Search Competition Focuses on Innovation

You may have noticed a few changes to the major Search Engines recently. MSN has become Bing. Yahoo is now "all about you." Google has added twitter feeds to it's enterprise search. These companies are in a fierce competition to dominate the Search industry.

Their competition is resulting in innovation. Bing and Google are leading the way in visual search, however they define term differently. Google Goggles incorporates pictures taken with the new Android phones that relate to the subject of the search. Bing uses public domain photos previously uploaded to their database within certain categories. The difference is that Google users define how comprehensive the visual search can become, an organic approach if you will. Bing is building their visual search internally by adding one category after another, an artificial approach. Yahoo has a visual search that only deals with music and videos according to their strategy of becoming a more personal experience for its users. It will be interesting to see which approach will grow faster and be more valued by users.

Another innovation is of value to business users. Google is leading in this area by publishing Twitter and other social media feeds into related searches. This is an opt-in search function meaning that you can choose whether or not to display them on your search results. Businesses interested in researching their target market, trends in their industry, and managing their brand use this as an invaluable tool. Bing has opted not to include social media feeds as they claim business block most social media sites. Like Google, Bing uses GSA to search across content management systems, business applications, portals, intranets, fileshares and websites.

Yahoo is revamping their search but decline to release anything until their deal with Microsoft is finalized. They may be on the trailing edge of innovation at the moment, but they may be able to pick up the slack after learning from Google or Bing's mistakes.

The three Search Engine giants are in a leap-frog style race for search engine marketing dominance. Google seems to be leading with Bing nipping at its tail while Yahoo is limping behind. I will do my best to keep you up-to-date on the latest innovations from these companies, how they will help your business, and why you should take advantage of them. As always contact your Internet Marketing experts at www.wsimagicweb.com to access free monthly webinars, learn about ways to use technology to build your business and stay on top of your competition.

Recent News from Google

Google wants to publish out-of-print books online. Readers that I’ve talked to are encouraging the move by the search engine giant. Although, the courts see it differently, they want to make sure Google isn’t stepping on any anti-trust laws.

The authors and publishers have given their consent to Google to release their material. Should the case go in favor of Google, the out-of-print authors could reach out to an audience when they could not before. Readers will be able to read the author’s works online, on their phone, iPod Touch, or on the new electronic readers that have recently come onto the market.

The public will be able to read this material for free, but Google has to pay for the rights and set-up of the service. How will they do it? Well, the same way they have always done it: advertising revenues. This is just speculation on my part, but I foresee them placing ads on the margins of e-books that they publish.

Businesses wish to reach a captive audience might want to watch as this story develops. Imagine a group of potential customers reading books that your business sponsors! Your ad would be displayed on every page giving you repetition, retention, increased brand awareness nudging potential customers page by page toward consideration. It would be like having your product displayed in every scene of a movie.

Knowledge is the key to on-line success. Internet Marketing success is based on how much information we can collect, interpret, and leverage towards our goals. Follow this story and others like it here on on-line.blogspot.com or by consulting with an agent from WSI Magic Web. Contact us today.

The New MSN.com or Bing.com

Yahoo isn't the only one looking to rebrand themselves. MSN.com has turned into Bing.com. Claiming that the nation suffers from search overload, Bing.com is the first ever decision engine. I'm sure you've seen their really annoying commercials, but is it so different from standard search?

From what I've seen there isn't much of a difference at all. The results display the same except for a tab with more info that appears when you mouse over the right side of a listing. I was going to take a screenshot of an example of it for you, but it disappears when I'm using my capture tool.

So the search is the same, but there are some features on Bing.com to help you waste your time.

The video page mimics Hulu.com with all the popular television shows. Below the shows, it displays current music videos.

The Image search displays the images related to the image of the day. Once you enter a keyword and search for an image it works the same as Google.

Shopping on Bing.com is relatively the same except for their Cashback program. When you buy items that have a cashback symbol next to it you can get up to a 20% discount. Bing.com will email you each time you earn cashback. You can retrieve your cashback cash 60 days after your purchases. You must have earned at least five dollars. They may have convinced me to do my online shopping on Bing.com.

