Have you ever been surfing the web and come upon Internet advertising that provides a direct solution for something that you've been researching lately? Did you think that it might be related to your computer cookies, or did you chalk it up to serendipity?
SEO contests are nothing new. Every few months someone pops up with some randomly generated phrase and a pile of prizes so aspiring search engine optimizers can go head to head in a race for top rankings. But when Donna Fontenot (DazzlinDonna) approached me about her latest idea for an SEO contest, I couldn't resist. This time around, Donna has recruited about a dozen search marketers to go head to head in a two-month, live blogged weight loss competition a la' "The Biggest Loser." The cool part? It's all about raising money for charities.
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.
When a business starts blogging, there is usually a huge temptation to use this newly-minted blog as a tool to directly promotion the business and its products and services. Unfortunately, this is the quickest way to guarantee that your blog will be totally useless and irrelevant to visitors. So what should your blog focus on? Providing value to your readers, of course!
Sites that require users to log in to access certain information and/or purchase products add an additional layer of potential complication to the usability process. To avoid potential visitor confusion and the possibility for errors, it is important that any login process requires little or no thought on the part of the site visitor. Once logged in, you must be sure that visitors are able to find the information they want and expect to find. My Account pages need to provide visitors with access and ability to view and change personal information, as necessary.
If you are a small business and you are looking to hire an online marketer, be weary of public relations firms that claim "we can do that" or "we'll bundle that with our services". Public Relations companies that truly understand online marketing are few and far between, and the ones who really do understand it and do a good job at it, are usually swamped and not taking on new clients....
So, here it is almost the end of January. How are y'all doing with your New Year's Resolutions? Still going strong? Or have you found yourself starting to "backslide" just a little bit?...
Today, I sat down and looked at approximately 1000 reviews listed in Google Maps for hospitality industry businesses. The following is the list of sources I found Google currently pulling this data from, in addition to their own Google Reviews source.
So you're running an AdWords campaign for your business, but you only want to target specific locations. How can you do that? Simon Heseltine offers up a walk through Google's geotargeting features to help you get a feel for the best way to narrow down your campaigns.
One of the most common questions I hear from bloggers and businesses that blog, is 'How can I grow my blog's traffic?' This is a valid question, but bloggers shouldn't forget to focus on their blog's subscribers as well. Over the last year, I have seen first-hand what can happen when you focus on growing your blog's subscriber count.
Sage spotlights an article by Marketing Sherpa that reveals the results of multivariate landing page testing on SEM conversion rates. With little initial investment, companies have the potential to double their conversion rates. The artice also points out four major lessons to learn from multivariate testing, such as remembering that site redesign is crucial and to expect organizational barriers.
This week's "In the News" video talks about advancements that companies like Southwest airlines and Ask.com are making to enhance personal touches for their uses; Southwest is adding internet access on some of their planes, and Ask is now offering customized skins on their search tools. Also, Google expands its local search results, making more options available to users but SEO harder for other sites.
Image optimization and video optimization are not secondary organic strategies anymore, they are essential in creating a well-rounded online presence. There are numerous resources you can turn to help perfect your strategy but I wanted to take a look at some techniques you may never thought of as well as some additional questions to ask yourself before applying any tactics....
Concern spreads as Yahoo announces that profits are down and that it will be cutting hundreds of jobs this year. Web Side Story users find themselves in migration formation as the site gets acquired by Omniture, and Google remains in the headlines as they launch their attack on BlackBerries via Google's iPhone capabilities.
Sage details an article by David Wallace, "Why You Should Not Place All Your Eggs in One Basket," in which David uses IncrediMail as an example of why it is important for small businesses to invest in multiple forms of marketing. He lists six different opportunities to project your business, including paid search, blogging, social media, web forums, word of mouth referrals, and even traditional marketing.
Whether you are a consultant, a small business, or a Fortune 500 company, a blog can be a great tool to promote yourself. But the mistake that many blogs make is placing too much emphasis on promoting what they offer, and not enough focus on the people doing the selling.
Since Google's been showing up to ten local results within their natural listings lately, it seems like a good idea to get back to the local search engines. They're now more visible than ever and are not going away. The search engines don't say (nor should they) how to get top local listings, and here are some basic steps and ideas to benefit from Google Maps and Yahoo Local listings.
Every day we get businesses coming to us looking to improve their search engine rankings. They want to talk about an SEO campaign but one quick look at their site and we see that SEO may not be the right approach for them. Usually in these cases the site needs a complete usability makeover.
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