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	<title>Technogumption &#187; Jargon</title>
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	<link>http://www.technogumption.com</link>
	<description>My techno thoughts and other stuff</description>
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		<title>What is SEO continued &#8211; Off Page SEO</title>
		<link>http://www.technogumption.com/what-is-seo-continued-off-page-seo/</link>
		<comments>http://www.technogumption.com/what-is-seo-continued-off-page-seo/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 07 Apr 2008 13:10:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tom</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Internet Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jargon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[linkbait]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pagerank]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.technogumption.com/?p=62</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[First of all we introduced SEO and explained what it was all about. Then we covered On Page SEO
which involved everything you can do to your own website to increase it&#8217;s visibility to search engines. Now we need to cover Off Page SEO. There is really only one thing to do when we talk about [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-46" style="float: right;" title="SEO - Complying with search engine guidelines" src="http://www.technogumption.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/bot.jpg" alt="" width="344" height="241" />First of all we <a title="What is SEO?" href="http://www.technogumption.com/what-is-seo/">introduced SEO</a> and explained what it was all about. Then we covered <a title="What is SEO continued - On Page SEO" href="http://www.technogumption.com/what-is-seo-on-page-seo/">On Page SEO</a></p>
<p>which involved everything you can do to your own website to increase it&#8217;s visibility to search engines. Now we need to cover Off Page SEO. There is really only one thing to do when we talk about Off Page SEO and that is link building. It sounds simple and it is simple, but there is a lot more to it than simply amassing a load of incoming links.</p>
<h3>Quantity versus Quality</h3>
<p>Quantity is of course good. You need a large number of incoming links in order to rank higher. However, links carry authority and because of this, a single link from a respected site with a high authority will provide considerably more benefit than a hundred links from new sites with little authority. At this point things might be sounding a little abstract but fear not, we will discuss this in more detail.</p>
<h3>How is quality measured?</h3>
<p>As Google is by far the largest search engine at this point, we will focus on them.  Google gives each page a rating between 0 and 10 where 10 is the highest value. The higher the value the more authority your site has. This value is known as the <strong>PageRank</strong>. Your PageRank is different for every page in your website. For all intents and purposes when you link to someone it is seen as you giving a vote of confidence to that page. PageRank is calculated by looking at the number and quality of the incoming links to a page. Google does not disclose the exact mechanism used in order to avoid people cheating the system. The algorithm changes constantly too, in order to keep up to date with any changes.</p>
<p>The system is more complex than this though. It also looks at the anchor text used in links and the relevance of the two websites. If a website in a specific niche links to a website in the same niche, it is worth more than a recommendation from a totally different niche. Google provide only hints and guidelines on how the system works, no actual details.</p>
<p>Your PageRank is important because it dictates your ranking on search engine results pages. We all know that when we search for anything, we tend to only visit the top few sites because they are in theory the most relevant to our search terms. As a rule Google is pretty good at getting this right, hence it has just a huge market share. As people using the Google search engine, we trust their judgment.</p>
<h3>Not all links pass authority</h3>
<p>As awareness of how to improve search rankings becomes more popular, and the search engines results pages become more competitive, link spam became a problem. A popular example would be where someone posts a comment on your blog with a link to their&#8217;s. They are doing this merely to improve their own rankings as opposed to adding value to your discussion. In order to combat this type of issue Google introduced the <strong>NoFollow</strong> tag. To use it you simply put rel=&#8221;nofollow&#8221; inside your hyperlink tags. This then tells the search engines not to pass on any authority. Google says this is not a negative vote, just a way to combat spam.</p>
<h3>Buying links</h3>
<p>A common practice to rapidly build up a large number of links is to buy them. The morals of this are discussed endlessly but the bottom line is that Google finds it unacceptable and penalises any website found to be buying links or selling paid links. They are pretty good at detecting who is buying links too. Many SEO firms will use the link buying technique to get results for their customers. Is this short sighted though? SEO firms need results now that they can show their customers in order to validate the bill they are about to give them.</p>
<p>As far as I am concerned it is a much better use of your time to develop good long term links than taking any risk buy buying links. The problem is that so many people still do buy links, and with competition in many industries being so fierce, if you do not, the chances are your page will be nowhere to be seen on the search engine results pages. Gyutae Park over at Winning the Web had an <a title="Should you buy links?" href="http://www.winningtheweb.com/should-buy-links.php">interesting discussion</a> about whether buying links is worth it or not after he posted about the pros and cons of link buying . It seems to me the buy your way to the top mentality is very much rooted in the old school way of doing business. The problem is that online we are heading towards a more community and collaborative based approach.</p>
