KhalidsLife.com

A recent post by myself, Micro-Market Shakeup, suggested that Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo was opportunistic and if the internet was controlled by two major players - Microsoft and Google - the future for publishers earning an income online may become more difficult, less financially stable and less profitable.

With the sluggish US Economy impacting business on a World Wide scale, it was only a matter of time before Google was affected too. This occured on Tuesday, with Google’s share price being slashed 4.57% to $464. The move came after research firm Comscore reported a sluggish January in the viewing of paid-for-advertisements on the Google site.

The total clicking on to Google’s paid adverts was 532 million, down from 533 million a year before, Comscore said.

Despite the strong growth in searches in January, there was a decline in the click through rate of paid-for advertisements which create the bulk of both Google’s and publisher’s revenue.

So, what is the future?

I don’t have a crystal ball but I am certainly keeping my eye out for offline investments too. I’m not exiting the internet, in business you have to ride out the waves, but I am spreading my risks. Realistically, revenue can only lower to a certain level before an uproar or boycott occurs by publishers, with bigger sites probably conducting private ad deals.

I doubt we’ll ever have another dot com bubble, the internet is now a necessity rather than a luxury. However, in my own personal experiences where I see my PPC going to $0.03, it is apparent, and has been for a while, that publishers are not in control.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

It is amazing how many different services there are on the web that “Guarantee …” with a “Money Back Refund” etc etc etc. Further to that, the amount of conflicting information is rather bewildering - “Googlebot hates…” or “Googlebot needs”.

Like many things in life, SEO is trial and error. There is no clear system that guarantees you a premium ranking in the SERPs and with so many different things you can do, how would you know what is right and wrong without conducting your own tests?

I managed to rank Kortaz.com #1 - #5 for a number of different keywords. Without sounding arrogant, I think that’s quite an achievement considering “Kortaz” was not even a keyword and the site was not filled with content!

I think the amount of backlinks with the anchor text as the keyword made the site strong and this was the driving force behind its ranking. These links were built up over time with webmasters submitting their own proxy links to be listed on the site.

Aside from backlink building, being popular in Digg and Stumble Upon have their benefits too (I didn’t used them for Kortaz.com but for other sites). As well as bringing in visitors, many webmasters look for content through these sites and this can generate backlinks.

It is quite important to mention on-site SEO too and that generally means ensuring your site is keyword rich with unique content and good anchor texts.

I’d really like to know what you do when it comes to SEO and how you rank well?

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.