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Earlier this week Danny Sullivan and many others noted that MSN and ASK did a much better job of reporting the oscar winners, than Google did. After doing some due diligence Matt Cutts of Google noticed that the official Oscars page was returning a 500 error which was reason google was having a problem. I’ll take Matt at his word that this was the case. However what this did was expose a potential weak spot in Google’s armor. So I’m going to engage in a bit of a parlor game now, and lets play a bit of “what if” specifically “what if google was wrong?”

Google has a unique business model, for the sake of clarity let’s get right down to it, Google makes money by copying your content analyzing it and displaying advertising around it. Sure they solve the important and necessary problem of making things findable on the net, and they should be rewarded for it, but lets not forget without the publishers Google doesn’t exist.

What if the publishers decided to get together and play a nice little trick on Google. Using a bit of predictive SEO by looking at the history of Google’s holiday logo’s you could be relatively comfortable assuming there will be a holiday logo for July 4th this year. What if all the publishers who rank for those terms decided to play a little trick on Google, what if they did a bit of IP delivery and fed Google some special content, that was completely wrong. What if the snippets on Google said “July 4th is the day Great Brittan Celebrates Victory over the American Colonies”. Normal users clicking through would see the correct content, but Google still displays the incorrect information. Doing a postmortem Google could come back with how this was an evil plot by the publishers, but how many “Google Goofs on July 4th” blog posts do you think there would be, and do you think the man on the street wants to know or be bothered with the intricacies of cloaking and crawling? In their eyes Google got it wrong, end of story.

Let’s move up the food chain, what if the major newspapers across the United States got together and planned a one day information strike against Google. What if the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, LA Times and every other big paper had gotten a little sick and tired of living off the table scraps Google was giving them and blocked all thier crawling bots for one day. What do you think the general public would say when they checked out Google news and saw only stories from second and third tier publishers, while Yahoo News and Live News were perfectly fine. What do you think the homepage of Techmeme would look like, and just how much sympathy do you think there would be for Google?

Of course none of this will ever happen, because the suits sitting at the board room tables of newpapers lack the intestinal fortitude and cajones to stand up to Google, but it is fun to imagagine what if. Unless of course you’re sitting in Mountain View California in a bean bag chair bathed in the light of a lava lamp, because if you are, this story probably sent a cold shiver of fear and reality right down your spine.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant.

Every person have the potential to start their own business. When is the last time you are unhappy with a product or service that you are using? Do you occasionally have some big ideas zooming across your mind while you are bathing or going through some daily routine?

All the above are business ideas that you can turn into reality. The sad thing is, even though there are a lot of potential founders, CEOs, Chairman or perhaps millionaires around us, not many are running their own business and when you ask them why, it is very likely that you will get one of the 15 excuses below.

“The economy is bad!”

You cannot expect customers to have the best purchasing power, banks to have the most lenient financing options and all economic sectors to boom at the same time. There are no perfect capital markets so if you are waiting for it, you are not going to start a business, ever!

“I have no funds to get started!”

There are always funds around and all you need to do is ask. If your business plan fails to impress venture capitalists or angel investors, sharpen it after reading 8 Tips for Successful Venture Capital Meetings and give it another go. If you don’t have sufficient cash for bootstrapping and your family members can’t help much, move onto friends and relatives. Banks and government agencies are mostly for existing businesses but there’s no harm to ask.

“Everything I do have a high chance of failure!”

Yes, it is proven that everything you do will fail so you really have nothing to lose here. When you have lower expectations, you tend to be a better entrepreneur because you will be realistic with estimates and predictions. Failure is the mother of success and failures are often the great teachers for successful entrepreneurs.

“My ideas sound stupid!”

50 years ago, mobile computing, on-demand entertainment and worldwide social interaction are stupid ideas. It is the innovation, persistence and hard work of entrepreneurs who believe in their ideas that brought them to life, together with money for themselves and the comfort for us. Prove those non-believers wrong and if possible, get them out of the way!

“I don’t understand business processes!”

You don’t need a MBA to run a business. In fact, most successful entrepreneurs are college droupouts. Of course, knowledge about business processes will play its part in minimizing error costs but you need to choose the right lecturers for entrepreneurs to achieve that. Theories add boundaries to your thinking. Sometimes, you learn better and have more fun by taking the trial and error route.

“I have a 9 to 5!”

You should look out for employment contract clauses that might prohibits you from starting a business that relates to the know-how and the nature of business of your employer. Other than that, you shouldn’t have much problems if you can manage your time properly and be more productive.

