SMarT Marketing - Internet Marketing Blog

Effective Call To Actions Help Increase Conversions

11/3/2009 4:21:00 PM

There are so many different aspects and fundamental elements that need to be in place for a website to be prosperous. With so many different, yet important elements that make up a successful website, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about Call To Actions (CTA). While an intriguing design, a lot of relevant and up-to-date content, visibility, a user friendly layout, and accessibility are all very important, I wanted to share the magnitude of creative and captivating call to actions. Call to actions come in many different forms, shapes, sizes, and categories. Depending on the site, your call to action will vary. For the sake of time and your interest, I’m not going to cover the 23482 different types of websites in this post. Today, I want to talk about a general type of call to action… the “contact us” CTA. Let’s assume that your business offers a service on their website and to inquire about the service, you require a user to contact you through the contact form. What are some creative and effective ways of doing that without using the general “Contact us now”? Incentive. People love incentives for doing things. If a user is going to click on a link, why not entice them by dangling a fresh and juicy 10% off our service coupon? For example, “Get 10% off! Hurry and contact us now!” – This could give users that extra little push to inquire about your services. Now you can use any type of incentive model, but you get the idea. CTA’s can go as far as your creative imagination can take you. Try to remember to use action words in your CTA. Here is a list of some basic CTA’s that I recommend spicing up a bit, but they are a good start: Click Here Call Now Buy today Register Now Free shipping Contact now Get a free trial Buy now Sign-up now Free Consultation Reserve Now Request for Free Quote Talk to an Expert Need a website that gives you results? Let Sales & Marketing Technologies give you a website that shows you true ROI! Contact us now!

Google Local Listing Ads - Not Quite Ready

10/30/2009 4:57:00 PM

Earlier this month Google introduced Local Listing Ads which allowed local businesses to pay for their local listings to be included in the Sponsored Results. The results? The ads appear in search results very sporadically, much like a poorly managed Pay Per Click campaign, and don't always show up for all the keywords relating to the business' offerings. The targeting is based on the existing local business listing, and the ad is preset with the same content found in the existing ad. Google clearly has some tweaking to do, but either way it still looks like local search marketing is still the best way to go. Check back for updates from the SMT marketing team on the results of Google Local Listing Ads' trial run.

Popular Email Newsletter Services

10/28/2009 4:17:00 PM

Recently I have been doing some work and research with email newsletter services. While there are so many great companies out there that offer superb services and competitive prices, I wanted to blog my favorite 4! Mail Chimp Talk about user friendly! Mail Chimp helps you build and manage your email list, create HTML email campaigns, and track and analyze your email campaigns. Mail Chimp also offers very competitive pricing. Have less than 500 subscribers and need to send out less than 3,000 emails per month? Well Mail Chimp will let you do that for FREE! Mail Chimp also offers Twitter and Facebook integration. AWeber AWeber is a very popular choice when choosing a email newsletter service. They have the works: HTML email newsletters, email web analytics, website signup forms, follow up autoresponders, and "top-notch email deliverability". Benchmark Email Benchmark Email can get pricey somewhat fast, but I'm not saying it isn't worth every dollar. With their gallery of FREE email templates and great customer support, Benchmark Email is on the top of my list for email newsletter services. iContact It's no wonder why iContact is becoming so popular these days! With their high deliverability percentage, real time tracking of email blasts, affiliate program, and easy setup of mailing lists; they have attracted thousands of users! Sales & Marketing Technologies has over 10 years experience setting up, managing, and tracking newsletter campaigns. Let us help you setup your next email blast! Contact us

What Google Social Search Means For Companies

10/27/2009 8:47:00 AM

Google has just launched Google Social Search. Google Social Search is a new feature that will pull in relevant information from people within your online "social circle". Google is going to display this information within the organic search results under a new section called "Results from people in your social circle." For this to work the user needs to be logged into their Google account. Google will then use the Gmail address book, articles from your Google Reader subscriptions, data from Google Profiles, Twitter, FriendFeed, Picasa, Blogger, and public information to create the search results for Social Search. Google Social Search also takes it one step further by including data from friends of friends. Here is a screen shot for a search on "Orlando Magic" with Social Search enabled. So what does this mean for companies? It means that companies that have been sitting on the sidelines of social media need to start to develop their social media strategy knowing that social media is being integrated into search. It could come to the point where social media mentions mean more then links do currently. This could possibly lead to higher visibility in the search results (especially if the user is already a friend/fan of your business). Go ahead and test it out. Just log into your Google account and go to googlelabs.com. You should see "Google Social Search". Click on "Details and feedback" and then there should be a "Try Google Social Search" button in the top right corner. You can only be part of one Google Labs experiment at a time.

Google Analytics Conversion Tracking Facelift

10/22/2009 4:14:00 PM

Today as I was setting up a Google Analytics profile, I noticed that there was a small, but neat little update to their conversion tracking. Typically you can setup your goals as specific URL's being visited. For example, if setup yourdomain.com/thank-you.html as your goal tracking URL and a visitor lands on that page, Google Analytics will count that was 1 goal (or otherwise known as conversion). But today, I saw that Google is giving users two (2) more options for their goal tracking. The first one was Time on Site. Meaning, you can setup a specific amount of time (using the greater than or less than condition options) a user will be on your site to determine if a goal was successfully tracked. The time variable choices are hours, minutes, or even as granular as seconds. See picture below. The second newly updated goal tracking option I saw was Pages Visited. Meaning that your goal tracking can be correlated to how many pages the user visited. Set the pages visited field to any number and then select a condition such as greater than, equal to, or less than. See picture below.

Bing Strikes a deal to include facebook updates in its search results.

10/21/2009 3:02:00 PM

To update your privacy settings, click on Privacy settings and adjust these options:

How To Make a CSS Sprite Rollover List Part 2

10/20/2009 5:17:00 PM

I know there have been many people anxiously waiting for Part 2 of How To Make a CSS Sprite Rollover List. Didn't read part 1 yet? Well before you learn how to make a CSS Sprite, why don't you head over to part 1 and learn Why Use CSS Sprites. View the working DEMO Now let's get to work. Follow these easy three instructions on producing a cross browser compatible list with a CSS sprite and rollover functionality! 1) Create your image First thing is first. Go ahead and create your CSS sprite image. Make sure you keep each icon the same size and the same distance away. In my case, I have each icon 54 x 54 pixel. Here is my image. 2) Create the HTML Next step is to create the HTML. My HTML is listed below: <div id="container"> <h1>CSS Sprite Example</h1> <ul> <li class="item1"><a href="#">List Item 1</a></li> <li class="item2"><a href="#">List Item 2</a></li> <li class="item3"><a href="#">List Item 3</a></li> <li class="item4"><a href="#">List Item 4</a></li> </ul> </div> 2) Create the CSS Next step is to create the CSS. My CSS is listed below: div#container { width: 400px; padding:30px; } div#container h1 { font-family:arial; color:#222; font-size:18px; } a { color:#006CB5; text-decoration:none; } #container li{ height:54px; list-style-type:none; display:block; margin:3px 0 3px 0px; font-size: 46px; } li.item1 a{ background:url('csssprites.jpg') no-repeat; background-position:0px 0px; padding-left:58px; } li.item1 a:hover { background:url('csssprites.jpg') no-repeat 0px -54px; color:#F3AE08; } li.item2 a { background:url('csssprites.jpg') no-repeat 0px -108px; padding-left:58px; } li.item2 a:hover { background:url('csssprites.jpg') no-repeat 0px -162px; color:#F3AE08; } li.item3 a { background:url('csssprites.jpg') no-repeat 0px -216px; padding-left:58px; } li.item3 a:hover { background:url('csssprites.jpg') no-repeat 0px -270px; color:#F3AE08; } li.item4 a { background:url('csssprites.jpg') no-repeat 0px -324px; padding-left:58px; } li.item4 a:hover { background:url('csssprites.jpg') no-repeat 0px -378px; color:#F3AE08; } Voila! Easy as 1, 2, 3. I hope you enjoyed it and you learned from this quick tutorial. Please comment if you have any questions! You can follow me on Twitter

What Balloon Boy Can Teach Us About Social Media

10/20/2009 8:27:00 AM

Still not convinced social media is a good way to spread the word? Let's take a look at this past Thursday (10/15/09) and the five hours that 'balloon boy' captivated the world. Balloon boy is a 6 year old from Colorado that was, at the time, believed to be trapped in a homemade hot air balloon floating out of control. Local authorities and the National Guard reacted quickly to the situation (read balloon boy story here), but the world saw an even faster response from the Internet through social networks like Twitter. Within minutes of the story breaking the term "balloon" was trending on Twitter at over 1600 tweets per minute. Twitter accounts were created, claiming the names @boyintheballoon and @balloonboy almost immediately. A website, http://www.whereisballoonboy.com was created to provide updates on the story. Before the boy was even found, "Save Balloon Boy" t-shirts were available for purchase online. Just now a tweet came through my TweetDeck advertising Balloon Boy shirts for $30. What's my point? Social media works. So what? I'm not balloon boy, you may be saying to yourself. True, and your latest press release may not be capable of grounding all flights over the Rockies like balloon boy did, but we learn a few essential lessons in social media here. 1. People are listening - If you have something to say, there are people on the social networks who are listening. Tell the Twitterverse about your latest product release, a new deal you're offering, or about a great new testimonial you just got. People will listen... and respond. 2. Social Media is a conversation - Within minutes of the balloon boy fiasco there were thousands and thousands of people talking about it online. There were comments on news reports, Twitter arguments about the boy's fate, and group prayers being tweeted back and forth. The point is that it was a conversation, much like any incident of social media. Engage your audience on social networks, and expect them to respond. Establishing a dialogue between your business and prospective customers is the key to social media success. 3. It's easy to steal a reputation - Was balloon boy really setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts to advertise cheesy products during this whole event? Nope, but a few individuals capitalized on 'ballon boy' and shamelessly plugged their products to thousands of concerned balloon boy fans. If you only listen to one sentence in this whole blog, make it this: Claim your social media identity before someone else does. Even if you're not quite ready to start tweeting about your latest product, claim your name and your reputation. 4. Social Media works - This point is simple. Where did the world turn for their balloon boy information? Social Media. Social Media has overtaken email and is now the most popular online activity (besides search engines, of course), and it's not just bored teenagers anymore. The fastest growing segment of social media use is adults 35+, meaning your audience is on social media. Not quite sure how to get started on social media? Find a great Orlando social media marketing firm.

Droid Does

10/19/2009 8:01:00 AM

In a commercial made just to point out the shortcomings of Apple's iPhone, Google and Verizon's "Droid Does" campaign has officially taken off the gloves in their battle with Apple and AT&T. When Google's Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple's board of directors back in August you knew more competition between the two companies was coming and this appears to be the first real shot across Apple's bow. It's a very simple commercial showcasing what the iPhone can't do that began showing during major sporting events over the weekend. The 30 second spot features lines such as "iDon't have a real keyboard" and "iDon't allow open development" and points you to, http://www.droiddoes.com which is currently only excepting emails for when more information becomes available.

Using Landing Pages to Maximize PPC Results

10/14/2009 10:00:00 AM

Linking your Google Adwords Pay Per Click ads to an effective landing page can help increase your ad rankings, increase traffic to your site and increase conversions on your site, but choosing the wrong landing page can cost you both rankings and money. Here are a few tips that will help keep your Adwords ROI high: Choose a Relevant Page - Pay Per Click advertisements are ranked by a combination of their Google Adwords quality score and their bid price. Having a higher quality score will allow your ad to rank higher without spending more per click. The relevancy of your landing page is a major determining factor in your quality score, so make sure your landing page contains the keywords your ad is targeting. More importantly, make sure the landing page is actually about the keywords your ad is targeting. Create More Ad Groups if Needed - Avoid creating generic ad groups with multiple unrelated products. The nice thing about Google Adwords is that you have the capability to advertise an unlimited number of products, each with their own ad and landing page. Take the time to create specific ad groups for each product or service, then give each ad its own landing page. Send the searcher directly to the product/service they were searching for. The easier you make it for a visitor to convert, the more likely it is that they will. Include a Call-To-Action (CTA) - Nothing is worse than sending a searcher (or potential customer) to a boring page that funnels them nowhere. The goal of your landing page is a conversion; maybe filling out a contact form, requesting a quote or ordering a product. Keep the page simple, to the point, and include a compelling call-to-action. If your conversion requires more than just a phone call, give users the tools to do so. For example, if you want users to fill out a contact form, put the form directly on the landing page or create a nice button that sends them there. Again, the easier you make it for a visitor to convert, the more likely it is that they will.

Testing Google Wave

10/8/2009 4:12:00 PM

Google is at it again, adding yet another new product this year called Google Wave. Google Wave is a web-based application promising to bring together e-mail, chat, wiki and social networking in a clean and organized platform. The system works in real-time, and features some potentially useful collaborative tools including live translator extensions and virtual conference calling. With that said, what does it Google Wave really do? While Wave is not completely released yet, a few of us at SMT got a sneak peak invitation into the beta version, and all I can say is... huh? Besides for Wave's simplistic yet confusing layout, it seems that Google Wave is essentially a regurgitation of existing collaboration applications like Vyew or Yugma mixed together with a few existing Google products. I'll admit the potential for file sharing and real-time collaboration is there, with features like RSVP tools, live editing and many other gadgets, but Google Wave's over-simplified system does not seem to deliver all that was promised. The main dashboard of Google Wave features an inbox, much like Gmail's, but with 'Waves' instead of emails. From there a user can open waves which can be updated in real-time and can be accessed by several users. [Screenshot below of Google Wave's Dashboard (and only screen)] For example: In my inbox is a Wave sent from a colleague containing the agenda to today's staff meeting. After opening the Wave I can then make real-time suggestions and edits to the agenda, and RSVP using the "Yes, No, Maybe" gadget included in the Wave. If other colleagues also have the Wave open at the same time, they will see me making changes to the agenda and have the ability to respond as well. Again, the potential for Wave to be a good collaboration tool is there, but I can't quite see the platform becoming a Social Networking tool like promised. Perhaps the issue is simply the lack of participants in Google Wave so far, but I don't see how it will allow users to network and build relationships online like other popular social networks Twitter and Facebook. Many marketers had speculated that Wave would be Google's answer to social Media, but with the current lack of a user profile (or anything brandable for that matter) networking seems unlikely. [Screenshot below of Google Wave's "profile"] So far, Google Wave seems like Gmail with a few basic collaborative tools built in, not the robust one-stop-shop we were promised. The good news is that with an API from Google and the help of a few developers we could soon be seeing interaction with real social networks. Who knows, Google Wave could be the next Tweetdeck/Gmail/Flickr/Vyew mashup. I'll keep tabs on Google Wave and re-evaluate once the full version is released. Bottom line: if you didn't get invited to test the beta Google Wave, don't be disappointed. You're not missing much... yet. Check back for a follow up post once Wave is fully released.

Google Sidewiki - Steps To Claim Your Site

9/29/2009 11:33:00 AM

Google recently launched a new product called SideWiki. Google's Sidewiki is a browser sidebar that allows users to add comments and information about a particular site. There has been some controversy about this new service already. Some of the issues brought up: The Sidewiki content is hosted on Google Taking comments /content from site owners and centralizing it Lack of comment filtering, open up for spam Some equate it to bathroom wall graffiti With that we want to talk about getting a "Page Owner" citation listed in the Sidewiki for your company. A "Page Owner" citation marks the site owner's comment in green and places the comment as the first listing in the Sidewiki. What a site owner can then do is to create a very long post that would take up the initial page of the Sidewiki, thus pushing down any other comments to a secondary page. So how do you create a "Page Owner" citation in Google's Sidewiki? First you need to have created a Google Account and verified your web site through Google Webmaster Tools Second is to download the updated Google Toolbar with the SideWiki enhancement Once the updated Google Toolbar is installed visit your web site Go to the Google Toolbar and click on the SideWiki button and select "Write an entry" You should now see the Sidewiki. If you are not logged in to your Google Account, it will now ask you to log in to post an entry. Since you verified your web site in Google Webmaster Tools you should now see a green box at the top of the Sidewiki. Just check the box next to "write as the page owner". You can now make you comment (a title is not required) Once saved you will now see a green box at the top of the Sidewiki that has a new citation by the "page owner" Here are some screen shots of what you should see during this process.

New Google Keyword Tool

9/28/2009 1:21:00 PM

If you haven't seen or heard about it, Google has a BETA version of the new Keyword Tool out. It still contains its fundamental functionality, but added some new features, made some tweaks, and changed the layout a bit. Here is a brief list of the new features and changes I noticed right away. If you know of any other neat features with the new Keyword Tool, we'd love to hear about them. My personal favorite, the Google Keyword Tool now lets you download a selected keyword list. Before you would have to download the entire list and then modify it in excel. This makes this a lot easier and smoother. Nice. You can view all three match types (Broad, Phrase, and Exact) at the same time. No need fluttering back and fourth trying to remember the amount of searches done between different match types. It's all conveniently packed on one screen. Search by any combination of a keyword, website, or category without having to do multiple searches. Again, this shaves off a bit of that tedious keyword research time - again, nice. If you would like to learn more about the new Keyword Tool, this post from the Google Adwords blog covers an overview of the changes.

Keywords Meta Tag Doesn't Matter To Google

9/23/2009 8:40:00 PM

The Google Webmaster Tool blog announced officially Monday that Google doesn't use the keywords meta tag in their ranking algorithm. But what really caught my attention was a little episode on Matt Cutts' blog, where he reiterated the Google doesn't use the keywords meta tag as a ranking factor and Graywolf actually called him out on in the comments. In case you missed it, it goes like this: graywolf September 21, 2009 at 12:42 pm "so what about this about meta descrptions http://bit.ly/TW8cC you mention descriptions in the google blog post, no longer playing a role and I’m trying clarify that, with your previous statement which doesnt agree" Matt Cutts September 21, 2009 at 1:29 pm "... graywolf, meta descriptions don’t count in scoring (that is, determining the scores which are then used to determine what order to show the results in). So changing your meta description tag won’t make your website rank higher. When we show snippets, we can sometimes use the meta description as the snippet that we show. To your point, if two results have the same snippet (not just because of the meta description but in general), we will often show the first result and then the other results are shown if you add “&filter=0″. But the post was about the keywords meta tag and clarifying that we don’t use the keywords meta tag. The reason we mentioned the description meta tag was to make the point that we don’t disregard all meta tags." graywolf September 21, 2009 at 1:36 pm "@mattcutts so like in the threadwatch example linked to above, you now say that having and identical meta description across your entire site will not have a negative impact on your site, and conversely having different descriptions for each page on your site will not have a positive affect. I’m perfectly ok with things like that changing in the 2-ish years since then just want to clarify that" I am still waiting for Matt Cutts to respond to Graywolf... if he decides to. Hope the readers enjoyed that as much as I did.

Is your site search costing you sales?

9/11/2009 8:02:00 AM

Recently we were attempting to establish why there were a proportionally large number of visitors leaving a site from the site search results page. In other words, a customer would search for a product and then leave without clicking on any of the products. We decided to install a “sniffer” to watch what keywords users were using when they performed a search. We not only wanted to find failed searches we also wanted some more in-depth intelligence on the customers and their intentions when they performed a search. Almost instantly our preconceived notions on how a visitor interacted with the site’s internal search engine were shattered. We were able to determine the majority of visitors performed their searches based on the model number not the actual name of the product and if they added a # sign before the model number the search failed. The client was also able to see products they did not carry but their visitors were searching for so they now have an additional way of determine future inventory. Your site search should be able to: Provide information on visitor searches Allow for trackable analytics on top keywords and failed searches Provide Spelling Suggestions to visitors Make recommendations if product not found Provide refinement options based on product attributes such as model and color Help you determine which keywords drive conversions Within a few of hours of activating the “sniffer” we were able established some actionable items to not only improve the user experience but also to increase the client’s conversions.

Why Use CSS Sprites Part 1

9/10/2009 4:07:00 PM

You’ve heard the term bouncing around the Internet, but still not sure what, why, or how to use CSS Sprites. I’m here to enlighten you on this neat little feature that is sure to help speed up your site. This is part 1 of a 2 part series blog. Part 2 will entail “How To Use CSS Sprites”. Why would I want to use a CSS sprite? CSS sprites reduce the total number of http requests, can reduce the total size of the images, and increase your pages load time. For example, if you build an unordered list and intend of having four (4) different list item images; that is 8 different HTTP requests, assuming you use a hover and are not using the CSS Sprite technique. Here is an example of what the CSS might look like without the CSS Sprite technique: #nav li a {background:none no-repeat left center} #nav li a.item1 {background-image:url('../images/image1.gif')} #nav li a:hover.item1 {background-image:url('../images/image1_over.gif')} #nav li a.item2 {background-image:url('../images/image2.gif')} #nav li a:hover.item2 {background-image:url('../images/image2_over.gif')} ... Using the CSS Sprites requires we consolidate all four of our images into one image. I will show you more details on how this is done in part 2. After you have the CSS Sprite image created, you will need to create the new CSS for it. My CSS looked like this: #nav li a {background-image:url('../images/image_nav.gif')} #nav li a.item1 {background-position:0px 0px} #nav li a:hover.item1 {background-position:0px -54px} #nav li a.item2 {background-position:0px -108px;} #nav li a:hover.item2 {background-position:0px -162px;} ... Now, using the CSS Sprites, we were able to cut down the HTTP requests to 1 and the total file size of all the images to 26 KB. Imagine multiplying that by all the list items you have. It adds up very quickly. In the end, this will reduce on your load time and increase the user experience. Don’t forget, in Part 2, I will show you how to make and use CSS Sprites.

Image Link Test Results

9/1/2009 10:41:00 AM

I performed a small test to see how image links pass keyword relevancy to pages. I wanted to see if the search engines would rank a page merely based on the keywords used within the image link. I first researched five made up words and made sure that no search results showed for each word. I then created five images with just the word in the image. I wanted to see if the search engines are starting to use optical recognition for images. I then created five new pages for each link. Each page had readable text, but no mention of the keyword within the text, file name, or meta tags. I placed the image links on the home page of an aged domain. Within one week Google has indexed two of my five pages. Yahoo and Bing have not indexed any of them. What I found is that placing the words within the image itself had no impact what so ever in ranking the pages for the specific keyword. I also used the keyword as the file name for the image. This had no impact on rankings. I also tested the use of the ALT tag. Those links that had the ALT tag with the specific keyword in it had their associated page indexed for that keyword. This test just shows that your image links with an associated ALT tag can pass keyword relevancy to your pages. I am going to wait and see if Yahoo or Bing will index any of the pages and write up a follow up.

Ormond Beach Chamber of Commerce Thank You Letter

8/27/2009 8:43:00 AM

We received a nice letter from the Ormond Beach Chamber of Commerce in regards to our recent Internet Marketing workshop at their last quarterly breakfast. Dear SMT Team: I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your participation in last month's quarterly breakfast. The educational workshop on Internet Marketing had to have been one of our most interesting and well-received topics, and there is no question that you and the team at SMT are experts in your field. You guys did a phenomenal job educating our 80+ chamber members that morning. What we appreciated most was the free professional guidance and tips on how to get the most out of the Internet for our local businesses. It's clear that SMT has been a tremendous resource on advising many of our members on how to promote their business through the web. I understand that many chamber members get confused by all of the Internet Marketing sales people that solicit their businesses, but SMT truly educated our group. I've never seen so many members stay after to ask questions like they did...I guess it's fair to say that Local Internet Marketing is a pretty hot topic! Thanks again for all of your support. Best Regards, Mary Rhodes Executive Director Ormond Beach Chamber of Commerce

Understanding Google Adwords Quality Score

8/26/2009 10:02:00 AM

We get questions all the time on how to improve Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns. One issue that comes up a lot is related to how Google ranks Adwords ads. What we find is that small businesses as well as large businesses do not understand that Google Adwords has it's own algorithm that is entirely separate from their organic search algorithm. It used to be that which ever advertiser bid the most on a keyword would have their ad show up the highest. This is no longer the case. Google has now gone to a Quality Score to rank your Adwords ads. Ad Rank Formula The ultimate factor in how your Google Adwords ads rank is based on your Ad Rank. Ad Rank is generated by combining your Quality Score with your Cost Per Click (CPC) bid. Ad Rank = CPC Bid X Quality Score So How Is Your Quality Score Calculated? The first thing to note is that the Quality Score is calculated every time your keyword matches a search query. As in typical Google fashion they do not provide the entire library of variables that goes into calculating your Quality Score. However, they do offer several factors that go into the calculation. Keyword's historical click-through rate (CTR) Historical CTR on all ads and keywords in your account Historical CTR of the display URL in the ad group Relevancy of your keyword to the ads in its ad group Relevancy of your keyword and ad to the user's search query Relevancy of your keyword to your landing page Account's performance in the geo-targeted region where the add will be shown How To Achieve A High Quality Score? Here are several tips to help you achieve a higher quality score. Include your keywords into the ad copy. Group related keywords together. Makes it easier to place similar keywords into ad copy. Your landing page should contain information related to your keywords you are bidding on Use keywords that are relevant to your customers

What ICANN's New gTLDs Mean for Search Engine Rankings

8/24/2009 10:21:00 AM

For the past several months there has been a lot of talk and speculation as to whether or not ICANN will be opening up their gTLD-global top-level domain(extension)-registration in late 2010. ICANN stands for 'Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' and is essentially the Internet's governing body, focusing specifically on domain registration. If ICANN's new gTLD program launches as planned, in late 2010 corporations, interest groups, cities and anyone else who has the financial means can apply to have a custom domain extension created. This doesn't come easily, however. ICANN's gTLD application fee is set at $186,000, not including the infrastructure and legal support needed to successfully launch a new domain extension. It is reported that several large corporations including as BMW(.bmw) and EBAY(.ebay) are already planning on creating their custom gTLDs. What does this mean for search engine rankings? While Google has not disclosed whether or not they give preference or weight to different global domain extensions, they have acknowledged associating country-specific domain extensions to their respective region in search. As part of a post regarding Google's new Webmaster Tools, they released a brief statement on the subject. "If your site targets users in a particular location, you can provide us with information that will help determine how your site appears in our country-specific search results, and also improve our search results for geographic queries. You can only use this feature for sites with a neutral top-level domain, such as .com or .org. Country-specific domains, such as .ie or .fr, are already associated with a country or region." Despite Google's overall silence on the issue, there are debates that certain domains such as .edu and .gov are more trusted than others and therefore receive higher rankings. Others argue that .edu and .gov websites often have a very high number of backlinks which create high rankings and the illusion of search engine preference. Either way, one can't ignore the possibilities that ICANN's new gTLD program may bring to search. Google already hints to giving geo-targeted preference to country-specific domains, a promising concept for the large cities (New York, Paris) considering their own TLD. If New York secures .nyc, registering a domain with this extension may become crucial to small businesses staying afloat in local (New York) searches. There have also been speculations that search engines will begin considering keywords found in specific domain extensions. For example, a global initiative in the hospitality industry is pushing to have the TLD .hotel created for use by hotels around the world. With an estimated 100,000 domain names registered each year with the keyword "hotel" inside, having an extension of .hotel would eliminate the need to include this keyword in the root domain and in return would create a loss of a major on-site ranking factor for Google. Some speculate that Google will offset this by factoring in the TLD. Although ICANN's program is not scheduled to launch until the end of 2010, staying on top of the issue may prove critical for businesses and search engine marketers alike. To keep up with ICANN's latest gTLD news, visit http://icann.org/en/topics/new-gtld-program.htm.