Bing.com does have a neat feature on their travel search called Farecast. It forecasts your fare so you can plan the cheapest fare. The drawback is that your summer vacation might be in winter, because that's when the cheapest fare is. Likewise, if you must travel on a certain date for business or a wedding or something like that, the Farecaster is not going to help you.

Visual Search is another fun feature to use although it is nothing new. Don't stray outside the predefined categories or you will get normal search results not visual ones.

One last feature I will talk about before I send you to explore on your own is xRank. XRank shows what the popular search terms for the day are. You can look up past days as well. You can also check the popularity of your search terms (Hint to business owners).

I look forward to leveraging the MSN or Bing.com. I believe, although the search is the same, the new shopping features will bring online success to businesses that use MSN as channel to reach customers. WSI Internet Consultants know just how to get your company started, contact us today.

Yahoo Begins Its Campaign

In the previous blog we talked about Yahoo revamping their service. I mentioned in late September their new national ad campaign. In case you missed TV for the past few weeks, here's the first ad of the 15 month series. This commercial just introduces the new Yahoo to consumers in vivid color and movement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULjCSK0oOlI

As Yahoo starts to re-brand themselves you should be as well. Yahoo is positioned to be the Content Portal for the entire web. Content advertising is nothing new. Your business has done it before in local newspapers, magazines, radio and television. Now that people are shifting in a major way to absorbing content online, don't you think it's time to re-brand your company online?

It used to be that only nationwide brands could market themselves on CNN.com, WallStreetJournal.com, ESPN.com and other online news sources. That has all changed thanks to the partnerships WSI has forged with Yahoo, Google, MSN and other major portals. You can now advertise locally on these nationally known networks.

The average consumer is not aware of this fact. Therefore, your local brand can look like a national brand for a fraction of the cost! The advantage of this perception by your local customers is astounding. You will gain copious amounts of creditability which leads to more sales and faster growth of your business.

We at WSI are excited about the new Yahoo and what it will help us do for you. Your online success will grow by leaps and bounds when you use WSI's proven Internet Marketing strategies. Contact us to find out how to get your business on the fast track today!

The New Yahoo and Online Success

Today an article in the Business section talked about the new Yahoo. In order to close the gap between Yahoo search and Google, Yahoo has been seeking a parnership with Microsoft. Essentially, Microsoft will handle the hardware and software for Yahoo while Yahoo focuses on the "front end" experience.

What is going to be so different about Yahoo's new front end experience? Well over the next 15 months Yahoo is launching a global branding campaign that will highlight the best elements. However, if you are a regular reader of this blog, then you know we can give you some insights into it before the traditional media catches up.

Yahoo is known for its search, email, instant messanging, and other popular applications. What thay are doing is comes from a multidisciplined appraoch to keep surfers and searchers on thier network as long as possible. In other words, they want to increase stickiness.

What they've done is hire a team of social scientists of different fields to work with their computer scientists to improve their search features. So soon you will see the top ten results as would now but with some changes. You will see content networks like CNN, Discovery Channel, etc. displayed on the left side of your search results that have links to content related to your query.

This is huge for online success. Recently, we have been seeing greater ROI on campaigns that do both paid search and display advertising. In the next 15 months Yahoo is going to be promoting content display networks even more heavily. Thus, this proven combination is taking over the world of Internet Marketing.

What can you do to take advantage of this? You need to start advertising now to beat your competition to the top positions. As we know the longer you've been advetising online, the better positioning you earn as a reward for your loyalty with the Search Engines. Also, as this starts to roll out prices are going to be lower for display. But in a short time competition will drive the prices up making it harder to get started.

As the world leader in Online Marketing we at WSI recommend you to not procrastinate on this opportunity. We advise a proactive approach in integrating this strategy into your current marketing efforts so that you get in on the ground floor. Contact us today and let us show you how this is the best time to to take on this great opportunity.

Setting Yourself Apart

From our earlier posts we've seen how the Internet has changed the way we do business, how we promote them, and the changes the Internet itself has gone through. Bottom line, it has become a more crowded and competitive space. Local businesses are competing in their local arenas and sometimes nationally or globally. With all this competition how does one set their company apart from similar businesses?

