Latest Articles by csandb

Data Cleansing

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

In every business, data is very important to keep the business growing. Just like humans that need food to survive and healthy foods are much needed of the body. Bad foods will just deteriorate our body. Just as data is everywhere in business and marketing and learning from one's own company data is the ideal way to learn, change and grow. So data can be healthy or bad also. Realizing its importance, irrelevant data thus needs to be cleaned. So how clean is your data? To get information or knowledge out of it, first it should be pure and not polluted.

To eliminate those problems, we have what we call Data Cleansing. Others termed it as data scrubbing. It is the act of detecting and correcting or removing corrupt or inaccurate records from a record set, table or database. Usually used in databases in identifying incomplete, incorrect, inaccurate, irrelevant parts of the data and then replacing, modifying or deleting this dirty data. Dirty data could be data that is misleading, incorrect or without generalized formatting, contains spelling or punctuation errors or data that is input in a wrong field or duplicate data. Any of these problems can reduce the effectiveness and business value of customer and prospect data. A database with accurate and consistent records equates to improved response rates that could result in increased profit.

Successful marketing on one end depends on understanding who your best customers are and knowing how to reach them. How you will be able to deal with the headaches, cost and resources of cleaning dirty databases loaded with misspelled addresses, human error, and inconsistent, inaccurate data is essential.
Dirty data caused also by people moving so frequently and businesses coming and going, then marketers begin to lose contact with their customers. In a year, approximately 6 million people move addresses and half a million addresses are affected by postal address changes. In a year also your data stored can easily be outdated. Your response rates may fall and audience reach becomes limited. You could be wasting a lot of money on marketing campaigns on invalid and outdated information.

How you maintain data as well as creation rules are very important for it is a critical factor for the success of enterprise intelligence initiatives. If the information shared across the organization is contradictory, inconsistent or inaccurate, then interactions with customers, suppliers and others will be based on inaccurate information, resulting in higher costs, reduced credibility and lost business. That is why the goal of data cleansing is not just to clean up the data in a database but also to bring consistency to different sets of data that have been merged from separate databases.

Bad data on one system can easily and rapidly propagate to other systems. Data cleansing is important to the efficiency of any data dependent business. If some of the clients within a database do not have accurate phone numbers and if your clients' email addresses are not formatted correctly, an automated email system would be unable to send out the latest coupons and special deals or anything new about your business. Data cleansing job is to ensure that the data within a system is correct, so that the system is able to use the data.

Data Cleansing may have been mistaken as data validation. These two differs in a way that actual process of data cleansing may involve removing typos or validating and correcting values against a known list of entities. The validation may be strict such as rejecting any address that does not have a valid postal code or correcting records that partially match existing known records. Data cleaning softwares are also created to make the task easy and fast.

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Gwyn is a employee of DotComSecrets which teaches various internet marketing strategies to internet business owners.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com

Reintroducing Google

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

"Don't be evil" is the code of conduct the Google Company abides by, to quote its owners, "We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served ― as shareholders and in all other ways ― by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains."

Google is a popular web based search engine which runs its business unlike any other. The starting page of google.com itself is clean unobtrusive and sleek making download time faster. Google is preferred by a lot of users because of this. The term Google itself had a very quirky start it was a misspelling of the term googol referring to a number 1 followed by a hundred zeroes. What started off as quirk turned out to become reality The Google Company grew to rashomon proportions and is now estimated to have a billion dollar revenue. At the very start, Google was a brainchild of Larry Page then a Phd student at Stanford University who was doing a dissertation thesis on the World Wide Web and its mathematical structure. Because of a misspelling the term google stuck and it was formally registered on September 15, 1997. On September 4, 2001, a patent describing part of Google's ranking mechanism (PageRank) was granted. The patent named Lawrence Page as the inventor.

But just what is Google aside from being a popular search engine?

Google is also involved in philanthropic acts. One of their activities is the establishment of Google.org giving it a staggering fund of $1 billion. Climate change, global public health and global poverty are just among the issues the organization wants to help. The development of a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that can attain 100 mpg is just one of its first projects.

Google has also worked with several corporations to enhance productivity and services. One such is its partnership with NASA wherein they work together on a variety of areas, including large-scale data management, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry. Google has also partnered with Time Warner's AOL unit for video searches and Fox to provide search and advertising on MySpace and other News Corp. websites

Google has been known for its forward thinking and made some very smart acquisitions over the years. One such example is the acquisition of Blogger from Pyra Labs which is a weblog publishing platform. This led to many of its premium features becoming free. The user friendly Google Docs and Spreadsheets is also a result of the company's acquisition of Upstartle, a company responsible for the online collaborative word processor Writely which was combined with Google Spreadsheets. Another of its popular buy outs is You tube which it purchased for $1.65 Billion dollars in 2006.

