Large companies are able to spend huge amounts on advertising and PR campaigns, though they love free publicity as much as anyone. But small and mid-sized businesses need to target their marketing dollars wisely to get as much bang as possible for every buck.

For smaller businesses, free publicity may well be the difference between failing, merely surviving, or shooting for the moon. Even for larger companies, obtaining free positive publicity can mean success in a fiercely competitive market.

The public is overwhelmed by thousands of advertising messages. Free publicity in the form of print or broadcast articles about your company, its executives or staff members, or its products and services can attract the attention of potential customers in a way that one more ad just can’t.

PR professionals are always coming up with clever ideas for getting their clients noticed, especially in the form of free and powerful publicity. Keep in mind that your goal is to attract the public’s attention in a way that will draw them to your door and keep them coming back. The public is your current and potential customer base, and public relations is all about reaching them in a way that will encourage both sales and customer loyalty.

A major purpose of PR is to place media articles about you and your business in local, national, and trade publications. Such articles lend your business credibility in the eyes of the public and position you as experts in the field. People often think about using a product or service for the first time after reading an article about it in a newspaper or a magazine. Another function of such publicity is to create an appealing image for your company, to encourage customer identification and loyalty.

Local Media Exposure

Marketing experts now advise that the trading area for most businesses consists of consumers within a 10-minute drive of their store. Even most national companies, especially franchises, exist for consumers primarily as local businesses. In other words, local media exposure is one of the most valuable forms of advertising available.

Instead of spending all of your marketing budget on expensive advertising programs, look for ways to win free publicity from local media exposure. Because your business is local, it is not at all difficult to make it newsworthy at the local level.

The most obvious way to do that is to take advantage of the fact that most local newspapers have a business section that routinely reports on events and activities that you will be engaging in just in the normal course of doing business:

• * Grand Openings
• * Expansions New hires
• * Special Events
• * Promotions
• * Community service involvement

Any of these can be translated into a news story that frames your business in an appealing light and attracts customers to your door.

But let’s face it, to reach most potential customers you need to get off the business page. Here are a few tips for creating a local buzz for your business by helping local newspapers and TV and radio shows see your company as a story.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of the Press Release

The press release is the PR workhorse. Carefully targeted, well-written press releases save reporters time and trouble by creating newsworthy angles about a business that media can use to fill column inches or airtime. There are many opportunities for sending out press releases, and new opportunities can always be created

• * New products and services
• * Contests and promotions
• * Awards or industry recognition
• * New hires and promotions
• * Grand openings and open houses
• * Speaking engagements
• * Involvement with local charity events, fund-raisers, or local community service events
• * Results of interesting or controversial customer surveys

If you or your PR/marketing specialist has developed a relationship with reporters, then it becomes even easier to get your press releases the attention you want. One way to establish such a relationship is to consistently provide them with stories they can use. In other words, don’t just send out press releases-create stories. Once you’ve got that relationship with a reporter, editor, newscaster, or talk show host, he or she will be especially receptive to your press releases.

So how do you create the stories that will build such relationships? Let me count the ways! Actually, let me count just a few ways for now, with a promise of many more in the future.

Think Feature Article

Feature stories are particularly useful in bringing your business to the attention of potential customers, especially since many feature stories are accompanied by full-color photographs! All you have to do is identify a human-interest angle that will attract the attention of the average newspaper reader. Especially for small and mid-sized local businesses, company owners and executives are real people and members of the community. A human angle featuring an executive or even a regular staff member is easy to come up with.

For example, most local papers have a “Home & Garden” section. If someone in the company has a house with unusual architectural features, or a particularly serene or spectacular garden, then a full-color feature on that person can be pitched to the lifestyle editor of the paper. If the business provides a service, a feature on a customer (or even an owner) who has achieved remarkable results using that service can attract customers who also need or want such a service.

Let’s say you are the owner of one of those new specialty franchise gyms that cater to older, heavier women. Most owners of these gyms purchased their franchise after having been paying members themselves. Besides seeing great potential for growth in that market, a lot of the women who own such franchises are also excited about the results they achieved as members.

Imagine a feature article, complete with before and after pictures, of the owner or one or more of her most successful clients. There would be a stampede to her door!

