Picture this. You advertise something for sale on line, maybe on Craig’s List, eBay, whatever.  You get an email from someone interested in purchasing your item. After settling on a price, he sends you a cashier’s check for quite a bit more than the price you agreed to sell it for. When you point this out, he apologizes and requests you cash the check, take your share, and return the overpayment to him. You do so, only to find out weeks later that the cashier’s check was a forgery, but of course, the money you sent was not.

This is one of the fastest growing scams on the Net. Be careful.

Until recently, it was assumed that the best way to improve search engine rankings for your website was to liberally sprinkle a group of relevant key words throughout your site. But in the rapidly growing and increasingly competitive Internet of today, specialization is necessary.

General key words no longer work well, nor do a wide array of keywords or phrases. The main goal, of course, is to be the number one listing (or at least on the first page) in Google, Yahoo, and/or MSN when internet users type your phrase into the search box.

Today, it is a good idea for each individual page of your website to be primarily optimized around a single phrase. That’s certainly not to say that you shouldn’t use other key phrases as well, but giving one of them priority is a wise strategy. That’s what we mean by specialization – a single well-focused key phrase.

Your primary phrase should be something that people are likely to type into a search engine, and it should also be descriptive of your page’s content.

You will generally see better results when your pages are optimized for more specific “niche” terms, rather than highly competitive terms that lots of people are trying to rank for. That’s why it can be much more effective to choose a creative two to five word key phrase rather than single key words with lots of competition, such as “travel” or “finance”.

Finding a relevant, popular key phrase that you will realistically be able to rank for certainly isn’t easy, but it’s definitely worth doing. In today’s competitive world, you need every edge you can get. If you would like help implementing or updating your website’s search engine optimization (SEO), please contact us.

Blogging is fast becoming an addicting pastime for everyday internet users with opinions and information they wish to share. But beyond these casual bloggers, many savvy internet marketers have also discovered that blogging is an effective way for business owners to keep in contact with their customers.

As recently as a year ago, blogging could really increase traffic to your website. Since then, the search engines have begun to adjust the level of importance they attach to a blog entry. So can blogging still be used as a way to boost your search listings ranking and generate traffic?

In short “yes” but the rules have changed. Today, more than ever, the content of the blog must be meaningful and relevant to your website. Otherwise, search engines may disregard it or even penalize you.

If you are thinking about adding a blog to your site, here are some guidelines to consider

1. Do you have an interest in blogging as a way to communicate with your clients?
2. Do you have enough content to deliver to your customers on an ongoing basis? You have to have enough content to spark an interest and a following from your visitors and customers or else it is a waste of time.
3. Does what you have to say provide any value or usefulness to your website visitor or customer? Do you have an opinion, offer advice, product reviews or service information that is of benefit to your readers?
4. Do your customers use the internet and would they interact using this medium? If customers do not use your method of advertising or promotion, how can you expect them to find your information?
5. Do you have the available time to spend blogging? Most bloggers will post to their blog every few days, but at least monthly.

If you answered “no” to any of the above questions then blogging is NOT an effective medium for you.

But if you answered yes, then blogging can be an effective tool to:

1. Make your clients or customers aware of new products, services or information.
2. Be newsworthy and write reviews, tips, articles, links to non-competing resources and more.
3. Receive comments and feedback from customers and blog visitors. You can learn more about the needs of your clients through the feedback of your readers.
4. Receive back links from other blogs and article sites (if you send them to directories). More back links usually translate into higher search engine results.
5. Improve search engine rankings and increase traffic to your website.

So there are real benefits to blogging if you have the time, the inclination and something to say.

These days we all get so much email that it is hard to know whether to even open most of it. A clear subject line is always helpful. Now, you can now have specific email from your website show up in your mailbox with a pre-determined subject line.

For example, let’s say you have a link on your site where visitors can request more information. Normally, the visitor puts whatever he or she wants in the subject line, and that can be misleading. But instead, you could have the subject line automatically say “Information Request” or “Newsletter sign-up” or anything else you like.

Here’s an example with the subject line “Tell me more.” Email me.

From now through June 30, 2007, we will add any subject line you like to any email link on your website.