Need an Internet Marketing Speaker for Your Next Seminar?

8/3/2009 12:38:00 PM

Our team of Internet Marketers at Sales & Marketing Technologies have been busy the past couple of months speaking to various medium and small business owners throughout Central Florida. As one of the largest Internet Marketing firms in Central Florida, we are on top of all of the latest Internet Marketing trends. We have been providing our clients with Internet Marketing services since 1995 (before Google). In the last several months we have been a featured speaker at: Ormond Beach Quarterly Breakfast - "Internet Marketing 101" Ormond Beach Lead Group - "How to build your business through Local Search" Florida Public Relations Association Volusia & Flagler County - "How to Leverage Twitter for your Business or Organization" Vistage Lake County - "Local Search & Twitter for Business" ProSource Vendor Network - "Local Search Marketing During a Tough Economy" Are you need of an Internet Marketing speaker for your next Internet Marketing seminar in the Central Florida area? Contact us

Advertise on Twitter - What You Need to Know

7/27/2009 4:27:00 PM

The topic of advertisements on Twitter is one that is controversial. Some users hate the idea, others think it is the natural evolution of Twitter. While Twitter does not have any official means to allow companies to advertise on Twitter, there are several third-party companies that do. Currently Twitter is really trying to educate companies about how to effectively use Twitter. There has been some speculation that Twitter is going to try to generate money through various add-on tools and services for business and professional users. The only signs of a Twitter ad network came a few months ago when Twitter revamped the home page for users to include a Twitter "word of the day". Some see this as a placeholder for future ads on the site. So how does a company leverage Twitter to promote products and services? This is where the third-party Twitter ad networks come in. Typically the advertisers have a choice on how they want to pay for their sponsored ad: Pay Per View, Pay Per Click, Pay Per Lead, or Pay Per Sale. Pay Per Tweet is very similar to the traditional cost per thousand ad impression model. The pricing is structured so that you pay more for those Twitter accounts that have a larger following. Pay Per Click is the advertising model where you pay when one of the Twit's Followers clicks on the sponsored ad link within the tweet. The price can vary from a few cents to several dollars. Pay Per Lead is the advertising model where the advertiser will pay the Twit based on an actual lead (sign up form, contact request, demo request,...). Pay Per Sale offers the advertiser to pay when a sale is completed on their site. One of the big sticking points to sponsored Twitter ads is how to disclose that the Tweet is paid. Some of these Twitter ad platforms have started to use hashtags to label Tweets as sponsored. The problem is that there is no standard hashtag being used by these ad networks. Some are using #ad, #sp, #spon, or even leave it up to the individual Twit to create. There was a recent a virtual summit from Techcrunch looking at some of the issues around disclosure (read more). Here are some of the top Twitter Ad Networks: TweetROI.com - matches influencers with marketers. They allow the influencer to write the tweet (with approval) so Twits can recommend products in their own words. Advertisers do provide a "suggested" tweet ad. This service offers a Pay Per Tweet ad model. SponsoredTweets.com - is a new player in the Twitter advertising space. The parent company first launched the Pay Per Post model that allowed for sponsored posts on blogs. Sponsored Tweets is the same concept which matches up advertisers with Twits. This service provides the option for the Twit to rewrite the original offer with approval from the advertiser. They offer a Pay Per Tweet or Pay Per Click model. Be-A-Magpie.com - one of the first Twitter ad networks. They offer the Pay Per Tweet, Pay Per Click, Pay Per Lead and Pay Per Sale models. AdCause.com - Their selection criteria to find Twits is pretty robust. They provide the ability to match advertisers up with Twits by Twitter ID, Follower count, Country, State and City. It looks as if they offer a Pay Per Tweet model only. BeTweeted.com - This service believes in using "social media responsibly". A bit different from some of the other Twitter ad networks, in that they require that the Twit include the @companyname into their sponsored ads. They believe this can help the advertiser potentially gain additional Followers for the advertiser's account. This is a Pay Per Click ad model. RevTwt - This service offers advertisers a Pay Per Click, Pay Per Tweet and Pay Per Lead ad model. PayMeTweets - They position themselves as a micro-promo tool for Twitter. PayMeTweets requires that Twits follow their @PayMeTweets account and retweet their posts. Looks to be a fairly new service as their current Twitter account only has 79 followers. This is a Pay Per Tweet ad model. Here are some additional Twitter advertising opportunities for companies. TwittAd.com - This services allows Twits to sell their Twitter account background image to advertisers. It looks like you can drill down to find Twits that match by category, location, Follower count, pricing and by keyword. They also offer a Pay Per Tweet ad model as well. FeaturedUsers.com - is a Twitter application ad network. Your Twitter profile is displayed on the Twitter apps in the FeaturedUsers.com network. The advertiser is charge a per impression fee. I would like to know if you have come across any other unique Twitter advertising opportunities that you may know of. I hope this post helps your company find additional advertising avenues through Twitter. Good luck.

Nested GridViews in C#.NET: How to display relational data together

6/25/2009 11:48:00 AM

First, you must understand the purpose of a GridView in the .NET framework. A GridView control displays rows of data in a table like structure. It displays one record from the table per grid row. This article explains how you can extend the functionality of this powerful control so that relational tables can be displayed together. This article shows you how to accomplish such a task. One reason to nest GridViews in .NET would be to display data in a one-to-many relationship. In some cases there is detail data that has a parent-child relationship to other data in the database. One time consuming way to display this data and its related data could be to loop through the categories (one hit to the database) and write the html manually in a literal control. Then for each category, loop through the details under that category (several hits to the database) and write the html manually in the same literal control. That’s a lot of hits to the database and a lot of manual coding. A shortcut to this manual coding and less hits to the database would be to create nested GridViews. First, create an .ascx (web control). You may need to separate the control in a sub folder, as controls and pages often do not coexist in the same folder. This control will house the detail data. Create a public property of the parent ID to this detail data, for example “Category ID”. private string _categoryID = "0"; public string CategoryID { set { _categoryID = value; } get { return _categoryID; } } On the page load event, grab the data table for the detail records filtering the data by the parent ID (“categoryID”). Bind that DataTable to the GridView in the control. protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { Documents.Document objDA = new Documents.Document(); objDA.searchCategory = CategoryID; DataTable dt = objDA.getChildren(); if (dt.Rows.Count > 0) { grdChild.DataSource = dt; grdChild.DataBind(); }<

LinkedIn Experiment Update

5/19/2009 12:35:00 AM

Just the quick update on the LinkedIn Experiment. I am now up to 89 1st Tier direct connections, 15,100+ 2nd Tier connections and a total network of 1,483,300. Not bad for someone not very active. LinkedIn has added some new features to their service. You can do Twitter-like updates and they now have an iPhone app for Mobile updates. I guess the folks at LinkedIn realized they needed to do something to make it more interactive. Otherwise, people have no real reason to return except to update their resume. Tags: LinkedIn, Connections, business development, Linked In

Google adds Options to its search results

5/18/2009 10:45:00 AM

Google has once again refined its search results. Google has made tremendous strides when it comes to localizing search results. In an attempt to compete with real time search results provided by companies like Twitter they have introduced "show options". Show options which is located just below the search box and above the listing results allows users to refine the search results by various means, but my favorite refinement would have to be the refine your search query by timeline where you can choose recent, past 24 hours, past week, and past year. These new options will play an important role in providing a better user experience, because now users will not only get search results that are location relevant but they will be location relevant along with being current.

Display Google Base Products in Google Adwords

5/5/2009 8:36:00 AM

Google introduced a new feature for Google Adwords advertisers this past week. The new feature allows advertisers to integrate their existing Google Base products into their current Adwords campaigns. By integrating your Google Base products into your Adwords account you will be able to gain additional exposure for your product listings. Once integrated you will see a expandable "Show products from COMPANY NAME" link right under the Adwords ad. Clicking this link displays three products with product title, price, product image, and a short description. I have seen these "Show products from..." links being displayed in the top three Adwords groups as well as down the left hand side. It does not look to be limited to one advertiser, as I have seen multiple Adword ads with the "Show products from..." link. It looks as though the integrating of Google Adwords and Google Base is limited to a few advertisers in the United States currently. Here are some screen shots.

Google Adwords Conversions (1-per-click vs many-per-click)

4/27/2009 4:43:00 PM

Google decided to spice up the metrics in Google Adwords. In the old Google Adwords, it was basically as black and white as it can get. Conversions = 6. You can say “Okay, I had 6 conversions this month.” With the new Google interface, you now can track conversions in a new way, actually two ways, 1-per-click and many-per-click. Conversions (1-per-click) Conversions (1-per-click) count a conversion for every AdWords ad click resulting in a conversion within 30 days. This means if more than one conversion happens following a single ad click, conversions after the first will not count. What does this mean? Well it means that if a user clicks on one of your ads and within 30 days converts 4 conversions, the Conversions (1-per-click) will only track that as 1 conversion. Hence, the term 1-per-click. Conversions (many-per-click) Conversions (many-per-click) count a conversion every time a conversion is made within 30 days following an AdWords ad click. Conversions (many-per-click) will count multiple conversions per click. These metrics are useful for measuring conversions that are valuable every time they happen (i.e. ecommerce transactions). What does this mean? After reading how the 1-per-click conversion tracking metrics works, it’s easy to understand the many-per-click. Which actually track multiple conversions after a click (as long as it’s within the 30 days). As Google stated, it’s very helpful for ecommerce transaction. If a click cost you $4.24 but you ended up getting 6 conversions from it resulting in a total of $293.93 in sales, you did very well. Google Accuracy Now, I’m not known for doubting the mighty Google, but I’m not sure how accurate the conversions will be within the 30 day mark. If anyone is aware of a study of how accurate the conversions are or perhaps how Google measures the conversions within 30 days (IP address, cookies, etc.), please comment or find me on twitter. The source I used was this Google Adwords Help page.

Google Penalty – How to Properly Request Reconsideration

4/24/2009 2:23:00 PM

Today Google released a video from two leaders of the Google Search Quality Web Spam Group, Racheal Searles and Brian White, giving their recommendations for creating a good reconsideration request. Their Tips Include: Admit any mistakes you’ve made and let Google know what you have done to fix them. They want you to realize there is actual people who read the re-inclusion request. If you don’t know what your site did to get the penalty the suggest going back and rereading the Google Guidelines which you can see here: Direct Link in Video: 0:17 Your server timing out and/or temporarily showing bad content will not give your site a penalty. So No need for a reconderation request. It's recommended that you wait a bit and see if things revert back to their previous ranking. Direct Link in Video: 1:00 Duplicate content does not cause a penalty. So No need for a reconderation request Direct Link in Video: 1:30 Partnership with a website that violates quality guidelines can affect both your site and the partner site. Brian does state that Google realizes you do not control the other site so be sure to put that in your reconsideration request. Direct Link in Video: 1:42 For bad links point them to the URL that shows your exhaustive attempts to clean that up. Direct Link in Video: 2:15 Don’t try to fool or lie to them on the report. They restate that there are actual people reading the report and they have tools to review the reconsideration request. If they feel you have not fixed the problem they will disregard your request. Direct Link to Video: 2:27 It can take some time to notice a penalty has been lifted. Direct Link to Video: 3:06 You can watch the full video below:

Parsing data in C#

4/16/2009 10:59:00 AM

Parsing data in C# is a simple process, and can be done using some basic language syntax. Sub Strings provide this functionality, and when used properly can make data collection, or simple parsing operations a much easier task. First when parsing data from sources such as a web page, it is important to first remove all data at the beginning of the document which is unnecessary, in order to prevent the parsing utility from finding the wrong information. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <rss version="2.0"> <channel> <title>website design search results</title> <link>http://randomexamplesiteurl.com/</link> <language>en</language> <pubDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:31:33 GMT</pubDate> <lastBuildDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:31:33 GMT</lastBuildDate> <image> <title>website design - sample feed</title> <url>http://randomexamplesiteurl.com/testimage1.gif</url> <link>http://randomexamplesiteurl.com/</link> </image> <item> <title>Small Businesses Receive Web Design Financing from Wildfire</title> <link>http://randomexamplesiteurl.com/testlink1.html</link> <pubDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:15:30 GMT</pubDate> <description>This is a sample description I am using for testing purposes</description> </item> <item> <title>Effective website design for successful ecommerce</title> <link>http://randomexamplesiteurl.com/testlink2.html</link> <pubDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:23:38 GMT</pubDate> <description>This is a sample description I am using for testing purposes</description> </item> <description>website design - XML Sample</description> </channel> </rss> Finding unique tags to mark the beginning of the data to be parsed is the key to building an efficient parsing utility. In the above sample, all of the text prior to "" is irrelevant if you are only attempting to gather the item data, and will not be needed to complete the parsing process. To remove this from your text use the following code: (code assumes data is loaded in a string variable named strData) int intStartPos = strData.IndexOf("<item>"); strWorkingRSS = strData.Substring(intStartPos); Once the irrelevant data has been removed, you can then focus on parsing the remainder of the string, with the following code this can be done by using any unique string at the beginning and the end of the data you would like to capture. The following code will always stop at the first instance of search string so if you continue to trim the text as you work using the above sample, you can easily write a loop to pull out each of the items until the data has all been parsed successfully. The below sample will result in assigning the variable strTitle with the text in between the "<title>" and "</title>" tags. string strOpenString = "<title>"; intStartPos = strData.IndexOf(strOpenString ) + strOpenString .Length; int intEndPos = strData.IndexOf("</title>"); int intLength = intEndPos - intStartPos; string strTitle = strData.Substring(intStartPos, intLength); This should be enough information to get any parsing project started. The data that I used for my sample may have been XML, but the real value in this type of parsing utility, is in cases where data from an HTML site, or group of HTML pages needs to be moved to a dynamic location such as a database. Many times the only viable option for data transfer is to use a "screen scraping" application, and this code provides a general outline for how to build one for most any circumstances.

SearchStatus Toolbar – Five Reasons It Rocks My SEO World

4/14/2009 1:11:00 PM

I recently had to undergo a fresh install (computer had a lot of unnecessary data) of Windows on my super machine that I like to call the beast! Don’t worry; she made it out without a scratch. Anyways, when I was finishing up adding the last of my Firefox plugins and add-ons, I relived the excitement of the SearchStatus add-on. This puppy is amazing and I have five reasons why you should have it: Can somebody say rank toolbar? This toolbar not only shows the standard PageRank and Alexa rankings, but also gives the option to show Compete and mozRank rankings. Easy Access to Meta Tags View the webpage you would like to the Meta tags on, right click on the SearchStatus icon, select Meta tags, and voila! Meta tag information in a click! Find Whois information I don’t know about you, but I always hated looking up Whois. But not anymore, it’s easy, plus SearchStatus gives me the option to choose what Whois source I would like to use. XML Sitemaps are fun now! Just like the Meta tag information, its so easy to view the XML sitemap of a webpage. Just point and click and the XML sitemap will open conveniently in a new window! Keyword density checker is just icing on the cake You can type in any keyword(s) and the keyword density tool from SearchStatus will check how many times it was used, how many words there are total, and the percentage of how often it was used compared to the total of words. It checks the title, body, header tags, links, bold, and meta information. The SearchStatus add-on has more than five reasons to use it; I just shared five of them. If you have any Firefox plugins or add-ons that are worth talking about, comment on this blog post and share with the rest of us. I won't keep you any longer, you can go and download it now. Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter.

System Integration: With or Without a Website

4/2/2009 3:59:00 PM

Wikipedia defines system integration as 'the bringing together of component subsystems into one system and ensuring that the subsystems function together as a system." It is also about "value-adding to the system, capabilities that are possible because of interactions between subsystems." In the application development world, "subsystems" may include a mixture of hardware (web servers, database servers, networks and firewalls) and software (SQL Server, .NET, html, php, classic ASP, etc). A classic example of an integrated system is a dynamically driven website. This is a combination of subsystems such as a web server, Internet Information Services (IIS), .NET framework with C# common runtime language, ISAPI Rewrite, and a SQL Server database. In order for these subsystems to work together as a functioning website, it requires the efforts of system engineers, website designers, website programmers and internet marketing professionals. Without one of those subsystems in place or only one of them is not integrated properly, the compilation of subsystems is a jumbled mess of components that do not work in synergy with each other. The synergistic website http://www.smtusa.com effectively combines all of these subsystems into a powerful, dynamic, optimized and beautiful website. An example of a third party integration is an email system for one of our clients that runs independent of their website. In fact, a website is not even needed for this integrated system. The software combines several sources of data retrieved from a third party vendor and performs database matches against the data. For example, specific data contains a list of buyers and the criteria those buyers are looking for in a particular service. The other data contains lists of services and the associated service attributes. When matches occur, emails are sent to the buyer as well as the service provider to inform them of those matching buyers and services. It is a well oiled machine: an integrated system.

Google Local Search Single Box Result

4/2/2009 8:35:00 AM

Looks like Google is pushing even more changes to how the local search results display. I am now seeing a single box result listing. My co-workers are still seeing the traditional Google Local Ten Box. I have added a screen shot from my search.

Dual Authority – Dual Inline Site Links

4/1/2009 4:51:00 PM

We have seen for a few different searches today where Google has begun showing multiple sites on the same search with site links. It appears as if Google is splitting the 8 site links it normally gives high authority sites to 4 inline site links each if the two sites both qualify as high authority for the search. The example below is for the search – Search Engine Update 4/2/09: Brent Nau noticed another form of inline site links today, using the search for Internet marketing blog, Hubspot has 3 sitelinks with a number next to them. It appears the number represents the number of posts within that blog category.

Google’s April Fools – Introducing CADIE

4/1/2009 8:12:00 AM

The Google tradition of April Fools jokes continues today with CADIE the world's first "artificial intelligence" tasked-array system. “On January 12th 2009, the STT run (Standard Turing Test) confirmed behavior indistinguishable from that of a reasonable human being with above-average intelligence and 3.8 GPA (we're still struggling to understand that missing .2; we suspect it points to fundamental flaws in the GPA system rather than CADIE. It's also worth noting that CADIE was never shown any textbooks and reading material for the classes; she was only administered the exams. In fact, during the first morning of testing she pointed out several important theoretical flaws in particle physics and cosmology. On several occasions she asked us whether we were really sure we wanted to do this; it is unclear what exactly she meant by these questions, or even by the word 'this.')” It appears Google took the time to make sure CADIE was on as many of their properties as possible: CADIE on Google - http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/cadie/index.html CADIE on Blogspot - http://cadiesingularity.blogspot.com/ CADIE on Maps - http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/cadie/doc/panda-map.html CADIE on Chrome - http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/chrome/cadie/ CADIE on Earth - http://earth.google.com/cadie.html CADIE on Gmail - http://mail.google.com/mail/help/autopilot/index.html CADIE on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/cadiesingularity My personal favorite: Google Brain search by Android - http://www.google.com/mobile/m/brainsearch/intro_android.html

Google to Start New Venture Capital Division

4/1/2009 8:09:00 AM

According to the New York Times Google is set to announce a new venture capital division, Google Ventures, who will invest over 100 million dollars over the next 12 months in companies that are expected to turn a profit. Google Ventures will invest in Internet Startups, Cleant Technology and Life Sciences and has already invested in two companies: Silver Spring Networks, a company that makes technology to help manage electric grids, and Pixazza, which links online images with related products that can be purchased. As pointed out by Tech Crunch, the new ventures site can be found at http://www.google.com/ventures/. There currently is only a parked domain on www.GoogleVentures.com . It appears as if the GoogleVentures.com domain was purchased way back in June 2004 by a James Hung, CEO of theHive.net a Venture Capitalist company who’s slogan is “Empowering the Global American Dream” . The Hive seems to have no association with Google and Google has filed to claim the domain name from Mr. Hung with the National Arbitration Forum If you think you have a business Google would be interested in investing in; they ask that you send no more than 20 slides and three type written pages to ventures@google.com

Google local one box listing results are now based on IP addresses.

3/31/2009 1:11:00 PM

Google has made changes to their one box local business listing results based on IP addresses. In the past users had to add a GEO qualifier, i.e. a city name to get the Google one box local listings to show up within the search results. But recently they have made changes which return Google local listings defaulting to searcher’s city when a GEO qualifier isn’t present. The results are based on the searchers IP address. This is just more evidence that if you don’t have an optimized Google local listing, you are missing the boat. While traditionally 40% percent of all searches used a GEO qualifier, this recent change assumes the searcher is looking for something in their local area and automatically shows the local listings among the results. This change, that is now very present among desktop searches, was probably geared towards mobile devices to improve mobile user experience and to streamline mobile search results towards Google Maps. We are also noticing that the Google Local One Box is typically coming up in the number four position for these broad search terms. We are also noticing this behavior when the user is logged in and when they are not. We also tested several other keywords that we know that our clients were showing up for when using the GEO qualifier search terms and it looks as if the search term has to be very broad. For example Lawyer, Dentist and Flooring. This is big game changer in local search.

Top 5 Reasons your Business should be Blogging

3/27/2009 2:24:00 PM

#5 – Control What is Said About Your Business Blogging allows your business the chance to inform customers, both existing and potential, of upcoming product launches, special discounts, conferences and the inner working of your business. It allows you to get information out to your clients quickly, easily and the way you want it to be presented. #4 - Establish Trust for Your Business A consistently updated blog allows customers to become familiar with your brand message and assures them your not a company that is here one day and gone the next. Remember, someone who finds your site on the internet may not have ever been into your local office and your Blog can communicate to that potential customer that your business is an actual presence. #3 – Engage Existing and Potential Customers Blogging allows you to turn your site from a billboard on the information super highway to an interactive form of communication and advertising. Both existing and potential customers are able stay current with you business and product /services offerings. #2 – Search Engines Love Blogs Blogs can easily provide fresh content to web sites and search engines love it. We have seen client’s blog posts show up on the first page of search results within 15 minutes of posting the article. This can lead to high search rankings for the site. #1 – Show you’re an expert in your industry The majority of consumers prefer to buy products and/or services from someone they perceive to be an expert in their field. Blogging allows you to establish your place as the expert in your industry. This is especially true if you’re a local based business. Blogging gives you a low cost chance to share your knowledge and expertise with a much, much larger audience.

