One of Google’s official blogs, and one of the most useful to site publishers anywhere, has taken down the wall between posters and visitors to allow comments.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and three of the four big search engines have made varying efforts for your affections. The fourth one, well, let’s just say they need to sign up for a class with the Lovemaster.

When a family who moved from New Zealand to the UK had a problem getting a payment processed for their SmugMug account, they humorously offered a sheep as payment.

There’s a new API and web service available on the Internet. This one comes from question and answer site Answerbag, whose founder Joel Downs said the API offers sites flexibility in monetizing their pages.

Retrevo, which has labeled itself “the ultimate in consumer electronics search,” reportedly became $3.2 million richer today. The company acquired the money through a venture financing round.

SearchEngineWatch’s Eric Enge broke the news, and according to him, “The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), and Alloy Ventures, a Series A investor, also participated . . .”

Disaster can strike a business at any time. Despite an entrepreneur’s careful plans to handle any possible emergency, life has a way of throwing the odd curveball. Sometimes those major issues feel like a hailstorm, and it’s landing right on your head. Of course, that’s only the beginning.

Veoh Networks has officially launched its online video service hoping to provide a convenient place for video viewers and publishers to visit. For video publishers the company offers automatic syndication and reporting features, which allow them to reach a large Web audience.

I was asked by email to provide what was my best decision and worst mistake as an entrepreneur.

Best Decision — To become an entrepreneur in the first place

Does anyone know what this gray shape is doing on Google Maps (it’s at Monzelfeld near Bernkastel-Kues, in Germany)?

While it may look like censorship at first, it might also be just missing data, or be due to something entirely different.

If you see something wrong within Google Maps, you don’t have to “take it” – users can now report problems. The average user may not get a lot out of this feature, however, because it only applies to business listings.

In other words, Google Maps may still erroneously advise people to drive 10 kilometers instead of take 30 steps. But other mistakes, such as incorrect phone numbers or inaccurate hours of operation, can be fixed.

Many websites currently offer a resource library for visitors – an area filled with articles covering relevant topics to the industry with which the site is connected. The articles may cover how to do something or define a particular aspect of the industry, but they do not usually directly sell the company’s products or services.

Benefits of a Resource Library

While it’s true that a resource library, on the surface, exists to benefit site visitors, it doesn’t end there — they also provide benefits that can directly impact any business. First of all, they spread goodwill among a business’s prospect base – and its non-prospect base as well. The site is seen by visitors as offering free information about important subject matter – and that makes it a more attractive site to return to in the future when a purchase will be made or a service established.

Second, with a solid resource library, the site puts itself in a great position to organically attract important inbound links. Outside sites will notice the offerings of important and unbiased information and link to individual articles or to the resource library as a whole. This will boost traffic and rankings overall.

Third, if the articles in the section are optimized properly, they will also boost rankings for popular and competitive keyphrases, driving additional targeted traffic to the site. The traffic may enter the site at the articles, but visitors are then likely to click for further information about the site itself.

A Common Objection to Adding a Resource Library

The most common objection a search engine optimization company hears when recommending that a site add a resource library is "I want to sell my product, not educate." However, this is shortsighted. It is important to reach buyers at all stages of the sales cycle. For example, if someone is just starting to investigate a product or service, a site with an appropriate informational article will reach him or her at this critical early stage. The prospect will then likely remember the experience when he or she is ready to buy and will return to the site.

In addition, a site with a resource library can help a salesperson save valuable time. With quality articles freely available on the site, the salesperson will no longer need to take the time to explain the basics to a prospect – the site will have already taken care of that. Instead, the salesperson can focus on speaking to the people who are ready to make a purchase.

Examples of Successful Resource Libraries

There are several sites that serve as great examples of this approach. Let’s look at three of them – Bed, Bath and Beyond; Lowe’s; and Step Two Designs (an Australian consulting firm).

Bed, Bath, and Beyond opens its resource library with a friendly "Need help shopping?" and follows it up by telling visitors that they can "browse through the sections below for helpful shopping hints on a variety of topics." There is no mention of specific sales at any point on this page, which is found here.

Taking a deeper look, one will find that the targeted phrase "window treatments" brings up Bed, Bath, and Beyond’s guide on the subject on the first page of Google. This phrase has the impressive monthly search estimate (using data from WordTracker) of 55,304. Note that this page, which is an unbiased article offering tips on choosing different types of window treatments, and not a retail sales page, is what achieves the rankings.

