English and french version.

You will find free tutorials and tips as well as personnal coaching services.

1 fair in Germany and 1 trade-show in the USA have convinced us, that there is a real necessity to help entrepreneurs in the industry to improve their website. At least for the basics !

Meta datas, URL, page titles and other basic SEO knowledge like what are keywords, long tail keywords, what are they, how to collect and use them, what can be done on their website, can it be improved or does it have to be totally rebuilt !

Go there and gather our free tutorials and learn more on your chances to come up on first pages of search engines and succeed in getting qualified lead thanks to Internet !

Daniel Rivalin

http://actu.abondance.com/2009/09/bazibaza-nouveau-moteur-b2b.html

His site “abondance” releases every week a newsletter read by thousands of professionnals. I highly recommend the paid version that I read now for  a couple of years !

Well even if it is in french, you can log and check for yourself !

Daniel Rivalin

The entry went a little something like this….
“..check out the search engine which is called “bazibaza”. I know, it is a little bit of a different name but just register and have a look…”.

To read the full article just go to http://fastenerblog.net/2009/08/02/a-new-fastener-search-engine.aspx

BUT T.S and “Fastener Talk” readers, do you really think our name is “DIFFERENT”???………..We like to think of our name as “UNIQUE” not “odd”!! And we are sure, that with such a name,you cannot forget us!

Thanks for all the feedback we received, it has been great. If you wish to check out our search engine, you can subscriber to Bazibaza beta at http://industry.bazibaza.com and test out the Bazibaza Prototype which will officially launch in September.

Bazibaza magic touch starts where google stops,we promise you that Bazibaza search results are relevant and well organised by categories.

Judge for yourself and let us know what you think either by posting your comments on our blog or by emailing us at ikalia@ikalia.com

We hope our Search Engine proves helpful to the fastener Industry by making information and products (etc..) easily accessible thanks to our many categories.

Many thanks to T.S. and Fastener Blog readers!

Daniel Rivalin

The Bazibaza Team
http://blog.ikalia.com

http://industry.bazibaza.com operating under Ikalia ltd

Try any search related to fastener industry and let us know your feedback with the “rate our business” button.

Any critics and suggestions are very useful for us while we are in beta version !

below a short video to explain how to register

var playerhost = ((”https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://www.ezs3.com/secure/” : “http://www.ezs3.com/players/”);
document.write(unescape(”%3Cscript src=’” + playerhost + “mov/Daniel Rivalin/A83497DB-B553-C4C2-2B414B8D98B58D77.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));

stay in tune !

ikalia team
Daniel Rivalin

See you soon !

Ikalia team

Technological advancements is not just important in fastener production but it is also imperative to innovative communication in the industry. On websites like Fastener Freaks (http://fastenerfreaks.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html) the author (Andy Pels) asks the question “Why not strive for innovation in the fastener distribution industry?”

The bazibaza blog follows the example of fellow fastener professional blogs (such as Fastener Talk http://www.fastenerblog.net/strive) and we too aim to promote open communication in the fastener industry.

The number of Fastener blogs and groups on the internet continues to rise. Yet even with the increase of fastener companies, professionals and enthuastics online, there still is no search engine dedicated to fasteners where you would be able to search worldwide for fastener products, information, companies, associations etc.

That is until this Summer when Bazibaza launches!!

Here is a little glimpse until then…..

bazibaza homepage

Do have a website? Do have a blog? Is this enough?

How do you target your market (especially if you are using a genre you may not be that familiar with) as it is no easy task trying to advertise to professionals and your average joe end-users. After all (generally speaking) you rely on the average customer to buy your product/ service yet it is also just as important to have a strong relationship to the fastener professionals.

I do not mean to over simplify the situation as I am aware that many fasteners companies operate in a highly specialised arena. Yet we all know there is nothing simple about the situation, especially in these uncertain times where everyone is affected by the crisis including the highly specialised companies.

So many companies are willing to spend time and money on fastener technology (and rightly so, as this is important to their future business) yet sales and marketing often come as an after-thought. Do you agree that this is true of the fastener industry in general?? Or does your company actually assign a high priority to sales and marketing?? Great if you feel that your company has nothing to worry when comes to this!

Yet if you are using traditional sales and marketing methods are they are working well for your company? How in the long run will you compete with your rivals who have a strong internet presence? If you fail to plan for the long term you may be being short sighted because the internet already holds a high importance and it is predicted that this importance will only continue to grow with time.

