It’s like those little pocket plastic sliding puzzles I hated when I was a kid, where you had to fix a picture of Mickey Mouse, except in this case you are fixing an image of the Google home page.

Oh, and I didn’t hate the game. I just hated that the only way I could win was by pulling out all the pieces and snapping them back in order. Of course, you can’t do that online.

Add to | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web

Technorati:

Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.

Right now, if you think about it, RSS is mostly a passive “receive medium.” First you opt-in to receive the feeds that interest you. Then you wait for new content to be published and later you “consume” it in your news aggregator. Sure, RSS is open for anyone to publish, but in the end we’re all shooting at the same hoop – to get individuals passively consuming our content.

What’s missing from this equation is the means for an individual to express themselves around a common want or need and then see it aggregated via RSS. For example, automotive companies should be able to subscribe to a feed of all the people who expressed interest in buying a hybrid car from their brand (assuming they don’t already offer one). Politicians should be able to easily find an RSS feed of all individuals who support a particular bill. And Dell should be able to subscribe to a feed that aggregates all of the people who are voicing complaints about their computers.

We can’t do any of these right now because no such vehicle exists. Technorati tags, structured blogging and 43 Things come close. However, these are mostly the domain of geeks. The key to making RSS expression happen on a mass scale is to seamlessly embed the tools right inside the platforms that people use already – e.g. eBay, Windows, Amazon, etc. This is what I hope we’ll see happen over the next 18 – 24 months.

Reader Comments…

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

You have until June 16 to register. The rules state that participants have two and a half hours to answer as many questions as possible. The top two winners will become a part of the U.S. Puzzle Team and will compete in the 2005 World Puzzle Championship (winners may additionally be chosen for the Canadian team).

Team USA won last year, and U.S. champion Roger Barkan made it to the individual finals, placing third. Before you even think of entering, check out last year’s test (PDF), with its tough questions. To give an example, one shows four similar drawings and asks:

Each of the four pictures contains some specific differences between it and some of the other pictures. Of the 10 specific differences, find those that are unique to just one of the four pictures. Enter the number of differences that appear only in picture A, followed by those that appear only in B, followed by those only in C, and then those that appear only in D.

Reader Comments…

Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.

The correct answers will grant access to a Web page where participants can enter to win prizes, including an Apple 15-inch PowerBook G4, Apple 20GB iPods, a trip with the Cal Football team to the Washington game, autographed Cal Bears merchandise and more. The contest, open to the general public, will be announced during the Homecoming match-up between Cal and UCLA on Saturday, October 16.

Earlier this summer, LookSmart and Cal Athletics began promoting Cal Bears Search to Cal’s students, 20,000 faculty and staff and 165,000 alumni living in the Bay Area and beyond. In a unique partnership, advertising on the search engine supports the university’s athletic programs while supplying highly relevant search results to Cal students and alumni.

The search engine can be accessed on CalBears.com, CalBearsSearch.com and via a toolbar application. Cal Bears Search provides results powered by LookSmart’s proprietary search technologies and 1.2 billion URL index. Each time users click on a paid listing, a portion of the revenue goes to support Cal Athletics. Cal Bears Search also features free access to LookSmart’s FindArticles, which offers the Internet’s largest full text article database with 5.5 million articles across 900 publications. Articles on subjects ranging from arts and entertainment to medical research can be found via CalBearsSearch.com by clicking on the articles tab.

The “Cal Bears Search & Win” contest is a component of an integrated marketing campaign intended to promote the search engine and introduce it to students, faculty, alumni and other Cal supporters.

WebProNews | Breaking eBusiness News
Your source for investigative ebusiness reporting and breaking news.

Marketing is the entire process from product conception to delivery. Most people mistakenly believe that the words “marketing” and “advertising” can be interchanged. In actuality, advertising is only one part of the entire marketing process.

The marketing process is like a puzzle. If you leave out any of the pieces, you’ll find a big hole that detracts from your end result. So what are the pieces and how do you put them all together? Here, I’ll show you the basics that must be included in your marketing plan.

Product Conception and Definition

The first step to marketing a product (or service) is deciding what the product is going to be. Before doing anything else, write down a clear definition of your product or service. What is it basically? What will it do/provide? What are the features? What are the benefits?

Your Customers

Next, and most importantly, you’ll need to decide if there are people who will have a need for your product. This group of people is called your target audience. They are the ones that you will advertise to in an effort to sell your wares. It does no good whatsoever to have the best product or service if no one will buy it. Who will have a need for your product or service? Why will they find it useful? What problems do they have that your product or service will solve? How often will they need to buy it? Are multiple purchases possible?

Reaching Your Target Audience Through Advertising

Step three is to determine a plan of action for reaching your target audience through advertising or publicity. Where does your target audience spend time? What magazines or newspapers do they read? What radio stations do they listen to? What TV shows do they watch? How do you plan to reach these people where they are? Can you reach them with ads, brochures, Web sites, mailings or how?

