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.

#1 way to SEO, Get thousands of contextual Links in a week

Is that for real? Yes, and I actually just wrote this on our blog templates blog, obviously that is our main blog, not just for SEO but for all our websites and our biggest promotional engine.

I have been a fan of PRWeb for more than two years, because we received thousands of links with our Press Releases and quickly got a good Google page rank for our previous blogs and real estate websites. Every SEO expert knows that sending out a professional Press Release through a wire service is the best way to get thousands of contextual links. One of the other things you can do, is to go to our b2b and online marketplace and submit your business information. While it won’t give you thousands of links, it does get get good traffic and it’s a sure way to promote your businesses! But recently I learned that PRNewswire says that they SEO press releases, but they did not provide contextual links within their press release, in fact they only provided one link. I had my client check with his PRNewswire rep to make sure that he got what he paid for. He paid the extra $250 but never got the links, his rep said that they SEO but don’t provide links. This was the silliest thing I have heard.

But, I wanted to do some research and make sure that PRWeb and PRNewswire were fully researched before I provided my SEO and Internet Marketing verdict. I read a few blogs, I did some research and my past experiences to make my judgement, which is. PRNewswire is an old company, with old ties and if you want to be seen as a Fortune 500 company, use them. They are expensive and worthless for SEO, because they don’t provide any contextual links back. PRWeb is the #2 company for Press Releases and does so much to SEO your news that it actually helps you get thousands of links in a week or less. The online tools for PRWeb are not super easy to use, but who cares, they give you THOUSANDS OF contextual links from news sites, which is amazing for SEO. Every business should do press releases, but only when they have news. B2b marketing finding customers is now much easier, so you don’t have to constantly push, sites like Alibaba and Trade Key are great sites for b2b Exchanges and online businesses to promote themselves.

Every SEO expert also knows that you need more Contextual links than your competitor, especially from news worthy sites, and blogs. Well guess what folks, PRWeb delivers, thousands of links for the price of about $130. But don’t take my word for it, spend hundreds of dollars, lots of time, and than you can email me later saying, YOU WERE RIGHT Vipin. No, don’t do that, take my word for it, and read the following links and search results:

Prweb Vs. Prnewswire - High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum

Prweb Vs. Prnewswire, Is one better than the other for SEO? Options V … Does this make them better for SEO tactics than PRNewswire? Any advice is welcome. … www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=26155 - 51k - Cached - Similar pages

PRWEb vs. PRNewswire Press Release Service for SEO - SEO Tip Week 38

PRWEb vs. PRNewswire Press Release Service for SEO - SEO Tip Week 38. Written on September 25, 2007 – 6:31 pm | by Shell Harris | … www.bigoakinc.com/blog/prweb-vs-prnewswire/ - 33k - Cached - Similar pages

PR Newswire vs. PRWeb From an SEO Perspective » Slicksurface …

PR Newswire vs. PRWeb From an SEO Perspective. A client of ours distributes “soft news stories” for their corporate clients. These can range from product …
www.slicksurface.com/blog/2007-05/pr-newswire-vs-prweb-from-an-seo-perspective - 25k -Now you have the secrets of the top SEO Experts, you should be sending out Press Releases every week on PRWeb.com.

Top 10 Marketing Books of all time, only one on SEO?

Top 10 Marketing books of all time, only one on SEO?

I wanted to write a blog post on the best marketing books of all time, I typed in Google and came up with this list, attached link. Some of you know, I rip on Amazon a little, but I mean no harm buy it, gosh, they are a good company. But this blogging/SEO expert, Moi have to give them some credit for their amazing SEO skills or it could be their smart book content? Honestly Amazon is known to be an amazing company run by an amazing CEO, but the internal structure has stopped it’s employees (my friends–many of them work there) of following through on some interesting initiatives. The company is known for it ruthless corporate culture, it’s been said that the cut throat corporate culture at Microsoft never reached this height. This is coming from good people who work there folks. But, maybe that is what is required to be the world’s largest ecommerce, and online marketplace. I do have to say that I love eBay, but they have their issues and their Online Marketplace had a revolt from it’s sellers last few week with a boycott too. Finally here is the list of the books by Amazon and my list below:

Amazon.com: “Top 17 Marketing Books Of All Time”

So what are my favorite Marketing Books of all time, and why? I have to do some research on this, but I have to tell you, I may not have read enough to make a difference. And, mine are now becoming outdated, and tend to focus on high tech marketing. I will compile a bigger list and add to this blog. This starts to complete this wholistic view I want to present about SEO, Blogging, Search Engine Marketing, Internet Marketing and Marketing as a whole. Because our goal here is to work in the real world to help all businesses succeed, that is why it makes sense as a series of blogs?

1. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. Why? Because it explains human behavior and how trends are started and created, a must read marketing book of all time!

2. “Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey Moore

3. “Inside the Tornado” by Geoffrey Moore

4. “Innovators Dilemma” Clayton Christensen

5. “SEO for Dummies” by Peter Kent

6. “Marketing to the Social Web” Larry Weber

7. “Purple Cow” Seth Godin

8. “The Big Moo” Seth Godin and 33 other experts such as Tom Peters

9. Everything by Peter Drucker

10. “Watch This Listen Up Click Here” by David Verklin

There are honorable mentions of a couple of Internet Marketing books, the SEO Book is good, and there are countless others, want to add to this list, let me/us know. “The Long Tail” is a great concept and book, I have not fully read this book, just skimmed it. I do want to mention it. Also, you may have heard about us launching our Internet Marketing book, which covers blogging and it’s benefit for SEO, which I have always said is the most important part of SEM (Search Engine Marketing), and is ultimately part of Internet Marketing.

How to attract customers, from "Marketing to the Social Web"

Just wrote this blog earlier today in our Blog templates site at MyTypes.com, from a great book, we still like blogging on blogger so I still post on this blog. The object of that site is to provide SEO advice, Internet Marketing 2.0 advice, social networking marketing advice, and of course a great blogging community.

Last night I was reading a good book that a friend of mine returned to me on Friday. “Marketing to the Social Web” by Larry Weber. It’s a good book on the subject of Social networking, and what I call Internet Marketing 2.0 if you have read my recent blogs. What makes it a great book for me personally for SEO and other business owners is that it has sound strategies and simple statistical value. Before I get to the paradigm shifting marketing strategies of the web 2.0 concepts of “Marketing to the Social Web”, I do have to say Larry’s cover of Jookster is what made it a favorite of mine. You see Jookster was co-founded in Seattle by a friend of ours, Othniel Palomino. Do read the book as it’s has a ton of information, and it’s as up to date as anything on the subject. He also has great testimonials on the back cover, from experts whom I value and respect.

So last night as I am reading the book, I run in to some great stats. I skim through most of the topics of most books I read, sorry too much to do, too little time. Even if no one loved my SEO articles and blog writing work, I do consider my self a SEO expert and Internet Marketing 2.0 expert. Hey we are #32 on Google for the keyword “SEO” that is out of 60million plus sites, and we just started to focus on SEO last week. You will see us in the top 10 soon, we hope. Social Web or Social networking is the key aspect of web 2.o arrival as you have probably heard. Online communities such as MySpace, YouTube, FaceBook, and even our small community of bloggers at MyTypes.com are all the rage. Why you ask? Because no man or women is an island, we are social beings. In my opinion, no one, Yes, I mean no one likes to eat alone. Very few if any, like to shop alone, and most people like to live with others, that is why Urban centers have so many people.

Now getting back to the subject of the book, marketing to the social web. How Larry how? I actually have not read that far yet, but I am sure there is no holy grail for every business, on how to attract more customers. But we do have an advantage over Larry in the fact, that we always talk about how to attract more customers via SEO (search engine optimization). We won’t go hammer the SEO mantras here once again, but Larry does mention that search marketing via proper keywords is great way to attract and invite members to your social web. The key to providing value is another topic, and I am sure that book covers it in detail. It’s a good book, based on what I have read so far. Here are the stats (4 things from Compete Inc. research) of what people are looking from Online communities based on the book:

“1. Meet people. Some 78 percent of the people who visit online communities join them to communicate with others, either colleagues or new acquaintances with whom they develop relationships.

2. Entertain themselves. Another 47 percent join to find entertaining content such as photos, music, or videos.

3. Learn Something new. Some 38 percent join because they want to obtain information about topics that hold particular interest to them.

4. Influence others. And 23 percent join to express the opinions in a forum where their ideas can be discussed, debated, or acted on.”

Now the hard part is to put this data in to practice, you are already here at a SEO blog community, learning to use SEO information, learn everything you can about this amazing subject. Do join our blogging community at Community.MyTypes.com? Why we actually promote the most recent 50-60 people on the front page of that site, check it out. Also, those pages are heavily indexed by search engines due to our SEO expertise. In the last 2.5 months we have been able attract over 3,100 people to that site, with nothing but SEO efforts. Now that may not be much, but I am proud of it.