HeroEngine is the world’s leading development platform for 3D online worlds and multi-player games. Since launching in 2006 HeroEngine has been licensed to dozens of game development firms worldwide for projects such as the EA/BioWare Star Wars: The Old Republic game and Enne’s virtual world project for teaching Spanish.

The HeroCloud service makes the powerful HeroEngine development technology
available in the internet cloud, dramatically lowering cost for small developers while offering additional services like hosting, billing, and network operations. Alex Shalash, company’s Chairman, said ‘We are very pleased to announce the acquisition of HeroEngine assets. We have hired the staff of Simutronics that was associated with the development and support of HeroEngine/HeroCloud and taken steps to ensure a seamless transition of operations.’

Shalash added, ‘We intend to invest additional resources to make these already great products even better. And we see strong potential in combining Hero team’s technology expertise with Idea Fabrik’s game development teams in the US and Ukraine to deliver the most engaging gaming and social networking experience to the rapidly growing internet and social gaming industry.’
Said Neil Harris, former president of HeroEngine at Simutronics and now COO of Idea Fabrik, ‘When we met the Idea Fabrik team it was clear that our long-term goals were in perfect sync. By combining our businesses we can realize our ambitious goals for bringing 3D gaming and virtual worlds to the next generation.’ Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

About Idea Fabrik Plc
Idea Fabrik is a product development company that intends, through internal development and targeted acquisitions, to bring to market immersive 3-D virtual worlds that will provide consumer entertainment experiences that combine multi-player gaming, virtual worlds, and social networking element. Our worlds will be easy to navigate, experience, and understand – delivering exciting new frontiers for the full spectrum of both experienced and casual consumers of Internet gaming, entertainment and social interaction. For additional information please visit
Virtual Worlds

Safe Harbor: Statements
contained in this news release, other than those identifying historical facts, constitute ‘forward-looking statements’. Such forward-looking statements relating to the Company’s future expectations, including but not limited to revenues and earnings, technology efficacy, strategies and plans, are subject to safe harbors protection. Actual Company results and performance may be materially different from any future results, performance, strategies, plans, or achievements that may be expressed or implied by any such forward-looking statements. The Company disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forwardlooking statements.

Contacts:
Idea Fabrik Plc.
Quadrant House Floor 4
Thomas More Square
London E1W 1YW
United Kingdom
Wolfgang Brand
Investor Relations
wolfgang.brand@ideafabrik.de
Tel: + (34) 665 841 138

 Since Google introduced its PR (page rank) based search engine, the way it evaluates links changed substantially. Whilst at first “link popularity” (amount of links pointing to a site) was key, today a number of different factors decide how much weight a link carries. The sheer number of links is secondary. Its quality over quantity.

 In the following I will list the 10 most important factors.

 1. Relevance

 This is probably the most important one. An inbound link from a site that is about the same topic as yours carries the most weight. The reason for that is just logical: A site that links to additional content about the same topic is providing the user with an added value.

 Lets say for example, you optimized a site about “American politics”. In this case the site: www.whitehouse.org would carry more weight then I.e: www.amazon.com , simply because its more relevant.

 2. Link text

 The link text tells the user what the site linked to, is all about in a few words. Often this is just one or two words. Search engines value the link text very high, because it is a third party recommendation to what the site is all about. Your site will most of the times get indexed, under the words you use in your link text , also referred to as “anchor text”.

The biggest mistake webmasters make is using “click here” or “go to website” as anchor text. This accounts for inbound links, as well as for your internal links. Instead your keywords should be used as anchor text. Make sure you are not using always the same keywords – that would not look natural hence is not credible and might get your site “flagged” or “sandbox-ed”.

 Search Engines also read and take into account the text surrounding a link. It pays to have a good description under a link.

 3. Links from trusted sites

 These are sites that are authorities on a topic and are around for some time. A link from this kind of site carries a lot of weight, but these links are difficult to obtain. If you can not get a link from a “trusted site” then try getting one from the sites the trusted site already links to. The closer you are linked to a trusted site the better for your “link profile”.

