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What’s in a name?  That’s a good question.  Some feel that the name that you are given at birth provides and accurate description of who you will turn out to be.

So I began to wonder, does a domain name say as much about a future site as your name says about you?  I decided to take a look at some of the domain names registered by Google to see if I could get an idea of what the company may be up to in the future and came up with some interesting ideas which I will share with you here.

With the advent of blogs and other informational sites, the search engine market space has become increasingly competitive.

Sometimes website owners begin to wonder if they will ever make money off their product or service.  In this article I give you other ideas on how to make money with your website, even if you don’t sell products or services.

For many retailers now is the time to think Christmas.  This is because at least in terms of search engines now is the time to make changes so that they have registered in the organic index.  But what does one have to do in order to prepare for their Christmas time online marketing campaign?  In this article, I give some pointers on how to prepare your organic optimization strategy.

I was recently helping someone troubleshoot some problems at SearchEngineWatch forums and it struck me that I should write an article about this and other issues.  Because sometimes when you run into a brick wall and can not figure out why your site is not getting listed or even crawled in the search engines it is not always a site issue.

In fact, sometimes it is a server issue which you may or may not have control over.  In that case, it does not matter what you do to your site, you just aren’t going to get it listed.  This article covers some things to look at and how you can go about fixing them.

At one time you used to be able to perform a one time optimization on your site and reap the benefits for months.  In todays competitive landscape, however, that is not the case. This is because your competition is always growing and changing and therefore you have to as well.  This article explains what you need to do to plan a long term SEO campaign.

There is so much talk out there about what the ‘perfect’ web page looks like.  In this article we give you tips on what we consider perfectly optimized as well as tips on helping turn the page into a great conversion tool.

The Chinese engine in which Google has invested has been sued, tons of Google news including speculation, jokes and ‘failures’ MSN releases more developer tools and a countrys ISPs have agreed to work together to collaborate on wi-fi.

When I first started checking the news this morning I was shocked to find there was not much worthwhile reporting on. Sure I could have told you about the new Nintendo wireless controller, or how to create a cluster of computers out of old Macs but those aren’t really search related.

However when I checked later on I was again surprised to see tons of news.

Content Management Systems (or CMS) have been in use on the web for some time now, however up until recently very few systems were considered search engine friendly.

The foundation of most CMS systems is simple:  First one creates a template which will be used to display your pages.  In general, one template is all that is needed for an entire site.  From there one uses the provided software to add content to the site.  This usually means entering the content in some form of dashboard. When completed the data is written into a database.  When a site visitor requests a page, it is usually created “on the fly” by pulling the appropriate data from the database and displaying it in the template.

With that description of a CMS system in mind, one must consider what the CMS can do for them.  Therefore some questions needs to be answered by the CMS provider:

Google personal finally graduates from beta and is open to the public, rumors of an MSN/AOL merger?  Plus Yahoo! instant searching, Ask Jeeves product search, eliminating PSA ads on AdSense and more today.

A development from Google more than 2 years in the making, upgrades by Yahoo! in addition to one coming next year and news from AOL.  Plus a Google Guys opinion on redirects, how to make your AdSense pretty, and college life according to Google.

Flash movies can be a great thing. They can help catch eyes that are otherwise bored with static looking pages, and they can help tell a story better than plain text.  However the use of flash must be tempered with the ability to rank in search engines.  This article describes some of the considerations and recommendations when using flash on a website.

The case between Microsoft and Google has been settled and while Google did win, there was some compromise.  Ask has also been marked as a spyware distributor, while MSN search asks for help.  That and more in todays Roundup.

The big news today is of course the purchase of Skype by Ebay.  Plus, Google founders have bought a plane, as there is even more speculation of upcoming Google features.  CNN and Time plan to merge some key web properties while Oracle finally buys Siebel.  All that and more in todays roundup.

As a person who uses the web professionally during the week, I often forget that there’s a whole other side to the web.  One that I also use heavily.  That is the research aspect of the web.  While the web can be a powerful income generation tool, it is an even more powerful education and research tool.  Too often online retailers forget this side of the equation.

I wrote yesterday on how Matt Cutts blogged that what we were seeing happening at Google wasn’t technically an update.  Seems that’s causing quite a stir, at least with a few people.  Also, there’s some interesting new Google queries out there, along with some extras for your Mac Gmail notifier.  Finally today, since it’s been a light news day I’ll show you what I’m working on this weekend.

Google is planning on floating another $4 billion in shares.  The question then becomes, with reserves of over $2 billion, what does the company want with the extra cash?  This article provides my own speculation and insight and it might surprise you.

Wow.  My inbox was almost overflowing with all the news of the day.  From an impressive hire by Google, to some new (if late) features from MSN, to a legal settlement which could pave the way to changes on the web.  Ebay may be getting into the VOIP game, how a spider ‘sees’ your site, why you shouldn’t dig holes, and how to install Mac OS on your PC.

Plus a review of new technology applied to shopping online, the business of SEM, Google’s battle with MSN hits the courts (and sounds like a soap opera), a great summary on 301 redirects, plus FEMA only likes IE.  All that in today’s roundup.

Gee so much news I don’t know where to start.

A few weeks ago I talked about how navigation and content are some of the most important aspects of a successful website.  However, these focus more on site factors.  In this article I look at one other missing aspect.  One that can make or break a website.

Well you can probably already guess that the MSN and Google news is search related, but what do Coke and Plazes have to do with today’s Daily Roundup?  Well, you are about to find out.

Despite the long weekend there is some news to report, from a comparison between Google AdSense and YPN, to new information on MSN’s paid advertising program, to a rumored ‘blow up’ by Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer and more.

I can’t tell you how many sites I’ve consulted on where, without a word to the SEM team, the site owner re-launches with a brand new site.  Sometimes it’s a simple cosmetic change but more often than not its a completely new site with new page naming conventions and new folder hierarchy.  In this article I am going to try and explain how you can minimize the impact to your search engine rankings when performing a redesign.

There are many in the industry who use IP recognition to serve ads or fool search engine spiders through cloaking.  Yet I’m here to tell you that there are many other uses for IP recognition as well, such as improving your search engine positioning, and serving geo-targetted content.

Wow, the last day before a long weekend and there’s TONS of news to report on.  I never thought I’d use so many web terms and acronyms at once.  From an update to Yahoo! IM that even angers Y! employees, a Google Engineers blogging, to a ‘disaster wiki,’ some new Google Earth images, a birthday and an internet first.

I came across a somewhat disturbing yet also enlightening blog today.  One that outlines one persons view of the current situation in New Orleans.  That as well as new features from Yahoo!, concerns about the new Google Earth and some more lighthearted news as well.