Overture or now known as Yahoo because of Yahoo’s takeover, was the original inventor of the use of the P4P or Pay for Performance. Overture saw that the internet was fast becoming the easiest and most convenient way to shop, and advertising was going to hit at an all time high because of the many businesses in the arena.

To get a person to go to a site than others, it needs to be very visible. Providing ads that could direct potential consumers and costumers to their site would allow them to have an increase in traffic as well as sales. Yahoo provides a service that can put a site or company’s ad in their sites that can be shown when certain keywords are inputted.

Yahoo offers a chance for any company to increase their traffic by using their services. With more people being aware of your site, there would be more traffic and visitors to your site given the chance to view your pages as well as your products. With even a small percentage of successful sales, with a high traffic volume this could still be a substantial figure for your company.

Getting a consistent substantial flow of website visitors is every company’s goal. Many methods are devised and utilized to ensure that there would be more people to boost the sales and to be aware of the existence of such a product or service. Website visitors are potentially the life blood of your internet based business.

Yahoo/Overture utilizes the same principle as Google’s Adwords. In fact, they are very similar to each other that they use keyword and keyword phrase searches and to determine which ads to show per search. When a person types in a keyword or keyword phrase to search for anything, the search engines gives out the results in a page. Then at the right side of the page, you will see selected ads that have paid for their ads to be viewed with certain keywords and keyword phrases searched.

For example, Lets say you run a car parts retail/wholesale site. You choose keywords that can prompt or trigger your ads to be shown in the page when a keyword is searched. When a search engine user types in Honda Accord, your ad may come up if you have designated that as one of your keywords. You don’t need to fully optimize your site with Search Engine Optimization methods and techniques.

While some labor so hard to make their site one of the high ranking sites per keyword search, you get the chance to be on the top of the list or at least in the first page of a search result increasing your chance to be clicked on. With that, you drive traffic and website visitors to your site a lot faster.

You will have to pony up some cash when using this service though. There are different ways Yahoo/Overture will charge you. It may be in the number of Keywords or Keyword phrases your ad uses or in the many times your ad is clicked on. Others offer many other services like having your ad show up not only in the search engine pages but also with some third party sites.

Third party sites support ads that have the same theme or niche as them. With more areas your ad is shown, you increase the chances of people knowing about your site or product. With more website visitors you increase the sales of your site which makes your investment with your ads a wise one.

With so many competitions in the internet based businesses, it is necessary to take a huge leap forward from the pack by advertising. Yahoo/Overture will be a great place to start. Many have utilized their services and have reaped the rewards of this decision. It’s a marketing strategy that will increase your website visitors as well as increase your sales resulting to profit.

It takes money to make money, while there are some methods that are basically low cost or free, using a marketing service such as what Yahoo/Overture offers will provide results faster and on a larger scale. Many businesses have learned this the hard way, don’t be counted with them.

Creating one of those is very simple, it’s not for just those popular sites. If your starting a blog or just haven’t added one yet because you don’t know how to, my simple instructions will have you one within minutes.

Why do I want One?

• Having uniqueness to your blog is something that attracts visitors. Having a FavIcon is part of personalising your blog.
• It looks much nicer if someone bookmarks your blog. They will see the icon and it’ll remind them that it’s your blog, it basically brands your website.
• They make you stand out from the crowd, especially to people who don’t have a FavIcon.

What do I need to make it Look like?
Choosing what your icon looks like is entirely upto you, but there are some things I could try to gather your ideas from.

• Your layout is a base for your FavIcon, if you see mine, I have a dominent colour of green in my layout and that is shown in my FavIcon. It gives the FavIcon a sense of belonging to your website.
• Take a picture on your website, maybe it’s your face and shrink it down.

How To Create It

1. Your going to need to create the image first of all. Make sure you take your time make sure the image size is 16×16 pixels. This is the required size for a FavIcon, it’s all the space you have to work your magic. You can create your image in paint or any other graphics program like Photoshop, it’s whichever you find most comfortable.

2. Time to make your file an .ico. .ico is the file extension for a FavIcon so you need to make it that. You can do this simply by uploading your image to websites like the ones listed below. They will automatically make your file an .ico if your program can’t.

• DynamicDrive - This website will automatically create a FavIcon from an image and create some other icons for you from an image, but if you have your own 16×16 image, just upload it and click ‘Create Icon’. Once it’s done download it again and you can go onto the next stage.
• FavIcon from Pics - Does basically the same thing, generates a FavIcon from a picture. Visit it here.There are many out there, but you only need to find a working one that will do the job.

3. You can now upload it to a directory however you usually upload your files. You can save it in a folder similar to ‘images’ if you like.
4. One final step, just add the following code to your website inbetween the < head > tags.

<link rel=”SHORTCUT ICON” type=”image/x-icon” href=”images/favicon.ico” mce_href=”images/favicon.ico”>

For those of you that don’t know what a permalink is, let’s start there. The permalink is the link that is visible in the browser window when you click on the heading of a blog post. This link by default should look something like this.

http://thatblogsite.com/?p=44

Simple right?

