Last week, Google announced that it would begin rolling out “Search, Plus Your World,” which is an integration of regular organic listings, PPC and social updates via Google Plus from your inner circles. For those people who thought social networking was going away any time soon, think again. This update is a bold statement by Google to say that social is here to stay; maybe more-so than ever.
Those who are unfamiliar with SEO practices should know one thing: It’s all about keywords.
While SEO is complicated from start to finish, most marketing professionals understand that linking strategies, both inbound and outbound, are one of the most significant factors in search engine optimization.
Linking a website to another is not as simple as it may seem. Getting links is one thing, but using it as a keyword strategy is a skill in and of itself.
SEOs use anchor text to link a website to another. When you create a hyperlink out of a word or a string of words, that’s called anchor text, and search engines, such as Google, factor that into their search algorithm.
s-420-90.jpg "Kindle Fire, the newest tablet to compete against the iPad")
The recent announcement of the Amazon tablet, Kindle Fire brings additional competition to the tablet market. Some tech analysts believe it is a direct threat to the Apple iPad, but others, like myself, believe it brings choice and lower prices to the tablet market, which benefit the consumer. With additional competition in this particular market, it pushes companies like Apple, HP, Dell and Amazon to improve technology while simultaneously lowering production cost so that they can offer the new technology at competitive prices. As consumers, this is fantastic, but as business people and marketers, this is even better news.
Those who are fighting for high organic rankings may be fighting a losing battle. Most generic keywords and semi long-tail keywords are sucked up and targeted by superior competition, most of them, also using pay-per-click advertising, or PPC, as part of their search engine marketing strategy.
The question, “Does paid advertising have a profound affect on organic search engine rankings?” comes up quite frequently in the search marketing world. The reality is, nobody has an exact answer except for the masterminds of the Google and Bing search algorithms.
Build a website and rack in the leads?
Wishful thinking. Any wise online marketing professional or SEO expert will tell you the exact opposite. One might think that if all time and monetary resources are into building a website that they would essentially be bringing in all sorts of leads once the launch is complete. That is completely false. There is much that goes into lead generation that has nothing to do with throwing up a website. Let me tell you, launching a new website may be appealing in the beginning, but it will slowly lose it’s value if time and energy isn’t put into keeping it fresh.
I just moved into my new home. First time home buyer, in fact. Looking back at how we found the place, I remember that my wife was surfing the web and came across http://www.portlandorhomefinder.com/ while Googling “homes in Beaverton Oregon.” All she was attempting to do was develop a list of homes she liked, but it was the marketing language and pictures that really attracted her to this particular house. Without that listing, the language and the multiple photos that were on the profile, I am not sure we ever would have bothered looking at this home. I am sure glad we did, and I thank the sellers and their agent for the time they put into attracting us towards this purchase; we could not be happier.
Blogging is something fairly new in the corporate world even though personal blogs have been around for many years. Only within the last few years have business leaders begun to understand the importance of blogging.
Leaders have had a difficult time embracing blogs for one simple reason: it doesn’t make them any money. Or does it?
Here are five reasons every business, small, medium or large, must have a blog and how it can make them money in the end:
We have reached a point in time in marketing where some things make sense, and some don’t. In the pre-internet era, it was typical that a business had an ad listing in the Yellow Pages. Consumers and businesses all had Yellow Pages, so it was widely known that many eyes would see the ad over the course of a subscription year, making it a wise marketing cost.
So if everyone used the Yellow Pages, wouldn’t it make sense to place an ad listing for your business? Yes.
If you aren’t using video as part of your business marketing plan, you better change that! With the available video-sharing websites such as YouTube, Vimeo and Dailymotion, uploading short videos has never been easier.
There was a day when websites were like brochures (some still are); they were full of text-based information and maybe a few pretty pictures for eye-candy. Now, webmasters can easily embed pictures, audio and video to enhance the visitor experience.
It’s been a year and a half since going to a movie theater, but last night I broke that streak and went to see the “Social Network.” I was intrigued at the story behind Facebook, but more importantly, I wanted to see in a a two hour snapshot how Facebook spread so quickly world-wide.
I have come to the conclusion, for obvious reasons, that between the information and new technology available to us, anything that is appealing, entertaining or important will go ‘viral’ on it’s own, without having to physically do any work yourself.
Photographer: jscreationzs