Welcome to your weekly dose of SEO from the SEO Chat newsletter! Before I dive into our favorite topic, let me tell you about a new website. It's called Smarter Technology, and it's the latest addition to the ZDE's corporate family. Sponsored by IBM, it focuses on “driving high-level discussions surrounding the rapid change and evolution of technology in today's complex world, according to Josh Heitsenrether, a senior vice president at ZDE. Leaving the corporate speak aside for the moment, it also has multi-media down cold, with plenty of editorial content and analysis. Check out Stephen Wellman's article on whether search can really be innovated, which is especially relevant in the face of Microsoft Bing. You'll also find community forums, videos, eSeminars, newsletters, RSS feeds, and integration with Twitter and Facebook. Stop by frequently and watch it grow!

Speaking of growing, if you need to hire more IT staff, either as replacements or for expansion, you'll want to check out this article from eWeek. You would think that hiring during a recession would be easy, with so many people looking for work. It's not, especially when you're trying to get someone with a particular skill set, to say nothing of the other qualities that go into making a good employee. Check out the article to see what I mean.

After you're done there, pop on over to SEO Chat. If you've ever wondered if you can make money as an affiliate, or by using affiliates, you'll want to read Monday's article. If you're looking for more ways to build links to your web site, Tuesday's piece has what you need. Trying to get a handle on keywords? Check out Wednesday's item.

Have you ever been offered, or considered, accepting payment based on commission? Then you won't want to miss this week's thread. The original poster's question kicked off quite a discussion of the pros and cons of this method of payment, including under what circumstances it may make sense. Stop by the thread and join the conversation!

The learning never ends here at the Shed. If you hunger for even more SEO information, stop by Tutorialized. You'll find plenty of SEO-related tutorials to feed your appetite. (This is what I get for writing something just before lunch!). Seriously, though, you'll find nearly 100 tutorials covering topics such as choosing keywords, website promotion, link building, and more.

Finally, our Spotlight, just for readers of our newsletter, should come as no surprise to those who have been watching Yahoo closely. The venerable search engine is closing Yahoo 360, its blog and social networking site. What does this mean, and what does Yahoo plan to do going forward? Scroll down to the Spotlight to find out.

As always, thanks for reading.

Until next time,
SEO Chat Staff

• News of the Weird is back to tickle your fancy. And your not-so fancy.
• Jenny on Games makes its debut. Will it last? No. Of course not.
• A special guest appearance by the invisible man.

Watch the video!

"Keyword" is a term often used by various people; however, few people actually understand what keywords have to do with websites and search engines. It may seem apparent that "search" and "engine" would be keywords for Google, but can we actually apply a definition to "keyword" in general that will help us understand it?

A keyword is actually-more or less-any word that appears on a web page. These are the words that make up a web page. Whenever you read a website, you are actually unconsciously processing all of the keywords on the page. The words that stand out most to you are most likely the "key" words.

Although this concept seems relatively straightforward to the human brain, it is actually somewhat difficult to quantify the value of a word relative to the rest on the page. Initially, it was thought that the ideal method was to simply count the number of times a word appeared on the page. The more times it appeared, the more important the word was.

Read The Lowdown on Keyword Density

Article Writing for Back-Links
by Joe Eitel
2009-06-02

There are a number of ways you can get visitors to your website. The best way, of course, is to give them a reason to visit. Since many web users search for information, if you can show them that you have the information they're interested in, you can attract more visitors. Writing articles, especially if at least one of them goes viral, can help - if you do it correctly.

Indeed, one traditionally strong Internet marketing technique often employed by online businesses is writing expertise articles. Someone from an online company can write an article on just about any subject imaginable, as long as they are knowledgeable about it. Once they have written it, they publish it online and it circulates around the Internet. People read this article, and then, if they want to know more or just respect the knowledge in it, they may follow a link from the bottom to the website of the article's author.

The articles come in many shapes and sizes. They can be of any length, from as few as 100 words to thousands. They can cover any subject matter. Many of them are about the Internet, since most of the people online are interested in reading about it, but there are plenty of other topics as well. Sometimes the authors will research their articles, but if there is plenty of knowledge on the subject already, then it is not always necessary.

Read Article Writing for Back-Links

Website Affiliates
by Joe Eitel
2009-06-01

One of the more common Internet marketing techniques involves using affiliates. There are definite benefits and drawbacks to this approach, and the Internet gives it a special twist. Keep reading for a close look; maybe by becoming an affiliate - or using affiliates - you may improve your traffic, and your bottom line.

The idea of affiliates is similar to a traditional marketing technique of two companies helping each other out. For instance, when two companies that are similar in purpose but cover slightly different needs find that their customers have a high demand for one another, then they may decide to send customers to the other in exchange for the same service from the other company. The company does not lose any business this way, but gains a considerable amount from the other company.

Internet affiliates work pretty much the same way. A website may list a link on the side of its page to a similar service or another website that they find cool. The other website generally does not serve the exact save purpose and should not steal any business from the original website. In exchange, the other website should do the same. This can also be called "link sharing."

