Is Amazon the New Google?

Forget Bing, forget Yahoo – Google’s Executive Chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt now knows who the biggest threat to his company’s search dominance is: Amazon.com.

In fact, Amazon and Google are going toe to toe in a myriad of industries, making their rivalry one of the biggest tech showdowns on the planet. And while search may not be the most obvious point of contention, it’s becoming so to Google, who have called out the Seattle giant as a formidable threat.

How Amazon has Become a Google Search Rival

What does the world’s biggest online marketplace know about search? When you’re as massive as Amazon, it has to be a core competency, and they’ve certainly done well to give the people what they want.

In Schmidt’s words, spoken at a recent visit to Native Instruments, it’s all about convenience. “But, really, our biggest search competitor is Amazon. People don’t think of Amazon as search, but if you are looking for something to buy, you are more often than not looking for it on Amazon.”

It’s not just products or books that people are searching on Amazon, either. Even Schmidt noted that there’s a myriad of answers users are searching for by the thousands every day, showing cracks in Google’s search monopoly.

How much does Google still dominate the search stratosphere? The numbers, while still significant, are showing decline. Right now, Google receives around 233.1 million unique users each month, which exceeds Amazon’s 172 million. But, that’s not a huge gap for Amazon to close in on and they’ve been doing just that for a long time.

Google Fires Back – Takes Aim at Amazon’s Core Business

Not to be left out of any online war, Google has started to infringe on Amazon’s ecommerce world too. They’ve launched same-day delivery services in San Francisco as a test run, looking to rival Amazon’s similar offerings. Both companies are prepared to battle it out with each other and are using a PR attack in the drone space, each hoping to become the biggest player in this new technological advancement in product deliveries.

Google has also proven quite successful in hardware, becoming a huge player in the mobile space with their Android platform, making Amazon’s Kindle play an even harder sell. And Google’s wearable technologies like Google Glass are more innovative and newsworthy than Amazon’s current related offerings.

While Amazon continues to be king in the cloud storage space, Google is not making it easy on them. Google has its own enterprise cloud storage and a clear winner in this battle is not yet obvious.

In short, these companies have a lot of businesses in common. Amazon wants consumers to subscribe to their Prime service and download entertainment on their Kindle TVs or Kindle Fires. Google would rather you do the same on your Nexus phone, or stream via Chromecast. Amazon wants you to store your music with their AMS service; Google woos customers with Google Music cloud storage. The similarities are indeed long.

Amazon’s Additional Attempts to One-Up Their Rival

Not to give you whiplash, but Amazon is looking to take more than just Google’s reign on the search scene. In August, Amazon announced a massive $1 billion dollar purchase of online-gaming giant Twitch, showing an obvious intent to become more mighty in the world of entertainment. Since Twitch had been in talks with Google as well, this marks as a double blow and a very telling sign for the future.

These two are even butting heads in the physical office space. Not long ago, Google set up a new London-based office in King’s Cross. Amazon answered back by breaking ground on a new 5,000 employee office just down the road from Google’s Campus. Which means they both will be fighting over top engineering talent in the area as well.

And, finally, despite the millions Amazon spends on Google ad buys as an apparent business partner (in 2013 ad buys exceeded $157 million, and that’s just domestically), they are also looking to steal some thunder there as well. Rumor has it Amazon is building their own robust ad network platform. If they’re able to compete with Google in this arena, this would be the ultimate blow. Ads have long since been the biggest revenue generator for Google, and losing their foothold in this area could be truly devastating.

There’s a big looming question through all these similarities – might the two become one in the not-so-distant future? It would be an epic deal to last the ages, but it’s not out of the question.

We’ve already seen during the economic downturn that mighty conglomerates can indeed fall to pieces; Schmidt is certainly not being dramatic when he emphasizes how critical it is for his company to keep advancing. As he stated recently in Berlin, Google needs to stay on the pulse of innovation, or “someone else will innovate around us, leaving us obsolete over time.”

