Here are some of the more prevalent myths I hear and see bandied about in SEO articles, at SEO conferences, in SEO blogs and on SEO forums:

SEO Myth #1: You Need Special Search Engine Pages.

While it’s not as prevalent as it used to be, we still get calls from companies who want us to create some sort of “SEO landing pages.” While landing pages often make sense for paid search campaigns such as Google AdWords, they’re unnecessary for organic SEO campaigns. Well, I shouldn’t say that they’re unnecessary – it’s just that your SEO landing pages shouldn’t be something outside of your site. They should already exist as an integral part of it. If those aren’t currently bringing you search engine traffic, it doesn’t mean you need to add new pages, it means you have to optimize your existing ones better.

SEO Myth #2: You Need to Optimize for Just One Keyword Phrase Per Page.

Many, many SEOs and businesses believe that you should optimize each page of your site for just one keyword phrase. Their thinking is that you will keep a strong focus on that one keyword phrase. The problem with this is, first, it’s very difficult if not impossible to write a page in a natural manner while you’re trying to focus on just one keyword phrase. And second, it’s a waste of a good page!

Why optimize for just one keyword phrase when you can optimize it for 3 or even 5 keyword phrases? The more keyword phrases you optimize a page for (within reason), the more targeted search engine traffic you will receive. If you look at your web analytics right now, you’ll typically see that each page of your site is already bringing in traffic from various forms of numerous keyword phrases. It’s not only okay to optimize for more than one phrase, but in my opinion it’s critical to your website and to search engine success.

SEO Myth #3: You Can’t Use Tables in Your HTML Code.

This one makes me want to scream. HTML tables have been easily spiderable by search engines since the search engines were newly hatched. As far as I know, table code hasn’t ever been anything that choked the search engines. I think this myth was propagated by website developers who advocate tableless designs to make you think you’ll somehow get better rankings out of their designs. You won’t.

SEO Myth #4: You Must Use Text Links, not Image Links.

Nope. Like tables, the search engines have been able to follow and index image links since their very early days. You certainly don’t have to ruin a beautiful website design that uses images for the primary navigation because you think it’s better for SEO. Just be sure to use the same words you’d use in your anchor text links in your image alt attribute text (alt tags), and you’ll be good to go for the search engines.

SEO Myth #5: You Can’t Use Flash on Your Website.

Yes, you can! While I don’t recommend that you create your entire website in Flash, using bits of Flash here and there for some cool effects will not bother or choke the search engines in the least. They don’t punish, penalize or otherwise nuke into oblivion sites that have Flash on them. You should of course avoid putting important content into your Flash elements, and also remember that some mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad don’t support Flash. But if you add alternative text for non-Flash-enabled browsers, all should be well.

SEO Myth #6: Google’s Link: Operator Tells You All the Links that Google Knows About.

No, no, and double no! Typing link:www.yoursite.com into Google’s search box often won’t even show you any links, let alone all of your links. And when it does show you some, they’re usually not the best ones. Don’t even bother to use this command because it is useless at best. While there are some helpful tools that can find some backward links, there is no foolproof method for finding out about all the links that point to your site or to your competitors’ sites. The good news is, just because you can’t find them all doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Keep making a great site and getting the word out about it, and you’ll keep building up your link profile, whether or not you can generate an accurate list of them.

SEO Myth #7: Toolbar PageRank = Real PageRank.

Most people who’ve learned a bit about SEO have seen Google’s PageRank toolbar graph at one point or another. It supposedly shows the importance in Google’s eyes of any given URL. Unfortunately, it’s not even close to an accurate representation of any page’s importance to Google.

That said, don’t let that fact lull you into thinking that PageRank – that is, the real PageRank that Google, Inc. knows about your website – is not important. It’s extremely important in how your site will perform in the search results for your targeted keyword phrases; there’s just no way for you to truly know exactly what it is.

SEO Myth #8: Google or other organizations can certify SEO companies or declare them the Best/Top SEO in the world.