This is what inevitably happens when a local newspaper runs an article on the opening of a local franchise for new fads, like, for example, the one for “hot yoga” that has swept the country over the last couple of years. The topic itself is newsworthy because it is unusual, and there are so many potential human-interest angles to it. Here are some businesses that provide ready-made human-interest angles. This list should get you thinking about how your business can be similarly positioned:

• * “Hot yoga”
• * A new kind of gym for older, heavier women who don’t want to share space with a gorgeous young hard body
• * A dog daycare that offers “enrichment” programs rather than just kenneling
• * A restaurant or store featuring a type of cuisine or product new to the local area (especially if the food or product has an exotic or ethnic angle)
• * A seamstress that offers only one type of service, with a promise of super-fast results (“Just Hems”)

During the 1970s, a woman in a college town in the Midwest put herself through college and graduate school by typing papers and manuscripts for other people. (This was in the days before word processors made everyone an expert typist.) She placed one brief, inexpensive ad in the university newspaper: Damned good typing. A friend of hers contacted the newspaper to call their attention to that ad, and the paper did a feature story on her. After the story broke, people lined up around the block for her typing services!

Find the angle-then pitch it.

Call the Radio Station and the Local TV Station

Again, the point is that your business, your executives, your staff, and your customers are members of the community. Sometimes they are very prominent members of the community, whose actions are newsworthy for that reason. But even if the individual is not prominent, that does not mean he or she is not newsworthy. Local broadcast media need to fill airtime just as print media need to fill column inches.

When pitching a story to broadcast media, you have to consider their particular needs. An executive or staff member who does not speak well in public might still serve nicely as the subject of a newspaper feature article with photographs. But for a radio interview or a spot on the local newscast, you want to put your best speakers forward. If you are going for television coverage, you also have to think about how to “give good video.”

One way to make a speaker appealing to the broadcast media is to position him or her as an expert, whether on a topic directly related to your business or on a topic of general interest to the media. Of course, you still need to find the angle that makes the “story” newsworthy or appealing from a human interest angle.

For the human interest angle, think kids, pets, old people, charity, community service, hobbies-the list is endless.

Here’s just one example. There has been a recent movement to offer classes in sign language to normal-hearing infants and toddlers and their parents. Imagine a story on your local newscast–with charming video of babies signing for milk or a kiss from Mommy–that features a staff member taking the class with her own baby.

If she reads up enough on the subject, she can speak on TV and radio programs (and, of course, to provide quotes for feature articles with cute photos), she can also offer to speak to parent groups in the area, as well as groups that are concerned with issues of child development and early childhood education, not to mention groups that deal with the deaf or with training sign language interpreters.

Once she is in the public eye, she can make sure the name and product or service of the business she works for is also mentioned in every talk or interview she gives. Even better, the business itself could sponsor baby sign language classes for its staff and the community. Imagine the flurry of publicity that could produce with just a few phone calls to local print and broadcast media outlets.

These are just a few examples of ways to drum up positive free publicity for your business.

Post from: Simon Local Search Marketing's s2m Marketing Blog

Tips: Free Publicity on a Shoestring Budget

In case you don’t know Matt Cutts is a Google employee who works on the webspam team and maintains a blog, as well as a hefty presence on other SEO/SEM related sites and is viewed by most SEO’s as an authority source of information about best practices when it comes to optimizing pages for Google Specifically.  Find out his take on the rel = canonical tag in this video:

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Google’s Matt Cutts Discusses Canonical Tag Issues

Currently there is a Keyword Suggestion Tool and a Niche Keyword Finder.  I have also just found a sponsor to provide several more additional free SEO tools like a Domain Age Check, Keyword Density, Keyword Clouds, Indexation Tools, Link Popularity tools and

much more.  So check back, I will try to add at least one new tool a day.  Over the weekend I can probably get to more, but Disney keeps me busy with SEO work there during the week, so don’t expect too much.  I can only do so much.