<h3>Selling links</h3>
<p>For a good while now selling text ads has been a good money maker online. Many bloggers make good money each month from selling ads. The problem however was that those buying the ads were buying them for the SEO reasons as opposed to for the actual advertising benefit in many instances. This is no longer permitted by Google and those found selling links get punished. The solution has been to add the NoFollow tag to all paid adverts. For those buying the links for the advertising purposes, this is a minor downside, but for those buying the links for SEO purposes, it has pretty much made text ads redundant. The market for text ads has been hurt badly by this change, as has many webmasters income. If your website is big enough, you may choose to ignore Google, and live without them. Whilst possible, this is not advisable.</p>
<h3>Building links organically and Linkbaiting</h3>
<p>Building links organically is a fairly passive process. You create your content and develop your readership in the hope that people will find it of interest and link to it. Discussion does happen between websites, and people frequently post lists of links to items they recommend reading. It is a slow process to build links naturally and because of this marketers have developed techniques to speed it up. Linkbait is content created with the purpose of attracting a large number of incoming links. People who master the technique can really benefit with great search engine rankings, and ultimately traffic which is the key to making money online.</p>
<h3>Linkbaiting</h3>
<p>Linkbait is designed to gain many backlinks. To do this it needs to be something that people will find useful or interesting, and want to share. Typically most linkbait involves creating resource lists, data, breaking news, an application or tool, something funny or quirky, something controversial, or simply an amazing piece of writing. Lets examine these in more detail.</p>
<p><strong>Resource lists</strong></p>
<p>These are very popular nowadays as they are a great way of doing well in search engines. In order to impress you will need to create something special and it will unfortunately take a lot of hard work and effort. A year ago a top ten list might have worked, but now people create resource lists with hundreds of items on them. The reason they do well is that people can see the value and bookmark them for future reference, then recommend their readers do so too.</p>
<p><strong>Data</strong></p>
<p>Tests and experiments with detailed write ups and data can perform well. It is key that it is unique and new research which covers a topic many people are interested in. The generic example is testing a number of spam protection systems a number of times and providing detailed reviews and data.</p>
<p><strong>Breaking news</strong></p>
<p>If you are the first to break some news then you will be referenced by everyone else. The bigger the story the more links you will receive. This technique works especially well for time sensitive subject matters so performs well with political and celebrity blogs and news sites where breaking a scandal before anyone else can result in thousands of backlinks and overnight success.</p>
<p><strong>An application or tool</strong></p>
<p>Create a new tool that thousands or better yet millions of people will find useful and you will get a lot of traffic. We all love tools which make our life easier and are willing to give anyone who creates one a massive shout out. This type of linkbait can be the defining feature of your blog and bring a constant stream of traffic everyday for a long time to come.</p>
<p><strong>Something quirky or funny</strong></p>
<p>This type of thing is hard to create. You never know what will do well and go viral or what will be a total non event. Think of the star wars kid, or any other of the hundreds of emails you get with funny pictures in. If you start one of these trends that go viral you can gain an enormous amount of backlinks and traffic. Like I said though, this is a very hit and miss technique.</p>
<p><strong>Something controversial</strong></p>
<p>The web is laced with controversy so you are going to have to pull something special out of the bag here. The right subject matter, marketed in the right way can be very beneficial to your website. Controversy has a unique way of bringing people out of silence to put forth their opinion. There will be people both attacking and defending the subject feeding off each other. The chances are in most cases people will just dismiss it as yet another person just trying to be controversial.</p>
<p><strong>An amazing piece of writing</strong></p>
<p>Probably by far the hardest type of linkbait. Writing something that most people will find to be amazing takes some talent. I do not believe that this is something that you can really just do. Instead you should try to always aim to make your work amazing and valuable then one day you might just nail it.</p>
<h3>Enough for now</h3>
<p>I think that is enough to get you started and thinking about what you need to do. Let me know how you get on and if you feel something needs adding or editing &#8211; do not hesitate, just drop me an email or comment here. If you feel this is of value, then help me out by giving it at stumble, digg, tweet, or whatever social network you use. The share this option below has links to all the main ones.</p>
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		<title>Widgets – what are they and what do they do?</title>
		<link>http://www.technogumption.com/widgets-what-are-they-what-do-they-do/</link>
		<comments>http://www.technogumption.com/widgets-what-are-they-what-do-they-do/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:17:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tom</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Jargon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[widgets]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.technogumption.com/widgets-what-are-they-what-do-they-do/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The shortest definition of a widget would be a small bundle of software, using graphics and information to perform a function, frequently a mini website within another website.
