This week I am glad to announce my appointment as VP of Operations at ColinKlinkert.com. After having spent most of the past four years in Australia, it was time for me to come back to Europe. It is good to be home, especially in this hot summer! It is a pleasure for me to work with Colin, who he is a renowned internet entrepreneur. Colin’s career on the web has been very successful. You may have already heard about ViralUrl.com or ViralFollowers.com… and there are many more very exciting projects to come!

This leads me to introduce you to one of Colin’s latest projects: ViralHosts.com, which is about to be fully launched. ViralHosts is the ultimate all-in-one hosting, list builder and mailer program. From 50 to 3,000MB storage space, from 500 to 15,000MB bandwidth… and all the tools you need to make money online! Try out as a free member and see how good this all-in-one program can be for your online business.

Don’t forget to check out the affiliate program, it is definitely worth a look! By promoting ViralHosts you open up another revenue stream via high, automatic commission payments: 40% commissions for free members and up to 60% for upgraded members!

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions!

Before starting optimizing your website for search engines, it is essential to find out which keywords to use. This is what search engine optimizers call keyword research. It is not only about popularity but also about other factors such as competitiveness, location, etc. There are several different ways to find keywords for your website. I will focus on three simple but effective ways: people, keyword suggestion tools and competitors.

1. People

A mistake that too many website owners do is that they do not try imagine themselves as potential customers. Try to forget everything you know about your product or service and ask yourself how you would call it. What words do your customers use to call your product or service? What words do they type in search engines to search for businesses like yours? You may not use the same vocabulary than yours customers. You also may simply want to ask around you: your friends, colleagues… and of course your customers themselves. Make a list of keywords and check their popularity and competitiveness with a keyword suggestion tool.

2. Keyword suggestion tools

There are plenty of keyword suggestion tools available on the web. Some are free, some are not. I tend to use Google’s keyword suggestion tool: Google AdWords: Keyword Tool. It has originally been designed to help people finding keywords for their Google AdWords campaigns but it works fine for search engine optimization purposes. I’m pretty sure Microsoft and Yahoo! have their own. Otherwise, you may be interested in paid keyword suggestion tools such as Wordtracker and  Keyword Discovery or even a keyword research software like Keyword Elite. This kind of program can help you achieve great results with only little effort. I believe keyword suggestion tools are an essential step in keyword research. They will help you verify how popular and competitive keywords are.

3. Competitors

Finally, I believe it is definitely worth taking a look at the keywords your competitors use. Visit their website and see in the page source (View > Source with Internet Explorer and View > Page Source with Firefox) which keywords are used in the page title, keywords tag, description tag, etc. The page title also shows up in the bar at the very top of  your web browser. However, it is not because your competitor uses a keyword that it is necessarily the best choice for your website.

There are a few other keyword research techniques – trend monitoring tools can be very useful in some cases – but these three should help you start building a comprehensive list of keywords to use when optimizing your website.

As you certainly already know, it is useful for website and blog owners and other internet professionals to be able to use graphics editors like Adobe Photoshop or Corel Paint Shop Pro. Images are an essential component of web content, and it shouldn’t be a problem for anyone managing a website or a blog to resize or convert an image. Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro are commercial programs, and thus pretty full on, but not that easy to use compared to free tools like Paint.NET, PhotoFiltre and GIMP.

I would recommend these free tools for minor graphics modifications, like resizing a picture or converting an image from BMP to JPEG. Microsoft Paint is rather limited in terms of functionality, and the end result is often not fully satisfactory. For Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, they may seem a little complicated to use, especially if you’re not too familiar with graphics editors… and they are not free.

The head designer at my work recommends Paint.NET to clients searching for an easy way to edit images. I personally use PhotoFiltre because I believe it is really easy to use, and I’m quite happy with it. At least it doesn’t take ages for the program to open; it usually only takes me a few seconds to resize or convert an image with PhotoFiltre. For more complex editing, I tend to use Paint Shop Pro, but only because it was the first commercial program I got. Photoshop is certainly better for professional designers but also a little more complicated to use. Anyway, try one of these tools, or all of them, and see how much time you can save!

(click to download)	(click to download)	(click to download)

It is time to stop bothering your graphic designer for minor graphics modifications! These tools are all only compatible with Windows, and I’m not familiar with this kind of program on other operating systems… I’m sure there are several other ones that are worth the try though, but that’s my selection, and feel free to comment about the one(s) you use.

Firefox 3.5 is out! If you’re already a Firefox user, make sure you download the latest version of your favorite web browser. If you’re not, well… you should definitely think about it! I use Firefox for quite a few years now, and I’m really happy about it. I feel it’s safer than other web browsers, and some of the add-ons are very useful. I also believe Firefox 3 is much faster than the previous versions. I used to complain a lot about how slow the previous versions were.  Not anymore…

According to website applications company Net Applications, Firefox accounted for almost 23 percent of the recorded usage of web browsers in May 2009, while Internet Explorer accounted for a little more than 65 percent. As a reminder, Firefox is not installed on all PCs as Internet Explorer is… If you’re not convinced, check out the features and add-ons, and just try it out! You won’t be disappointed. I’ve never heard of people trying Firefox and switching back to Internet Explorer…

I downloaded Internet Explorer 8 when it came out a few weeks ago. I sometimes use it at work, but now most websites are fully compatible with Firefox, I never use it at home. Microsoft really tries to push web users to download the latest version of Internet Explorer this time. I don’t think Internet Explorer 7 was very successful; some people are still using Internet Explorer 6… Anyway, you may have noticed the Firefox button I added on the right column, right below the live traffic feed. I’m really getting into this Spread Firefox thing. Check out their affiliate program, you can win stuff. That’s very good viral marketing…

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about optimizing page titles. Another easy technique that can help your website get better rankings in search engines is to add alt attributes to images. Here is what we can find on the topic in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines: “Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images. If you must use images for textual content, consider using the alt attribute to include a few words of descriptive text”. Fair enough, that’s pretty straight forward.

