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When it comes to search engine marketing the only thing in most webmaster’s minds is ranking well on the conventional search engines. How many think about the possible benefits of ranking high for image searches? It’s something that has been written on countless times yet I still have a hard time finding webmasters who actually do it.

I’m not going to lead you to believe that ranking well for image searches is better or even close to ranking well for conventional searches because it’s not. However, if you have the opportunity to rank well for image searches, why not? It may not bring as much traffic as ranking well for conventional searching but in SEO every little bit counts.

The How To

Optimizing an image for search engines is extremely similar to optimizing a web page file for search engines. The two things you have to concentrate on are file name and the alt attribute. The first thing you need to do is find the keywords you want to target (just like in Building a Niche Minisite). Next you name your image with your keywords in mind just as you would do with your web page file. For example if your keyword is “rob zombie” you will want to name your image something like “rob_zomie.jpg”. Rocket science right?

The second thing you need to look at is the alt attribute. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the alt attribute is the little text that appears next to your cursor when you hover over an image. Many webmasters leave this out of their site completely, not to mention optimizing it for search engines. When optimizing your images for search engines you will want to include a short, concise description of the image but always with your keywords in mind. Avoid stuffing as many keywords into your alt as you can; just focus on the most important ones. Keeping with the same example as above, if your keyword is “rob zombie” you will want to include the text “Rob Zombie” in your alt attribute.

The Proof is in the Pudding

This is extremely simple. So simple in fact that it’s got to be nearly impossible for it to actually work and get your images to the top image searches on Google, wouldn’t you think? It’s entirely possible.

I made a Rob Zombie minisite last summer (which I’ve since sold). Since “rob zombie” is a competative keyword I didn’t do too great in the conventional search engine; however, before I realized it I had 2 out of the top 4 Rob Zombie images in Google’s image search for the term “rob zombie”.

The irony of it is that I got these images from Google’s image search, yet I was able to outrank them within a couple of weeks with no more work than what I listed above.

Is it Worth it?

So now you know how to optimize images for search engines, and you have proof that it works and is fairly easy to do. But is it worth it? Having images at the top of image search results means that the vast majority of your visitors will be interested in that image and that image alone. Whether it’s for posting up in a forum, on their Myspace page, or just to show to a friend, most of your image search traffic will be from people who want access to a specific image one time. This traffic obviously won’t convert into ad clicks or CPA leads. However, a small percent of it will actually stick around to see the site. That’s what you’re hoping for.

Overall optimizing for image search is something that I believe every webmaster should do, but a small percent actually practice. Yes it will eat up a little of your bandwidth, but it will also generate traffic that otherwise would never see your site. That’s what SEO is all about.

CNN reports that ICANN has officially removed the domain extension “.um” (for US minor outlying islands) from the current list of domains available for registration, shortening the list from 265 to 264. The article goes on to suggest that the extension “.su” (for Soviet Union) is next on the chopping block.

The major difference here, however, is that .um was hardly used whereas .su has approximately 8,000 domains registered under it according to an article published by Mosnews last November. According to Mosnews there are many pro-Kremlin groups poised to take legal action against ICANN:

One of those is the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi, whose website is registered with the .su suffix. “Should the domain be eliminated our lawyers will examine the issue and will stand up for the movement’s rights in court,” Nashi spokesman Robert Shlegel told Kommersant.

Another extension that is under review is “.yu” which represents the former Yugoslavia nation - Yugoslavia became Serbia and Montenegro in early 2003. Then again this is nothing new as the domain industry has been debating about the future of .yu for almost four years now. SFGate reports that Serbia and Montenegro have adpoted their own extensions (.rs and .me respectively); however, there are still millions of Google results for .su and .yu extensions.

It’s good that ICANN is moving forward by eliminating the use of outdated domain names, but if an extension is still being used should they let it remain despite the fact that the country for which it was created no longer exists? To sum it up, I’ll leave you with a relevant (and fantastically dorky) quote posted by mfh on Slashdot.org:

Obi-Wan: I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

The destruction of a domain that is of no use, is nothing to be upset about. But what happens when this motion is repeated on a larger scale when not everyone is in agreement?

If you haven’t seen the latest bit of nerdy drama unfold, you should take a look at this post on TechCrunch. Apparantly someone’s “discovered” a nifty little trick which enables users to have access to Google TV Beta. I’ve tried following the method that’s supposed to get the Google TV Beta link to show, but gave up after about three minutes. I don’t have any follow through.

In any case, here’s a video of the trick being done (and you can read the TechCrunch article for the other videos).

I saw this posted up on Derrich’s blog and just had to throw it up over here. Yet another classic Stephen Colbert analysis.