Your target audience will also give you what you need to know in order to package your product and design your advertising efforts. Follow their lead. If you are marketing professional services to corporations, you’ll need to stay with darker colors, professionally printed brochures and flyers (instead of homemade with templates) and above all, copy that speaks their language.

This is where advertising comes into play. Again, it does no good to have a super ad or the best-looking Web site on the ‘Net if you can’t get it seen by the right people. Spend a lot of time and consideration on this step of the process. It will make or break your business.

Packaging

Packaging is not only a step used for products. How you package your services plays a major role in your success, too.

Again, follow the lead of your target audience. What will appeal to them? Bright colors, dark colors, a hard plastic casing or a cardboard box?

For services, your packaging comes in the form of your Web site design, brochures, corporate profiles and other marketing materials. Make sure they fit with the profile of your customer – not necessarily with your personal tastes.

Distribution

For products, the distribution step involves things like inventory, shipping and returns. For services, it involves delivery time, follow-up and refunds. How will you handle this piece to the puzzle? Will you need to rent a warehouse? Have private trucks or use a freight carrier? Can you provide services in a timely manner? How will you handle returns and refunds? All these questions must be considered, and proper arrangements made, before planning to sell the first item.

Sales

Even if you’re a one-man show, you’ll need to have a sales strategy in place. Most small business owners wear several hats. One of yours might be that of “salesman”. Things to consider during this phase of your marketing plan will be: what sales methods can you employ that will appeal to your target audience? Can you use a sales letter for direct mail or your Web site? Will you have “live” salespeople who employ telemarketing to makes sales? Will you have a brick and mortar shop where customers visit you and meet a salesperson face-to-face? The process of selling can’t be overlooked as it is what takes over once advertising has done its job.

Customer Service

Finally, no basic marketing plan is complete without proper thought being given to customer service. “Customer service isn’t part of a marketing plan”, you say. It most certainly is! It is much easier (and cheaper) to sell to an existing customer than it is to sell to a brand new customer. Not to mention, without excellent customer service, your repeat sales will dwindle into nonexistence.

Create a plan for handling your customers properly and professionally. Will you have a frequent buyer program? What will you do when someone has a special situation that goes against normal company policy? How will you let your customers know you appreciate their business? How can you encourage repeat business?

As you see, each step is intertwined with all the others. Customer service issues relate back to sales and distribution. Sales questions make you think of advertising. Your target audience plays a major part in all areas of the plan.

Don’t sell yourself short. Leaving one or more pieces of the puzzle out will certainly cause problems. Putting all the pieces together will give you a definite plan-of-action and a much more positive result.

Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses
the engines and your visitors at
http://www.copywritingcourse.com. Be sure to also check out
Karon’s latest e-report “How To Increase Keyword Saturation
(Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)” at
http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword.

For the purpose of this article, the term “monster puzzle” in its intended meaning refers to the complex nature of the HUGE Internet.

I’m sure you must have solved a puzzle, or at least tried solving it once in your lifetime. As you know, solving a puzzle requires some pre-arrangement of puzzle pictures in order to get it solved, solving a monster puzzle is no different. The only exception to rule is you ends up making money.

Now imagine if the puzzle gets bigger as in case of the Internet.

- What will you do?

- How will you arrange puzzle pieces?

- How can you determine the time it will take to get solved? And, more importantly…

- How can you make sure you’re doing it right?

So is there a solution to it? You ask! Well, there certainly IS a solution.

And surprisingly it’s quite simple, but only if followed in a proper and a step-by-step way. Just follow these 7 killer rules of the game, and all I can say is the monster WILL get tamed. GUARANTEED!

So lets find out why these 7 rules serves as the backbone of your Internet business. And why they’re absolutely critical for your online success. Here I’ll cover the first rule, the remaining rules can be found at http://www.nichechallenge.com/free-articles/

Look Before You Leap — Carve Out a Niche

This is like a puzzle picture provided with puzzle game. Just as it’s absolutely vital to have a puzzle picture in place while solving the puzzle, carving a niche for your business is an absolute MUST for today’s successful Internet business.

A niche can be defined as a small targeted and focused area of any business entity that offers a unique program, or benefit, satisfying a common NEED of like minded people.

I often get asked by people why I emphasize so much on this rule. And I always said:

It’s The Golden Rule for Success.

Nevertheless, it’s potential is widely under estimated by many amateurs on the Net. Identifying a niche requires a particular mindset. You can’t come up with a niche in a flash until you really understand how to go about it. You can only come up with a well defined niche by having the right attitude towards a concrete, and clear objective in mind.

I’ve heard so many people saying, I found my niche and I’m targeting the right audience. For example, people often say, I’m catering to women with health care products. While this surely sounds jerky, it can’t be regarded as a niche. You just can’t target your business at women and call it a niche.

