Here is a link to the free RSS builder.
By clicking the following link, you agree that we assume no responsibility as regards the accuracy of this tool or its usefulness or its ability to magically fill your bank account with millions of dollars!
Here is the link.
http://www.nobleriver.com/rssbuilder
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Hi Everyone,
Sorry for the delay in posting. Got caught up on finishing my book(http://www.seousermanual.com).
Linking is one of the most important aspects of your SEO strategy. Hence, I am starting a new series on Linking. And this time, I’m making it available to the public.
It will cover the technical aspects as well as the functional aspects of linking. Eventually, we will cover all about links, how Search Engines see them, how to get them perform better , where to get links .etc .etc.
Head over here to read Part 1.
http://www.nobleriver.com/Articles/ArticleDisplay.aspx?Article=Understanding-linking-for-SEO.htm
Or you could go to http://www.nobleriver.com , click on “full list of articles” on the right navigation menu and then click on “Understanding linking … “.
As always, thank you for leaving your comments.
Dave J.
Happy linking.
P.S. Would you believe the irony, WordPress won’t let me link to the URL from this page 
.
Email marketing is a great way for us marketers to get our message across.
But now, we have entered the age of Information Overload. Every marketer has to think twice before we exercise our email lists.
A new survey by emarketer daily puts the reason for junk or spam flagging of emails to be boredom.
This means your email makes them go ho-hum, you get marked as junk !
IF you’ve been writing emails without due care, not good news for you my friend! Once the junk percentage of your email goes above a certain value, your ISP will begin blocking your emails.
Please check with your ISP for this number!
So what can you do to make your emails less boring?
But before you do all this,
MAKE SURE YOUR EMAIL IS RELEVANT TO THE CUSTOMER!
Today the local news has been going overboard with the news that a City Hall employee had visited 349170 web site visits over a 5 month period. This information was apparently retrieved from the city auditor’s report regarding the performance of the City Hall print shop.
Here is a link to the news story.
It seems so amazing how someone could waste the tax payers money so casually and why the city fathers would let such a thing as this happen time and again.
So, I did a little math.
349170 visits / 5 months = 69834 visits per month.
69834 visits per month / 20 days = 3491.7 visits per day.
2327.8 visits per day / 8 hours = 436 visits per hour.
And this figure divided by 60 gives you 7.2 visits per minute.
I would like you to try and visit 7.2 sites per minute and then keep that pace up all day long. Then come back and do the same the next day for 5 months. Absurd, isn’t it?
Before you read any further, I want you to do something for me.
Visit these web sites and time yourselves. Just browse to these sites, and time yourselves. Then continue reading this post.
http://www.msn.com
http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.inrich.com
http://www.cnn.com.
Now I wouldn’t dont know this guy from Adam. I don’t even know if its a guy.
But let’s consider he comes to work at 8.00 am. sharp. By 8.01, he has already visited 7 web-sites.
By 8.02 his web-site count is 14.
How many of you have spent every moment at work on your computer?
Have you not visited the CNN news page or some such equally innoccous web-site to see why there was such a big ruckus on the road this morning?
By any means, the number of 7 web-sites per minute of his work time seems so totally unbelievable.
Has anyone of you ever clicked an innocent link from somewhere and got an unexpected shock when a porn site opened up?
Now I am a person who has been trained to see both sides. Also, I have long degrees after my name in Information Technology.
So I fired up my favorite recording tool and went to work.
The first site I visited : http:\\www.msn.com.
Why did I choose this? — Because many have this web-site as the default page when we start our browser. Its also called the home page.
Now here is the surprise: I recorded the total number of hits on the web-site to bring back this one page : It was 52.
Lets imagine for one minute that may be he has the city of richmond web-site as his home page : This site took 37 requests.
Yahoo.com : 40 requests
cnn.com :168 requests
and in a few seconds, the CNN page refreshed, now it was 180 requests.
inrich.com (local city newspaper web-site) : 126 requests
This means, in less than 1 minute, I had visited a total of 40 + 168 + 180 + 126 = 514 web site hits.
Remember, yahoo, msn, cnn etc are portals. Most of these web-sites let you customize what items you see on the site when you browse over to your web-site.
All these web-sites load on your browser in less than 3 seconds. But there is a separate hit on the web-site for each image, each link and each page item.
Each web-page that is visible to you is actually made up of many many components, some of which are loaded separately from the web-site.
Ok, so the employee might have erred by visiting web-sites he should not have visited during his work hours, especially porn sites. He should pay for that if he has actually done it.