I think people who don’t blog, or don’t blog with SEO in mind misunderstand just how time consuming it can be.  But when you get that one comment saying you helped someone find something, or you were able to give someone information they couldn’t find elsewhere, or just happy clients make me want to keep moving forward.  I might not have the most followers, visits or even the best content, but I think i have found a nice little platform to sound off about search in general, some news thrown in and now some free SEO tools.  Seems to me that I’m adding value by consolidating information, tools and more in one place.  It also doesn’t hurt that the site actually drives business to Simon Search Marketing, which was ultimately what is was designed for, but now with a full time job and maxed out on freelance clients, I still want to keep it as a resource, a tool, a place to relax and converse and interact with others with similar interests.  I find it useful to participate in other blog communities as well, so there are some i read religiously and others that I wish there was more time in the day  to read, but I thought I would outline some of the creme de la creme of Search blogs broken down in to a few different categories.  For instance, Science for SEO does a great job of looking at SEO from a scientific perspective, while a site like Web Pro News focuses on a lot of topics, but generally maintains a news production feel to it, especially the videos.  These are both great resources but for different reasons.  Anyway, hopefully i can get that put together shortly also.

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Free New Keyword Tools

Be sure to check out the source here, or click through to see the slide show.

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What You Should Know About Eye Tracking

Whiteboard Friday – Outsourcing Content Creation

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Content Strategy

Continue to the next page for the presentation.

How to be a Link Magnet: SES NY 2010

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Link Acquisition Strategies Presentation courtesy of SEOMOZ

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Adding Media Sitemaps to Your Blog

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>

<urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″

xmlns:image=”http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1″>

<url>

<loc>http://example.com/sample.html</loc>

<image:image>

<image:loc>http://example.com/image.jpg</image:loc>

</image:image>

<image:image>

<image:loc>http://example.com/photo.jpg</image:loc>

</image:image>

</url>

</urlset>

While this is a boilerplate format, the following is a table, again, taken from Google’s page on including image url’s in your xml sitemaps of what is required and what is optional.  The above example doesn’t include all of the variables listed below.

Post from: Simon Local Search Marketing's s2m Marketing Blog

Put Images in Your XML Sitemaps Part II – AKA: The Part I left Out.

Image URL’s in XML Sitemaps

The purpose of this post is to review best practices for image search, also to inform people who haven’t heard, you can now include images in your XML sitemaps.  For up to 1,000 image you can add per page, I will point you to the resource on Google and also provide the syntax and required and optional fields that you can use when adding images to your sitemap.

Google has come a long way when it comes to the type of media that it can index and serve up on the results pages of Google Searches.  This is just another step that Google has taken to improve the user experience and help people find what they are looking for, regardless of the medium.  Now, from Google’s standpoint, they want image search to be useful to their audience so what they recommend here in terms of best practices are the following recommendations:

• Good Quality Photos – Resist the temptation to post blurry and unclear images.  There are a ton of images out there and if you want people to see yours, you better make sure they are clear and crisp.  Crisp clear images are also more likely to translate in to crisp clear images when Google thumbnails them in the search results, so users are more likely to click on the clear image than the blurry image (if it shows up at all).
• Make a Separate Page for Each Image – By creating a stand alone page for each image on your site, even if it already appears in a few places, allows you to consolidate all the information about that image on one page.  This helps Google figure out what the image is about.  If you do this Google suggests that you include unique information about your image including descriptive titles and captions; on each page.  You can also enable comments, ratings or other interactive elements about the image on this  page.
• Image placement on the Page – Place your images high up on your page.  Not everyone scrolls to the bottom of the page, so make sure your image is above the fold (ATF) where it can be immediately seen.
• Image Directory Structure – Try and consolidate your related images together, this could mean segmenting them by size, by geographic location (if your in the travel business, for instance), by food item (if it happens to be a recipe or food related site).  I order a lot of food online from Lou’s to Go, which delivers Deep Dish Chicago Pizza,  Italian Beef Sandwich kits, Poppy seed buns, Vienna beef hot dogs, Carson’s Ribs, etc.  Wow, my mouth started to water a bit.  Anyway, use the convention that makes the most sense for your site.  So for instance Lou’s could put pizzas in one directory, beef sandwich images in another, Vienna beef hot dog kits in another and so on.
• Specify Width & Height – For each image you want to make sure that you include in the IMG SRC the size of the image.  This helps because a page can begin to be rendered even  before the image is loaded, but only if it knows what area to warden off for the images on the page.  Adding this to your image syntax will help speed up your load times and provide a better user experience.