City Centroid - Local Search Ranking Factor

3/24/2009 2:38:00 PM

There has been a shift from Yellow Pages to Search Engines to find local companies and products. According to a TMP Directional Marketing study, the Internet has become the primary source for local research. The study found that 31% of respondents to the study used Search Engines to find local products and services first, with Yellow Pages or White Pages at 30%, Internet Yellow Pages at 19% and Local Search Sites at 11%. The importance of showing up in Google's Onebox Local Search result is becoming more important for businesses. We are finding more and more large and small businesses wanting to show up in the Local Onebox as well as in the organic search results. One of the local search ranking factors that comes into play is how close the business is to the city centroid (the exact middle of the city). The Centroid Factor use to be weighed really heavy and was easily gamed. Today, the Centroid Factor in local search plays more of a minor role, except for very competitive terms. For example, terms like Orlando Dentist, Orlando Lawyer, Orlando Attorney or Orlando Accountant. We have found that when all things are equal, the Centroid Factor is highly weighted. Now there does not seem to be a set radius from the centroid. As we have seen the radius vary in size. For the term "Orlando Dentist" we see a radius of 2.25 miles, "Orlando Lawyer" a radius of 2 miles, "Orlando Attorney" a radius of 1.25 miles, and "Orlando Accountant" a radius of 1.25 miles. As there are more optimized local listings closer to the centroid, we see that the radius becomes smaller. Now this is not to say there could not be outliers. We have seen cases where an optimize local business listing is 2-3 miles outside the farthest edge of the radius. We have noted that those particular listings have a extremely high number of local web citations compared to the rest of the top ten Google Onebox local search results. As you can see from the screenshot below, there are also a high number of local Orlando Dentists within the radius (represented by the red dots), but the local business listings are not optimized properly for Local Search. How much business are those businesses missing out on? Radius for the term Orlando Dentist

Internet Explorer 8 and Web Standards

3/19/2009 12:35:00 PM

Internet Explorer 8 is out of beta and the final version is available! It actually became available today at noon ET. On the IEBlog, they state that IE8 will comply more with web standards. Internet Explorer’s development team actually worked closely with the Web Standards Project. Which is huge for web developers, because many web developers have to use CSS hacks or javascript to get around the IE browser bugs. Microsoft could be moving in the right direction by adding a new optional mode called “super standards” that supposedly will balance backward compatibility with web standards. It will be enabled by a simple “meta” element. Which could make web developers job a bit easier. Also, I read some of the reviews and according to Microsoft, IE8 “is one of the fastest browsers on the market today…”. But then most of the reviews contradicted Microsoft's statement by saying they haven’t seen much of a difference in speeds. The comments from the IEBlog offer some enlightening perspectives. Here are a couple: Sami wrote “I'd prefer having the superstandards mode on by default. Let the user switch to quirks mode, if the page is not displayed. IE7 gives an enormous warning about invalid ssl certificates, why not to do the same about invalid markup?” Mo wrote “Congratulations, it's definitely the best solution for the time being. But what makes me afraid is the fact that you don't see it as a temporary solution for IE8, but even want other browser vendors to adopt it. Which would mean you're breaking the web, but in another way. Please let this be a solution only for IE8. As soon as 90% of all pages on the web are standards compliant, release IE9, which will only have one rendering engine: the most standards compliant one.” Personally, I am a supporter of Firefox because of its speed and compatibility with web standards, but I am going to give the final version of IE8 a whirl and see how I like it.

Automated Spanish Translation System for Web Sites

3/11/2009 1:08:00 PM

Miami Children’s Hospital (MCH) recently requested the assistance of Sales & Marketing Technologies to provide an effective solution to dynamically translate their English content from their web site to Spanish using the third party vendor, Translations.com. SMT’s in-house Programming team worked closely with Translations.com to perform the initial Spanish translation by building the necessary XML file needed for input into their system. Once the translation was complete, the initial file was imported into a staging environment and sent to the client for review. Once approved, the newly translated Spanish content was published to the live MCH site. The process was later enhanced by SMT’s Programming team to provide an automated system for MCH to create the XML file without the assistance from SMT. Through a back end manager on the web site, MCH was able to dynamically create new English content pages. The English pages were then converted to a XML file and automatically sent to Translations.com via a secure FTP download process. Once the file is translated by Translations.com, the Spanish content file is uploaded to the MCH website for review. Once reviewed, MCH can publish the newly created Spanish content with a touch of a button. The result is a 3-step process without the assistance from SMT: (1) create the XML file (2) translate the file (3) upload the content to the web site. This automated translation process demonstrates the ability for SMT to build relationships with other third party vendors that result in an outcome that benefit our clients. Miami Children's Hospital® is South Florida’s only licensed specialty hospital exclusively for children, with more than 650 attending physicians and over 130 pediatric sub-specialists. Sales & Marketing Technologies is a full service web development and Internet marketing company with offices in Altamonte Springs, Orlando and Tampa, Florida. Founded in 1991, SMT has produced award winning web sites for clients nationally and internationally.

Integrating Online and Offline Marketing Through Twitter

3/9/2009 2:03:00 PM

We saw a pretty cool example of integrating your online and offline marketing through Twitter. Our VP of Sales received a postcard in the mail today from one of his Twitter followers. The postcard read: "Hi Bernie, I'm one of your followers on twitter and wanted to introduce myself. I could have sent a message from twitter but I'm sure you get a ton of those and I wanted to stand out. The reason I'm writing you is because I'd like your opinion on a new start-up I founded... I'm hoping to fnd a place for printed communications like this in the world of social networking. You seem to know a lot about the online world so I'd value your opinion..." The sender provided his Twitter profile URL at the bottom of the postcard. The postcard goes on to ask that you follow their business URL and enter in the provided code for a free trial of their service. What a great way to integrate your online and offline marketing efforts. I have attached the images of the actual postcard we received.

Implementing 301 Redirects on Legacy URLs

3/4/2009 8:53:00 AM

The implementation of 301 redirects for legacy URLs is a crucial step in website redevelopment and URL optimization projects. It seems that web development companies that are not strong in Internet Marketing often make the mistake, out of ignorance more than anything, of not properly taking care of legacy URLs, that is of URLs that used to rank on the previous website version but whose content has been assigned a new URL. For example if the details page of a product is now on http://www.domain.com/Products/CategoryX/ProductY.html the legacy URL prior to the website redevelopment or URL optimization could have been http://www.domain.com/product.asp?productCategory=CategoryX&productName=ProductY What would happen if Google continued to send traffic to the legacy URL? The worst outcome would be a dreadful 404 error message back from the server. That product page, which used to rank for Google, now only provides your visitors with a sad “Page Not Found” message. If you are seeking to preserve some of your rankings after the launch of your new site version, a 404 error is unacceptable. We have seen in the past that web development companies will at least gracefully handle a 404 by redirecting the user to the home page. Your old rankings will likely still quickly dwindle, but at least you are not faced with the user experience disaster of a 404. We come now to what should be done to properly address legacy URLs. The answer is simple. Create URL Rewriting rules to instruct your server to return 301 messages instead of 404 messages for those URLs. A 301 is a “Permanent Redirect” message that conveniently provides a new URL and instructs your visitor’s web browser to go there instead. But you have dozens, hundreds, even thousands of products. It sounds a little crazy to produce rewrite rules for all URLs, and in fact it is crazy. In many cases you don’t have to. That’s what the rewrite engine and regular expressions are for. Assuming that you use ISAPI Rewrite 2 using the example above you can accomplish all of your product detail redirects with one rule: RewriteRule /product.asp\?productCategory=(.*)&productName=(.*) /Products/$1/$2\.html [I,RP,L] In the first half of the rule each parenthesis block creates a back-referenced subexpression. Two back-referenced subexpressions are created, one after the productCategory equal sign and one after the productName equal sign. These subexpressions are then “back-referenced” on the second half of the rule as $1 and $2 respectively and so this rule tells the server: If there is a request for anything in the format /product.asp?productCategory=[Back Reference Subexpression #1]&productName=[Back Reference Subexpression #2] Apply this rule in “case insensitive” mode so it does not matter what was lower case or uppercase in the requested URL (thus the “I” flag at the end of the rule to indicate Case “Insensitive”) Produce a permanent redirect (thus the RP flag at the end of the rule to indicate to “Redirect Permanently”) and tell the visitor’s browser to go to /Products/[Back Reference Subexpression #1]/[Back Reference Subexpression #2].html instead If there was a match, make this the “last” rule that applies and do not continue down the rules file looking for other rules (thus the L flag at the end of the rule to indicate that this is the “Last” rule) This will also tell the search engine spiders that a page has been permanently redirected and eventually it will know that the page that used to be located at the legacy URL now has a new URL. 301 Redirects for Legacy URLs should not be an eleventh hour implementation process. To be effective it needs to be properly thought out at the beginning of a redevelopment or URL optimization project. The example above assumes a best case scenario where your legacy URL contain all of the information that your new URL needs. I will discuss conditional expressions and rule loops in a future post to address more complex scenarios.

Twitter Contributes to Globalization

2/27/2009 4:24:00 PM

If you are asking yourself, “What exactly is globalization?” -- Well, here is my understanding of it… globalization has been and most likely will always be an ongoing process that eliminates borders between nations and allows an interconnectedness between nations. For example, 20 years ago it would have been very difficult for me to speak with someone from across the nation. Now with the internet, I am able to speak instantly with others around the globe. There are many factors that contribute to globalization; some more than others. One of the more obvious ones is the internet. I actually believe the internet has grown so much that we can consider once sub-factors (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc), now factors. There are estimations that Twitter has up to 8 million users all over the world and increasing everyday. With the brief and easy platform Twitter uses, it makes it so easy to connect with people everywhere (globalization). Twitter is contributing in major ways to globalization by knocking down international barriers. Just recently I received a DM from a web designer in Germany asking some general questions about SEO. Nobody I knew, but it was interesting that Twitter enabled us to engage in conversation so easily. Now with all of the hard work the staff at Twitter puts into their site, we can be sure that Twitter will always be improving its usability and helping users connect from all over the world. If don't have a Twitter account, you should definitely create one and after you do, read this post on how to optimize your Twitter bio to make it more search-able. Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!

Action Required: Cost Data Change

2/27/2009 11:17:00 AM

If you receive the "Action Required Cost Data Change" Email from Google it may seem a little confusing, I know I read it a couple times, and you only have until March 4th to make the required changes. To help alleviate some confusion Google has an employee, Stephen, actively answering questions about the email; below is some of his answers: First, some background: Right now, Google Analytics will attribute clicks and impressions to AdWords as long as the visitor has the 'gclid' auto-tag in there request. This will happen regardless of what account the tag is related to. For example, if I create an ad in my AdWords account, and direct it toward your website, then you will see clicks attributed to my AdWords keywords in your Analytics account. There are other consequences to this, but that is the most basic behavior a user might see, and we believe that it makes our advertiser's less secure than they should be. The immediate consequence: This change will prevent the auto-tagged keywords from being attributed to AdWords unless the AdWords and Analytics accounts are linked, or unless the Analytics account has had 'cost data' applied. So if I decide to make an AdWords ad for your website, then the visits I send will be attributed to the source 'Google Organic'. What should you do? It depends. While the change will effect all Analytics accounts, not all Analytics users want the same behavior in their accounts or have the same account structures. I think that's one of the things that makes it hard to explain this issue. If you only have one AdWords account and one Analytics account, then all you need to do is make sure they're linked together. That's the first set of steps in the email we sent out. If you already linked them, but chose not to 'implement cost data', then you'll need to follow the second set of steps above. If you have multiple AdWords accounts that you track through one Analytics account, and you want AdWords visits to continue to show from all of them, then you you need to request that the data be linked by AdWords Support by using the 'Contact Us' link in your AdWords accounts. The full details are in the 'FAQ' link in the email, which you can also find here: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=140391&utm_source=costdata&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=en_us You can visit the Google help center and read all responses here: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdWords/thread?tid=2031d315a6a35703&hl=en

Retail Dominates in Top 50 Rankings

2/25/2009 9:54:00 AM

I was going through some recent (11/08) comScore data and came across something I thought was interesting. A list of the top 50 internet properties in the United States. The rankings are based strictly from unique visitors from home, work, or university locations. You can view the Top 50 Properties on the internet here. Even though search engines dominate the top rankings, it is the retail industry dominating in numbers. It was actually a surprise to see some Weather competition in the midst. However, the greater surprise to me was to see a company like ESPN ranked 43 out of the 50, and Adobe ranked 21! It may not be a surprise to others, but to me it sure was. Here is a breakdown of the top 50 properties on the internet by category/industry. Some of the Miscellaneous include Glam Media, Real.com Network, United Online, Inc., and others. Category Number of Sites (out of top 50) Retail 10 Search Engines 5 News 5 Social Sites 4 Informational 4 Mobile 3 Weather 2 Finance 2 Misc. 15 I am ultimately curious what sites fall under the "Adobe Sites" ranking. I am fully aware of their product line, but might be unaware of other online projects. If you know of any Adobe Sites that are lingering around the internet. Please let me know! You can find me on Twitter.

How Small Businesses Are Leveraging Twitter into Sales

2/25/2009 8:38:00 AM

The explosive growth of Twitter has made Twitter a main stream micro-blogging platform. With the estimated 6 million users, businesses are find that there are true opportunities to connect with customers and drive sales from their Twitter accounts. Twitter is a free social messaging utility for staying connected in real time. Twitter is considered a micro-blogging platform where you only have 140 characters for your message. An estimated 5-10 thousand new users are signing up daily on Twitter. Traffic to the site has grown by 600% over the last 12 months with 20% of Twitter users joining in the last 60 days. The Pew Internet & American Life Project released a study, Twitter and Status Updating, recently. The study provided the percentage of online adults that have said they have used Twitter before: 19% - 18 to 24 years old 20% - 25 to 34 years old 10% - 35 to 44 years old 5% - 45 to 54 years old 4% - 55 to 64 years old 2% - 65 and older As the majority of users tend to be younger, they also tend to live in lower-income households. 17% earn less than $30,000 10% earn more than $70,000 As you can see from this data their is a huge opportunity for small businesses to use Twitter. We have set up accounts for several of our clients, but we always get the question, "How can I generate business from it?". Here are four case studies on how small businesses are generating sales from Twitter. CoffeeGroundz Cafe (@coffeegroundz) is a local coffee house in Houston, Texas. They are proclaim to have taken the first to-go order through Twitter. A regular customer messaged them asking if he could place an order and pick it up at the drive-thru. From there CoffeGroundz started to take orders via direct message from their cleintele. Clients are now even ordering via Twitter directly from a table in the store without having to walk up to the counter and order a coffee. Zoomdweebie's Tea Bar (@52teas) is a local tea company in Wichita, Kansas. They set up a Twitter account and offered a new tea blend each week. Customers were also alerted to daily specials. The owner stated that they typically sold one or two packages every two or three weeks, but Twitter has allowed them to ship 40 to 50 packages. They are even getting orders from as far away as Scotland and Australia. Namecheap (@namecheap), a 70 person domain registrar out of Los Angeles, started their Twitter account in December. They initially ran a trivia contest once an hour and the first @ replies won an one-year domain registration. Namecheap's traffic increased by 10% in December and domain registrations increased by 20%. Ichiban (@orlandoichiban), an Orlando-based Japanese restaurant join Twitter in December. They are taking online orders via Twitter. They are even promoting their special and upcoming events to their followers.

Yet another reason an optimized Google local directory presence is a must.

1/29/2009 4:19:00 PM

Other than the obvious reason why it is important to have an optimized Google local listing. It is now even more important because of 1800Goog411, Google's free 411 information line (which has been around a while). Basically it performs the same function as a traditional 411 number; however, it is free and pulls the information straight out of their local listings and if your listing is number one for the users search terms and city and state then your business will be the first one returned with an option for an instant free connection to your business number at the press of a button. And as more and more regulation cracks down on texting and talking on phones while driving, you can bet more people will be conducting searches via voice recognition. Which I believe Google is quietly using the recorded Goog411 calls to perfect the technology. The searches done using voice recognition on Googles system aren't giving an option on the results based on the normal organic rankings, but only the local directory listings. So that is just another reason why an optimized local listing is important.

Super Bowl Ads 2009

1/29/2009 9:44:00 AM

The 2009 Super Bowl Ads are almost here, but don’t expect to see any General Motors or FedEx advertisements. That’s right, GM and FedEx has decided to sit the bench for Super Bowl 43. Why, you ask. Well, one word: recession. But the big bad recession hasn’t stopped last years Super Bowl 30 second ad space at $2.7 million to jump up to $3 million this year. Did you know that somewhere between 90 million and 150 million people (depends on which survey you use) tune in to watch the Super Bowl simply for the commercials and half time show! I couldn’t believe that statistic when I read it. But then again, sometimes they are more entertaining than the game. Before I depart from this blog post, I am leaving you with a partial list of noteworthy advertisers for this year’s Super Bowl. Advertiser’s to look out for this year: Coke (I expect a nice rivalry battle between Coke and Pepsi) Pepsi Anheuser-Busch Monster.com CareerBuilder HR Block Doritos P.S. Go Steelers!

Three reasons why Long Tail Keyword searches are so important?

1/29/2009 9:41:00 AM

Long tail keyword searches are the secret to tremendous website traffic. Why are they so important and how do they work? Here are three reasons why long tail keyword searches are so important. After studying the traffic to a popular website whose domain name is the same as its primary keyword, we found that during a thirty day period the website received 500k visitors. But only 12k of them where for the primary keyword. The other 488k visitors found the site using long tail keyword searches, keyword searches with additional discriminators like the location of the service, a specific model number, or brand of product. The long tail searches drove the majority of the search traffic. Long tail keyword searches mimic the spoken word. With the ever so increasing popularity of mobile devices and the regulation that comes with it, i.e. laws against talking and texting while driving, you can expect more and more mobile device users to use hands free devices to make their calls. Internet searches through voice recognition will soon increase as a result and since long tail keyword searches mimic the spoken word they will a vital part of internet success. The longer the keyword search term the higher probability for a sale or conversion whether it be a sale or a request for additional information. For example users searching for a 2004 black Honda Hybrid are further along in the buying process than some who searches for a Honda and are more likely to convert into a sale. So how do you capitalize on long tail keyword search terms? Structure your URLs to support them. (i.e. yoururl.com/long-tail-search-terms instead of yoururl.com/story423). Write content for people not search engines. I'm not saying to not use SEO fundamentals, but combine them with normal speech patterns.

Famous People on Twitter Part 2

1/28/2009 4:57:00 PM

First, let me say that Dennis' first post, "Famous People On Twitter - Where Are They?" rocked! However, it has been quite some time since that infamous post and I bet the Famous People On Twitter list could probably get an update! Before I release the list, please note that I cannot say for sure if these Twitter Aliases are actually who they say they are. You never know who is behind that alias! Sara Bareilles Patrick Wilson of Weezer Shaquille O’Neal Joe Budden Jimmy Fallon Dave Matthews Of Dave Matthews Band Soulja Boy Britney Spears Luke Wilson Lance Armstrong Erykah Badu Tyler Perry Enjoy and if anybody knows any other famous people we can add to the list, let me know! Don't forget to follow me on Twitter!

SMT Internet Marketing Seminar Was a Success

1/28/2009 8:42:00 AM

I am glad to say that our "Achieving Breakthrough Results From the Internet in 2009" seminar in Orlando was truly a great success. We had a a packed house of current clients as well as some local business owners from the Greater Orlando area attend. The seminar provided a nice overview of Internet Marketing and some of the emerging Internet Marketing trends for 2009. We touched on such topics as Social Media, Blogs, Local Search, Video Search and Universal/Personalized Search. We are continuing this series in Tampa in February and expect an even larger turn out at our new office location off of Hines Avenue.

Five Great Google Adwords Tips for Saving Money on Adwords

12/31/2008 7:21:00 PM

Here are five Adwords tips to help you get more bang for your buck with Google Adwords. Put your phone number in the Google ad, because some people are likely to call instead of clicking through. If you are on a small budget, have your ads scheduled to start running later in the day to give some time for some advertisers to blow through their daily budget. Geo target your ads to prevent paying for clicks outside your servicing ability. Make sure to use negative keywords when setting up your keywords, and review them often. Try and target your products or services which have the best profit margin.

Top Ten Reputation Management Tips

12/31/2008 7:02:00 PM

When it comes to your image, or the image of your brand, reputation management is a word you need to know. The internet is a very powerful and quick force and a negative comment on a blog, Twitter, or forum can literally spread across the internet in minutes and can result in a loss of business and profit. That’s where reputation management comes in. Monitoring what is said about you on the internet and responding when appropriate can reduce the spread of negative comments, but the real damage is done when the negative comments gravitate to the top of Google or Yahoo. Here are a few tips to manage your reputation before it becomes a problem. Check your website on www.statbrain.com, checking your stats on Statbrain creates a link within their site. This link tends to rank well on the search engines and can prevent negative comments from showing up on top of the search engine. Check your stats on www.alexa.com, it has the same effect. Check your site on www.compete.com, (same effect also) Check your site on www.websiteoutlook.com (same effect also) Create a Twitter profile using your business name. Create a naymz.com profile using your business name. Create an aboutus.org profile using your business name. Create a facebook.com profile using your business name. Create a linkedin.com profile using your business name. If these don’t keep the negative comments off the first page of the search engines, give us a call because you need a professional.

Amazon.com Had “Best Ever” Holiday Season

12/31/2008 4:28:00 PM

Powerhouse Online Retailer, Amazon.com said that this holiday season was their, “best ever”. One of the busiest online days to shop is December 15th, and Amazon customers ordered 6.3 million items that day. Which is a significant increase compared to last years 5.4 million on their peak day. Unfortunately, Amazon has not released any dollar figures and wouldn’t say whether the average value of orders had changed. Many people are debating if the sole purpose of this increase was because of the online retailer giant or because there simply is just a larger demand to shopping online. I bought a couple items online this holiday season. It was simple and convenient. The prices are typically the same, if not cheaper and with a lot of the items having FREE shipping, it doesn’t hurt the wallet as bad as it used to. It was easy and I am sure I will end up doing it again in the near future.

Google Leading Mobile Web

12/31/2008 4:11:00 PM

Surprirsed? Yeah, me neither. According to Nielsen Mobile, surprisingly (sarcasm) Google is the leading force in mobile search in the US. With iPhones, Google Androids, Blackberry Storms, and other internet capable phones, the mobile web is on the fast track for either booming success or failure due to overload. Source: Nielsen Mobile What I mean by failure to overload is this… We all know that mobile browsing is going to be huge! But when it does, will the mobile web have the capabilities, functionality, speed, and content to feed the eagerly needy consumer market? An article from Mobile Marketing Watch states an interesting statistic, “According to an M:Metrics March 18, 2008 survey, 85 percent of iPhone users access the Web for information and are 10 times more likely to search the mobile Web than cell phone owners.” A site that does well in mobile search has: Small, lightweight and fast-loading site ( XHTML Mobile 1.0 Doctype UTF-8 character encoding JPEG / GIF images Content including “mobile” On-site keyphrase optimisation as usual (with a focus on short titles, and small amounts of body copy) Regular technical SEO principles Remember, mobile plays a significant role in the future of the internet.

Google Continues to Grow in November

12/19/2008 10:57:00 PM

Just a few minutes ago ComScore released their November Search Engine Ranking Report and Google continues to grow in the search market with both Yahoo! and MSN losing ground. Overall Americans searched 3% less in November when compared to October. November 2008 vs. October 2008 Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore qSearch 2.0 Core Search Entity Oct-08 Nov-08 Point Change Nov-08 vs. Oct-08 Total Core Search 100 100 N/A Google 63.1 63.5 0.4 Yahoo! 20.5 20.4 -0.1 MSN/Live 8.5 8.3 -0.2 ASK 4.2 4.0 -0.2 AOL 3.7 3.8 0.1 * Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.

Hackers Can Steal Your PageRank

12/9/2008 5:44:00 PM

Recently John Mueller, a Webmaster Trends Analyst for Google, reported on his personal blog that hackers have been stealing PageRank from websites. He writes: In this particular case, a "massive amount" of sites were hacked and likely redirected through suomi.co.in. The Hackers were able to 301 redirect pages for search engine spiders only so the webmaster and site visitors never saw a change on the site. By redirecting the Spiders this way the Google believed the site had moved and began giving PageRank and inbound link credit to Suomi.co.in site. Thereby stealing the work of the original website for their own benefit. John Mueller then goes on to show you two ways that a site can detect this if they feel they are a victim. The first way assumes that you have actually noticed that URLs from your website are no longer being listed in the Search Engines. 1. Use an online tool such as Web-Sniffer. It's pretty easy to use and is somewhat close to an actual crawler. 2. Use FireFox with the User Agent Switcher plugin. If you use this plugin, you'll have to add the user agent yourself. I usually use the current Googlebot user agent string: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) Note: if you use Firefox for this, make sure that your Firefox installation is up to date and locked down properly in case you run into a site serving malware like this. Sometimes it even makes sense to use a virtual machine for this. 3. (I wish there were a half-"li" ) There's also "wget", which is easy for those of you who prefer use console tools. I usually use the above user agent string with wget. If you access the site using one of these tools, you'll often be able to spot these redirects (or other issues that a site might be having with regards to being accessed by search engine crawlers). Below is an image of what you would see if this is happening with your website. Please note that Suomi.co.in could be any website that is not yours. The second way is actually very easy and something you should implement on all your sites anyways. When you submit a Sitemap file, Google will show warnings for URLs that redirect. By design, you should be listing the final URL in your Sitemap file, so if the URL is redirecting for our crawlers (as in this case), we'll show a warning in your account.

Is MySpace going to speed up adoption of IE7 and Firefox?

12/7/2008 10:07:00 PM

It looks as if Myspace is strongly encouraging people to upgrade their browsers to either Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox. Now I must admit I'm not a huge MySpace user also I use primarily IE6 for my work from home and save IE7 and Firefox for my time in the office where I would lean more to being an early adopter than at home. When you log into MySpace with IE6 you get the following "MySpace recommends upgrading to IE7" screen shot: MySpace hits you again if you attempt to use their new Profile 2.0 tool. If you look closely at the two screen shots it appears MySpace prefers FireFox over IE7. The IE7 recommendation from the opening screen is actually an advertisement and the Profile 2.0 tool is a true Firefox recommendation. So will it speed up adoption? With Myspace's millions of users I can't see how it wouldn't - I'm actually writing this from home using IE7 thanks to MySpace's recommendation.