Despite what some SEO companies would like you to believe, there is no such thing as an SEO certification. No organization currently exists that can certify that any company is qualified to perform search engine optimization services. There are no definitive tests that an SEO company can take to prove that they are qualified, and there are no courses that, when passed, will prove that a company can do SEO. Yes, there are courses people can take that will provide them with a certificate of completion for that course, but don’t ever believe that a certificate of that sort has any real meaning beyond the completion of the course.

There are also lists and directories of SEO companies who pay a fee for the honor of being labeled the “#1 SEO company!” If you are ever in the market for SEO services, don’t let those fake paid-for awards trick you into thinking that the SEO company must be good or the best. While it’s possible they may be a perfectly fine company, they may not be. Paying for a “best” label doesn’t magically make a company any good. It just means they are willing to spend the money it takes to purchase the label. Much to the surprise of unwitting SEO clients, award sites are not actual rating or ranking SEO companies based on any skill sets.

Have you fallen for any of these SEO myths before?

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It is all good advice but kind of general and already well known (for the past decade.)

But there are always things a search engine will not tell you. And, of course, these are the things that make all the difference in your SEO efforts and results. That said; here are eight things that Bing does not want you to know (or you can skip to the Magic Formula section at the end):

1.) Your Domain Name Matters – A Lot

Search for just about anything on MSN / Bing and at least three of the top five matches will have some version of that keyword as the domain name. For example if you wanted to optimize for the keyword ‘my domain’ you should try to get the domain name ‘mydomain.com.’ If that is taken, opt for ‘my-domain.com.’ If that’s taken try for a name starting with ‘mydomain’ and ending with a word that is commonly associated. This is called LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing. A good example would be ‘mydomainname.com’ or ‘my-domain-name.com.’ BTW, Bing treats dashes as a space so as long as long as the dashes merely separate words, they are treated much like the non dash version.

2.) There is No Sandbox

Here’s some great news for anyone just getting started. Bing does not seem to care about the age of your domain name. There is no ‘sandbox’ like Google has. Many people, myself included, have registered brand new domains and had them ranking in a matter of days.

3.) DotCom Trumps DotNet

Today some search engines like Google will often give .net and .com virtually the same value, and possibly higher value for a .org that is for a recognized non-profit organization. Bing however appears to prefer the .com version. You can even see instances where a ‘.co.uk’ site gets high rankings simply because it uses the exact keyword in the domain name and .co is close enough to .com.

4.) We Like Sub Domains

Most web hosts will let you add sub domains to your website. On Bing, if you have the sub domain mydomain.mydomain.com you are in for some potentially great rankings. The same is true if you have my.domain.com, but to a slightly lesser degree.

5.) Less is More – Part One

We have been trained by Google to try to have hundreds of pages of quality content on every website. Bing adheres to the old policy that they are indexing web ‘pages’ not web ‘sites’ (like Google says they do, but Bing appears to really mean it.) This means each page is treated on its own merit so a site with one page has the same chances of being ranked as a site with 100 pages, because each page is genuinely treated individually.

6.) Less is More – Part Two

The same rule as above goes for on-page text. Pages with 800 to 1,200 words seem to do best on Google but on Bing the reverse is true, with 250 to 500 words being the magic number. Just do not overuse your keyword.

7.) Links are Nice But Not Required

Forget about spending your life building an ever growing number of inbound links for Bing. They do not need them. Your site, for now at least, is judged by its own merits, page by page.

8.) Be Bold not Strong

The original SEO method dating back to 1996 was using the H1 or ‘strong’ heading tags in your HTML. Forget them for now. Bing gives higher priority to how you would express importance in a word processor document; larger font and bolded text as the main markers.

Summary: I build hundreds of Bing (formerly MSN) targeted mini sites every year using the information above (as it has evolved) and the results have been consistent top ten rankings. You can do it too!

Here’s my magic formula for a one hour top ranking:

A.) Get the .com version of a three to four word keyword as the domain name (dashes are fine.)

B.) Use the domain name as the page heading in a bolded font, slightly larger than the paragraph text.

C.) Write 400 words of natural sounding text using the keyword up to five times.

D.) Mention the keyword once in the first sentence and once in the final sentence of the page – then up to three times scattered throughout the remainder.

