Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has some pretty extreme views for the business world. I think he might be looking in the mirror too closely when he talks about the business world as a whole.
Search Engine Roundtable gave some interesting advice on upping your budget over at Bing/Adcenter.
With more and more people signing on to social sites like Twitter and Facebook, companies are working overtime to figure out how to make the companies, products and offerings go viral. While I've written quite a few article about the theories behind preparing a campaign that's likely to go viral, the truth is that some of the most effective viral campaigns are also the simplest. Sometimes it's less about creating a great idea and more about enabling the spread.
Sometimes, I get ahead of myself when I'm answering questions and in this case, I forgot for a moment that such a huge number of the business listings that make up Google's local index are still unclaimed. Let's get down to basics with this article. If you've been mystified by the verification process, read on!
Everyone is staring hard at Bing, Microsoft's new search engine, and I mostly like what I see, with one exception. I've written before about the search engine conflict of interest between highlighting their own properties and providing the truly best answer. In the quest for ever more cash, search engines are presenting results that point to their own pages. What does that mean to the searcher and to the search marketer?
The panelists spoke about various topics such as; online tools, social marketing and challenges their clients face. Some good points were made throughout the session however, as most panels go, they were all intertwined and scattered. I have highlighted some of the main items that are beneficial to all businesses either as a refresher or as new information.
Having a good headline, a good article and even a good-looking site isn't always enough to maintain an audience. To keep people coming back to your blog day after day you have to go through the extra effort to keep your visitors interested in your content.
Google's Webmaster Central team has started an excellent YouTube channel and in this week's video Matt Cutts Answers: "Will Google consider Yahoo! Directory and BOTW as source of paid links? If no, why is this different from another site that sell links.
I post something on my Biznology blog each day I'm working, and we've got a lot of subscribers so we get a fair number of comments. And I check each and every comment before it is posted, so that I'm not littering the blog with spam comments. But I am finding myself challenged by deciding just what is and is not spam. If you run a blog, I wonder if this has ever happened to you, too.
Having a good looking blog starts with having a good looking website design. It's amazing how easy it is to throw up a blog. But putting one together that is visually appealing to your audience is often another matter all together. There's more to a website or a blog than a header, side navigation, and a few images.
PageRank Sculpting is now the hottest topic on the SEO landscape. Learn what it is and how the changes in this area will effect you.
Microsoft's Key Phrase Research tool is now officially in beta. It's a really powerful tool and offers a ton of great information. I highly recommend you check it out!
We have all heard about the Four P's of Marketing, but what about the new two E's, Emotion and Engagement, are you fully utilizing them?
Convincing small business folk to get on board with social media is akin to asking a four-year-old to watch paint dry. It's nice to look at, for a few minutes, until boredom sets in and the child asks if he can go outside and play. Outside is where the action is. There's stuff to do. People to see. Places to go.
The best titled blog in the world is only going to get you so far. To get readers you have to prove that you've got the goods that go with it.
My master website marketing checklist covering over 400 specific items through 23 topics. These topics include things such as website development, SEO, usability, accessibility, etc. This list doesn't cover any "how tos," which are an essential ingredient to successful online marketing, but sometimes you need to first know what to do so you can then discover how to do it.
Google's latest move brings Local to the forefront of the search experience, for searchers and marketers alike. This is a game changer.
It's enough to make the average business owner break out in a cold sweat; the thought of bloggers ripping them. But while many businesses and companies are fearful of posts that shine a negative light on their business, these instances are in fact a wonderful opportunity.
I constantly counsel people to make their Web site more than just an online brochure--they must measure their conversions online and offline so they know what it's worth to bring that extra visitor to their Web site. Only then do you know what to spend on marketing. Simple, right? Not always. What do you do when you have multiple ways of measuring conversions?
I recently received an email from someone looking for some advice and a variety of topics. I thought our readers here would benefit from my response. This is the first post of a series of questions and answers touching on keywords and how search engines interpret keyword usage.
This post is a list of all the questions that have been asked in the 8-Part Big Bad List of SEO Questions. Here you will find the full list of questions with links to each of them individually.
We've previously looked at Paid Search Advertising Roadmap, Paid Search Rules and Alphabet Soup and PPC. Now let's start looking at keyword matching. How well do you understand match types?
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.
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