New Yahoo CEO!!!

Despite Yahoo"S recent struggles, Semsl received another big bundle of stock otions last year that boosteed the value of his 2006 conpensation package to $71.7 m.

After exasperating investors for the most of last 18 months, Yahoo inc chairman Terry Semel finally found a way to please Wall Street by stepping aside as chief executive. It came a week after he faced off with shareholders disillusioned with the company's lack of performance as internet seach leader Google inc pulled further ahead in the lucrative online advertising market.

The malaise had contributed to a nearly 30% drop in yahoo"s stock price since the end of 2005. To fill the void created by Semel"s departure Yahoo appointed company co-founder Jerry Yang as its new CEO and named Susan Decker as its President.

Wall Street applauded the new pecking order. Yahoo shares gained 81% finished at $28.12 or 4.7%.

Retiring Feedstats

As important to us to be constantly adding new features and functionality for you guys, sometimes we have to retire or prune things that just didn’t work out or that we don’t have time to focus on right now.
So today we bid farewell to our good friend Feed Stats, which tried to tell you how many subscribers you had to your blog and what software they used. However it never grew out of that awkward teenager stage, and wasn’t used very frequently.
The code isn’t dead, just taking a break. Perhaps someday feed stats will return, but when they do we hope to do a much better job of collecting and presenting the data.

Top Paying Keywords

OverviewThe TopPayingKeywords database presents the keyword prices of the 30,000+ most popular keyword searches, in addition to hundreds of high-priced keywords that we have brainstormed. By identifying the highest paying keywords on the Internet, the database allows website owners to dramatically improve earnings in Google’s AdSense™ program.

Why the Price of Keywords MatterGoogle charges advertisers on a price per click (PPC) basis.

That is, advertisers pay only when a user clicks on their advertisement. Advertisers bid against each other to receive better placement in the results, and the bidding price for each keyword differs.
For example, the keyword “weather” is only worth 5 cents or less to most advertisers, while keywords such as “mortgage” often yield $5 or more per click. Since Google splits its advertising revenue with you on a click-by-click basis, you obviously want the ads that Google delivers to include the highest paying keywords.

How to Profit from TopPayingKeywords.com

By optimizing the text of your website to include high priced keywords, Google will deliver ads based on these higher priced keywords, thus yielding you significantly more revenue per click.
Specifically, by understanding which keywords are the highest priced, you can generate more revenues by:

• Modifying the text of existing web pages
• Creating new web pages for existing websites; and/or
• Creating completely new websites

One key to success in the first and second bullets is finding correlations between your existing content and new, higher-priced content. For instance, a site about baby names (baby names is a $0.05 keyword) could include content about life insurance (life insurance is a $6.00 keyword). In this case, the correlation is that when parents have children, they should make sure they have the best life insurance policy.

Case StudyThe founders of TopPayingKeywords.com operate a website that experiences a 1.5% click through rate (1.5% of page viewers click on one of our Google AdSense ads – this is the industry norm). However, our website has an average price per click of up to $4, which is 10 to 20 times the industry average, because we have optimized our site around the top paying keywords. Our site routinely generates $1,000 to $2,000 per day in revenues.
How TopPayingKeywords.com Develops our DatabaseTopPayingKeywords.com spends hundreds of hours each month to determine the highest paying keywords. First, we research the price of the top 30,000 most heavily searched keywords and assess the price of each. We then brainstorm other keywords that are similar to the most expensive keywords on this list that may not be in the top 30,000 most heavily searched keyword list.

What you Get TopPayingKeywords.com

Our database is available in Microsoft Excel format and includes more than 30,000 keywords on which advertisers currently bid. For each keyword, we include the average price of the number three paying ad on that keyword in the major pay per placement search engines (e.g., Google, Overture).

We include the average price of the number three paying ad since this is most representative of the real price of that keyword. This is because advertisers only have to pay one cent above the next highest bid. For instance if one advertiser bids $20 for a keyword and the second highest bidding advertiser only bids 40 cents for that keyword, the first advertiser only pays 41 cents per click. In addition, sometimes the second advertiser bids $19.99, simply to force the first advertiser to pay the full $20 per click. In such a case, neither of these bids represent the true price of that keyword.
On the other hand, the third highest bid is often the most stable, and in all cases, the first and second bidders must pay at least as much as the third priced bid. So, we include this price, even though it may be slightly less than the price of the first two bidded keywords.
Sample Listings/Current DatabaseThe current database was updated on April 4, 2007. The database includes 30,000+ keywords that have at least three advertisers paying at least 10 cents per click on a major pay per placement search engine.

The database is sorted both by price and popularity. The following is a sample of our database:

Popularity Rank Keyword Price :

2670 Arabic $0.18
2671 Trucking $0.64
2672 Lake Tahoe $1.25
Loan Rates $3.77
2674 Alamo $0.39
267 Anti Aging $4.12


The keyword pricing of the current database is distributed as follows:


Keyword Price Keywords

$10.00 - $20.00 18
$5.00 - $9.99 275
$3.00 - $4.99 398
$2.00 - $2.99 938
$1.00 - $1.99 3,549
$0.50 - $0.99 7,490
$0.25 - $0.49 7,299
$0.10 - $0.24 10,241

