Blogs

This article will show you how to increase your site's performance and speed related SEO, and compare the SEO of five other major SEO sites.

Taken from the Yahoo Developer Network:

YSlow analyzes web page performance by examining all the components on the page, including components dynamically created by using JavaScript. It measures the page's performance and offers suggestions for improvement.

The problem much of the world is having with social media is how to gauge its value. Everyone knows there is value to be had, but measuring it is proving to be tricky.

CFOs are tearing their hair out and driving CMOs crazy with demands of financially quantifiable returns. The truth of the matter is that social does not quantify in a straightforward manner. Businesses must adapt.

If your website or blog is not completely dreadful, then any money you spend on anything more than "good practice" SEO is wasted.

SEO, as an industry, is the result of poor website development in the formative stages of the Internet. If search engines couldn't index a blog or site properly, then that site was at a disadvantage. Since search was the only game in town, "SEO experts" popped up overnight to meet a demand.

The demand was created by businesses looking to attract... well, more business... from the Internet. SEO was a perfect way to feel like everything possible was being done to eek out an advantage over competitors.

SEO has a lot to answer for. Primarily, the fact that the Internet is awash with redundant, duplicate, plagiarized and otherwise useless content. A result of individuals and organizations trying to increase their online visibility and organic search traffic.

Everyone has been told that "content is king", but almost without exception, the wrong reasons have been cited. It is worth investing time and effort in creating content, but probably not for the reasons you think.

If you have spent hours creating content only to have no-one read it, and for Google to only send the occasional visit through some obscure long tail SEO keyphrase, then make sure you read this article carefully.

It's the ultimate honor for a book to be included in the New York Times bestseller lists. Authors and publishers gain prestige, recognition and... more sales.

But why do some books get chosen over others? I wanted to see how closely the NY Times bestseller lists matches popular opinion.

Are the books selected for inclusion into the NY Times bestseller lists chosen because they are actually bestsellers, or are they bestsellers because they are chosen?

The "Dummies" brand is ubiquitous. I don't think there's anyone who hasn't heard of some topic or another that doesn't have a matching dummies title. But how well do these books really sell?

I decided to track the sales of five leading dummies titles to get a feel for the type of sales these books were making over the typical week. The results may surprise you - earnings for some Dummies books show they're not all that stupid ;)

Did you know that Twitter and/or FaceBook can be used as a platform to market to existing customers in a killer new way?

Most traditional businesses waste the time their customers spend in the store by not giving them "sexy" options to engage in repeat business. It's insane.

In the online world, every moment that someone spends looking at your webpages is an opportunity to convert in one way or another. The same should go for traditional businesses.

Everyone knows that the Kindle Fire is a popular product on Amazon. Just how popular?

I thought I would track the sales data for 5 leading eReader models, over a range of brands to get a feel for just how much the Kindle Fire actually sells.

What I found is that the sales rank graph provided courtesy of RankTracer - Amazon sales analytics was almost redundant. Not because they weren't able to track the product, but because the sales rank of the Kindle Fire is exclusively 1.

A lot of people expend resources (time, money and effort) on improving their SEO. But SEO is no longer as important as it once was. Businesses need to shift their focus to improving their "social influence".

Here's a quote from an article entitled "Die SEO, die!" that looks at how and why the Internet is shifting from search to social:

SEO is to social influence what the typewriter is to the PC

John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing follows me on Twitter. He's got nearly 62 000 twitter followers and about 120 000 people signed up to his newsletter. That's serious pull.

In order to be successful in business, it is crucial to build up trust. Trust is most easily established through association - I may not know you, but if someone I know or trust recommends you then you're probably ok to work with.