E.) Bold one instance of the keyword. Italicize one instance of the keyword. Use one instance of the keyword as a link back to the same page.

F.) Always fill in your Title, Description and Keywords META tags. That’s it.

Good luck and take care!

PS: This works for Yahoo too.

If you are starting off setting up a brand new domain, here are some of the things you need to know to incorporate into your new site’s design. Plus you need to pick your domain name with SEO in mind, don’t have your domain name work against you.

If you are preparing to buy a domain from someone else you really need to keep these factors in mind before you pay for something you may regret later.

The measureable factors that affect your SEO are:

1) Backlinks

The more relevant links there are to your website the more SEO value it will carry. Obviously a new domain will not have any backlinks to it yet. If you can buy an established site with a lot of relevant backlinks that will make your life easier as creating these links to your site can be quite time consuming.

2) Google PageRank (or PR)

Google automatically checks for the quantity and also the quality of backlinks there are to your website. This along with some other factors will determine the pagerank for each page on your website from 0 – 10 (0 for new pages & 10 for authority sites such as CNN.com).

These numbers are calculated to the power of 10, so for example a PR3 is 10 times more powerful than a PR2. So the higher ranking the more powerful it will be.

3) Age of Domain

The age of a Domain is determined from the date it was registered. Age is also an important SEO factor as Google puts a lot more trust in a site which has been around for some time, rather than the new kid on the block.

4) History of Domain

If the domain name you are looking at purchasing did have content on it before which was related to the niche you are going into, then the history of that domain is good and Google will reward you.

On the reverse side if the domain had content that was not related to the niche or was of questionable quality then the bad history of that domain could hurt your SEO. So in this case you would probably be better off to register a brand new domain in your niche.

5) High Value DMOZ & Yahoo! Directory Listings
If you can get your hands on an aged domain name which already has a listing in DMOZ or in the Yahoo! Directory, then you will be saving yourself a lot of time, money and effort. It is very difficult and expensive to get these listings.

6) Indexing

If you are starting a brand new site then clearly you need to get your web pages listed on Google or the other search engines., otherwise known as getting your pages index. This is how people will find you. The more indexed pages a site has the more weight it will have with the various search engines.

So now you know some of the SEO factors to watch out for when deciding whether to buy a domain name or start from scratch.

You do not want to be penalized for things you really had nothing to do with, but why don’t you take advantage of a domain for sale with SEO factors working in your favor?

Enjoy!

FTP Clients:
CoreFTP -http://www.coreftp.com/
Filezilla -http://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla
miFiles -http://www.simdata.com.au/mifiles.html
SmartFTP -http://www.smartftp.com/

FTP Servers:
Cerberus -http://www.cerberusftp.com/
FileZilla -http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/
Golden FTP Server -http://www.goldenftpserver.com
Quick ‘n Easy FTP Server -http://www.pablovandermeer.nl/ftp_server.html
SlimFTPd -http://www.whitsoftdev.com/slimftpd
TYPSoft FTP Server -http://en.typsoft.com/
WarFTPD -http://www.jgaa.com/

HTML Editors:
1st page 2000 -http://www.evrsoft.com/download.shtml
AceHTML -http://freeware.acehtml.com/download.html
Aracnophilia -http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/
FoxEditor -http://foxeditor.sourceforge.net/
HTML-Kit -http://www.chami.com/html-kit/
NVU -http://www.nvu.com/index.html
Selida -http://www.amaryllis.8m.com/
Trellian webPAGE -http://webpage.vendercom.com/
TSW WebCoder -http://www.tsware.net/

Image viewers:
Ahaview -http://www.aha-soft.com/ahaview/ahaviewfree.exe
FastStone Image Viewer -http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm
Irfanview -http://www.irfanview.com/
Picasa -http://www.picasa.com/content/download.php
Shell Extension -http://www.firmtools.com/products/shellextension/
SlowView -http://www.slowview.at/
XNView -http://www.xnview.com/