Online Spending Up 846 Million on Cyber Monday

12/3/2008 3:18:00 PM

Not all is bad in the retail world especially if your primary business is online. comScore’s latest survey results show Cyber Monday, the online equivalent to Black Friday, up 15% over last year making it the second busiest online shopping day on record. The weekend between Thanksgiving day and Cyber Monday (Nov. 29 - 30th) was up 19% over 2007. Holiday Season to Date Millions ($) 2007 2008 Percent Change Nov. 1 - Dec. 1 $12,217 12,025 -2% Pre-Thanksgiving $10,035 $9,588 -4% Thanksgiving and Later $2,182 $2,437 12% November 27 (Thanksgiving Day) $272 $288 6% November 28 ("Black Friday") $531 $534 1% November 29-30 (Weekend) $645 $769 19% December 1 ("Cyber Monday") $733 $846 15% comScore’s chairman Gian Fulgoni is quoted as saying: Rumors of the death of online holiday shopping have been greatly exaggerated and continued with: With Cyber Monday promotions beginning in earnest over the Thanksgiving weekend, consumers have finally begun to open their wallets, setting off a streak of four consecutive days of extremely strong growth, and culminating in a Cyber Monday that racked up an impressive $846 million in online spending Some of the other findings from ComScore: More than half (51 percent) of consumers indicated that the level of promotions and discounts is higher this year than last year, while only 12 percent said that there appeared to be fewer, suggesting that retailers are having to be more aggressive in discounting to spur consumer spending. 39 percent of consumers said that there seemed to be fewer people out shopping in retail stores this year than last year, while only 7 percent thought there were more.

Consumers Continue to Research Online, Buy Offline

12/2/2008 8:39:00 PM

A recent study, Local Search Usage Study, by comScore shows that more consumers are doing their research online while purchasing offline with a phone call or a visit to the local store. The study found that once online research was performed 39% of consumers contacted the local business via phone, 32% visited the local business, and 12% contacted the local business online. The number one source for research was Search Engines (31%), followed by Print Yellow Pages or White Pages (30%), then Internet Yellow Page Sites (19%), and finally Local Search Sites (11%). The study also found that Internet Yellow Page (IYP) sites accounted for 60% of local IYP business searches, while Local Search sites accounted for 40%. The study goes on to talk about how the explosive growth of mobile and voice search is already having an impact on local search. They found that 1 in 5 local business searchers with an Internet-accessible mobile phone have conducted a local search via the mobile Web. There are currently 228 million mobile subscribers in the U.S., representing an increase of 45% in mobile browsing year-over-year. As local search grows, local business owners need to understand that they need to include local search into their marketing plans.

Google Releases Guidelines for Bloggers

12/1/2008 3:36:00 AM

Earlier this week Google released a new set of Blogging Best Practices in their Creating a Google-friendly site section of Webmaster help. The document starts out with Google reiterating their pro-blog feelings: If you have a website but don’t have a blog, consider creating one: A blog is a great way to connect with people who share your interests, or to publicize your site or product. Blogs are easy to create and update, and rich, useful, and original blog content will encourage readers to come back to your site. Here are some tips for making the most of your blog Then proceeds to separate out their document into three sections: Create great content, Make sure readers and crawlers can find your content and Your blog and Webmaster Tools. Create Great Content: Write Well and Often. Follow the webmaster guidelines. Categorize your posts. If necessary, limit comment spam. Check our tips for affiliate sites. Make sure readers and crawlers can find your content: Create descriptive titles for each of your posts. Connect with your online community. Publish a feed of your content. Your blog and Webmaster Tools: Add your blog to your Webmaster Tools account. Verify your blog. Submit a Sitemap. If you have the time you can read the full documentation here.

Christmas Time Revenue

12/1/2008 3:28:00 AM

Now that you have filled your belly with turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and every kind of pie your grandma can whip up, it’s time to focus on this Christmas seasons potential revenue. What I am about to share with you isn’t a million dollar idea, but will help you or your business earn those extra Christmas dollars. The Christmas season is a great opportunity to market your product or service and put a little Christmas season twist on it! There are “Doorbuster Deals” and “Christmas Sales” around every corner in every city. Why not use those same offline strategies online? For example, if you run a e-Commerce website, you can offer a free $10 Starbucks Holiday Gift Card for every order over $100. Unfortunately, not all websites are geared towards e-Commerce. But what you can do, (for SEO) is think about a specific product or service that possibly would be in demand during this holiday season. Once you have your selected product or service chosen, create as much internet exposure on that product or service as possible. How can I do this, you ask. Our internet marketing department are experts in creating a ROI for you and your business! Contact us today so you are ready this holiday season!

Search Engine Usage Statistics

11/30/2008 4:49:00 PM

COMscore, a leading internet research firm, released their October 2008 Search Engine usage statistics a few days ago and Google still retains a sizeable lead on all other Search Engines combined. Google led the U.S. in search with 63.1 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo (20.5%), MSN (8.5%), Ask (4.2%), and AOL (3.7%). Of the 12.6 Billion searches by U.S. residents in October Google provided results for 8 billion of those an increase of 7 percent from September of 2008. Yahoo and MSN came in a distance second and third, 2.6 Billion and 1.1 Billion respectively, as Google continues to increase its search footprint in the US market.

TravelMax Nursing Launches New Website

11/26/2008 8:54:00 PM

Sales & Marketing Technologies is pleased to announce the launch of the new TravelMax Nursing website, http://www.tmaxnursing.com. The new website is an extension of the TravelMax brand focusing on direct placement and travel nursing jobs. The website provides cutting edge technology which allows job seekers to automatically receive new job opportunities via email that match the job seeker’s preset specifications. In addition, the Clinician Availability database provides clients with 24/7/365 access to the latest available nurses for a particular location or clinical discipline. TravelMax Nursing, a division of Maxim Healthcare Services, provides customized travel nursing jobs and direct placement nursing jobs to RNs and LPNs throughout the United States. TravelMax Nursing provides nursing job opportunities in the following disciplines: ICU/CCU, CVICU, Step Down, ER/ED, NICU, PICU, SICU, LDRP, OB/GYN, OR, Peds, PACU, and many other areas. TravelMax was founded in 2001 for the purpose of providing a full line of travel and permanent placement staffing services.

Google Trends for Websites.

11/6/2008 1:59:00 PM

Google just recently added Google Trends for websites which is a great research tool for analyzing authority type websites. I say authority type websites because websites with lower search volumes usually return this message “Your website sampledomainname.com does not have data to display”. The Google trends for websites tool gives an insight to what regions the visitors are coming from, what sites visitors also visited and what search terms the visitors also searched for. The information can be used to target marketing efforts for your website, for example if you know that a potential customer visited Site “A” and they also visted Site “B” and Site “C” you may want to advertise on one of the other sites (B or C) based on marketing costs because there is a good chance they will find your ad. You can visit Google Trends for Websites here. ?

Even in a Tough Economy E-commerce Continues to Grow

11/1/2008 3:01:00 AM

Market research group comScore released their third quarter retail e-commerce report today which shows as the economy struggles Internet Retailers continue to grow albeit at a slower rate. Their research shows U.S. consumers spent 30 billion online in the third quarter, excluding travel, a 6% increase over the same period last year. However, the growth rate was slower when compared to the previous two quarters of this year with the growth rate in the first quarter up 12% over 2007 and the second quarter up 13%. comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni had this to say about the report: “Consumers’ economic pressures continue to have a significant impact on retail spending, which is evident in the slowing growth rates in the online channel. However, in a tight economy, the Internet remains a critical sales and media channel for retailers for three reasons. First, it is a more cost-effective medium than traditional media. Second, despite the slowdown, e-commerce growth rates still exceed those at retail. And third, online marketing campaigns have been proven to not only grow a retailer’s e-commerce sales but to also have the ability to drive increased traffic into retail stores. And, with so many consumers expected to be especially cost-conscious this holiday season, it is important for retailers to reach them at the initial point of the purchase funnel — when many product research and price comparisons are being conducted online.”

How do I increase traffic & sales on my website?

10/31/2008 1:00:00 PM

I hear this question “How do I increase traffic & sales on my website?” all the time, and the funny thing is most of the time its from clients who’s sales have doubled and even tripled over the past year. The answer to this question is simple but applying the principles is not quite as simple because it usually requires some work. To increase traffic & sales on websites, I like to use what I call the “CLUB” method which is: C = Content (Content needs to be fresh, think of your website as grocery produce department, shoppers look for the fresh stuff, So do search engines) L = Links (Links, and when I’m speaking of links I mean internal and external links. External links (links pointing to your site) act as vouching for your website and internal links (Navigation) should lead the visitor to where or what you want them to do, internal linking should support the sales process not hamper it) U = Uniqueness (Uniqueness refers to the appearance and the content, your content needs to be unique so it can stand out in the crowd and the appearance also needs to be unique to make your site easy to remember) B = Beauty (Beauty refers to appearance and cosmetic appeal of your website, the cosmetic appeal of your website directly correlates to several things: Users trust better looking websites. Users are more likely to purchase from appealing sites than a spammy looking site. In sales, its a known fact that so called “good looking” sales people tend to do better than not so good looking sales people, the same applies to websites.) So that my friends is how you increase traffic & sales on your website.

4% of Websites Meet Web Standards

10/31/2008 2:10:00 AM

Matt Cutts stated a very interesting comment on twitter a couple of weeks ago and it goes something like this: “Only 4% of web pages comply w/standards: http://bit.ly/2BJMnZ . That’s why Google can’t return only those pages; too few of them. “ You can view that quote here. I have been thinking about that lately and wanted to put my thoughts in a blog post. My first thought is, it’s quite pathetic to only have 4%, excuse me, 4.13% of the web complying with web standards. My second thought is, should search engines reward websites that comply with web standards? I think with their efforts and compliance with the web their should be some sort of incentive. But, what could you reward these websites with? Perhaps their should be a weighted value in the search engine algorithms for websites that adhere to web compliance standards. I would love to hear what others think so be sure to leave a comment!

How To Launch A New Site

10/28/2008 2:09:00 AM

Shhh… Do you hear that? Yeah, me neither. If you want to avoid launch failure and the crickets, follow these easy steps to create a buzz about your newly launched site. 1) Check, Check, and Check Again I can’t tell you how many internet users shy away from websites because of failed image loads, broken links, and/or internet browsers displaying the content wrong. It is so important to do a thorough check of your site to assure the functionality and display (check in multiple browsers) is working correctly. These are such simple and minute errors, but can cause a major toll on your users experience, causing them never to return. So please, take your time and make your everything works fine and dandy. It’ll be worth it. I promise. 2) Tell People Tell your friends, tell your family ,tell your neighbors… just tell people. Oh, and why you’re at it, maybe you can have them tell people. You never know what type of spark can come from this. Word of mouth is still one of the best forms of marketing to date. Take advantage of it. 3) What’s That Thing Called?? Oh Yeah! The Internet The world has a population of over 6 billion people and depending on what study you use, 1 billion of them are internet users. Right now, at this very moment, someone is probably looking for a site just like yours. The question is, can they find it? Most sites can’t be found, but there is a solution for that. It’s called marketing (or Internet Marketing). Internet Marketing is one of the best things you can do for your site because this is where you will set your site up to be found and get traffic. There are many techniques to marketing your site and I would recommend speaking to one of our internet marketing specialists to discuss what internet marketing strategy will work for you! Remember, this is just a basic rundown on three things that can help you when launching your new site. There are numerous other techniques and strategies that can also improve the launching of a new site. Contact a internet marketing specialist today to discuss the right marketing strategy for you.

When Great Google Rankings Hurt Your Business

10/23/2008 1:11:00 PM

Never would we have ever thought that great Google rankings could hurt your business, but its true. So many businesses are focused on Google rankings that the most important thing is usually over looked. Conversions, whether your conversion is a sale or just supplying important information about your company, that should be the focus of your Internet marketing. So how do great rankings hurt your business? Its when you rank great for irrelevant terms, terms with little or no search demand, or terms that aren’t geared towards your product. Over the years we have had clients say I want to rank for this or that term, yet the search term has no search volume which would dilute their marketing effort. On a recent case study, we saw traffic and conversions drop for a website just by increasing the rankings for a less relevant term. Basically, Google thought the website’s content was about the less relevant term instead what drove conversions. So how do you make sure your marketing efforts are geared towards your goal? First, make sure you research the search demand for terms you are targeting, terms which directly relate to your products or services. Second, make sure your website’s content, meta data, and navigational structure supports and validates those terms. Third, make sure your off site marketing complements those terms by using the correct keyword anchor text within the links. Using this system will improve your conversions and your bottom line. I personally would rather rank number 10 on google for a term that converts into sales than number one for one that doesn’t.

Healthcare Consultants Launch Newly Redesigned Website

10/22/2008 4:32:00 PM

Sales & Marketing Technologies is pleased to announce the launch of the Healthcare Consultants Pharmacy Staffing Division redesigned website, http://www.pharmacy-staffing.com/. The redesigned site provides an updated look and feel while enhancing the site visitor’s experience with HCC’s brand. HCC Pharmacy Staffing division provides temporary and permanent pharmacy jobs around the United States. HCC provides pharmacy job opportunities in the following settings: clinical, compound, home care, hospice, hospital, long term care, mail order, institutional, retail, and specialty pharmacies. HCC has been providing pharmacies with expert staff since 1989 and has achieved the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organization’s certification.

Google Adwords Smart Positioning Beta

10/16/2008 1:23:00 PM

Today I noticed a new option in one of our clients Adwords accounts, Smart Positioning Beta. Google describes Smart Positioning as: Smart Positioning (beta) is a bidding feature based on an auction model that differs from the regular AdWords auction model. Here are a few benefits of using Smart Positioning: * It’s designed to get you more clicks for the same total cost. * It aims to place your ad in the most cost-effective position each time it’s displayed on Google and the search network. (Learn how Smart Positioning works on the content network.) * It can reduce the frequency with which you need to adjust your bids. Here is a screen shot of the changes Smart Positioning is suggesting in this particular account: Estimated Changes Cost: No Change Clicks: +17 Avg CPC: -.10 Max CPC Bids: +34.5% The increase in Max CPC concerns me a little but as Google says: Your average CPC for this campaign is unlikely to increase because Smart Positioning uses a larger discount than manual bidding alone. Your actual costs are likely to be much lower than your bids Ok I’ll Bite, let’s give it a try for a week and see if it really makes a difference. I’ll keep you updated Tags: Google, Adwords, Google Adwords, Adwords Smart Positioning, Smart Positioning

Webmasters don’t punish your users

10/10/2008 1:43:00 PM

Recently I have visited numerous websites and more often than not its as if the websites are punishing their users. Webmasters need to start asking themselves “What is the purpose of my website?” Usually the purpose of a website is to inform, entertain, provide a service or product to the user. So why do so many websites punish their users with poor navigation, pop-ups, no clear call to action, cumbersome checkout processes, and is it really necessary to fill user’s email inboxes with daily emails? I’ve made purchases online inspite of poorly structured websites, but can’t help to think of how much more revenue these websites could make if webmasters would just reward their users with a pleasent experience, a respectful experience, and try to remember repeat business is what makes or breaks you.?

Yahoo’s Locations Near You Show Competitors

10/10/2008 1:03:00 PM

We had issues with one of our clients in the Yahoo search results earlier this week. Yahoo was pulling in a page title and meta description for totally different pages on the site. That issue was quickly resolved after @yahoo_directory found the conversation on Twitter. I checked our client’s listings this morning and noticed that Yahoo started to add the “Locations Near You” link under the main listing. The “Locations Near You” link brought me to Yahoo Local. I first noticed that the locations near me were actually from Jacksonville, while I reside in Orlando. Then I noticed that there were competitors being listed as well. I quickly went back to the Yahoo search results and clicked on the “Locations Near You” for one of the competitors and low and behold my client was thier only local listing. Hope this is fixed soon. Anyone else seeing this for their listings in Yahoo?

New Tampa Online Marketing and Web Development Office

10/9/2008 7:33:00 PM

Sales & Marketing Technologies, a full-service Web Development, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimization and Website Hosting firm headquartered in Orlando, Florida has just opened an office in Tampa. The new office is an extension of the company's ongoing expansion of its web development and Internet marketing services. The Tampa office will be headed up by Mark Redmond. SMT is a privately owned firm with clients throughout Central Florida, the United States, Canada, South America and the United Kingdom. Our specialty is Internet Marketing. We are proud to say our in-house team of web designers, programmers, and Internet marketers have been delivering online success since 1995. Clients include: Kennedy Space Center, Florida Hospital, Gallagher Promotional Products, Corona Cigar Company, and Miami Children's Hospital. "SMT is excited to have a local office serving Tampa." President Dave Larson said. "We already have a fair number of clients in the area. We are looking forward to becoming a real part of the Tampa business community." Sales & Marketing Technologies' Tampa office is located at: 4511 N Hines Avenue, Suite 200 Tampa, Florida 33614 Phone: (831) 449-4444

Think SEO Before a Website Redesign

10/3/2008 4:10:00 PM

We always hear the question “We are thinking about redesigning our website. When should we think about search engine optimization?”. The simple answer is at the beginning. When considering redesigning you website, ensure that you consult with a search engine optimization company at the beginning, not at the end. Here are some examples of issues that can arise when your web developer is not well versed in search engine optimization: Removing a page from the site that was driving traffic You need to be careful on eliminating content from the site. We always recommend to 301 redirect the old page to a existing page that has similar content. If no logical page exist, then redirect the page to your home page. The Designer places key text into images The web designer has a background in print and does not understand the importance of plain text for search engine optimization. You want to have keyword-targeted text on the page to add relevancy for your site. Javascript files not placed into includes Optimizing the code to ensure the fastest load time is an important factor for not only SEO, but for site visitors. Who wants to wait around for a web page to load? You have around eight seconds before someone will abandon the site. Renaming web pages Another mistake we see often is the web developer changes the file name. Since the old URL no longer exists it is recommended that a 301 redirect is implemented pointing to the new page URL. We also see web developers rewrite the URL without using the best keywords in the file name, if any at all. At SMT we have experience working with third party or even in-house web developers to ensure that our clients are incorporating search engine optimization best practices into their designs. Contact us to learn more about our Internet Marketing Consulting services. Tags: seo, search engine optimization, internet marketing, internet marketing consulting

Web Retailers Looking Towards Social Media

10/3/2008 12:32:00 PM

The latest eMarketer report, Social Media and Shopping Behavior, takes a look at how consumers are using social media sites to influence their purchase decisions. The report states that 85% of Gen Y participate in social networking and 57% are invloved with blogs. The report also cites an Internet Retailer report found 39.3% of their retail respondents use social networks, 32% have a page on Facebook, 27% on MySpace, 26% on YouTube, and 5% on Flickr. The eMarketer report goes on to reference another report by Nuance Communications that online rating systems, discussion forums and blogs are believed to be the most valuable social media sources.

Google is 10 and We get the Gifts

10/1/2008 12:42:00 AM

Currently Google is the largest search engine in world and one of the most visited sites on the Internet, its stock is currently trading at $400.52 (Sept 30th 2008) and it’s name has become synonymous for a web search (Google it) but it hasn't always been that way. In celebration of its 10th anniversary Google opened up its archives to the world. I'm not sure if this is something they plan on keeping up or if it's something their going to take down after the celebration. So take a look at the Google History Timeline and relive some past searches with a search from circa. 2001 (it’s weird to think of a time when Myspace was a Windows 95/98 software application). Google History Timeline Search like its 2001 Some of the fun facts I picked up: Larry Page and Sergey Brin Met in summer of 1995 Google becomes a company September 4th 1998 Their first employee was hired on Sept 21 1998 Google hired their first chef in November of 1999 The Search Trends from the Year 2000 Adsense comes into existence on March 4th 2003 Really I could go on and on, I've already read through it twice so I'll give you a chance to find some nice stuff so visit Google's 10th anniversary celebration page. Why you're at it, want to see what SMT looked like 10 years ago? Take a look here: SMT 10 Years ago Yeah we're as old as Google

Effectively Using Google Webmaster Tools

9/30/2008 6:05:00 PM

Google Webmaster Tools is a free service from Google that provides webmasters with tools and data about their site. I want to touch on some of the benefits of authenticating your site through this service. The first step is to have a Google account (set it up here). Diagnostic Tools The Diagnostic Tools section provides information on any crawling issues that Google may be having with your website. This section will provide a list of problematic URLs with a short description of the problem. You can use this data to further investigate the individual pages on your site that may be hindering Google in the indexing of your site. If you have too many errors, your URL structure may not be Google-friendly. Statistics I really like this section. You can find the top queries in Google that return your site as well as the top keywords generating clicks. The tool even allows you to define your search parameter to a specific month, 4 weeks ago, 3 weeks ago, 2 weeks ago, or even last week. This section also provides “crawl stats”. It shows the last 90 days of activity from Googlebot (Google’s search engine spider). Here you can see the number of pages crawled per day, the number of kilobytes downloaded per day, and the time spent downloading a page. The number of pages crawled can be used as a gauge on how Google-friendly the URL structure is. The time spent downloading a page can be a indicator as to whether you have any performance issues with your site. The section also provides a graphical representation of your Google Page Rank for all of your pages combined. It also provides the page URL with the highest Page Rank. There is quite the debate as to whether Page Rank is something that should be monitored. I believe that it is a “loose” indicator on how authoritative a site is compared the webosphere. Links Understanding that links can influence your search engine rankings, this section provides some additional insight on external links as well your internal linking structure. The section provides a list of pages that have inbound links pointing to them. You can use this tool to track you linking efforts to see if they are effective. The tool also provides insight on the website’s internal linking structure. Analyzing this data may help you find areas of your site that are not linked effectively with other pages on the site. Sitemaps The Sitemaps section allows you to claim any current general, mobile, code, geo, or video sitemaps. Sitemaps help assist Google in finding all of your content that they may not otherwise discover. Read more about sitemaps. Tools There are some effective tools within this section that can help you with your overall search engine optimization strategy. You can have your current robots.txt file analyzed or you can generate one if you currently do not have one for your website. The robots.txt file can prevent search engines from indexing certain areas of your site (i.e. admin section), certain files, or even prevent certain search engine robots from crawling your site. The “Set Geographic Target” tool allows you to define your geographic area that you want to associate with your site. Currently the tool allows you to limit by country. My guess is that as local search continues to grow, e will see state or regional geo-targeting options. The “Set Preferred Domain” tool allows the site owner to choose either the www or non-www version of the URL as the one you would like used to index your site’s pages. This is also referred to URL canonicalization. Search engines can see variations of the same domain as different pages and this can cause confusion and possible ranking reductions. The “Enhanced Image Search” tool allows the Google to index your images and to include them in the image search. This can be an effective strategy for sites to drive additional traffic through Google’s image search. Now if you are a professional photographer, you may want to opt out of this to protect your images. The “Remove URLs” tool allows you to remove content from the Google index. You may be saying why in the world would someone not want their content in Google. Well maybe the site had a promotional page that is no longer valid or the content page was removed from the website. The “Enhanced 404 Pages” tool creates a custom 404 error page widget. Instead of providing the un-friendly default system 404 error page, you can now enhance it to make it easier for site visitors to find the information they need on your site. Well there is your two cent tour of Google Webmaster Tools. Tags: google, google webmaster tools

Google Android Apps Developer Challenge chooses 10 $275,000 winners

9/30/2008 1:33:00 PM

The winners of the Google Android Apps Developer Challenge each receive $275,000. 1. Cab4me.com - Ever been looking for a cab? cab4me is the answer. Anywhere. Anytime. http://www.cab4me.com/ 2. CompareEverywhere - Shop smarter using your phone. Compare prices, read reviews, and connect with local stores. http://compare-everywhere.com/ 3. Ecorio - Ecorio automatically tracks your mobile carbon footprint, suggests transit and carpooling alternatives and lets you stay carbon neutral by offsetting your trips easily. http://www.ecorio.org/ 4. GoCart - Scan a product’s barcode with your phone’s camera and view all the best prices online and at nearby, local stores. http://www.biggu.com/ 5. Life360 - From major natural disasters to little things like your child wandering away at the mall, there is a lot you might worry about. Life360 can help. http://www.life360.com/ 6. Locale - Locale is an advanced settings manager that automatically changes your phone’s settings based on conditions, such as location. http://www.androidlocale.com/ 7. PicSay - Easy to use image editor that enables you to quickly personalize your pictures and share them with friends or photo sites. http://www.shinycore.com/picsay/ 8. SoftRace - Turn your workout into a thrilling race and challenge the world in real time. http://www.softrace.net/ 9. Tunewiki - TuneWiki Social Media Player, is an advanced player, featuring synchronized lyrics for audio or video, translation, music maps and a social network. http://TuneWiki.com/ 10. Wertago - The mobile application nightlifers have been waiting for. Find the hottest parties in town and connect with friends and others all night long. http://wertago.com/

Why and How To Add Breadcrumbs To Your Wordpress Blog

9/29/2008 8:08:00 PM

As a long-time internet user, I have seen breadcrumbs really take off around the internet and recently with many of the major Wordpress websites using them. You may be asking, “Why should I use them on my blog?” Well, breadcrumbs are excellent for improving user navigation and helping the search engines establish your website's structure, otherwise known as SEO purposes. Unfortunately, Wordpress hasn't inherited the use of breadcrumbs, which is a grave disappointment in my opinion. However, there is hope. Wordpress plugin developers have created various breadcrumb plugins that enable us to enhance the functionality and SEO of our blog. The plugin that I use is a favorite of mine and gets the job done. I use yoast. How do I install it? You need to download yoast. You can download it here. After you download the plugin, you must unzip the package and upload the file to your Wordpress installation's plugins folder. Go to your plugins menu and activate the plugin. You can adjust the settings under Settings > Breadcrumbs. After all the settings are correct, you just add the following code where you want your breadcrumbs to be displayed: <?php if ( function_exists(’yoast_breadcrumb’) ) { yoast_breadcrumb(’<p id=”breadcrumbs”>’,'</p>’); } ?> Now, that you have your breadcrumbs installed and working correctly, you have officially added another important asset to optimizing your blog for search engines.

