I've never seen her so motivated in my life! She's starting to take the whole getting a job thing seriously. This week she spent some time calling places to find out who will hire someone under 16. She found three places, the skating rink, the water park, and the child care at the gym.

My wife picked up the applications and helped her answering the questions. It's all so new to her. She got them turned in and went for her first interview at the skating rink, which, I'm told, went fantastically. She's got another interview scheduled for next week at the gym. Before I know it, my little girl will be texting her friends once again. Even better she'll be learning about real-life responsibilities, and what it takes to "survive" in the real world. All it took was a little motivation.

Put feeling into your words

Motivation is a funny thing. You can try to encourage people by telling them the benefits of this, that or the other, but sometimes it's just not enough. You've got to make them "feel" it. If you craft your message right, you can do just that using words only. This is true whether you're dealing with a child, spouse or a customer over the Internet.

Fast food restaurants use words (and pictures) to make you feel hungry. Non-profits raise money by making you feel sad and/or that you can make a difference. Employers motivate by making their employees feel valuable. Is this all just lip service? It shouldn't be. Feelings only last so long as the actions behind them support it.

In advertising and marketing you can illicit feeling in your words and pictures. You can stir feelings of pain, anger, relief, desire, attraction, want, hope, satisfaction, love, etc., etc., etc.. And if you really want to close the sale, you have to make people feel like what you are selling is going to meet their wants or needs.

When you're words convey feeling, then you are motivating them to take the action you desire. Essentially you're helping them make the decision because they'll know they'll feel good about the result. This helps them feel confident and comfortable that they are doing the right thing.

You can talk to your customers and try to explain why they need what you sell. Or you can use words to motivate them by making them feel the emotion that will make them want to buy. The difference is, by merely talking to them you are leaving the decision up to them. When you motivate your visitors by using feelings, you've actually done them a favor. You've helped them solve a need. Now they are just not your customer, they are your friend.

As for my daughter, I obviously didn't motivate her enough with my words. But cause and effect is a wonderful motivator as well!

1. All is well; your website is www.xyzname.com and it is currently listed in the top 10 in Google for 'xyz'.
   
   
2. A hacker comes along and decides that your listing for 'xyz' needs to be removed (perhaps for competitive reasons or out of spite). So the hacker gets Google to spider your website through a proxy. The address that Google would be given to index might look like this:
   www.proxysrus.au/proxy/www.xyzname.com/
   
   
3. When Google indexes this new URL it looks legitimate and Google's filters will soon recognize that the content being indexed is exactly the same as www.xyzname.com. As a result, in the cases that have arisen so far www.xyzname.com loses its ranking and the freshly indexed proxy URL has effectively eradicated the competition.

1. When the proxy URL is requested the server would have to provide the search engines with zero suspicion that a proxy was delivering the information. This includes URL syntax, URL length, server header information and latency.
   
   
2. The proxy URL would have to appear authoritative.
   
   
3. The proxy would need to be able to thwart the proxy hacking prevention measures that Dan has laid out within his informative article. At this time it appears the only proxies that are having some success are the ones that strip all browsing information so that the 'hack proof' sites cannot tell whether the traffic is legitimate or not. If they can't tell then they will not know to block Google from spidering their site through the wrong URL. Again even that attack has been rebuffed by Dan and his team by enabling noindex and nofollow tags on his client's sites UNLESS a verified search engine is visiting.

Steve Ballmer Microsoft CEO said the company will try to fill holes in its business or enter new markets mostly via small deals, but he also said larger deals are "conceivable,".

"We have not, by default, opted for acquisitions as part of our strategy ... but we don't count them out either," he said. "In general, though (we focus on) smaller deals, we are open to large acquisitions.

News reports last Friday that Microsoft has once again approached Yahoo for a potential merger. Ballmer declined to comment whether he was interested in acquisitions in the $40 billion to $50 billion.

"I don't think you should expect that most of our growth should come from buying large companies and taking costs out," Ballmer said, adding that such cost-reduction strategies are useful in slow-growing, more mature industries, but not software.

Google has launched "Lat Long Blog", a blog focusing on Google Earth, Maps, Local and APIs.

"Things are changing so fast we thought a blog focused on this topic would be the best way to communicate with you, both about our products and about the overall development of geo on the web." John Hanke, Director of Google Earth & Maps said.

Google added more integration with Google Calendar. You can download all events in your portfolio such as earnings calls, analyst meetings, and any other material event on your company and portfolio pages to your Google Calendar.

