Marketing Pilgrim gives us some good information this week regarding mobile phones and Motrin. First, we learn how detrimental all Flash websites are to iPhone users, who only see a blank page when they try and visit a flash site. Second, Sage talks about the mommy blogger outrage over the edgy Motrin YoutTube commercial. Are YouTube and LinkedIn following Facebook's lead? Now on YouTube, you will now see and can buy PPC ads, and LinkedIn has added demographic-specific Events to user's profiles in a similar fashion. Lastly, check out WebPro News for a detailed translation of a live chat Q&A with Google.
One of the biggest 'criticisms' of social media that companies have, is the difficulty in measuring the return on investment for their efforts. Many believe that widespread business adoption of social media won't happen until a clear benefit to the company's bottom line can be measured. Of course, these people are totally missing the point of what social media is, and why it works.
Businesses don't succeed on the basis of a product alone. Those products have to be developed, marketed and sold using sound business principles. Similarly, SEO doesn't succeed solely by what you do on the technical front, but what you do internally to build a platform that will allow SEO success to happen.
With the holiday shopping season already in full gear online, paid search prices are going to be going up. After all, more competition equals higher prices. That means you'll need to make sure every ad you create has the best shot at landing you a conversion. To do that, you really need to understand how to write great ads.
I've spent the last month playing around with Twitter. Now that I've had time to really dive into the service, experiement with it and learn some of the finer details, I figured it's about time I wrote a Seach Engine Guide style guide to the service. This multi-part series will cover everything from how to get an account and get people following you to the finer points of twitter marketing and networking. It's not a service that will be worth the time to everyone, but it's certainly proven itself to have practical application for me.
If SEO isn't exactly rocket science (and I don't believe it is), then why are people willing to pay so much for site optimization services?
WordPress is an excellent blog platform which provides complete customization which is both user and search engine friendly. Here are some of the tips, tricks and plug-ins that I use when I setup WordPress blogs.
Every SEO campaign has to start somewhere. Any good plan; whether you're building a home, preparing for a family vacation or looking to optimize your website for search rankings, starts with research. Before you are ready to optimize your first piece of code you need to understand the landscape around you, which means you need to know the condition of your site as it currently is, and the goals you wish to achieve over the course of your campaign.
Most, if not every blogger, wants to write posts that are popular with their readers, and other bloggers. And while there are no foolproof ways to guarantee that others will be interested in what you write, there are several things you can do to greatly improve your chances that others will talk about, and link to your posts.
Once upon a time directories provided value to webmasters who were either looking to get new sites indexed or increase their site's link popularity or both. Now I am seeing a trend where directories are not as helpful in these.
To some, it sounds incredibly simple. To others, it's somewhat mind boggling. Search marketers toss around lingo like "keywords" and "keyword phrases" as if they're part of everyone's vocabulary. While it's true the words are nothing special, the concept can be foreign to someone new to the industry. This article offers up a quick and simple primer on the concept of keywords and keyword phrases in regards to organic search engine optimization.
We've seen a couple of posts popping up in our Small Business Ideas forums asking if links from a specific site are being nofollowed or not. With that in mind, I thought a quick tutorial on how to find out if a link is nofollowed might be handy for some of our readers.
While learning how to effectively manage a paid search advertising campaign can take quite a bit of time, there are plenty of quick and easy ways to increase your chances at success. This article aims to outline five common mistakes that end up keeping small businesses and in-house marketers from maximizing the potential of their pay per click campaigns.
I like to create systems for everything that I do and SEO is no exception. While not every aspect of search engine marketing can be programmed, categorized or easily referenced, (I have a mighty team to handle that stuff!) the bulk of the work can at least be outlined into a handy check list.
There is no denying the power of link text when it comes to search engine optimization. Whether it's your internal link structure, your outgoing links or your incoming links, the anchor text that gets used can have a strong impact.
Since it's hard to build a good link strategy if you don't actually understand why links are so important, I thought that I'd put together a new series of articles that examines why it is that links matter so much.
While it's easy enough to envision a potential customer heading off to Yahoo or Google, conducting a search, clicking through and making a purchase, the reality is that the online sales process is more complicated than that.
Often mistaken for search engines, directories are actually collections of human reviewed web sites that have been arranged into topical categories. Popular directories can serve as excellent starting points for navigating the Internet.
Robots.txt files are often mentioned as being an important foundation of a search friendly web site. To site owners and small businesses who are new to search marketing, the robots.txt file can sound daunting. In reality, it's one of the fastest, simplest ways to make your site just a little more search engine friendly.