Read Website Affiliates

Tutorialized is dedicated to programming, designing, and many other
tech related tutorials.

Google Adword Campaign
How to build your own Google Adword Campaign. Easy to follow set of instructions.
Read the tutorial.

How to Promote Site to Increase Traffic
SEO is about promoting your site.
Read the tutorial.

Easy Search Engine Friendly URLs with mod_rewrite
Create search engine friendly URLs easily with mod_rewrite.
Read the tutorial.

How Search Engines Operate
How search engines and its spiders actually work?
Read the tutorial.

SEO and Link Building for Quality Traffic
Build quality traffic using your keywords! Here is how!
Read the tutorial.

Make Engines Read Keywords
Force search engines to read your keywords.
Read the tutorial.

How can this SEO Newsletter be better?

What do you like or dislike about this issue?
Is there a topic you want to learn more about?
What issues in search engine news are important to you? We'll consider your suggestions and ideas for improvement,
so please email us. Email us.

Any professional wants to get paid for their work, and SEOs are no exception. The nature of the work inspires some slightly different payment arrangements. This week's thread discusses the pros and cons of getting paid on commission, with far more good posts than I could include here. Be sure to stop by the thread and share your experiences!

Does Any SEO Take Commission?

I was recently offered an SEO position that will pay based on commission for an 8 month old website that has about 10,000 products for a very specific industry. The commission would be based on the growth of gross organic revenue.

Has anyone ever taken a commission like this before, and if so, how did it go? What are the factors I should consider before taking the position? Your thoughts would be much appreciated!

The problem.... what if they decide to break their relationship with you after you bust your *** building links for several months. Do you have perpetual claim to the revenue stream that you have built?

Better to take a commission for promoting their products on your own site as an affiliate. Since you don't control the full deal you can carry your rankings to another vendor if the relationship turns sour. If you do really well you can become a reseller.

Sure lots... but not with companies I don't have any clout with.

Commission is a way to manage a reward system... most companies that don't have an existing relationship with their commissioners use it as a means to manage risk.

There isn't anything wrong with that, but "IF" the system is to manage risk you should get a very high percentage on the first sales: 50% on first 10, 35% of next 10, 25% on next, and maybe 20% on everything after that.

That way the risk/reward ratio is favorable to you - for doing all the work on the company's "unrealized sales" (sales they would have never gotten without you).

Obviously since the first 10 sales came in "there is no risk" and your payout is deserving ... and these each month will be the sales that define the relationship... in hindsight the company will likely try to switch you to a salary role in the future to reduce your fees... but it was "all your risk up front" and now it's all your rewards.

That said, be honest with yourself... if you need to ask about this model you likely don't have to talent to predict your own lucrative future using it with any degree of certainty... the risk is "all yours."

Posts from this thread may have been abridged or removed. Forum members are responsible for the content of these posts.
Read the full thread.

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Consider the bar raised

Yahoo Closes 360

Yahoo 360 users can't say they weren't warned; the venerable search engine first announced two years ago that it planned to close 360. The closing of MASH, and the more recent closing of Geocities, should have been writing on the wall for the faithful. Now it's real.

If you own a Yahoo 360 account, you probably received an email recently that explained the site will close on July 13, 2009. Apparently, that date is written in stone. If you want to keep anything you have in your 360 account, you must move it by no later than July 12. At the very least, you need to save or download it before taking it elsewhere.

So where can you take it? Well, Yahoo is hoping that you'll start up a new Yahoo profile and take it there. If you don't like that option, Yahoo will let you “export your blog and all of your content...to any of the supported blogging systems,” according to a post on Yahoo 360's product blog by Melissa Daniels, Yahoo community manager. Fortunately, supported systems include some of the most popular ones: WordPress, Blogger, and MoveableType.

Daniels went to some effort to explain that Yahoo really is dedicated to making its profiles work, and keep it around for a while. Perhaps she's concerned that users will give up on Yahoo as a social networking platform. It's no wonder, either; with so many sites and services closing at the search engine, why should anyone believe that this one will stick around? The problem is, as Joseph Tarkakoff points out in a post on Paid Content, “When 360 shuts down on July 13, it will mark the official end of Yahoo's formal foray into social networking.”

Yet just last month, Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh told Reuters that the search engine wanted to buy companies that could help it become a bigger player in the social networking space. So what's going on here? It seems obvious that closing the various Yahoo sites amounts to some much-needed housecleaning, letting the search engine free up resources to be used on what is to come.

To all accounts, Yahoo's new profile system is relatively basic; there are a lot of things you could do with 360 that you can't do with your Yahoo profile. New features are coming, Daniels explained, but they'll take time to roll out. With the advent of Google Wave and so many other social networking sites with great functionality, that could be time the venerable search engine doesn't have...and time its former 360 users choose not to spend, unless Yahoo can offer them something truly compelling that they can't find somewhere else.