Blog Orlando - My First Conference

9/29/2008 12:08:00 AM

Upon hearing news of attending Blog Orlando 3, I wasn't sure what to expect. Having worked behind the scenes in an online world, I wasn't sure what kind of environment to expect, people who were new age, older generation, people who were like me, or people who wouldn't get me. Being the chicken I am I asked my girlfriend (who is not a web person by any stretch) to join me so I wasn't alone in the experience. We arrived to an empty street close to Rollins college (the site of the conference), hoping that we parked in a "permitted" parking area. We walked to the building, with our paper notebooks in hand; we saw people with briefcases and laptops, and quickly felt inadequate and unprepared. After we checked in, we met in the main auditorium. In the auditorium we were introduced to the day to come. This was the 3rd annual Blog Orlando conference; so far everyone was very friendly and welcoming. There were people from all different walks of life in attendance, a surprisingly diverse group. We plotted out the day to come. The event was split into 5 tracks: Public relations / Communication Media / Creative Community Technology-Basic Technology-Advanced We chose for the first session, Shiny New Objects, it was presented by Frank Gruber of Somewhat Frank. He used an IPhone as a means of retrieving his notes and dropped different sources of new internet tools. Our second session was Hyperlocal thinking it was to assist in developing your blog for Local Search. I was a little disappointed that it was about keeping your blog local and focused on the local community, nothing to do with search. I would say this is my fault for thinking "search" when it's a blog conference. The third session was very intriguing, Monetization. The session was led by the founder of IZEA, Ted Murphy. He spoke of his experience and his business, he also emphasized that diversifying and exploring new revenue sources is essential if you plan on generating income. Mr. Murray said blatantly, "If your blog isn't making money, you are a donkey." Following a quite exciting lunch expedition to the local taco place, we attended our fourth session, Going beyond Google. The session was led by Leah Jones of Edelman, this session basically informed listeners of different search engines other than Google. "Go beyond Google" emphasized Boolean searching. Leah was nice enough to provide the slideshow from her presentation to anyone here http://www.slideshare.net/leahjones/search-for-roi so if you're curious to learn a little more take a look. Next, we hiked up to the 3rd floor, Rollins has very steep stairs, to attend a jam packed session of Online Identity led by Jake McGhee - Community Guy. The group discussed their personal experiences with websites such as Myspace and Facebook and discussed how risque photos and blogs affected their careers and their futures. Following a short break, Geno Church, Brains on Fire, presented Movement, Activism and Social Media, which had to be the best PowerPoint presentation I have ever seen which included pictures, video and music. This presentation was the very informative and well put together. He spoke of the importance of passion and building online communities. He empathised letting go of the reigns of your community and letting it grow naturally. We hiked back down the stairs to attend a session with Josh Hallett about Flickr, the online photo gallery, Josh discussed the uses and technique of Flickr and how to get your pictures seen. The closing session was that of Erik Herson, WhiteAfrican.com. He discussed his websites, which were very monumental. He has developed groundbreaking African based websites that were very useful to the African people. His website, Ushahidi allows Africans to identify and report civil unrest, disasters and other major problems in their area by SMS. The after conference networking event took place at Finnhenry's in downtown Orlando. When the group of 100+ arrived to the downtown establishment, there was a Notre Dame vs. Purdue game showing on all TV's, packed with Notre Dame Fans. This unfortunately was not a great spot for networking and talking. The BlogOrlando3 group ended up gathering on the streets of Downtown Orlando, outside of Finnhenry's. If I could have changed anything about the event I would have split the conference into two days to allow for people to explore all the tracks offered. There were many times when I was interested in two different sessions being offered at the same time and basically flipped a coin to decide on which one to attend. There were a total of 29 sessions with the opportunity to attend only seven. I was very pleased with my first blogging conference. Overall it was really a great experience, I was able to network with people who share a similar interest and learned quite a bit about the people who make up the local blogging community.

Top Five Wordpress Plugins

9/26/2008 12:55:00 AM

Wordpress has become the best blogging software and will continue to reign as the best. With the popularity of Wordpress, I am surprised to find the unpopularity of certain plugins being used. If you manage a Wordpress blog, I would strongly consider my list of the top five plugins to use: Wordpress Database Backup - An excellent automated or manual backup solution for your Wordpress database. A classic. Akismet - Can someone say SPAM? Yes, we all hate it and Akismet is the best Spam protection you can get for handling comments on your blog. Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they are spam or not, also checks the trackbacks for spam. All in One SEO Pack - If want exposure and traffic to your blog, you might as well optimize it for the search engines. This automatic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plugin works right out of the box for your Wordpress blog. Google XML Sitemaps - It is a simple, but very effective tool for auto generating sitemaps every time you make an update to your site. This plugin is the best tool to tell Google how it should crawl your blog and where to find everything you want found. WP Super Cache - Speed and responsive all wrapped up into one little plugin. This plugin must efficiently caches your system to make your site much faster and responsive. It works by caching Worpress pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests.

Microsoft's Vista armor starting to fade

9/23/2008 8:21:00 PM

HP recently ran an article which hinted that it was developing a software package that had the ability to bypass a portion of the Windows Vista Security. HP might not be the first, but should be noted as a major player in the game. How does this affect your experience? First it shows that it is possible to circumvent the all powerful security features Microsoft is so proud of. If hackers have not already found a way, HP’s tremendous resources will surely be reverse engineered and used for evil. It was inevitable that it would happen, and although Vista was touted as the most secure OS that Microsoft has ever produced, this proves that problems will always exist. Our needs are changing, things are moving online for numerous reasons most notably technical and ease of use as other bloggers have pointed out. With web applications being all the rage now if people can run a browser and a handful of programs then that is all the OS will be used for. The browser and application should also be sand boxed, with no access to the core system files, this will help to beef up security holes, and contain them to small specific areas when they are found since eliminating them is just not realistic. In my opinion, the role of an OS is always changing, and it'll be up to Microsoft to change with it.

Mobile Search On the Rise in US

9/17/2008 12:00:00 AM

comScore M:Metrics released a new report denoting that mobile search grew 68% in the U.S. over June 2007. The report also notes that the U.S. had a 9.2% penetration of mobile subscribers using search. The expansion of 3G and smart phones, as well as the widely available flat-rate data plans, has helped fuel the fire for mobile search. It was also noted that Google has a 63% market share of mobile-browers, followed by Yahoo at 34.6%.

Effectively Leveraging Videos for Universal Search

9/16/2008 3:36:00 PM

Univeral Search, also known as Blended Search, blends listings from local, images, video, news, and blogs. Universal Search was introduced first by Google in May 2007. MSN and Yahoo quickly followed in July and October respectively. Universal search has had a big impact ever since on how people search. We find that many companies do not have an online strategy when it comes to videos. Videos are becoming an important part of the marketing mix. Let me provide you with some background information concerning video search. As of March 2008, online video search accounted for 1.09% of all U.S Internet visits (Hitwise, Aprill 2008). U.S. Internet users viewed 11.5 billion online videos during March 2008 (comScore, May 2008) Projected that 86% of U.S. Internet users will be online video viewers by 2011 (eMarketer, August 2007) So the upside for video search is huge. This combined with Universal Search has produced a sort of “land grab” for video search results. I equate it to the beginning of the Internet, where one could insert 1000 keywords in to the keyword meta tag and rank on the first page for all of the keywords. A well optimized video has the potential to rank very well within the blended search results. Here are some tips on producing a successful video for Universal Search. The thumbnail view of the video has tremendous impact on the click-through-rate for the video. When producing a video for YouTube make sure you optimize the video so that you have a compelling frame at the 25% mark, 50% mark and 75% mark. So if you had a video that was 80 seconds in length, YouTube would provide you thethumbnail options at the 20 sec frame, 40 sec frame, and the 60 second frame. We find many people forget to optimize the meta data within the video itself. Video search engines use this data, along with other data, to provide keyword relevancy for the video. The video meta data can compared to the meta description page on a web page. Don’t forget about the file name. Make sure you provide a keyword-rich file name. Do not use 5637xty.wma, instead use how-to-build-a-wooden-shed.wma. Also use hyphens instead of underscores. (read more about this) Read about other Video SEO tactics. Tags: video seo, video search engine optimization, vseo, universal search, blended search

Protect your website from SQL Injection Attacks

9/16/2008 2:51:00 PM

(two of two articles) This article is a little more technical than the first article, but I kept it as simple-worded as possible. Is your website vulnerable? Very possible. You could do a few quick checks, but explaining how to write SQL Injection code is out of the scope of this blog. Websites written using Classic ASP language, PHP, AJAX, and other website languages are vulnerable, but that doesn't leave .NET websites in the clear. Any website that gives full access to the SQL database is vulnerable. That gives the hacker full range at manipulating the information in your database. So, what are some ways to protect against SQL Injection? Below are some recommendations on how to protect your database from SQL Injection Attacks. They should all be done, but some can be done independently or not at all. One way is to take an inventory of all dynamically driven pages. If it uses or talks to a database, it could be vulnerable. More investigation in the programming would identify if it is the extent of it vulnerability. There are some inexpensive automated tools out there that will identify the holes you may have in your website. For example Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner has a free version. Validate all data that gets passed to the database. For example, if the web page expects an integer data type, check to make sure a hacker is not trying to pass in a line of hacking code and only accept an integer value. Eliminate any inline SQL that is used on these pages and change them to parameter based stored procedures. When you use a stored procedure to talk to the database and use parameter objects, the data that gets passed to the database must be the right type. Stored procedures by themselves are not the answer alone. Limit the website login to the database to only run the stored procedures needed for the website. DO NOT give the website "dbo" access to the database. One way for hackers to grab the sensitive information is by viewing any errors from the website that their hacking attempts display. It is a way to grab sensitive data, like credit card number. Use a server 500 redirect page to redirect and SQL errors returned so they are not shown to the hacker. A recent widespread attack across the glob used access to the sys objects in the database to break in. So, deny access to the sys objects in the database to the web user. Never store sensitive information in clear-text within a database. Encrypt your sensitive passwords, credit card data, social security numbers, and other private information. There are more advanced articles that explain these techniques and explain some of the terms used above in more detail. But I wanted to keep this article simple and to the point. You can read more at ScottGu's Blog Tip/Trick: Guard Against SQL Injection Attacks

IZEAFest Conference Thoughts

9/15/2008 4:01:00 PM

I am re-energized to blog again after attending the IZEAFest conference. The conference had some big money bloggers in attendence. I was really surprised that there wasn’t a packed house. I thought the conference was a little bit light on content and not enough technical information for advanced bloggers. However, I did find the session about Wordpress plugins really informative. I found several plugins that will help are clients such as FeedWrangler, RSS Footer, Zemanta, Bad Behavior, and several others. The conference was also leveraging Twitter and Ustream.tv. It was pretty cool to see all of the live tweets from the audience as well as those watching it live on Ustream.tv posted to several large screen tv’s. I bet we will see this more often at tech type conferences. Overall I would give it a thumbs up, just because you were able to rub elbows with some of the top bloggers on the Internet for only $65!

What’s the hype about SQL Injection?

9/15/2008 2:39:00 PM

(one of two articles) You may have heard of the term “SQL Injection” often or never before. So, what the heck is it? And, why should I worry about it? Below I try to put in lamen's terms what it is and why it is a bad thing. In basic terms, it is a way to hack into a database and a website. First I will explain a little bit about what SQL means. What is SQL? Is it an acronym for something? Yes. It stands for Structure Query Language. It is not only an abbreviation and a programming “language”, is also a database. SQL Server is a database, it is often just referred to as a SQL Database. You may have also heard of “MySQL”. This is a free copy of a database with similar functionality that SQL Server offers. So, if SQL is just a database, what about other databases you may have heard about? Is Oracle vulnerable to this type of hacking? What about Access? The SQL programming language talks to the database objects, like tables. Example of tables may include customer data or order data. SQL is a very powerful language. It can do a lot of good things, like update data, delete data, insert data, read data, calculate complex things, create tables, delete tables and so much more. Stored procedures and SQL functions are “mini-programs” that wrap a little or a lot of SQL Language together in one package. I've programmed some complicated stored procedures and functions that do much more than simply return data from a table. It is a really COOL and powerful programming tool and I really like working with it. Although Oracle and Access don't have the same powerful language they are also vulnerable to website hacking. Since SQL is such a powerful language, if hackers get their hands into a hole in your website they could grab sensitive information, like contact names, numbers, addresses, social security numbers, credit card data. They could delete tables or update tables with corrupt data, like pornography links or malware. They could even take down your website. Lawsuits could result of this stolen information. Yuck!

Pimp’n out Your Twitter Profile

8/11/2008 4:32:00 PM

If you have not taken notice on the explosion of Twitter, you may not have realized that this micro-blogging platform has increased their traffic by 400+% with over 2 million unique users a month (stats gathered from Compete.com, actual numbers maybe greater). Hop aboard this train, but before you do make sure your Twitter page matches your company’s look and feel. Here are some tips on doing this: - Use a real person’s image, people want to connect with a face not a logo - In Settings –> Design select “Use my custom style below” - Select “Use background image”, uncheck “Tile” - Creat a image 1600px wide by 1200px high. This will allow your background to strech across most monitor sizes - Create a border at the top 1 3/8″ tall. Use photoshop ruler. - You have about 3″ from the left to add in logo - Limit your left column to 2 1/2″-3″ wide max. Place secondary image and related company contact information. Here are some examples: http://twitter.com/problogger http://twitter.com/andybeal http://twitter.com/dennisdornon http://twitter.com/michaelsaunders http://twitter.com/AnimalShelter Tags: twitter, design

Reputation Management - Protect Your Company Online

7/30/2008 12:07:00 PM

It's time to consider online reputation management into your monthly marketing budget. If you have never thought about reputation management for your business according to Wikipedia it's "the process of tracking an entity’s actions and other entities’ opinions about those actions; reporting on those actions and opinions; and reacting to that report". With more and more user generated content online your company's reputation is under constant threat of attack be it from bloggers, review sites or even your direct competitors. A well planned marketing strategy can be completely taken down by a few well placed bad remarks. Let's take one example I stumbled upon recently. I was researching different car dealers in my area while looking for a nice new car. I did a quick search for a dealer, a friend of mine had recommended, in Google and the first two listings that popped up even before the dealer's own website were both from a review site and the review sites listings were not flattering. Below is sampling of this dealers search results: (slightly changed to protect the dealer) 1. "ToyotaDealer - Worst Experience Ever" 2. "ToyotaDealer - Highly do not recommend!." 3. "ToyotaDealer 's own Website" The sad part is that this dealer has more than likely lost a sale from me even with a personal recommendation just because he hasn't taken the time to review his search listings and diligently do online reputation management. Now I know what some of you are thinking isn't this illegal or at the very least trademark infringement for these people to say these things about me using my company name? The Quick answer is No. Review sites in the U.S are protected under the Communications Decency Act, which says in a nutshell says when a user writes and posts material on a website, the site itself will not be held legally responsible for the posted material. Along with this, 47 U.S.C. * 230(c)(1) states, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Bloggers are also protected under the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007 that basically says bloggers have the same rights and protections of a journalist. So how do you go about protecting your company and your site? It's both easy and hard. First the easy part, finding out what is being said about your company: The easiest and least expensive way is with Google Alerts. Google will notify you whenever it finds a mention of your company on the internet and where. Just visit http://www.google.com/alerts and in 4 easy steps you'll have next to instant information on what's being said about your company. 1. Enter your company's name in the Search terms 2. Enter the type. I suggest Comprehensive so you get information from all sources 3. How Often: Go with as soon as it happens for instant notification 4. Enter Your Email Or if you interested in a more comprehensive solution and don't mind a small monthly fee you can try Andy Beal's Trackur which monitors multiple sources and provides charts for tracking purposes. Now the Hard Part: You can't make a website take down, in most instances, negative information about your company so you have to fight it another way and the only real way to win the search engine reputation management game is to out rank them for the terms in the search engines. A couple of the many things you can do for this are: Perform Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing on your main site to bring it to the top of the listings when searching for your company's name. Set up other listings through social sites such as Namyz or Kudzu that you control. Create "sister sites" that use your name but that you control. Notice on both those examples the keywords are "that you control" and that's because that's what it really comes down to. You need to be in control of your online reputation no one is going to do it for you and as much as you want all your customers to be happy customers there's a good chance a few won't be and it's easy on the internet to let all your frustrations out without fear of retaliation and in complete anonymity. Tags: Reputation Management, online reputation management, search engine reputation management, internet reputation management, brand reputation management

Creative One Way Linking Strategy

7/14/2008 7:28:00 PM

The other day I saw a creative one way link exchange request. The request asked if the website owner would add a link to a requested website, and in exchange the requester would add a link to the owner’s website from two of theirs. What made this interesting was the fact that the link they wanted added to the website owner’s site wasn’t one of the two sites they would link back from. Therefore, the owner would get two links for one (which seems like a good deal), yet the requester would get one way links to their primary site without having to link back (seems like a great deal). The requester also made sure to only target websites with similar themes. I believe this “two for one” tactic may become very popular if not already.

National SEO Day

7/11/2008 8:30:00 PM

National SEO Day is approaching! Approximately 28 more days until the first annual National Search Engine Optimizer’s Day! It all came about on June 26, 2008 through Dana Larson’s Twitter page and through word of mouth and intense viral marketing techniques this annual celebration might be a start of something big! The National SEO Day website does a very good job at keeping tabs on the event and actually nominated me to wear the first National SEO Day Badge. Thank you National SEO Day, I know the family will be proud. Join us in counting down the days and spreading the word! Tags: national seo day, national search engine optimizers day, seo day

Google’s Ranking Philosophy

7/10/2008 5:23:00 PM

Today Amit Singhal a Google Engineer in charge of the ranking team introduced Google’s three core ranking philosophies. 1) Best locally relevant results served globally. 2) Keep it simple. 3) No manual intervention. He then took the time to break-down each one. Best locally relevant results served globally What he goes on to say is that if they run into a problem with a query they use that as method of improving the algorithm or as Amit says it “no query left behind” Keep it simple This is in reference to the Google Search Algorithm itself, he basically says that they keep the Algo as clean as possible without any loss of quality to the search. “Our engineers understand exactly why a page was ranked the way it was for a given query. This simple understandable system has allowed us innovate quickly, and it shows. The “keep it simple” philosophy has served us well.” No manual intervention Does Google manually edit their results? According to Amit the answer is No. He actually gives two reasons for this: 1. He says that people have made and contiune to make the web by building pages and linking to sites and they just extract that information through their Algorithm. We believe that the subjective judgment of any individual is, well … subjective, and information distilled by our algorithms from the vast amount of human knowledge encoded in the web pages and their links is better than individual subjectivity. 2. A query that does not return the results is just an opportunity for improvement to the Algorithm. Improving the underlying algorithm not only improves that one query, it improves an entire class of queries, and often for all languages. He also takes the time to point out they will use humans to remove websites in violation of Googles Webmaster policies and for other legal reasons. You can read the whole post by Amit Singhal on Google’s Webmaster Blog Tags: Google, Algorithm, Search, Search Engine

Famous People on Twitter - Where are They?

7/7/2008 8:18:00 PM

First, If you don't know what twitter is, check out www.twitter.com as it says on their home page "Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?" Since most of my friends and family are not tech savvy people, I help them turn on the computer, and my co-workers already make me read what their twitting I decided what to see fun I can have with this. As I desperately try to understand why anyone would want to read my twit (yes that's what people call it) on Twitter I decided to see if there was any Famous Twitters out there that might be interesting to read and maybe get me a little more acclimated to twitting. When I say famous I mean common everyday famous. The type of famous where when you were a kid and say "I want to be famous" this is the type of fame you're talking about. I tried to stay away from people who are Tech Famous or SEO Famous because there are hundreds of those type of people on Twitter and this post would of taken me all day. Plus, most people outside of that persons niche in the online world would never have heard of them. So taking that into consideration here's a short list I was able to dig up where most people are going to know who I'm talking about or at least can understand the reference. The first thing I noticed as I searched around is that it seems like any major celebrities have so far shied away from twitting. It's a real shame because I would love to know what Angelina Jolie is thinking as she brushes her teeth. I was able to find some nice "fake" twitters of the celebrity world such as: Tom Cruise Will Ferrell David Letterman Paris Hilton Chuck Norris (Which reminds me of a fun Google trick - Type in Find Chuck Norris then click I'm Feeling Lucky for your search; Well I find it funny) I did find some pretty famous Celebes: Last Updated 4/7/2009 Actors: @justinebateman - Justine Bateman (Family Ties) @levarburton - Lavar Burton (Star Trek) @steve_buscemi - Steve Buscemi @johncleese - John Cleese (Monty Python) @dhewlett - David Hewlett (Stargate Atlantis) @vanessahudgens - Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical) @greggrunberg - Greg Grunberg (Heros) @realhughjackman - Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) @aplusk - Ashton Kutcher @mrskutcher - Demi Moore @kennygkrauss - Kenny G. Krauss (The Guardian) @tinafey - Tina Fey (30 Rock, SNL) @moonfrye - Soleil Moon Frye (Punky Brewster) @schwarzenegger - Arnold Schwarzenegger @thatkevinsmith - Kevin Smith (Clerks) @cwalken - Christopher Walken @krissywalrus - Krissy Wall @wilw - Wil Wheaton (Stand By Me) @therue - Rumer Willis (Bruce Willis' daughter) @rainnwilson - Rainn Wilson (The Office) Athletes: @mcuban - Mark Cuban (Dallas Mavericks Owner) @lancearmstrong - Lance Armstrong @the_real_shaq - Shaquille Oneal (NBA) @cv31 - Charlie Villanueva (NBA) Comedians: @borat - Borat @margaretcho - Margaret Cho @jamiekennedy - Jamie Kennedy @kevinpollak - Kevin Pollak @paulapoundstone - Paula Pundstone Entertainment: @jamie_oliver - Jamie Oliver (Naked Chef) @nicolerichie - Nicole Richie (Simple Life/Socialite) @tonyrobbins - Tony Robbins Musicians: @50cent - 50 Cent @iamdiddy - Sean Combs (aka Puff Daddy) @mileycyrus - Miley Cyrus (aka Hanna Montana) @freddurst - Fred Durst @brookehogan - Brooke Hogan @jonathanrknight - Jonathan Knight (New Kids on the Block) @johncmayer - John Mayer @ludajuice - Ludacris @mchammer - MCHammer @qtiptheabstract - Q-Tip (A Tribe Called Quest) @leanrimes - LeAnn Rimes @henryrollins - Henry Rollins (Black Flag) @ashsimpsonwentz - Ashley Simpson @snoopdogg - Snoop Dogg @britneyspears - Britney Spears

National Search Engine Optimizers Day - August 8th

6/26/2008 12:54:00 PM

National Search Engine Optimizers Day is coming so mark your calenders! I first came across it on Dana Larson’s Twitter page. All I know thus far is it will be acknowledged on August 8, 2008 and will be the first of hopefully many of celebrations to come. Do search engine optimizers get the day off for this holiday? Probably not, but if it grows legs we can cross our fingers for a lunch to honor us. Tags: national search engine optimizers day, national search engine optimizers day august 8th, search engine optimizers day, search engine optimizers day, august 8 2008

Video Search Usage on the Rise

6/9/2008 4:26:00 PM

Recent data on video search usage shows that video consumption on the Internet is on the rise. While video search only accounts for a little more then one percent of all U.S Internet visits in March, this has translated into over 11.5 billion videos being watched online during the month of March. Even video search sites, like YouTube, Yahoo Video, MySpace TV, and others, have seen the amount of time spent on these video websites increase by 7%. Currently 73.7% of the total U.S. Internet audience is viewing videos online. eMarketers projects this to be almost 87% by 2011. This represents over 183 million users watching videos! Guess who dominates in the video search market? One word, Google. With Google’s acquistion of YouTube, their market share of video search has increased to 77.24%. Google is followed by MySpace TV (9.21%), Yahoo! Video (2.16%) and Break.com (1.82%). Read about some Video SEO tips.

Yahoo Flagging Harmful Websites in Search Results

6/2/2008 12:28:00 PM

With Yahoo’s recent search index this past week, we are noticing that Yahoo has followed in the steps of Google by marking harmful websites within their natural search results. We noticed when searching on the term “surge protection” that a warning message is produced “1 potential harmful website is marked on this page”. The flagged listing has a warning stating “Warning: Unsolicited Emails”. So it looks like Yahoo is taking it one step further then Google and actually using spam submission details. I like how Yahoo is now putting the Scarlet Letter on those who sending spam! Here are a couple of screen shots.