As stated in one of my article on “focus”, you need to go through a certain hierarchy in order to find your niche. For example, if you’re targeting women in business, your hierarchy may well be drawn something like this… women -> women’s health -> pregnancy -> nutritional requirement in pregnancy -> semi liquid food supplement -> finally your product, with a clear and distinct benefit.

Be as much specific as possible. Put your entire force towards a single specific value driven business model, rather than getting generalized and trying to sell everything under one roof. In simple terms, by narrowing your business focus you’ll effectively broaden sales. You’ll end up make more money this way.

Whats more… since you’re the first person in carving your own niche, your chances of becoming an AUTHORITY in your field raises significantly high. Why? Because…

- You’re the one who created the concept

- You have the passion

- You’re incharge

- You make them visualize the true worth of your product

- You have the resources

- You make them feel the need for your product, and only

- You’re the one who could provide them what they need

- Sounds like a lot of work ahead!

Well, not really.

In fact, its the simplest and easiest thing you can do with your business to make money. I mean a LOT more money.

How? By establishing yourself as an “expert” in your field.

The best example I can give you practicing THIS technique is of a man who have won the reputation of being a respected Affiliate Programs Guru on the net.

Yup! Allan Gardyne.

I had an opportunity to interview him lately. If you’d like to get his success secrets, and wants to know how he did it, check out his exclusive interview at the following URL: http://www.NicheChallenge.com/NichePundits/AllanGardyne.htm

To be an expert you don’t necessarily need to have lot of knowledge or expertise. Needless to say you can get started right away with what you already know or enjoy doing in your spare time, and preferably have a passion for it too. Soon, you’ll develop the expertise required to make your business positioned at a particular concept that you choose.

Just try to be a little bit “different” than the rest.

Once you have positioned yourself online as an expert in a specific niche, you will outgrow automatically into more related profitable areas. Your credibility in such areas will carry more weight than if you would attempt to offer “everything under one roof” approach.

Also, it’s much easier to survive with your mistakes in a niche that’s experiencing rapid growth, than in one that’s stagnant, or is shrinking, because the competition is almost equal to none.

Another great benefit of having a narrow niche is the fact that visitors to your site will have a greater interest in what you offer. Why? Because your product or service is highly targeted to them, and you aim to solve their specific problem.

What this means is your visitors are pre-qualified with a ready to buy attitude, i.e., they are almost already 50-60% convinced. The rest is your job. Make your Web site simple and attractive with a killer copy, and with useful content that further persuades them to make a purchase.

It really makes no sense starting or running an Internet business without identifying a niche. If you’re really determined to get success on the Net, this is the way to go.

Do some positive brainstorming, relate different things around you trying to get into a specific niche, and add value. You will eventually come up with a great idea. And a great idea is the spark for a big explosion.

There are TONS of other benefits that makes defining a niche an absolute necessity. Especially on the Internet. For more info, check out my other niche building articles and resources on my website at: http://www.NicheChallenge.com/free-articles/

Amin Khan of http://www.NicheChallenge.com is the active soul for helping you develop a successful niche based business. Subscribe his FREE ezine ‘The LASER’ to join the select group of pros who are driving the Net for success. Send a blank email to: majordomo@NicheChallenge.com with the word “subscribe laser” (without quotes) in the body of your email.

Dan is happy to answer “almost any” question, but if you would like an intelligent answer, please stick to the general topics of online marketing, website promotion, and search engine positioning (including pay per click). Please include your website’s URL, and as many details as possible.

Send your questions to Dan.

Dan’s Recent Answers:
Boosting Affiliate Sales On A High Traffic Site
Flash And Your SEO Rankings
Google Trauma: Dan Thies Rescues Reader’s Site
Link Building: Finding Appropriate Partners
Improve Your Rankings: Original Content May Help
Getting Listed in Australian Search Engines
Does Google Index Dynamic Pages?
Expanding Content For More Traffic
Getting Listed: A Search Engine Jump Start
The Four Pieces To The Search Optimization Puzzle
Using Multiple Domains With Duplicate Content
Getting Listed with AltaVista
The Value of Link Popularity Software
Search Engines and the “Postcard Look”
When Yahoo and Inktomi Collide
Submitting to Inktomi
Position Weaver
The Google ToolBar
Submission Frequency
SEO Advice from Dan Thies
The Complete SEO Conversations With Dan Thies