This is not the greatest or most obvious definition, but widgets can be so varied that they are hard to pin down. They come in all shapes and [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The shortest definition of a widget would be <em>a small bundle of software, using graphics and information to perform a function, frequently a mini website within another website</em>.</p>
<p>This is not the greatest or most obvious definition, but widgets can be so varied that they are hard to pin down. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some are simple games, others may even make money for you! There are entire websites dedicated to building and distributing widgets such as <a href="http://www.widgetbox.com" title="WidgetBox" target="_blank">widgetbox</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Widgets and social networking</strong><br />
Widgets took off in terms of popularity when <a href="http://www.technogumption.com/facebook-suffers-its-first-drop-in-unique-monthly-visitors/" title="Facebook Suffer First Drop in Unique Monthly Visitors" target="_blank">Facebook</a> released their development pack allowing anyone to create a widget for their users. The allure of millions of Facebook users was very attractive to online marketers and a flurry of activity ensued. Over 14 000 of these Facebook widgets are currently available. <a href="http://www.technogumption.com/introduction-to-social-networking/" title="Introduction to Social Networking" target="_blank">Other social networks</a> such as MySpace have now opened themselves up to allow the public to develop widgets.</p>
<p><strong>Widgets and blogs</strong><br />
These are those small plugins you can drag and drop into your sidebar. Sometimes you will just paste some JavaScript in. They serve a variety of functions varying from the Top Commentators list to the Recent Visitors box from various <a href="http://www.technogumption.com/blogging-communities-connect-with-us/" title="Connect with us through various Blogging Communities" target="_blank">blogging communities</a>.</p>
<p><strong>What is the attraction to online marketers?</strong><br />
The key attraction here is the opportunity for your widget to go viral and spread very fast becoming the next big thing. This opens your brand exposure up to millions of people. The opportunity to interact like this with younger people, potentially for a low price is of significant branding value.</p>
<p><strong>What is the downside?</strong><br />
The biggest problem with this new found technology is that it is very hard to get it right. Many never go viral. Those that do, may hit the wrong audience. If the widget does not go viral or fails to hit the correct audience, the cost of development suddenly feels very expensive.</p>
<p>Due to the very nature of most widgets, they are gimmicky so they have very limited shelf life. The adoption curve tends to be bell shaped, showing it&#8217;s rapid rise to fame, but just as rapid demise, with very little time spent at the top.</p>
<p>If it is some sort of game, or offers some functionality, people just use it for those reasons. It is difficult to convert this attention into actual sales. This could also be due to the fact many of those likely to be attracted to the widget are of a younger demographic with a considerably lower purchasing power.</p>
<p>As widgets have become more popular, more people have began to associate them with advertising and marketing campaigns. As a rule people dislike being sold to, and there is some objection to advertising in social networks.</p>
<p><strong>Who benefits?</strong><br />
Well those companies who get it right, can most definitely benefit. Popular widgets reach millions of people and create a lot of buzz with the best getting mentions in mainstream press. At the end of the day marketing is about developing this exposure.</p>
<p>Independent developers have profited from this new industry. There are said to be around 150 000 active developers for Facebook widgets alone. Those that succeed are able to make a lot of money.</p>
<p>We, as users of these networks can benefit too. Many of these widgets are entertaining or useful. Our enjoyment may not last forever, but many people enjoy playing little games and interacting with their friends online.</p>
<p>Many widgets are used for monetization purposes. These benefit the smaller websites who typically do not do well with more traditional online advertising techniques. The targeted ads can be very successful for selling products.</p>
<p><strong>Will it last?</strong><br />
I can see widgets being popular for a long time, but not so much novelty widgets as a form of advertising. The costs involved together with the difficulty in converting the exposure into sales make them less and less worthwhile as time goes by. They worked because they were novel and now advertisers and marketers need to work on finding the next big thing.</p>
<p>The more functional widgets, such as those used to showcase products for sale with affiliate links will do well. Product based blogs will do well with these assuming there are relevant products available.</p>
<p>Let me know what you think. Can you see a future for widgets as a form of advertising?</p>
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		<slash:comments>7</slash:comments>
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		<title>What is SEO continued &#8211; On Page SEO</title>
		<link>http://www.technogumption.com/what-is-seo-on-page-seo/</link>
		<comments>http://www.technogumption.com/what-is-seo-on-page-seo/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 08 Mar 2008 00:20:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tom</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Internet Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jargon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[on page seo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.technogumption.com/what-is-seo-on-page-seo/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The first time round I explained the basics including:

what SEO stands for
what SEO companies do
why you need SEO
the difference between white hat and black hat
some sources of confusion
SEO is an ongoing process
can you do SEO

Now we have covered these important basics I am going to discuss the techniques involved in SEO. These take up two [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://www.technogumption.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/bot.jpg" alt="SEO - Complying with search engine guidelines" align="right" /><a href="http://www.technogumption.com/what-is-seo/" title="What is SEO?">The first time round</a> I explained the basics including:</p>
<ul>