Here is a list of all other features they've added:

• Historical prices: View and download historical end-of-day prices for any U.S. or Canadian company
• Portfolios: You can now download the latest portfolio performance and transaction details from your portfolio
• News feeds: Stay on top of the news using your feed client such as
  Google Reader, Bloglines, or as part of your iGoogle

You can read more about it at the Official Google Blog.

by Mike Fleming

If you manage a PPC account, you know that for several years now AdWords has had three match types: exact, phrase, and broad.  You also know what they mean and how your keywords are matched to search queries.  Up until a couple of years ago, broad match meant that the keywords in your phrase were matched to queries that had all of your words in any order.

Then, broad match became "expanded broad match" where Google's algorithm was given free reign to decide if search queries were a close enough match in search intent to show your ad.  Many of the results were not even close.  Your keyword could be business cards and your ad would show on state ids and business plans.

The overwhelming advantage of broad match of course is that you get more impressions, clicks and conversions; although you most likely would have a lower conversion rate that will make you pay more for each conversion.  So for some it works and for some not so much.  The major disadvantage is that you have to spend time going through your search queries very often to weed out those that are not applicable to your business because you paid for clicks state ids and business plans.

But now, Google has given us another option that offers more flexibility in balancing the tension between traffic and relevance; the old broad match and expanded broad match.  It's called modified broad match.  This option has greater reach than phrase match, but is more controlled than broad match. 

How? With this match type, if you put a plus (+) sign in front of a word in your phrase, AdWords will only match your keyword to search queries that contain that word exactly or contain a close variation of the word.

Google defines a close variation as "misspellings, singular/plural, abbreviations/acronyms, stemming (like "floor" and "flooring") and synonyms.  They say related searches like "flowers" and "tulips" are not considered close variations.

So basically they are allowing advertisers to choose between the old broad match, newer broad match, or a combination of the two.  You can choose to "bring in the reins" so to speak on broad match and decide which words in keyword phrases are necessary in the search query for their ad to be triggered.  So, you could do this:

business +cards

This means card will not be matched with id or plan but only cards exactly or close variations of it (card, etc.).  Now, this still means that you could get matched to id card; so if you want to further filter your possible matches, you could go with:

+business +cards

This functions like the old school broad match.  Now business will always mean business and cards will always mean cards.

This really takes the realistic number of possible match types up to 6 or 7.  Here's a really cool graph that shows the match types, their relative reach and an initial bidding strategy for each.

If you would like to test these match types out, choose a couple ad groups where you are struggling, copy them and use the new ad groups to replace your broad match keywords with modified broad match.   Modify your broad match keywords and set their bids between the your broad match and phrase match keywords.  Then, after enough data has collected you can analyze search queries and conversions of each ad group to see the results and adjust using your reports.

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by Sage Lewis

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by Stoney deGeyter

Much like life, websites have to adapt over time. When they don't, they risk becoming stagnant, outdated, stale, and boring. As times change, so should your content. Content that was once relevant becomes irrelevant or in need of an update, old products get dumped in favor of new products, and data becomes outdated and needs to be replaced.

There are any number of reasons why content needs to be changed, freshened up, or removed altogether. But rarely, if ever, do you want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Something can usually be salvaged. Previously valuable content can be made valuable again. Here are four ways you can keep good content alive, even when it's old.

Keep content up to date

Keeping your content up-to-date may sound like a simple task; but, the larger the site, the more difficult it is. Sites with hundreds or thousands of pages often have a lot of little hidden gems that can easily become stale or irrelevant. Over time, you see products and services change. A simple reference to an old pricing structure or outdated way of doing things can really throw a wrench in the works for the reader. Conflicts and contradictions breed mistrust.

Failing to find and correct these nuggets will send your readers a message that perhaps you are stale and irrelevant as well. So, spending time on a regular basis, perhaps yearly, reviewing all your editorial content and brushing it up to keep it current is an important item to put on your task list.

Redirect deleted pages

Pages on websites often get moved or deleted over time. Perhaps you are restructuring your information architecture, removing services that you no longer offer, or deleting tutorials that have become obsolete. Just because this content is considered old, doesn't mean that it can't still work for you.

Simply adding "301 redirects" or a building a custom "404" page can capture that traffic and send them to other areas of your site. This allows them to stick around long enough to see if you still have something that will meet their needs, even though you no longer have exactly what they want.

Adding redirects allows you to keep visitors on your site if they have arrived, say, from a bookmarked page or an old page in the search results. Instead of losing those visitors, this gives you the opportunity to keep them engaged with your site, with the possibility of attracting them to your other excellent content.

Repurpose old content

Blogs are a great place to re-purpose old content and provide an updated spin on it. If you're running out of ideas for what to publish on your blog, you can go back several years in your archive and find old topics and discussions for which you can provide a new take.

Blog back history can give you a wealth of topics that you can pull from to create fresh, new content for your readers.

