most called for cocktail in America to be the T&T or the Trump and Tonic.”

I said back then that I expect this particular venture to fail, and as we are approaching the summer of ‘06 with little if any buzz about the ?Trump and Tonic? my position appears to be dead on. Sorry Donald, but it looks like you’ll have to chalk this one up as a loss.

If you’re like many small business owners, you’re always looking for ways to cut costs. While this can be a good thing, it can also be a bad thing. Part of being an effective entrepreneur is knowing where you can cut costs, and where you need to invest in the services of a professional. Translation is one of those areas that you really should hire a professional rather than trying to do it on your own or worse yet, use a free web based service.

Here’s an example of what can go wrong when you take short cuts in translating your marketing materials?

The internet, interactive TV and satellite radio will remain fast-growth areas in U.S. in terms of ad revenue, with the internet having averaged 57 percent growth each year over the past 10 years according to the ?Advertising Forecast 2006″ report from Kagan Research. In 2005, new channels with the most growth included satellite radio (235%) and interactive TV (116%). Total ad revenue in 2005, including traditional and interactive, increased 3.9%to $240 billion.

“The question is, can traditional ad media morph and take advantage of the internet and do partnerships with their own websites, or will dollars migrate from them to other companies like Yahoo and Google?” said Derek Baine, a senior analyst with Kagan. “So you’re seeing some of the cable networks have been very aggressive in developing new applications on the internet, mobile and interactive channels. That’s the wave of the future for those who act quickly and jump on the media.”

Google’s updated webmaster guidelines