 An example: If you optimize for the term : “virtual worlds” the site: www.secondlife.com carries more weight then most other sites about virtual worlds. It is a topic authority and a trusted site.

SEOs do spend a considerable amount searching the web to find trusted sites or sites a trusted site has linked to.

 4. Diversity

 This is what determines your link profile. The more you have links from a variety of sources the more credible is your link profile.

 This includes links from a diversity of IP addresses, domains, high and low page rank, types of site and topics. If all of your inbound links do come from the same or similar  IP’s, they carry less weight than if they were all from different sites/IP’s. It is also important to get links from different types of sites: communities, blogs, directories, wiki’s and so on.

 5. Age

 The value of a link increases over time. The longer a site links to you, the more this link will impact your rankings. This is especially the case with sites, that do often change their content but do not remove the link to your site. It is therefore  paramount to check your links  on a regular basis and give your linking partners a good reason to keep that link.

 6. Position of the link

 It does make a difference, where the link is on a given page. The highest value do have links, which are within the content of the page. For example in an article. The lowest value carry links in the footer of a page.

 7. Amount of outbound links

 You share the value a link from a given page can carry , with all other links on that page. Lets say, for example,  the value of a certain link would be 10 points . But there are 9 other links on that same page. That means the link to your site is valued at 1 point only (actually a little bit less as the sending site holds some of the value back).

 Google also takes into account the amount of outgoing links of the entire domain in relation to the actual content of the site. Therefore sites that have thousands of outbound links but not much content, or pages with hundreds of outbound links are not a good source for links,unless they carry a lot of weight for other reasons ( topic authorities).

 A page/site that ONLY contains hundreds of links is worthless at its best and dangerous for your site at its worst. Most of them are what we call “link farms”.They have no value for the user and are created for the sole purpose of obtaining link popularity.

 8. PR (page rank)

 The page rank of your site as such does not determine how well you rank and does not impact your rankings as such directly. Page rank shows you, how Google evaluates a given page, based on the above factors. That means that a link from a site/page with a high page rank carries more weight then a link  from a page with low or no page rank at all.

 9. The nofollow attribute

 The nofollow attribute is an HTML element, that is used to indicate search engines, that the creator of the site does not vouch for the site he is linking to. Those links are pretty much worthless from an SEO perspective.

 However often sites that could refer a lot of visitors to you use the nofollow attribute to avoid link spamming.

 Here two examples: www.wikipedia.org or  www.xing.com.

The later being one of my biggest and most important referrers.

 10. Reciprocation of a link

 If you link back to the site/page that links to you, both links loose a considerable amount of their weight. In fact, the remaining weight is not much higher then the weight of an internal link. Reciprocal links are only worth doing,  if the the two site do offer the user a genuine value, meaning the two sites need to be very relevant to each other. For the purpose of link exchange it is a much better strategy to set up a second website on the same topic.

 Then you have site B (Your on topic link exchange site/blog)  linking to site C ( the site you want to exchange links with) and C linking to A (your main commercial site). Your site B may also link to A. Make sure that you have good and unique content on both sites and host them on different IP addresses.

 Resume

 As you can see, building a good link profile is not as easy as it might look like. It requires time, knowledge of how to evaluate sites and experience. This is why companies hire SEO professionals instead of doing it themselves.

Any questions about SEO and links?
Post it hereunder,  I will answer asap:

 5 points to identify a genuine SEO Consultant:

 1. A genuine SEO consultant can show you examples of his work!

 This might either be sites, that the SEO consultant has optimized  for a client, or it might be his own project. He should be able to provide a full ranking report, a link profile and traffic stats for the site. It is insufficient to show you some “number one positions” for obscure key-phrases that nobody uses in the first place.

 2. A genuine SEO consultant does not guarantee rankings!

 Why not? Isn’t that what I am paying for you might ask. No its not. You pay for  positioning your website in search engines to get more qualified visitors to your site and convert a certain amount of visitors into  new clients.

