http://searchenginewatch.com/
On September 2, 2010, In SEO, by Search Engine Watch
SMBs generally have relatively tight marketing budgets. Here’s how you can quickly figure out when you’ll see a return on your SEO or PPC investments. …
SMBs generally have relatively tight marketing budgets. Here's how you can quickly figure out when you'll see a return on your SEO or PPC investments. ...
On September 2, 2010, In SEO, by SEO, Search, and Social News and Articles from Joe Griffin and Jay Swansson
As a web developer, it is your job primarily to identify your target market and direct them to your websites. Directing traffic is the main point why we do search engine optimization in the first place.
Real-time search engine results have been a major…
As a web developer, it is your job primarily to identify your target market and direct them to your websites. Directing traffic is the main point why we do search engine optimization in the first place.
Real-time search engine results have been a major development in ... Read the Rest
http://searchconcepts.com
On September 2, 2010, In SEO, by SEO, Search, and Social News and Articles from Joe Griffin and Jay Swansson
Another added feature is being released by Apture that aims to help ease and enhance user experience especially for searches. Apture is a start-up online company that develops software that enables online publishers to enhance content through the use o…
Another added feature is being released by Apture that aims to help ease and enhance user experience especially for searches. Apture is a start-up online company that develops software that enables online publishers to enhance content through the use of media pop-ups that will feature ... Read the Rest
http://searchconcepts.com
On September 1, 2010, In SEO, by Search Engine Watch
Need help deciding where to invest your limited time in social media? Use these tips on how and where to create online conversations about your SMB. …
Need help deciding where to invest your limited time in social media? Use these tips on how and where to create online conversations about your SMB. ...
http://searchenginewatch.com/
On August 31, 2010, In Internet Marketing, SEO, by Conversion Rater
After finishing over three years at Yahoo! and almost 3 years previous to that at Right Media, I thought it’d be worthwhile to write about my experience over that very interesting time and set of events. This is simply my perspective as I know th…
After finishing over three years at Yahoo! and almost 3 years previous to that at Right Media, I thought it’d be worthwhile to write about my experience over that very interesting time and set of events. This is simply my perspective as I know that others at Right Media and Yahoo! had completely different opinions [...]
http://www.conversionrater.com
On August 31, 2010, In SEO, by Jonathan Allen
Following their new computer to phone calling service Google have launched a new beta feature for Gmail users, called priority inbox. It ranks your email according to what you read.Click to read the rest of this post…
Following their new computer to phone calling service Google have launched a new beta feature for Gmail users, called priority inbox. It ranks your email according to what you read.
Click to read the rest of this post...
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/
On August 30, 2010, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis
Everybody has a different approach to almost everything they do in life and that includes their own personal marketing strategy. With so many different DNA’s and personalities floating around in the web it is nice to see the different approaches that business owners and entrepreneurs take to execute their online marketing efforts. What type of [...]
Everybody has a different approach to almost everything they do in life and that includes their own personal marketing strategy. With so many different DNA’s and personalities floating around in the web it is nice to see the different approaches that business owners and entrepreneurs take to execute their online marketing efforts.
What type of personality does your internet marketing have?
Aggressive Internet Marketing Personality:
Do you spend almost every waking and free minute you have pumping out content and information surrounding your business? Being aggressive is not a bad marketing personality to have you just have to be careful to not upset your target audience or community. It is common nature to be an aggressive business and promoting your brand but there is a thin line between being too aggressive and a nuisance. When using the social media tools do you almost always only promote your own products and services? Do you ever take the time to use them for what they were designed for and push out any great content you find surrounding your industry?
Casual Internet Marketing Personality:
Is your internet marketing very laid back? Little bit of communication here and there but somehow it seems to work for you? Nothing wrong with that either. We can’t all be work horses and grind the skin down to our bones. Updating your Twitter account once per/week is fine if it works for you. If it doesn’t than maybe the heat on the fire needs to be turned up a bit so things work out how they are supposed to. Sometimes certain niches respond differently to different frequencies of communication. It really depends on how much knowledge you have about your industry and what they like to see come from different business and leaders in their space.
Edgy Internet Marketing Personality:
Does your marketing personality push the envelope on the seams of society? Do you like to cause a stir whether it is good or bad? This could either work 2 ways from what I have seen. Either you force this type of approach to your marketing and it really isn’t in you and it shows in your work or you poses this trait naturally and it works like a charm because no matter how much you push buttons your audience, colleagues and competitors still respect the heck out of you. Edgy marketing that might offend some and intrigue others could work great and really increase your revenues and overall branding efforts but if execute improperly it could backfire on your business quite ferociously.
