Even before the concept of search engine optimization was introduced, robots.txt has been a fixture on websites. With or without SEO, its purpose was clear: to request search engines to ignore crawling certain files and folders as specified in the protocol. These pages may have been placed on our servers for convenient access to certain people, but with the concept of open Web, whatever we uploaded can now be seen by anyone who has access to the Internet through search engines. That's where robots.txt comes into picture.

With SEO we have become more aware of what search engines can do. Our purpose of doing SEO is to make our pages more visible, thereby attracting more visitors who see its more prominent search engine placement. But prominent search engine placement for wrong keywords and pages is not only embarrassing, but also damaging especially if it involves moderately sensitive information such as next week's menu for a restaurant website or an upcoming promotion of a shopping mall.

Bing is the latest reincarnation of Microsoft's search engine offering. After MSN Search and Live Search didn't impress users and instead prompted them to switch to other search engines, an overhaul took place and the result is a pleasant surprise: Bing search engine indeed delivers desired results, interesting new features and finally some challenge to Google dominance.

I wonder what took Microsoft's search team so long to unleash this innovative search power? Bing incidentally was launched just weeks after the long anticipated Wolfram Alpha was set live. I guess Microsoft prefers to be in stealthy mode and likes to talk more after its launched, even if there were already speculations swirling around about it before launch.

So what's so special about this new search engine? Even before you type your search query, you'll never fail to notice the presence of ever changing background of remarkable places; I even wrote something about Chocolate Hills of Bohol, Philippines. This is a contrast to Google and Yahoo's immaculate search layouts. But don't get deceived by the good looks. Let's get into the details. Bing was developed and aimed to address the following concerns:

Even before we build our first newletter release, one major element that needs to be addressed is the quality and quantity of our mailing list. Quality is determined on how we source our subscribers. Are they permission based? Or are they bought from a company involved in an email harvesting and recycling activity? Obviously we want the first type but starting it out can be really tough experience especially if we are just starting out.

So how do we start building our newsletter mailing list? Here are some tips that helps us get moving:

1. Use a confirmed opt-in subscription form.
Confirmed opt-in means every subscriber who signs up needs to click a link in a confirmation email. This method may build the mailing list at a slower pace than using the single opt-in, which simply asks for email address without confirmation, but no doubt the quality of email addresses is higher. That's because single opt-in subscription method is prone to prank email submissions and wrongly spelled email addresses.

2. Place subscription forms at popular pages.
Placement of email subscription form on homepage or any popular sections of the site definitely gathers more eyeballs and possible interest in subscribing to the mailing list. If I read a very informative article, I would think that the site itself is a good source of other informative articles. I would then be easily convinced to sign up.

We reckon that email marketing has been around for quite a while. Dragged into annoyance of unsolicited mails, and rendered irrelevant by people who choose to mark email messages as spam instead of unsubscribing to newsletters, and apparently outshined by its younger peers named SEO and social media, EDM continues to be among the easiest and cheapest way to communicate to our target audience.

However, we notice that many emails are sent just for the sake of sending. We still see many emails consisting of just big JPG file; I can only imagine marketers doing so think that sending emails is similar to outdoor advertising, only viewed indoors. We still see multiple instances where unsubscribe forms don't work. If such things continue to prevail, effectiveness of marketing through EDM will continue to be curtailed.