So far we've been talking about the design and promotion of your website to set you apart. Conversion-based architecture helps to ensure ease of use no matter what customer type you serve. Aggressive Internet marketing makes sure that your website is easily found, talked about, visited, and generates conversions of traffic into customers. But, what are some little extra things that will set you apart?

In Internet marketing, we call these little extras conversion tools. They improve the customer experience, keep customers on your website longer (aka create stickiness), and generate word of mouth. Below are just a few ideas, but contact us to see more and discuss their advantages.

Placing a video along with regular text gives the customer an option to choose how they consume the information provided about your company. Now you are catering to their needs. Thus, improving their experience.

Along with video we use an ROI calculator. It's a gadget that our clients can use to get a rough idea of what they can expect their returns to be for our Pay-per-click campaigns. They can play around with it for a while which give them a chance to think about their goals, so they will ready to talk budget when they contact us. Just by them spending a little extra time on our site, we capture more of their attention. The more attention then the more likely they become a client. To see the ROI calculator, click here and scroll down to the middle of the page.

The third I want to introduce is the Click-to-call element. This conversion tool allows customers to call you without them having to dial your number. It allows you, the business owner, to measure and record calls made to your business from your website. Not all click-to-call tools are the same. The one we offer has many advanced features such as the find-me-follow-me function and virtual receptionist. Both these features give the appearance of a larger company to your customers. They make sure customers find the person they are looking for and that a call never goes unanswered. Our click-to-call solution is the best one we've found, and we've looked a lot.

All in all, these tools are about the customer. What are their needs? What will hold their attention longer? What will impress them, so they tell their friends? These tools range from free to moderate price, from cheesy to impressive. Pick our brains about the ones that we've seen success with and for creative ideas for your business today. Let us help you stand apart from the crowd.

Main Street Marketing 2.0 (Part 3)

Main Street businesses are certainly familiar with traditional forms of advertising. Newspapers, magazines, billboards, bus benches, radio, and television ads are traditional forms of push marketing. Push marketing allows businesses to inform potential customers and create awareness about their company and any sales or services offered, announcements can be temporary or long standing.

Yellowpages, business directories, and tourist information centers are traditional forms of pull marketing. Pull marketing takes advantage of the awareness created. Once a customer identifies his needs or wants, he seeks out ways to contact or visit companies that offer exactly what the customer is looking for.

All of these have a direct mirror in Internet Marketing. The difference between online and traditional marketing is that businesses are:

• able to reach to a wider audience at less cost
• able to easily track the results
• able to respond quicker to customer demand

Let's look at a table where we can see the mirrors of each strategy and where they fit into the buying cycle of customer behavior.

Although they did not fit on the table, we can assume that all the traditional push strategies fit only into the purchase stage of the funnel. But to be fair we'll stick with push media for now. Pull marketing is worthy of it's own lengthy blog.

Once again the Internet has an advantage over traditional media, because it can do remarketing. Remarketing is where, because online activities are being traced, we have a second opportunity to capture purchase makers even if they did not click on our push ad. Another more detailed blog about that later.

Back to the matter at hand Display ads and banner ads are to newspaper, magazine and billboard ads as television and radio are to viral video marketing and social media marketing.

Display ads appear among the content of news and other informational sites to potential customers that are a captured audience on those sites just like newspaper and magazine ads have a captured audience. With Internet marketing the number of impressions can be accurately measured. Not so with newspaper and other print and good luck measuring how many people see your roadside billboard.

Like TV and radio ads Social media and viral videos are subject to the whims of the viewer or listener. Once ads come on they can change the station unless the ads peak their interest. With TV and radio you cannot count how many times your ad was seen or heard. Viral videos and social media can be exact to how many times your ad was watched, and unique to the Internet, reviewed by the public!

By now you should be able to the ongoing trend here. Traditional marketing while effective most of the time does not provide accurate measurement and therefore presents an iffy portrayal of your Return on Investment. Internet marketing is just as effective if not more and portrays an exact measure for your Return on Investment. For those businesses that need to watch their bottom line more closely the Internet is their best option although a healthy mix of both would be ideal. Call your WSI Internet Consultant to learn more about the best strategy for your business today!

Main Street 2.0: Local internet Marketing (Part 2)

In part 2, we are going to discuss some more similarities between how a business markets themselves on and offline. Main Street businesses spend lots of money to generate word of mouth. Let's examine the most expensive part of those activities especially for a new business: their storefront.