Calculated Internet Marketing Personality:
Do you have a very analytical personality and mindset? Taking a calculated approach to your marketing efforts could pan out very well in the ROI department. Some companies really don’t give a hoot about branding and social communication. They tend to focus on accounting ledgers and what goes out and what comes back in which still is a very important part of any marketing campaign. It is always great to try and determine your return on investment before you approach the marketing space but it can’t always be done. If you do apply this type of personality to your marketing be careful you don’t over calculate your marketing to the point where nobody really knows who you are and you always have to market your business to acquire new business rather than building a little brand recognition resulting in a steady flow of inbound leads and sales.
There is no right or wrong path when it comes to deciding on an personality to apply to your internet marketing efforts. The best approach is the one that comes naturally to you. If you hold certain traits and characteristics as a person apply those to your online marketing or branding efforts. Don’t make your internet marketing campaign a chore. Marketing and branding your business should be exciting and fun and if you approach it that way you could find yourself growing your business very nicely while burning the image of your brand in your audiences mind.
A personality is what gives a business their stamp in front of their audience. A business having some sort of personality is much better than a business having absolutely no personality whatsoever. For some businesses that is how people remember you by. Give your audience something to snack on when conducting any of your internet
http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com
On August 29, 2010, In SEO, by Nick Stamoulis
If you are somewhat new to the SEO world and you have been given the task of finding an SEO services company to hire to help your business might leave you with some investigative work to do. There are many, many SEO companies out there claiming they are the best and if you are trying [...]
If you are somewhat new to the SEO world and you have been given the task of finding an SEO services company to hire to help your business might leave you with some investigative work to do. There are many, many SEO companies out there claiming they are the best and if you are trying to isolate the right SEO services company to partner with there are some things you should know before you make your final decision.
Don’t Base Your Entire Decision On Price
This theory can go in both directions. With many things in life if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Do you really think you are going to effectively market your business and beat out your competition on $49.95 per/month? Chances are no. This doesn’t mean that you have to go and spend $2,000 per/month either. Be realistic on what it takes to market a business online. There are distribution costs associated with some efforts, time to write articles and press releases along with the time and energy to constantly put together an ongoing SEO strategy that is going to help you grow
your business online the right way.
Research The SEO Services Company
Do a little bit of research on the companies you are thinking about working with. Find out everything about them. Search their company names online and see what you come up with. Take a look and see if other companies have done any write ups on them or what type of information is lurking in the search results for their company name. If there is nothing in the search results scratch them off your list.
Don’t Make Your Decision on Whether the SEO Website Ranks
If you search for “SEO” and you don’t see them on page 1 don’t rule them out as a company just yet. There are only ten parking spaces on the first page of Google and they can’t fit thousands of companies into this space. You have some SEO companies that have had their websites for ten plus years so it will be difficult to move them out of the way in the search results. Plus keep in mind that in our industry “most” SEO companies know exactly what they are doing so we have to compete against an industry that practices what they preach.
How Many Employees Does the SEO Services Company Have?
Think about it for a minute, if they have 40 or 50 employees chances are they have many business processes in place along with policies and protocols that are iron clad. Chances are you will hear “Sorry that is just policy” at some point during your SEO campaign. If you go with a firm that has 10 or 15 people you might have a bit more flexibility with pricing and special requests that the large firms won’t even budge on. I’m not saying every large company that offers SEO is bad to work with but you have to watch out for everything out there.
Not Every Hosting Company and Web Designer Knows SEO
Just because your hosting company or web designer claims they know how to do SEO, that doesn’t mean that they actually do. A hosting company’s primary focus was to host websites and along the way they realized that if they open an SEO division they can become slightly more profitable. Same goes with web designers and developers. Just because the recession came along and they slapped up an SEO page on their website does not mean they are trained to execute it properly.
Make Sure the SEO Services Company Speaks English
Would you really want someone who barley speaks English working on the marketing for your company? Since search engine optimization is an effort that really encompasses the art of language you need someone that completely 100% understand the language and also things like industry slang that could be a very important keyword in your vertical or niche. Someone doing search engine optimization on the other side of the world that barley speaks English is not going to get that part of the task right and you will not be running at full steam when the job is done – that is not an opinion that is reality.
Take the time to really analyze the SEO company you are going to work with before you do so you can avoid any shotty work or getting burned along the way.
http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com
On August 29, 2010, In SEO, by Scott Monty
One of the oft-overlooked elements in the routine of blogging is image selection. Now, not every blogger uses images, charts, graphs, or other visuals as part of their storytelling approach (Seth Godin, most notably, is almost always a text-only blogge…
One of the oft-overlooked elements in the routine of blogging is image selection. Now, not every blogger uses images, charts, graphs, or other visuals as part of their storytelling approach (Seth Godin, most notably, is almost always a text-only blogger). But for those of us who do, our photos can be just as important and compelling as our written copy.The art of communications and marketing is largely one of storytelling. As someone with small children, I can appreciate the necessity of images to help tell stories. Images can help to set expectations, evoke emotional responses, draw attention, provoke laughter, or symbolize irony, among hundreds of other things.
