One way to succeed in your online business is to learn from others who have been there and done that. What kind of homepage design gets the best results? What colors and images does your target audience respond best to? Archive.org’s WayBack Machine a great way to learn from your successful competitors who have been at the game for a while.

Just type in a URL and see how various websites have changed over the years. Let’s take a peek at MSN’s past…

1996 – LOVE the text under the cloud image that reads: “oh… and if you are new to the Internet…click here for our internet tutorial”(<< This is what’s so great about the WayBack Machine – this link will really take you to this internet tutorial frozen in time from 1996!)

2000 – Data between 1996 and 2000 is scrambled, but by the year 2000, you can see that MSN has moved full swing into the search game. The design stayed relatively similar for the next several year. These were the days when Microsoft dominated search…

2002 – A color scheme change and now displaying current stock prices (with a 20 minute delay) on the homepage.

2003 – A slight color variation, but otherwise the design has remained pretty consistent.

2006 – Pretty much holding steady with the design with slight variations

2007 – MSN Today

Who do you want to check out?

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Some of the most popular websites online offer videos and photos – does yours?  Now that Google has announced the Universal Search Model, you SEO job just got a lot broader.  With the Universal search model, Google will search through all types of media – not just text – to find related entries.  But how do you search engine optimize video?

Blinkx has created a whitepaper that discusses the ins and outs of video optimization.  The whitepaper covers:

• Cleaning and conversion of metadata
• Optimizing titles, description and filenames
• Leveraging sitemaps
• Utilizing Media RSS
• Content Management
• Where to submit
• What to Avoid

Something to think about over the weekend…. What types of video do you have and how can you use them to leverage your SEO strategy?  If you don’t have video, what can you create? 

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It’s Friday and most people are dreaming about the weekend or making plans to have a special time with the special mother in their life for Mother’s Day.  So today, we’re going to focus on a couple of super-quick website quality checks you can make to ensure that you’re site is in top-notch shape for the weekend:

Broken links checker
It’s inevitable.  Over time, some of the sites that you’ve linked to will have moved or shut down, so it’s important to periodically check for broken links. 

Quick Code Diagnostics
Poodle Predictor allows you to see your site as search engine’s view it.  Enter your URL to see how a description might look in the search engine results page.  The description you see won’t be how every search engine will display your site, but might reveal some changes you need to make to define the view in various search engines. 

The coolest part in my opinion about the Poodle Predictor is the Diagnostic View.  After entering a URL, click the Diagnostic View link to discover any places were you could optimize quickly (such as H1 tags and titles)

Blog Backup
I know someone that lost their entire blog and tons of valuable backlinks along with it.  What a mess.  The 13^th of each month has been officially deemed blog backup day.  With the right tools backing up your blog is fast, easy, and will give you unbelievable peace of mind. 

Back up your Blogger Blog

Back up your Wordpress Blog

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Wouldn’t it be great if people who came to your site WANTED to show off a link back to your site?  There are plenty of company’s out there enticing people to do just that.  Let’s take a look at a few:

Kiva – People rave about Kiva and are proud to place a big, colorful, ad about Kiva on their websites.  Why?  Because they feel great about donating to Kiva and want to publicize their generosity. 

Bruce Clay – Bruce Clay has hundreds of backlinks from relevant, related, SEO sites.  Why?  Because Bruce Clay set the standards for SEO and then allowed people to boast their Bruce Clay seal of approval on their websites.

eZine Articles – There are hundreds of content writers promoting the link to eZine Articles on their websites.  Why?  Because eZine articles offers authors a collection of “expert author” labels that increase an author’s credibility.

In each case, the company’s have created a demand for their logo by devising a program that increases the website owner’s credibility.  In order for someone to WANT to add your link to their page, they’ve got to WANT to show off their affiliation.  When an affiliate with you boosts another person or business’ credibility, they are happy to promote your link!

Also, each of these sites makes it easy for others to add the link. They provide a selection of images and the ready-made HTML code so that it can be easily placed right on the website.   

How can you incorporate these ideas on your site and start building your backlinks?

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