Author: Stan Shinn

Stan is a seasoned digital strategist professional with broad Fortune 1000 and financial services sector experience. His specializations include accessibility, digital strategy and product roadmaps, large-scale digital projects, complex web redesigns, and enterprise website governance. Stan is also a published author and active innovator.

FireFox Add-Ons for SEO

Here is a dump of my current FireFox add-ons.

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Some of them are particularly relevant to SEO/SEM:

  • Diigo -- Great when you have a group that wants to annotate web pages to share notes on SEO mods you want to do for a page.
  • Live PageRank -- Get the PR for a page.
  • Send Tab URLs -- A quick and dirty way to get a dump of page URLs and descriptions by opening up the pages you are interested in Tabs, then selecting this option in the File menu.

iContact Tool for Email Newsletters

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iContact is an affordable (prices that start at $9.95 per month) solution for anyone who wants to send out email newsletters. They sport an extremely easy to use interface, numerous templates, with surveying, autoresponder, and blogging capability.

They take care of managing bounces and unsubscribes for you (this is a big perk if you have ever tried to manage this yourself like I have). They also take care of the backend technical details like making sure your message gets to the inbox of your recipients through their ISP relations, feedback loops, and whitelist status, etc.

The company has over 15,000 customers and 100,000 users. The product is used primarily by small businesses but also has a number of Fortune 500 companies like Bank of America, Ford, Nissan, Super 8 Motel, and International Paper, and political campaigns like Barack Obama '08.

You can download their free Best Practice Whitepaper on email marketing to get a better feel for the benefits of their tool. You can also view a video overview to learn more about their iContact Email Newsletter Tool.

Manage Paid Search with SEOP

SEOLooking for the right SEO provider to grow a business?

SEOP is a search engine optimization with a staff of 33 full time computer scientists and 3 cryptologists; their web site is http://www.seop.com.
SEOPerformance was co-founded by former, respected top search engine experts from Google and Yahoo. They teamed with top online marketing minds from Proctor & Gamble, Gillette and Coca Cola and now boast over 400 current clients from Fortune 1000 clients to small startup ventures.

SEOP also focuses on expert SEO results and maximum revenue. With them you can manage your paid search with Google to maximize returns and overall ROI.

Learn more about Search engine optimization using SEOP.

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Legacy Methodologies

In the late 1980s the advent of Client/Server technology as a new technology platform caused new methods of software delivery to be created. Host-based systems relied on mainframe technologies and centralized systems centered around ‘waterfall’ methodologies. Project implementation often took nine to eighteen months or more.
Client/Server Methodologies

Client/Server technologies focused on creating decentralized PC-centric systems. Client/Server systems emerged to facilitate building RAD (rapid application development) methodologies. Most of these development methods focused on an iterative, staged-delivery approach.

The Client/Server project was broken into multiple phases each containing a complete iteration. Prototyping, coding, quality assurance, and end user evaluation took place within each iteration. Since software was being rolled out in phases, each stage could be evaluated and major system flaws detected early in the life cycle.

Agile Methodologies have replaced these legacy methodologies and allow us the web testing flexibility to be competitive.

SEO Challenge When Google Gets Personal

When doing SEO optimization, be careful of the personalized feature Google offers:

Google on Friday moved to combine two of its separate personalization features in order to make searching a bit more friendly for its users. When signed into the site, Google will automatically custom tailor search results based on search history and preferences selected for the personalized homepage.

"Keep in mind that personalization is subtle—at first you may not notice any difference," says Google engineer Sep Kamvar. Those who don't want Google to track what they're doing can simply sign out of the site and personalization features will be disabled. "After all, the goal is to give you what you want when you want it," added Kamvar. Source

You may rank well on your personalized search, but not well in the search results others are seeing. Make sure you turn off personalized search if you're evaluating your SERPs position!

Speaking of Success

imageLooking for sales advice to give you the edge to succeed? This valuable information that can motivate you to exceed in a competitive marketplace.

Author Bill Todd is a high energy, humorous, professional speaker and trainer with over a quarter century of front line sales, marketing, customer service and advertising experience. His Free E-Book that speaks about time-tested, proven and highly creative strategies for sales, marketing and advertising success.

The author delves into what differentiates the average sales person or manager from high achievers who consistently out-perform their peers. The e-Book outlines five success strategies that can have an immediate, positive impact on your business and personal success.

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Web Marketing using Agile Methodologies

Business changes quickly. Today’s business cycles are compressed—companies demand solutions requiring delivery in record time.

In order to meet changing business needs, project management must be be flexible, adaptable, and above all quick! Break web projects into a series of iterations delivered in less than three month cycles. This enables you (at reduced cost and risk!) to deliver business solutions that address quickly evolving business needs.

Project management must balance the triangle of cost, quality and time. With web systems, project managers find themselves scrambling to deliver innovative solutions while still controlling costs.

The rapid pace of change and innovation on the web has caused a new catch phrase to be coined—‘Internet-time.’ Doing things in Internet-time means getting things done faster than in the old economy. The rapid rate of e-business change makes quickly delivering web solutions imperative.

Anyone building a business web site benefits from using an agile methodology: decision makers, business managers, web project managers, technical team leaders, consultants, digital media directors, and most of all, the web developers who are often left to improvise and manage projects with little direction from their management.

Monarch Airlines

Looking for inexpensive airfare, especially to the UK? Monarch gives you low cost, convenient flights that you can book directly on their website, by telephone, or by travel agent.

Monarch's scheduled services account for more than 60% of the Monarch operation and we were awarded 'Best Airline to Mediterranean and Islands' in the Short Breaks and Holidays Travel Awards 2005.

Read more about Cheap Flights image

Audio Transcription Techniques

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Last time I had voice recordings transcribe it ran $120/hr for the audio transcription. This new service has the following rates -- making it less than $26/hr for podcast transcriptions!

  • URL Podcast transcription is 42 cents a minute. Podcasts are made searchable.
  • Uploaded file transcription is 75 cents a minute. Transcripts are not searchable.

The transcribing is done by people, not machines. Read more about CastingWords web service.

On the other hand, if you want to transcribe your recordings yourself, here are some nice free software tools to help you with the job: http://www.nch.com.au/scribe/

Raise Money Using FundRaising.Com

If you are involved in non-profit groups, you know how important fundraising is to your success.

Here are several free fundraising ideas for group large and small.

  • Lollipops -- Tie 3 lollipops together with colorful ribbons to make fun lollipop bouquets -- a unique idea that is fun and profitable for you, and so attractive to your supporters!
  • Hershey's Chocolate -- It comes in easy to handle carry cases and their easy to sell at the office and to co-workers. A sure favorite.
  • Online Magazine Fundraising -- Don't like to knock on doors? This technique is done entirely online through email.

Check out all the other options at http://www.fundraising.com.

I like it that it organizes the fundraisers by industry type (e.g. Churches, School, Sports, etc.), and that it has options like online fundraisers. This is the best site I've seen with this sort of information.