As a matter of fact, folks used to even run extraneous blog commenting campaigns, doing up to 100+ comments on a daily basis to quickly gather valuable back-links, drive more traffic and rank higher in the Google search results.

But, pretty soon the content king – Google realized the irony of the situation, and started penalizing websites that sold or gave away non nofollow links. As a result, even the default comments in all the newer versions of blogging engines like Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, and the likes of them, had nofollow links by default.

Ever since then it has become a trend, and currently everybody has started using “nofollow” link tag – and even from social networking sites like FaceBook or Orkut, all that you can get is only nofollow links. But, social media is now becoming a great way to drive massive traffic and expose your business identity to the public.

Blog commenting has become a dying art and it is only a good way to build good rapport with fellow bloggers and improve the daily traffic to your website/blog. Something similar goes with the social networking and social media platforms, as one can only improve the traffic not Page Rank and search rankings with these links!

When it comes to link-building with so many constraints, a word of caution would be to remember the sheer fact that links to too many directories can make your site look like a link-farm – so beware Google is watching you!

Article directories are definitely the best bets to generate good backlinks. You may try running an article marketing campaign at reputed sites like EzineArticles.com GoArticles.com, Constant-Content.com, ArticlesBase.com and generate some targeted traffic as well as quality links.

Then the social bookmarking services like Digg Buzz.Yahoo, Del.icio.us, Reddit, StumbleUpon, can come in handy in exposing your website to a wider range of audience and getting more traffic!

But, the bottom-line is that quality content, on-page organic SEO, and seamless user experience are the most effective ways to improve the overall SEO and search rankings of your website.

Last, but definitely not the least, you may want to add a robots.txt file on your root directory to exercise control over the pages that you DON’T want to be indexed by Google Crawler, Adsense Crawler and other bots. For instance, in a Wordpress blog, you don’t want Google to crawl the /wp-admin folder, so you can add following line in robots.txt file –

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google

Disallow:
User-agent: Googlebot

Disallow:

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /wp-admin

Note: Adding a sitemap to your site is a must!

The Google Buzz has definitely created a buzz, and is acclaimed to be one of the smart moves by Google. Buzz is not a competitor to Twitter, Facebook or other social platforms, but rather a gateway, something to aggregate your social existence in one space and further share with the web.

Giving this some more thought, how many companies will start to take into consideration the business side of things, there’s more to it – Google Buzz and the inclusion into search results as Twitter is, can greatly affect ones presence on the net and how we do business. Google is the source for info, phone numbers, feedback, reviews etc … Buzz is going to add to the pile, further generate more info for people to take into consideration when determining a purchase or decision and affect or influence customers further.

Basically upon performing a search for businesses in Google Maps, you can find the “Buzz about this place” option. Now, this turns out to be more or less like a Facebook community or Twitter group for the specific business, as you have the choice to Buzz about a business you like or the one you don’t. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Buzz has the ability to be seen by more people, the conversations are public and distributed by the most popular site on the net.

So, Google Buzz polls about a business will turn out to be much more than a review? Well, sure thing, you’ll enjoy the positive buzz about your business and increase in the business (if you’re lucky enough to get only positive Buzz). On the contrary, if you get lot of negative Buzz about your business or a particular product, you’ll have to essentially interact with the ‘dissatisfied customers’ and help them in resolving their issues as with any social channel.

Well then, it looks like Google is all set to pull more to the party, to participate in Social Media activities and engage them to keeping talking with the new Google Buzz! If you’re not too happy with the Buzz, then you can opt out (This option is based in the footer on Gmail). While I wouldn’t encourage opting out, if you are going to I would suggest you monitor it.

Prepare for the challenge and see how Buzz morphs over the coming months, where it appears and how it is used. The social web is growing, channels are appearing daily and the conversation will continue. Take part and enjoy.

What’s on the go in 2010? Some projects will be coming out of the box and into the public domain for testing, and yes finally Mediabadger is one of them. Been a tough go with only one person doing development on the project, but that being said we have some great new partners that are helping us roll out the system. Stay tuned!