Not-so ClearType :: Apple FTW

There’s been much hoo-hah regarding the font rendering in Apple’s beta release of Safari for Windows. I decided to install the beta myself and see what all the fuss is about.
Here’s why I think Apple gets it right and why Microsoft could learn some lessons from them:
Apple’s font renderer more accurately maintains the intended look of the font. It does this by smoothing the edges and corners of characters where appropriate which can sometimes lead to small letters looking a little blurry. Microsoft’s ClearType technology attempts to make fonts sharper and more readable by jamming characters into pixels in a miscellaneous and sometimes unpleasant fashion.
I’m not a designer, but I own a few typography books and have a strong appreciation for the topic. Which side you choose in this debate is likely to be influenced by which platform you use. However, I don’t see why Microsoft needs to remove the designers ability to use a font in exactly the way it was intended, especially when you consider the availability of various fonts designed specifically for on-screen reading.
OK, so to most seasoned Windows users Safari probably looks a little strange; we’ve got years of mutilated descenders to blame for that. That fact is, designers should be trusted to make smart decisions about the font they want to use and how they want to use it.
Full disclosure: I am currently a Mac user but spend an unfortunate amount of time using Windows on Parallels.
Anyone care to weigh-in (while I don my flame proof suit)? Is it right to morph a font into something that’s close to what it should look like for the sake of readability? Or is typography a sacred art that shouldn’t be messed with?

Basic SEO Tactics For Bloggers

Bloggers are amazing for a number of different reasons, but one that has always stood out for me is the need for bloggers to be experts in many different fields, from writing, to design and marketing and advertising to name but a few. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for those who might not be familiar with the term, is, according to Adwordsedge, a general term used to describe specific techniques that can be used on websites in order to rank favorably with search engine. It can also apply as a term to describe people who actually do SEO for a living, as a noun as opposed to a verb.
But for this guide we’ll take a look at the search engine optimization as another tool in the ways you can promote your blog. This guide is by no means complete, or even heavy in detail, but is meant as a basic view of tactics and things that work to assure that you blog can be found, and hopefully discovered by people using search engines.Domain nameIf you’re serious about getting a good spot in the search engines, or even about blogging in general, you need your own domain name. First and foremost they are cheap, so there is little excuse for you not to own one. I can go back to 97 when I first bought a domain name, I think I paid about $120 USD for 2 years for it. Today I pay $8.95 per year, and some sites charge even lower than this. Hosting for your domain is pretty cheap as well, with plenty of quality offerings out there for under $10 USD per month, of even $100 USD per year. Some can be as low as a couple of dollars a month, the price of a cup of coffee.
StructureThere are two schools of thought in regards to the structure of your domain name: practical or colorful. Practical domain names involve at least one key word that states the topic of your blog, but ideally more. For example Weblog Empire’s The Gadget Blog has the URL of http://ww.thegadgetblog.com/ Unimaginative, sure, but highly practical. Another example is PVRSpot, the Weblog Empire PVR News and views blog with the URL of http://www.pvrspot.com/. One keyword in the URL followed by another word that isn’t relevant but tries to be catchy. For colorful go straight to Gawker Media and do not pass go…domain names such as Kotaku, Gawker, Wonkette to name but a few. Personally, as you can see I generally prefer practical, because having keywords in the URL make it easier for your blog to be picked up for those keywords in Google. Colourful domain names are great, but lose on two counts for me: firstly they are harder to get search engine traffic from, and secondly they can be difficult to spell as well, which can mean lost traffic.
HostingThere are lots of different thoughts on hosting when it comes to search engine optimization, and I’m not going to pretend that I know which ones are right. There is more information in my guide here for DIY Blog Hosting that may be of interest if you are looking for a host, but as a rough list there is some things I can share from experience. Firstly, there are no major problems with shared hosting. Some people will tell you that shared hosting is the root cause of all evil and it can hamper you in getting your site indexed. I’ve never experienced it over maybe half a dozen hosts in the last 3 years. Personally I have my own a unique IP address for my sites that’s exclusive to the network not each blog. This is usually a cheap add on for many hosts, so if you are concerned about shared hosting I’d recommend getting your own IP address just to be sure.
Meta-tagsMake sure your blogs have appropriate information in the meta tags so the search engines now what they are looking at. Most major blogging packages will allow you to do with from within their administration areas.
SEF Blog URLsMore available here on this one.
LinksLinks are the No.1 most important feature of getting a decent place in the search engines, and subsequently in building your site. First and foremost though: don’t go out and do silly things like setting up link farms (sites that are there for no other reason than to provide links) or posting to FFA Links pages, because generally speaking they don’t work. There are some legitimate strategies for getting links to your blog.- Link from your own blogs if you own others is the easiet one. In may case I can usually get most search engines to visit within 24-48 hours to a new site using my own blogs alone.- Swap links with like-minded bloggers: put up a notice saying your happy to swap links, or if you see someone else with a similar notice take up the offer. Where possible keep roughly on topic where you can- Buy links: text links are the best in terms of SEO, make sure where possible its not behind code/ script and don’t pay top dollar. Even if its a week or a few weeks, you get picked up more by search engines and you’ll even get some extra traffic as well.- Comment: seek out like minded blogs and comment on them, although they may not count with sites that use link=nofollow (a tag that blocks search engine tracking if you like) it exposes you and your blog to new readers who then might visit and put links on their own blogs. Its always important to remember secondary effects as well. Weblogs Inc., has the best blogs now for commenters because they reward commenters with a table which ranks their posts and provides links to their sites. Please though, with all blogs, make sure that you are interested in the post and you’ve got something useful to say. Never, ever comment spam.- Advertising: although they are not suppose to make a difference I’ve found Google Adwords helpful in building a bit of extra traffic which has then provided links as well, secondary effect again.
I hope this is useful for those perhaps new to blogging or as a refresher to others. If your more interested in SEO tactics there are any number of sites out there on the subject you can read, but my final advice is this: if you don’t feel confortable with the tactics being suggested by myself or anyone else out there on the net: don’t do them. Many tactics suggested elsewhere are morally wrong, and in many cases break the rules at the major search engines. Sure, some can deliver short term gain, but they rarely ever deliver long term gain.