Main Street is popular because of all the unique storefronts that decorate the sidewalks with entertaining window displays, inviting scents wafting from restaurants, and the colorful characters that make shopping downtown memorable. Companies spend a lot of initial investment creating the right look and feel for their storefront. Every element of their design is meant to attract customers and create word of mouth. It is most effective when foot traffic or window shoppers with no set shopping agenda say,"Ooh that place looks neat. Let's check it out!" And you know, when they get home they tell their friends about this really cool store they found.

Internet Marketing has a similar expense when building online storefront. Although a website is much cheaper than designing a physical store it still needs the same care and attention. Like a window diplay your website needs to be attractive and compelling. Like having good employees your website needs to be able to inform customers to turn traffic into purchases. We call these conversions. Conversion based architecture needs to be included in your website design to make your investment effective.

Businesses want to be located on Main Street because it brings them the most foot traffic. Local internet marketing does the same thing for online traffic. Companies need to invest in IM strategies to have the best location among their competitors. Thus, they will gain the most traffic and the most customers for their type of business. Like Main Street the Internet used to be small and simple to market your business. When malls and big box stores started to compete with Main Steet, it had to up its game. Nowadays the Internet is flooded with comeptition and local businesses once again need to up their game. The best strategy for them is to leverage proven Internet Marketing techniques.

Webdesign is the starting point but you can't stop there. You need to promote it and measure the results. Traditonal media can be hard to measure. The Internet makes it easy with web analytics. Like your accountant can tell you how much ROI you are getting per sqaure foot of store space, your Internet Marketing consultant can tell you your ROI for all the ways you promote your online store. Ask a WSI Internet Consultant to show you how.

Main Street 2.0: Local Internet Marketing (Part 1)

Main Street2: Local Internet Marketing (Part 1)

More and more activities from our daily lives have gone online. It seems as if Main Street America is being replaced by the Internet. The outlook looks bleak. Why go to the bar when there’s Match.com? I can order groceries or a delivery pizza online, so I don’t need to go out. I can watch movies or local bands on YouTube or MySpace. The Internet is so convenient for all our activities why do we need to leave home?

It’s the same reason why jail is bad. Humans need to go outside and actually interact with other people. We need to get out and stretch our legs. When we can, we reward ourselves for our hard work be it dinner, drinks, clothes, or entertainment. The Internet is not going to replace our local businesses and destroy our humanity like some hard lesson learned story by Ray Bradbury. The world isn’t going to end, but the paradigm has shifted because of our other human need, information.

The Information Age is enhancing our communities by opening up communication. Local business listings on Google Maps and Yelp and other “review sites” opened up Word-of-Mouth marketing to business owners everywhere. Social Media, or Social Networking sites offers us a chance in our busy lives to build relationships in our community. Good relationships are the backbone of a local business. Internet marketing bridges the gap that used to separate companies and customers.

The opportunities to connect the span are not hard to see, but information overload can blind us to them. It’s wise to consult with an Internet marketing professional at this point (wink, wink). We are told about pay-per-click, social media, page rank, Google, Facebook, shopping carts and how great they are, but they’re not new concepts. Internet Marketing works because it’s based on traditional methods of building business-customer relations. In truth, the basic elements of T.V., Radio, Print, Yellow Pages and Word-of-Mouth have an online counterpart. The difference between traditional marketing strategies and Internet marketing is the heightened ability to track results, measure Return on Investment, adjust and adapt to market conditions and interact with customers.

The second part of this series will look at the behaviors of customers downtown and online. What makes a company competitive on Main Street and Online? Then, in part three, we’ll look at Traditional and Internet marketing side by side. How are they applied to customer behavior?

Optimized Local Business Listings

Local Business Listings as you know can be found in places such as Google Maps and Yelp.com. They are free to create in most cases and help customers determine where to shop. Business owners that invest time and creativity into their listings achieve the most success.

To get started with Google Maps you need to create a profile. This creates your listing and allows you to return to make changes. You want to include as much information about your business as possible.

Besides the obvious stuff (company name, products/services, etc.) include your business hours, charities you support, and local organizations to which your company belongs (local chamber of commerce, little league team, BBB, and local networking groups). These give you local ‘street cred’.