I've decided to set up a little challenge for myself and to both blog and write articles on it over the next month. The idea is to try to setup some type of business in my free time and see...
Two of the most popular buzz words in the online marketing realm right now are link baiting and viral marketing. These two tactics are a great way to build links and to build branding when constrained by small marketing budgets...
Next to contextual search (i.e. just a plain 'regular' search on a search engine) Image Search is the fastest growing vertical search in the space. Compared to shopping, news, blogging, etc., image search has them beat by a mile. However, what's even more important about image search, is how Google's Universal Search, Ask's 3d Search and Yahoo's Blended Search are utilizing and incorporating images from each of their image search verticals into the 'regular' search results.
I can hardly bring myself to say the old cliche about content being... well, you know. I think it's one of the original cliche's in the SEO industry. And as redundant as it has become, for whatever reason we keep...
Up until last week, I had never had much use for Twitter. To me, it was just another inane example of people sharing far more than anyone wants to know about them. Then I stumbled across a fantastic use of Twitter and started having second thoughts. I still can't see the sense in letting the world know who is hanging out in your hotel room, but I am thinking there could be some unique applications for it.
Is this the end of the target audience? Well, okay, to be honest... no. The target audience is alive and well. But what can you do to improve website performance further? Check out the concept of personas.
Ask has some incredible and unique features that I believe will slowly but surely steal search share from its more popular brethren. Consequently, it seems appropriate to provide some tips on how to optimize for Ask without sacrificing rankings on the other search engines.
I'll admit that as a marketing manager I'm typically slow to allocate budget and time towards a new trend until I start seeing concrete examples of that new trend providing some ROI? Well, an example fell right into our lap and I'm sold
Learn how looking at the ways people find and use your web site can give you valuable insight into your marketing campaigns, your page content and your products. Our Analytics articles cover topics like why you should be tracking your analytics, which analytics programs to use and what you should be doing with the data you gather.
Blogs are simple programs that allow web site owners to quickly and easily publish new content to their web site. Our series of articles on blogging offers practical advice on setting up a blog, deciding what type of content you should publish on your blog and how you can use blogs to market your business.
With social media and search engines driving a huge percentage of the traffic to a web site, it's essential to make sure you're building your brand and convincing people to come looking for YOU. Find out how to build a stronger brand by positioning yourself in search results and by branding yourself through social media conversations.
Getting people to come to your web site is only half the battle. Once they've arrived, you need to be certain you're serving up fresh, engaging content. While writing is a skill that doesn't always come easy, our collection of simple tips and insights can help you rev up your content to gain better search engine rankings and higher conversion rates.
Traffic is not your friend. Conversions are your friend. This collection of articles shares practical advice you can use in your marketing campaigns and on your web site to make sure you are driving leads, sales and sign-ups. Learn how to define your conversion points and then focus on improving them.
Keywords are the words or phrases people type into the search engines to find the web sites they're looking for. Learn how to identify the best keywords for your site and how to integrate them into your title tags, headlines and page copy to improve rankings.
There's no denying the power of links in terms of online marketing. Search engines use links as a way to determine how valuable and relevant your site is and people use links to move from one site to another. Building quality links from relevant sources can go a long way toward improving your search rankings, but it can also drive tons of targeted traffic.
With paper Yellow Pages quickly getting buried in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, local search is being an essential part of any online marketing campaign. Learn which sites searchers are turning to for listings and reviews and find out how you can put your best foot forward on them.
Public relations isn't just for big companies anymore. The web has taken conversation global which means one angry customer can do major damage to your brand. Of course that also means one very happy customer can launch your brand into the stratosphere. Learn the nuances of online public relations through the articles in this category.
Companies worry someone might say something bad about them online. What they should be worried about is that someone might say something bad about them online without them ever knowing it. Learn how to track the conversation about your company, your products and even yourself. Get practical tips and advice on heading off, or recovering from a crisis.
A collection of articles and posts that do not fall into any particular online marketing category.
Purchasing keyword triggered advertising on major search engines or content sites can be a great way to drive targeted traffic to your web site. These articles explore the various paid search advertising options and offer up tips for maximizing the value of your ad dollar.
This category covers high level search marketing concepts. These articles and posts tend to focus on the overall value of search marketing tactics and the need to integrate several forms of online marketing to build stronger results.
SEO is the practice of increasing your rankings in the organic (non-paid) search results of a search engine. The posts in this category offer up tips and advice for making sure your site is search engine friendly and for increasing your rankings through changes in links, content and keyword focus.