Alt attributes will help search engines know what the images are about, but also web users in the case they don’t display (the alt attributes will show up instead of the images). I don’t think you should just add as many keywords as possible, but rather give the image a  relevant description. If you use a content management system, it should be fairly easy. You may simply have to go the image’s properties. There’s probably a blank field dedicated to the alt attribute. If you don’t use a content management system, it may be a little more difficult as you have to use an HTML editor and add alt="..." within the image tag. You may also want to add title attributes (title="..."), which are used by most web browsers as tooltips. Tooltips show up when you hover an image with your mouse pointer. Some web browsers, including Internet Explorer 6 and 7, use alt attributes (and not title attributes) as tooltips.

This will look like a tip for beginners, and it is the case, but I still see a lot of websites with no alt attributes at all… and I think that’s a shame, because it is useful to both search engines and web users. I wouldn’t say all images should have alt attributes but most of them, especially your logo, product images, etc.

I made it! After only a few weeks… You can have your own cover at mrboo.fr. All you need is your Twitter ID, and a few seconds to waste.

I was rather skeptic about Twitter a few months ago, but I must admit I quite like this platform now. I can’t believe it was launched back in 2006. It seems like ages ago! It can be extremely useful for internet marketers. I would even believe it has become essential for businesses wanting to build a strong online presence. Even if you only have a blog, you should definitely start twittering. There are tools that allow you to automatically tweet your  blog posts as soon are they are published.

I heard a lot about Twitter these last few days, everywhere: at work of course, at home, at uni… The user base has grown quite significantly these last few months, but many accounts aren’t actually used that much, as HubSpot recently revealed it: Announcing the June 2009  State of the Twittersphere Report. If you’re wondering about all the buzz, I strongly suggest you to take a look at this report.

Make sure you follow Marketing Meerkat on Twitter @mktgmkt so you are notified every time a post is published! By the way, there’s an article about Twitter in this week’s Time Magazine…

Bing was fully launched earlier this week and is a replacement for Live Search. With this move, Microsoft intends to gain market share over Google. They call it a decision engine, rather than a search engine, as it is supposed to help users make decisions quicker than with a search engine.

I seriously doubt Bing will significantly increase its market share over the next few months, but since it’s going to be heavily advertised, I believe a fair share of web users will try it out. This makes me think of Google Chrome. I guess quite a lot of web users tried it out, but only a few adopted it. It still remains on the scene as it is Google’s web browser. Bing is Microsoft’s search engine… it must be good, somehow.

Bing offers a number of new functionalities and gadgets. I’m not too familiar with them yet, but if you want to know more, I suggest you read Wired’s article on the topic. It reviews the whole thing: Hands on with Microsoft’s New Search Engine: Bing, but no Boom. They think Bing hides its best features, which I think is right as I didn’t notice most of them the first time I tried it out. I like the pictures used as a background. They are changed every day, or even maybe more often. That’s a pretty clever way to make people come back. Anyway, it is definitely worth a try, even if it hasn’t indexed my blog yet!

Bing
(click to try it out)

I wanted to post something about Microsoft’s new search engine today, but I didn’t find enough time due to university commitments… I’ll come up with something this weekend. I promise! While waiting for the weekend, here is an online video ad by Intel that I find very good. It’s been around for a few weeks now, but I really think it is worth the watch. They definitely made the right choice not to advertise about the products…

Apparently, this is not the real Ajay Bhatt, but the actor did a pretty good job! Well done Intel!

When people ask me how they should start optimizing their website for search engines, I tend to respond that they should begin with the optimization of their home page title. I still see a lot of websites with a home page named “Home”. What a waste… I’ve managed to help quite a few small businesses rank better in search engines by only changing their home page title. These websites have no or few competitors, but their owners wouldn’t take advantage of the situation.

Keywords first

Anyway, back to the point of this post. Most websites have a home page title with the website name first, then the keywords: “Marketing Meerkat – Internet Marketing Blog”. I believe in putting the keywords first, then the website name: “Internet Marketing Blog – Marketing Meerkat”. Maybe you don’t even need to put the website name. Unless branding is a key element of your strategy, you should definitely think about it. What do web users want to know first? Who you are? Or what you do?

Don’t forget that when doing a search on Google, the keywords you’ve typed in are highlighted in bold on results pages. Showing up on results pages is good, but getting some attention is better!

There are so many URL shortening services available on the web these days. I see quite a few people using TinyURL and bit.ly on Twitter, where the service can be very useful because of the character limit. My favorite one is moourl. If it’s not the most popular one, it’s definitely the cutest one…

I understand that you don’t really care which URL shortening service I use, but this one has a few interesting options. You can personalize the URL, by giving the name you want like moourl.com/marketingmeerkat. I guess this is subject to availability… You can also add a bookmarklet to your favorites: a button that will automatically shorten the URL of the webpage in your web browser when you click it. Just give it a try, it’s really handy…

Popular URL shorteners usually have these options. If you’re after analytics, social media mentoring and other related services, try Cligs. Feel free to share your favorite URL shortener with us!