Instant Messengers:
AMSN -http://amsn.sourceforge.net/index.php
Gaim -http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
Google Talk -http://www.google.com/talk/
IM2:http://www.im2.com
Mercury Messenger -http://www.mercury.to/
Miranda IM -http://www.miranda-im.org/
Pandion -http://www.pandion.be/
PSI -http://psi.affinix.com/
qip -http://www.qip.ru/
Skype -http://www.skype.com/
SIM -http://sim-icq.sourceforge.net/
TerraIM -http://terraim.sourceforge.net/
Trillian Basic -http://trillian.cc/downloads

Internet Explorer Front-Ends:
AM Browser -http://www.ambrowser.com/
AOL Browser -http://beta.aol.com/projects/aolbrowser/
Avantbrowser -http://www.avantbrowser.com/
Maxthon -http://www.maxthon.com/
SlimBrowser -http://www.flashpeak.com/sbrowser/sbrowser.htm

IRC Clients:
BersIRC -http://www.bersirc.com/
BitchX -http://bitchx.org/download.php
HydraIRC -http://www.hydrairc.com/
NodeIRC -http://node.sourceforge.net/
TinyIRC -http://www.tinyirc.net/
XChat -http://www.silverex.org/news/

Mail programs:
Foxmail -http://fox.foxmail.com.cn/english/
i.Scribe -http://www.memecode.com/
Mahogany Mail -http://mahogany.sourceforge.net/
Pegasus Mail -http://www.pmail.com/
PopTray -http://www.poptray.org/
Thunderbird -http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/

Anti-spam programs:
K9 -http://www.keir.net/k9.html
MailWasher-http://www.mailwasher.net/
POPFile -http://popfile.sourceforge.net/
SpamBayes -http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/
SpamPal -http://www.spampal.org/

Live Musics:
http://livemusicstations.co.uk

Network Tools:
CMDTime NTP Utility – http://www.softshape.com/download/
Ethereal Protocol Analyzer -http://www.ethereal.com/
Gencontrol -http://www.gensortium.com/products/gencontrol.html
hamachi -http://www.hamachi.cc/
NetMeter -http://readerror.gmxhome.de/
NetProfiles -http://netprofiles.danielmilner.com/
NMap -http://www.insecure.org/nmap/
Ntop -http://www.ntop.org
PingPlotter -http://www.pingplotter.com
PuTTY -http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty
RAS Graph & Stats -http://forum.flashfxp.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2400
RealVNC -http://www.realvnc.com/
TightVNC -http://www.tightvnc.org/
Ultr@VNC -http://ultravnc.sourceforge.net/
WinSCP -http://www.winscp.com/

Office Suite:
602PC Suite free edition -http://www.software602.com/products/pcs/download.html
AbiWord -http://www.abiword.com/
OpenOffice.org -http://www.openoffice.org/
qjot -http://www.xtort.net/xtort/qjot.php
TreeDBNotes -http://www.softviewer.com/treedbnotes/free_index.htm

Partition Managers:
Partition Resizer -http://zeleps.com/
Ranish Partition Manager -http://www.ranish.com/part/
SwissKnife -http://www.compuapps.com/Download/swissknife/swissknife.htm
TestDisk -http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html?testdisk.html

PDF Utilities:
CutePDF -http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp
Foxit PDF Reader -http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
Free PDF -http://www.webxd.com/zipguy/frpdfdl.htm
Ghostscript/GSView -http://www.ghostscript.com/
PDF 995 -http://www.pdf995.com/
PDFCreator -http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
PrimoPDF -http://www.primopdf.com/

Encryption and data security:
Axcrypt -http://axcrypt.sourceforge.net/
Blowfish Advanced CS-http://web.bsn.ch/lasse/bfacs.htm
Eraser -http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/default.php
File Shredder -http://www.sys-shield.com/fileshredder.htm
KeePass -http://keepass.sourceforge.net/
GnuPG -http://www.gnupg.org/
PGP Freeware -http://www.pgp.com/products/freeware.html
PicoCrypt -http://picofactory.com/picocrypt.html
TrueCrypt -http://www.truecrypt.org/
WindowsCleaner -http://www.winnowsoft.com/internet-eraser.htm

