Once again, Randfish (SEOmoz) has made a fantastic post over at SEOmoz Blog
check it out: 11 Best Practices for URLs
according to a report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
The IAB and PwC reported the numbers yesterday from the MIXX Conference and Expo. Internet advertising revenues for the US were approximately $7.9 billion, a new record and a 37% increase over the first half of 2005.
In the second quarter alone, revenues totaled nearly $4.1 billion, representing a 36% increase over same period 2005, and a 5.5% increase over Q1 2006.
Greg Stuart, CEO of IAB, indicated that interactive Internet capabilities were becoming crucial in the marketing world as businesses look to maximize search, broadband, lead generation, behavioral targeting, consumer-generated content and, eventually, mobile and iPTV.
“The latest results reaffirm the Internet’s growing importance for marketers to integrate online advertising into their overall media plans,” said PwC’s David Silverman.
“While search advertising remains the largest format in terms of revenues, we expect to see new formats like video ads to continue to emerge as advertisers seek to leverage the branding opportunities afforded by the growing installed base of broadband users.”
“Internet advertising continues to reach new milestones, exceeding $4 billion in quarterly revenues for the first time, and on pace for another record year of revenues,” said Pete Petrusky of PwC.
“With the seventh consecutive quarter of growth behind us we are confident that the Internet will continue to reconcile the imbalances between its share of media consumption versus its relative share of total advertising spend.”
Source: WebPronews
Rumours are that Microsoft is planning to offer scaled down versions of MS Office online.
Microsoft is planning free web-based versions of its word processing and spreadsheet programs.
The online versions of the programs will lack many of the features found in the full versions found in Microsoft’s Office suite of applications.
Although the programs will be free to use, Microsoft is planning to fund them via advertising.
Source: BBC
Internet search firm Yahoo is reported to be in talks to buy social networking website Facebook for $1bn (£527m). US-based Facebook, popular with students, has also held separate discussions with Microsoft and Viacom, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Facebook, which allows users to put up profiles of themselves, recently signed an advertising deal with Microsoft.
A similar such website, MySpace, was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation for $580m last year.
Founded in February 2004, Facebook has quickly grown in popularity, and by the end of 2005 had more than 7.5 million users at US schools and colleges alone.
Neither Facebook nor Yahoo were immediately available for comment.
Source: BBC
in the last 2-3 weeks, i have been buying loads of content from the various forums i hang around. the moment i get some time, i will be putting these in some recent domain/website purchases. i dont have a time frame as i have my hands full at the moment.
so it might be another 2-3 weeks before you see them ;)
on another note, i sold urlshack.com as i was not able to spend time on the submissions bit. better with someone else than with me and staying unattented :)
this post is more of a i am still here kinda thing.. so later
Wow!! this is something of a shocker to me. First the acquistion of Dreamweaver and now InterAKT. Cool :)
never expected something like this to happen and i was randomly searching for a dreamweaver extension and i happened to visit their website and its been 5 days now and i havent read this in my bookmarked places - numbers close to 150 -.
here’s what the Alexandru Costin, InterAKT co-founder says
“We have been working with Adobe/Macromedia since the beginning, and it feels natural to join the company that drives our ecosystem. We love to create software and Adobe will offer us a fertile ground for innovation“. Bogdan Ripa, also an InterAKT co-founder, will be the Director of Engineering at Adobe Romania: “We always thought that InterAKT’s technology and team together with Adobe’s brand and power is a perfect fit. Everybody at InterAKT is looking forward to working at Adobe and building better experiences, expanding our reach to the whole Adobe customer base.“
Full story can be read at InterAKT’s web site.
The Corbis photo agency has filed a lawsuit against TemplateMonster.com and ultravertex.com for (allegedly) engaged in Large-scale Piracy of Stock Photos and are seeking $109 million in damages.
Corbis accuses TemplateMonster of selling web site templates that include Corbis stock photos, thereby infringing on Corbis’s copyrights and encouraging customers to do the same. It also accuses Ultravertex of running a stock photo subscription service – priced at $49.95 for a six-month membership – that re-licensed Corbis photographs without authorization. In total, 623 Corbis images were available through the sites, the lawsuit says.
hmm… interesting and something to keep track of.
i have been wanting to republish this for some time, but kept forgetting about it. now that i found it again here are some fantastic Tips from Larwee of Geek Talk Forums.
- First, ask for help whenever you need help. If you have a problem try to get help with that problem. Posting the problem here at discussion forums is one place you can get help.
- Luck also can play a role. I hate to say it but it does sometimes and that may or may not be something you can control. Bad luck can hurt you and good luck can really help.
- Lots of hard work always helps. Spend as much time as possible working on your site and finding ways to make it better.