Next, place your ‘pin’ at the correct location on the map. Google Maps doesn’t always put it in the right place. You can also customize your pin to be a picture of your choosing. The best photo to have would be one of your storefront. This helps customers know exactly what they’re looking for before leaving the house.

Ok, now you’re all done. Not! Local business listings are free, but they take work. Google Maps and Yelp work on mutual benefit. They promote your business, and you promote theirs. You can get stickers to place in your storefront window which reminds some observant people to review you or look at your reviews, but that’s the minimum.

You need to ask your customers to write one. Even better, give them something for it. A coupon off their next purchase or a gift that’s appropriate for your product/service.

One mattress company is doing the latter with great success. Keetsa is an eco-friendly mattress store. Their products have names like “Tea Leaf Classic” and include features like “green tea memory foam”. My Mom went there to get a new mattress for her guest room. After her purchase they gave her a bag of green tea with their logo on it and asked her to write a Yelp review. This is what she wrote

Lynne A.
Alameda, CA

6/11/2009
We needed a new mattress and bed for our guest room. We did not want to spend a ton of money but we wanted out guests to be comfortable. We found just what we needed at the Keetsa store. Our shopping experience was great at the Keetsa store in Berkeley. Robert really helped us and worked with us the whole time. The mattress came in a box small enough to fit in our car (it expands after you take it out of the box) and the frame or stand was so easy to assemble you can do it without tools, Keetsa has really changed the mattress buying experience.

With Yelp, the business owner is notified when a new review is posted. He sent an email to my mother thanking her for the review. If you go to Yelp and look up this company, you will see many positive reviews about them from one-time and repeat customers.

The business owner at Keetsa is achieving online success with local business listings. By prompting his customers, whether they found him online or not, to review his business he is

· Gaining local credibility
· Improving customer service and
· Controlling word-of-mouth/ brand reputation.

All these things bring him more customers and more success. Your business could easily do the same. Check out Yelp and Google Maps for yourself. If you’re not sure which is the best review site for your type of business, contact the experts at WSI Magic Web.

Why Are Local Business Listings Important?

Local Business Listings done correctly are a great way to attract local buyers. Customers love them, because they can compare reviews from one company to another. After the buying experience customers can join the conversation by writing their own reviews.

Business owners like the listings, because they can see how people rate their business. They can see where they are doing well and what needs to be improved. The savvy business owners will even address customer complaints to ensure a positive word-of-mouth.

Before review sites, companies could not be a part of the word-of-mouth they generate. Now that the conversation between customers has gone online, the business owner can join it. In the pre-review era all a company could do was to ask customers to "tell their friends". Now the business owner can incentivize customers to review them online which reaches a greater audience than just a circle of friends.

Another reason for encouraging patrons to review your business is to gain higher display frequency. Google's local business listings (Google Maps) are rotated for each search. This means that for competitive keywords your listing might not show up a lot of the time. Listings with a greater number of reviews are rotated in more often than listings with little to no reviews. This is because Google sees reviews as business creditability and rewards companies with greater creditability.

Local business listings are a great place to start your Internet Marketing portfolio for your local business. The next post in this series will teach you how to get started and how to leverage your listings for online success.

A Word About Word-of-Mouth

Talk to most business owners and they will tell you that word-of-mouth is their best, if not only, source for attracting new customers. And why not? It's free (almost).

There are some costs to achieving positive word-of-mouth. You must have spent money training a knowledgeable and friendly staff to ensure the best customer service possible. You've no doubt given discounts, refunds, and give-aways to satisfy unhappy customers. You probably spent time and money trying to measure your customer's experience with customer comment cards and surveys. Even after all these efforts your business can't be there when word-of-mouth takes place, or can it?

Your customers are talking about you online. Search around on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Myspace, and other Social networking sites to see exactly what I mean. If you don't see anybody talking about you, then try refining your search locally. If you still don't see chatter about you, then you have an even bigger problem, and also a great opportunity. (Funny how crisis and opportunity appear at the same time.)