File Managers:
2xExplorer -http://netez.com/2xExplorer/
A43 -http://www.shawneelink.net/~bgmiller/
ExplorerXP -http://www.explorerxp.com
freeCommander -http://www.freecommander.com/index_en.htm
Gyula’s Navigator -http://www.wanari.com/
JExplorer -http://home.megapass.co.kr/~woosjung/
MeeSoft Commander -http://meesoft.logicnet.dk/

File repair and recovery:
PC Inspector File Recovery -http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

Firewalls:
Jetico Personal Firewall -http://www.jetico.com/index.htm#/jpfirewall.htm
Kerio (Kerio Personal Firewall is FREE for home and personal use) -http://www.kerio.com/kpf_home.html
NetVida Safetynet -http://www.netveda.com/consumer/safetynet.htm
Outpost Firewall (version 1 is free) -http://www.agnitum.com/download/outpost1.html
SoftPerfect Personal Firewall -http://www.softperfect.com/products/firewall/
Sygate -http://smb.sygate.com/products/spf_standard.htm
Wyvern Firewall 2004 -http://www.wyvernworks.com/firewall.html

Create a custom 404 web page, so that any time your website visitor mistypes or misspells a URL on your site, they will still be provided with navigation options for your site (instead of getting nothing but a “Page Not Found” error message, which is neither friendly or helpful).

2. Redirect Non-www. To www.

Website visitors will often leave out the “www.” portion when they type a URL or link to your website. Set the website up so that it automatically redirects any non-www version of your domain urls (http://domain. com) to the www version (http://www.domain. com) of your website.

3. Properly Sized Graphics

Size and define all graphics and images on your web pages properly and correctly. Web pages will load quicker if the graphics contained on each page are properly defined so they don’t require the web browser to re-size them. Properly sized and defined images can reduce the web browser workload and speed up the page loading time.

4. Favicon

Add a Favicon (favorite icon) to your website, so that your company or product logo appears in the URL box. This icon will also show up in a bookmark list, and gives the web site an added level of professionalism.

5. Include RSS Auto-Discovery

If you provide an RSS feed for any content on your website, be sure to include auto-discovery code in the header of your website. This will allow many browsers and RSS readers to automatically detect the presence of an RSS feed and alert the visitor that it is available.

6. Alternate Domains

Domain names are relatively inexpensive, so you should register multiple domain versions and extensions in order to protect your brand. The varied domains can be parked on the main website, simply to prevent others from obtaining them. Registering alternate domain versions will help protect your brand.

7. Consistent Navigation

Navigation should remain consistent on a website. As a website visitor moves through the website, the navigation bar should remain in the same place on each page. This will make it easier for visitors to navigate your website, and become more comfortable as they move through your site.

8. Home Goes Home

The main graphic, company logo, or “header” at the top of the site should be included on every page in the site, and should always return the visitor to the home page of the website. This has become a web standard, and most visitors now expect to return to the main page of the site simply by clicking on the main top graphic from any page within the site.

9. Copyright Notice

Include a copyright notice on the bottom of each page contained on the website, and keep it current! It may seem trivial, but an out-of-date copyright notice can send a message to your visitors that the website and its content may be out-of-date as well.

10. Meaningful File Names

Use meaningful file names for any files, graphics, or web pages. Many search engines look at file names as part of their search algorithm, and using keywords in file names may help to improve search engine rankings.

11. Hyphens vs Underscores

When naming files and webpages, use hyphens (i.e. web-page.html) rather than underscores (i.e. web_page.html) for the file names. It is much easier for search engines to separate and index the keywords when hyphens are used.

12. Alt Tags

Use ALT tags to describe what images represent on web pages. ALT tags not only assist visually-impaired visitors in knowing what the images are, but they also help with search engine ranking.

13. Spell Check

Use a spell-check feature on the text of all web pages in a website. A website that contains mistyped or misspelled words just shouts “unprofessional”. Take the extra few minutes necessary to check the spelling of text on each page of your website.

14. Test

After making changes to a website, test it! Many times, a webmaster will upload changes, confident in their abilities, only to later discover that in their attempt to fix one thing, they have “broken” something somewhere else. Make testing a habit after making even the most minor changes!