Let’s take a look at some of the articles that made it happen for the month of January:

Domaining 101
The Domaining 101 series was the first big installment on this blog and goes through step by step everything you need to know to become a domainer. It originally began as an eBook, but I decided it would be more appreciated as a free blog segment here.

Building a Niche Minisite
This has by far been the most successful article written on Net Business Blog. It’s an easy to follow tutorial on how to research a niche, setup a site, and monetize that site. It’s a really simple guide, and anyone despite their experience should be able to make this work.

Link Building Through Design
This is a unqiue article on how to create quality backlinks by simply having a good CSS-based design. If you enjoyed this article you should also see the followup: Link Building Through Theme Distribution.

5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Make an “I Got Dugg” Post
Aren’t you tired of all the bloggers out there who follow up their Diggs with arrogant, self-praising “I Got Dugg” posts? Me too.

Simple Sitemapping
A really simple walkthrough for new webmasters who have never made a sitemap before. It goes over how to make a sitemap as well as how to submit it to search engines.

I think I hit on all the biggest and best articles for January, but feel free to chime in and let me know if I missed anything.

This is another link building tip for you web designers out there (the first being the CSS gallery tip). Theme distribution is basically creating a design, skinning it into a CMS or forum (WP, PN, vB, and IPB to name a few) and then distributing it for free to anyone who wants to use it. A lot of designers hate the idea of giving away free designs, but I’ve used theme distribution as a way to promote my design company since day 1, and I’m positive that the majority of its initial growth was due to this method.

How is This Helpful?

Theme distribution is helpful to both the designer, webmaster, and the person using the theme. The designer basically has his work put out there in front of potentially thousands of users, most of whom will only be interested in using a free theme. Many of them, however, will just be looking for a temporary theme until they find a designer to create a custom one, or may need a custom design for a separate project. If they like your theme there’s a good chance they could come to you for that custom job. Theme distribution helps the webmaster (who is quite often the designer) for two reasons: 1) in order to download the theme you should have the users come to your site (but don’t make them register!) 2) by including a simple link at the bottom of the theme (Design by: You) you are gaining thousands of backlinks from a ton of different sites. Finally, theme distribution helps the end user because obviously they have a sexy new theme.

Where to Get Started

The first thing you need to do is get a theme-friendly design. What does the term “theme-friendly” mean? It basically means that you want to create (or buy) a design that is versatile enough to be used by a large amount of people will few limitations on functionality or editability. Long story short, you don’t want a theme that’s tailored to your specific needs but rather one that can be used by a variety of people. A great example of a versatile theme is MistyLook. This theme is setup in a way that makes it very easy to add additional content, pages, and sidebar widgets without losing the functionality or quality of the theme. Don’t forget to keep the theme pretty too. Functionality is all well and good, but if your theme is ugly then people simply won’t use it.

Want to create a theme, but you’re not a web designer? You can always hire a designer to create one for you. There are a ton of quality designers out there experienced in creating CMS and forum themes, but what kind of capitalist would I be if I didn’t suggest my company (Vehowave)? But just in case you’re not a fan of biased self-promotion, here are some other good designers who fit within a resonable budget:

• Fruda - Julian Targowski
• Digit - David Myers
• Microvisuals - Anthony Bullock
• BlindChild

After you have your design in hand it’s time to get it skinned (coded into a CMS or forum). It’s pretty easy to find an affordable freelancer or small company to code your designs, and it’s often more cost-effective than learning how to do it yourself. If you want to learn to do it yourself, that’s perfectly fine. All you really need to know is basic HTML, and you’ll find that once you learn how to skin one CMS or forum you can very easily figure out how to skin the rest. Either way is fine.

If you want to hire someone to skin your design, I have a couple suggestions:

• VehoWave - Blog, forum, and CMS design/coding
• CodeYourDesign - A great WordPress skinner
• FreshSkinner - Good vB coder
• Skins for WP - Good WP skinner, sometimes slow w/contact
• VBMode (Edder) - Great vB coder

If you know anymore reliable and reputable designers or skinners (that are fairly inexpensive) please contact me so I can add to these lists.

Note: Don’t forget to include a link back to your website in the theme!

Which Software Should I Use?

