Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

Do you have a question about the Google search engine?

Try the WebmasterWorld Google Knowledgebase V2 or as I like to call it, The Ultimate Google FAQ.

Some of the more interesting questions I found answers to:

• Will Google index a framed site?
• Does Google index dynamic content? (This blog is dynamic but the URLs, or permalinks remain static so Google *should* spider them)
• What are the big things I shouldn’t do that will decrease my rankings on Google?
• How big of a problem are duplicate pages?
• How often does Google update?

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StartupJournal: Small online proprietors often spend lots of time and money trying to improve their search-engine rankings, getting only poor results for their effort.

To avoid costly errors, make note of these common myths:

Myth 1. You can be guaranteed consistently high rankings.

Myth 2. I need to submit my Web site to every search engine out there.

Myth 3. Repeating keywords will increase my site’s rankings.

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The Perfect Store - Inside eBay
by Adam Cohen

Amazon: From its beginnings as a hobby site on a Silicon Valley PC, to its maturation as a real company under the burgeoning fiscal pressures of cyberspace, to its present status as one of the few original e-business practitioners to survive the dot.com implosion, eBay has always been part of the crowd while managing to stand out from it. Cohen helps us understand why by taking us inside the heads of major players like Pierre Omidyar, the co-founder who imbued his site with a Libertarian philosophy responsible for its heart and soul, and Meg Whitman, the seasoned manager who brought business savvy and a Harvard MBA to its roller-coaster world. What helps make the book so readable and informative, though, are Cohen’s accompanying observations of the many other people and events that also helped eBay develop its trademark direction and characteristic personality: the company that formulated its distinctive logo, the Kansas City clothing-iron collectors whose pastime was transformed by the upstart Web site, the quirky listings that generated controversy (and publicity) like the one in 1999 for a “fully functional kidney,” even detractors who decry its big-business underpinnings. Fans of the site, along with students of the online world in general, will find Cohen’s account both instructive and enjoyable.

Review

This book is amazing. It’s by far the most inspirational book on web business that I have ever read. Besides being a great story which is now a part Internet folklore, the eBay journey provides many lessons for any person starting up a web business. If you want a great e-business story, rich with unique characters and personality, this book is for you. If you are a fan of eBay, the culture and the community this book is for you. If you are an Internet entrepreneur, and you want to learn from one of the biggest success stories online, this book is for you.

Pierre Omidyar the french American that built eBay became, at the time, one of the top 10 richest men in America when eBay did their IPO on the stock market. His share of the business was valued in the billions of dollars. Much of eBay’s upper management became billionaires and many of the staff millionaires. Omidyar commented that the amount of money he had was impossible for one man to ever conceivably spend in a lifetime, even all of his friends and family combined probably couldn’t spend it all. During most of this time he kept driving around his beat up old VW Volkswagen bug. Classy.

Full credit must be given to Adam Cohen the author of the book. The story is complete and meticulous in detail without being boring or repetitive. What made it even better were the little side stories interspersed within the main eBay history. He recounts tales of business that formed as a result of eBay, other websites and communities that developed to discuss eBay matters and even a story of how eBay staff entered a third world village to set up the equipment to allow the locals to sell their gift-wares on eBay. Mr Cohen carefully goes through every stage of business development, discusses all the important characters and explains all the major events. It’s a top class book that I enjoyed from start to finish.

The eBay story is very relevant to anyone that has a web business, or even just a website. We all want lots of people to visit our site and dream of becoming rich as a result of e-commerce. The eBay story starts out just like this - a guy sitting at home that builds a website that allows people to auction items. EBay started in the golden “untapped” early days of the world wide web when the concept of online auctions was new. Because of simplicity, first mover advantage and the addictiveness of online auctions eBay spread like wildfire mostly through viral networks - friends telling friends about a cool new website. In fact the site was so successful many times it buckled under the sheer demand and popularity. A unique and enviable position to be in when starting a web business or any business for that matter.

This book tells a great story about what can be accomplished online when you have a simple idea that just works. It clearly demonstrates the human aspect, detailing the characters and motivations behind the business and what they did well and did not do well. It outlines the challenges eBay faced at each stage of growth. It provides practical insights into the marketing methods that eBay employed. It outlines what happens to an organisation as it grows from a two person start-up business to one with hundreds of employees, shareholders, a board and an executive management team. It talks about the mistakes made along the way. It outlines the techniques and methods that had the most impact on business growth. As you can imagine, all this information is extremely valuable for any person interested in succeeding at online business and entrepreneurship.

I highly recommend this book.

Rated 4.5 / 5

Yaro Starak
eBay Fan

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The jury is still out on whether listing your site in free directories is good for your site’s search engine optimisation. Same people say Google ignores directories for rankings, some say that a few of the authority directories, especially DMOZ - The Open Directory Project, are important. There is even rumours that Google will penalise sites with a lot of free directory inbound links. My rule - list your sites in a few authority AND relevant directories but definitely don’t go for a blanket approach, quality over quantity.