At the present Google now provides service for a range of tasks and they run several products to do so. Just some of their products are: Gmail, for e-mail purposes, Picasa for photos, and Google maps which is a Mapping service that indexes streets and satellite imagery, providing driving directions and local business search.

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Reah is an online journalist who writes about Google on her Google Fan Blog

Source: http://www.articletrader.com

Russell Brunson and DotComSecrets Scams

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500

We are all aware that scams are rampant in online businesses. Most of the time people who know just a little about internet marketing are more prone to being scammed. There are a number of opportunities offered in the internet to help people set up their own home based internet business and promises them to become successful. So it's hard to choose the real and legitimate opportunities from the ones that only want to rip off your money. Russell Brunson and his DotComSecrets are one program that have been accussed at times of being a Scam.

So who is Russell Brunson? Russell Brunson is a millionaire internet marketer. How he became a millionaire is truly amazing and somewhat unbelievable. Are the products he offers really effective and will they make you a millionaire also? Or does it only work with him and does he play dirty tactics with it?

Russell Brunson started his online business when he was a young college student. He needed to earn some extra money, at that time, to pay for his college tuition, so he ventured into online business. Russell Brunson has proven that his products are far from being a scam. He has gone on to turn his company, DotComSecrets, into a multi-million dollar a year international marketing company. He has clients in dozens of countries all around that range from the stay at home entrepreneur all the way up to huge multi-million dollar corporations. He has been featured in magazines, on T.V. and speaking in front of some of the largest audiences in the world.

With Russell Brunson's products you can actually start up with just small amount and their testimonials of people are those who actually used the product and amazingly experiencing the results. They actually have detailed how Russell's products worked with them. Also, Russell Brunson gives a money back guarantee on his products. He is confident that his DotCom Secrets are proven effective.

Those who call

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Gwyn is a product reviewer for The Federal Watch.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com

4 Ways To Maximize Your Web Presence

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0600

There are hundreds of ways to promote a business online. I come across new ways to advertise and promote a business online almost every week. However, to simplify things I recommend you first consider doing the following things to get the most bang for your buck.

1. Do some basic Search Engine Optimization
Search engines can bring in a huge amount of highly targeted "free" traffic to your website. You can just launch your website and hope you get listed in Google, but with some SEO knowledge and some effort you can almost guarantee that you will get traffic from search engines. The article Three Steps to Search Engine Traffic outlines a pretty straightforward SEO strategy to follow. While it isn't really too hard to learn the basics of SEO, it is important to remember that the most important factor in SEO is backlinks, which could take a bit more knowledge and some creativity to obtain in a cost effective manner. Knowing how to do SEO and having the creativity and resources to carry out a plan are two separate things. If you have the budget, hiring an outside SEO firm or an SEO expert in house would be a good investment.

Many of the promotion methods listed below will help you obtain backlinks which will complement your SEO efforts, so it is important to consider SEO first so that you can best leverage the impact of other promotion methods.

2. Run PPC Campaigns
Running a Pay Per Click Campaign is probably the quickest way a business can start profiting from their online presence. One great thing about PPC campaigns is that you can know exactly how much profit you are making on each keyword and you can test different ad copy and get quick results. For a good introduction to Adwords, Google PPC network, check out Perry Marshall's free course 5 Days to Success with Google AdWords.

PPC click campaigns can also complement your SEO efforts. As you find out what keywords, ad copy, and landing pages are converting the best you can adjust your SEO efforts to put a greater priority on the things that are converting the best in your PPC campaigns.

3. Start a blog
There are many benefits to blogging. It helps build a community around your business, helps with your SEO efforts (it creates more content and attracts backlinks), it can act as a "maven trap" (discussed in The Tipping Point), it empowers customers to easily spread the word about your products and business, and it can help you network with others in your industry.

4. Pay Bloggers to Review your website and/or products
Within the past six months or so many websites have launched which will help you find bloggers to write reviews. The four that I am aware of are ReviewMe, PayPerPost, Blogitive, and LoudLaunch. ReviewMe seems to be the best if you want to reach a large audience because the bloggers there tend to have a larger readership, but you will also pay a lot more per review than the other blogger review sites. PayPerPost could be a good option to increase your backlinks, but don't expect as much traffic initially as you would from a ReviewMe Review. I have no experience with Blogitive and LoudLauch but I will be writing about them when I do.

I hope these tips help you get the most from your presence online. For more tips please visit the Internet Business Blog

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Chris Sandberg is an internet entrepreneur who writes about various topics related to doing business online on his Internet Business Blog

Source: http://www.articletrader.com

Three Steps to Search Engine Traffic

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0600

I generally follow a fairly straight forward 3 step process when I want to get search engine traffic for a new website. I have outlined this three step process in a simple guide below.

Step One: Make a List of Targeted Keyword Phrases
What is it that your site has to offer and what will people that want what you have to offer likely be searching for in the search engines? As you think about this begin to make a list of possible phrases that your potential visitors will be searching for. Be as specific and targeted as possible. If you sell philosophy books on your site then a possible phrase could be "Medieval philosophy books". Don't write just "Philosophy" as that would be too general.

After you have made your list of possible keyword phrases narrow down the list to the phrases that you want to target the most. Use keyword research tools to find the keyword phrases that will be most worth your time to go after. For more information on the subject of Keyword research please read SEOmoz's article, How to Conduct Keyword Research.

Step Two: Create an Optimized Page for Each Keyword Phrase on Your List
Many people trying to rank high in the search engines make the mistake of trying to optimize for too many keywords on any one page. It is a better strategy to just stick with optimizing for one keyword phrase per page. By focusing on one phrase you are more likely to rank high for that particular phrase and you may get lucky and rank high for other related keyword phrases at the same time. If you want to rank high for more than just one phrase then just create an additional page for each phrase you would like to rank high for.

You have already made a list of keyword phrases so now all you have to do is create a unique page for each of those phrases. Treat each of your pages as a stand alone entry page. Keep in mind that when a visitor comes to your site from the search engines they were most likely looking for something specific, so each page should help visitors find what they were looking for by providing information about the keyword phrase that it is being optimized for. In order to fully optimize each page your keyword phrase should be included in the title, heading, and naturally within the text of the page.

Step Three: Obtain Quality Backlinks to Each of Your Pages
The third and probably most important step in ranking high in the search engines is to obtain links pointing to your pages from other websites. The more links the better, but you should focus your efforts on sites that themselves have many links pointing to them, because the search engines place higher value on links from those sites. The amount of links that a site has pointing to it is called link popularity. Google uses a ranking system called PageRank to measure the link popularity of each page. Do a search for "Pagerank tool" or download the Google toolbar to find out the pagerank of specific pages. Don't rely too heavily on PageRank or link popularity to determine a page's worth, though. It is more important to obtain links form sites that are related to yours than to just obtain links from high pagerank sites that may not be related to your site. The search engines place a higher value on links from sites with topics that are related to yours than from those that are not related. For some ideas on how to get links please visit Andy Hagan and Aaron Wall's 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006 or SEOmoz' Advanced Link Building Tactics.

When obtaining links, get links to each of your individual pages, not just your homepage. You should encourage those that link to a given page to use the keywords that that page has been optimized for in the anchor text of the link, since this helps the search engines determine that the page is relevant for the term you want to rank for. In most cases webmasters will do this naturally since you have already included your desired keywords in the title and heading of your page.

In general it is a better strategy to focus your link building efforts on encouraging other webmasters to link to your site naturally rather trying to go out and obtain links manually one by one. Designing a page to encourage others to link to it is called LinkBaiting. Good linkbait gives users something of value, which webmasters will link to because they want to share it with their website visitors. Coming up with good linkbait ideas is where some creativity and marketing know how come in very handy. Being a creative marketer is more valuable in SEO than knowing everything there is to know about search engine algorithms.

I hope the above information is helpful. The above guide is just a basic overview and is just one way to do SEO. If you would like to learn more about SEO and Internet Marketing, please visit the SEM Research Blog.

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Chris Sandberg is an SEM Research Blog

Source: http://www.articletrader.com

The Secret to Effective SEO

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0600

What is the secret to SEO? Well, I’m going to tell you right now. All you have to do is have great content that incorporates the keywords search users will be using to find what you have to offer, design your site in a way that can be easily crawled by search engine spiders, and get relevant, inbound links pointing to the pages on your site. That’s it. Pretty simple, eh.

If it is so easy then why is there a whole industry built around it? It’s because knowing SEO and actually doing it are two different things. SEO is actually a bit more complicated than I made it out to be in the opening paragraph, you do need to know some of the details of what search engines look for, but it really isn’t that hard to learn. You could just read Aaron Wall’s SEO book and read up on some good SEO blogs such as such as SEOmoz and SEM Research be an expert in no time. However, as I have already stated SEO is more than just know how.

A big part of SEO is getting relevant inbound links to the pages on your site. This can be accomplished in many ways. Andy Hagans and Aaron Wall have put together a pretty comprehensive list of link building ideas here. However, to be a really effective SEO you are going to have to be little creative and have some marketing and business skills. You need to be able to come up link building ideas and implement them in a cost effective manner. It is pretty easy to get a lot of traffic from the search engines with some know how and a little effort, however, It is the SEO that can leverage their resources in creative ways to get the most out of their money and efforts that are most successful. Effective SEO really just comes down to effective marketing, creating buzz about you site and getting people to link to you naturally. If you want to be an effective SEO learn as much as you can about marketing, then supplement that knowledge with some basic information on how the search engines work.

So what is the "secret" to SEO? It's simply good Marketing.

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Chris Sandberg is an independent internet marketer. He writes about search engine and social media marketing at the SEM Research Blog.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com