As awesome as Wordpress is, they manage to give you a terrible out-of-the-box configuration for permalinks. Not so good. But it’s not hard to change them, and I’ll show you how in just a minute. But first let’s talk about WHY you want to change your permalinks.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The default permalink structure is absolutely terrible, and serves little to no purpose when it comes to SEO. Why? Well, unless someone is searching for “?p=44″, then you are completely missing the boat when it comes to using your keywords in the title. We all know that incoming links are important for SEO, but, what’s even more valuable is a link that has our targeted keywords in it. A permalink is no different. It’s much more valuable to have a permalink with your keywords, rather than the default “ugly links” that Wordpress comes with.

Readability

I’m sure you’ve also been told that you should be writing for people, not search engines. Well, this is true here as well. The default permalink structure gives people absolutely no idea what they are reading. So, for example, let’s say that your friend Joe links to you on his blog, and uses a direct copy and paste of the permalink rather than adding anchor text. Well, people don’t have any clue what - http://thatblogsite.com/?p=44 means. Wouldn’t it be better if your permalinks were a bit more descriptive? Now, let’s say that Joe copy and pasted your permalink after you changed the structure. Doesn’t - http://thatblogsite.com/your-permalinks-are-ugly - look much better? It’s descriptive, great for SEO, and there is no mystery about what the readers are getting ready to read.

Changing Your Permalink Structure

1. Click on the “settings” tab in the upper right corner of your Wordpress dashboard.
2. Find the “permalinks” tab and click it.
3. Click the “custom structure” tab.  It should be set on default when you get there.  Make sure it’s on “custom structure”.
4. In the “custom structure” box, paste this - /%postname%/
5. DONE!

Pretty easy huh?

It happens to all of us, the dreaded “writers block”, or in our cases “bloggers block”.  But what do we do when adversity rears it’s ugly head?  We use these ten tips to beating bloggers block of course!

1. Write what you know. It’s much simpler to try to create a post if you are writing about something that you have a lot of knowledge about.  For example, I know a lot about internet marketing, seo, and blogging.  But if you asked me to write about Aviation, I’d be done after three posts.  Pick a good topic!
2. Use a list. Hmm.. I’m using a list, I wonder if I have bloggers block and don’t know it.  Using a list is the simplest, and most eye-pleasing way to drive home a few points.  People tend to like them, and they are often easier posts to write than regular posts.  Pick 7, 10, 12, or more bullet points, and get a list going!
3. Do a product review. There are literally millions of products out there you could be reviewing right now.  A lot of them are free… so get off your butt, and do some testing.
4. Publish a guest post. If you have guest posts waiting in the dashboard, use them!  I often save my guest posts for vacations, or times where I just can’t sit down to write.  They come in handy on these days, and are generally enough to get me going again for the next day!
5. Read some other blogs. By now, I hope that you’ve added a bunch of other blogs to your Rss reader.  Read them!  It’s not uncommon to find inspiration in a post created by someone else.  Just don’t copy it!
6. Do a link love session. This is done by simply linking to the best stories in your niche.  Your readers get to find other great blogs on your recommendation, and more often than not, the favor is returned.
7. Don’t write at all! It’s better to not write anything, than to write garbage.  So, if you simply can’t squeeze out a post, quit trying.
8. Go take a walk. Generally, the second I get away from the computer for an extended period of time, the more creative I start to feel.  Take in nature, and a post will come to you!
9. Answer a question. We all get questions in our comment field, answer them!  Use it to create a post, and it kills two birds with one stone.
10. I don’t know… I think I have bloggers block

As most of us already know, linkage data determines where you sit on Google’s food chain.  But what if I told you that you don’t have to have thousands of links to have a high ranking site?  In fact, it merely takes a few high quality links to have the same results as having thousands of links from lower quality sites.

The links that you should be targeting are high pagerank links, or .edu links.  Links from .edu sites are generally very trusted, and they hold a lot of value in Google’s algorithm.  These links come from colleges, universities, and research institutes across the globe, and can be just what you need to start building a high profile link portfolio.  But how do you get them?

The easiest way is to buy them.  Digitalpoint often has .edu links for sale in it’s forums.  They aren’t cheap, but being as valuable as they are, you wouldn’t expect them to be either.  Check out the forums at Digitalpoint and see if you can’t find a few.

The second method involves friends and family.  Some schools, offer free web pages, or even a social network for their students.  If you are enrolled, or have friends or family that are enrolled… ask them about this.  It’ll be free, and it gets you a few high quality .edu backlinks.

You can also try writing a high quality paper for a university, and see if they can use it as part of their course.  When they do this, it’s generally pretty easy to bargain a link or two out of them.  However, this is extremely time consuming.

Or, my favorite way to get .edu backlinks is by using our favorite search tool… Google.  You can type in this search string to pull up .edu sites that allow you to comment.

site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”comments closed” -”you must be logged in” “your topic”

site:.edu [finds edu domains]
inurl:blog [ find blogs]
“post a comment” [makes sure we can post to this blogs]
-”comments closed” [does not show these closed blogs]
-”you must be logged in” [does not show blogs where u need to log in]

Give it a try… see if you can find some great .edu backlinks!