1. Because you are tired of paying for your traffic.
2. Because not reading the latest article from some SEO 'guru' bleating about site optimisation will give you more time to to market your product and actually provide decent content.
3. Because you will then get more refferals from sites that count.
4. Because you think that Google have made enough money.
5. Because your site has lost all of it's rankings.
6. Because you were refused an AdSense account.
7. Because without Search Engines we would have a life and actually talk to people to get refferals to the best products or services.
8. Because Search Engines actually copy your entire site in order to make it 'searchable' - would you allow www.Free-Mail.co.za to do that? No, because that would be plagiarism and you or I would be penalised for 'duplicate content'. Have you ever seen any of the Search Engines penalise one another for 'duplicate content'?
9. Because you don't really need to know the absolute latest news as it happens.
10. Because searching for naked images of your mother / sister / father / brother / classmate etc. is just wrong!!!

Portions of this post were inspired by a message seen in an image on a local Port Elizabeth web site - www.MyPE.co.za. Click HERE to see the large image and reveal the message.

You will hear many people telling you how beneficial it is to promote your web site/s on forums. What they neglect to tell you is that effective promotion takes time and dedication. (It is normally at this point that lazy spammers leave this article and move on....)

Promoting your web site/s on forums demands time, dedication and patience.

Here is a quick 10 point Forum check list:

1. Choose forums that are relevant to your web site/s; i.e. sailing on a sailing forum, local business on a local community forum etc.
2. Check that the forums allow uploadable Avatars and signatures that link to your web site/s.
3. Check that the "No Follow" meta tag is NOT in place on the forum.
4. Having the "No Follow" is not a train smash, though, as you are trying to get CUSTOMERS and not VISITORS.
5. Make sure that your forum posts are ON TOPIC, BRIEF, and NOT SPAMMY.
6. Become the recognised authority when you post.
   If there is a keyword phrase that you would like to rank well for in the search engines, use this as the 'anchor text' in your website link.
7. Bookmark the forums that you visit.
8. Check your SPELLING and grammar.
9. Visit the forums regularly and ONLY comment if your comment CONTRIBUTES.

Modern forums are the equivalent of the Village Pump - a place for people to gather, swop ideas and catch up on the latest gossip. Treat the other forum members with respect and your business can only benefit.

Visit MyPE - Port Elizabeth's Community Forum.

The following numbers are taken from Googles last available third quarter 2006 results:

"Google reported revenues of $2.69 billion for the quarter ended September 30, 2006, an increase of 70% compared to the third quarter of 2005 and an increase of 10% compared to the second quarter of 2006."

Well the way I see it is as follows:

Question: "Mmmmmmm what shall we do with nearly $3 billion dollars? Buy a small country? Settle Africa's debt problems? Run for President? Find a cure for Aids?"

Answer: "I know, let's buy a web site that allows rich kids to steal content from television and movie stations, that allows them to upload video's of their spoiled lives and let us make history by paying nearly $2 billion for it!"

Of course there is always the other side of the coin, but, isn't it fun to see this one?

Google Inc. announced today that it has closed its acquisition of YouTube, the consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos. In connection with the acquisition Google issued an aggregate of 3,217,560 shares, and restricted stock units, options and a warrant exercisable for or convertible into an aggregate of 442,210 shares, of Google's Class A common stock. The number of shares of Class A common stock issued and issuable by Google was calculated by dividing $1.65 billion less certain amounts (approximately $15 million) funded to YouTube by Google between signing and closing by the average closing price for the 30 trading days ending on November 9, 2006. 12.5% of the equity issued and issuable in the transaction will be subject to escrow for one year to secure certain indemnification obligations.

"We are excited to have closed the acquisition in order to begin collaborating to offer the best in quality and depth of content, user experience and new business opportunities for our partners," said Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google. "YouTube and Google will together provide innovative and exciting services for our users that will add a new dimension to on-line media entertainment. We look forward to working with content creators and owners large and small to harness the power of the internet to promote, distribute and monetize their content."

"Google's expertise, technology leadership, and resources will provide us with the flexibility to innovate and build the best, most entertaining service on the Internet. In the coming months, we will roll out many new exciting features and programs to benefit the creativity and participation of our community," said Chad Hurley, CEO and Co-Founder of YouTube. "The community will remain the most important part of YouTube and we are staying on the same course we set out on nearly one year ago. We will continue to gather and listen to its feedback and are looking forward to the many opportunities that lie ahead."

Just said nice things about Comet Query and along comes Sprinko. Sprinko look like they want to take Google, MSN and Yahoo on as they offer the obligatory free emails, space, blogs and complimentary dog shampoo.

Now ny measure of a new Search Engine is quite primitive, but it works for me - I do a search in any new search engine for all three of my OLDEST domains and check the results.

Now Sprinko DOES NOT HAVE ANY of my oldest domains in their index, so sorry for you Sprinko, I will not be bookmarking you.

NEXT PLEASE

Came across this search engine called Comet Query. Click on the title of the post or HERE to see the results for free-mail.co.za - clean, neat and great prominence. Unlike other search engines I did not see hundreds of listings of other web sites for free-mail.co.za in my results. Don't you hate it when other guys have sucked up your content and used it to get traffic that should go to you?