<li>what SEO stands for</li>
<li>what SEO companies do</li>
<li>why you need SEO</li>
<li>the difference between white hat and black hat</li>
<li>some sources of confusion</li>
<li>SEO is an ongoing process</li>
<li>can you do SEO</li>
</ul>
<p>Now we have covered these important basics I am going to discuss the techniques involved in SEO. These take up two categories: “On page” and “Off page”. The titles are pretty self explanatory and as you probably figured out yourself, on page refers to things you can change on your own website where as off page regards techniques that do not involve your own site, primarily link building. Today we will focus on “On page” SEO.</p>
<h2>On Page SEO</h2>
<p>Much has been written about SEO. Not a day goes by without a dozen new blog posts about the ultimate SEO techniques or a new tweak which will change your search engine results. One of the most popular resources is Aaron Wall&#8217;s SEO book. You will see this advertised on almost every blog. For beginners this is all too complicated and goes into too much detail to the point where it is overwhelming. For beginners there are a number of simple techniques, which are often no more than best practice which are key to any SEO strategy.</p>
<p><strong>1. The title tags</strong><br />
These title tags appear at the top of every page before any content. As they are the first thing the search engine reads, and the title of the page, they should convey what will be found on the page. Some SEO experts such as <a href="http://ez-onlinemoney.com/blog/" title="Josh Spaulding" target="_blank">Josh Spaulding</a> regard this to be the most important on page SEO factor.</p>
<p>Choosing a catchy title to attract readers vs a keyword filled descriptive title is a tricky decision sometimes. It depends on your goals. In the short term the catchy title might do better, but this traffic does not last. A descriptive title including relevant keywords will rank well in search engines providing a long term constant stream of organic traffic.</p>
<p><strong>2. Meta description</strong><br />
These no longer hold the value they once did. In the past search engines used this information to know what was on your page. If we could manually tell the search engines what was on the page then the system would be very easy to game. This is not the case so much now search algorithms are considerably more advanced and complex. Meta description has practically no influence on your rankings.</p>
<p>The important thing to do is write a good description of your page. This text is often displayed on the search engine results pages, and is what a user will read after your title, but before deciding to click. A well written meta description could be what convinces someone to visit your site.</p>
<p><strong>3. Internal linking and navigation</strong><br />
It is important that search engines can navigate your pages easily. Flash or JavaScript navigation is a no no because of this. Many people favour snazzy flash designs because they look good. When no one can find your site, you will wish you went for the SEO friendly method.</p>
<p>Sitemaps come in two forms. XML sitemaps which you can register in Google&#8217;s webmaster tools (Familiarise yourself with these, you will keep coming back to them), and regular sitemaps to help users. The XML sitemap is a must have. It helps search engines navigate your website more easily and find new content. A regular sitemap can help your regular users navigate. These are particularly useful when the sites navigation is complicated or hard to see. If you go down the Flash site route, definitely add a sitemap.</p>
<p>Each page has a certain authority which can be passed on via linking, because of this it is important you link to and reference your own content. Remember to do this naturally and not just linking for the sake of SEO. This has the added benefit of showing off your other content to readers, increasing the sites overall page views and reducing the bounce rate.</p>
<p><strong>4. Search Engine Friendly URLs</strong><br />
Originally almost all URLs were simple and easily understood as we created and named them manually. Now we tend to use database driven sites, powered by PHP. The pages are generated dynamically and have URLs which are long, do not consist of words, and are near impossible to remember.</p>
<p>Search engine friendly URLs are simple and clean. Wordpress and many other content management systems will do this automatically for you if you set it up. These clean URLs can take the format of your choice though most opt for a simple mydomain/article-title or mydomain/category/article-title. As we use the article title as the URL, we have relevant keywords in our URL which helps rank our page. The key is to keep them as short and simple as possible, but remember that you cannot have the same URL for two different pages.</p>
<p><strong>5. Anchor text</strong><br />
This is used to determine keywords which are relevant to the linked page. It is important you put a little thought into this. If you want a page to rank well for the keyword “green widget” then use that keyword in the anchor text for any links to that page. The ultimate misuse of the anchor text is to use text such as “click here”, as this provides no information.</p>
<p><strong>6. Accessibility and best practice</strong><br />
We should aim to make our websites as accessible as possible. Alt tags are important for every image. Broken links and forms should be fixed. The loading time of your page is another factor to take into account as it seems Google may start taking this into account.</p>
<h2>Things NOT to do</h2>
<p><strong>Anchor text</strong><br />
As mentioned already, this is very important as it is weighted and ranked by search engines. Using “click here” as your anchor text gives no indication of what you are linking to.</p>
<p><strong>Hiding links</strong><br />
This involves making links the same colour as your background, or in a div pushed off screen, or hidden in any other way. If you are found out the search engines will penalise you.</p>
<p><strong>Keyword stuffing<br />
</strong>This involves making text the same colour as the background and filling it with your keywords, or using your keywords over and over again in your title and a variety of other methods. As already mentioned, search engines do not take well to people who try to game the system.</p>
<p><strong>Keyword density<br />
</strong>Have you ever read an article that barely made sense because of the repetition of certain key words and phrases? This is the result of people attempting to write for search engines as opposed to for their readers. You will do much better in the long run if your content is actually useful to users.</p>