Provide Good Context for Your Images

The page the image is on and the content around the image including captions, titles all help Google determine what your image is about.  The example given is an image of a polar bear on a page about tomatoes.  This could send mixed signals to Google about the subject matter of polarbear.jpg.

Image Protection and Search Impact

Many webmasters are concerned with people stealing their images and using them on their own sites, which are legitimate concerns.  What Google says about this matter is somewhat telling of how they use links to images as a signal of what the image is about as well as the original source of the image.  Duplicate images are found all over the Internet and Google ‘s image index, and all they want is indication of who the original source of the image is.  What is somewhat of an image paradox, these sites that disallow people from linking to their images or using their images on other sites are saving their bandwidth, but also preventing the discoverability and reducing the  potential audience for their images.

What is suggested is to use a creative commons license that requires attribution.  It is also helpful to provide a JavaScript snippet that allows people to link to your images, but with the alt text that you suggest.  These work by disabling the regular right click options and replacing them with the code you will need to use to link to the particular image you were just about to link to.   Some also use watermarks to inform users of the source of the image.  While this helps, it might hurt your click-through-rate on the image in universal search due to the watermark that most people tend to shy away from.

Image File Names

Use detailed informative file names for your images.  Try to make your file name a good indication of the content of the image.  For example, my-new-black-kitten.jpg is a lot more useful to Google than IMG098743.jpg.  Descriptive file names are also helpful for the user.  According to Google, if they are unable to find suitable information on the page in which the image is on they will use the image file name as the image’s snippet within the search results.

So it’s possible, if your good, to rank an image that has a filename like IMG98123.png and there isn’t suitable content surrounding the image, or a caption that in the SERPS the snippet would be quite confusing to users, so remember again the point about using targeted, descriptive file names, if not just for that reason.

Image ALT Tags

Image Alt Tags are what people usually associate with the single element of the image that has the biggest impact on how Google views the content of the image.  Indeed the Image Alt tag is important for several reasons:

• It provides Google with information on the subject matter of the image.  Google uses this information to help determine the best image to return for a users query.  So in fact, the IMG ALT tags are quite important in how Google ranks images.
• Visually impaired users or users who have low bandwidth connections many times have their images turned off so the IMG ALT text is important in giving these users important information about what is there.

To give an example from the Google Image Search page, consider the following image alt tags:

Not Good: <img src=”kitten.png” alt=”" />

Better: <img src=”kitten.png” alt=”kitten” />

Best: <img src=”kitten.png” alt=”kitten playing with string of yarn” />

It is also important to note that keyword stuffing penalties still apply to alt tags as it does to title tags and other meta information associated with a piece of content, in this case – image content.  So avoid tags that look like this:

<img src=”puppy.jpg” alt=”puppy dog baby

dog pup pups puppies doggies pups litter puppies dog retriever

labrador wolfhound setter pointer puppy jack russell terrier

puppies dog food cheap dogfood puppy food”/>

Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Web spam team provided the following video on creating great alt text:

Along the same lines of optimizing image content, Google also suggests using some techniques to make your site load faster.  In case you haven’t noticed, Google has been pushing page speed as a factor in how they rank sites.  This means that if all else is equal in the eyes of Google, they will put the page that loads faster above a slower loading page.

There is some controversy about this in the community due to the fact that a lot of video based sites, or sites that use complex processing all to enhance the user experience are perceived to be getting “dissed” by Google because a lot of flash based, image and video heavy sites, like Disney’s site for example is optimized to take advantage of the tools to load pages faster, but they are still going to load slower than a flat static, or even dynamic site that is not as video centric and filled with images.

Use the Best File Format

The file format is important because each one has it’s unique profile of advantages and disadvantages.  For images containing flat illustrations or artwork, use the 8-bit PNG or GIF format and reduce the number of colors in the palette. Some image programs such as PhotoShop allow you to save the image for the web and fine-tune the image settings. By reducing the color palette from 256 to something like 32, you greatly reduce the size of the file. The less colors that the image has, the smaller the file size is going to be.  According to Google, they suggest the following:

For very detailed and colorful artwork or for photographics, JPG and 24-bit PNG are typically used because they have a much larger color palette. While a 24-bit PNG results in superior image quality, this comes at the price of a larger file size. When you can, use JPG instead and adjust the quality setting so you can compress the image as much as possible within your desired tolerance for image quality.

