Author: Stan Shinn

Project plans lay out a defined series of steps to accomplish a goal. Most software development methodologies produce an undesirable goal—failure. A 60% failure rate is not just dumb luck, it is the natural consequence of the methodology. To change the outcome, we must change our methodology!

I’ve witnessed failed projects which did not achieve business results. Despite experience and planning, many times the best efforts still turned into the worst results. Developers typically lack a good road map to navigate their project to a successful end. This lack of direction dooms the project before the first line of code is even written.

Don’t become another victim of project failure—adopt a proven Agile software development methodology!

There are many Search Engine Optimization design factors which involve how your HTML is structured (e.g. H1 headings, meta tags, alt tags, etc.) But beyond this alphabet soup of technical factors, a lot of SEO comes down to good copywriting. If you have compelling content which by design contains key words and phrases which you're targeting, you have a foundation for good SEO ranking. Some reason that copywriting is the single most important aspect of SEO. Here's why:

Companies interested in increasing sales rely on copywriting to monetize those leads.

Poor copywriting may attract a high volume of qualified buyers but ones who aren't being convinced to buy your product or service.

Poor copywriting is usually done by people so focused on rankings that they forget about the conversion value of the text (read by real potential customers!) and fixate on tweaking the web page copy solely to please the search robots.

Quality copywriting has headlines and text that snags your attention and entices you to read more. The copy quickly helps the reader to understand that the product meets their needs and answers the questions they had in mind when they typed in their keywords into the search engine.
By priming the customer with good copy, the calls to action like "Buy Now" or "Contact Us For a Free Consultation" the customer will gladly do so because the quality copy has persuaded them in a way poor text could not.

Read more about copywriting and Search Engine Optimization Information.

The rise of Internet technology has forced IT to adopt new methods that inherently combat the issues leading to failed projects. Delivering web systems rapidly to a geographically dispersed customer base is requiring dramatic changes to the way software is constructed and managed.

Today’s new economic structure is characterized by compressed business cycles. Companies are increasingly under pressure to launch new products or services in mere months from conceptualization. In the war of business, bringing new IT solutions to bear on the market is not just a perk—it is a business necessity.

Businesses must adapt to new Agile ways of managing projects—or go out of business. The 60% failure rate is simply no longer a viable option.

Enterprise support services traditionally will cost you an arm and a leg. Rimini Street annual support services can replace Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards maintenance and support services while providing 24x7, 30 minute emergency engineer response and premium support features.
They tought a 50% cost savings. If you use Siebel Support today, you might want to get a quote from them about their service alternative.

There are a number of SEO and SEM related glossaries on the Internet, but this is the first one I've seen that is humorous. If you need to learn the difference between 404 errors and Latent Semantic Analysis, this is one place you can learn it and still have fun:

Bot: The term bot is used to mean spider, the kind that SEs send to trawl through your site. It's short for ROBOT which is itself short for something else (which I can't remember right now). ROBOT is officially an endangered species, if the word gets any shorter than bot it may become extinct as it's not known to mate and breed successfully in the wild.

Read more at The Alternative Webmaster Glossary

A new software solution from NetSimplicity: meeting room scheduling and asset management.

NetSimplicity's product automates many day-to-day office administration tasks. It integrates with Microsoft Outlook and other tools to provide for the management and scheduling of rooms, equipment, assets and resources.

This software can replace personal calendaring software and spreadsheets to inventory, map and track all sorts of assets using your Web browser or a handheld scanner. This can help you know what you own, where the asset is at, and what the asset is worth.Their Scheduling Software has a free 30 Day Trial; a great way to test out their asset management system.

"I don’t get it," the project manager complained. We were debriefing after a project launch debacle, and tensions were running high. "We had our best people on the project. We authorized overtime. We even had outside consultants review our systems before we put the system into production. And now this!"

My boss was referring to the high-profile new system we had spent months building—only to have our customers utterly reject it. We had worked hard, planned extensively, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop what was supposed to be a revolutionary system to save millions of dollars for the company.

Yet we had failed.

Even worse, there were no assurances we would fare any better on the next project.

Does this scenario sound familiar? Multiple studies indicate the failure rate for custom software projects is above 60%. This astonishing statistic is tolerated only because software systems are integrally vital to modern organizations. Given this poor track record it is no wonder businesses balk at increasing IT budgets.
Large web site projects suffer from these same ailments. Why do these failures occur? Software projects fail not from lack of effort, but from effort misguided. A nimble, easy-to-use methodology makes projects consistently successful.

Agile software development is the solution.

Are directory submissions important anymore?

Despite Google’s preeminence, directory submissions are still important. Directories catalog links for easy access for visitors to find information they are searching on.

The biggest value from directories is not so much direct traffic from your directory listing, but from the SEO lift you get from the directory listing. The more important the directory, the better improvement in your search engine placement.

Links play an important part in determining your ranking position for the various search engines. Obtaining quality inbound links can influence your search engine rank immensely.

Garbage in, garbage out. If your website lacks lots of text content but is full of images and flash content which search engines cannot spider, the directory is not going to be able to overcome these ‘spider traps.’ Make sure your site is SEO friendly and optimized to take full advantage of a directory’s SEO lift. Submitting to a directory under a particular category, and have links to content rich pages which will allow the search engine to most easily categorize your site under the relevant topic.

There are many specific directories available online. Niche or specific directories target only websites categorized for a particular subject or field. There are directories available for virtually all business areas and topics. Regional directories are available which may be highly useful if your online business targets customers locally.

Directory submission companies like Directory Maximizer can help. Check out this article from them on the importance of directory submissions.

This site -- DNForum.com -- is a clearing house for discussions on a variety of topics on domain name sales, domain appraisals, and discussions about domain registrars.

Their "Industry Leaders" forum allows you to talk about issues with registrars. If you're like me and have a lot of domain names, then you've likely run afoul of some registrar at some point and this is a great place to get tips on how to deal with individual registrar issues.

Possibly the best opportunity on this site though is if you have some domain names you want to sell. Here you can get an appraisal and then create buzz and network to sell that domain you've been holding on to.

GoBoardz is a new -- and free! -- forum service that allows you to create online message boards. Some selected features:

• Picture uploading/linking via embedded Photobucket widgets
• Avatars
• Active Topics (via RSS too!),
• Customizable colors
• Digg suppport
• Del.icio.us linking

Unlike some other systems in the market, this system is very fast (no graphics, just colors), and simple to set up. I set up a test forum here --http://seo.goboardz.com -- and had it up and running in minutes.
Learn more at GoBoardz Forums