There’s a ton of blogging, forum, and CMS software out there, and to make sure you get the most out of your buck you want to build your theme around the most popular of the bunch. If you have the time and/or money, it definately won’t hurt you to code your design into as many pieces of software as possible. To be positive you get the most exposure, you should probably concentrate on the following for your themes:

• vBulletin - Forum
• Invision Power Board - Forum
• Post Nuke - CMS
• Drupal - CMS
• WordPress - Blogging

Distributing Your Theme

Just having a sexy free theme available for download on your site won’t really drive in the traffic. You have to market your new free theme. Fortunately, that’s not very hard to do at all. The first thing you should do is go to the official website of that software and see if they have a theme database. They almost always will, and if they don’t they’ll provide links to theme databases centered around their software. Next you should look for other sites related to that software - there’s usually a ton of fansites dedicated to discussing and troubleshooting popular CMS software. These sites will usually have their own places for you to submit your theme. Then you need to look for blogs/news portals that allow users to submit news of new free themes for certain software. PHPNuke still does this on their main site, and if you get your theme featured on the front (which if it’s decent then it will almost always make it) then that news will get aggregated across the web generating a huge amount of viewers for your theme. Finally, you need to take a look at any forums that are based on the software your theme is made for. Forums usually have specific categories for submitting free themes. This is another great way of getting your theme seen.

Conclusion

Distributing a free theme may sound like a poor strategy in terms of cost-effectiveness at first; however, if you weigh everything you’ll see that it’s definately worth it. Think about it: most companies charge a couple hundred to submit your site to a thousand or so web directories with the sole purpose of generating backlinks (usually low-value backlinks). By spending roughly the same amount you can create a campaign that generates a potentially limitless amount of links depending on the quality of your theme. The best part of all is that you’re giving the community a quality piece of merchandise and raising your own reputation as a developer. Not only does distributing free themes create a ton of backlinks for your site, but it brings in a fair amount of potential paying customers as well.

A few things to remember:

1. Always include a link to your site in the theme
2. Don’t make users register to download your theme
3. Try to deny direct linking to your theme; make people link to your page instead

By using this method you should be able to come up with thousands of backlinks very quickly, gain some respect in the community, and most likely get contacted by some potential customers. This is a simple, easy method that is very often overlooked by designers. Use it.

According to a recent article on Slashdot, eBay has decided to delist all virtual property. This is targeted at online gamers who have been selling virtual items such as in-game currency, items, and characters for years. eBay has been the largest marketplace for online goods since there was a demand for them.

Now that eBay is no longer allowing virtual property to be sold through their website, I can only imagine how much more IGE will grow. IGE has been a major retailer of virtual items next to eBay since 2001; however, unlike eBay IGE acts as a virtual goods merchant rather than providing a user-powered auctioning system. IGE offers to purchase users’ virtual items but at an extremely low price (compared to what one could get on eBay).

Now there is a gap in the industry with no big player left to fill it. There are a lot of small auction sites for virtual items, but an eBay of the virtual world? There isn’t one. Now that eBay has cut off the sale of virtual goods, I think this is the perfect time for someone to step in and take their spot.

Domaining 101 Contents:

• Introduction
• Extensions
• Researching Keywords
• Registration
• Parking

What is Domain Parking?

So now that you’ve registered the domain name you want, how do you turn that investment into revenue? One of the ways to start earning with your domain is to park it. Domain parking is simply pointing your domain to a page, typically containing advertisements, to either assess the amount of traffic the domain is receiving, earn revenue from the ads, or to allow potential buyers a means to contact you. For now, I’m going to concentrate on how domain parking can earn you revenue from advertisements.

First off, for a domain to earn you a good return through parking alone, you need to have a lot of traffic. Traffic for parked domains comes mostly from type-ins or search engines. Since your domain will not be pointing to a page with much relevant content for the user, there will be very little recurring visitors. Because of this parked domains rely entirely on organic traffic to produce income.

Parked domains typically use contextual advertisements to display text ads on your parked pages. Good parking services have ads relevant to the keywords in your domain name (which is another reason to research your domain keywords extensively), as well as allowing you to select keyword categories, and sometimes even one or two specific keywords. These ads are setup as the main focal point of the page. What you’re hoping is that organic traffic to your domain will get there, see there is no real content, and exit through an ad rather than closing the page. I know that doesn’t sound entirely reliable, but there are a ton of people making their living off of this method alone.

Domain Parking Services

There are a number of domain parking services available, all of which have their pros and cons. There isn’t a “number 1 parking service”, so you need to select where to park based on each individual domain. Out of all the parking services I’ve researched, I can only recommend two: Sedo and Parked.com.

Sedo
http://www.sedo.com

Sedo is the most popular domain parking service on the net right now. It is a very professional service with a lot of features available absolutely free. Although you do have to deal with some promotion by the staff pushing you to invest in their “premium” features such as domain appraisal and promotion, they don’t require you or trick you into paying for anything. The only complaint I have with Sedo is that they’re PPC for ad clicks seems to be very low. The best part about parking with Sedo is the exposure to potential buyers, but that will be covered in the next post on the second hand market.

