In the battle for literary supremacy on the web, it appears that numbers beat letters in a 7 round TKO. According to a new article by Jakob Nielsen: It’s better to use “23″ than “twenty-three” to catch users’ eyes when they scan Web pages for facts, according to eyetracking data. Traditional literary rules say that you should spell out (Four vs. 4) whole numbers from one to ninety-nine.

OK, I admit, this post is the first time since high school that I spelled out a number…they are NUMBERS after all, but I cannot argue with the experts.

Jakob is the expert on online writing though so I take his advice.

His full article is full of awesome information and background on the research (a bunch of fancy eye-tracking stuff), so check it out…Show Numbers as Numerals When Writing for Online Readers

Earlier this month, SEOMOZ released version 2 of Search Engine Ranking Factors.

37 leaders in the world of SEO, such as Danny Sullivan, Jeremy Schoemaker, and Aaron Wall, gave their opinions and insight on the most important factors in Search Engine Optimization.

The full article and results can be found here

Top Positive Factors included:

Keyword Use in the Title Tag, Global Link Popularity of the Site, and Anchor Text of the Inbound Links .

Top Negative Factors were:

An Inaccessible Server, Similar/Duplicate Content, and Low Quality External Links

Each factor is given a ranking by each of the panelists and ranked accordingly.

This article is a MUST READ! 

Holly Buchanan writes a GREAT article about how to give your site “voice.” We all know that copywriting and appearance play an important part in the message you convey to your visitors. The wrong copy and look can send the wrong message and send your visitors fleeing!

Read more about finding your website’s voice.

SEO’Brien recently made an interesting post about MSN’s soon to be patented search algorithm.

According to the post, the algorithm “filter[s] the organic results to remove any duplicate listings (two domains pointing to the same website).”

This seems to make things awfully interesting. What do you think?

Read the full post and comments here and what they are saying on ABestWeb here.

WebinarStock is over and I must say…what a great event! I am sure there will be more and I cannot wait for them. Congratulations to James Doran who won the full pass to Affiliate Summit East, worth $1499.00! Our CEO, Hunter Ingram listened in and won a prize from another merchant as well. Go Hunter!

I have uploaded the power point presentation that I used for my presentation.

In the future, I strongly advise taking part in WebinarStock. You will learn a lot and get connected with some great people!

Just a reminder that tonight is the night for WebinarStock!There are going to be many great presenters from different affiliate programs.

A full list of presenters can be found here

As a presenter, we are giving away a free full pass to Affiliate Summit East valued at $1449.00!

About WebinarStock:

Webinarstock is an online webinar event being held on March 14th. Webinarstock will bring together dozens of merchant affiliate program managers and potentially hundreds of affiliates in 1 webinar for 3 hours of learning and earning. Participating affiliate managers will each give presentations about their programs, answer affiliate questions and hold contests and giveaways for affiliates in attendance. Affiliates will be able to interact with the affiliate managers and learn more about each of the participating merchant programs in a fun, festival type atmosphere.

Webinarstock is free for merchants and affiliates. Conference call long distance charges may apply depending on where you’re located. Space for merchants and affiliates will be on a first come, first serve basis due to time constraints and attendee limits. We’ll be giving away prizes throughout the event, along with other fun surprises. We hope to see you there!

To register to attend click here

Hope you can attend and have a chance to win this great prize!

The Dfinitive Blog has a great collection of links with interviews of 61 pioneers in Web 2.0 sites. Interviewees include: Mike Davidson of NewsVine, Seth Godin of Squidoo, and Kevin Rose of Digg.

For the full list of interviews visit the Dfinitive Blog.

In case you missed it…

AdWords Editor 3.0 is now available for Windows (Mac Coming soon)

Read more

As we announced a while back, we will be participating in the first ever WebinarStock on March 14th at 6:00 pm Eastern Time.

As a presenter, we are giving away a free full pass to Affiliate Summit East valued at $1449.00!

About WebinarStock:

Webinarstock is an online webinar event being held on March 14th. Webinarstock will bring together dozens of merchant affiliate program managers and potentially hundreds of affiliates in 1 webinar for 3 hours of learning and earning. Participating affiliate managers will each give presentations about their programs, answer affiliate questions and hold contests and giveaways for affiliates in attendance. Affiliates will be able to interact with the affiliate managers and learn more about each of the participating merchant programs in a fun, festival type atmosphere.