To compare and contrast, here are the file sizes of the above graphic in various formats:

• JPG, 60 quality – 32K
• PNG-8, 256 colors – 37K
• GIF, 256 colors – 42K
• PNG-24 – 146K

Also note that JPG has an option called “Progressive” mode. This option adds multiple copies of the image at lower resolution to make the image appear quickly on the screen, while progressively improving in quality. But it also increases the overall size of the image.

PNG also has a similar feature called “Interlaced”. You may want to turn this feature off so that the full image downloads quicker.

Because the 8-bit PNG and GIF formats have the potential to result in much smaller image files, try to keep this in mind when creating graphics and illustrations for your site. Try to keep the amount of colors to a minimum and use flat graphics instead of photographs. This way you can create images with palettes of 16 colors, keeping the file size extremely small and fast to download.

Post from: Simon Local Search Marketing's s2m Marketing Blog

Rank Images in Universal Search, Image Search

So apparently Facebook will team up with Ronald Mcdonald and the rest of the Fry Guys to implement a Facebook app that allows users to “check in”. Not only does this sound like the first public announcement utilizing Facebook’s new Geolocation feature, but also like the opening volley shot over the bow of FourSquare, the “resident” geolocation “check in” service of record. This not only raises some interesting conversational pieces about other uses of Geolocation on Facebook, but also a bigger question.Should Facebook compete with FourSquare?  Is there enough pie there for everyone to be fat and happy?  Or should they save themselves a lot of trouble re-inventing what appears to be a legitimate working wheel?  So far a local tab has been spotted on McDonalds Facebook page asking for your zip code.  This begs the question of how Facebook will handle public updates, feed integration and privacy issues with their new shiny location based toy.

Also, will people feel secure enough to actually let people know where they are?  I realize Facebook connects friends, but there are plenty of profiles with “friends” that might be for a common goal of raising your online game status, things like Mafia Wars, Farmville, etc.  How many of those people are in your Facebook circle?  Maybe there needs to be  a way to block them from seeing certain things.  Currently you can adjust privacy settings and put friends into groups, but applying different privacy settings for different groups I don’t think is active yet.  This would be a good idea for Facebook to take into account when trying to generate as many users of this product as possible.  But we all know how good they are, like, at that.

Technorati Tags: McDonalds, Facebook, Social Media, Geolocation Services, FourSquare, Simon Search Marketing, Location Based Services

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Will Facebook buy FourSquare, what about McDonalds?

The redesign is aimed at making the site more engaging, we will also be adding a Facebook developer to our team, so clients in need of custom Facebook integration, application development and other Facebook related services, including community development and consulting on strategy. For example, how can I monetize a Facebook user? What is the value of a Facebook user versus a user registered to my site? Can i integrate Facebook’s user information in a way that lets me access data to make a more personalized experience for users? We will be adding a whole bunch of answers to these questions, so stay subscribed and, again, pardon our dust.

You can always call for a quote (323) 393-3154

Post from: Simon Local Search Marketing's s2m Marketing Blog

Pardon our Dust

Quick Guide on Removing Your Information from Spokeo

Fastest way to remove your info from Spokeo

Spokeo positions itself as a white pages, yellow pages search product.  But what it doesn’t tell you is that what it actually is which happens to be a clearinghouse for information put online by you. Regardless of whether the network you put them on inundated you with privacy agreements that I would guesstimate less than a percentage of the people actually read, or you just happen to want the exposure on a particular network only, and for your personal information not to be sold to 3rd parties, but just used for that particular network….say Facebook, eventually your info. makes it on to these sites whose business model consists of selling private information (Yours), regardless of the tactics they used to acquire that information, to businesses, agencies or pretty much anyone with the 2-3 dollars it costs for a “listing”. Part of the messaging on their site is that you can track friends, or even total strangers.  That sounds to me like they are targeting and providing a service to a shady demographic and should maybe think twice about marketing to self selected stalkers, even if it is “just cyberstalking”.  Now i thought the yellow pages was a free service to the public because companies paid to have their businesses listed there, and as far as i know you still had to opt in to the white pages, or at the very least just let them know you prefer to be unlisted.  With services such as Spokeo, you have to actively pursue them to get your information removed.  Now here are the steps to remove your information from Spokeo.

