Blogs = Great Content = Higher Rankings, but how?

You have heard this from so many SEO experts, blog often, blog this and blog that. They are constantly talking about blogging, but the average person, well even I don’t know what to write about. And trust me, you need to write meaningful content or people won’t read it, and if they don’t, you won’t get high rankings on Google either. So how should we blog, how often and long, on what platform and Why? I am going to keep this post short, as I blogged earlier about our Marketplace and the ITEX announcement, which is attached as a promo about our business. Getting back to how why blogging helps your SEO Rankings:

1. How? Blogging is the same as writing, but it involves writing online. Just start writing, it’s easy, add some pictures, from sites such as www.sxc.hu and off you go a gorgeous blog.

2. How often? Usually once a day is awesome, but 2-3 times a week, 2-3 paragraphs max keep it relative short and keep your blog to the point of your business and keywords.

3. What platform and Why? On MyTypes.com (We are biased that is our platform), Wordpress.com, and Blogger.com. On MyTypes blogging platform we automatically get your content indexed by Google and other search engines. Wordpress.com and Blogger.com are both free and quite amazing too.

Here is the blog from my Business blogs:

B2B Marketplaces go SaaS..Sassi with ITEX

February 29th, 2008 at 07:41 pm by Admin in b2b

B2B stands for Business to Business, but you already knew that. What it is, does not concern us in this blog post. What does, is the fact that many businesses are starting to utilize B2B marketplaces and b2b hubs as they were called to Buy, Sell, and Trade. In contrast to the amazing reception of online marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon, the b2b world is quiet, maybe even boring? Well how do I say this, less exciting maybe, but Go B2B, kind of has a lack of tone to it doesn’t it? Regardless consumer online businesses are not the only one’s benefiting from b2b trade exchanges.

Hundreds of thousands of distributors, sales, marketing and millions of businesses are buying, selling, trading on sites like Alibaba, TradeKey and soon our b2b marketplace. By the way, ITEX a major investor in our company has 24,000 businesses in the trading community. A friend of mine often visits Alibaba.com and works with trade manufactures from China and helps further international trade. He is a professor of Internation business at a local University, and he often gets excited about the progress of businesses trading via the Internet Trading for B2B. It’s amazing how many products you can find from suppliers over seas. It’s good for them, it’s good for us, it helps the little businesses compete with large multi-nationals. Often this cuts out a cumbersome process of middleman and creates a global marketplace where everything is transparent.

Alibaba made a huge splash a few weeks ago with it’s IPO, it instantly turned this multi-million dollar b2b marketplace in to a billion dollar company. It didnt’ hurt that it was approximately 38% owned by Yahoo. Besides Alibaba, I don’t really see a lot of marketplaces for b2b and businesses to buy, sell, and trade with each other. It’s nice that international companies are using the Net to trade, but what about US based b2b marketplace to help businesses, and especially small businesses. I am sorry but I just don’t see too many of those. That is why we launched our Beta online marketplace a few weeks ago, we are in a non-stealth mode, as we do have to start the SEO process to promote it. The marketplace is developed in concert with ITEX and to promote the barter exchange of ITEX, but as we get deeper and deeper in to it, the more we are focusing on the b2b needs to help businesses with Buy, Sell and Trade. On a secondary note but probably more Saasy, ITEX made an amazing announcement yesterday, to help vertical Industries of all sorts leverage it’s marketplace platform and grow their businesses b2b or business to consumer.

ITEX CEO TO PRESENT AT MONTGOMERY TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE

Software as a Service Strategy to be Announced

Bellevue, WA – February 28, 2008 – ITEX Corporation (OTCBB: ITEX), The Membership Trading CommunitySM, a leading marketplace for cashless business transactions in North America, today announced that ITEX Chairman and CEO Steven White is scheduled to present Tuesday, March 11th at 8:30 AM (PST) at the Montgomery Technology Conference in Santa Monica, CA.

Mr. White is expected to discuss ITEX’s current operations and announce the Company’s strategy to enter the Software as a Service (SaaS) market. A video replay and copy of the slide presentation will be available on the ITEX website (www.itex.com), under the Investor Relations section, from the end of the day on March 11, 2008 through May 31, 2008.

Steven White, Chairman and CEO of ITEX, stated “We are pleased to be invited to present the ITEX story to this technology-savvy audience and to announce our entrance into the SaaS market. ITEX has grown revenue 50% since fiscal 2005and is expected to reach $15,000,000 in fiscal 2008. Operating income has increased on average 25% annually; more than 142% what it was in 2004, exceeding $1,500,000 in fiscal 2007. Part of our success is attributed to our dynamic and robust internet based technology platform which has proven to be practical, easy-to-use, efficient and scalable. For the last couple of years we have enhanced our platform in order to capitalize on a large opportunity for our Company - to offer our technology platform, and the many features and benefits it provides, to other businesses; so they may enhance the value proposition and revenue streams for their marketplace or community, while at the same time creating new revenue streams for us.”

Mr. White continued, “ITEX launched its internet based platform in 2003, internally named TEAM (Trade Exchange Account Manager). More than just Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, the platform has payment processing, record-keeping, and billing functionality and provides comprehensive transaction data on
24,000 active members within the ITEX trading community as they complete over 1,000 transactions each business day. Our web interface can be customized and branded for a variety of online marketplaces or communities. What makes our platform unique is its ability to track both cash transactions and those based on non-cash currencies, such as rewards, points, units or other consideration a vendor decides to use.”

Steven White’s presentation at the Montgomery Technology Conference will be the first opportunity for ITEX to showcase its new SaaS strategy.

About Montgomery Montgomery & Co. is a leading provider of merger and acquisition advisory, private placements, and private equity for companies in the media, communications, information technology and healthcare sectors. Montgomery
& Co. has emerged as the premier investment banking alternative for growth companies in the United States by offering its clients in-depth industry knowledge, financial expertise, access to key relationships and a high degree of customer service.

Montgomery & Co.’s primary offices are in Santa Monica, San Francisco, and San Diego. Montgomery & Co. is a member of the National Association of Security Dealers, Inc. (NASD), and its professional associates are registered with the NASD-SIPC. For more information, please visit www.monty.com.

The 5th Annual Montgomery Technology Conference will gather a highly select group of 750-plus venture, private equity, public institutional investors and senior technology executives from around the world. Conference highlights include 90 high-quality private companies, 50 industry-leading public companies, industry keynotes and panels.

About ITEX - ITEX, The Membership Trading Community SM, is a thriving community of member businesses buying and selling more than $270 million a year in ITEX dollar transactions. Member businesses increase sales through an exclusive distribution channel managed by franchisees, licensees and corporate-owned locations, by
utilizing ITEX dollars to exchange goods and services. ITEX is powered by ITEX Payment Systems, the leading payment technology platform for processing cashless business transactions. ITEX is headquartered in Bellevue, WA.