RSS is an acronym for “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication.” RSS is basically a feed which you can make available to users that automatically lists the updated content from your website or blog. If you have a fan following or regular readers of your website, it allows them to keep informed and up to date about the latest information you have on your website or blog. It saves readers the time of browsing through all their favorite websites to check for new information and allows them to view their favorite site headlines which have been updated with new information listed. RSS is the convenience you are providing to your readers to easily access your information. By allowing your readers to view your website updates through an RSS feed, you are also effectively optimizing your website and building relevant traffic. This is also referred to as RSS optimization.

RSS Optimization has replaced E-mail marketing strategies which updated readers with e-mails when any new content was put up on a website. E-mail notifications turned out to be pretty inconvenient because no one had time to read their e-mails. E-mail marketing was not proved to be an effective Internet marketing strategy as it just took up space in people’s inboxes and kept getting marked as spam. RSS feeds have allowed people to reach out to the public and create opportunity and a reason for people to keep visiting the websites they find interesting.

Not only are RSS feeds convenient for readers but they allow companies to track and analyze the kind of traffic they are receiving. RSS feeds can offer businesses essential information such as the amount of people subscribing to their feed, how many times people are coming to visit their website, and what interested them to come and visit. Having an RSS feed will allow your website to substantially improve its Google page rank which will further increase its credibility. RSS feeds allow users to view updates based upon their preferences and interests. By analyzing the trends of your website from these feeds, you will be able to develop the next steps to your next Internet marketing strategy.

If you have a company blog, RSS feeds are perfect for informing users about a new post or topic being discussed on your blog. RSS feeds also update content such as breaking news, podcasts and videos. It effectively distributes content not only to the reader who’s subscribed to your feed but displays it to others who visit their blog or website. Did I mention RSS feeds also provide your website with great back links? Because RSS feeds are based on headlines, make sure your headlines include important keywords that will be useful for the ranking of your website. Feeds enable you to work on your brand awareness as it allows you to incorporate logos and images. Make sure to distribute your feed to all important RSS search engines and directories so people can access your information.

Once you set up your RSS feed, the important thing is to keep updating your website with fresh content. Fresh content will enable the RSS Marketing strategy to work effectively bringing more traffic and followers to your website.

There is so much to do, when it comes to optimizing a website and making it search engine friendly. There are blog posts to write, articles to submit, content to change, press releases to distribute, social network profiles to update, etc. It is difficult for just one person to handle all these marketing tasks for a specific SEO project in a short amount of time. Virtual assistants are people you can hire from other locations around the world to handle these tasks for you. They plan your SEO campaign and set out to complete key Internet marketing tasks to help boost traffic to your website.

Virtual Assistants can write up the articles required for your company to submit on various article submissions sites. Articles with information about industry related topics and useful tips will help your company with brand awareness and gaining credibility. Submitting content on these article submission sites will give you great back links which in turn allows your website to be indexed faster by search engines. Distributing articles is a fool proof way of exposing your business and gaining stability in the online world.

Corporations start a blog to help their consumers find the information they need, discuss important issues or answer questions. However after a blog is created, they becomes stagnant when no time is set aside to update it with new posts. When you don’t make time to update your blog, the initial hype you have created about your blog goes to waste. Consumers or followers who initially were interested and came to read about what you wrote, stop visiting and lose interest when you don’t update it regularly. The idea is to keep your company blog up to date and fresh on a daily or weekly basis, so followers will continue visiting your website and learning more about your company. Virtual assistants are in charge of creating fresh content on your website in order to gain reader interest and convert traffic to fruitful business endeavors.

We all have been guilty at least once in our lives of opening an account or profile on a social network platform such as      Facebook or My Space, only to forget about it. As a company, you simply cannot afford to do that. Social networks provide your business the opportunity to come face-to-face with your consumers and get the feedback you need to keep your business running. Social networks allow a two way exchange of information from company to consumer. You offer information and updates through the use of social networks and the consumers are able to provide you with their direct comments and feedback. By letting any of your company profiles lag behind, you are shutting off access to your consumers and taking away their chance to trust in you and relate to you. Virtual Assistants can be given the task of prioritizing social networks the company is involved with and updating each profile with new information. They will also provide your company with the latest feedback so you can act upon it and keep your customers happy.

Yesterday it was My Space, today it’s Facebook, tomorrow it can be something else. Virtual Assistants with their constant research and in-depth knowledge of social media optimization and search engine optimization can direct your company with the latest and newest marketing strategies so you can be ahead of your competitors.