Regardless of the search engine implications listing your site in directories at least gives you a chance for some free traffic coming from the directory. Don’t expect miracles but if you have some time devoted to link building consider free directory listings as a path of least resistance to get started.

This listing of free web directories is a great place to start because it includes statistics on how well positioned the directories are within the major search engines. It’s interesting to note how Google completely ignores some directories while Yahoo will index the entire site. Zeal.com is a good example. Google ignores it, Yahoo has 1.8 million entries for it.

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As a web business owner you will be well aware that content for your website is good. The more content the better, but of course it must be relevant and of high quality. If you know anything about search engine optimisation you know that Google loves content. The problem most webmasters face is how to get the content without writing it yourself, which takes time, or without spending money to pay someone else to do it.

I recently faced this problem. I wanted some fresh content for my site, but beyond sales pages and basic features such as contact information I really didn’t have the experience with the subject matter to produce good content. To get around this problem I came up with a method to attain good quality content, for free, which I could use for my web business site. It’s not the easiest method, but to get good content you sometimes have to work a little harder. This is how I did it.

Step 1: Think about your customer’s needs.

Before chasing content you have to think what sort of content your customers want and what needs they have. Obviously you want people coming to your business site that are interested in what you offer so think about what other things complimentary information they might be interested in. For example if you are running a website that sells tennis racquets then you should fill your site with quality articles on how to improve your tennis game.

If you can provide valuable free content then your traffic will increase but it’s important to make sure it’s the right kind of traffic. By providing content that attracts your target market you have the best chance of converting those prospects into customers.

Step 2: Locate the best articles based on customer needs.

Now that you have a good idea what sort of content your potential customers would be interested in you need to get out there and find the best articles to meet this need. Thankfully it’s Google’s job to do this so all you need to do is think like someone that would be searching for content in this area and pump it into Google. The search results at the top should be the best and most relevant content on the subject matter you are looking for. If it’s not then you might need to adjust your search terms until you find some good articles.

The ideal situation is to find a hobbyist fan, someone that writes articles for fun to indulge in their hobby and happens to be an expert too so they write good stuff. You can usually spot these types of websites because they are not professional, after all they are not trying to run a business, they just want to help others out while they enjoy their hobby. So continuing the tennis example you should hopefully find a few mad keen tennis fans or trainers that have written up some good content.

A note on PageRank: Try and pick the articles that have a high PageRank, at least a 4 or more is best. The first page or two of results on Google should bring in those types of sites. If you don’t know what PageRank is read about it. When a page has a high PageRank and shows up in the first few results in Google you can assume the content is of a high standard. If in doubt, sit down and read the article, you should be able to judge for yourself if it provides something of quality.

Step 3: Ask for permission to publish the content.

This is the tricky part. Write out an email template to send to the author of the article explaining who you are and what you want to do with the article. Be sure to be completely honest and tell them that your site is commercial although you will not be selling or making any direct money from the article. Make sure you state that the article will be clearly sourced with a link back to the author’s homepage. Here is an example from an email I used:

******

Dear INSERT AUTHOR NAME,

My name is INSERT YOUR NAME and I am the owner of an INSERT YOUR
BUSINESS located in INSERT YOUR CITY, COUNTRY AND URL. We are
looking for resources to add to a new online library that we are
developing. I came across your INSERT ARTICLE NAME and I believe it
would be perfect for our library. In fact I think it could be one of
the main features, if you are willing to share it. We will of course
list you as the author and link directly back to your website.

The library will be completely free to use and we are presently
putting together a collection of quality articles to help our
visitors with INSERT YOUR SUBJECT AREA (E.G. TENNIS GAME).  We do
not intend to make direct profits from the library, it is intended
to add value to our website and hopefully indirectly increase the
sales of our INSERT WHAT YOUR BUSINESS DOES. The business is a
commercial enterprise. If you have any questions regarding my
business or intentions please contact me.

******

Be certain to sign it off personally and make yourself available for any questions. I also request a response from the author regardless of their decision so you can be certain the email made it through. You have to ensure the author has some potential value from allowing his/her article to be re-published. In this case it can be fame and traffic back to his/her website.

This technique will not always work. Every single author may reject you, some may never respond. Your business may operate in an industry where there just isn’t any good individual authors writing good content that isn’t in some way linked to a commercial enterprise. To get around this you can offer to buy the content if you have the available funds, but I advise against paying much unless the article really is top class and not distributed anywhere else.

I sent out about ten emails and four authors agreed to have their articles published. This provided me with thousands of words of quality free content. Best of all these articles are probably only published in a handful of places, perhaps only on my site and the author’s site. It was definitely worth the time and effort I put in and I recommend you give it a try too, you may be surprised at how generous people can be.

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