 Instead a good SEO works out a marketing plan with you, based on what he thinks is realistic in terms of performance and based on your budget.

 3. A genuine SEO consultant is not cheap!

 The price for SEO depends on three  factors:

 -        How competitive are your key phrases

-        Your expectations in performance

-        How you want to pay

 This can range from only 2000 Euros per year and in some cases more than 200.000 per year. There is a big difference if you want to be found under “my product + my hometown” or if you need to generate i.e. 200 real estate leads per month to feed a sales organization.

 A genuine SEO tells you what needs to be done to achieve your goals and puts a price tag on his services. He will be able to work within your estimated CPO (cost per order), or the estimated CPL (cost per lead) and he will work closely together with you to achieve those pre-defined goals.

 Often SEO work on a hybrid payment model that is a smaller annual or monthly fee, plus a CPL or CPO  based payment. The more the payment is performance based, the more the SEO will expect to earn and vice versa.

 4. A genuine SEO consultant does not spam!

 A genuine SEO will not use what is  call “black hat techniques”. He will not suggest  methods to “trick” the search engines.

 5.A genuine SEO consultant is not secretive!

 SEO is not some secret voodoo technique, that only a selected few have access to. Its a job that requires some expert knowledge and some time to be invested. Just like lawyers, doctors, business consultants or similar.

 A good and genuine SEO consultant will tell you what needs to be done to achieve your goals and what methods he will use. He can also confidently and without bullshit, answer questions about how search engines do rank websites.

 That does not mean he will train or educate you to become an SEO yourself, but you will at least know what steps he is going to undertake and in which time frame.

 In closing

 These 5 points  reduce the amount of SEO consultants you have to choose from to about 5% of the original amount. Of course, you can always take the easy route and call Smart Media for a quote, to take the guess work out of your search for an SEO consultant.

 Simply call 
+ (34) 665 841 138

Talk to you later

Wolfgang Brand
Genuine SEO Consultant

Gratuitous animation
Flash has contributed to the ridiculous amount of gratuitous animation on the Internet, and – unlike animated GIFs – flash animations do not respond to your browser’s stop button or your keyboard’s escape key. Thus, users are likely to close the entire website down, rather than just a section.

Splash screen renaissance
By comprising smaller file sizes than GIF animations, flash has single-handedly brought back the splash screen, arguably one of the most irritating Internet experiences. Internet users are usually looking for content, and presenting them with a content-free splash screen is a sure-fire way to annoy them and give them good reason to leave. And who can blame them?

Flash websites
Incorporating flash into an HTML page or splash screen is bad enough, but entire websites built with flash are positively evil. First and foremost, flash websites make the browser’s back button and address bar useless, and make book-marking pages inside a flash website impossible. Printing flash pages from your browser won’t work either, nor will intra-page keyword searching. Finally, flash sites disable HTML links’ visited and unvisited colours, and this colour-changing feature is the Internet’s most important navigational cue.

Flash and search engines
Pages that are built entirely from flash – or ones that are heavily loaded with it – suffer from the same ranking problems as frame sites. There is simply not enough content for spiders to determine the relevancy of the site, and no meaningful ranking is ever achieved.

A flash site usually consists of one HTML page (the home page) and all other content is in a flash object. A flash designer’s argument is that the index page is in HTML, which can be read by search engines. They usually say that adding meta tag descriptions will do the trick. Fortunately, we’ve only had one potential client who was naive enough to believe he could achieve good rankings this way.

Google Blog

Another nail in the coffin for flash sites!

If I pay 3.000 Euro for an annual contract for SEO I am paying 60 Euros per week. He concluded he should get 6 hours of work for that.

He seriously expected me  to work for 10 Euro an hour. He probably pays his cleaning lady more then that.

So what does an SEO charge per hour?

SEO’s are not getting paid by the hour. They get paid for their ‘know how’. To be exact: their knowledge  about how to make a website rank, for their sources of quality links, for their intuition, for the experience gained from mulitiple experiments, tests and previous projects.