I think there are a lot of companies and businesses out there who want to put their foot in the door, when it comes to doing business. In the past, most businesses from the UK and US held a conservative approach when it came to working with offshore SEO companies. It was the “work only through reference or recommendation approach.” Slowly they are now realizing the benefits to doing business across the globe and not limiting their resources to just local vendors. However, they are still shy as to how to begin such a venture. There are so many services you can request at a considerably low cost such as search engine optimization, social media optimization, website design, press release optimization, etc. Companies are also understanding the fact that SEO is a continuous ongoing effort and becomes a cost effective expense when getting the work completed from offshore SEO companies. Businesses in the US and UK are able to hire offshore SEO companies over 3 to 6 months with the amount they spend on local SEO companies monthly.

So how can you tell whether an Offshore SEO company will be a good business partner to work with? If you think you have found a company, make sure to ask them direct questions. Asking them direct questions will give them a chance to give you straight forward responses and see how well they answer. Ask them about their qualifications and their experience first. If they are beating around the bush, they may not be as qualified or professional as you thought. Their replies should make you feel comfortable about working with them. You should also be firm about letting them know that you would like only white hat SEO strategies being used to help build consistent traffic for your website. There are companies that practice white hat and black hat SEO marketing tactics. Be sure that you are working with a company that only follows white hat SEO methods. Don’t be afraid to ask why the standards of their own website are not up to par. If you are curious to know, ask them. Many offshore consultancy websites have to constantly reinvent themselves to keep up with the ever changing Internet marketing world. This causes their website to go through constant changing, rebuilding and upgrading. Their website may be in the midst of reconstruction so don’t jump to conclusions if their website does not meet your standards.

Ask for references to back up their experience. If they can show you before and after results on past projects they’ve worked on, you will get an idea of what to expect from them, in terms of results. The cost of SEO packages can vary from a couple hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. Think about what you want out of their services in terms of keyword rankings. Sign a contract with them and make sure there is some sort of guarantee. If there is no guarantee they can offer you then there is no point of working with them. There are offshore SEO companies that also accept payment only after the desired results are achieved. Make sure you outline and understand the agreed upon terms before you sign on a project with an offshore SEO company. Question them about their competitors. They should be open about it and be able to convince you of their service worthiness over their competitor’s.

There are businesses that are finicky about giving offshore companies access to making changes on their website. But it is sometimes necessary to make key changes to your website in order for search engines to be able to crawl it easily. When search engines are able to crawl the pages of your website more effectively, you have a better chance of ranking well. Changes to the title tags, URLs, description, and H1 tags are necessary to make your website more search engine friendly. If you are not comfortable with providing back end access of your website to a third party, they should be able to provide you the files so you can upload the changes on your website yourself. You have to do your part and cooperate the best you can to help them help you. The company you work with should provide you with a ranking report at the end of the work completed, to show you the before and after results. If you signed on for a long term project, I would suggest that you have them send you a monthly ranking report so you can see the progress of the work being done for you. A month by month ranking analysis will also reveal to you which SEO strategies are working for you and what areas need to be improved upon. Even if you do have a long term contract, it won’t hurt to touch base with them once a week to get an update about the work progress.

Once the work is completed and you are happy with the results, don’t be afraid to ask about other services they offer. Many Offshore SEO companies offer a variety of other Internet marketing services such as website design, social media optimization, press release optimization, article marketing, etc. Enquiring about services does not bind you to buying them. It will give you an opportunity to find out more and think about what the next Internet marketing strategy should be for your website.

I was so tired and frustrated recently by the amount of spam all over the web that a thought came to me. What is going through the spammer’s minds when they do what they do? Do they actually think they will get any traffic to their site by continually sending out links along with an unrelated or generic one liner everywhere?  What are they thinking? They use the most popular sites and news (obviously!) and completely spoil the experience for everyone by posting their links and not contributing in any way to the discussion or argument. Do they think that there are enough ill informed people out there who would click on their link?

So what did I do? I googled spammer and got a lot of information about this cursed lot.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mulad/264285948/

Apparently they are not as stupid as I originally thought they were. They are lacking in integrity and decency but not intelligence, because they are using a cheap form of advertising that actually works. (Okay, they are not ‘intelligent’ but they are not dodos either). I was shocked when I read this because it seems impossible to me that anyone would want to click on a link that sounds so… Cliché? Corny? Annoying? Ugly? All of the above?

Maybe these people (let’s call them clickers) don’t spend enough time online to be able to recognize spam. But is that even possible? Or maybe they just like to click. I don’t know. But whatever the reason clickers do what they do, I really wish they would stop.

I came across an interesting site during my mini research of spammers. This site speaks of the different ways a spammer collects e-mail addresses to use to send spam. (The writer uses words like ‘harvest’ and says things like ‘there have been reports of’ both of which gave me chills but I think it is mostly because of the black background of the blog. Not only did it hurt my eyes, it also put me ‘in a dark place’.)

