In July 2008, I had the opportunity to share my skills and knowledge with small businesses and internet marketers in Austin, Texas for the SEM for SMB event, hosted by SparkSight. Both Reza Sarmadi boarded a plan and flew from LA, not knowing what to expect, but of course we had no expectations, rather extreme optimism coupled with a strong manifestation for success.

My speech was title “Online Marketing Reporting and Analytics“. After this first speech I gave I felt my speech could of been better polished and refined. I asked the universe to grant me one more opportunity after this speech to try it again and give me one more shot even though my speech was booked for day 1 only.

I manifested that thought for about 4 hours. Sure enough, after I let it go I got a text from Chris Justice, the promoter of the event. The text went something like this. “Your speech was awesome, everyone loved it and it is in high demand. Can you do it again tomorrow”. I looked at ReZ with the biggest smile and said, the universe listens.

That night I spent hours practicing the speech, determined to do my part of the manifestation and “do what I said I would do”, which was prepare, practice and refine it. That next day, I gave the speech with the utmost confidence and I was praised my the many people who attend the speech that what my speech gave some great ideas and insight to reporting and analytics that really helped people better understand how to make the most out of stats.

The truth of the matter is and lesson learned is: never give up what you want and when you want something. You know what you need to do to achieve it. So you better do what you know you need to do, otherwise you will fall short of your manifest.

It took a while to get it online, but without further wait, here is the seminar.  If you would like to download the slides to the event, click this link.

I had the privledge of serving on the blogger’s choice awards for Mashable. The votes are in and here are your winners.

Blogger’s Choice Winners

Mainstream & Large Scale Social Networks

Winner: Twitter
Runner-up: Facebook

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Embeddable Widgets

Winner:
Clearspring
Runner-up: Sprout

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Blog Plugins

Winner: ShareThis
Runner-up: AddThis

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Social News

Winner: Digg
Runner-up: Mixx

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Social Networking Applications

Winner: Ping.fm
Runner-up: Twitterfeed

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Social Bookmarking

Winner: Delicious
Runner-up: StumbleUpon

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Search & Social Search

Winner: Google
Runner-up: Scour

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Sports & Fitness

Winner: Gyminee
Runner-up: Oneseason

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Photo Sharing

Winner: Flickr
Runner-up: Picasa

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Video Sharing

Winner: YouTube
Runner-up: Vimeo

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Start Pages

Winner: iGoogle
Runner-up: Netvibes

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Places & Events

Winner: Doodle
Runner-up: Eventbrite

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Travel

Winner: TripIt
Runner-up: GeckoGo

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Music

Winner: Last.fm
Runner-up: Pandora

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Social Shopping

Winner: Wishpot
Runner-up(s): Tigerbow/Pikaba (tie)

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Fashion

Winner: Coolspotters
Runner-up: Gift Girl

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Celebrity & Gossip

Winner: Perez Hilton
Runner-up: Popvine

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Mobile Applications

Winner: Evernote
Runner-up: Qik

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Dating & Romance

Winner: SpeedDate
Runner-up: OKCupid

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Wiki

Winner: Wikipedia
Runner-up: PBWiki

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Politics

Winner: Huffington Post
Runner-up: CreateDebate

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How-to

Winner: eHow
Runner-up: Howcast

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Environmental

Winner: ThinkGreen
Runner-up: SocialVibe

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Non-Profit Causes

Winner: SocialVibe
Runner-up: Kiva

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Online Games

Winner: Playfish
Runner-up: Kongregate

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Niche Social Networks

Winner: Wadja
Runner-up: Lifeblob

Internal linking is an essential strategy for any web designer, internet marketer, or anyone else looking to become involved with a website on any level. These tips are suggestions and observations of proven techniques to get the most out of your internal linking.

The best time to begin internal linking is during the planning stage of the website. Before you begin, you’ll want to include the following in your planning.

1.) The sitemap will be the most important resource for you when planning out your internal linking. Brainstorm and think of different pages on the site until you have every possible angle covered. Then begin building your sitemap.

2.) Defining the description and content of each page on your sitemap is very important. This gives your website focus, and will help any marketing campaign as well.

Page Types – These are Web Pages that should be included in the site map by default to help with internal linking

3.) Home page – Link to all of your main pages form the home page. These are known as category pages. These category pages should be the main sections of your website.

4.) Navigation Bar - Have a dynamic navigation versus a static navigation menu. Each category page could show the specific products or service pages on the navigation menu. This way, the navigation menu differs for each category page and is more valuable. A breadcrumb trail is also important, as it helps the user and also helps dynamically create keywords.

5.) Sitemap - For internal linking purposes, there should be more than one sitemap. A Google sitemap is a sitemap created specifically for Google indexing. A Google sitemap is a complete list of the pages. A general site map should also be included, to help visitors navigate more easily throughout the site. The most updated, highest content pages should be on the sitemap.

6.) Glossary Page – The site should include a glossary page. Be sure to link to this page as well, as it is high in content. The glossary page should be a static page, not a popup. This way it is more search engine friendly. Also, link to it, as it’s a high content page. Categorize the glossary, this way you have more detail. Feel free to link to other sources, whether it’s to Wikipedia, images and more. This increases relevancy.

7.) Link Directory – It’s important to have a link directory. This allows you to have data and content on different genres and categories. Add interactivity, and web 2.0 services, and related data on the site. Add tags, and tag clouds. Don’t make it too prominent, as it could annoy visitors. Perhaps offer the ability to comment on the directory site as well.

8.) Relevancy – Today the search engines are taking a large amount of the relevancy into account when indexing websites. Relevancy factors to consider include content, popularity and age.

9.) Link format – Home page links to the category pages, the main pages link to the detail pages. Add a description page that explains each product, another page that talks about the history of each product that is listed.

Specific Web Pages – These are internal linking techniques that can be applies to each specific product or service page on the site.

10.) Duplicate Content – Try to avoid duplicate content, but if duplicate content is necessary at least use the keywords that relate to that specific page. Avoid linking to old pages (stale content), the older URL’s are more valuable, but if it’s not updated don’t link there.

11.) Video for Specific Pages – Create a video tab for each of your specific pages. You can embed the video, or link to it directly.

12.) Links Page for Specific Pages - Have a page that links to other sites for each specific product page. Be careful to avoid over linking, however, as Google considers this spamming.

13.) Keyword clouds for the Specific Pages – Create a keyword cloud for each product page, but make sure it is out of the way and unobtrusive. Also, taking it a step further, turn the keywords that appear in the tag cloud into hyperlinks themselves.

Bonus Web Pages – These are pages to add to take internal linking to the next level and get an edge over the competition

14.) Recent and Top Search Terms – Create a static page filled with the most recent and most popular search terms, and a small description for each term.

15.) Referrer page – Create a static page that lists the sites your visitors are coming from.

These tips can help maximize internal linking within a website. The most important time to begin internal linking is before the website even goes live; proper planning can create an environment great for SEO, and make navigation of your site easy and logical.