That’s at least how I see it, and that’s what I base my prices on.

Everytime I take on a new client, he gets an analysis of his site and linking profile and the offer includes all measures that need to be undertaken to achieve better rankings for the site. I don’t stipulate how many hours I need for that.

Actually the less hours I need, the more money I make and the faster the client’s site starts performing – a win win situation.

I explain with this little story:

A giant ship engine failed. The ship’s owners tried one expert after another, but none of them could figure but how to fix the engine.

Then they brought in an old man who had been fixing ships since he was a young.  He carried a large bag of tools with him, and when he arrived, he immediately went to work.  He inspected the engine very carefully, top to bottom.

Two of the ship’s owners were there, watching this man, hoping he would know what to do.  After looking things over, the old man reached into his bag and pulled out a small hammer.  He gently tapped something. Instantly, the engine lurched into life.  He carefully put his hammer away.

The engine was fixed!

A week later, the owners received a bill from the old man for ten thousand dollars.

“What?!” the owners exclaimed. “He hardly did anything!” So they wrote the old man a note saying, “Please send us an itemized bill.”

The man sent a bill that read:

Tapping with a hammer………………….. $ 2.00
Knowing where to tap…………………….. $ 9,998.00

Would be interesting to hear from other SEOs whats their opinion about ‘charges per hour’ ….

Wolfgang Brand

Flash designer gone mad

The company is using the latest game-development technologies to create its Virtual World with outstanding graphics and great user experience. One of the main differences to other Virtual Worlds is that Idea Fabrik is creating content based on real life Cities.

At present the prototype cities of London and New York are being tested. 

The company is in the process of going public and will soon trade on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. This could be a unique opportunity for investors to be part of the next big development on the internet.

Smart Media has been contracted to do coordinate online PR campaigns as well as social media campaigns to create awareness for the brand, the stock and the product alike.

Their new corporate website is currently under development and will go online soon.

While the first website is a point of reference for a business, the second is an educational website that offers users information about topics related to their business: a weblog or blog.

Internet users don’t surf the Internet for businesses, they surf for information or for solutions to their problems. Your second website will provide them with these solutions, and will direct them to your first website to purchase from. It really doesn’t matter what business you’re; this same principle always applies.

Major search engines prefer to index information rather than businesses; therefore, a website about your real estate company and its properties will not be as successful as a website about life in Spain and its benefits.

Obviously, a second website doesn’t come cheap. However  Smart Media offers a package that makes promoting your website with  a blog afffordable.

Ask for details:
wolfgang@smartmediaspain.com

Regards

Wolfgang Brand

A letter to Santa Claus:

Dear Santa Claus (Google)

I am the owner of a website selling property in Spain. My website helps people to fulfil their dream of living in the sun. I never cheated anyone and my employees love me. I think I deserve a present this christmas.

My problem is that that I haven’t got the foggiest idea what Internet Marketing is all about. Also I simply do not have the time and money to contract somebody who knows how this stuff works. I am also far too lazy to learn it.

However, my website has an outstanding design, lots of pictures and only the most important information. The ‘about us’ section provides the user with a detailed explanation about what a great company we are, including pictures of all these great people working for us (including mine of course). The colours are my favourites: blue and yellow and I hardly left any white space. I also included some very catchy animations and I am especially proud of this flashy intro playing my favourite song in the background.

Hence forth this Christmas one thing really would make me happy: List my website in Google under the words listed hereunder. I provide the list in a format easy to read for you:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”property in spain, properties in spain, costa del sol property, villas, townhouses, apartments, penthouses, buying property, investments, buying off plan, developments, real estate, rentals, legal advice, mortgages, estate agents, real estate agents, marbella, malaga, commercial property, residential property, fincas, country property, inmobilaria, casas, propriedades, immobilien in Spanien”>

Merry Christmas

Tony Naive
Best Properties S.C.