I’ve read a lot of other “predictions” by others in this business about what will happen in ’07. Here’s a few of my own.

1. For the engines: Google will continue it’s reign. Yahoo will continue to follow. MSN will disappear (in our minds, anyway. It will still be there, but no one will give shit about it.) However, a new engine will become very popular. It may already exist or it may be brand new, but this engine will be VERY popular, especially with a younger crowd.
2. Someone will make a deal with Sony to provide default browser and search functions on the PS3. Or, Sony will continue doing it themselves and slowly become a huge online search/portal because of the popularity of the PS3. Hmmm…maybe Sony will power that new engine I was talking about? Interesting.

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Forgive me if this seems obvious, but I’ve never seen it actually put on paper, so to speak. As YouTube and the online video industry continues to gather more heat, people will begin to turn to YouTube to market their product or service.

They’ll try to create a video that ranks high for a keyword phrase. Google will give them another option other than “natural” ranking, which will be a “PPV” ad model. Much like PPC, it will be an auction based ranking system that provides advertisers the ability to pop up at the top of YouTube’s search results for a specific keyword. The advertiser then only pays Google when someone clicks and views the video.

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Hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday.

This post is for Tristan, John J, Staci, Sheena & Randy, Jenn, Sean, John, Kaitlin, Toot, Dan, & El Hefe, all new bloggers who are part of the Evolvor Media network. You’ve probably heard most of these 99 tips for branding a website come out of my mouth already, so here’s a refresher course in how to build your brand online.

I think the most important one is being yourself- bringing that personality to a blog that will breathe life into your page and attract people. To quote Hermey the Elf (from the Rudolf classic), you all should want to be “In-de-pen-dent”. Rudolf stood out from the crowd with his bright red nose; find your “shiny nose” and use it to make your website shine.

I tried to post a comment yesterday on a friends blog (a Blogger Account), and it told me I could use my Google Account information. I was sure that I had this info, so I typed this information in and, alas, I was wrong. It seems I’ve gotten my “Google Account” information mixed up with my “Adsense” and “AdWords” logins. I’d hate to know if you need another login to use Gmail (I do not use the service). Why can’t I just have one damn login to all my Google goodies? I hope the plans are in the works (I think I read a post about this not to long ago). Untill then, I’ll have to break out the secret black book of logins to get to every Google Account. Sigh…

1. Growing up I was known as Eric He-Bert just like it looks (or more often mis-pronounced as HER-Bert). At 18 I decided from there on be known as Eric “A-BEAR”, as my name is supposed to be pronounced (the H is silent). Yeah, I’m proud.

2. I dressed up as Captain America for my town’s 4th of July parade. I was 12 and was a little miffed at the younger kids who kept referring to me at “Batman”. I had the full outfit thanks to a talented mom-mom complete with shield (thanks dad).

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After Rand over at SEOMoz asked about making the silly tagging game of “5 Things You Don’t Know About Me” into a more relevant game, I thought of the idea of “5 Things That Got You Into SEO/Internet Marketing”.

I’ll start just a post here with the hopes that the rest of you will join in the comments. The rules are simple: what skills from a job or business opportunity (as many of mine were) prepared you for your current job in SEO and internet marketing? Here are the five “skills” that got me ready for SEO:

1. Auto Sales

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Paul, this post is mostly directed to you, to make sure you’re reading the blog (and if you’re not, get ready for a spanking). The tool is called Fire Bug and integrates with Firefox to edit HTML, CSS, Javascript, and more. Check it out and let me know how it is. Note to project managers out there: making your web developers job easier makes your life easier too!

Matt over at 37 Signals has written a nice post about “Taming the RSS”. I have mentioned in the past about how too many posts for one blog can be a huge turn off for readers, especially those who read 100 + blogs a day like myself. It will be interesting to see how RSS management products will continue to grow as the technology becomes more popular. Any suggestions as to make RSS feeds more manageable?

It’s been a crazy week here at Evolvor Media; I’ve landed a few music-related projects that I’m really excited about and am ready to dive into. I also added a new site to the ever growing Evolvor Media empire. Just wanted to share my enthusiasm with you, and apologize if my blogging feels light as we get closer to x-mas. A busy little bee as I juggle moving, lots of projects, and last minute shopping should prove to be a hectic but fun time. Hope your next 12 days are as awesome as mine.

Google has done it again! Today on their Inside Adwords Blog Google announced free hosted business pages. To sum it up, every free AdWords account receives a business card-like page on Google that is easy to set-up with no html knowledge required. This way, even if you do not have a website, you can still use AdWords to promote your business using your hosted business page as the ad’s landing page. It may not seem like anything significant now, but the idea could develop in the future, giving you more options to customize and change the look of the page ala MySpace hacks. The question now is, will Google index these pages? Will it find them relevant to search queries? Does Google have any other plans to expand this feature in the future ? (i.e. hosting, design, etc. for an extra charge – Like Yahoo Site builder?)

Over the past two weeks I’ve been trying to use Yahoo’s Keyword Selector Tool to do some reverse searches for clients (I’ve noticed new clients are more warm to see a well known brand like Yahoo in showing search statistics). However, I have not be able to access any data recently do to connections timing out. This is not a connection issue on my end and I’m wondering what is going on with the service. Anybody else having similar issues? Is Yahoo changing the way they share data (i.e. is the connection timing out because Yahoo wants it that way?)

One of the most important factors in SEO is the Meta-Description Tag. WordPress uses dynamic PHP scripting to generate pages and is not set-up to change the Meta-Description of each page with by default. You’re gonna need a Meta-Description Plug-In to help auto-generate Meta-Descriptions for each of your pages and posts. The plug-in gives you different options that allow your pages the ability to generate optimized Meta Keyword and Meta Description tags to ensure your site makes goody-good with the search engines.

A buddy of mine told me to check out this site about a week ago, which shows you how often I get back to my notes. It’s called sexywidget.com, and provides insight into the world of blog/website “widgets” and “blog bling” which of course all us geekazoid bloggers are addicted to. The site of course is loaded with way to many widgets of it’s own, but I guess that’s already a given.