Simplosys Solutions Blog

Don't let people make SEO a big messy maze. It's not. It's simple, if you keep it simple. At Simplosys, we like simple. So much so that we named the company after that :)

Now, this doesn't mean it's EASY. There's a difference. The concept is simple. Which is what you need to understand. VERY well. Then the implementation will depend on how well you execute the simple concept. But if your understanding of the basic concept is flawed, you'll never get results, really, never. 

 So, here you go:

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Tons of people, including greats such as Warren Buffett (who actually invented the concept) recommend value investing. The idea of buying shares of companies that are fundamentally sound, but trading well below their actual long term potential. Sounds great in theory and has worked well over the years, for one simple reason - the overall market grew as well at a pretty reasonable pace. So if you simply bought the market (sau DJI index fund) and stayed with it for 10 years, from any period between 1940 and 2000, you'd make roughly 5-10% per annum, which is pretty good. So it makes sense to pick ones that will beat the market, so you'd make even more than that average, but also run the risk of making lesser. Risk, reward, I get it.

But from 1998 to today, the market's actually DOWN about 0.5%. That's like 12 years of economic development with nothing to show for it. In this market, how the heck are you going to invest in companies when fundamentals don't seem to matter? Everything goes down when China changes an economic policy or Spain declares bankruptcy or Indian real estate approaches a bubble. It's all way too interconnected. And noone, NOONE can predict what'll happen in all these places, all correctly. So it's impossible to pick stocks anymore for the long term, or so it seems, at least for ordinary investors that don't spend all day keeping track of Reuters press releases hoping to get information before everyone else, but in vain.

Long term investing is dead. Why? Because there is no such thing as long term anymore. Is long term 2 years, 3 years, 5 years? The future of the world economy is hardly something anyone foresees at this point, beyond 1 year at least. Most developed economies have debt to GDP ratios of over 50%. If your annual income was $50k and you had a 25k debt at 5%, what would you do? Borrow more, so you can go to school to learn more and make more money some day in the future? Well, most people would take up a job and pay off the $25k, or at least most of it, before getting more debt. That's because in this economy, two years from now, the job market could be even worse, so it makes sense to not run big loans and put yourself at risk of bankruptcy. But sovereign nations don't get that. They do exactly the opposite. Issue more debt, so they can build more schools and roads, as investments for the future. A future, that most people don't see as very rosy.

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Article Marketing is perhaps the easiest and most common form of link building. Everyone does it. Either themselves or through their SEO or a link building service. There is nothing wrong with it when it's done right and in moderation.

One problem with article marketing is that it's difficult to measure results right away. Directories take days or even weeks to approve an article and this can make it hard to know whether your submission was right, was approved, Etc., especially if you are submitting tens or even hundreds of articles, for yourself or multiple clients. 

Here's some tips that I've used that have helped me increase the acceptance rate and stay on the good books with article directories that I submit to. 

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Fidelity, Scottrade, Schwab and most other large trading brokerage firms allow multi-user accounts these days. This is something that I did not know and thought I should share with you guys because you may benefit from this too.

Read this conversation which explains it pretty well. This was with Fidelity but should work in a similar fashion with other brokerages.

Always remember NOT to trust just anyone, needless to say, your buddy or uncle doesn't qualify (unless he/she also happens to be a professional with loads of experience and credibility...

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According to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the research and support of entrepreneurship, in the past decade the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity belongs to those between 55 and 64 years old. According to the study, "The 20 to 34 age bracket...which we usually identify with risk-taking youth (think Facebook and Google(GOOG Quote)), has the lowest rate."

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10669129/1/retire-or-start-a-new-business.html?puc=_tscrss

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http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/resources/article.php/3656806

This is an EXCELLENT piece - precise and informative on when, why and how to go about collecting sales tax on your ecommerce sales. If you have a website and are selling anything "tangible" on it then most likely you need to pay sales tax in one more more jurisidictions. Even if you sell something intangible such as digital products - ebooks or software, you still need to pay sales taxes in some states. 

 Read the article. If you are planning to be in Ecommerce as a career or a serious business initiative, it's worth knowing and doing the right thing upfront instead of paying back-taxes or pentalties after an audit 14 years from now.

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I've been dabbling with the idea of setting up several 1-800 numbers for customer support for my Ecommerce sites. I am based out of San Diego CA but my staff is all over the world. So that makes that whole process a bit more complicated - at least that's what I used to think.

First thought was to do that with Vonage or other VoIP service. But given the poor Internet bandwidth that my Indian and Phillipine office gets, that was out of the question almost right away. Not worth the constant troubleshooting and mess. Even though my budget was small and call volume was likely to be very small - less than a 1000 calls per month, but I wanted something reliable.

I searched and considered several companies - JetNumbers.com, RingCentral.com, Etc. But none had the features for international call forwarding that I wanted - at a decent price. Until I ran into this provider - Call Me 800. They seem to have a great product out there for international call forwarding.

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Five-six years ago, people hadn't still figured out the Google formula as clearly. Good ol' dark ages when SEO was a term not many even knew about. Times when you could rank high with just a few links from random sites via link exchanges. Times that have changed for the better now.

Now,  link exchanges are almost a thing of the past. They still work and are beneficial to get direct traffic but getting links from links pages with tons of other links are not really that helpful anymore. From highly relevant pages, OK, may be..

 But why am I telling you stuff you already know? Let's get to the point. I know you want to know what works today. Here you go. This is it.

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Contests make for great SEO! We talked about Hosting Contests to Generate Links earlier and we've seen this work more and more. Here are some ideas to host contests that serve more than one purpose.

 1. Caption contest

Put up a funny picture relevant to your website. Then invite your visitors to log in to your site (there you go, more registered users) and write a caption for that image (more content). Have others vote for the best caption (more user interaction) and then give away something super cool for that audience as prizes (this gets proomted on giveaways sites and usually catches on in twitter, digg, etc. - so more buzz and links!). And the best part? You don't have to offer expensive prizes. Just offer them something that's valuable to them and overstocked with you or a service that's not much of an additional cost to you or your staff.

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I love it! Slicker, faster, and more integrated with the rest of Yahoo.

 Now only if Yahoo actually made similar progress on their Calendar tool, I'd be in love with them even more.

 I've always thought that Yahoo kicks google's ass when it comes to mail. Gmail is the most confusing email client I've seen. The only  thing it does better than Yahoo mail is faster results on maibox searches. But yahoo takes just a few fractions of a second longer and I can live with that. Their mail folders, automatically moving emails to folders by clicking numbers on the keyboard, just well organized email lists, easy flagging, unlimited email and RELIABILITY (it's hardly ever down in the 10 years that I've had it) just is awesome. Having maintained exchange servers for clients, I can imagine how hard it must be to pull off an email service like that for 100  million users. Yahoo, your email rocks!

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