15. Keep It Simple

Simple is good. Eliminate unnecessary clutter and distractions from a website and navigation menu.

Why are these links to your site important? They can can…

• bring potential customers to your site when they click on the link

• boost the number of visitors to your web site

• dramatically improve your search engine rankings

Even though there are software packages on the market that help automate the linking process, use them sparingly, if at all. The only way to succeed in linking strategies is (aside from creating useful content that will encourage inbound links) by manually creating the links. That’s a hard fact to swallow, given how I like to automate as much of my marketing as I can.

Here are the 10 most important inbound links you must have to your site:

1. Directory Links

Directories are indexes of online sites, typically organized by category. Links back to your site from directories like Yahoo Directory and DMOZ.org are very valuable. DMOZ.org is edited by human editors, and while it’s free, it may take awhile for your site to be added. Getting added to Yahoo’s Directory costs $299/year.

2. Press Releases

If you’re writing press releases, make sure they are optimized for keywords that someone would use to find a business like yours and include links back to your site, as well. Once written, you can have your press release distributed through a service like PRWeb.com, which will create links from high traffic news sites back to your site.

3. Article Directories

Writing and distributing articles through high traffic article directories, like EzineArticles. com, is a great way to get valuable inbound links from a high traffic site. By crafting an effective resource box at the close of your article, you can drive traffic back to your site!

4. Social Bookmarking

Similar to web browser bookmarks, social bookmarking sites store individual pages (bookmarks) online and allows users to tag (with keywords), organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources as well as share them with others. If you bookmark your content on these sites (like Digg.com, Reddit.com, Del.icio.us. com), you get a link from the service. By producing content that your readers love and then bookmark to their friends, the link increases in SEO value.

5. Blog Comments

To find blog posts on which to comment, you can use blog-specific search engines like Google Blog Search. Make sure these are blogs read by your target market, not your colleagues. Brand yourself by always using the same name and remember to link back to your site. Always leave a comment that adds to the conversation that’s happening within the comments.

6. Social Media

Now, Google also indexes your Twitter updates and your social networking profiles. Add that to Web 2.0 hubsites like Scribd or HubPage and you’ve got the option of creating many, many inbound links in a very short period of time.

7. Blog/Podcast Syndication

Submitting the RSS feed of your blog and podcast to syndication services will give you a link back to your site. In some cases, each time you publish a new blog post, the post itself will also get a link.

8. Video Syndication

YouTube is one of the most visited sites online, and the number of sites that syndicate videos is growing each day. These sites often allow you to link to your site either in your video’s description or on your profile page, or both.

9. .EDU and .GOV Links

Search engines place a great deal of credibility in government and education web sites, and the links carry a great deal of weight. Frankly, it isn’t easy to get inbound links from these sites.

10. Internal Links

Remember, if you have more than one web site, or a web site and a blog, be sure and link one to the other. You can do this by linking one article to other related articles, or link to categories or archives of information.

Creating a sound inbound linking strategy is a key component of your search engine optimization efforts. Try a few of the strategies listed above and see how your traffic and rankings grow.

About The Author
Small business marketing Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals create authentic, profitable online businesses. Would you like to learn the specific Internet marketing strategies that get results? Discover how to improve your visibility and get found online by claiming your Free gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketíng Toolkit, at ==> TurbochargeYourOnlineMarketing.com

I have become a Gmail (Google’s email) guru. Google products help me to save time, money and ultimately improve revenues. Gmail is Google’s solution for bringing email, chat and (with their newest addition BUZZ) social networking to one place. The Google site states, “Gmail is built on the idea that email can be more intuitive, efficient, and useful. And maybe even fun.”…and I agree. This is why I want to share some of the key benefits that I enjoy.

Best Benefits of Gmail

1. The Price is Right! Gmail is free. And you will not be bothered with desktop software (i.e. Outlook) to purchase, update or upgrade!

2. Gmail Goes with You! Gmail is web-based. You can access your email anywhere you can get online unlike a desk top software solution.

