I recently had the opportunity to interview an SEO expert about his work. I didn’t realize until the interview was complete that I’d held a bunch of preconceived notions about what type of person might provide professional SEO services. Although I knew that SEO was something done by almost all online businesses, I’d expected someone who was an expert in the topic to be working at a technological level that was beyond my own brain. What happened, of course, was that I met someone who had a thorough understanding of SEO but who was otherwise exactly like you or I.

The individual who runs an SEO company is really more knowledgeable about business and marketing than about technology per se. Although the marketing is applied to the world of the Internet, the work is designed to increase attention to websites. This is done through following algorithms that are set up by search engines. However, it’s rooted in basic marketing practices. For example, this particular expert told me that the basic rule of SEO is really the "I’ll scratch your back and you scratch mine" mentality of social networking.

And he told this to me in simple language that I could understand. As we wrapped up the interview, I realized that my assumptions about this expert underlined assumptions that I held about the difficulty of SEO. After the interview was complete and I’d realized how mistaken these assumptions were, I became much more open to the idea of learning how to implement some basic SEO on my own site.

Technorati Tags: SEO expert, SEO company, professional SEO services

Free templates are something that you can download from the Internet and use to make the appearance of your website more visually appealing. Although anybody with a website can benefit from these templates, there are certain groups that get more out of their use than others.

Here are three groups that benefit from using free templates:

• New bloggers. There are thousands of new blogs launched each day. Many of those are set up by people without a lot of blog knowledge who still want their site to stand apart from the others. Using downloaded templates and the assistance of a template forum, this is a possibility.
• Small business owners. New small businesses don’t have the resources to hire professional web designers. Using templates and web design tutorials, they can do it themselves.
• Students. Students can benefit from learning basic web design skills no matter what field they’re studying. Templates are a good start to getting that education.

Businesses of any size and bloggers at any level can benefit from improving their websites using templates found online. But small businesses, new bloggers and students are the groups which get the most out of using these templates because they have the most to gain from getting good design at no cost.

Technorati Tags: free templates, template forum, web design tutorials

Online colleges are easy to find. You simply need to go to your favorite search engine, type in the phrase and a whole slew of them will come up. But how can you tell from looking at the site whether it’s a good college or not? Online college degree programs that are of high quality all share five characteristics:

1. Accreditation. This is the most important thing to look for with any program online. You want your degree to actually count for something in the real world.
2. Different degrees. You want to find a school that offers Associates, Bachelors and higher education degrees. One size does not fit all.
3. Specific programs. You probably shouldn’t just get a general liberal arts degree online. Look for programs that give you specific skills in a career field that interests you.
4. Financial aid assistance. A good college helps you pay for your education. Many online programs fail to do this but a good one will help you out.
5. Resources. The Internet offers a sea of resources so there’s no reason that a college online shouldn’t link you to them.

Online college degrees come in all shapes and sizes. Find one that has these five qualities but which suits your personal style.

Technorati Tags: Online colleges, Online college degree, Online college degrees

You stopped getting stuck in the throngs of the “Black Friday” holiday shopping crowd years ago. In fact, you’ve mostly stopped shopping outside of your own home. Storefront accessibility on your computer has just made it far too easy to do your shopping at home while avoiding the crowds. However, online stores have to do just as much preparation as physical locations do to get ready for the holidays.

“Real world” stores prepare themselves for the holiday shopping rush by hiring seasonal staff and adjusting the placement of key items on the shelves. Believe it or not, eCommerce stores have to do the same thing. Additional traffic online can jam up connections, making the online store run too slowly. Before the consumer can press “check out” on the online shopping cart, he’s gotten bored and moved on to another store. As a result, eCommerce stores must boost their bandwidth and make their sites run more smoothly before the holiday rush.

Although sites want to run more efficiently, they don’t want to be simplified. Targeted advertising (such as Amazon’s “people who bought this also liked” approach) is a terrific way to get people to buy more during the holidays. Sites make use of simple software to improve this type of advertising while cutting back on major bandwidth consumption items like video.

Technorati Tags: Storefront, eCommerce, shopping cart