What else … The launch of a new advertising platform. And I’ll leave it at that for the time being.

TechEast continues to grow even though news from the region slowed to a trickle over the last few months. It is starting to pick up again and I’m looking into bringing a writer into the mix once again. Any suggestions do let me know. We are also working to get ATJ.ca back up and running and even better .

Well thats all and to summarize my 2009 in one word. HECTIC.

Its been a great ride and I’m looking forward to continuing it here (in London for the time being). If your around drop me an email or call and we can grab a coffee.

The answer might well be; all of the above. This might spark the thought “uh oh, death by committee.” But in this case, we don’t mean to suggest a Web Committee be struck. Our work has found that companies who mix online elements of their operations with real-world elements, develop better strategies and usage policies when there is a multi-disciplinary team involved. End decisions should not be based on committee voting. A business is about making a profit and that means autocracy. But today, such decisions can be better made when a team can build concensus and make a viable recommendation to the senior manager who must then make the final decision.

I usually recommend that a company establish a team that mixes departments and various levels of experience. While many senior managers over 50 may feel the Web is the domain of youth, nothing makes up for seasoned business experience. Some rules may be different on the Web, but the fundamentals of good financial and corporate governance remain the same. Our experience has been that the best teams usually comprise of Marketing, Finance, HR and Legal. Through marketing, finance and HR’s participation, you’re able to address the multiple key audiences and stakeholders that will be impacted by your online operations. And good fiscal judgement is more likely to exercised. Additionally, the involvement of Finance will help them to better understand the costs associated with the online elements of the business.

By engaging a senior management person with key strategic decisions around the Web, you also build awareness at the executive level, which helps in times of crisis or when conducting strategic planning. A good team will develop over time and guidelines for areas of responsibilities should be established and reviewed annually. The team should change from time to time as well to keep ideas and objectives fresh.

PPC has more admirers as it follows the rules of traditional advertising. The result is quick and can be tracked easily. In a recent study based on conversion rates i.e. converting leads or site traffic into sales, it’s established that SEO is ahead in conversion percentage because of the quality of content provided by SEO writers and its wide scope of availability on web. While in average order value and on-site time consumption PPC stands out as an all time winner. Along with that PPC is the first choice for a quick online presence and immediate feedback. Also, PPC is ideal when there is no ramp up time, no pipeline projects or when one wants to introduce some trial projects. It’s flexible because whenever your market season is off or you feel that your website is overloaded because of overwhelmed response, you can stop campaign or can start blocking the PPC users. The most important thing in PPC is that you have the power to control and manage. You can start your campaign at any time, block it and start again. Also, you can curtail your investments. If you have a new project or website coming up, PPC is the best way to evaluate the response of your targeted consumers. All you need is to identify the keywords which w’d bring in more clicks that means more sales.

SEO is considered new and more difficult than PPC. It takes time before you actually get to see the results but in the long run it’s not only better but also effective for your products and company. In another study, it’s claimed that high-qualified people trust SEO while making a purchasing decision. The same study also validates this point for consumers of expensive products. If your page features in top rankings then you’d ultimately generate more traffic and higher conversion rates.

PPC and SEO have their benefits and downfalls. For beginners, PPC could be a risk. It is quite easy to lose money and waste time if they are not aware of the how of PPC works. Follow -ups are must in PPC. PPC is mistaken for advertising campaign but its not that easy. Yes, you can raise the stakes and turn on campaign as your wish but it needs investment and proper monitoring. Where as SEO is considered as a best option for products/services, which are to stay long term in the market.

However, some of the technocrats prefer both. According to them both can be used together to boost business. If you want an instant exposure concentrate more on PPC but also invest in SEO. People will only click on your promotion ads when you are selling something that is of interest. If they want some information or knowledge about your products, SEO is the key which can push your ranking and reach. PPC should be followed by SEO because by the time you will know which keywords work and these can be used in your SEO efforts to enhance your sales.

PPC and SEO go together. While doing PPC, SEO considerations should be made. While PPC offers immediate results SEO has long term benefits.