So anyway, this write-up talks about how spammers have all these different ways of getting access to e-mail addresses. I guess any wannabe spammer can just check this site or the (I’m sure) countless other sites that provide the same information to become a pro spammer. But I am in no way criticizing the person responsible for this write-up. He is just sharing information that I feel should be out there anyway and he is also giving us very valuable information on how to counter spam along with legal resources and a lot more information.

I also came across another site that has a humorous approach to this issue. The page is based on the idea of spamming being a ‘problem’ much like drugs and alcohol and needs to be addressed individually. The result? Spammers Anonymous. There is also a quiz to determine whether you are a spammer or not which I found really funny.

The message is clear – when the spammers stop the spam will too and that is what some websites are trying to get at by increasing awareness either consciously or not.

Unfortunately the only way the spammers will stop is if they find another source of cheap advertising, which is unlikely. I only wish they would realize that they are not gaining in the long run and would start to take up social media optimization instead. It might be a bit slower than what they are used to, but it is a sure way (if done correctly) to build the consumer’s confidence in the product for the long run. I mean what better way of selling whatever product or service you have than by doing it socially. By making acquaintances online and zeroing in on only those people who might be interested in what you are selling. In fact, if done correctly, the prospects will come to you.

The spammer’s mistake is obvious to you and me, who have the resources to be able to preach. But it’s not that obvious to the spammer. I wish it was for their sake, as well as ours.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcusmeissner/3243734765/

Google is getting ready to come out with a new search engine called Google Caffeine. Google has plans to unveil it soon, in competition with MSN’s new search engine Bing. The sneak preview version of Google Caffeine is out and I had the chance to test it out and compare it with the old Google search engine and MSN Live’s Bing. I wanted to compare them to analyze how different Google Caffeine is as a search engine compared to the ones that are already out there. Below are some results of the testing I did to find out how the old Google search engine and the new Google Caffeine search engine are in comparison.

The new Google Caffeine provides search results more than twice as fast as the current Google search engine. The speed of providing search results is just phenomenal! When I searched the term “Offshore SEO” in Google Caffeine I got my results in 0.16 seconds as compared to regular Google which provided me my results in 0.47 seconds. However, if you include any special characters like quotes in your search results Google Caffeine is slightly faster than the regular Google search engine. Even when I used quotes, I searched the term “social bookmarking” in both search engines, and it gave me the Google Caffeine results 0.10 seconds faster than the regular Google search engine. The only difference was that the new Google Caffeine didn’t always bring up as many image results.

But I’m guessing that could be because they’re still fine tuning the search engine and it’s still in its development stages. When it came to the amount of search results brought up for each keyword searched, the new Google search engine ranked higher by far. When I searched for the term seo in both search engines, Google Caffeine came up with 247,000,000 results whereas regular Google came up with a mere 195,000,000 results. Maybe the speed of MSN Live’s Bing triumphed over Google momentarily but Google is now in the process of reclaiming their title as the best search engine on the Internet. Google’s trick to staying on top is like how Madonna stays on top of the music world. They just never stop reinventing themselves.

They’re not happy with just fast, they want to be the fastest! Because they’ve maintained their high search standards Google Search is used for approximately 77% of all searches in the US. Google also has created specific search engines for popular searches such as Froogle, Google News, Google Maps, Google Videos, Google Blogs, Google Scholar, Google Images, etc. This makes it easier to narrow down the search results and increase relevancy.  There is no doubt that the new Google Caffeine will be fast and bring you a monster truck full of results! If you would like to test out the new Google Caffeine search engine yourself, give it a go right here at this link: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ Tell me what you think about the different search engines on the Internet today and how they perform.

It’s now about 20 years since the start of the popular internet. I’m using the word “popular” because technically, it first started during the Sputnik 1 project, waaay back in 1958, for use by the Soviet Union. It was only in the early 90’s that it was released for commercial interests. It’s mid 2009, and the world’s still just warming up to the internet. The growth in the number of people using it for different purposes(email, chat, P2P, browsing, VoIP, gaming, VPN and so much more) is truly astounding. Here are a few statistics for 2008 from a survey, aptly titled- The Exploding Internet, based on the usage of the internet.

1. $6.8 trillion- Value of eCommerce spending on the internet in 2008, which is roughly 15% of the world’s GDP.
2. 50%- Estimated annual growth rate of internet traffic.
3. 210 billion- Number of emails sent daily in 2008.
4. 78%- Percentage of the above figure which is SPAM, or unsolicited email!
5. 72.5%- Percentage of the American population using the internet, which translates to 220 million individuals.
6. 19%- Percentage of the Chinese population using the internet, which is 253 million people, clearly overtaking the US in terms of number of users.
7. 2012- Year in which Asian internet users will outnumber their peers in North America by 3 to 1. This includes almost 500 million Chinese users.
8. 3- Predicted position of India on the hierarchy of internet using countries by 2012.

Just an indication of what is truly the next revolution.

Source: http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/2988/27062201.jpg