Articles:
Overcome Your Search Engine Fear!
Search Engine Positioning: 3 Key Principles
The New Teoma 2.0: Best Search Ever?
What Makes Teoma Different: Did Anyone Say “Themes?”
Teoma Ranking Tips
Creating Link Popularity – Without Getting Banned
Are You Ready To Froogle?
Is A Yahoo Listing Still Worth The Cost?
5 Ways To Prepare Your Website For 2003
Spam-Proofing Your Website
Surviving the Submission Jungle
Resubmission Tactics: Follow Up
7 Key Email Marketing Tactics
Controlling Search Engine Spiders
Creating Link Popularity – Without Getting Banned
Spam-Proofing Your Website and Doing Away With Unwanted Spiders
Follow Up: Killing the SpamBot Spiders
Teoma: The New, Highly Regarded Search Engine

Dan Thies is a well-known writer and teacher on search engine marketing. He offers consulting, training, and coaching for webmasters, business owners, SEO/SEM consultants, and other marketing professionals through his company, SEO Research Labs. His next online class will be a link building clinic beginning March 22

The clients I have now came primarily by word of mouth, although three did find me on the web — through Microsoft Front Page. If you type in “spideree” in Google search, I’m in the first 8 listings, but I’m not even in the first 10 pages when you type in “web design” + “New Jersey.”

Please look at my Web sites. SpideRee Web Design is my main source of income (now that my unemployment has run out but my other two sites get more traffic! I recently added a mention of my home state location to my opening page and resubmitted with my Web Position Gold software. What else can I do to get more jobs?

Thanks.

Reesa Marchetti
http://spideree.com

===

Reesa:

We might call it “search engine optimization,” but really there are four big pieces to the puzzle, and optimization is not necessarily the biggest challenge.

1. Search Engine Positioning
What I mean by this is carefully researching and selecting the keywords and search terms that you want to target. You want search terms that deliver “enough” traffic without “too much” competition. Services like WordTracker will help, but it’s best to have an idea in mind before you start using them.

“Web Design” is very generic, so you are correct in looking at localizing (New Jersey). There are probably a lot of other search terms and modifiers (*business* website design) that you will need to target as well. The more targeted the search terms are, the better the outcome will be once you get that visitor to your site.

2. Site Development
Once you’ve defined your positioning strategy, map out your website to accommodate as many pages as you will need. You can’t target more than a couple search terms on each page, although you can mix in “modifiers” like business, low cost, etc. to increase the number of actual searches the page will appear on.

Ultimately, your results will improve as you add more optimized content to your site. This might seem pointless right now, if you can’t get the search engines to crawl your whole site, but that will change as you build up link popularity.

3. Search Engine Optimization
Once you know which words you’re targeting on the page, you need to optimize it, right? Your home page right now has little chance of appearing in the results for searches that include “web design” because you haven’t optimized for that search term.

The good news is that these days, optimizing is the easy part. Once you’ve defined your strategy, building optimized pages is a piece of cake. I have an article on the basics of optimization here:
http://www.insideoutmarketing.com/index.php?p=pages&pid=4

4. Site Promotion (Link Popularity)
Because search engines look at a site’s “link popularity,” and Google has its “PageRank” formula that adds weight to it, you need to work on getting more sites to link to you. This doesn’t mean hiding links on your clients’ sites, although asking them for a single link isn’t a bad idea.

Swapping links with other related sites, getting listed in major directories like the Open Directory (www.dmoz.org), and making sure that you’re listed in every industry-specific directory you can find, will all help. You can also use my personal favorite link building strategy, which is to write articles and help people learn what I know. As a designer, you certainly have a lot of knowledge that you could share.

The nice thing about “link building” is that it has its own rewards – this is really “website promotion 101.” If search engines didn’t exist, you would still be able to promote your site and find customers by building up your link popularity. Focus your link building on quality sites that are likely to deliver traffic on their own.

Once your site has a good number of incoming links, you can target just about any search terms you like, and you’ll be able to compete. Don’t stop building links once you’ve gotten your site ranked, though. Your competitors aren’t sitting still. Spending even an hour a week on link building will pay off dramatically – I usually spend at least that, and often more, if my rankings start slipping.

Dan Thies is a well-known writer and teacher on search engine marketing. He offers consulting, training, and coaching for webmasters, business owners, SEO/SEM consultants, and other marketing professionals through his company, SEO Research Labs. His next online class will be a link building clinic beginning March 22

Being German and publishing on the web mainly for German speaking audiences, we nevertheless realized very soon, that interesting content, even if not been written in English, might attract visitorsof foreign tongues worldwide. So – what could we do to entertain visitors nationally and internationally alike?

When we started to put our “2000 Years in History” (which is under development since 1993, first being published on CD-ROM) on the web in January 1999, we already did have some web experiences. If you would like to have a peek, you may visit the site here: http://www.weltchronik.de

Concerning the entertaining issue, we were looking for something suitable to those international needs, and we finally came down to online playable jigsaw puzzles.

Why that? Why jigsaw puzzles?

Here are some answers:

Jigsaw puzzles are aiming at ALL ages, ANY gender, ALL languages. Nothing else has such flexibility: