HTC officially announced it will be swapping AMOLED with Super LCD (SLCD) displays in several of its phones later this summer, including the Desire and Nexus One.The reason for the change, according to HTC, is the high level of demand for phones with 3.7-inch displays, on top of the low availability of AMOLED screens.Whether AMOLED screens are better than LCD screens is debatable, but buyers of these SLCD-equipped versions of HTC smartphones get an added benefit: better battery life. “The SLCD displays provide consumers with a comparable visual experience to HTC’s current 3.7 inch displays with some additional benefits including battery performance,” said HTC CEO Peter Chou.This sheds light onto Apple’s decision to use LCD technology for its iPhone 4. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone 4, he said its LCD retina display is “quite a bit better than OLED displays.” It’s quite possible, however, that Apple went with LCD technology because it anticipated that AMOLEDs would be in short supply.

Google is the most powerful information resource humans have ever constructed. The power of any major search tool boggles the mind but considering the vastness of Google’s complex simplicity can truly hurt one’s brain. With over 8-billion references in its rapidly growing, organically generated index, Google sets the standards other search engines follow. Benefiting from a three year reign as the undisputed leader of search, Google has had a very good year and looks poised to make 2005 an even better year.

In 2004, Google introduced more new and improved applications for its users than any other tech company, posted one of the most successful IPO’s in business history in a most unorthodox Dutch-Auction format, and met or exceeded any challenges its rivals threw at.

Google is no longer just a search engine, it is an advertising machine. Drawing about 90% of its revenues from paid advertising and contextual ad-delivery, Google has had two major focuses this quarter. The first is increasing the number of places paid-advertising might show up. The second is to develop new products and features that will retain current user loyalty and win new users from the other search firms. Both initiatives rely heavily on Google’s reputation for delivering fast, free and relevant search results. Google has the world’s largest database of indexed websites and it acquires site information through its spider GoogleBot.

GoogleBot is probably the most well-known spider working the web today. It is also likely among the most analyzed applications ever written. On one level, GoogleBot is quite simple and can be depended on to act in a very specific manner. GoogleBot lives to follow links. GoogleBot will often chase down a link-path until it can no longer work its way deeper into a site. It will also work its way through any site linked to from any other site. Google finds the majority of new sites in its index by following links from established sites. If a link exists, Google will (A) find it, (B) follow it, (C ) record every bit of information it can possibly record, and (D) weigh that information against a fairly rigid algorithm to determine the perceived topic or theme of a site for future reference. If a site in Google’s index is modified or changes, Google will re-spider the site as quickly as it possibly can.

GoogleBot’s mission is to create a snap-shot of the World Wide Web and store it across Google’s network of data centers around the world. When you reference information from Google, the results you see reflect Google’s most recent snap-shot of the web. Parts of that snap-shot might be hours or even weeks old but overall the index is updating itself every minute of every day, 24/7. The fastest way to see exactly what Google views as the most recent version of your site is to click on the “Cached” link generally below the main link-reference Google displays for your site.

How GoogleBot behaves as it acquires sites is one thing. What Google does with the information its bot gathers is another thing. Google’s method of ranking websites is extremely (and increasingly) complex. To understand how Google works today, a brief (and over simplified) explanation of the principle of PageRank is in order.

Google was originally developed as a means of finding information in research documents at Stanford University where its inventors Larry Page and Sergey Brin met as grad students. PageRank was developed as the basic sorting algorithm for their search tool (then known as Backrub) and was based on a very simple concept, trust.

Page and Brin understood that documents on the Internet could be linked together. They speculated that if someone took the time to code a link (by hand in those days) to another document there was likely a relevance between the two documents. Why else would one researcher link to another researcher’s work? Simply put, the more incoming links a particular document has, the better it would rank when sorted by PageRank. Given the environment in which it was developed, Google’s genesis proved to be the perfect tool for intelligent users. Transfering that simplicity from a dorm room at Stanford to practically every living room and office space on Earth has been a great challenge for Google’s engineers. While it is still somewhat based on the original, “democratic” nature of PageRank, Google’s sorting algorithm has become infinitely more complicated.

Google continues to weigh the number of links directed towards a site as positive indicators that there is relevant information to be found there. Since links are the veins and arteries of the web, links continue to be the most important factor influencing Google’s perception of the relevance of a website. As the Google index has grown so rapidly over the past six years, and search engine marketers have learned how to use Google’s behaviours to influence rankings, Google weighs several other factors when considering the relevance of a site but the core of the algorithm remains rooted in PageRank

Back in the good old days, seven or eight years ago at Stanford, one link could represent one positive vote. As marketers learned to manipulate links, Google learned to apply different standards and measures when looking at those links and the content of sites in its index. Today, Google considers different links in different ways. As a matter of interest, our recent studies show that Google displays less back-links for sites than any other search engine, leading us to conclude that Google has become much stricter about how it views and values incoming links.

Google looks at a number of factors when determining the value of a link. Where the link originates from is as important as where the link is directed in Google’s eyes. Google, like its rivals, is trying to find relationships between documents aside from obvious keywords. Google has the ability to fundamentally understand documents in its index and determine the topic, theme or context of those documents. This is an important measure as Google is becoming increasingly strict about link-relevance. To receive a highly positive response from Google, the pages or sites linked together must somehow relate to each other in topic as well as by sharing similar keywords. An excellent example would be in regional tourism.

A local tourism bureau will almost certainly have a website. That site will link to the sites of member-clients in its region. Each of those sites represent businesses dependent on regional tourism, thus establishing relevance between the sites. The tourism bureau becomes the “hub” from which Google follows links to other, topically related websites. In this way, the Hub site becomes a highly positive link-reference in Google’s eyes

About The Author
Jim Hedger is a writer, speaker and search engine marketing expert based in Victoria BC. Jim works with a limited group of clients and provides consultancy services to StepForth Search Engine Placement. He has worked as an SEO for over 5 years and welcomes the opportunity to share his experience through interviews, articles and speaking engagements. Hedger can be reached at jim.hedger@gmail.com

If you are in that same situation, here is a simple strategy that will certainly increase your blog traffic and make you break the 1,000 daily page views mark. In fact, the strategy could be used even if your are already over that number but have reached a traffic plateau lately.

Just make sure to execute the 4 steps as planned and to spend the two hours and a half every day (obviously if you have more time available you can expand the time spent on each of the four steps proportionally).
First Step: Killer Articles (1 hour per day)

Spend one hour brainstorming, researching and writing killer articles (also called linkbaits, pillar articles and so on).

Notice that your goal is to release one killer article every week. If that is not possible aim for one every 15 days. So the one hour that you will spend every day will be dedicated to the same piece. In other words, expect killers articles to take from 5 up to 10 hours of work.

If you are not familiar with the term, a killer article is nothing more than a long and structured article that has the goal of delivering a huge amount of value to potential visitors. If you have a web design blog, for example, you could write an article with “100 Free Resources for Designers”. Here are some ideas for killer articles:

* create a giant list of resources,
* write a detailed tutorial teaching people how to do something,
* find a solution for a common problem in your niche and write about it, or
* write a deep analysis on a topic where people have only talked superficially

When visitors come across your killer article, you want them to have the following reaction: “Holy crap! This is awesome. I better bookmark it. Heck, I better even mention this on my site and on my Twitter account, to let my readers and friends know about it.”
Second Step: Networking (30 minutes per day)

Networking is essential, especially when you are just getting started. The 30 minutes that you will dedicate to it every day could be split among:

* commenting on other blogs in your niche,
* linking to the posts of bloggers in your niche, and
* interacting with the bloggers in your niche via email, IM or Twitter.

Remember that your goal is to build genuine relationships, so don’t approach people just because you think they can help to promote your blog. Approach them because you respect their work and because you think the two of you could grow together.
Third Step: Promotion (30 minutes per day)

The first activity here is the promotion of your killer articles. Whenever you publish one of them, you should push it in any way you can. Examples include:

* letting the people in your network know about it (don’t beg for a link though),
* letting bloggers and webmasters in relevant niches know about it,
* getting some friends to submit the article to social bookmarking sites,
* getting some friends to Twitter the article, and
* posting about the article in online forums and/or newsgroups.

If there is time left, spend it with search engine optimization, social media marketing and activities to promote your blog as whole. Those can range from keyword research to promoting your blog on Facebook and guest blogging.
Fourth Step: Normal Posts (30 minutes per day)

Just like a man does not live by bread alone, a blog does not live by killer articles alone. Normal posts are the ones that you will publish routinely in your blog, between the killer articles. For example, you could publish a killer article every Monday and normal posts from Tuesday through Friday. Here are some ideas for normal posts:

* a post linking to an article on another blog and containing your opinion about it
* a post informing your readers about a news in your niche
* a post asking a question to your readers and aiming to initiate a discussion
* a post highlighting a new resource or trick that you discovered and that would be useful to your readers

While killers articles are essential to promote your blog and bring new readers aboard, normal posts are the ones that will create diversity in your content and keep your readers engaged.

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Choose a right domain name and host your site to a reliable server.
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Step 2

Do detailed market research and competitor analysis.
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Step 3

Select your keywords carefully. Choose only relevant keywords. It is recommended to use some keyword research tool, if required.
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Step 4

Keep your URL and Directory structure simple. Use Text base navigation and interlink to various pages of the website.
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Step 5

Use keywords at prominent places like headings, bold/italic or bulleted text, anchor text and above the fold text.
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Step 6

Produce quality content for your website. Make your copy user friendly rather than optimizing it for search engines. Avoid duplication of contents.
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Step 7

Create an html sitemap of your site as it works as a ‘table of contents’ o f a book. Also submit xml sitemap to top search engines .
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Step 8

Get links from relevant sites. Use keyword rich anchor text for these links. Use variety of anchor text in links.
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Step 9

Do not link to bad neighbours. Do not do excessive link exchange. Avoid paid links.
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Step 10

Produce quality contents and get links from article directories, blogs, forums and other social media sites.
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Step 11

Avoid invisible text, keyword stuffing, targeting irrelevant keywords, broken links , page not found errors and others similar things.
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Step 12

Submit your site to top directories, relevant yellow pages and trade boards.
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Step 13

If you want to hire an SEO, check the ranking of their own website, references and ideas before making up your mind to select them.

Everyone wants “organic” or “free” traffic, but it’s a full time job to try to keep on top of the search engines changing rules. Instead, if you build a good content-rich site and do the things on this list, you’ll get traffic and help your ranking at the same time.

1. Use Pay-Per-Click (PPC) – Get traffic in an hour with PPC. Google and Overture (now Yahoo). Don’t bother with others until you make these two work. The key to this is to know your visitor value, bid on hundreds of key words and phrases and split test your ads and track each keyword, phrase or ad separately

2. Distribute Your Content – write articles of value to your target market. Distribute that content for other webmasters to use on their sites as long as they keep the link back to you in a “resource box” at the end of each article. Distribute your articles through article directories, ezines, and distribution services. The key to make this work is valuable content.

3. Submit Press Releases – submit electronic press releases frequently with news of interest to the media and your target market. Since press releases are news, if they get picked up, it will be quickly and you may get hundreds of links back to your site this way. Key to make this work: write 300 – 500 word releases, include a link back to you, and have them written and distributed by experts who know how to optimize each release for key words (not typical PR firms).

4. Set Up a Blog with RSS – to be effective, blogs must have frequently updated content. Base yours on information helpful to your customers, not sales pitches. Don’t do it unless you can commit some ongoing time to it. Seth Godin says the keys to a successful blog are: Candor, Urgency, Timeliness, Pithiness (short & to the point), and Controversy. The key to making this work is to make it interesting to your visitors, submit to blog directories, ping the search engines when you post and distribute your content with RSS.

5. Get One-Way Incoming Links – All the previous tips will create incoming, one-way links but you can also buy links from other sites from text link brokers. Don’t do reciprocal linking, it’s dead. Make sure you get links from pages with a Google Page Rank higher than “0″. A site Google rates as “0″ may be because they are penalizing it for some reason. If you link to it, you’ll get penalized too.

The key to making this work: Make sure links have your keywords in the anchor text and make sure they are text, not graphical links. Make sure they are from other relevant sites, not link farms or FFA (Free for All) sites. The ideal is links from relevant pages without many other links.

6. Give Other Sites Your Testimonial – let them publish it on their web site as long as they link back to you. This can get you a one-way link from a site that would otherwise not give it to you. The key to make this work: keep it short and to the point.

7. Email Promotions – Advertise in Ezines, place ads in someone else’s email newsletters that reach your target market. The key to make this work: track everything carefully.

8. Joint Ventures – Get promoted to your JV partner’s customer database by your JV partner. John Reese sold over $1 Million of his information product in 24 hours exclusively by using joint venture promotions from his partners sending his offer to their customer lists. He paid his partners commissions on sales. The key to make this work: know your visitor value and have a tested and proven sales page that converts well BEFORE you contact JV prospects.

9. Get Affiliates – If selling a product, offer a commission to affiliates to sell for you. Each affiliate’s link to your sales letter conversion page will bring you traffic and a better search engine rank too. The key to making this work is to make it financially attractive to your affiliates and give them everything they need to promote your product or service. Make it brain dead easy for them to do.

10. Buy Other Web Sites – Find web sites that already rank high on your keywords and verify their traffic with the site owner and independent tools. Make sure you get ownership of the domain – you can let them still use their content elsewhere. Check deleteddomains.com to see what domains you can register for a few dollars that their owners have let expire. The key to making this work: Check Google page rank, Alexa rank and the number of back links for any site before you buy a web site.