“I am too young/old!”

If you think that you are too young, read up Lessons from an 11 Years Old Entrepreneur and 13 Years Old Entrepreneur Finds Chocolate Success. If you think you are too old, the number of baby boomer entrepreneurs is on the rise. Age is not and shouldn’t be a factor in determining whether you should become an entrepreneur.

“I have too many ideas for a startup!”

No one is limiting you from having multiple startups. We call entrepreneurs with multiple startups as serial entrepreneurs. Know your own abilities and focus on one task at a time. Learn how to jot down and postpone your ideas. Start off with the idea that you have the most confidence in or the one that pushes your excitement to the max.

“Every sector is dominated!”

It is impossible that every sector is dominated. If a monopoly is in place, customers will definitely have some dissatisfaction which you can capitalize on. The Blue Ocean Strategy book will teach you how to move away from red bloody competition and find a new market of your own by creating a brand new market or by narrowing down the broad niches.

“I am no CEO material!”

As a founder or owner of a company or business, it is not necessary for you to take up the CEO position. If you are good with marketing, you can be the CMO. The CFO position is always there is you are an expert in financial performance analysis. It does more harm than good for an entrepreneur with bad managerial skills to stay on as CEO.

“I cannot afford a mentor!”

A mentor is good if you want personalized guidance and support. However, we have more than enough resources, case studies and tutorials, both online and offline, covering several major business sectors. Also, you have two large entrepreneurs forum, namely Young Entrepreneur Forum and Startup Nation which you can source answers for questions that you have. Alternatively, you can contact me if you have any questions about entrepreneurship and ways to improve your business.

“I have a family!”

Quitting your day job immediately after having your own business plan is not feasible at all due to the risk involved, especially if you have a family. You can work on your startup after work and during holidays. Spare some time for your family. Getting them to help can be a win-win situation that can help growing your business and improving the relationship. Again, productivity and time management is crucial.

“I have no experience in running a business!”

Most first time entrepreneurs will have this dilemma but no one is born with entrepreneurial skills. You have to learn by reading tons of materials and from your experience so that you can manage your business efficiently. Reading business books, business news, case studies and attending trade events or your local Chamber of Commerce contribute a lot in terms of knowledge for entrepreneurs.

“I need motivation for this!”

I have to admit that life as a solopreneur is boring. You need to network with like-minded peers through platforms such as local entrepreneur associations, LinkedIn, entrepreneur and small business blogs like this one and Twitter (small business and entrepreneur) to get motivated. Also, attend networking events that are targeted towards entrepreneurs and small business owners.

“I still need to learn!”

You need to get the basics right but you need not become a business professor to start a business. Take action and only read up when you face problems with your venture. It is also impossible for you to learn every aspect of a business in detail and even Fortune 500 companies are not all-rounded.

The above will be the 15 common excuses that you might get when trying to find out why someone is not starting his or her own business. All of them are busted in my elaborations. Do you agree with my arguments?

Have you ever heard of other excuses? What are some related examples that you would like to share with me?

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Working in the internet marketing industry, it is important to stay on top of the latest information and also any tools that can help assist with the work you carry out. It was reported this week by Google that they would be making two new improvements to their search algorithm.

For many of us webmasters, all over the world, the rumours spread over the past week with people claiming that Google will be announcing two new features but we were all waiting to hear this formally announced by Google.

The two new improvements are in offering more related searches and with the addition of longer search result descriptions. Google say that they have developed a new technology which understands associations and concepts related to searches.

They are now able to target more queries, more languages and make suggestions for related results pages based on what the user search for.

Google’s example:

“If you search for [principles of physics], our algorithms understand that “angular momentum,” “special relativity,” “big bang” and “quantum mechanic” are related terms that could help you find what you need.”

Kenneth Berkley
Natural SEO Programmer

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by Mike Moran

A client asked me this very question recently and it got me to thinking about what’s wrong with the way a lot of us think about search marketing. The major concept behind successful search marketing (and indeed all of Internet marketing) is direct marketing. And the more you know about direct marketing, the less this question makes sense.

A veteran direct marketer would tell you that direct marketers don’t easily distinguish between sales and marketing. After all, if you are sent a catalog and you rip out the order form and send it in, where did the marketing stop and the sales begin?