1. Navigate to spokeo.com and choose email address, at least this is how i found my page the quickest.
2. Look for the link at the bottom (i’m talking bottom of the footer here) that says “Privacy”
3. Click Privacy and fill out the pertinent information and click “Remove Listing”
4. Now go and check the email account that you originally typed in to find your page in step 1.
5. You should have received an email from Spokeo which you need to open and click on the second link, the one that says “To complete the removal process, please click this URL or paste it into your browser:”

The screen-shot above shows the page that should appear after you click the privacy link on the bottom of the page that comes up with your information on it.

You can see from the next sceen-shot on the left here where the privacy button is.  You are going to need to click on this to get to the remove page above.  First navigate to the page with your information on it, then click the “privacy” button.  I used email to find my pages, that seemed to be the fastest method.  I tried name, etc. but there were too many entries to sift through, even with a name like “Geoff Simon”, which all in all, not that common, but it seemed to appear everywhere.  Repeat and rinse when all your listings are removed.

Technorati Tags: Spokeo, Simon Search Placement, Facebook, Internet Privacy, Remove Spokeo Info, Geoff Simon

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Fastest Way to Remove Your Info from Spokeo

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Disney YouTube Video Channel

Google News Ranking Factor Video from Google Employee explains the factors both positive and negative that go into ranking news items, whether it’s on Google Web search or separately on Google News Search:

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Ranking Factors: Google News from Google Employee Video

YouTube is unique as a search engine, because every search performed there is for a video.  And once it became clear that video searches were generating massive amounts of traffic to YouTube’s site, it was only a matter of time before marketers saw the potential for using that interest to their advantage.

A couple years ago YouTube instituted a program called “Sponsored Videos,” which is similar to the Google AdWords keyword-purchase program.  Video owners can purchase keywords to promote certain individual videos, in the same way that website owners purchase keywords from Google AdWords to promote their sites.  The program is still in the early stages of development, and YouTube personnel are keeping mum about the numbers of keywords available, pricing, and how extensive the program will eventually be.

But the idea is intriguing and filled with possibilities.  A recent survey by BurstMedia showed that nearly 70% of the respondents actively view videos on the Internet on a regular basis, and people aged 35 to 54 are just as likely to view video content as people aged 18-24.  An eMarketer study found that more than 120 million Americans view videos online at least once a month, and 76% of them tell someone about a video they have watched.  Of the video viewers who have watched ads with online videos, 44% of them have taken action upon what they saw in the ads.

With all of this interest in watching videos online, it doesn’t take much of a leap to realize the huge PR potential offered by video searches; hence the development of sponsored videos.  Spending money to encourage viewers to watch a video is not a direct approach to e-commerce, but it is a new concept that savvy marketers are learning how to use. For example, if a person searches YouTube for a video about iPhones, the sponsored video links at the top of the search results may include videos from manufacturers about peripheral products that work with iPhones.  The person searching for videos about iPhones may see links to those advertising videos and be enticed into clicking them to learn more.

Video search engine optimization using purchased keywords is opening the door for PR firms to tap into the massive amounts of traffic flowing through video search engines such as YouTube, AOL Video, Google Video, and Yahoo! Video.  As long as those millions of Internet visitors keep watching user-posted videos, they are a captive audience for sponsored videos as well.

Post from: Simon Local Search Marketing's s2m Marketing Blog

Is Video Search the New PR Frontier?

This is pretty sexy to someone like me who was just getting into bookmarklets and having to collect multiples for the various things that i do on a daily basis with my job as an SEO specialist for sites like Family Fun, a Disney recipe, crafts, food, holiday, seasonal recipes and crafts site along with others like Family, Baby Zone, which is all about baby names, baby care and tips for the new mom and mom to be, and many other sites aimed at pretty much similar demographics.