The Missing Ingredient in SEO Writing

SEO writing is a specialized type of writing, where the author tries to develop content that will catch the eye of Google and result in a Web page being listed in Google’s search results.
Most writers who engage in this type of writing focus on getting the right keywords into the text to win the Google listing and to score a click from Google to their website or their client’s website.

I have done article marketing myself since 2000 and I know from personal experience this technique works. In 2010, before I closed down a couple of my less profitable domains, I was seeing three-quarters of a million visitors a year to my websites, with 6.5 million page views.

Thirty-five percent of my traffic was derived from Google: 265,000 visitors per year.

About 50 percent of my traffic came directly from the articles I had on the Internet that were promoting my websites: 375,000 visitors per year.

Even in the first 10 months of 2014, my current websites have seen 189,000 visitors, with 990,000 page views.

The bottom line is that article marketing still works, when you do it correctly.

The problem is that the way most SEO writers do it WILL NOT produce the same kinds of results I have seen.

Most freelance SEO writers are focused only on producing just enough words to get paid and sprinkling in enough keywords to make their services seem valuable to their webmaster clients.

Given how most SEO writers approach writing for the search engines, it is no wonder that Google’s Farmer update devastated the article directories a few years ago. Ezine Articles, for example, saw a 90 percent decrease in its Google search results, which led also to a significant decline in EZA’s traffic.

Even after the devastation of the Farmer update and subsequent Google updates, most SEO writers have missed the boat on how to overcome the real problem.

When they took the hit, EzineArticles responded by telling authors to increase the average word count of articles from 300 words to a minimum of 400 words per article (and 600 words in “spam prone” niches, in 2013). In doing so, it helped perpetuate the myth that the problem was related to low word count.

When flying airplanes, all pilots know if they begin a journey of 1,000 miles, and they are off by a single degree on their trajectory, they will end up 16.7 nautical miles from their intended destination. If their flight is off by five degrees, they will end up a full 83 miles from their intended destination.

If you are telling your SEO writers that the solution to the problem of how to overcome Google’s anti-spam technology is to write more words, then you are sending people down a path that will leave them miles from their intended destination.

The problem with SEO articles was NEVER low word counts…

The problem with SEO articles was that they never appealed to the people, who were finding those articles in Google’s search listings.

Google was intent on improving their user’s search experience. To make sure that their users did not go somewhere else for search services, Google had to take steps to improve the quality of materials available to their users.

Google’s users do not want to read 600 words of gibberish, intended to fill a page with the words that will look good to Google’s search algorithm.

Instead, Google’s users wanted exactly what they have always wanted:

• Articles that answers a question they might have…
• Articles that help them solve a problem…
• Articles that tells a story they want to read…
• Articles that deliver the best quality information in an easy-to-understand and interesting manner…

When was the last time that you read a “SEO article” and found it informative and fun-to-read?

What is that you said?

Never?

Our future customers are selfish…

For some reason, people want to be able to read fun or interesting articles that answer to their specific needs.

The one thing, above all other things, that SEO writers fail to do is to have empathy for their readers.

They fail to realize that people want to read articles that offer more than a jumble of words that contain keywords of interest to their readers.

They fail to give readers what they want.

Search engines like keywords… People want answers.

Here is the interesting aspect of this approach to writing articles…

If your article answers the reader’s questions in a way that the reader felt was interesting or useful, then people will share your article on social media.

And what is the key to getting Google to pay attention to your article? Links from external websites, including social media?

Finally, we can see the nuts and bolts behind creating SEO content that makes a real difference for the people using it…

Sure, keywords are important to get the attention of Google, but so is the quality of the story you tell.

Google needs two pieces of information to judge your content useful to its users:

• Keywords – to understand the nature of the content;
• Links from Third-Party Websites – to understand the importance of the content.

Any SEO writer, who fails to understand what it takes to create content that appeals to the end-user, is in essence stealing money from your marketing budget, by selling you false hope and pretend rewards.

It has been my experience that you can hire freelance writers at pretty much any rate at which you want to pay for those services. You can hire writers for peanuts, or you can pay more to ensure a better quality article.

When you hire a freelance writer, it is your job to tell your writer what kind of content you want in return for your money.