3. Gigs of Space! Gmail offers users abundant storage space; over 7 GB (and counting, because Google keeps improving its product) meaning most of us won’t ever have to delete a message. This amount of storage is double the amount of space provided by its competitors. They even provide a premium service option that allows businesses to raise their storage and enjoy up to 33% savíngs by converting to Google applications. Compare for yourself. Use a Calculator to project your business savíngs.

4. Gmail Chat – Conduct real time communication with Gmail subscribers. Build your base of Contacts, Customers, and (staff) Team members. You can opt to save chats and later access them through the search feature. This is useful when sharing web links and other details.

5. Less Spam – Gmail filters spam so you do not have to.

6. Contained Commercial Ads – Google does not incorporate advertisements into the message body as AOL does. Related advertisements appear in the side panes, although these do not interfere with your message. These advertisements are predicative matches populated by key words in the current emails. Ads are machine-matched.

7. Reliable Retrieval of Information – Email is searchable by topic, sender, keywords, date, etc. Google does not search spam or trash which means your results are more inclined to be relevant.

8. Greater Organization – File topics under multiple labels for ease in searching. For those who are used to working with folders, this transition may take some time. Emails can be filed under multiple labels: For example: Future interest, Past Customers, Possible Recruits, and Spring Call Backs. The ability to classify emails with multiple labels gives you fast access to archived information. Archived emails are still searchable. Use filters, stars and constantly archive incoming mail to reign in your inbound communication.

9. Maximum Mobility – Receive Gmail on your mobile phone. My Gmail arrives on my Blackberry, which has pleasantly eliminated the need to tote a laptop.

10. Mesh Your Other Email Clients – Integrate Gmail with your other email clients so that all of your email goes to one account. Reply to emails from your originating email address. You can automatically reply from the same address or reply from the account of your choice. (For example, I forward my personal email and my business email to my gmail account. You can automatically reply from the same address or reply from the account of your choice.

Google Calendar Saves You Time and Helps You Organize Multiple Schedules

Combine Gmail with Google Calendar

Google Calendar is a free (The Price Is Right!) Internet based calendar where you can organize your time and share your appointments with others. You can import events from Outlook, I-cal or Yahoo calendars.

Benefits of Google Calendar

1. Create Multiple Calendars – Whether you are managing direct reports, training team members and staff, or balancing your personal and business calendars, the Google Calendar helps you to organize more efficiently by using color coded calendars. You can maintain separate calendars for personal, business, team and family engagements. These calendars can all interface into one so you can see the big picture.

2. Use Event Invites – Schedule team meetings, events and one-on-one coaching. Send Invites for family events, conference calls and parties and collect RSVP. This is similar to evite.com without the graphics.

3. Track Team Performance – Follow goals and objectives of your team members and staff.

4. Online/Offline Visibility – Print and view your Calendar in a variety of formats (agenda, daily, weekly, monthly)

5. Determine, Decide & Delegate – Determine what needs to be done. Decide who will do it. Delegate activities. Assign tasks to team members, staff and participants for team meeting preparation.

6. Share the Responsibility – Google has superiority in this area. You can transfer calendar ownership and grant or deny permission rights to allow others to manage and update information. If you are part of an organization and want to schedule meetings, collect RSVPs and arrange meeting locations like we did for our NAWBO round table, calendar sharing makes this easy.

7. Generate Task Lists – Tasks will show up on your calendar by due date. You can satisfyingly check off the items you accomplish.

8. Publicize Your Calendar – Embed your calendar into your web site and visitors can see your upcoming events. See my public Google Calendar.

What’s the Downside?

Periodically Google’s server is slow, however this is rare. Some of the features and functions may take familiarizing time, but it is worth the investment to learn about these tools. Once you learn your way around, you will find the technology is created with simplicity in mind. So you can see – Gmail is much more with it than AOL and other competitive products! Enjoy the speed, simplicity, search-ability, spam-LESS, storage, star features and functionality. It is time you consider a change.

Links referred to in this article.
1. http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/details.html
2. http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/messaging_value.html
3. http://mail.google.com/mail/