One could argue that the danger is that your company would not being competing with your competitors if you didn’t have a strong online presence as more and more companies realise the potential opportunities that the internet holds. If your competitors are more visible on the net than your business then they are reaching a wider market of potential customers and are greater benefiting from the economic benefits of technological investment.

It all comes down to benchmarking your company’s visibility on the internet! How do you rate?

Are you visible enough??

Don’t be invincible….. make your presence felt!!!!

Posted by Katie O’Connor

koconnor@ikalia.com

Bing..google and yahoo

Competition heats up as Bing joins the race.

Forget about live search and check out Bing!

First of all, how can such a catchy name NOT be already registered by another company? Shockingly, the trademark was only registered in march this year. So we can be pretty sure that it did not cost anything for a big company like Microsoft!

We know from our own experience how difficult it is to find a unregistered trademark, it is like searching for a name for your child! Our search continues as we can’t use “www.ikalia.com” for our search engine because the trademark is problematic as there is another registered trademark with a similar phonetic pronunciation. Thus our hunt continues!

Even Google met some problems with its name. Especially in the case of gmail which they cannot use in Germany due to trademark issues.

Anyway, take the time to check all the new features of BING. It is very interesting. In the first week, it even surpassed Yahoo search.

Looks like it could fall down pretty fast according to some expert. But still, the market needs an alternative to google.

Anyway to judge it, from a point of view of the industry, I tried a very simple search : “DIN 84″ – a very basic metric screw with cylindric slotted head – better known that “ISO 1207″, which is the official version. On the french version of BING, in the first 2 search places were for the same company ACME. (Google never put 2 results in a row from the same website without clearly identifying it)

Then 2 results from sketchup.google.com…a big honor for the competitor of Bing. On google, the first results for sketchup comes only in second page.

What surprised me most is that there was no business directories results or industry portal results on the first 2 pages of BING.

Didn’t BING had the time to crawl and index them? We will have to wait to find out!

I will be posting some pictures and video shortly, so stay tuned !

Many factors can explain this.

The first could be that the management of most companies, small AND big, do not see yet what it could bring to them in term of business, opportunities and/or brand image.

Second is that, fortunately for them, the subscription to several business directories and marketplaces, improve their visibility on internet.

Better be on the 5th page of Alibaba or appear somewhere on the list of Globalspec, Kompass or directindustry than to be nowhere.

That’s for sure.

But what if the company is on none on this path ?

Remain the direct advertisement on google, with sponsored links, using Adwords features.

In that regard, many small AND big companies now compete for the same keywords.

We are just at the beginning of this process, and while the professionnals start to understand what advantage it gives to be on first page of google, the price on adwords of this simple word “fasteners” is going to double within a year for sure.

The PPC (pay per click) is between 0,97 and 1,42 US$ according to google  ! It was less than 1 US$ a few month ago.

on this may 10th, we had 26th advertisers on adwords for “fasteners”.

Let’s come back to this post in one year to see the evolution !

Ikalia has now reached well over 3500 sites for fastener industry and around : screw machining, finish and coating, sorting, machinery…

And those who want to test in advance the “magic” features of sorting webpages can contact me at drivalin@ikalia.com

Daniel Rivalin

let’s enjoy !

Well, enjoy… as you can. I know that for most of you, the economical situation is very tough. Some of you even wonder if their company will go through. We are at your side, and wish you all the best !

Time of crisis are best to face realties in each area of the company, first of them, the way you sell your products and services.

Regarding internet, it is all about : are you visible (see my previous post) ? how my new customers can find me ?

Well, what about us ?

It is now time to accept to be compared to our best friend ! Google the emperor.

We have for that reason created a small application where we can compare our results with google. Actually, I should say “YOUR” results in fact !

First thing, our results are very quiet compared to Google.

Less pages, but PROFESSIONNAL ones ONLY. And the “MIRACLE” of being able to filter using manually set up categories !

What a pleasure in 2 clicks to refine to australian market the search for specific fixing parts ! Something google will never do !

Still, a long way to go for us to get comparable results on some specific norms and topic and this will be our hard work in the coming weeks !

Norms results are leaded by Norm vendors.

Looks a little “noisy” but little choice than to accept those necessary pages. But we are creating a special category, so with our feature “EXCLUDE CATEGORY”, you will be able to come back to pages of manufacturer, distributors of that norm !

Sounds a little difficult to follow ? no problem, time is coming when you will be able to test all that for yourself !

The readers interested to test right now, can contact me by sending me an email to drivalin@ikalia.com

see you soon for another post !

Daniel Rivalin – Ikalia team