Parked.com
http://www.parked.com

Parked.com is solely a parking service, which allows them to focus more on the earning aspect of parked domains. They claim to have the highest parked domain payout, which I haven’t heard argued against very much in the domaining community. They also advertise their domain optimization services. “While parked domain names do make some money, parked domains that are optimized often generate 10 times more revenue.” Even though their terrifically scientific numbers there make me giggle a bit, I’ve heard great things about them from a number of domainers. If you’re looking to optimize your parked domains solely for revenue then I suggest giving Parked.com a try.

Creating a Landing Page

Many domainers argue that parking services, on the whole, just don’t give the returns that they should. Therefore, many domainers now are creating their own landing pages (simple 1 page websites that promote ads much like parking pages do) hosted on their own servers. Landing pages are a bit more simple than niche minisites, but they follow the same basic guidelines. The main purpose of a landing page is to provide visitors with affiliate offers or contextual advertisements. Affiliate offers are commission or lead-based advertisements that require the user to click on an advertiser’s page and then buy a product (sales commission) or perform an action such as filling out a survey (pay per action). Contextual advertisements are links, typically text links but sometimes images, that display ads relevant to your domain’s topic. Both of these advertising options are viable, and you will simply have to test which one works best with your particular domain. It’s also possible to use both with a somewhat advanced landing page.

Now lets get into the nitty gritty of creating a landing page. First and foremost you want your landing page all to fit on the user’s screen. The best domain landing pages are those where the user does not have to scroll to see the offer or advertisements. In addition you do not want to overwhelm your visitor. It is commonly agreed by most webmasters that the best conversion rates for landing pages are on pages with as little as one or two ad blocks or affiliate offers. If a visitor lands on your site and is flooded with ads and popups, they are most likely going to quickly close the window. However, if you integrate your ads into the page subtly and classy then you are more likely to get leads and ad clicks. You should also make an attempt to give your landing page a somewhat professional appearance. Users today are becoming more and more used to scam sites and MFA (Made for Adsense) sites and are learning to steer clear from them.

Go the extra mile with your landing page. Hire a graphic designer to integrate some photos related to your domain niche into the landing page. You may even buy an article from an article peddler, get an article custom made by a freelance writer, or download one for free from one of the many article depositories on the internet. If you follow these basics you should have good success with landing pages. There is a lot more I could go into; however, this is a segment on domaining in general and not landing pages. I will be going more in-depth with creating landing pages at a later time.

So now you know how to setup your landing page, but where do you get the ads or affiliate offers? There are a ton of advertising and affiliate programs out there, but I’m going to do my best to whittle them down to the few best.

Google Adsense - Contextual Advertising
http://www.google.com/adsense

Google Adsense is the most popularly-used form of contextual advertising today. Advertisers sign up through Google Adwords, create ads, which then display through Google Adsense (what you put on your landing page). Adsense has a good targeting feature that gives your visitors ads that are extremely relevant to your domain. Since they’re backed by Google, you can rely on Adsense’s reputation and never have to worry about them not paying out at the end of the month.

Yahoo Publisher Network - Contextual Advertising
http://publisher.yahoo.com/

Following in Google’s footsteps, Yahoo has established YPN (Yahoo Publisher Network) which is almost exactly the same as Google in every conceivable way. The main difference is that YPN is currently in closed beta and is only open to U.S. citizens which means they have less advertisers and in turn less targeted ads. Many publishers, however, claim higher payouts with YPN but that is speculated to drop significantly as it moves out of beta. However, YPN is still one of the best contextual advertisers out there and cannot be overlooked.

Commission Junction - Affiliate Marketing
http://www.cj.com

Commission Junction specializes in offering products or lead offers to publishers rather than contextual ads. You have to sift through their link database and decide which offers are best for your landing pages rather than simply slapping some code on your site and letting the program do the rest. CJ has the largest selection of affiliate offers and a long-standing reputation. They are, in my opinion, the best affiliate marketing company hands down.

Other Affiliate Marketing Programs
Azoogle - http://www.azoogle.com
Maxbounty - http://www.maxbounty.com
CPAEmpire - http://www.cpaempire.com
Hydra Network - http://network.hydramedia.com

These are the networks I consider to be the cream of the crop. However, if you want a more complete and unbiased list, John Chow has written a very concise article on his blog listing a huge number of ad networks (contextual and affiliate marketing).