To find out more about Quix I have included a video below that will show you the product in action and also provide some tips and tricks on the best features and why it’s better than using hundreds of different bookmarklets.

Technorati Tags: quix, seo, sem, tools, yoast, website tweaking, bookmarklets

Post from: Simon Local Search Marketing's s2m Marketing Blog

The Ultimate Bookmarklet – Quix

My point here is about the new Nexus One and the copious amounts of money spent on the home page of Google the other day.  And what search terms have spiked based on Google Trends?  First you would expect the awareness numbers to jump up with all the attention.  The index for this is 1 based on how Google Trends works.  What other term has that same index is also 1, Nexus One Customer Service.  This is based on the rules of how this index number is calculated which you can read on Google trends, but basically it’s a measure of that term against either other times and since there is not much data to work with, this might not be the best example.  But I still think the biggest obstacle to the long term success of the Nexus One will be the amount of customer service Google is willing to give to it’s, as far as I can remember is Googles first consumer electronic hardware device of this kind.

I could be way off base here, but for anyone that has had to deal with Google as a regular consumer of adwords, adsense, etc., you know how much Google likes to dish out the customer service.

Post from: Simon Local Search Marketing's s2m Marketing Blog

Could Lack of Customer Support Kill the Nexus One?

How do I create my video sitemap according to the standards?

To create your video sitemap, even if you just have a dozen or so videos on your site, or even less, and just want to test out the service to see what kind of exposure your video’s get now that Google can crawl them and pick up meta data about the video such as aspect ratio, runtime, etc. I would take a look at the step by step guide to creating video  sitemaps here.

How do I submit my Video Sitemap to Google?

Again, you can use the guide set up on Google’s Webmaster Guide for this topic.  I have also added a screenshot below of where you would go to do the submission.

If anyone feels like they have more to add to this quick guide on video sitemap creation, submission, feel free to leave comments, tips, suggestions and I will give appropriate credit to whoever submits an actual valid tip that I use, but as always feel free to leave comments about general SEO, SEM and Local Search as well.  Questions are usually answered within one business day, and if can’t be answered as a quick FAQ, I’ll let you know that as well.

Another note worth mentioning is that when your videos do end up getting indexed by Google amd emd up on YouTube there will be the ability to easily embed videos in to certain websites, so in essence this makes your video content “portable”, which is huge.

Post from: Simon Local Search Marketing's s2m Marketing Blog

How to Create Proper Google Video Sitemaps

Find out on October 21, 2009 when PRWeb offers a free webinar on “Measuring the Success of Your Online News Releases”.  According to their pitch, “if you’re still lugging a clip book around to demonstrate that your online news programs are successful, you might want to bring your strategy to the 21st century.”

The feature speaker is Greg Jarboe, President and founder of SEO-PR – a firm specializing in online visibility, sculpting online image and maintaining that image.  No doubt there will be discussion on online newsrooms, press releases online, link strategies in press releases, targeting, RSS, social media, specifically how social media can be used to help search rankings.

In addition to these topics, analytics should be interesting to hear about.  What tools other than standard Google Analytics or Omniture does PRWeb offer?

I am sure they will let us know at the free webinar, but i believe they have some tracking options, at least what sort of pick up your release gets, but i believe they offer more robust reporting for certain online releases.

Register for the Free PRWeb  Webinar here, and learn how to:

• Use current analytics to measure online news campaigns
• Apply SEO techniques to news releases and use them to increase rankings and visibility
• Measure the impact of social media and your blog

Also, if you are looking for someone to provide management of online news campaigns, give us a call or send an email and we can tell you how we have helped other companies do this.  We offer comprehensive programs for companies new to social media and online news releases to experienced companies looking to refine or analyze their current campaigns to see if anything is missing.

Technorati Tags: PRWeb, Free Webinar, Social Media, Online News Releases, Online Newsrooms

Post from: Simon Local Search Marketing's s2m Marketing Blog

Measuring the Success of Online News Releases

Technorati Tags: duplicate content, canonical urls, google, matt cutts

Post from: Simon Local Search Marketing's s2m Marketing Blog

Are Google Duplicate Content Penalties a Myth?