Google has a great tool for all of us called the webmaster guidelines that outlines everything we should be trying to accomplish on our website, as well as everything we should avoid when it comes to technical (onsite design) as well as (SEO) search engine optimization.

With so much talk lately in forums about linking and what links are good, and what links are bad, for example does getting links on directories hurt us, or does it help us?  If a site links to us and its not our fault can we still be punished for that?  These are all very good questions and should be considered in depth later on.

The purpose of this post is to talk about something very simple and obvious that most webmasters, and internet business owners do wrong when it comes to wording.  The words “sponsored links”, “links”, “link partners” etc are all wrong ways to name the pages of sites that you refer to.  You should use words such as “resources” or “helpful sites” as to not set off “alarms” on the marjor search engines especially Google.

This may seem like a simple thing, and you may wonder to yourself “does this really matter?”  Yes, it really does, so go through all of your pages and do some analyzing and make sure that none of your pages have wording on them that could get your site less Google love.

Paying attention to all of the webmaster guidelines from Google is also a good idea and we can get into more strategies later on, but for now this is what I wanted to post about tonight!  Its late and I am going to bed!

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The age old battle between the web designer (with his beautiful looking website) and the SEO with keyword rich content that will “uglify” the design. If you are caught between the two as a small internet business owner let me give you some ideas how to make it a win win situation for all.

First of all - designers are not search engine marketers (no matter how much they think they are) They are designers. They can do amazing things with a website that most SEO’s could not dream of. So stick to what you are good at. I won’t tell you to use CSS or AJAX, and you dont tell me how to optimize a site. I know that I can’t design worth crap so I will trust in my designers. My designer and I have an agreement - I am paying him to do what I say. Its my website and I am paying him…its that simple. (more…)

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Heres how: Drop IE, or any other pathetic browswer you may be using.

I have been using Firefox for about a year now and will never go back to IE (other then to just see how sites I have designed look in it) and I wanted to share my top 10 reasons you should switch to Firefox today:

1. It’s not a Microsoft product. (do I really need anymore after that?)
2. Load time on pages is faster
3. The best standards compliance browser
4. The .01% of the time it may crash (because its most likely on a Windows machine) the new Firefox has a restore feature that opens your last tabs, and you lose nothing. (this alone sold me on the new Firefox 2)
5. Open source people love it (thus they program the sickest extentions for it - FOR FREE)
6. Easy extention updates
7. Perfect for developers and designers
8. User interface is simple and elegant
9. Works on all platforms - Windows, Linux, Mac
10. Find dialog is amazing, and they were one of the first to start offering web 2.0 features. (like SVG support)
11. Not a microsoft product - (ok that is 11 but it needed to be on the list again)

As a marketing professional I love Firefox for all the cool SEO tools and extentions that are developed for it. I could not live with out and wonder why people are still wasting thier time on any other browser.

If you want to keep using a pathetic browser then don’t click on this link - Get Firefox 2

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Most internet business owners are not taking full advantage of the opportunities for money making their websites offer. I can’t tell you how many sites I see and say to myself…”that site has good PR, great ILQ (Inbound Link Quality) etc., yet they have no money making opportunities on their pages.

For example the homepage may have a PR (page rank) 5 or 6 (sometimes I have seen ones higher) and if they only knew they can sell links on their site through link brokers such as Text Link Ads they could be making thousands more revenue per month.

I know alot of sites do not like to offer text links on their pages because they feel it takes away from the value of their website. I see the point and if done wrong totally agree. But there are ways to get the links on - and not annoy. When you can make the links blend in and look like they are a part of the site by matching colors, text and font size.

Try to avoid having verbage around the links that say “sponsored sites”, or “link partners” doing this can devalue the site page, plus potentially hurt your rankings and standing with Google. To learn more click on the link below:

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