If you're new to search marketing, these entry level articles will help you get an idea of what goes into a search marketing campaign. You'll find step by step primers and simple explanations aimed at helping you dive into search marketing without fear of drowning.
There's a conversation going on around you. Are you part of it? Social media sites focus on giving people a way to connect and share thoughts, ideas and creations. Smart companies are figuring out ways to contribute to and become part of this conversation. Learn how to join in without stepping on toes.
Search engines used to focus on delivering up a list of the best web pages for a search. These days, they're also integrating video, images, blog listings, product listings and more. Learn how universal search is changing up search engine optimization and how savvy marketers are taking advantage of it to increase their presence in search results.
News and information from our Small Business Marketing Unleashed Conference. Articles and video reviews and interviews are included.
Ever been to a site that made it difficult for you to find your way around? Tried to buy a product, but couldn't find the add to cart option? If so, you've experienced a usability problem. This collection of articles focuses on the need to build your web site around accepted standards so users can quickly and easily find their way around.
Specialized search engines focus on serving up results for a specific topic or from a specific type of media. Vertical search engines may let you dig deep into video results or refine your search to sites focused on one industry. These engines serve as great sources of engaged traffic and learning how to increase your rankings on them can have a huge pay off.
Every now and then a little piece of marketing genius takes off with lightening speed and finds its way to half the computers on the Internet. These articles will give you insight into what makes some pieces fly while others flounder. They'll also help you learn how to find the best starting points to launch a viral campaign.
If you're looking for ways to increase the visibility of your small business and build links, submitting videos to your local government cable channel may be an option. Local cable as well as network television affiliates look for content filler at certain times. Here's a couple of ways you may be able to take advantage of those needs and expand the reach of your small business!...
I have rules about my social networks and I am sure most people who are comfortable utilizing social networks do too. When someone is just starting to get involved in building up their social network it's hard to know or recognize when and where to set boundaries. As well, there seems to be a bit of a challenge when it comes to being completely professional or being yourself. Luckily, the rule of being "you" is winning out and those folks who think they are being "professional" in sending blog links, promotional introductions, and other spammy items are turning into "professional...
Almost everyone with an interest in Local Search is trying to get a message through to the large minds at Google, in a variety of ways. The message concerns the real-life effects of inaccurate data in Google's One Box, 10-pack and Maps on the public. While a major percentage of Internet users have grown to trust the Google brand and will take Google's local data at face value, few will understand that Google views its own local applications as a wiki, community project. Let me explain why this is seriously problematic....
At one point or another, every blogger struggles to find new content ideas for their blog. For some of us, ideas for posts come easily, but if you're a blogger that's constantly wracking your brain for the next post idea, launching a blog post series could be your solution!
There's some bad news but good tools in the news this week. Yahoo "can't win for losing" as Google terminates its advertising partnership with them and Yahoo shares drop significantly. While Google and Yahoo part ways, Yellowbook and YouTube join forces to distribute SMB videos. Wordtracker announces a new tool that anticipates the questions people are clicking on while searching based off keywords. Also, according to Search Engine Watch, the number of small businesses using social media is expected to double from 300K to 600K in the next twelve months....
One of the presenters at this year's SES Chicago is Search Marketing Veteran, Bruce Clay. Bruce will be leading a session on the topic of SEO tools: "tools that will help you to accomplish your tasks including indexing, competitive analysis, site ranking, diagnosing and remedying problems, page level information, site level information, on-page optimization and much more." I had a chance to ask Bruce a few questions about his session and how he leverages SEO Tools for his own strategies....
Someone recently asked me how he knows whether to use shopping cart software or a full-blown content management system for a Web site. Does it depend on how large your site is? Does it depend on what kind of content you have? And, most importantly, which one is better for search marketing? These are good questions, so they deserve good answers....
Have you decided to take your blog to the next level by including video? Hooray! Video logs (vlogs) can help communicate in a lot of different ways and they also add a "real" voice to your blog posts....
A few months ago Bryan Eisenberg and John Quarto-vonTivadar released an in-depth guide on testing using Google Website Optimizer called, "Always Be Testing." I had the opportunity to go through the book and thought that anyone could read it and quickly implement a testing framework using Google's website optimizer. I recently got the chance to interview co-author Bryan Eisenberg to get his thoughts on his motivations for writing the book and the benefits readers can get from it....
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Also, a big thanks goes to our friend Christine Churchill at Key Relevance for her insights on paid search and keyword research.