But claiming on an official report something that could have been easily checked out seems to be a lapse of attention on the part of the city auditor Mr.Dalal. If he had done a little calculation, he might have seen that the numbers he quotes were impossibly high.
But then, when you are flying high, you do lose touch with the ground, don’t you?
Video has become the latest craze out there on the Internet Marketing scene.
Everybody is rushing to put their educational material and ezines into videos and mp3s. Some of my favorite marketers have their material as videos.
There are a number of options available to create videos and publish them for public consumption. Sites like Youtube.com allow you to effortlessly make available your creation to your consuming public.
A lot of ezines have already jumped on the band-wagon. But is video the answer for all your ills?
If you have not already converted your ezine to video format; hold on. Pull back for a moment and think.
Yes, a video will make you appear more human.
Yes they will connect more with you when you are doing the talking and you appear playing with your kids in the midst of talking about the recession.
Yes, a video will prove that you are up-to-date with the latest technology.
But if you are providing some serious information, to business consumers, think again!
If your consumer is a busy professional, will he have the time to sit through your 30 minute video to see what you have to say?
Or would he rather pick up an e-book or e-report which he can glance through at will?
I would!
I’ve begun avoiding videos in favor of books because I have the ability to go back and forth in the text. At a glance I can see what chapters I must read and what I already know. I really don’t want to spend 30 minutes to learn that I already knew the subject matter.
Another issue is that of printability. Your ebook can be printed and stored for future reading. I can carry it with me on the subway to read on the way to work. Can’t do that with your video unless I am very technology savvy or put additional effort into it.
Find the number of customers who routinely print out your ebook to read later. You may just be amazed at the number. Some like to make notes along the margins. Some like the feeling of holding the book in their hands. Some like to read on the bed. All this becomes impossible if your material is in the form of a video.
Having said that, there are reasons your customers may prefer to use your mp3 or watch your video. Its up to you to determine if your customers actually use your video.
You may also provide a transcript along with your video. This will help those customers who want the information, but do not have the time to sit through a 40 minute video or listen to an mp3 recording.
But if your customers do not overwhelmingly prefer the video, the amount of effort expended to create a video may just not be worth it.
You’ve been warned !
It happens in every business, sooner or later.
Your customer wanted one thing. And you dispatched something else by mistake.
Or she wanted it next week for her daughters birthday, but your despatcher forgot that you get new stock only 3 weeks from now.
What happens when you mess up?
Do you fess up and make it right?
or
Do you play ping pong with the customer ?
At what stage in your growth do you decide that meeting your customers every desire is not necessary?
Is there really a point where you think you dont need to worry about your customers any more as long as you keep investors happy?
Do you take that decision or is it taken for you by poorly chosen sub-ordinates?
Earlier in a similar blog at this site, I had mentioned my experience with Comcast in blog titled “How not to grow your business – Comcast Style.”
But Comcast batted a good one in the form of an employee who contacted me within a few hours of posting and offered to redress my issues.
Here is a synopsis of my friend James’ experience with Verizon.
Recently his current cable company raised prices of Cable and Internet Service package.
My friend shopped around and found that FiOS from Verizon had a slightly better rate for him. He could cancel anytime if he called within 30 days, they offered.
He went online and signed up for FIOS Service.
When he called his existing vendor to cancel, they offered him an even better deal and he decided to keep his Comcast service.
My friend immediately goes online to cancel the newly registered FIOS Service. But wait, he can’t find a link to the cancellation page.
==> I guess the idea might be to have a human handle the cancellation request and if possible to lead him into continuing service.
So he calls the 1-800 number and after a long wait, some one comes online and informs him that he will have to call the local office to cancel. Huh?
So he calls the local office of Verizon and requests that his order be cancelled.
The lady on the phone could not find his order, even when he gave her the order number. So this enterprising person creates a new order and then proceeds to cancel it. Huh ? huh ?
I beleive most of you reading this have caught my drift.
Here is a company that claims to be #1 among 10 telecom companies( Source: http://newscenter.verizon.com/press-releases/verizon/2008/verizoncom-my-account-and.html.) in online satisfaction. I dont know how a company that forces you to go offline to cancel a service can call itself good online.
The head office or wherever the 1-800 number is located cannot cancel an order ? Have they heard of Systems Integration?
The person at the local office could not find his order. So what is the process in such a situation? Any company worth its salt has processes for almost everything it does. “Process” – You say?