Internet Marketing Specialist Job Opportunities Avaliable

5/23/2008 3:01:00 PM

As our client base continues to grow, our need for experienced Internet Marketing Specialists does too. Our Internet Marketing Department is looking for two qualified candiates to join our team. Find out the details for these positions by visiting http://www.smtusa.com/jobs/. Here we GROW Again! Sales & Marketing Technologies is located just North of Orlando, Florida in Altamonte Springs. Tags: internet marketing, internet marketing specialist, seo, ppc, seo job, internet marketing job, job, pc job, sem job

Google Universal Search Now Including Blog Posts

5/2/2008 4:32:00 PM

I just noticed today that Google is incoporating blog posts into their Universal Search results. Now I know Google has been including blog posts into the search results, but they are grouping related blog posts below the 10 organic listings by matching the keyword search to related blog postings. The “Blog posts about…” is grouped just like their Shopping results. I have only noticed this at the bottom of the search results. This is a great example of why companies should be blogging on a regular basis. ? Tags: google universal search

Another New Addition To The Internet Marketing Team

5/1/2008 5:37:00 PM

Here We Grow Again! I want to welcome Jonathan Crowe to our Internet Marketing team. Jonathan is a recent graduate of Southeastern University, earning his Bachelors of Science in Business Management this past December. Jonathan has a passion for Internet marketing and building websites. As our client base continues to grow, Jonathan will be a valuable asset to SMT. Tags: jonathan crowe, smt, internet marketing job

How Google is Killing Your Adwords Quality Score

4/25/2008 12:31:00 PM

We came across this interesting scenario with Google Adwords and how they are displaying some of their ads. I searched on the term, “orlando car accident lawyers”, and received the normal Adwords ads. I then refocused my search on “nursing jobs orlando”. This is where it gets interesting. From the screenshot below you will notice that one ad is related to my search term “nursing jobs orlando”. All the other ads are being served based on my previous search, which does not relate to my current search. Thus the lawyer ads are receiveing impressions on a term that is no longer relevant to the ads being displayed. Since the relevancy is not there, the potential for a click on those ads decreases significantly. So the potential to hurt your quality score due to the fact that your impressions went up, but your click through rate did not increase. Screenshot Tags: google adwords, quality score

Following your Passion, Why I joined the SMT Team

4/23/2008 2:06:00 PM

I have been marketing for years and while most people do not realize that they are always marketing something whether they like it or not, I do realize it. And over the last five years I have been refining my marketing skills towards the internet. Just recently I joined the SMT team for selfish reasons. Reasons being, I am consumed by the internet, search engine optimization, and internet marketing in general, and since I would rather spend my entire day engulfed by my passion, I might as well get paid for it. A good friend of mine once told me in order to be successful, just be the best at what you do. It doesn’t matter what you do, just do it to the best of your ability and follow your passion. Recently, I sold a Hair salon franchise type business, and my Internet marketing company was acquired by SMT, I have been getting numerous emails asking me "Why did you sell your business and join with SMT? You went from owning two businesses to working for a company." and the short answer is, "SMT is a very reputable company with a proven track record of Internet Marketing, and while my companies were both profitable, the whole company thing wasn't my passion which goes back to what I was saying, be the best at what you do and follow your passion, so I made some quality of life decisions and changes, now I am able to focus on my passion, Internet marketing. With my own companies I had to spend entirely too much time on the business aspect, neglecting my family and my passion, now I work on what I enjoy, and go home at the end of the day, which typical business owners don't get to do. And now it is smooth sailing on the boat I like to call "My Passion". I would like to thank the SMT team for their warm welcome.

What is URL Canonicalization?

4/18/2008 12:42:00 PM

Search engines can see variations of the same domain as different pages and this can cause confusion and possible ranking reductions. For instance, domain.com, domain.com/default.asp, www.domain.com/default.asp, and www.domain.com can all be seen as different pages, even though they are actually the same page. Typically a server-side redirect can be implemented to point all of these domain variations to one main domain. You may, do search engines care which domain variation I should use. The short answer is no. As a standard, we typically redirect all of our client’s websites to the www.domain.com. Definition of canonicalization - The process of converting data that has more than one posiible representation into a “standard” representation Tags: url canonicalization, seo, search engine optimization, canonicalization

New Addition To The Internet Marketing Team

4/18/2008 12:28:00 PM

It has been quite a while since we have posted on the blog, but we have been extremely busy in the Internet Marketing department. We have been growing our department and are still looking for qualified Internet Marketers to join our team. Through our recent acquisition of EZ SEO Solutions, Ken Moody has joined our Internet Marketing team at Sales & Marketing Technologies. Ken has over 5 years of experience in SEO, Web Development, and PPC Management. Ken also served in the Air Force fulfilling 20 years of service. We welcome Ken to our team. Tags: ken moody, ez seo solutions, seo specialist, internet marketing, web development, ppc management, ppc,

NoFollow - What is it?

2/8/2008 2:09:00 PM

The nofollow is a HTML attribute for links. The nofollow attribute supposedly excludes links from search engine ranking calculations. This attribute was first introduced by Google’s Matt Cutts and Blogger.com’s Jason Shellen. Example: Ancor Text It has been found that Google still follows these links, but if the page was not in the index previously they will not index the page, will not show the link as a back link , and will not associate any keyword relevancy from the anchor text of the link. Yahoo will follow the link and will index the page, show the link as a back link, and will use the keyword relevancy from the anchor text of the link. However they do exclude the link from their ranking calculations. MSN has not been proven to follow the link. MSN does not count the nofollow links in their ranking calculations. Sculpting Page Rank Webmasters quickly found that they could use the nofollow attribute not only for external links, but internal links as well. Some people could control the flow of their Page Rank to pages on their own site that were deemed less important for search engines. Pages like your Shipping Information, Privacy Policy, Account Login really do not need to be indexed by the search engines. How Can You Tell if a Site Uses Nofollow? One way of seeing if a site uses the nofollow attribute is to view the web page’s source code. Then you need to comb through the HTML code to find a link. A faster way is to use the SEO for Firefox extension. This Firefox add-on provides a nice option to highlight the nofollow links right on the page. Tags: nofollow, no follow, rel nofollow, link spam nofollow, nofollow external links, nofollow link, link rel nofollow, link rel nofollow seo

MSN Buys Yahoo

1/31/2008 7:34:00 PM

If you MSN does get their hands on Yahoo this will definately open up the market for another player. Although MSN may try and keep the brand seperate, in the online world, this is very hard. It is a big move for both companies, but based on the huge shareholder incentive for Yahoo holders, this may just go through.

Postlets - Real Estate Marketing Tool

1/29/2008 9:55:00 PM

Came across a nice free tool for real estate agents called Postlets. The tool allows users to post properties to several main stream classified networks such as backpage, Google Base, Kijiji, Oodle and more. The site steps you through the process of creating your listing. This is a great tool to propogate your listings across some fo the bigger free classified networks. This application also works for selling cars, but on a more limited distribution.

Digg = Traffic

1/29/2008 8:25:00 PM

Below is a chart taken directy from Google Analytics showing a spike in traffic. This spike occured from one comment (the first comment) on a related article that made the first page of Digg.com. If you come across an article on Digg that is related to your site, you may want to seriously consider adding a relevant comment that includes your url. You can often comment on both the Digg site and the page of the actual article.

Can Google Get Any Fresher?

1/8/2008 3:33:00 PM

I just posted a blog entry on one of my client’s sites and within 40 minutes the blog entry shows up second for the key term the blog entry was discussing. Is Google just that fresh or was I lucky enough to have the Google Bot visit the site right when I published the blog? Any how here is a screenshot of the listing.

High Bounce Rates Mean Its Time To Revise Your Website Content

12/19/2007 7:47:00 PM

Definition: Web Page Bounce Rate The % of single page visits to your site where the visitor left your site from the same page that the entered. During the past year Google Analytics made this more prominent in it's reporting data and I am glad they did. A bounce rate gives you a good starting point into how your users experience your site. I use the bounce rate to evaluate web page changes, user experience and overall satisfaction and I know that if I can reduce a websites bounce rate I can increase the conversion. So I created a Bounce Rate Scale Bounce Rate 80% and above You are not connecting with your audience and they are arriving at your page expect one thing and not finding it. Review these items - Is the navigation easy to find? Do you have a clear next path for your user? - Could you be ranking for an irrelevant keyword or keyword phrases? - Does your keyword have multiple meanings? Apple as in iPod or as in fruit - Does your content selling? - Visually is your web site dated? Does it look trustworthy? Once you review these items take action to revise your content add visable next step and test new offers. If using Google Adwords, YSM or MSN AdCenter consider adding negative keywords or refining your keyword list. Bounce Rate of 60 - 79% You are connecting with some of your users but a lot of visitors were expecting something else. Review these items - Content, how do you make it sell or motivate better - Review top keywords by doing a search in Google, Yahoo, or MSN to see what other sites might be doing. If you find something is missing make changes to your web site. - Add action text links in the copy that link to your next step - Consider adding Video or story telling graphic to get visitor to stay longer and learn about your product or services. They longer they stay, the more likely they will read more and take action Bounce Rate of 45 - 59% You are doing things right but need to fine tune and keep testing. We recommend you test one item at a time to gauge how each change impacts your visitors. Review these items - Test new offers to see how they perform - Test new graphics and text - Look to refine paid keyword lists by using negative keywords Bounce rate under 44% If your bounce rate is running consistently under 44% review that page and identify what is working and transfer it to other pages. Some people would argue that 44% is to high, but I have viewed stats for over a decade and I based on some crazy stuff I have seen, I think this is a good number to aim for. If you do have a low web page bounce rate, you are not finished. Because the next question would be What is your Conversion Rate? Happy Holidays Russell Troutman Internet Marketing Manager - SMTUSA.com Tags: website bounce rate, internet marketing, website content

Google’s Christmas Balls

12/14/2007 2:27:00 PM

Has anybody else seen this: It appears for certain queries, Google is showing it’s Christmas spirit. As an AdWords user, I think initially this would help advertisers, as the new design should draw some eyeballs to the right. Tags: Googles Christmas Balls, google xmas, adwords

Matt Cutts IS Google

12/14/2007 1:26:00 PM

From PubCon’s “Meet the Google Engineers”…Matt Cutts was swarmed immediately when the doors opened for the “Meet the Google Engineers” gathering out in Vegas. As Matt entered the hall it started out as just a crowd of about six people, but as the night went on Matt Cutts stayed in the same place while more and more webmasters gathered to hear his Google Wisdom. Matt was “trapped” right next to the bar all night and as I approached the bar for my beverage the bartenders were bantering back and forth about who this guy was that all these people were gathered around. The one bartender turned to the other and stated…”someone said that he IS Google”. I started to laugh. So forget Larry and Sergy…hello Matt Cutts. Tags: Matt Cutts, PubCon, Google

Google Toolbar 5 Tracks 404 Error Pages

12/13/2007 3:52:00 PM

I just downloaded the Google Toolbar 5 beta and just happened to read the Google Toolbar Privacy Notice. There is a quick statement in thier stating: “In Toolbar 5, if you navigate to a URL that does not exist, the Toolbar may send the URL to Google so we can help you find the URL you were looking for.” This is interesting. I wonder if they will use that data to clean up the index faster for pages coming up with 404s? Here is a screenshot of their “Opps! This Link Appears Broken” Tags: Google, 404 error, Google Toolbar

Duplicate Content Issue? Couple of Tips to Solve Your Problem

12/12/2007 10:04:00 PM

One of the hot topics at PubCon last week was the issue of duplicate content. One may say “What’s the big deal? I can get more of my pages indexed in Google.”. Well, it is a big deal and it could be affecting your rankings. When Google comes by your site and starts to index it, it does not necessarily index every single page during that particular visit (especially if you have 10,000+ pages). But when the search engine bot (or spider) arrives, it starts to go through each page and index them one-by-one while placing links on that page into a queue for later indexing. So as the spider continues to index the site the queue of additional pages to index keeps increasing. So if you are throwing in a bunch of duplicate content pages into the queue then you are essentially limiting the spiders ability to grab all of your “unique” content on the site. If your duplicate content does get indexed you could be splitting Page Rank among the duplicate pages, lessening the chance of ranking well in the search engines. Some places to look for duplicate content. Printer Friendly pages. Place a noindex or use robots.txt to exclude these pages from being spidered. Search results pages that sort by product attribute (color, size, model). Sometimes these attributes are included as a new URL parameter in the search string. Try placing these search parameters into a cookie. There is a helpful tool called Xenu. It is primarily used to search for broken links on a site, but you can use it to search for duplicate content on your site. You can export the results into Excel (probably need to use 2007 since it can handle 100,000 rows of data now). You can then sort it and strat cruising for duplicate URLs. There was some talk about if there is a penalty associated with duplicate content. The short answer is no. Contact Sales & Marketing Technologies to learn how we can improve your web site's success. Tags: duplicate content, xenu, pubcon

Pubcon 2007 Take Aways - Buying Links, Video, Buzz

12/12/2007 9:49:00 PM

I finally found a few minutes to blog after returning from Pubcon to an over flowing inbox, voice messages, and rescheduled meetings. It was a great time, as always, with lots of knowledgeable speakers. Here are 3 points that seemed to be stressed by multiple speakers and attendees alike: 1) Buying links is not a good long term strategy. Google (and the other major search engines according to Matt Cutts) are cracking down on sites who buy and/or sell links. Will buying 1 link get you black listed from Google? Probably not. However they have already cut the legs out from under many sites who sell text links based on PageRank. This means that you will be paying for a link on a site that now carries very little weight in terms of passing Link Juice (how PageRank is passed from one page or site to another), which was still a buzz word this year. It is humerous that if you search Link Juice on Google you find a bunch of sites selling links to increase PageRank! 2) Video content is entertaining, good for links, and good for business. There are many new Video search engines such as Blinkx who are tinkering with making Video content much more indexable, searchable, and findable based on the content within the Video. VSEO is ramping up. 3) Creating a buzz using Social Networking websites is one of the best ways to gain links. Pretty much everyone agreed that the traffic from reaching the front page of Digg will not convert very well (depending on the site’s goals), but it can dramatically increase the number of links to your site. A little tip: After the buzz has passed and all the incoming links are to /page-with-story-that-got-dugg.html, you may want to consider 301 redirecting this page to one that will better convert the visitors. If you have specific questions about this post or other topics discussed at Pubcon, you can contact me through the SMT Contact Form. Tags: pubcon 2007, buying links, google, matt cutts, buzz, vseo, online video

5 Keys to Planning Your 2008 Internet Marketing Strategy

12/6/2007 3:36:00 PM

As 2007 comes to an end and 2008 is just around the corner, now is the time to review just how far you and your business has come. Did you improve your website, adjust content, include conversion, develop tools that benefit your audience; are you getting more out of this 24 workhorse than you did a year ago? If the answer is no, you need to start looking making changes. And if the answer is yes, then you are most likely already planning changes for 2008. So Where Do You Start to Plan Your 2008 Internet Marketing Strategy? The Basics and Build from there 1. Review your web site Does it meet your visitor's expectations? It is dated? Does the content motivate and sell while being search engine friendly? Does your site build a relationship with your customers or just provide information? Many companies are not sure how there website stacks up, so consider hiring a company that can thoroughly does website evaluations. The benefit of this approach is that you get an outside, unbiased view of your site. Answer these questions honestly and then start setting the plan, revised and new content, better conversion paths, new graphics, etc... Here is a tip - always start with the content first 2. Review traffic sources Where are visitors coming from Search engines, social networks, pay per click, banner advertising, banner advertising, other web sites, news sites, etc... and what is the value of these sources. Depending on your business, loyalty of users, target audience and how you advertise you traffic will vary but... Search Engine traffic can be some of the highest converting Social Networking in business to business can be some of your best qualified leads Pay Per Click Services can drive volume and allow for geo-targeting Direct Traffic - Success of Branding and offline marketing etc... Then you need to identify where you can get more traffic from and what you are will to invest to get that traffic, leads and sales. 3. Social Networking Strategies How active is your company in social networking? MySpace, LinkedIn, FaceBook are the most talked about but there are many layers of social networking sites and various way to utilize them for business. Do you have a corporate strategy for your business and each employee? Do you need one? We recommend that you set guidelines for your business pages, but know that social networking means that we are all connected. That includes past and present employees. 4. Blogging Are you doing it and should your business be blogging? Well, blogging can be a powerful tool but companies really need to identify how they would like to use it. Some options include: Share Business Information - Build Reputation Commentary and Opinion Custer Service - Product Updates, Upgrades, Solutions Informational - News, Events, Company Information While there are more options and these topics may overlap, the style and presentation of each could vary. Note some of the best blogs deal with tough customer service issues online. Readers of these blogs quickly learn whether companies address issues or ignore them. Those business that quickly move to solve problems often win loyal followers. 5. Review, Improve, Repeat Continue to improve and test new things on your website. Always keep testing new ideas, revise old ones and accept that some will fail. The knowledge you get from a test that does not succeed can sometimes be more valuable then those that succeed. Looking back at some key clients who are now having record breaking success, the one common factor is that small improvement were made all year long. New copy, improved search functionality, revising the header, revising and improving ppc ads, keywords and bids and improving the navigation structure all have helped client achieve 30 and 45% increases in 2007 over 2006 without a significant increase in expenses. There is more but...You will notice that I didn't touch on video, widgets and other emerging technologies in this article and there is a reason why. Most companies fail to get the basics down first. Basically they spend $20,000 on a pay per click campaign and then realize that the site doesn't convert. My approach is build a solid foundation and build from there a successful Internet Marketing Strategy starts with the basics and layers on more and more success, while continuously working to improve performance. If you are looking for a company to consult, advise or review your 2008 Internet Marketing Strategy give Sales & Marketing Technologies a call 407-682-2222. We work with companies with sales from $1 million to over a billion dollars and have one objective to make them more successful and I know we can do it for you too. Author: Russell Troutman Internet Marketing Manager, Sales & Marketing Technologies

HubPages & Other Industry Pages, Leading to More Sales?

12/6/2007 3:12:00 PM

What follows is a crazy, but true tale of a little HubPage that never gave up. Nearly four months ago I created a HubPages account for a client. The page was succinct and targeted one of their main keywords. As the months go by, some other optimizations are performed. Four months later (present day), I'm looking at the main site's progression up the search engines and who do I run into - well good ole HubPages, all sweaty and out-of-breath. This particular client has a niche, geographically-tight target market. The market is also less SEO competitive than some others, but nonetheless, there was the main site at #1, a secondary page at #2 and little buddy HubPage at #3 in the Yahoo Search Results. In Google, the main site was #4 and the HubPage was near the bottom of the first page. While this page has not yet been a tremendous traffic generator, it does bump competitors down and occupies prime beach-front property. As well, the stronger the HubPage gets, the stronger the back link becomes to the main site. Relevant back links, we all know...are relevant. There are a number of websites that allow for these industry pages, HubPages merely fits the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately criterion for this Blog post. These types of industry pages expand the funnel process from Internet surfer to sale, widening the mouth of the whirlpool so more surfers fall in. If you would like help widening your whirlpool or are in need of Internet marketing services, contact Sales & Marketing technologies. By Brett Hughes Internet Marketing Specialist, Sales & Marketing Technologies Tags: hubpages, internet, marketing, industry, pages, increase, sales, increase, traffic

Open Search Forum with The [Search] Engines at Pubcon 2007

12/5/2007 3:48:00 AM

Late Tuesday night (tonight) at Pubcon was the open forum with the main public figures from each of the major search engines; Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask. This was moderated by Guy Kawasaki (one of the best speakers I have had the pleasure of learning from!). So, what was learned from this forum……well: Google (Cutts) is very defensive about their position on user feedback about their organic search results. It is clear they are not only relying on their algorithms to determine results, but also on user feedback. Although Guy was very persistent on getting “fact of the matter” answers from the forum panel such as how to rank, what is PageRank, and “what would you do if” there was a lot of dodging and little new information except the old stand by of building relative content (including blogs) and gaining on topic links. So what did we really learn about internet marketing in general? If you want to learn the secrets to search engine rankings, ask those who do it, not those who represent the companies who make the search money. FYI…one tidbit that we all paid attention to was….mod rewritten urls are important. I’ll paraphrase Matt Cutts; “Everything else being equal, a page with keywords within the url is better off then a url with ambiguous numbers”.

Using Social Networks for Links

12/4/2007 8:47:00 PM

Just got out of a very good session at Pubcon here in Las Vegas about leveraging social networking websites to generate incoming links to your site. In fact, Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOMoz listed about 60 websites that can be used for content submissions, profile building, and general marketing purposes. Unfortunately he has asked we do not publish the full list…..so here is a partial Flickr DeviantArt Care2 Hugg. Sphinn Mixx To find out how to implement social networking into your internet marketing strategy to increase your links and your search engine rankings, contact SMT.

WebmasterWorld’s Pubcon 2007 in Vegas

12/3/2007 9:09:00 PM

Well, we’re off to Pubcon in Las Vegas again. This year should be full of useful information and SEO tidbits especially with keynotes such as Matt Cutts from Google and Craig Nemark from Craigslist. This has always been a great conference for the nuts and bolts of internet marketing. We’ll keep you posted!

Google’s Did You Mean

11/30/2007 5:14:00 PM

I am sure you have seen it or possible even use it daily as a spell checker. If you search Google and spell your word(s) incorrectly, Google will ask you “Did you mean…?” with a suggestion link to alternative search results. Sounds like a great idea and usually it works very well. However, let’s take a case where your brand name is close to an actual word. If my company name was “fintastic fins” and a potential customer heard about me and searched on Google, they would get these results. This wouldn’t be so bad, unless of course my competitor’s name was “fantastic fins”. In which case it would seem Google is recommending my competition over me. There are various ways to overcome this issue. The first, make your brand name so well known that it is used across the web and searched for consistently. This should make Google realize the term is legit and that users “Did not mean anything” except for what they typed in. Another option is to ask Google to stop the correction. This is unlikely to produce any results as it would mean Google would either have to adjust their algorithm or hand edit it, which is rare but does happen on occasion. An alternative is to attempt to rank for the generic term of “fantastic fins”. Since it is generic and very on-target based on your content (presumably finastic fins makes really good fins) there is no reason your site shouldn’t rank for it. You may also want to bid on the term using Google AdWords to ensure those looking for your site and/or products find you. If you are having this issue or similar problems, you may want to contact SMT Web Development for a solution or ask me a question on Linkedin.

KeyWord Expectation, How Do You Rank?

11/29/2007 11:19:00 AM

Keyword Expectation - Simply meeting the expectation of the person performing the search request based on the meaning of the keyword or keyword phrase. And the closer you are to meeting users "Keyword Expectation" the most likely you are to close a sale, a lead or have a subscriber to your blog or newsletter. Why this is a simple concept, many of our new clients are often surprised to learn that they have been trying to mislead users and often disappoint visitors. The result is high web site bounce rates and higher than normal conversion costs. Here is an example: A Daytona Beach Hotel created web pages for Orlando hotel and Hotel near Disney, because these are popular search terms. They believed that these pages could be flipped into getting people to book hotel rooms in Daytona Beach, which is over 1 hour away from Walt Disney World! They utilized pay per clicks to drive traffic and had the pages indexed in the major search engines. After 2 weeks they had spent hundreds of dollars on the Orlando and Disney terms and had zero conversions. They were disappointed. They were disappointed! I hated to tell them that so were the more than 300 visitors who expected to book a hotel room in Orlando and within 5 - 10 minutes of Walt Disney World. They had wasted their money, disappointed 300 hundred visitors and tarnished their reputation. We advised them to focus on Daytona Beach terms, beach vacation, Florida vacation and to work on creating content that integrated the idea of staying the beach and spending a day trip to the park. We appealed to visitors that enjoy nature, like to avoid crowds, wanted to relax and noted that family fun does not have to cost a fortune. By evaluating the keywords they targeted, analyzing the users keyword expectation and creating pages that appeal to that audience we were able to turn visitors into vacationers! As the internet continues to get more competitive, success is based on meeting your user's keyword expectation and then fulfilling their want and need. Will your company meet your user's keyword expectation or will you continue to disappoint your web site visitors in 2008? by Russell Troutman Internet Marketing Manager, Sales & Marketing Technologies

Using Web Site Behavioral Clickstream Data As An Email Targeting Tactic

11/28/2007 6:33:00 PM

Using web analytics can help you better understand your customer’s needs and help you market to them more effectively. It has been found that emails generated from clickstream data saw a 9x improvement in revenue and 32x more in net profit versus undifferentiated broadcast emails (”The ROI of Email Relevance”, Jupiter Research). Who has not completed a transaction? Use your web analytics to see which customers have abandon your shopping cart. After a few days send a reminder email encouraging customers to return and complete the process. You may even want to inform the recipient that their shopping cart will be expiring soon. Another tactic is the include an incentive to purchase the abandon items. What pages do they visit? Take a look at the your user’s site usage. Send an email on products or incentives related to the products or categories browsed. It has been found that consumers made an immediate purchase from emails when the email contained the products they were already considering. When do they visit? For frequent visitors to your site, invite them to participate in hidden promotions or sweepstakes not available to your other customers. For recent visitors, send a message on the latest products browsed. From where are they arriving? Take a look at what referring domains and URLs visitors are coming from. Use this information to target visitors by sending them a message that asserts or reinforces your competitive or leadership position. Why do they do what they do? Incorporate email demographics into your web anlytics program, you can then learn what products categories and pages are currently appealing to your demographic segment. How? You will need to connect a specific email recipient to the browsing behavior associated with the visitor history or profile in your Web analytics program. You can also use email conversion tracking, in which a customer accesses the site by clicking a trackable link in an email. There is a challege to using web site behavioral clickstream data as an email targeting tactic. Typically a relatively small portion of the email list lends itself to clickstream targeting. Contact Sales & Marketing Technologies to learn how we can improve your web site’s success. by Brent Nau Internet Marketing Specialist

Increase Web Site Traffic by Eliminating These 5 Web Site Mistakes

11/28/2007 2:26:00 PM

Web designers, programmers, IT specialist and business marketing departments are all involved in the development of wonderful web sites. However, few of these professionals care how you rank in the search engines and whether your site produces leads or sales. If you want to Increase Web Site Traffic you need to see if your site makes any of these web site mistakes and then take action to correct them. 1. Flash Home Page / Web Site Nothing stops a search engine spider than no readable content. Flash pages can be great for paid traffic, however for organic rankings learn to integrate readable content. 2. Poor Content Search engines use content to help determine what your web site is about. Try this quick test, if you read your web page copy to a complete stranger, would they know what business you were in? If the answer is No, you need to revise your copy because the search engines don't know what business you are in either. 3. Calls To Action / Next Steps For some reason a lot of web sites are built without logical Calls to Action or Next Steps thought out. What is the logical step that your web page has set the user up for and how does this page fit into the Conversion path. Review your site and see if your visitors are lead towards a conversion path or left to choose their own path. 4. Search Engine Friendly urls Many programmers build amazing dynamic web sites and never consider how or why it is important to rank for every service or product offered on the site. One solution is to use re-writes to create search engine friendly urls that can improve indexing and have been shown to have higher click through rates. 5. URL Server Set Up How your url is set up on the server can impact your rankings and the use of proper 301 redirects are critical when re-launching your web site. It is important that your IT expert and hosting company understands proper set up. You now have some insight into how to increase your web site traffic and may have identified areas where you and your business can improve. If you are looking for a more in-depth analysis and understanding of how to improve your web site's success contact Sales & Marketing Technologies. 1-407-682-2222 by Russell Troutman Internet Marketing Manager * Related Articles Online Marketing before or After Web Site Development

Offline and Online Marketing

11/26/2007 10:24:00 PM

The importance of having a consistent message should never be overlooked, especially when it comes to your website. Recognition that carries over from print or traditional media to the internet will greatly strenthen your brand and can result in customer loyalty. If you are planning to update the your website design in the near future, here are some points to keep in mind to help ensure your message is clear and consistent: 1) Are you basing your website design on existing marketing materials or vise versa. If you have boxes of already printed materials, this may be a very easy question to answer. On the other hand, if you are going to have the website designed first then create your print material, your web development company will have much more flexibility in the design. 2) Do you already have a recognizable brand? If so, it may not be wise to deviate very far with your website. A recognizable brand is, of course, extremely valuable (assuming it is a positive image). 3) “Link” your various marketing materials. This means referencing your website within your print materials and including pdfs or web pages of offline ads. This will help bring your customers full circle. It will make your company look bigger than it may be and gives a sense of continuity.