But most companies can easily separate their sales from their marketing. I mean, most companies have a Chief Marketing Officer on one side and a VP of Sales on the other. Any communications that go to big groups of customers are called marketing, while interactions with individual customers must be sales.

That’s because brand marketing, which is what most companies do, is easily separable from sales. Unfortunately, Internet marketing, and search marketing in particular, are based on direct marketing–on tying each individual sale back to the marketing that produced it.

So, if your company is tossing and turning over whether you need to align search marketing with marketing or sales, you might be asking the wrong question. Instead, try to figure out how to make search marketing align marketing and sales with each other.

If you’re thinking, “We don’t sell things online, so we can’t do direct marketing,” it’s not so. I admit that it’s harder to count offline sales than online sales, but it’s just as important. If you can’t tie your offline sales to how they started on the Web, then you don’t know what you did right to get that sale. Once you figure that out, you’re a direct marketer. And probably a successful search marketer, too.

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Why would you? Spell your name wrong that is? Well, according to Patrick O’Malley, or is that O’Mally, this is the great missing LinkedIn tip. He suggests adding common misspellings of your name to your summary profile so that anyone searching for you and not getting it quite right might still find you.

Indeed, if you search for Patrick O’Malley he’s right there, top of the list, but if you search for Patrick O’Mally, he’s the only one. It would probably almost be worth Patrick changing his name just for the uniqueness of it as a keyword!

I don’t know if anyone searching for me ever spells my name wrong. I know for a fact that people I deal with where I say my name, usually get it just right: David B-R-A-D-L-E-Y. No one ever says B-R-A-D-L-Y without the E or with an extra L thinking I’m one of the Brady Bunch or something.

But, just in case I took Patrick’s tip to heart and added the David Bradly spelling just in case. Of course, some uninitiated Americans occasionally think I’m a Jewish comic scriptwriter called Bradley David (he’s my alter ego) and call me Brad on the phone. It’s not quite the same as saying, you can call me Al. Of course there are variations on my given name, so once I had a byline as Dave Bradley in New Scientist it was the only time an editor abbreviated me. I could be Davey Bradley, but that sounds silly or even most pretentiously Davide Braudleigh. Occasionally, I might be David Bradbury.

Another “typo” credited me in a science book I co-wrote along with Iain Stewart, Richard Dawking, and John Girbin as “David Bailey“, I presume they thought I was the famous monochrome photographer of the stars, but why Bailey would be writing about buckyballs and supramolecular chemistry I really don’t know. They were very apologetic and if there had been a second edition (Hah!) I think they would have corrected my byline.

But, as I was writing this post, it occurred to me that there is no reason to limit this little game to your LinkedIn profile, it would make sense to do the same in a footnote to your online resume, your about page, and social media and networking sites. It’s old-hat but gray-hat search engine optimization (SEO) to be honest. Misspelling keywords and stuffing pages and meta tags with them was a trick from the early days.

But, there is a subtle distinction here. If your name is fairly well-known, or you slapped palms but didn’t exchange business cards, adding the common misspellings of your name to at least one web page may help that wannabe contact of yours find you when they otherwise might have gone done a blind O’Malley.

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Kim Woodbridge has 8 great tips for spring-cleaning your WordPress website including backing up before you start, removing redundant plugins, deleting revisions from your database and making sure you are running the latest version of the blogging software. All good stuff and definitely worth adding to your todo list but only after you’ve taken a stroll in the beautiful spring air at the vernal equinox.

Tip #7 is particularly interesting:

Examine Old Posts – go through your older posts and see if you can add links to newer ones. I have to admit that I am not good about this. I usually remember to link to my older posts but rarely go back the other way. This adds value to your visitors and has got to be useful from a SEO perspective.

It’s an interesting idea. However, if you are running a “related posts” plugin, I think that cross-linking between posts is partly taken care of. However, I would extend the idea of giving old posts a spring clean. It’s certainly worth going back to old posts that had popular content, take a look at your logs from six months to a year ago, to get an idea of which posts might be worth revising.

You can then fix outdated information, add hard links to new posts that are pertinent to the discussion, and perhaps even tidy up those typos you missed first time around. At this stage, you may also consider running Zemanta to add free blog content, fresh images, and links to related sites and content.

I’d do this job in batches, perhaps pick five or ten rather old posts, but previously popular posts, give them a spring clean. Then create a new post and link to these five or ten with a short intro explaining how refreshed the posts are. You could repeat this task weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or whatever, building up a kind of link directory to your older content and providing readers with a reason to (re)visit.

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