<p>Next week I shall be looking into off page SEO techniques.</p>
<p>Did I explain this clearly? Could anything be explained differently? Do you have any techniques I should add?</p>
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		<slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
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		<title>Essential Online Advertising Terminology</title>
		<link>http://www.technogumption.com/essential-online-advertising-terminology/</link>
		<comments>http://www.technogumption.com/essential-online-advertising-terminology/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:13:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tom</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Jargon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[advertising]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[online marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[PPC]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.technogumption.com/essential-online-advertising-terminology/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The world of advertising has been revolutionised by the internet and all that comes with it. The fastest growing market in advertising is easily online and companies are struggling to get to terms with it. There is a load of jargon involved with online advertising sales that you need to be comfortable with when buying [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://www.technogumption.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/click-here.png" alt="Clicking - An essential part of online advertising" align="right" />The world of advertising has been revolutionised by the internet and all that comes with it. <strong>The fastest growing market in advertising is easily online and companies are struggling to get to terms with it</strong>. There is a load of jargon involved with online advertising sales that you need to be comfortable with when buying or selling advertising. Below we have a list of what we think to be the essential terms you need to know in order to hold your ground.</p>
<p><strong>Impressions</strong> – The number of page views.</p>
<p><strong>Visits</strong> – The number of people who have visited your site</p>
<p><strong>Unique Visitors</strong> – The number of unique visitors adjusts the total number of visitors for repeat visitors.</p>
<p><strong>CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions)</strong> – Rarely used any more. This is a pricing system where adverts where sold at a fixed price per thousand impressions. Only profitable if your site creates a very large amount of impressions.</p>
<p><strong>PPC (Pay Per Click)</strong> – This is a pricing system in which the advertiser is charged for each click. It is preferred to CPM was you are only paying when someone actually clicks on your advert as opposed to whenever it is displayed.</p>
<p><strong>CPC (Cost Per Click)</strong> – This is the amount which an advertiser is charged for each click on their advert.</p>
<p><strong>PPA (Pay Per Action)</strong> – This is a pricing system whereby the publisher is paid only when a certain action is completed. This could be the submission of an email address, the completion of a registration form or a sale. If the person does not complete the action, the publisher earns nothing from that click.</p>
<p><strong>CPA (Cost Per Action)</strong> – This is the amount paid to the publisher upon completion of a specified action.</p>
<p><strong>ROI (Return On Investment)</strong> – This is simply the return made on each dollar spent.</p>
<p><strong>CTR (Click Through Ratio)</strong> – The % of people who click on adverts. This is calculated by dividing clicks by impressions and multiplying by 100.</p>
<p><strong>eCPM (Estimated Earnings Per Thousand Impressions)</strong> – A way of forecasting how much revenue is generated per thousand impressions. This is the best way of comparing different revenue models.</p>
<p><strong>Ad server</strong> – A piece of software used to serve ads to your website. Typically it will also be capable of tracking many of the statistics mentioned above. It allows you to manage campaigns, and often have extra features. Ad servers can be hosted locally or by a third party.</p>
<p><strong>Ad network</strong> – a brokering service used to connect advertisers and publishers. They take a commission of all ad sales.</p>
<p><strong>Affiliate marketing</strong> – An agreement between two sites in which the affiliate agrees to feature adverts for the others products or services in return for some form of compensation typically a commission. This is typically a PPA system.</p>
<p><strong>Affiliate network</strong> &#8211; Similar to an ad network, but dealing with companies offering affiliate programs. These companies take a commission from all sales. The affiliate managers often give affiliates tips and rewards for performance.</p>
<p>There will of course be a follow up to this post containing slightly more advanced terminology.  If you have any suggestions for more advanced terms mention them below or drop me an email. Can you see any other basic terms which you consider to be essential?</p>
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		<title>Curation &#8211; The latest in internet buzz</title>
		<link>http://www.technogumption.com/curation-the-latest-in-internet-buzz/</link>
		<comments>http://www.technogumption.com/curation-the-latest-in-internet-buzz/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:32:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tom</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Internet Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jargon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[affiliate marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Affiliate Summit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[curation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[facebook]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jason Calacanis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[keynote]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[linkedin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mahalo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[myspace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spam]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.technogumption.com/curation-the-latest-in-internet-buzz/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I unfortunately was not able to attend Affiliate Summit West (ASW). I did however watch a lot of the videos, see the pictures and read the blog posts. Thanks so much to those who provided coverage of the event. It seems like a great event!