First, let's talk about what to do if you see people talking about your company, products, or services. You simply need to join the conversation where the word-of-mouth is happening. You may ask," How do I find out all the places where my customers are talking about me?" Your WSI Internet Consultant has tools and reports to find out for you. We can simplify the process of gaining a presence in the Social Media sphere of influence. Now let's look at the second scenario.

So, you can't find any word-of-mouth about you online. What does that mean? It does not mean that your customers don't go online. Unfortunately, it does mean that your business is not creating strong word-of-mouth, which is as good as no word-of-mouth at all. Fortunately, like having no credit you have a great opportunity to build good standing. With the slate blank you can start the conversation then invite your customers to join you. In turn, you improve customer relations and build a community around your business.

Community organizing and involvement are buzz-words today that cannot be ignored. Look at how much success it brought to the Obama campaign in 2008. It has a powerful impact in your market share. Banks have to be involved in the community by law. Most successful small to medium businesses support local Little League programs or charities. There are communities built around these important organizations on Social Networking sites. Your business could support them online as well as off. People like businesses that act beyond their bottom line. Thus, word-of-mouth grows from community involvement.

Want to know more? WSI Internet Consulting and Education is a great place to start. Visit our website to learn more about marketing your business or non-profit on the Internet.

It's Pay-Per-Click, Not Paper Clip!

Just getting the name right can be hard, not to mention running a successful campaign for your business. Many small business advertisers, with their DIY modus operandi, believe they can drive traffic to their website with an inefficient budget of $50 bidding on one or two keywords. During my time as an Internet Consultant I've met many of these guys who complain," Why don't I ever see my ads and how come I never see any traffic from them?"

The answer is that they are not properly using the Three Core Elements of a Paid Search Campaign.

1. Keyword Research
2. Keyword Bidding Strategy
3. Text Ad Creation

These elements are critical to Pay-Per-Click (PPC) success. Let's breifly review each one. If you would like to learn them in more detail, contact us at www.wsimagicweb.com to reach our expert Internet Consultants.

Step 1: Keyword Research

If you are considering managing your own campaign, take the time to extensively research the search terms that would be best for your business. Free tools such as WordTracker help you to find keywords that are popular but not competitive, A.K.A. keywords with a high KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index).

Another tool called SEMRush allows you to see what keywords your competition is bidding on and for how much! Finding keywords with high KEI is great, but you also need to be found where your competition is, so you can compete with them directly. Combining the data and advertising on all the keywords you've found from both tools will start to get you ahead of the game.

Are you starting to see why a DIY campaign of two keywords and an inefficient budget does not work?

Step 2: Keyword Bidding Strategy

Manually managed PPC campaigns have a simple but time consuming keyword bidding strategy.

• Keyword research
• Bid on new keywords
• Outbid competition

In the mind of the DIY advertiser," I will do my keyword research when I have time away from running my business, then bid on my new and current keywords when I have the time and the budget to implement it." Well, that's not good enough. Keyword research results change all the time as behaviors of Searchers and their search patterns are constantly in flux. Your average, busy business owner/ manager will be constantly behind the competition.

However, they can fix this problem by hiring a salaried employee to do it, or they can go the economical route and hire a professional Internet Consultant. WSI Internet Consultants have simplified PPC marketing for you. We do not charge an hourly rate, making it less expensive than hiring a person to work in-house.

WSI PPC keyword bidding strategy is different, because we

• Do the Keyword Research for you daily.
• Bid on hundreds of related keywords for you daily.
• Combine expert professionals with intelligent technology to keep your campaign optimized daily.
• Are managing thousands of campaigns for local businesses like yours.
• Are partners with all the major Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, AOL, etc.).

Watch a brief video of our PPC strategy on YouTube. You only need to pay a small management fee plus your ad spend, we will take care of the rest.

Step 3: Text Ad Creation

First of all there are rules. Google, Yahoo and the other major Search Engines have rules about what can and cannot be displayed in the text ads. Exclamations are right out. Offer lines are only so many characters long which count spaces and punctuation. Another is that you cannot say you are the "best" if it cannot be verified by a reputable third party. Copyrighted terms like brand names may need special permissions from the copyright holders.

Second, your ads need to be compelling. Try to stand out from your competition with an engaging offer and use strong calls-to-action. "10% off" or "call us today for a special discount" are statements that will grab traffic in the buying phase of the online purchasing cycle. Be sure your ad links directly to the page on your website with the stated offer/ coupon.