From the Press Release on Comet Query:

In a world of many search engines you may wondering why anyone would change what search engine they use? We at CometQuery hope to be that reason. We are working in a small shed in little old England to bring you not only great results but results that show fast. Our team is fully ready to work on creating a search engine that can give what it promises and over the coming months we shall be expanding to fit in all your needs.

Unlike many other search engines CometQuery can only get better if you tell us what to do, we are a group of people who love reading comments about CometQuery and as soon as we get the comments we get to work. CometQuery provides fast results with thumbnails, like as seen on Ask.com. We may have a simple homepage but we also have a lot of power behind that HTML, currently using a Cluster server system hosted in Equinox we hope to expand to both speed up crawling and speed up result times.

Daniel Jenkins and his team are based in the UK, Jenkins started CometQuery when he was 16 and now one year latter is really open to comments. Jenkins says: "CometQuery was never about the money, I have funded the project out of my own pocket and I do not believe public services should contain ads, so I simply do not include them".

Linking to other web sites can hurt your rankings if you link to the wrong web sites. Links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web can have a negative effect on your rankings on Google and other search engines.

A Google official has recently commented on bad neighborhood links and how they affect your web site rankings on Google.

What are bad neighborhood links?

It seems that Google doesn't like the following type of web sites:

• free for all links pages (FFA)
• link farms (automated linking schemes with lots of unrelated links)
• known web spammers

Linking to the above types of site can have a negative effect on your Google rankings.

Is there an official Google statement about bad neighborhood links?

In a discussion in a webmaster forum, Google's Adam Lasnik has recently clarified what Google looks for in regards to bad neighborhood penalties:

1. There is no relation between outbound links and Google's supplemental index.

   "It’s unlikely that your outbound linking is causing your pages to be listed in the supplemental, rather than main index."

2. Google looks for bad neighborhood linking patterns

   "Also, be assured that we’re not looking to penalize folks for a 'bad' link here and there. Rather, our algorithms are tuned to look for patterns of 'egregious' linking behavior… both on individual sites and in the aggregate."

3. You should check the links on your web site

   "It's certainly in your users' interest that you regularly audit outgoing links on your site (especially prominent ones) to ensure that you're not losing folks' trust by sending them to inappropriate places or 404 pages."

Sure, it's great to keep Google happy, but it's usually more important (long term) to have your users be return visitors.

What does this mean to your web site?

Google looks for linking patterns. That means that it probably won't hurt your site if you link to a bad web site by mistake. Use a tool like ARELIS to find good related web sites with which you can exchange links.

Many links to 404 error pages might cause ranking problems. For that reason, it's a good idea to check the links on your web site every now and then.

1. Most Directories have some form of human involvement in the listing and editorial process
2. Human Involvement means that there is a quality check in place
3. Human Involement means that fewer sites will get listed
4. Fewer Sites listed equates to higher quality traffic
5. Directory users are encouraged to drill down to a relevant area or category and then browse from a list.
6. A visitor who comes to your website from a directory is far more likely to convert into a customer as they will already have a greater understanding of the products and services you provide.
7. Directories are often categorised on a regional basis or by industry sector which means that visitors finding your website via a directory are more likely to be relevant potential customers and therefore will be easier to convert into clients.
8. Good Directories with high page rank are a good source of Inbound Links.

Add your web site to the Free Mail Directory.

Great post by Rand from www.seomoz.org discussing salaries and the salary expectations of people working in the Search Engine Optimization world.

Here is a synopsis of the per annum salaries quoted (in Rands as of today's rate of R7.29 to $1.00):

In-House SEOs:

* VP/Director of Search Marketing: R729 000 - R2 551 500+
* Director/Manager Organic Search: R546 750 - R1 093 500
* SEO Guru: R546 750 - R1 458 000
* Campaign Manager: R400 950 - R729 000
* SEO Specialist: R291 600 - R583 200

SEO Agency Employees:

* SEO Director: R364 500 - R729 000
* Search Marketing Consultant: R437 400 - R 1 458 000
* Link Builder: R255 150 - R729 000
* Content Writer: R255 150 - R546 750
* SEO Researcher: R218 700 - R437 400
* Client Relations Coordinator: R255 150 - R546 750

The post also contains lots of comments and links to useful pay scale comparison sites.

I subscribe to many Search Engine Optimisation newsletters and alert services such as Google's and got to thinking;

If I was in the market for a SEO firm I would not really want one that could prove to me that they were at the top of the pile for such and such or so and so set of keywords.

Why?

Simple really - I know just how much time and effort it takes to get and stay there and, as a paying client I would far rather want the SEO Expert to spend that time on MY site and NOT on their site.

iBoogie tells us that it is a "MetaSearch Document Clustering Engine and Personalized Search Engines Directory".

I never would have noticed iBoogie except for the fact that Free Mail appears on the first page of iBoogie for the search term "in Free Mail" - not too shabby, Hey Nige?

I suppose the fact that most of the results for this search on iBoogie come from Wisenut and Netscape must have an influence, but, who cares at least Free Mail is on the first page of results of SOME search engines for a very competitive term.

See the iBoogie Results for Free Mail HERE.