ASW all kicked off with a somewhat controversial keynote speech by [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I unfortunately was not able to attend <a href="http://www.affiliatesummit.com/" title="Affiliate Summit">Affiliate Summit West</a> (ASW). I did however watch a lot of the videos, see the pictures and read the blog posts. Thanks so much to those who provided coverage of the event. It seems like a great event!</p>
<p><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2418/2292039661_ffd0f504a0.jpg?v=0" alt="Missy Ward, Jason Calacanis, Shawn Collins" align="center" border="0" height="375" width="500" /></p>
<p>ASW all kicked off with a somewhat <strong>controversial keynote speech</strong> by <a href="http://www.calacanis.com" title="Jason Calacanis">Jason Calacanis</a> on <strong>Affiliate Spam</strong>. Pretty brave at an affiliate marketing conference.</p>
<p><strong>The gist of it</strong><br />
His major point was that most affiliate marketers were creating low quality but very high SEO value websites which were dominating search results. These sites were merely funnels pushing people towards buying products in order for the marketer to earn a commission. Jason essentially called affiliate marketers out for spamming search results pages reducing their quality and value for the end user. This is short sighted. The phrases Jason used to describe this practice were <strong>poisoning the well</strong> and <strong>polluting the river</strong> where the well and the river are the internet that we all need and use on such a regular basis.</p>
<p>This is a very good point and the industry&#8217;s lack of a governing body or any real guidelines have let marketers to plague search engines with their landing pages. In an ideal world, marketers would all focus on creating quality resources which add value. At the minute the focus of many is on so called <strong>thin affiliate sites</strong> which are simple the aforementioned landing pages funneling people towards the point of sale.</p>
<p><strong>The problem</strong><br />
The problem is that this is not an ideal world. Much like the paid back link situation, if you don&#8217;t do it, someone else will. If you stop creating thin affiliate sites and start working on larger quality projects, someone else will be cashing in on those affiliate offers.</p>
<p>The result of the continued growth in affiliates pushing low quality sites with no goal other than to convert paid traffic into sales into search engine results pages will be of ever decreasing value. Affiliate marketers are some of the cleverest and hardest working people out there. Their knowledge of SEO is pretty much unbeatable. Eventually a Google search of something will yield nothing but affiliate landing pages. This makes it useless. Jason makes this point, and compares it to the decline of Usenet and sites such as Squidoo which suffered from being spammed to death.</p>
<p><strong>The solution can be summarised into one word: Curation.</strong></p>
<p><strong>What is curation?</strong><br />
Curation essentially means maintaining, curing, healing and that type of thing. How does this apply to search engines? Well in the case of <a href="http://www.mahalo.com/" title="Mahalo, a human edited search engine">Mahalo</a> – a new search engines owned by Calacanis, it means human processing of every page. This is the only true way of filtering out all spammy websites and making sure only the most important and relevant websites rank. This way when you search for hotels in Paris you will get great resources regarding hotels in Paris, as opposed to hundreds of travel sites packed with spammy offers and not giving you any real information such as contact numbers.</p>
<p>Other examples include the move from <a href="http://www.myspace.com" title="myspace">MySpace</a> where loads of profiles can be created and it is full of spam to the likes of <a href="http://www.facebook.com" title="facebook">Facebook</a> (<a href="http://www.technogumption.com/facebook-suffers-its-first-drop-in-unique-monthly-visitors/" title="Facebook suffers its first drop in unique monthly visitors">though the rapid increase in numbers of applications has made it more spammy</a>) and <a href="http://www.linkedin.com" title="LinkedIn">LinkedIn</a>, where only real profiles are allowed. Here spam is reduced as people are held accountable.</p>
<p><strong>Does this digital curation make business sense?</strong><br />
Well we shall have to see. It looks to me like it will. Jason Calacanis made a direct comparison to the move in food production from almost industrial mass production techniques to the free range and organic methods. In this case it has been proven, people are willing to pay the premium for a better quality product and a clearer conscience.</p>
<p><strong>My conclusion</strong><br />
As bloggers we always talk about “adding value”. There is no reason why business should not be done with a clear conscience. The emphasis on being social is evolving into doing things for the greater good. There will always be someone out for a quick buck though.</p>
<p>Unless Google can find a way to keep on top of things then I can see the likes of Mahalo increasing in popularity. A human powered search engine is going to severely struggle to process the sheer volume of content the internet produces, so their functionality is going to be very limited for the majority of users for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>Accountability for ones actions is something I can see developing very strongly. Anonymity affects peoples judgements, and when money is involved, the effects are rarely positive. At the same time, this will be countered by those who want privacy and are totally against a big brother type society.</p>
<p><strong>Links and credits</strong><br />
Listen to Jason’s keynote speech at <a href="http://www.webmasterradio.fm/Conferences/Affiliate-Summit/Jason-Calacanis-on-Affiliate-Spam.htm" title="Listen online">WebmasterRadio.FM</a> or <a href="http://audio.webmasterradio.fm/NonMembers/02-25-08-Jason-Calacanis-on-Affiliate-Spam.mp3" title="download the speech">download it<br />
</a></p>
<p><a href="http://audio.webmasterradio.fm/NonMembers/02-25-08-Jason-Calacanis-on-Affiliate-Spam.mp3" title="download the speech">Jason&#8217;s </a><a href="http://www.calacanis.com/2008/02/26/more-feedback-on-my-talk-at-the-affiliate-summit-yesterday/" title="Jason offers more feedback on his talk">follow up on his blog</a></p>