Webinarstock is free for merchants and affiliates. Conference call long distance charges may apply depending on where you’re located. Space for merchants and affiliates will be on a first come, first serve basis due to time constraints and attendee limits. We’ll be giving away prizes throughout the event, along with other fun surprises. We hope to see you there!

To register to attend click here

Hope you can attend and have a chance to win this great prize!

Google’s Quality Score updates are LIVE…

There is a thread on ABestWeb about the Most Common Affiliate Mistakes.

My post, one that many of you have heard before is:

The mistake that most people in any business make is getting a 300 item TO-DO list and never acting on the first item.

In affiliate marketing I see this too often as newbies do a lot of research, read all the forums, blogs, etc. but forget to act. Then they get overwhelmed at their long list and fail to act.

That 9 to 5 job beings to look safe…and it IS. If you want safety and guaranteed security, don’t get into affiliate marketing. If you want to be 100% in charge of your success and failure, it is for you.

I say to never let your to-do list get any longer than 5 items. If you want to add a 6th, you must do of the other 5 first!

My lesson: Don’t let a seemingly endless list of possible tasks get you down!  Act now on that good idea you had or learned, before it’s too late.

Check out the posts by other affiliates at ABestWeb.

According to the Inside Adwords Blog, CPC (Cost-Per-Click) for site-targetting is now in BETA testing with AdWords. Their post pretty much explains it so here goes:

Site targeting is a feature that allows advertisers to choose individual sites in the content network where they want their ads to appear. Currently, advertisers using site targeting place bids on a cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) basis. In March, we plan to begin testing a new site targeting feature to increase the flexibility and control advertisers have with site-targeted campaigns: cost-per-click (CPC) bidding.

CPC bidding has often been requested by advertisers who would like to utilize site targeting, but are not comfortable bidding on a CPM basis. Here are two examples of how CPC bidding can enhance your site targeting experience:

• Increased flexibility. Select the content network sites you want your ads to appear on and choose the bidding option that fits your needs. If clicks are your goal, try CPC bidding so you pay only when you get the result you want.

• Full control. Create new CPC site-targeted campaigns, or switch your existing campaigns between CPC and CPM at any time. As always, you retain full control over your budgets and bids.

If you’re an AdWords advertiser located in the US and are interested in participating in the CPC site targeting beta, please fill out this short web form: http://services.google.com/ads_inquiry/cpc_sitetargeting. Please note that we are only able to select a limited number of advertisers from all that apply. If you’re selected as a beta participant, we will contact you within the next couple of weeks.

While I do not necessarily advocate the use of credit cards, I think this one may be of use to the responsible card users out there…

The Affiliate Credit Card, it is a card that is geared to and faciliatates our business activities.

You can brand it with your business name and you earn cash back (with no limit) on:

• PPC Advertising (Yahoo, Google and MSN)
• Web Hosting Fees
• Computer Supplies
• Cellular Services
• Ebay seller fees (if applicable)

Some of the card features are:

• Up to 5% cash back with NO CAP! If your doing a lot of PPC this is for you!
• 0% APR on balance transfers - 15months
• 7.99% Fixed APR thereafter
• You can brand it with your company name
• Open to non-incorporated businesses (sole proprietors are welcome)!
• $0 Fraud liability - cannot get that with a debit card!

If interested, Apply now

Earlier this week we posted (read it here) about Google’s New Link Analysis Tool
Mike Murray of Fathom SEO posted a handy reminder on Revenews that Link Popularity is not dead yet.

It’s a very quick read and serves as a good reminder that while Google’s new tool is helpful, in the long run, it is still only a small help to most webmasters.

Read Mike’s Post here

This is definitely one of the cooler things I have seen in affiliate marketing in a while. Webinarstock is an event being run by Alan Townsend on March 14.

According to the web site, Webinarstock will bring together dozens of merchant affiliate program managers and potentially hundreds of affiliates in 1 webinar for 3 hours of learning and earning. Participating affiliate managers will each give presentations about their programs, answer affiliate questions and hold contests and giveaways for affiliates in attendance. Affiliates will be able to interact with the affiliate managers and learn more about each of the participating merchant programs in a fun, festival type atmosphere.

I will be presenting and look forward to being able to share some tips and ideas with all of you!

To register to attend click here