YSM’s Blocked Sites Functionality, Is the Promised Fulfilled?

11/16/2007 8:42:00 PM

On Oct. 15 - we got an email from Yahoo Search Marketing "Block Sites Where You Don’t Want Your Ads to Appear" Our expectation was high as this could really give advertisers a chance to control where their ads are shown. We looked at the system during the first week and noted it was not what we expect. So we waited a month to see if time has improved this system. Review of Yahoo Search Marketing’s Block sites Functionality:Usabilty: Difficult The user must know which urls the want to block. So you must know which sites send you YSM paid traffic. YSM noted this can be found if you have their analytics program set up. Set Up Time: Under Five Minutes (If you know the URL’s to block) However, if you don’t know which URL’s to block you could spend hours. Time Value as ROI: A Must Do if you spend over $10,000 a month. I would have accounts spending $5K reviewing their stats, but for smaller accounts the hours spend putting together and maintain this list may be better spend building your business, adding keywords, and improving ad tiles. Overall Experience: Disappointed This is a great idea and needs to be made more user friendly. I want to be able to use the service, but there must be a better way. Suggestions for YSM Blocked Sites Application: Provide a list of Top 25 Content Sites that spend your PPC dollars Provide a Search box where I can submit a url and you will let me know if it is in the network. Overall, I like the idea and the goal in mind I just need YSM to provide the tools that allow the everyone to benefit from a service like this. Tags: yahoo search marketing, blocked sites functionality, block web sites, ppc ads, pay per click services, ysm, overture

Learn What Small Web Site Changes Are Adding Up to 50% Sales Increase

11/15/2007 8:33:00 PM

It's was 10:43 pm last night when I logged in to check the daily ecommerce sales. The results Up 20% for the day and for the month up a whopping 50%, "Yes" I said. This would seem routine if I worked or owned the company, but I don’t. I am their Internet Marketing Manager and live hours away from their business and I was ecstatic. All the little changes and adjustments we have been working on all year are now paying off and the are swampped with huge sales increases. In a way, I feel terrible as Scott and his team are working weekend just to keep up with demand, but I know they are excited as well. They are on track to break the yearly sales record with over a full month left to go so every day is exciting. It is also exciting to know that we may have the best online month ever and online advertising costs will be unchanged from last November. We were able to have this success because we consistently made improvements all year long and kept reviewing the site to identify more and more opportunities. While sometimes we were challenged on our ideas and there was resistance, they were implemented and the results are positive. In addition, we always kept testing new ideas, some failed but others succeeded. One of the most amazing facts is that we still have a wish list of improvements that have not been implemented yet. We expect bigger and better things in 2008. The Little Things that Added Up: Consistent Linking Strategy We consistent worked every month to build brand via directories, social networking pages, social bookmarking sites, press releases, and paid links where applicable. Revised Onsite Search We spotted that the online search results were poor and left out keywords products for popular search results. Now people are finding what they want, rather than leaving the site. Created Product Page Based on How Users ShopBasically, we removed the clutter and confusion and made an easy to use page organized on how users shop. Constant PPC Evaluation We are always reviewing the worst and best ppc ad groups and revising and refocusing in order to make them profitable. That is how we have increase ROI tremendously over the last six months. Revised Navigation & Links for Customer’s Benefit Provide the information that your customers want and keep the path simple, so if they get lost on your site they can quickly find what they want. Added Blogs to the Mix We blogged every month and tested various styles until we hit a consumer need that resulted in a dramatic surge in traffic to the site. During this holiday season we are blogging two to three times a week and seeing a steady stream of new customers from it. These are a few of the changes implemented this year, we actually wanted more but the great thing is that small monthly improvements which in some cases were not measurable have results in huge benefits when our client needed it most. There is nothing more rewarding then being able to share in this success with them. Work with a Company that Want to Build Your Success, Call Us. Sales & Marketing Technologies 407-682-2222 Russell Troutman is the Internet Marketing Manager for Sales & Marketing Technologies in Orlando, FL

The Importance of Domain Name Extensions - .com Vs. .org and the others

11/13/2007 3:14:00 PM

Domain name buying, selling, and brokering is big business. People will scoop up the good-ones and hold them ransom or auction ‘em off to the highest bidder. Your whole business model may be cut down when you are forced to buy i-wanted-this-in-a-dot-com-but-they-only-had.org. But how much will it effect business? Well, luckily, from an SEO perspective there is no difference. All domain extensions are created equal. The same onsite and offsite factors integral to good rankings apply across the board. I have not, however, seen any research pertaining to the user’s propensity to click a search result ending in a .org or .com. It is very possible that a shopper who is searching for shoes may not be as likely to click a .org link, because of the lingering notion that .org is for an organization There are also branding aspects of a .org, .com, .net, etc. The general user is more familiar with a .com and may be more likely to try a .com version of a partially remembered URL; it is an easier recall. So when business branding and performing offline promotions, a .com is usually (obviously) the best solution. But if the site is to be an SEO phenom, take your pick, all domain extensions have the ability to rank well. Tags: domain, name, extension, .org, .com

Using LinkedIn for Introductions

11/7/2007 12:17:00 AM

Dave's Network Status Report: 56 direct connections, 1000+ friends of friends, 210,200+ total network Dave's Quick LinkedIn Tip: Be sure to add your photo on LinkedIn. You want people attempting to contact you to know they have the right person. After sending out the invitations, I heard from some old friends. It was great catching up. In the pile was a very large business opportunity. It was so large we couldn't even attempt it. What can you say, you can't get them all. It was an honor to even be considered. I tried my first shot at using my network for outbound business development. I picked a company we would very much like to have on the client list. I searched for the company in LinkedIn. Bingo! One of my friends knows someone who used to work at this company. It even happens to be the right department. I asked my friend for an introduction. My friend introduced me via email to his friend (that used to work there). She agreed to do some checking to get a contact for me. Not bad! Perhaps next time I will dig a little harder to find a direct link into the company. I think that would be the ultimate.

Business Benefits of Blogging

10/31/2007 9:27:00 PM

Often times, to a business, a blog may have an undeserving negative connotation. By now, most of us are aware that it is no longer exclusively for teens Tommy and Tina to hobnob about their weekend events. Blogging has become a powerful internet and business tool, when used properly. Maybe a blog on your site still makes you a little squeamish. Do you prefer a newsletter, events page, industry articles section, or a press release section? Well, in all honesty, a blog can act as all of these. While it may take some time to properly implement a blog on your domain with the same look as your site, there are quite a few blogging services that are free, including Blogger and WordPress. Both these services offer article categorization, archiving and handfuls of other goodies to turn a blog into a dynamic business tool. Posts can be archived by category and date, or searched. Users can subscribe via an RSS feed. Have an upcoming event? Create a short blog post. Something important happen to change your industry? Blog about it. Take $100 from Larry Bird in a golf outing? Write a blog. Well, your company environment may dictate the nature and scope of blog posts, but it certainly can be used as a less formal way to communicate with your customers. Before taking on a blog, consider: Is there somebody at the company who writes? If there isn't somebody or a group of somebodies to cultivate the blog, it will neve reach its potential. Do you have patience? A post may not shoot to the top of Google, but original, industry specific articles and posts are good ways to strengthen your site. It builds out the total number of pages and keeps the site current. Don't blog angry. Matt Cutts once posted about blogging angry. It is always smart to consider your audience, re-read your blog post and understand that once it's posted and indexed, it is public - forever. Sometimes jokes do not translate in type form. If your blog is open for comments, be ready to field some...in a professional and respectful manner. Blog fights may not be the best for business. If you're not sure what to blog about...blog about blogging. So if it seems right, commit yourself. Re-read and if you're new, have somebody read your posts before you push them live. Keep it light and have fun. - Happy blogging and since it is Halloween, Happy Halloween as well! Tags: blog, blogging, post, business, benefits

SEO Problems with Pagination

10/30/2007 6:14:00 PM

Organization of content on a website is very important for search engine index-ability. It can be a challenge to create a system that is friendly to both human visitors and search engine bots. A common example is a list of articles. Even with categories, over time there can become a huge amount of articles within any given category. Then what? You don’t want an enormous page with 1000 article titles on it…do you? So, of course, you use pagination. The most common way is to have multiple links at the bottom (and sometimes top) of the list such as that allow users to navigate through the various pages within a category. This works well for users, but here is why it isn’t so good for search engines: Your first category page will have links to the first 10 articles. This first category page probably has multiple links to it (site footer, navigation) such as “Visit Article Category 1″. So, to make this easy to understand, let’s say we have a 100 page website. Each page has a link to the category pages in the site footer. Therefore each category page will have 100 internal links. All the articles listed on the first page of the category will only ever be 2 clicks away for a user. So….what about the articles that are listed on page 2, page 3, etc of that category? Well, if this particular category had 10 pages, then page 2 of that category would only have 10 internal links. And, all the links would be labeled as “2″. Not a very good description of the page for the search engines. Also, the articles listed on these secondary pages are 3 clicks away, rather than 2 (if we start on the home page….1 click on the footer link to the category page, 1 click on the “2″ to go to page 2, then 1 click on the article link). You are essentially telling search engines that you place less value on the articles listed on page 2 then the articles listed on page 1. The best fix for this problem is to break down articles into manageable categories that are small enough to list on articles in the category. However, this may not be possible for websites with a huge number of articles so you may also want to consider a better navigational table than 1 2 3 4….. Try something like Category A Page 2, Category A Page 3, etc. This way, at least you are referencing your deeper category pages with relevant text. You can also link to the secondary pages from places like your sitemap and maybe even the footer if it doesn’t bulk it up too much. That way, you minimize the damage caused by burying your secondary category pages with pagination. Tags: seo, pagination, search engine indexing

SEO For Flash Only Websites

10/29/2007 7:07:00 PM

I was reviewing a website today that was a flash only website and needed to know if the company that built the site was smart enough to include a HTML version of the site for search engine indexing. The short answer…no. At SMT we do use Flash, but only as elements within a website. As any seasoned SEO expert will tell you, search engines have a hard time indexing sites that are totally developed in Flash. This is not to say that Flash sites can not get indexed, but when is the last time you saw a Flash only website at the number one spot? So my quest to find out how I can optimize Flash only websites for the search engines has lead me to the topic of Search Optimized Flash Architecture (SOFA). SOFA is a technique of converting the Flash content into XHTML. Once the content is converted to XHTML it can now be indexed by search engines. I also came across another technique using the JavaScript function called SWFObject(). The primary content of the site is placed with a DIV on the HTML page. The function determines if the browser is capable of viweing Flash. If it does not, then it will render the content from the DIV on the page. Some may proclaim that this is cloaking, but as long as you are serving up the same content that is in your Flash you will not have anything to worry about. A third option is to use the Macromedia Flash Search Engine SDK. This program extracts links and text from a Flash SWF file and returns the data as a HTML document. Learn more about the Flash Search Engine SDK. Tags: flash only website high ranking, seo for flash only website, optimize flash website, flash for search engine, search optimized flash architecture, sofa, flash

Template CMS Based Websites

10/26/2007 11:58:00 AM

There are many companies out there offering very attractive hosting and website solutions. They promise to give you 99% uptime and tools to build your own website in minutes for a low monthly fee. Many of these services are focused on certain niches such as golf courses, churches, hotels, etc. These are great solutions for businesses who just want an online presence and a url to put on their business cards. However, these template type systems generally have some huge seo drawbacks for those looking to attract and gather leads online. These content management systems often advertise seo tools, search engine submission services, meta tag generators, etc. The truth is, I have yet to see a template based system that can rank as well as a stand alone site. Please comment below if you have an example, but my guess is you will have trouble finding one. Here are a few potential drawbacks, from a search engine optimization perspective, of template based websites. (Please remember this does not encompass all template CMS type systems and is only a list of potential issues.) 1) Coding. These systems are generally very heavy on the coding, because the system needs to accommodate a variety of users and applications. The code to content ratio is important and a stand alone system will generally have less coding. 2) Duplication. If 1000 other golf courses are using the system for their websites, there must be some similar, if not exact, aspects of the coding. Duplication of content is a big issue with search engines…..they don’t like it. 3) Ownership. Do you own the code? Do you own the content? Do you own the domain? If not, look for problems down the road. 4) Control. This means more than just adding title and meta tags. Footer links? Additional pages? XML feeds? Google map integration? There are hundreds of potential applications you may want some day, but can’t have. 5) Domain handling. This is a very important aspect of SEO and, if not done properly, can lead to major indexing issues. These are just a few of the potential issues. These systems are good for some…not all. If you are looking to increase your business, I suggest you look for an experienced web development company to meet your website needs. Tags: cms, seo, template based websites

Getting Connections on LinkedIn (Continued)

10/18/2007 3:33:00 AM

I sent out 89 invitations in the first shot. The LinkedIn system is very nice. It shows you if the invitation is undeliverable. A great way to clean up your list. I had to follow up on a few and get updated email addresses. After scaring up a few more email addresses, the total was up to 95 invitations out. The next day, I got a bunch of calls and emails asking... "What is this?" and "Did you really send this to me?" I think after I explained all but one did set up a LinkedIn account. Here is what I sent out if they emailed me... Greetings! It is an online tool that helps you build an easy to access network. Done right, it helps you expand the number of people you have access to. The theory is that just about everyone knows 300 people. The more people you know the more people you can help and they can help you. Here is the power. I am one guy. Right now, I have 26 connections (my friends and business associates 1st degree). Of my 26 connections they have 700+ connections (2nd degree), connections to the 700 folks (3rd degree) - 176,000 connections. I am 3 degrees separated from a ton of folks. I can now get introductions to these other folks. Maybe find employees, find business deals, etc. I paid the $20 a month so I can search for people I wish to know. Odds are they are 1 of the 176,000 people. If you want to give it a whirl, click on the link and then sign up. Then fill out your profile. It steps you through. I use Outlook. Make sure it is up to date and you can import the names and send invitations like I did. I only included people I am at peace knowing my friends. Dave Nine days after sending out that letter those who asked me, I had 45 connections. That doesn't sound like much, however, my 45 connections know 900+ people and they know 198,000+ people. Not bad for someone getting started. Next, what can you do with all your new friends. If you need it, here is the start of the blog: http://blog.smtusa.com/index.php/the-linkedin-experiment/ Tags: LinkedIn, Social Networking, Business Development

Getting Connections On LinkedIn

10/12/2007 12:56:00 AM

After loading my profile, I needed some connections. Connections are people who have a LinkedIn account and agree to connect to you. How you get people to agree to connect is you send out an invitation. In the invitation, you ask if they will link to you. It is that simple. You send invitations out from LinkedIn. Just go to the button at the top that says "Expand Your Network." Who should you link to? Typically, you send invitations to friends, colleagues, business contacts, family members, etc. I decided for me I wouldn't put in just anyone. I didn't want people I barely know. Though I did put in one like that as a test. I didn't want to be seen as a "LinkHo." I wanted only people I would feel totally comfortable calling for an introduction to someone they know and I am totally comfortable with them calling me for introductions to my friends. That's what networks are for. Keep in mind, anyone you are connected to can see your connections and you can see their connections (as long as they haven't turned this off this feature). I use Outlook. For me, LinkedIn recommended I upload my contacts. I must confess I was a little edgy about turning over my Outlook address book. After realizing what can really be stolen? Email addresses are public. I have the relationship. I did it. The LinkedIn Outlook upload worked great! It pulled in my contacts. I checked off the people to send to. I used the standard LinkedIn invitation message and out it went. Hind sight is 20/20. Thinking about it now, I might have had more success had I customized the invitation a bit. Oh well! More on creating connections in the next post. Tags: LinkedIn, Connections, business development, Linked In

Getting Started With LinkedIn

10/11/2007 11:22:00 PM

When I first logged in to LinkedIn didn’t seem like much is there. It doesn’t really tell you what to do or why. I think they do that so it doesn’t overwhelm you. The first thing I did is set up my profile. It is easy. Where you went to school, your job history, stuff like that. Get out your latest resume and you should pretty much have everything you need at your finger tips. Once this info is in the next step is to put in your contacts. Tags: LinkedIn, Profile, Getting Started

The LinkedIn Experiment

10/9/2007 4:51:00 PM

Greetings! This is Dave Larson President of Sales & Marketing Technologies. I have been hearing for a while now the power of the social networking sites. I have seen my sons using MySpace. I heard of the guy being offered $1 billion for FaceBook and turning it down. Then one of my friends asked me to connect to him using LinkedIn. I had heard of LinkedIn, however, I didn’t know anything about it. Since he was a friend, it was free, I thought… Why not? I signed up. I looked around a bit and left. My account sat there for a couple of weeks. It didn’t seem important. Though I was still curious what everyone was seeing in these things. Then another friend emailed me to connect. I said “okay.” I looked at his info it says he had 75 connections. I looked and I could see all 75 people he knew. I could see their info… where they went to school, what they do, who they work for, etc. On the list, were a few people I wanted to know. Then it hit me. This could be an unbelievable source of warm referrals. Instead of asking my friend to look in his address book and give me some referrals, I could look who he knows and ask to be introduced. It doesn’t get any better than that. What is in it for my friend? Since we are connected, he can see my contacts too. He does an outstanding job providing us wth connectivity. If he needs an introduction, I would gladly open some doors for him. I decided I was going to test LinkedIn to see if I could build a powerful network and use it to benefit our company. I told some of the Internet Marketing folks at our company what I was thinking of doing and they put the pressure on me to blog about it. I said it would never come to this, but here I am. I will do my best to keep you up to date on the progress. Here we go… Tags: LinkedIn, Social Networking, Business Development, getting started

Mergers, Acquisitions and Web Sites

9/12/2007 8:14:00 PM

Recently we have seen several of our clients purchase additional businesses or be purchased by another company. My first question to my clients is "What is going to happen to the web site?" This is often followed by a "Huh?" and a statement like "We buying a business and not a web site." and that is where I reply you are buying both. In many cases people know how to value a business but not how to value a web site or even understand how a successful web site plays into the success of a business. So what do you look for and questions should you ask to better understand what you are buying? There are some key items you should review and ask when doing your due diligence. By getting answers to these questions you should have a better understanding of how important that web site is to their business and maybe how important it may be to yours. Questions to Ask: How many domain names does the business have? What is the main url for the business? What percentage of clients come form online (web) verse offline (traditional advertising)? Do you have a two year history of online leads from the web? Do you have two years history of online media expenditures? Ask to see how they spent that money online, paid links, banners, pay per click, SEO services. Do work with an Internet Marketing Company? If yes who? How long have you worked with that Internet Marketing Company? While this doesn't go into how to strategize the site or what to do with it, that will be another article, it will start to give you an idea of how reliant the business is on the web. It is important to know whether you are buying something that is sustainable and solid or if the business was built to look good and be sold. These questions should give you insight into how this company has used the web, allow you to learn how to maybe use the web better and validate that you are making a smart purchase. If you need an outside perspective and insight into the data, contact Sales & Marketing Technologies and we will assist in getting and analyzing that data for you. In a future article, we will discuss what to do with that web site once you have purchased a business. Tags: web site valuation, mergers, acquisitions, business web sites

Convert a Google AdWords Bulk File for Use in Yahoo

9/11/2007 1:13:00 PM

Yahoo high rollers are given an “import” link under the campaigns tab in their Yahoo Search Marketing accounts…available upon request. A user can convert their existing Google PPC account into an Excel file for upload to their Yahoo account. I commend Yahoo for making our lives easier…or at least trying. As a sidebar, this is a feature that Yahoo only offers big spenders. If my competition holds the majority market share, would it not be in my benefit to let everybody know that they can “easily” convert their existing Google accounts into Yahoo accounts AND on top of that, we’ll give you $50 free bucks. That certainly would be an attractive offer, but I will attempt to get back on topic and slide on “easily” for now. I think most would agree that this is a nice feature, importing one account into another. I’m not sure, however, if Yahoo has ever seen a Google bulk file. My Google bulk file which was uploaded had headers like this: “Campaign Campaign Daily Budget Ad Group Max CPC Max Content CPC Max CPM Keyword Keyword Type Min CPC Headline Description Line 1 Description Line 2 Display URL Destination URL Campaign Status AdGroup Status Creative Status Keyword Status Suggested Changes Comment” Upon downloading and viewing the “converted” file, the header looked like this: “Campaign Ad Group Max CPC Keyword Type Keyword Headline Description Line 1 Description Line 2 Display URL Destination URL Campaign Status AdGroup Status Creative Status Keyword Status Suggested Changes” The only suggested changes were that it balked at my negative keywords. When I attempted to upload my new converted file, Yahoo stated that I had changed my header, deviating from the template. The Yahoo Search Marketing bulk upload file has headers that look like this: “Campaign Name Ad Group Name Component Type Component Status Keyword Keyword Alt Text Keyword Custom URL Sponsored Search Bid (USD) Sponsored Search Bid Limit (USD) Sponsored Search Status Match Type Content Match Bid (USD) Content Match Bid Limit (USD) Content Match Status Ad Name Ad Title Ad Short Description Ad Long Description Display URL Destination URL Watch List Campaign ID Campaign Description Campaign Start Date Campaign End Date Ad Group ID Ad Group: Optimize Ad Display Ad ID Keyword ID Checksum Error Message” So, in the end I had to copy and paste everything around, add a lot, and filter a lot. The converted file did not inherently pick up the component type. It did not delete duplicates duplicate, based upon the fact that Google allows for bidding on singular and plural forms of the word and Yahoo does not. It did not changed Keyword Type from Broad to Advanced. It did not realize that Negative Broad probably meant Excluded. In closing, I was ecstatic. I am still thankful to the people at Yahoo for those 5 minutes when I thought bulk file conversion was possible. I was, however, somewhat disappointed with the converted file…and I’m pretty sure it cost me more time and certainly more emotion. Tags: yahoo, google, ppc, file, conversion, bulk, upload

Flash and Search Engine Optimization

8/31/2007 6:59:00 PM

There seems to be a misconception that flash is bad for search engines and overall website rankings. This is simply not true. What is true is Flash, to date, can not be properly indexed by search engines. This means that any Flash on a website is essentially non-existent to search engines. The misconception most likely came from websites that are entirely created using Flash, since these website are invisible to search engine spiders. Without a massive amount of on topic incoming links, it is almost impossible to rank using a site made entirely out of Flash. This does not mean Flash does not have its place. Using high-end flash to get across a message, make a website look more professional, and increase its ’stickiness’ can be very effective. The trick is to only incorporate it into a site, not create the whole site from it. Navigations and content areas can be done using CSS styling and still look like they belong beside a Flash piece. This allows for search engine optimization of a website while still having a high class look and feel. If you are looking for a high end website with a professional look and feel, but still want those top rankings in Google for your main terms, Contact SMT.

