Iron Monkey Ventures

Great article on what it means and takes to be an entrepreneur.  It was written 1997, but it still applies

http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/community/bmag/sbsm0397/attitude.html

http://www.linkbuilding.org/guide/tips.asp

Short list of things to do for SEO

Content

1. Provide content, not just links, not just images.
2. Use meta-data to describe your site and content.
3. Check for broken links and correct HTML.
4. Fill in “alt” in your image tags.

Backend

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dashboard – submit/verify your website, create a sitemap

Completing these steps will make sure you get listed on search engines and prepare you for the next steps – marketing and building links.

See Vaughns Google search engine SERP Ranking Factors SEO Checklist for a much more detailed and comprehensive list than what I have here.
Vaughn also lists things to avoid.  Which is just as, if not more, important than things to do.

I’ve been twittering or tweeting or twitting. . . using Twitter for a while now.  It’s a great tool to listen in on conversations and get the pulse of what’s going.

I use it to communicate to my clients and to follow the communications of people I’m interested in.  I see great potential in use Twitter as a marketing tool.  As we get ready to launch Parentville.com, Twitter will be a channel to communicate the launch and happenings.  I follow @pleasedressme as they developed their site and eagerly waited for their launch.  I was informed of new updates to their index.  Great job guys!

Brian Solis has a great primer on what twitter is and related services and tools.

Sign up for your own account and follow me on twitter at @lmai to see what’s going on in my head.

I have talked to many small business and website owners who set up a website and wonder why their site is buried several pages deep on search result pages.  They expect someone to get them listed at the top of natural search results within a week.  That might have been possible a few years ago, but not anymore.

Search engines are smart.  They know when you’re trying to dupe them and they don’t like it.  Google has a habit of penalizing websites that break their rules.  They are aware of the link building sites and services.

You business was probably not an overnight success.  You had to market your business and build a customer base.  It’s the same with SEO  – to be listed on page one of search results takes some time and a little effort.

Please Google . . .tell us why it’s down

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_33/b4096000952343.htm

Business Week article says Facebook execs are selling their shares.

2 interesting things
1.  There really isn’t supposed to be a market for this, and VC firms frown upon this.  Apparently FB is addressing this internally.
2.  The valuation is around $3.5 – $5 billion.  That’s way below the $15 billion valuation Microsoft paid.

• Remember everything. | Evernote Corporation
  (tags: web2.0 web software productivity tools)
• Digsby = IM + Email + Social Networks
  (tags: web2.0 software networking social tools)

Interesting image.  Searches for VC and PE drop dramitically over the weekends.

http://google.com/insights/search/#cat=&q=%22venture%20capital%22%2C%22private%20equity%22&geo=&date=today%203-m&clp=&cmpt=q

So what does get searched for on the weekends?

Oh well. . there’s no way to do this because you can’t get the granuality

I used trends and it gave some interesting glimpes into what people were searching for.  Now Google just announced yet another beta product – Insight for Search.

“Today, we’re launching Google Insights for Search, a new product designed with the advertiser in mind. It provides more flexibility and functionality for advertisers and marketers to understand search behavior, and adds some cool new features like a world heat map to graphically display search volume and regional interest.”

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10008339-93.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/business/media/06adco.html

http://google.com/insights/search/

Now let’s see what we can do with it…