<p>Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/affsum/2292039661/" title="Affiliate Summit on Flickr">affiliatesummit</a> (From left to right, Missy Ward, Jason Calacanis, Shawn Collins)</p>
<p><strong>Your thoughts</strong><br />
There is no doubt there is a lot of food for thought there. How do you feel about curation? Is it the direction we are heading in?</p>
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		<title>What is SEO?</title>
		<link>http://www.technogumption.com/what-is-seo/</link>
		<comments>http://www.technogumption.com/what-is-seo/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:30:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tom</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Jargon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine optimisation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine optimiser]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine optimizer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.technogumption.com/what-is-seo/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The world has gone SEO crazy. SEO consultants are popping up everywhere. Web design companies are re branding as SEO companies and marketing companies are offering SEO services too. This is much more than a fad though, it is common sense mixed in with a load of jargon and hype. It is the latest in [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://www.technogumption.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/seo.png" alt="What is SEO?" align="right" />The world has gone SEO crazy. SEO consultants are popping up everywhere. Web design companies are re branding as SEO companies and marketing companies are offering SEO services too. This is much more than a fad though, it is common sense mixed in with a load of jargon and hype. It is the latest in marketing strategy.</p>
<p><strong>What does SEO stand for?</strong><br />
In short, SEO stands for <strong>Search Engine Optimisation</strong> (the process) or Search Engine Optimisers (those who carry out the process). It does pretty much what it says on the can. They work to optimise your web presence for search engines. This is achieved by understanding the algorithms search engines use in order to index websites and display them as search results. A SEO specialist will work on your site in order to achieve good rankings for the search terms you want your business to show up under. For example, if you are a wetsuit retailer, you would like your site to come top of the list when someone searches for “wetsuits”. The value of this is obvious – increased traffic, leading to increased sales.</p>
<p><strong>What does a SEO company do?</strong><br />
They may do a variety of things, from re coding sites and fixing problems related to the search engines ability to crawl/spider the site to changing the structure. A big part of effort goes into the content. Search engines value relevant, regularly updated content. A SEO will make sure there is relevant content, containing relevant keywords that the company wants to rank well for, and that new content is regularly added.</p>
<p><strong>Why do I need a SEO?</strong><br />
These consultants or companies specialise in this field, and are therefore able to offer expert advise. Unfortunately many web designers are not up to date with the latest industry standards and produce websites which are not totally search engine friendly. Here an SEO can help. SEOs are also generally more aware of marketing strategy than web designers.</p>
<p><strong>What are White hat and Black hat?</strong><br />
White hat quite simply refers  to SEO techniques recommended by search engines. There is no deception. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization" title="Search Engine Optimisation" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a> sums it up as “creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose”.</p>
<p>Black hat techniques try to game the search engines algorithms and if discovered using these techniques, your website will be penalised.  There are many techniques that can be used but Google is pretty good at catching people out. This approach does not offer the long term results of White hat SEO.</p>
<p><strong>Sources of confusion</strong><br />
As the search engines do not publish guidelines but often hint towards things there are many grey areas. The search engines algorithms are top secret. SEOs therefore have to test and make assumptions. For example, it is commonly agreed that search engines read from top to bottom and left to right. Therefore it would be beneficial to have as little as possible between the top of your source code, and your content. <a href="http://www.45n5.com/permalink/seo-themes-does-your-template-help-or-hurt-your-se.html" title="Mark from 45.5.com" target="_blank">Mark from 45n5.com made a report</a> on this recently.</p>
<p>There is no formal recognised industry body or qualification for SEO. This pretty much allows anyone to call themselves a SEO expert so when it comes to picking one to work for you it is important to do your homework. Ask for references and contact them. Any good company should have no problem supplying references. This problem is highlighted by <a href="http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/01/16/why-i-do-not-like-95-of-seo-experts/" title="Jeremy Schoemaker dislikes 95% of SEOs" target="_blank">Jeremy Schoemaker</a> who says:<br />
<em>This is why SEO’s are like used car salesman… </em></p>
<ol>
<li><em>They can always sell you something.</em></li>
<li><em>They can never guarantee results.</em></li>
<li><em>They can not be held accountable.</em></li>
<li><em>They have a answer for everything.</em></li>
<li><em>All the magic happens behind the curtains &#8211; they cant tell you what they are actual doing because that would be getting to much into the secret sauce.</em></li>
<li><em>Anyone can be a SEO. </em></li>
</ol>
<p><strong>SEO is an ongoing process</strong>. It is not a one off thing. In order to rank well new content has to be created regularly. This is the reason that company blogs are increasingly popular. Blogs rank very well with search engines and typically produce new content on a regular basis.</p>