If you tell your writer that you want SEO articles, you will most likely get 600 words of pure gibberish, dotted with a few keywords here and there.

If, however, you instruct your writer to create an article that answers a question for the reader, then you will get the kind of content you want written, and it will actually help with your SEO goals.

Remember that old anecdote… “He who has the most money makes the rules.”

If the freelance writer wants your money, they will follow your rules. So, don’t be afraid to tell people what kind of content you want them to create for you.

“The Missing Ingredient in SEO Writing” should be obvious by this point…

If you don’t give readers what they want, then Google cannot and will not give you what you want – more Google listings, more traffic and more sales…

Now that you know how to make your SEO writing shine, what are you going to do with this information?

How to Improve Windows Phone Battery Life

How to Improve Windows Phone Battery Life [Top 5 Ways]

We have shared different methods with you guys to improve phone battery life of your Android, iPhone and iPhone 6. However, we have yet not shared top ways to improve Windows Phone Battery Life.

So, today I am going to share a guide with you guys which will make you understand that, “how to improve Windows Phone Battery Life?” These are the official methods which we are going to share.

There are many people, who love to use Windows Phone due to its applications and features. Thus, there are many people as well, who use to complain about the Windows Phone battery life problem.

Therefore, keeping that thing in mind, our team has realized that we should share a guide for our Windows Phone users as well. So, friends you will be able to improve your Windows Phone battery life with the help of our tips which are clearly elaborated below.

1- Lower Down the Brightness

The brightness is the main reason which consumes much of the battery life of any phone, so does with the Windows phone. You are suggested to lower down the brightness of your Windows Phone.

You are supposed to make the brightness moderate, as we have already mentioned in our previous articles of battery Saving. Additionally, to lower down the brightness for your Windows Phone, you need to follow the below steps:

• First of all, you need to tap on Start and then on App and after that tap on Settings
• Now from Settings, you need to tap on Brightness and from there you have to turn off Automatically Adjust and then you can lower down the brightness according to your convenience.

2- Use Dark Background Theme

This is suggested by the official site of Microsoft Windows Phone. They have said that you need to use dark background theme which will be helpful to improve Windows Phone battery life.

Since, the dark theme causes the less consumption of battery life, whereas the bright and animated themes consumes much of the battery life of your phone. Therefore, you are suggested to use dark background theme for your Windows Phone.

3- Turn Off Bluetooth and WiFi

This is another common trick which we are discussing in our every battery life saving post, so the same thing is for your Windows Phone. You need to turn off WiFi and Bluetooth.

If you are not using WiFi and Bluetooth then it is better to turn them off. Since, if they are turned on for no reason then they keep on searching for the devices that means they are consuming battery life. So, it is better to make them turned off, if you are not using these services.

4- Turn On Battery Saver

This is common feature which is available on almost every phone. But, many of the people are not aware with its work. Here in Windows Phone, it can be really beneficiary to save the battery Life.

Ones you have turned on the Battery Saver then it will disable some of the features of your Windows Phone. The features which will be turned off after enabling Battery Saver, are listed below:

1. It will stop allowing apps running in the Background
2. It will stop the automatic update of some tiles on the home screen of your Windows Phone
3. It will stop automatic receiving of e-mails and calender updates

These are the areas which will be turned off after enabling the Battery Saver on your Windows Phone. So, to turn on Battery Saver on your Windows Phone, you need to follow the below steps

• First of all, you need to tap on Start and then on App and after that tap on Settings and then Tap onBattery Saver
• Then you will see two option you can select options according to your need.

After that, you will be able to improve Windows Phone battery life. I am sure that this is a simply trick to apply

5- Use Extra Battery Case

This is a kind of product, you may use it to last the battery of your Windows Phone. This product is easily available in the market. It will actually makes your phone a double battery phone, since, a second battery will be fitted in the case.

You may charge that extra battery case and it will make your phone last for much more longer time efficiently. This is really helpful for the users who want to use phones for longer time. I am sure this will help you to improve Windows Phone Battery Life.