Dont think there is one at Verizon. Who in his right mind would create a new order to cancel an existing order?
But wait, there is more.
The day after he cancelled his order with the local office, he saw that a part of his lawn had been marked to show the presence of underground pipes. He got concerned and waited at home the next day for fear that someone might dig up his lawn for an order he already had cancelled.
And he was not disappointed. Shortly after noon, the crew showed up with digging tools and cables. He somehow managed to convince them that he had cancelled the order and they went away without any damage to the lawn.
Next day was Saturday, and when he got home at noon, half his lawn had already been dug up. He again managed to convince them that he had cancelled his order and send them packing for a second time.
Well ! By now, you could be forgiven if you totally lost your cool. What a shoddy treatment of a customer.
James got home Tuesday evening and finds that someone had dug up his lawn, laid some cable and also disconnected his Comcast connection. Now he has no TV, no phone and no Internet. The poor guy hates cell phones, so he had to go to the Pay phone at the gas station to make a call to Verizon.
Waiting time, 41 minutes, on a pay phone. NOT nice! He had to spend another day waiting at home for someone else to show up and re-connect his cable.
Apparently there exists a major disconnect between the company database and the records maintained by the contractors who are send out to do the cable laying work. Or the contractors are ignoring cancel orders so that they get paid for the work. In either case, the cost to the company must have been higher than the cost to the customer.
Not to mention that James will talk to everyone he comes in contact with about his experience.
—————————————————————————————–
So the question is: how do you ensure that your customers never face such an experience?
How do you make sure that your employees give as much attention or more to customer service as you might have given?
Do you have systems in place that can manage this automatically?
Do you have a complaint handling system that is manned by someone with authority to actually redress the issue?
How would you communicate to your employees what your vision is for customer experience?
Article Marketing is that kind of advertising or marketing which uses generally free and informative content published via free article directories on the Internet.
I have been encouraging my clients to get into Article Marketing. The main problem in accomplishing a concrete strategy seems to be diffidence in their writing ability.
Actually, it is very easy to start and maintain a great Article Marketing Campaign.
Please read my post “Article Marketing 101 – How to best use Articles to promote your business”
Please feel free to let me know if I have missed anything of importance. I look forward to your comments too.
Ok,
Today’s post is more marketing than SEO. But I believe anyone in business should ALWAYS be on the lookout for opportunities to better market his/her business.
Here is an example.
There are quite a few businesses out there that employ their own trucks. Most either just show some pretty picture of their products or almost always merely print their names on the truck.
What a waste of prime real estate!
If you own a truck for your business, think of it as very valuable advertising space. Use it to promote an offer.
Make your offer visible and easy to read. Offer added incentives to come in right away.
Ask people to mention the truck when they call. This not only helps you gauge response to your offer, it also helps track the presence of your truck in a particular location.
This is just one of the examples of using hidden assets for greater profits. The same goes for other assets in your business such as business cards.
Instead of leaving the back side of the cards blank, I inscribe my one line offer :
” Call us immediately for your free marketing brain-storming session. ” or some such.
The next time you have a minute, sit back and think as to where else you could put your offer that exposes your business to newer customers.
Very often, we see huge companies do business in a totally ham handed manner. Telecom companies are guilty of this very sin.
Case In point: Comcast.
We have been using Comcast cable for over 6 years and we have kept the same account over the years. We have Basic Cable along with Internet service. Now, in spite of us signing up for the basic cable, we were getting a lot of other premium channels such as Disney, Discovery etc.
Therefore, when FIOS from Verizon came knocking in April, we were not hesitant to say No. We were pretty happy with the Comcast service. Even though the cost of FIOS was slightly lesser than that of Comcast, we did not think that the savings were worth the effort.
Come May, and all of a sudden our TV went on the blink. None of the channels we could see earlier were to be seen any more. Comcast had arbitrarily cut back on our service in a push to get us to convert to their slightly more expensive digital service.
We came to know that technicians had come through the neigbourhood and meted out the same treatment to a few other neighbors too.
My question is :
How would you handle this if this were your business?
Would you call and inform before your customers of impending change before you cut service or would you cut and then wait for your customer to call you and complain?
Do you consider your customers before you do something that affects their service?
Let me know your take.
I found that there is not much information available on the Net about how to optimize your ASP.NET pages so that they may be found on Google.
Here are a few tips:
Please let me know if I am missing any obvious ones.
I have posted a full report with code on my site — http://www.google-seo-tools.com/Articles/ASP-NET-Coding-SEO/Default.aspx .