Corporate Transparency - Web 2.0

7/31/2007 3:12:00 PM

Blogging has become an important part of the online experience. There is no better way to get the very latest information on almost any subject or company. But what makes a company blog worthwhile? The answer: improved corporate image and building customer loyalty. A corporate blog should be written by multiple high level officers within the company. It should be written to include the personality of the writer. Blogs that are manicured by the corporate PR team often come across as nothing more than advertising. In the new Web 2.0 age consumers expect transparency. They like to hear about problems, decisions, and goals of a company, not just a plug for the newest product. Corporate transparency doesn’t mean giving away secrets or personal information. It means putting a human face on an otherwise faceless corporation. The companies who take advantage of this trend will have a deeper connection with their current customers and soon-to-be customers. Tags: corporate transparency, web 2.0, blog, company blogging

How Google Sees Your Site

7/30/2007 1:31:00 PM

Google, like many search engines, sees a website just like a browser would. To view the code that is getting indexed by Google, simply visit your webpage, right click and select ‘view source’. This will pull up a notepad filled with the page html code. If you are not familiar with html, there is another way to see what a search engine bot sees. Just follow these steps: 1) type in a word that you know your site ranks for in Google. The most obvious search is simply your company name. 2) find your site’s listing in the serps 3) click on the ‘cache’ link under your site’s listing 4) click on the ‘cache text’ link in the top paragraph You should now be viewing a text only page with links throughout. This, in a nutshell, is what Google is seeing. Do you see your target terms? Do you see a lot of links? You should.

Accessibility for Search Engines

7/30/2007 1:27:00 PM

We find that most new clients that have had their site built by another company fail to have their page’s code optimized correctly. The most common issue that we come across is having internal JavaScript code on the page. You may be wondering why this would be an issue. When search engine spiders crawl your site, the spider will go through all of the page code to understand what the page content is about. Typically spiders will index up to 110K of data before abandoning the page. So if the page is top heavy with irrelevant code like JavaScript or CSS style sheets, spiders will not be able to effectively decide if your page is relevant for a particular topic. An easy solution is to move the JavaScript code into an external file and then place a JavaScript include file on the page. Tags: seo, search engine optimization, code optimization, web code optimization, seo, sem, internet marketing, smt

The Importance of a Good Hosting Company During Website Launch

7/11/2007 7:19:00 PM

When your ready to launch a new site, it is easy to forget the little things, like search engine rankings. Enamored by the glitz of a fresh looking website and new images, often redirects are overlooked and the old site just forgotten. But Google will not forget so easily, unless properly told. The old site worked hard to migrate up the rankings, slipping past competitors and nestling on the first page. Often the old site’s content was so amazing that outsiders would even link to it. If the new site goes live without telling the server what to do with people following these inbound links, people will just get kicked to the 404 Error landing page. Sure they find the site, but what happens with those back links in the eyes of mighty Google. Google follows the keyword-laden “Best Pastry Puffs Ever” link to your Pasty Puffs page and receives a 404 Error - the page no longer exists and therefore it no longer important. But, when using a 301 Redirect on the old page, Google sees the the old Pastry Puffs page, sees that it has permanently moved to the new Pastry Puffs page and siphons all that “Best Pastry Puffs Ever” importance and keyword relevancy to the new page. But what happens if your hosting company uses a Microsoft IIS server, without the capability to implement all these integral 301 Redirects? Well then you politely ask them to improve their services, download the necessary software, so you don’t drop off Google, let alone MSN. (If you can imagine.) We want our httpd.ini access files. This file gives you the ability to implement these necessary 301 Redirects. (A 301 is a type of redirect, which the server uses to tell search bots that the page has permanently moved.) This type of file is standard on an Apache server, although it is a .htaccess file. So when approaching a site launch, ask your hosting company if they provide said service. If not, it may be time to 301 your hosting. Tags: hosting, company, 301, redirects, 301s, new, website, launch, site

New SMT Website Launched

5/29/2007 4:21:00 PM

Sales and Marketing Technologies has launched a new website with a “2.0″ look and feel. The new design was created for easy navigation, up-to-date information, and of course for search engine marketing. Although redesigning a website is often necessary to keep up with the changing trends online, it can also have some negative effects on search engine rankings, if not done properly. It is important to remember to 301 permanent redirect all old pages to the corresponding new pages. This can help avoid the initial “dip” in the SERPs as search engine bots reindex the new pages. You will also notice the latest blog entries from this blog are pulled into the home page of the new SMT site. Consistently changing content on a site’s home page and/or interior pages can have great benefits with regards to search engine rankings. The new content lets search engines know that the site is not “abandoned” and the information is current. New information is often viewed as more likely to be useful to searchers, thus increasing the rankings of that page. If content is King, new content is the King’s father. We hope you enjoy the new Sales and Marketing Technologies website. If you have any comments about the new design or functionality, feel free to comment and let us know. Tags: smt, sales and marketing technologies, new site launch

Server Set up Error Can Be Costly Mistake

5/11/2007 6:45:00 PM

Even the big boys make little mistakes that can prove to be costly. So what is the cost of a simple server set up issue for Yahoo? It could be thousands of dollars a day and the longer it goes on the more money MSN, Google and others can earn off this error. If you simply type in Overture.com, you land at MSN's and Google's search results page because the server is not pointing to www.Overture.com which is working fine. The first listing in MSN is a paid listing for Searchmarketing.Yahoo.com, so every time someone clicks on this listing Yahoo gets charged, even worse number tow is an MSN listing so now MSN gets a shot to invite the user to click on their PPC ad instead of YSM's. Although this is not likely, who likes to lose business? And if each click is 1 and 1,000 people click this listing each day, it is easy to see the wasted dollars add up from a simple server set up issue. While Yahoo does have more capital than most companies, wasting money is never a good thing. The bottom line is little mistakes can be costly and in Yahoo's case maybe $1, $5 or even $10K a day. Tags: yahoo, ysm, overture, server setup, Google adwords, msn adcenter, business, internet marketing

Tracking Google Base Listings

5/10/2007 1:38:00 PM

The Official Google Base Blog offered up a tip recently on how to track your Google Base listings in Google Analytics by creating a special landing page to identify that traffic as unique. While this would work, it’s not exactly a elegant solution and quite frankly outdated. Google Analytics enables you to append tracking variables to URLs that you can place as links on various inbound traffic sources, including Google Base, that will feed in data about where specifically the traffic came from right into every aspect of your Google Analytics account. The same solution can be used to track email campaign performance, banner ads and PPCs, even offline marketing efforts like radio, TV and print. This shows the value of using a professional online marketing agency like SMT as they can sometimes have a more fuller understanding of how to implement the services offered by search companies like Google. Tags: google, analytics, traffic, analysis, marketing, roi, conversion, tracking

Why 1-800-FLOWERS Fails in Marketing

5/1/2007 3:45:00 PM

There was a time when 1-800-FLOWERS was a great business name. However with today's PDA phones like the BlackJack and others, it is nothing more than a dialing disaster. What, You're kidding right? That is the original response I had when my friend Danielle told me how she hated that she could not dial a phone number with a word in it. In fact the only way she said she could dial such a number was to look at a standard or traditional phone. And until you test it for yourself, it is the response I get from all my friends until I ask them to dial 1-800-FLOWERS or any phone number with a word in it on their phone PDA and they can't. The problem is that the numbers that correspond with the phone number no longer match up. Technology and a full PDA key pad has made this nightmare for businesses that promote their company name in and as their phone number. Unless they make changes in their marketing to include the real phone number, they might be losing business and never even know it. As the PDA phone market continues to grow SMarT marketers need to be aware that this change impacts TV, radio, print and online advertising. You need to take steps to make sure that PDA phone users reach you on the first try. So should 1-800-FLOWERS change it's name to 1-800-356-9377? No, but they need to realize they need to add this number to their web site and other marketing materials in order to ensure that everyone who has a regular phone or a PDA phone can reach them. Tags: 1-800-FLowers, pda phones, marketing, online marketing, business phone numbers

Social Networking And Your Business

4/27/2007 8:13:00 PM

Social networking sites have become big business because of the sheer traffic volume many of the larger sites are bringing in, including MySpace.com, FaceBook.com, LinkedIn.com, WetPaint.com, MerchantCircle.com, and YouTube.com. What is very appealing to many businesses is the typical demographics of these sites; young with lots of disposable income. So how, or can, your business take advantage of these social type site? First, know your target market, which you probably already do. Not all social networking sites cater to kids. Linkedin.com for example is directed towards professional networking. If your company’s market is other businesses, Linkedin and MerchantCircle are great places to start. You may even find some groups within the big sites that are directly related to your product or service. Second, get involved. It is important to understand how these sites function and what is deemed as acceptable behavior. Be yourself. Promote yourself first, then your business. Make friends. Many of these sites are based on individuals, not companies. Third, Link your social profiles with your main company website. Link your different profiles together. Create a network between our various online profiles. Lastly, continue looking for new avenues to market your products or services through. There are currently many, many social networking websites and the number continues to grow. Tags: social networking business, small business networking, marketing business online, web 2.0 promotion

YouTube Poised to Lose 25% of their Traffic

4/26/2007 8:33:00 PM

From bloggingstocks, Google to add 30-sec ads to YouTube videos, blog post: “(Google) was testing the concept of offering people and companies that post videos half of the ad revenues, if they agree to allow a 30-second spot to run before the video.” From BurstMedia’s Online Video Advertising (PDF) study: “…one out of two (52.7%) say they typically continue watching video content once they encounter an advertising unit; 40.4% say they typically stop watching. Interestingly, one-quarter (27.9%) of respondents who stop watching video content once they encounter an advertisement also say they immediately leave the website.” By this study, YouTube is poised to lose over 25% of their visitors to their site. This poses the question which video search engine will fill this gap? Tags: google, youtube, video search, video advertising, video online advertising, internet marketing blog smt

Video SEO (VSEO)

4/25/2007 1:58:00 PM

Video SEO, also known as VSEO or Video Search Engine Optimization, is a strategy to help get video found on popular video search engines such as Google Video, You Tube, AOL Video and Yahoo! Video. BurstMedia released a study, Online Video Advertising (PDF), that looked at how users consume video content and how they preceive advertising placement with in the video. 69.5% of respondents actively view video content on the web Men are significantly more likely than women to view online content The age segment 35-44 and 45-54 years were as likely to view online content as the 18-24 years segment Half can recall advertising in online video, but it can lead to site abandonment One-quarter say video advertisement is more effective than standard creative units According to an eMarketer study, Internet Video Audience, they found that: 123 million Americans will view online video at least once a month in 2007 66% of video viewers have watched online video ads and 44% have taken action on what they had seen 76% of users tell a friend about a video they have seen Video SEO Tips & Tricks 1. Undertsand that there are currently two types of video search engines: First Generation Video Search Engines Depend entirely on metadata Looks at the web page text taht lies near a video Second Generation Video Search Engines Use the metadata Use speech recognition Use visual analysis and recognition Use video optical character recognition to allow software to listen to, watch and read text appearing on the video content 2. Video search engines encounter the same problem that regular search engines have when trying to index Flash. Flash players are difficult to spider and extract information from. 3. If you have multiple videos on your site, create a site map for videos (not an XML site map). 4. Videos should be branded with a watermark and an URL or 800 number. When using an URL or 800 number, ensure that it is only used in your videos and in no other marketing materials. This way you will be able to track the number of leads generated from the video. 5. Refrain from the use of po-up players. They run the risk of being blocked. 6. Look to optimize the script of the video to use more keywords. This will help those video search engines who use speech recognition. 7. Do not forget about the second tier video search engines, like Revver, VideoEgg, or MetCafe. They too can provide highly qualified traffic. Tags: video seo, vseo, video search engine optimization

Greatest Living American Google Bomb Defused

4/19/2007 9:13:00 PM

With the recent Google Bomb denoting Stephen Colbert as the “Greatest Living American” we have discover that Google Bombing still exists. The ColbertNation.com homepage ranks #1 for “Greatest Living American” without any reference to the specific term or any of the individual keywords on page. We took a sample of the pages that link to the site and noted that they were directing their links to the http://www.colbertnation.com/cn/letter-from-stephen.php. This page does not contain any reference to the term Greatest Living American. Possibly Colbert removed these keywords…who knows? So that poses the question…is Google hand defusing Google Bombs? Tags: stephen colbert, greatest living american, google bomb, google bombing, google, colbert nation, greatest, living, american, wikiality

Webmasters Can Now Auto-Discover With Sitemaps

4/11/2007 2:15:00 PM

An XML sitemap file is a fairly recent standard adopting by the major search engines that can help with indexing. Yahoo recently announced that the big 3 search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN, have agreed on another standard that relates to how these sitemap feeds can be submitted. Previously they could only be submitted through some site management tools maintained by the search engines, but now your robots.txt file can be used to automate the process a little more. By adding a single line to your robots.txt file you can identify the URL location of your sitemap file for indexing. This is good news for sites with large amounts of pages as it makes it that much easier for the search engines to fully index a site. Tags: search, engine, indexing, sitemap, xml

What Can Small Business Owners Do?

3/21/2007 9:31:00 PM

So, you own a small business and you don’t have any technical expertise. You are one of the least internet savvy people in your company. You hire a geek to make sure the computers all work and maybe an internet marketing company (self promotion;) to help your company site show up for some relevant searches. Well then, you’ve done your job…right? Sure, if you are happy with “just getting by”. Here is what every small business owner could (and should) be doing to take advantage of a huge market that they have no idea how to tap, i.e. the internet. Write down your thoughts and observations and insight into your industry. Not sales stuff, but real information others will find useful. Most small business owners are decent writers and almost all have some valuable information about the industry. By sharing this information, you will, over time, become the source of industry information for your peers and potential customers. The more you write, the more your opinion will get read, increase your company’s exposure and sales. Of course, we are talking about a company Blog. A Blog by a business owner means a lot to peers and customers. Take the 10 minutes per day and, given enough time, increase your business’ exposure and sales. Tags: company blog, small business blog, small business owner, small business marketing

Website Asset Rather Than Expense

3/15/2007 1:47:00 PM

There seems to be a misconception by many businesses that a website is an expense. Of course this is true to the extent that a properly built and marketed website costs a decent amount of money, but so does a new building to facilitate your employees and day to day business. If we want to make a further analogy, the land the building sits on is also an asset. A website sits on a domain or URL (or URI) rather than land. There are expense associated with buildings; electricity, taxes, water, upkeep. There are expenses of owning a website; domain registration, hosting, upkeep. Buildings are sold for a lot of money. Websites are sold for A LOT of money. Both a business’ building and a business’ website can increase the value of the business. So remember, a well built, search engine friendly, properly marketed, high ranking website can not only increase your business sales, but also increase the value of your business, sometimes more so than any other business asset. Tags: website asset, website expense, cost of website, business asset

Which Local Event Web Site Is Better? Eventful or Upcoming

3/2/2007 7:58:00 PM

Local event web sites are gaining in popularity. There are several sites out there that are trying to capitalize on serving local markets by allowing users to search for and share local event information. Two companies that are at the fore front of this are Upcoming.org and Eventful.com. Basically the two sites allow the user to promote a local event for a particular city or metro area free of charge. Both are simple to use and provide an easy way to search for local community events. The biggest difference between the two is that Upcoming.org is backed by the Internet powerhouse of Yahoo. With the backing of Yahoo, Upcoming.org distribution network includes Yahoo Local. When comparing the two site's Alexa ranking, Upcoming.org ranks at 7,403 while Eventful.com ranks at 14,975. Upcoming.org's traffic seems to be going sideways a bit, but Eventful.com's traffic has increased by 70% in the last three months. There does seem to be quite a few registered users (34,844) on Upcoming.org. I could not find a definite count on Eventful.org. Pros and Cons - If you have several similar events that have different venues or dates, Eventful makes it easy by allowing one to copy and modify an existing event. Upcoming makes you create a new event from scratch. - Eventful allows you to submit your event to additional web sites and blog search engines such as Technorati, Delicious, Popbop blog and even Upcoming.org! Upcoming syndicates the events as well. I have seen some of the events listed in the Google Calendar search results (more on this). - Eventful allows you to add a venue type, such as hotel, airport or concert hall. The downside is that they do not display this information in the listing - Eventful is a little cumbersome when trying to add a new venue. They make you go through a couple of steps to enter the country and state. Not sure why they can not detect that I am a user from the United States and pre-populate this. - Upcoming allows you to choose only one category for your event. Eventful allows you to choose up to three. - Both sites allow you to place additional links to the "Official" site or other resource web pages, but they modify the URLs so you do not get a backlink to your site from it. - When adding a new venue to Eventful it tries to look up the venue name for any matching venues in their database. Unfortunately it does a global search and brings up venues not in the specific city that you are listing the event in. Additional Local Event Web Sites: - Zvents.com - HeyLetsGo.com - Google Calendar (You need to enter events into your Google Calendar and make them public in order for those events to get picked up in their Google Calendar Local Event Search.) Tags: upcoming, eventful, local event, local community event, community event, web site, website, internet marketing, smt, smart marketing, blog, google calendar, heyletsgo, zvents

NOYDIR Meta Tags and Weather Update

2/28/2007 7:04:00 PM

Search engines such as Google and Yahoo recently began supporting a new value for your robots meta tag that would prevent them from forcing your DMOZ (Open Directory Project) title and description to be used in your search engine results. DMOZ is the source Google uses to populate it’s own browseable directory of websites and Yahoo as well will pull information from it for listings from time to time. The issues that would result from this often would be that an old outdated name or description of a site or company would appear in listings despite the site itself having newer more appropriate information. Since DMOZ is volunteer driven getting things submitted, much less updated, has progressively gotten more and more difficult if not altogether impossible. The support of a NOODP meta tag allowed your site’s current information to override and the problem was solved. However, Yahoo has it’s own directory which has served as the core of their services for a long time, which means it often contains a lot of old outdated titles and descriptions. Getting those updated requires access to the Yahoo account that originally submitted the site for inclusion and for many people this can be information long gone as employees and email accounts change over time. The same issue could be found in Yahoo search results where the directory listing overrides a site’s careful crafted title and descriptions from the actual site. The Yahoo directory titles and descriptions are sparse and cannot contain any sales driven copy, which means being able to present an attractive listing in the search results is difficult when your directory listing overpowers. To combat this, Yahoo has announced support for a new robots meta tag value, NOYDIR, which works just like the NOODP tag. This is good news for sites locked into an outdated Yahoo directory listing! Tags: seo, title, tags, description, metas, noydir, yahoo, search, engine

Update To Google AdWords Algorithm - February 2007

2/16/2007 6:00:00 PM

If you have a Google AdWords account, check it now. You may find their update to the algorithm has taken some of your main keywords offline, requesting that you either increase the bid amount to $10 per click or increase the ad quality. We have seen this before, but the instances were pretty isolated and often were for keywords that may have not been as focused as they could have been. But with the recent change (it seems to have happened last night), no keywords seem safe. One account I manage was very suspicious. “keyword” was fine. “keywords” was not. Both terms had the same ad tile and same bid amount. They had a decent clickthrough rate and the only difference between the two was the “s”. It appears Google has put in place a very strict set of rules. The exact rule changes still elude me, but if anyone has some thoughts, please post. I have a feeling this latest Google AdWords update will be refined. Since it is unlikely that many AdWords users will accept a $10 bid; there may be a lot of terms with no advertisers; cutting into Google’s profits. Here’s hoping the revisions come sooner than later. Tags: google adwords update, google adwords, adwords algorithm, google ppc change

Importance of a Good Internal Linking Structure

2/15/2007 5:01:00 PM

A website’s internal linking structure is simply how each page links to other pages on the site. Seems simple enough, but surprisingly, many internet marketers overlook how important it is to search engines such as Google to properly display and name internal links. Each page on a website should link to many other pages on the site. The most common place to accomplish this is in the footer. It is out of the way, yet if users get lost on a site they will often look in the footer for the link they want. This is the same reason it is important to have a link in the footer to a sitemap that lists all pages on the site. If a website is a hotel, the links are doorways. The more doorways, the more chances a search engine bot will visit every room. The more rooms a search engine bot visits, the better chance a room (web page) will come up in the search engine rankings. Here’s an example of a strong internal linking structure: www.compren.com. Notice how the footer is filled with links to the main internal site pages. You will also notice each link is named according to the page it links to. For example, the link the goes to the computer repair section is named computer repair and service. This helps make that page more relevant for “computer repair and service” since there is a link on every page to this page, using the target keywords. It is obvious a search engine bot would be able to easily find this page as well. And, if I were a customer and was looking for the computer repair information, I would know this link goes to the page I want. Make it easy for search engines and users to find your pages using internal links named properly. Tags: internal linking structure, links, footer text, computer repair

Online Marketing Before or After Web Site Development?

2/14/2007 7:38:00 PM

A prospective client called in yesterday and said we just finished our web site and now we are looking for a marketing firm to drive in new business via search engine traffic and media buys. After asking for the domain name, I took a long pause and a deep breath... and said "You have a beautiful web site that showcases your product as a high end prestige brand but it is not built for online marketing success." "What do you mean?" I noted that it appeared that while the site had all the spit and polish a famous established brand and yours is new to the US market, it was not built to take advantage of the of what search engines use to index web sites. And when I asked about how they planned out the conversion path and why it took 6 steps just to get to determine the price, there was no clear answer. While we were able to come up with some opportunities for this prospect, one issue that concerned me was that they had built an entire web site and never thought about the marketing nor how people can easily purchase their high end products. So when should you concern yourself with online marketing? My Answer: Before you build define your online demand, topical issues concerning your content, development of conversion paths, utilization of current resources that you already use, product feeds, brand building and many other new and emerging areas. How can one plan for after launch success if the proper planning is not completed. I can tell you I hated telling our prospect that they didn't get what the paid for and that the web site had many weakness that actually could and will hinder their success. So if you are considering building or re-designing your web site due your due diligence first and then apply that knowledge to have your site built in a way to take advantage of as many online opportunities as possible. Simply put the marketing of your web site begins with knowing that you need a web site. Tags: web site development, design, ecommerce, marketing, seo, sem, web site conversion

What exactly is a PING and how do I do it?

2/9/2007 8:56:00 PM

A “Ping” is a basic internet program that allows one to verify that a certain IP address exists and can accept requests. Pinging acts as a notifier to search engines that you have updated your RSS feed on your site. Once a search engine receives the ping they will typically schedule an immediate refresh of your feed so they have the latest content. This is the easiest way to get your blog or RSS feed indexed by the search engines. There are two easy methods to ping a search engine. You can use the REST client method or use a pinging service such as Ping-O-Matic. The REST client method consists of a specific URL that can take optional parameters such as, site URL or site name. You can then take this URL string and place it into the browser and submit it to the site. Typically you will get a plain text reponse in the browser stating that the submission was either a success or a failure. Here are some exmaples of how you can submit your blog or RSS feed to Yahoo, Google and MSN. Yahoo URL: http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping Parameters: u = YOUR RSS URL Example: http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://blog.smtusa.com Google http://blogsearch.google.com/ping Parameters: name = NAME OF BLOG url = YOUR BLOG URL changesURL = URL OF RSS, RDF or ATOM FEED (optional) Example: http://blogsearch.google.com/ping?name=SMarT Marketing &url=http://blog.smtusa.com&changesURL=http://blog.smtusa.com/rssfeed.xml MSN(Results Supplemented by Moreover) http://api.moreover.com/ping Parameters: u = YOUR RSS URL Example: http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://blog.smtusa.com/rssfeed.xml Here are some ping submission services that you can use as well: Ping-O-Matic http://pingomatic.com/ King Ping http://www.kping.com/ Pingoat http://pingoat.com/ Tags: ping, pinging, ping service, pingoat, ping o matic, king ping, rss, google, yahoo, msn, moreover

What’s a Title Tag? Why Does It Matter?

2/7/2007 9:00:00 PM

A “title tag” is coded into each page of a site and is meant to define what a page’s content is about. It appears in the title area of a browser window and will be the default name when you go to bookmark a page. It’s defined in the underlying HTML coding of each page. Title tags are a critical part of SEO. While not as important as the content of a page in gaining rankings in the search engines, it does get heavily factored by the search engines. However, arguably its greatest importance lies in getting people to click your listing in the search results in the first place. Your title tag is used by the search engines as the blue underlined link that people will see in the list of results, and therefore this wording needs to be both engineered to the benefit of the search engines as well as actual human visitors. So how do you handle this careful balancing act? It takes a lot of experience and testing to perfect, but the general idea is to utilize keywords that are specific to the page’s content in an eye catching but meaningful way. Sounds easy right? Well now throw in that you have to do this in about 60-65 characters or risk important parts of your great phrase getting chopped off! Here’s a few bad examples: ::Awesome Widgets!!!::MyStore Don’t waste time with pointless characters and fluff words, you’re strapped for space remember. Also, search engines have been known to penalize for trying to intentionally include characters to stand out more. Besides, when have you ever searched for “::”? MyStore Offers Fast Free Shipping on A Wide Selection of Green Wid … This title has an attractive offer but what for? The length pushed the most important info out of view. Green Widgets Good for rankings maybe, but what entices the visitor to click on this link as opposed to a competitor? So what does a good title tag look like? For the examples above a good title tag might be: Green Widgets, Woggles: Free Shipping from MyStore This listing identifies what’s on the page right up front and provides an additional synonymous keyword that people might also use to describe that item. An attractive offer is presented and the branding wraps it all up. Tags: title, tag, seo, search, engine, optimization, internet, marketing