- Make sure you have your own domain name and not some strange something from a free service. Register that domain name with an established registrar which has a low price. No need to pay a high price.
- Make sure your site has lots of content. This will help you with your visitors as well as provide plenty of food for the search engines.
- Design your site so it is easy to read and easy to navigate.
- Get listed in directories. You might keep hearing get listed in DMOZ. It doesn’t need to be DMOZ. If you get listed there fine, if not fine. There are many fine directories and many of them will list you much quicker than DMOZ. Try to get listed in as many directories as possible. Do manual submissions. Don’t try to find some quick, easy automatic submission.
- Being listed in lots of directories could bring you some traffic. But, may or may not provide you with lots of traffic. However, being listed in directories will provide links to your site which will be found by the search engines and search engines can bring you plenty of traffic. It doesn’t take lots of directories, just as long as you are listed in some directory that will provide a link for search engines to find you.
- You can submit to search engines, but this doesn’t guarantee that they will list you. The search engines like to find you through a link from another site.
- When you design your site, design it with your visitors in mind and try to make it the very best that you can. Do not try to design it for search engines by using all types of tricks to fool the search engines.
- If you design your site with your visitors in mind, there will be people who will like your site and link to you from your site without you even asking.
- Consider building links by such things as exchanging links with other sites.
- Try to update your content and add new content. The new content provides more for the search engines and that will give you more opportunities to attract more people to your site.
- Try to make sure that your site is about something you have an interest in. That makes your site much more fun for you to work on and will encourage you to spend the time needed to help make it a good site.
- Avoid using FFA (Free For All) listings, and buying traffic from places that promise to deliver traffic to your site for a fee.
- Avoid doing business with those who promise to submit your site to thousands of directories and search engines for a fee. The major search engines and a very few directories are the only ones which really deliver much traffic.
- Repeat visitors can be very helpful. Keeping your site up to date and adding new content is a good way to keep visitors coming back.
- Try to develop good contacts with other people who have sites. These people can help you to advance your site.
- Consider adding a newsletter. Newsletters might not be as effective as they once were because of all the spam filters etc., but they can still be helpful. Traffic often increases after a newsletter is sent out and some of your subscribers will forward you newsletter to their friends if you have a good newsletter.
- Word of mouth really helps. If you have a good site, people are going to tell others about your site.
- You might also consider adding a Tell A Friend feature to your site. This works much better for some sites than others. But it might be worth a try to see how it works for you.
- Get a good stats program or service so that you can examine your stats. This will provide you with valuable information about the people who visit your site as to where they visit, where they don’t visit and how they arrived at your site. You can use this information to improve your site.
- Above all, be patient. Don’t expect things to happen real fast. Too often people just simply give up because things didn’t happen as quickly as they wanted them to.
- Stick with it. Fight against the disappointments. Learn from your mistakes. Be willing to wait long enough for your work to bring you the rewards that you want.
- Your site could possibly benefit a great deal if you learn about blogs and RSS feeds and put them to use.
- A blog can be successful on its own. But you can use your blog to help your site. Of course you would have a link to your site on your blog, but you can also use your blog as a promotional vehicle for your site. With RSS feeds people can subscribe to your blog.
- http://www.blogger.com isn’t the only choice you have for a blog. It is one of many choices you have. But it is free, plus it will automatically create feeds to make it possible for people to subscribe to your blog.
- Try to create a good and interesting blog that is loaded with content. You could end up having a successful blog, plus you will be able to use your blog to increase traffic to your website.
do you have any which you would like to share ?
The Retsambew Dash Klat for Charity SEO Contest finished today with the winners being announced in the official thread
1st place:
www.retsambchar.com
Domain Registration Date: 04-Apr-2006
Chosen Charity: The Voice of the Martyrs at http://www.persecution.com
2nd place:
www.seo-poland.com
Domain Registration Date: 03-Apr-2006
Chosen Charity: Big Cat Rescue at http://www.bigcatrescue.org
3rd place:
www.linkfor.us
Domain Registration Date: 03-Apr-2006
Chosen Charity: Action Against Hunger at http://www.actionagainsthunger.org
4th place:
www.seocontestant.com
Domain Registration Date: 03-Apr-2006
Chosen Charity: Autism Society of America at http://www.autism-society.org
5th place:
superseo.org
Domain Registration Date: 17-May-2006
Chosen Charity: The Christopher Reeve Foundation at http://www.christopherreeve.org
Check the official thread for the runners up as well :)
Congrats to the winners and to everyone else who took part and esp to Tim of Webmaster Talk for organising this.
While you are checking this , Tim’s become a father recently so be sure to send in your wishes to him as well :)