So you see, the cavalier approach to image selection simply won't do for blogging. Or shouldn't. Similarly, the sources and the rights of images needs to be taken just as seriously as choosing an image. This post is designed to help you think about where and how you choose images for your blog (or site, or brochure, or whatever), with some bonus content thrown in.
Finding Images
Let's start with the basics. You need an image for a blog post. Where should you look? There are a number of great resources that are either low-cost or free:
- Flickr The grand-daddy of all image sites. Flickr is a very powerful community with millions of photos at your disposal. There's an advanced search capability that makes it easy to pinpoint what you're looking for. Check out their Outstanding Shots,
- everystockphoto.com Is just that. A full range of free images with various levels of licensing.
- StockVault, according to its site, is a stock photo sharing site where photographers, designers and students can share their photographs and images with each other. Its sole purpose is to collect and archive medium and high resolution photos that designers and students can share and use for personal and non-commercial designs.
- OpenPhoto A little more barebones than the other sites, but with a variety of content that is sourced in a wiki-like way.
- Compfight will help you find images by text or by tag and will allow you to change the settings on licensing, original photos and safe search. The visual layout of the images is impressive and will help you more quickly assess what works and what doesn't.
- FlickrStorm is a brainstorming tool that lays out the images based on a search term that you enter and that also lets you change the settings on image rights. You can add images to your tray as you're browsing, so you can compare them later.
A note about using Flickr photos: if you plan to embed a Flickr photo in your site, there are guidelines that you need to follow. Namely, you need to use the HTML code available from the "Share this" link and provide a link back to the original photo. Please be sure to abide by Flickr's community guidelines.
If you'd like to use your own photographs but you don't feel quite comfortable with your ability, you can check Darren Rowse's Digital Photography Tips, or grab a copy of Scott Kelby's The Digital Photography Book (as well as Volume 2 and Volume 3). And a camera like a Canon EOS Rebel T1i or a Nikon D90 DX wouldn't hurt, either.
If you'd like to use your own photographs but you don't feel quite comfortable with your ability, you can check Darren Rowse's Digital Photography Tips, or grab a copy of Scott Kelby's The Digital Photography Book (as well as Volume 2 and Volume 3). And a camera like a Canon EOS Rebel T1i or a Nikon D90 DX wouldn't hurt, either.
What's all this talk about rights?
Just because an image appears on the Internet doesn't mean it's yours for the taking. Many images have copyrights associated with them. In fact, there have even been examples of companies that have gotten into trouble, as they didn't seek permission to use Flickr-hosted images before they used them in official advertising.
I'm not a lawyer (I don't even play one on TV), but I can tell you that many online images are covered by a Creative Commons license. What's Creative Commons? It's a nonprofit organization that offers free tools that help to increase collaboration and sharing. You can find out more about them here.
If you learn anything about Creative Commons, it's that they have a number of levels of licenses that authors, designers, bloggers, photographers and others can assign to their work. The categories basically come down to Attribution (giving credit), Share Alike (distribution), Non-Commercial, Derivatives (original vs. changed material). There are symbols that signify each category, and taken as a whole, you can tell what they mean. In my case, this site is governed by an Attribution-Non-Commerical-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.
cc by
This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under Attribution.
cc by-sa
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.
cc by-nd
This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
cc by-nc
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
cc by-nc-sa
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. Others can download and redistribute your work just like the by-nc-nd license, but they can also translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on your work. All new work based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also be non-commercial in nature.
cc by-nc-nd
This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, allowing redistribution. This license is often called the “free advertising” license because it allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.
It's important to understand how CC works and how it applies to your own content as well as to others'.
Editing tools
If you want a few quick suggestions for editing and other useful tools, check these out.
- Picnik Use this tool for quick editing of your Flickr photos, directly online.
- Splashup An online alternative to Photoshop or the GIMP
- FotoFlexer Self-branded as "the world's most advanced online photo editor." And highly recommedned by me.
- ResizR Powerful and easy to use tool that will resize your .jpg images online.
- And if that's not enough, this Mashable article lists 20 Great Online Image Editors
I hope these resources are helpful. If you have other suggestions or favorite sites, please leave a comment so we can all benefit from each other's collective knowledge.
Image credit: alpha du centaure (Flickr)
http://www.scottmonty.com/
On August 26, 2010, In SEO, by Search Engine Watch
A new crop of search marketers need to learn the fundamentals of our industry. Class is in session once again. Today’s lesson: organic and paid search for newbies. …
A new crop of search marketers need to learn the fundamentals of our industry. Class is in session once again. Today's lesson: organic and paid search for newbies. ...
http://searchenginewatch.com/