Search Engine Optimization in 2010
Search engines are always changing their algorithms, sometimes as often as twice per day, but lately there have been some major changes that will affect the way search engines produce results.
Recently, major engines like Google and Yahoo introduced a real-time search feature that scrolls recent Tweets from Twitter containing the searched keyword. With Twitter's explosive growth this year, this change now exposes the millions of conversations happening on Twitter, especially when it comes to...
Can Your Marketing Survive On PPC Alone?
There has been a lot of debate on whether a business can survive and thrive using pay per click PPC marketing alone. While PPC marketing can be very effective, using it without an organic search plan can be costly. There are several reasons PPC marketing needs to be coupled with organic search strategies. 1 Your Google Adwords bids can cost you more if your campaigns and landing pages are improperly optimized. Google states "Include specific keywords that directly relate to the specific theme...
Why Online Marketing Should Be In Your 2010 Marketing Budget
If it’s not too late, I wanted to go over your 2010 marketing budget. No, I physically can’t look over it, but what I can do is list off reasons why you should invest in an online marketing strategy. It’s a tough advertising world out there with all of the advertising options you have especially when they ALL say they deliver a good ROI. I’m not here to pick on the other guys today, I’m just here to tell you what online marketing can do for your business. The...
What Google Real-Time Search Means to Your Business
Real-time search makes social media more important On Monday, Google made a giant leap to the front of the real-time search game by adding "Latest Results", a real-time search result box, to the first page of search results. The "Latest Results" feed pulls results from major news sources, blog posts and social networks including Twitter and FriendFeed. Here's an example from Google: Try it out for yourself: Google real-time search for 'Pearltrees', a French social network. The "Latest...
Google Implements Personalized Search Based on Browser Cookie
Google announced an extension to personalized search on Friday. Google noted that they will now provide customized search results based on past search activity for users not logged into their Google account. Google will set an anonymous cookie in your browser that will store up to 180 days of "signed-out" search activity, including search queries and results you click. How will you notice the change? Google has been nice enough to place a "View Customization" link on the search results page...
How To Create An iPhone Favicon For Your Website
Favicons are very important for branding your website and your services. As you might already know, the favicon.ico shows up in several places. The greater exposure to of your brand, the better effect it will have on your visitors. Does your site have an iPhone favicon? If not, don’t worry. I’ll tell you exactly how to get one. But first, let’s look at what I mean. Load up your website in your iPhone or iPod Touch. Once it has been completely loaded, click on the...
Tips To Prepare Your eCommerce Site Tis' Holiday Season
It’s coming. The wonderful time of year when houses and stores are being decorated with lights and trees, the time when the weather is cold enough to drink hot chocolate, and the time when you start hearing Christmas music while you shop. The 2009 Holiday Season is right around the corner and you need to make sure your eCommerce site is prepared for it! Do not fret. This blog post focuses on some basic tips to make sure your eCommerce site is prepared this holiday season. Add some...
Twitter Adds Retweet Button
... and then takes it away Twitter recently made changes to the way people retweet in a limited beta release of their retweet button. Usually, retweets are done by appending 'RT' to someone else's tweet. Example Tweet: JonNegrini I'm blogging about Twitter Example Retweet: JoeSchmoe RT @JonNegrini I'm blogging about Twitter In this example I made the original tweet and Joe Schmoe retweeted my tweet. Something to remember in this method is that tweeters need to leave room in the 140 characters...
Google Webmaster Tools Keyword Significance
Google has now started showing what it believes are the most significant for you website. Here's what Google believes are the most important keywords for SMTUSA.com In a Webmaster Central Help Page updated 11/12/09 Google explains: "The Keywords page lists the most significant keywords Google found when crawling your site. The significance of each keyword reflects how often it's found on your site's pages. Click each keyword to see a sampling of pages on which it appears." Google goes on to...
Effective Call To Actions Help Increase Conversions
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...
Popular Email Newsletter Services
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...
What Google Social Search Means For Companies
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...
What Balloon Boy Can Teach Us About Social Media
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...
How To Make a CSS Sprite Rollover List Part 2
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...
Using Landing Pages to Maximize PPC Results
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...
Google Sidewiki - Steps To Claim Your Site
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...
New Google Keyword Tool
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...
Is Your Site Search Costing You Sales?
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...
Why Use CSS Sprites Part 1
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...
Understanding Google Adwords Quality Score
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...