Is SEO Still Important Today or in the Future?

By Hector E. Cisneros

Courtesy of Flickr

SEO is a term that is bandied about as if it were the holy grail of Search Engine Marketing. But what is SEO really? It is optimizing your website? Or, is it optimizing what you post to your web properties? Is it key word sensitive, key phrase-centric or is it something else altogether? My answer to these questions may surprise you. SEO is no longer just one thing. It's not just optimizing your website for proper Meta tags and matching content. It has grown to mean so much more. In this article, I discuss how Search Engine Optimization (a.d.a., SEO) has evolved into Search Engine Marketing (a.k.a., SEM). I will discuss how what was once a single-faceted injection has evolved into a multifaceted ongoing process. In this article you will find information on how a company can improve its search ranking, specific methods to follow that will insure a strong ranking position. Best of all, you can accomplish all this without resorting to tricks, gimmicks or deception that tries to bypass the search engine ranking systems.

Is it Still Possible to Make Money Online?

Courtesy of Flickr

By Carl Weiss  

The concept of making money online is nothing new.  It’s what drove most of us onto the internet in the first place.  Back in the good old days before Google more or less monopolized search, there were real opportunities to grab the top slots on a number of search engines (some in as little as 24 hours), create an eCommerce site and get to it.  However, the game has changed to the point where there are now more than 300 million websites online with 130,000 new sites being spawned daily.  And they all want to be on page one of Google.  

Crowdfunding, it's a Game Changer

By Carl Weiss

Courtesy of Flickr

Back in the bad-old days, entrepreneurs searching for funding had three choices: 

1. Friends and Family 
2. Banks 
3. Angel and/or Venture Capitalists

For many this meant that starting a business was nearly a mission impossible.  Then in 2007, all that changed when Prosper.com launched the first peer-to-peer lending service in the US.  Since that time a number of other Crowdfunding sites have popped up, including Kickstarter, which in 2012 raised more than $10 million for the Pebble Watch.

Before you decide to quit your day job, understand that not all projects get funded.  Some pitches are flawed, while others are deemed unfundable due to the rules of various Crowdsourcing portals. But for a staggering number of well thought out and executed proposals, the world wide web can your oyster when it comes to jumpstarting a business.  However, as you will soon find out, Crowdfunding comes in a number of different flavors.