<p><strong>Can I do SEO?</strong><br />
The truth is that yes, you can quite easily do some SEO. If you designed your web site yourself and know some html you can make some changes. Start by cleaning up your code. Make sure all CSS and Javascript is linked to in a separate file. Next look at your content. Do your titles contain the keywords that relate to what you have written? Does your content contain the keywords and variations of them? Have you used ALT tags for your images? These are all things you can start to do yourself.</p>
<p>UPDATE: I have just found out about this <a href="http://www.theeasyseoreport.com/?u=416" title="The Easy SEO Report" target="_blank">free ebook</a> showing you some easy SEO techniques. If you are ready to take the next step and find out more about SEO this is ideal.  <a href="http://www.theeasyseoreport.com/?u=416" title="The Easy SEO Report" target="_blank">Download  The Easy SEO Report</a>.</p>
<p>Have you hired a SEO expert? What criteria did you use for selecting them? Does your business have a blog? Is it for SEO purposes?</p>
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		<title>What is RSS?</title>
		<link>http://www.technogumption.com/what-is-rss/</link>
		<comments>http://www.technogumption.com/what-is-rss/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:30:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Chris</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Jargon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Networking]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.technogumption.com/what-is-rss/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Blogging veterans will already know all about RSS and its uses, however if your new to blog reading you&#8217;ll see lots of mention of RSS and maybe wonder what it is.  Before writing this article I wasn&#8217;t 100% sure as to exactly what it was so I did a bit of digging around to [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://www.technogumption.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/r.png" alt="RSS?" align="right" />Blogging veterans will already know all about RSS and its uses, however if your new to blog reading you&#8217;ll see lots of mention of RSS and maybe wonder what it is.  Before writing this article I wasn&#8217;t 100% sure as to exactly what it was so I did a bit of digging around to find out more.</p>
<p><strong>Basic Definition</strong><br />
A RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is universal system that allows websites publishing  regularly updating content, to provide an option to subscribe to the RSS feed associated with that content and receive updates as and when new content is published.  These RSS feeds are usually used in conjunction with an RSS Reader of some kind, (e.g. <a href="https://www.google.com/reader" title="Google Reader" target="_blank">Google Reader</a>) which allows the subscriber to receive content from multiple feeds.</p>
<p><strong>Why subscribe to RSS feeds?</strong><br />
The main advantage of the RSS system, only really becomes apparent if you want to check multiple different content sources, such as news sites and blogs.  Conventionally you would bookmark these web pages and visit the individual sites every so often to read their latest articles.  However when you amass a list of different sites who&#8217;s content you wish to regularly check up on this becomes impractical, because loading each website and searching to find the information you want takes time.</p>
<p>Hence having a RSS feed deliver you the latest content from all your favorite websites direct to your reader, allows you to quickly and easily scan through new content and decide what to read and what to ignore. Feed readers update regularly, checking for new content usually every 10 minutes or so.  This means you get the content and news almost immediately after it has been published.</p>
<p>Another advantage of online feed readers, (also known as aggregators), such as Google Reader is that you can log into your account from any computer with an internet connection and check all your feeds.</p>
<p>RSS aggregators feed our need for constant information and being up to date (<a href="http://www.technogumption.com/are-you-suffering-from-infomania/" title="Do you suffer from Infomania?">Do you suffer from Infomania?</a>).</p>
<p><strong>Benefits to web publishers/bloggers</strong><br />
Subscribers to your site RSS feed are much the same as subscribers to a magazine. These are your loyal readers.  The more you have the better. It means you have an audience. These loyal followers trust what you write and want to keep up to date with it.  This is also why many blogs reward their RSS subscribers with prizes and competitions.  A high subscriber count gives a good measure of the quality and successfulness of a blog.</p>
<p><strong>Other uses for RSS feeds</strong><br />
Recently a new breed of website has become popular. These sites have very little if any content of their own yet are immensely popular. What they do is show the headlines from a number of similar or related sites. A great example of this is <a href="http://www.alltop.com" title="Alltop" target="_blank">Alltop</a>. Here under various categories you can see what the key players in each categories latest posts are. Under the category Technology, the top of the page shows the latest from popular social media sites Digg, del.icio.us and reddit, images from Flickr, videos from Youtube, the latest from popular news sites then the latest from some blogs such as Wired and a load of other sources.</p>
<p><strong>Give it a go</strong><br />
If you are new to RRS why not give our RSS feed a try, simply click on the big orange RSS button, then you can choose to sign up to an online feed reader or you can view feed updates through your web browser.  Alternatively you can enter your Email address, (next to the orange button), to receive updates directly to your email account.  Experiment and see what works best for you.</p>
<p>If you want to find out more about the history of RSS, read Mark Pilgrim&#8217;s <a href="http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html" title="What is RSS" target="_blank">What is RSS</a>.</p>
<p>Already amassed a huge RSS feed list? How do you view your feeds?</p>
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