A search engine optimization chokehold can leave your website unable to perform and gasping for air.  SEO searches rely on an organic recipe that requires constant mixing of the right flavors.  Add too much or too little of one thing and you get something worse than a rookie barista concocting a double tall half-caf soy milk cherry-peanutbutter flavored, sugar-free, extra whip latte sprinkled with cinnamon.  Do the right thing though and you’ll find more success than Martha Stewart achieves in a batch of blueberry scones.  Sometimes the easiest way to figure how to do something right, is to recognize what you’re doing wrong.

The SEO Stiflers

1) Lack of Consistency: Spiders control search functions and are designed to find associations within a web site.  This means links, metatags, articles - all the inner workings of a site, must contain a sense of continuity of content that’s literally spelled out.  A web site will lose positioning in search results if there are unrelated articles, errant links, or copy in general that’s not pertinent to the main product or site theme. 

2) Inadequate Keyword Choice - it’s important to have a pulse on not only your market, but how knowledgeable they are about your product or service.  Knowing how your specific market essentially shops will enable you to effectively predict how they will search.  Chose keywords that are specific to your buying market, not the general market. 

3) Link Farms - Google’s page rank algorithm quickly put an end to the rule of pages that contain thousands and thousands of generally irrelevant links.  The algorithm instead gives search result precedence to more ‘valuable’ sites that contain consistent content. 

These are just a few of the many things you can do to increase your SEO prowess. 

Increasingly, as mobile phone technology continues to advance, companies are focusing on inventing new ways customers can use phones to communicate while also targeting new ‘targets’ for lack of a better term, to communicate with.  Two such companies are Diebold Inc. and NCR Corp. as reported in an article by the Associated Press.  Both companies see automated teller machines (ATM) as an opportunity to use cell phones to not only obtain cash more quickly, but with increased security as well. 

How can using a cell phone save time at the ATM?  Diebold holds the patents to technologies that allow mobile phones to find the nearest bank/ATM, communicate with the bank/ATM, and order cash remotely.  Time is saved by one, having instantaneous directions in hand, and two, by skipping standing in bank lines or even entering pin codes and directions at the ATM.  With Diebold technology, customers would be able to simply enter a secret code when at the ATM, and the machine will respond according to the request made via the mobile phone.  This process eliminates the need to enter a pin or security code as well. 

NCR took fraud prevention once step further by creating a system that enables ATM receipts to be sent directly to the customers’ mobile phone or PDA.  This way the customer would always be automatically informed if someone other than him/herself was withdrawing money.