Third, you should be AB testing your text ads. That's right, you should have two or more text ads running to learn which offers are more effective for which keywords. You may have to run multiple campaigns to do this. This entails doing keyword research and bidding for each campaign for each Search Engine on which you are advertising.

Does this seem like a lot of work?

Unless you are a business owner with lots of time on your hands, this is too much work. Even your Webmaster does not have this kind of time, because he's busy building websites. Your WSI Internet Consultant will make Pay-Per-Click marketing easy and profitable for you.

We do not need to make changes to your website which means no messy code work for you. We recommend an efficient budget appropriate for your business. We manage your campaign with our expert professionals and our intelligent proprietary software (nobody else can do this). We exclusively optimize and report on your campaigns daily for free! You will always know what your campaign is doing and what your Return on Investment is, which is something the DIY advertiser cannot do themselves.

Call 1-866-690-4249 today or contact us through our Website to speak with a WSI Internet Consultant about starting a successful Pay-Per-Click Marketing campaign.

What Is Online Success?

Simply, just with any business venture, it is a measure of desired results against your investment. How seriously you take your investment has a direct impact on your success.

I have seen how expensive and ineffective websites done by amatures can hurt a small business. Because of our economic times and emerging technologies a new and expanding marketplace has developed on the Internet. The online marketplace is more sophisticated allowing consumers to learn more about the products and services to fullfill their needs.

What does that mean for your business? It means that the investment in your website or virtual storefront needs to be taken as seriously as your physical storefront. Whether you provide goods or services you have invested time and money in a prominent location, training a friendly and engaging staff, and (hopefully) effecient marketing.

Guess what, your website needs to perform as your brick and mortor location. It needs to be in a prominent location i.e. at the top of the search results for keywords related to your business. It needs to be engaging, professional, and informative like your best employees. Lastly, it needs effective marketing such as

• Pay-Per-Click: Stand out from your competitors
• Social Media Optimization: Join in the conversation with your customers and manage your brand
• Display Advertising: Build brand awareness where customers are consuming media

The great thing about succeeding online is that it is easily measurable. You and your professional Internet Marketing supplier should be using analytic tools to measure your return on investment. With them, you can see where traffic is coming from, what they are doing on your website, how they are converting into customers, and at what rate? (more on analytics in a future post or contact me)

Businesses should keep these tips in mind as they build their Internet presence.

1. Always work with a professional Internet Marketing company.
2. Always keep your website updated and engaging.
3. Never stop driving traffic to your website.

Make sure your Internet Marketing company does all of the above. WSI is a world leader in Internet Marketing with 1500 professional Internet Consultants to help your local small-medium sized business. Learn more at http://www.wsimagicweb.com/.

New Results on Google

Search Engine Optimization is constantly in flux as Google is always changing. Normally, webmasters have to optimize with a blindfold on because Google will not tell us what elements get pages ranked higher.

Recently, Google has been showing some new results as part of their beta search experiment. There are several experiments you can be a part of, but you can only do one at a time. One such experiment is "Timeline Results". These results list pages that have dates associated with the topic of their content. Here's the timeline result on 'Thomas Jefferson' (sorry about the fuzziness):

This result was at position ten on page one. Any business can do this. All they would need to do is write a short history of their product or service and let the spiders crawl.

Searchers can also adjust their search result settings with these experiments. Check out the other experiments here http://www.google.com/experimental/. There's experiments with keyboard shortcuts, web accessability, and one for your preferred sites.

As you are looking for SEO strategies keep these experiments in mind. They could be your ticket to page one results. As they say on the Google labs page,"Google is always experimenting with new features aimed at improving the search experience." This implies that at least one of the experiments will become a permanent fixture of the search experience on Google.

Down the Rabbit-Hole of Social Media Marketing

I'm working on a Trend and Competitor analysis report for a client that is interested in starting Social Media and Search Engine Optimization. I started playing around with tools like Google Insight and SEOQuake, and I went down a rabbit-hole of information.