Getting a story to the frontpage of Digg is an accomplishment. It means that your article (or other form of media) was good enough in the eyes of Digg’s users to be seen by all - at least for a couple of hours. A lot of bloggers take the Digg traffic in stride and move on to their next topic while quietly enjoying the boost in visitors and revenue Digg sent their way. I’ve noticed a growing trend, however, for bloggers to make followup posts to their Digg frontpage stories gloating about their success and often throwing in some half-baked “tips and tricks” for getting your own stories dugg as well.

I’m not going to group all “I Got Dugg” posts into a negative category. Some of them - although very very few - actually provide insight on how the Digg effect helps/hurts a site, what sort of demographic Digg presents, and how one can take advantage of the surge of visitors (example). But most of the “I Got Dugg” posts are little more than gloating. So to be safe I’m asking all bloggers refrain from making “I Got Dugg” posts, and I’m even providing this nifty breakdown of 5 reasons to take my advice.

1) It Makes You Look Amateur

It doesn’t matter if you are an arbitrage guru pulling in millions through cunning campaigns or a domainer with a portfolio slam full of 3 letter .com’s (pronouncable!!!!!!), if you make a blog post cheering about the 30k uniques Digg sent your way the day before, you look like an amateur. Perhaps it’s just me, but the first thing that pops into my head when I see an “I Got Dugg” post is the image of a 15 year old kid jumping and shouting at his computer screen as he watches his AWStats slowly update during a Digg.

Can you honestly imagine a real professional who has real experience getting excited enough over a Digg to post about it later? Maybe one would mention it in passing, but to create an individual post dedicated to proving your worth through your Digg success through the use of graphs and referral screenshots shows readers that success is new to you.

2) It Waters Down Your Previous Success

Building on the first point, creating an “I Got Dugg” post gives users the impression that success is new to you. Unless being unsuccessful is some sort of gimmick you’re using, it’s not a good idea to lead users to believe that before your blog appeared on the frontpage of Digg that it was unsuccessful. You don’t have to lie about your success, but you always want to project the attitude of success. What I mean by this is that you as a blogger have to have confidence in yourself and allow that confidence to flow through your blog. By creating an “I Got Dugg” post, you’ve basically shown the reader that your Digg experience was so sublime that it dwarfed your previous success as a blogger. That’s not what you want to do.

3) It Opens the Door to Griefers

My friend John Chow can tell you first hand what being too open about your Digg experience can do. By writing about your overnight success via Digg, you create a lot of enemies extremely fast. First there’s the people who now consider you a “spammer” (see point #4). Next you have your competition who despise you for getting a 1-up on them even if it’s for a short amount of time. You also have an entirely new group of alienated readers that you yourself created by showing off your success. “I Got Dugg” posts can easily turn a good portion of your readers against you as their view of you changes from an enlightened source of information to a vote-mongering Digg whore.

All of these people hate you. Typically a hate-filled mob is able to win out against a single person. John was able to establish himself after he was banned for Digg. You may have a harder time.

4) It Labels You as a “Spammer”

Digg users have a much more broad definition of the term “spammer” than most - according to Digg users any and all content created with the purpose of performing well on Digg is spam. They ignore the fact that for content to perform well on Digg it must be good in general (there’s no magic secret to getting Dugg … just write good content). In any case, by creating an “I Got Dugg” post you’re showing that you were at the very least aware of the Digg effect. This also implies that you have some knowledge of how to game the system (even though there’s no gaming … just write good content). Because of this many Digg users will consider your article, and possibly your entire blog, to be spam.

You don’t want to be a spammer. The only way to really avoid this label is to write as if you are blissfully unaware of the Digg effect and that your only goal in life is to create delicious content for the user, which it probably should be anyway since the easiest way to get Dugg is to … just write good content.

5) It is a Waste of Your Time

You could be spending the time you wasted making an “I Got Dugg” post writing another entry that your users would actually appreciate.

Enjoy your Dugg article, the traffic it brings, the backlinks it generates, and the discussion it sparks. Just please do so quietly.

Google is in talks to acquire Adscape Media, Inc. which is an advertising company that allows for the placement of ads over the Web in video games.  The article also goes on to say that Google is discussing the possibility of radio and TV ads with CBS as well.

The report said that one person in the know said that for several months Google has been discussing with game publishers the prospect of delivering ads over the Internet into the action of their games.

A deal with Adscape could help Google in its bid to broker advertising across many types of media worldwide, the report said.

The Internet company, whose 2006 revenue is expected to top $10 billion on the strength of its online-ad sales, currently is testing systems for selling ads in newspapers and on radio, and has said it plans to extend into television ads.

The next logical step for Google is, of course, to deliver ads while you sleep through your dreams - it’s right around the corner, so get ready for the dream advertising BONANZA.  Buy Lightspeed Briefs.