Another way to re-purpose old content is by removing excessive content from your site and moving it over to your blog. This can be necessary after years of site content build-up. This happens when you keep adding content to your site and it becomes so bloated that your readers end up spending too much time working through your site instead of being moved through the conversion process.

A couple months back, I worked on the Information Architecture for a client, and they had this very problem. We were able to take dozens of pages of content and move it off of their main site onto their blog. The content was good, but it was excessive. This hindered the conversion process, making the site both convoluted and confusing at the same time. By moving this stuff to the blog, the main site was better able to do the job of selling and the blog became the avenue of informing readers.

Link to historical pages

Content, especially blog content, often gets buried after months and years of time passing. But that doesn't necessarily mean the content isn't valuable or even needs to be re-written.

What you can do is write new content that links to this valuable content that was written long ago. You're giving your readers something fresh, while linking to something historical, that you can use to make your point or provide more detailed information for the reader to peruse at their leisure.

Take advantage of any area of content that allows you to link to another page that provides more information. The web isn't a brochure, it's more like a choose-your-own-adventure novel. That historical content can be a goldmine of information, provided you're giving your new readers a way to access it.

Good content never has to die. If you're treating it right, it never will. New people are coming to your site every day. These people have not had the benefit of reading all your past or historical stuff. No need to let it go to waste. Instead, keep it alive... and keep it working for you.

This post was inspired from The Princess Bride themed presentation I gave in early 2010 at SEMpdx's Searchfest titled Inconceivable Content: The Dread Pirate Robert's Guide to Creating Swashbuckling Content, Pillaging the Search Engines, and Commandeering a Treasure Trove of Conversions. If you enjoyed this post you also might enjoy other posts inspired from the same. Search for "inconceivable content" on this blog to find them all.

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by Mike Moran

Some of you might know that I like to take Augusts off. While not completely off the grid (I still clean out my e-mail—although I don't reply much—and I still moderate comments on my blog), I don't write any blog posts (on my blog or here at Search Engine Guide), and I stay off Twitter. I also don't read any blog posts or check out what others are saying on Twitter—it's a social media fast. Each year, it's interesting to find myself picking up a newspaper again. This year, I did something a bit different, because I actually returned to work on August 25th because of a client need, but I continued to stay away from social media for the last week, just to see what it was like. It's one thing for me to avoid social media while I am on vacation, but what would it feel like during my work day?

Image via Wikipedia

Well, the verdict is in. It felt very strange. As easy as it is for me to drop out of social media while on vacation and just hang with my wife and play with the kids, once I am back at work, it felt very odd to not know what is going on.

I mean, I had been away for three weeks on vacation, so I really had no idea what was happening, but to be working in that kind of darkness was a different experience. The first thing I had to do was to fly to a distant city and make a speech on Internet marketing to hundreds of people. In doing so, I was gripped by this semi-insane fear that I couldn't make the speech without knowing what is going on. I mean, what if someone asked a question about something that just happened and I didn't know the answer?

Of course, the speech went just fine. Internet marketing apparently hasn't changed all that much in the last month (even though apparently the Web died while I was away).

But I also noticed how much I wanted to say, with no one to tell. I usually tweet about where I am traveling, so I had to resist the impulse to tell people about my trip last week. People would send me links to things to read—not only didn't I read them, but I didn't tell anyone about them. I'll probably catch up over the next week and tweet some of them.

But it was the blog ideas that just kept coming. And I wasn't writing any of them.

Usually, I post to my blog once each day (usually I am the writer of the article, but I also edit contributions from some other excellent contributors), so every day it is a struggle to get that done. I take for granted that nice people out there are actually interested in hearing what I have to say. It was strange to have a few work days where I wasn't publishing anything. (Frank Reed published several posts on my blog while I was away, but I didn't have any work to do while on vacation.)

I now have dozens of ideas for blog posts. most accumulated during the last week at work, with only a couple from my vacation. So, while my vacation definitely recharged my batteries, my social media fast during my first week back from work filled my creative coffers. Perhaps many of you post just once a week, or even less frequently, so this is not an issue for you. And while I've never felt like I am running dry for ideas, going a few days without having to write anything has been an eye-opener.

So, I still haven't completely caught up on what's been going on, but I will soon. My social media fast has proven to me both how important social media is and how important it is to take a break now and then. Some have told me that they only look at social media during defined times of the day (I know some who do this with e-mail, too). I never understood that before, but maybe I am starting to.

Anyway, I am glad to be back, and I'm honored that a few of you actually want to listen to what I have to say. Thank you.

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by Eric Brown

"During the subprime bubble, banks and brokers sold one another bad debt -- debt that couldn't be made good on. Today, "social" media is trading in low-quality connections -- linkages that are unlikely to yield meaningful, lasting relationships."

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