The home improvement chain Lowe’s actually has several resource libraries available on its site, from buying guides to an extensive how-to library. Its buying guide page, found here, notes, "Work Smarter: We’ll help you find the right equipment and tools you need for all of your projects." And the company’s article on choosing floor tiles appears on the first page of Google for the targeted phrase "tile floor," which has a monthly search estimate of 2,046. Again, it’s an informational page and not a product page that gets the great rankings.

Both of the above examples are great, but you don’t need to be selling a product online – or even be in the retail business at all – to use a resource library to your benefit. Step Two Designs is a consulting firm that offers a resource library of whitepapers on its site. Its article "How to Evaluate a Content Management System," for example, establishes its usefulness right at the top, stating that "No vendors or products are mentioned in this article: this is not a survey of current commercial solutions. Instead, it provides tools to assist you to conduct a review of suitable products."

This article appears on the first page of Google for the targeted phrase "content management systems," which has a monthly search estimate of 2,356. While this may be a lower number than the Bed, Bath and Beyond example, a consulting firm’s average sale will likely be greater than that of a single purchase from a retail outlet, and so these visitors are potentially more valuable. Even in this type of business, a resource library will quickly prove its value.

Conclusion

Resource libraries clearly offer something of value for everyone involved. Prospects appreciate their existence, search engines reward sites that have them, and salespeople are relieved of the burden of explaining basic concepts to early prospects. You can either create your articles in-house or, if you’re not sure where to start, hire a search engine optimization company to help you with everything from idea generation to writing. In either case, with just a little bit of effort your site too can realize the benefits of establishing this type of section.

Medium Blue 2007

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

About the Author

Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, a search engine optimization company. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, Lockergnome, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld, serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, Cirronet, and DS Waters. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

Google is integrating malware warnings in the search results to warn searchers about risky sites before they go there. In fact, searchers have to work extra hard to get to them.

Results for the phrase "beautiful free screensaver" include a warning with the top result, linking to EliteSavers.com, reading "This site may harm your computer."

What is not lost with the personalization of search:

Important components of search marketing have always been and will always be increasing quality traffic, increasing sales, and increasing profit. These are the ultimate indicators of success for any search marketing campaign. The introduction of personalized results for users does not change the importance of these indicators or goals in any way.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been relentlessly fierce in its pursuit of individuals it deems as “criminals” by filing numerous lawsuits over the past several years.

It looks like the RIAA is trying to do all it can to encourage ISPs to be more forthcoming with identifying information in order to fuel their tactics which amount to little more than a legal means of extorting money from everyday citizens.

While online sales increased during the 2006 holiday season, some small online business owners found that they missed an opportunity to increase sales because they were not prepared to sell their products or services online.

Yahoo has announced the integration of Yahoo Mail with Yahoo instant messenger. This new functionality of Yahoo messenger will apparently make it possible to send and receive instant messages right from your Yahoo Mail (beta) interface.

The words “elusivity” (being difficult to describe, detect, or grasp) and “Internet Marketing” are not words I would typically join in a sentence (no one else in the world either). But after doing a tradeshow this last week for one of our companies I found there are many benefits to “elusivity” in marketing, and that these could certainly be applied to Internet Marketing.

Dear Kalena…

contactlab

Kalena’s Answer:

Hi contactlab

1. The SEO has a right to receive payment from the client for the entire amount contracted. A contract is a contract is a contract. Don’t try to weasel out of it.
2. The SEO has a right not to have to justify to the client payment due in terms of actual time spent on account unless payment is based on an hourly fee. Package priced contract fees are due regardless of time spent provided work outlined in the contract is performed.

His Wikia company launched three new projects where people can collaborate on topics in a community of like-minded, active users.

The proliferation of podcasting has been significantly slower than most analysts predicted when the medium burst onto the scene. Within the next two years, however, it is projected that the format will boom due to Google’s efforts in developing an advertising medium for the content platform.

A law introduced into the House of Representatives by Lamar Smith (R-TX) is whipping up a fight in the blogosphere. Aimed at combating online child pornography, the bill calls for Internet service providers to retain records on their subscribers.

Redirection abounds at AOL, where they have taken a break from laying off people to rerouting visitors seeking SingingFish and Truveo to other sites.

WebSideStory’s Digital Marketing University (DMU) is just around the corner in March – and I’m going to be teaching two classes this time. I’ll be doing a hands-on class on Functionalism – which I hope would be useful to almost any web analytics practitioner.

In addition, I’ll be doing a class on advanced Visitor Segmentation in Visual Science. That’s obviously a deep-dive class – and it should be a lot of fun.