While juggling all the data on my client and their competitors, much like the tea cups at the Mad-Hatter's, I discovered strong evidence for the previous post's claims that SMO gets websites ranked better. Compare the website in the red column with the orange, blue and green.The red website has no SEO or SMO and rarely is found. The sites in the other columns are easily found at top positions for their search terms with some elements of SEO and SMO. Notice that standard SEO elements such as robot.txt files and XML sitemaps are absent from all the sites. The red column has more indexed pages but still does not rank as well as the others. While the green ranks the best, probably from its high count of incoming links, the orange and blue are a close second without any known incoming links.

Why? Take a look at their Social Bookmarks. Orange 3, blue 11, and green has 1. What does this say about Social Bookmarking and Social Media Marketing? Volumes. It is as if Google is weighing social media activity more than incoming links. And who could blame them? Social media is a much better experience for searchers than following links from site to site. Social media provides fresh content and engage the searcher to interact.

I've come out of the rabbit-hole more convinced than ever that Social Media Optimization works. Moreover, because those inbound links still have a lot of weight, it should be implemented with a strong SEO strategy for the best results. I'm excited to show my client the report and for them to get started on SMO and SEO right away, so I can share the results with you.

PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait... wait... Rank: wait... Traffic: wait... Price: wait... CY: wait... I: wait... YCat: wait... I: wait... Top: wait... C: wait...

Social Media Helps Sites Rank Higher

Did you ever wonder whether your business should be doing anything with social media optimization or social media marketing You know, things like blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. If you think that these sites are just for the casual use of folks who want to share what they have for lunch, think again. Google and the other search engines are paying close attention to what is going on with these sites and they tend to give them lots of credibility in the search display results. The reason for this is that the search engines love new content and the social media sites and blogs are displaying new content on a regular basis.

I just had a first had example of this. We recently launched a new web site for a local dentist. The site is http://www.jamesrussodds.com/. I have been checking daily to see if the site has been crawled by the Google crawler so the site will be included in the Google index. Of course we did all the "right things" like submitting to the DMOZ project, installing an xml site map and verifying the site via webmaster tools. Still it had been a few days and the crawler had not been there yet.

But today I typed in http://www.jamesrussodds.com/ in the search bar instead of the browser bar and the site did come in the search results for the first time. So the Google crawler has just been there. But guess which page of the site that Google choose to display - well the one blog post we have done so far. Here is the page that was displayed. http://www.jamesrussodds.com/Read_Our_Blog.php

Social media optimization does seem to be the fastest way to get on the search engines. Use social media to get your site ranked.

DISH Network Partners with Google

As I was relaxing this weekend watching TV I came across a surprising advertisement. The ad announced the partnership between Google and DISH Network. It was surprising because I was under the impression that traditional media was at odds with Google. It turns out that is a great way to form alliances. 

The two allies will offer more efficient television commercials with tracking, reporting, and measurability. Advertisers will be able to use the Google Adwords system to bid on their ad placement. Like YouTube, advertisers can upload their self-created ad but directly to television. In the beginning, DISH Network will populate ads on a few national channels and expand from there. 

DISH Network already has an interactive TV feature, but there are rumors about a full ecommerce enablement further blurring the line between the two medias.  This means advertisers will be able to target by viewing behavior and track activity of ads “clicked”. Subscribers will no longer have to switch between their television and their computer to follow their interests. 

Also rumored is Google Account integration where DISH Network subscribers will be able to login to their Google Accounts with their TV remotes. Once signed-in, Google can serve more Video and Text ads relevant to the user’s television, online and search behavior. Advertisers can look forward to more airtime and higher quality leads once this feature is enabled. 

Google and DISH Network are pioneering this effort reminding us that the future is now. Who will follow Yahoo with Comcast or MSN with AOL Time Warner? All I know is that this development is huge for local and small advertisers as well as the big guys. I was surprised by the ad this weekend, but now I am excited to see what will happen next.

Create you own Google profile

Well I just created by Google personal profile. Now we will see what happens. I hope I don't get more spam but I'm open to folks finding me. Once you create your personal Google profile the link to it will appear in on your Google page and you can update it at any time.


Here is my personal Google profile : http://www.Google.com/profiles/lynneashcraft. If you want to create your own personal profile to this:


1. Sign in to your Gmail, Adwords, Knol or any other Google account.

2. Open another window and go to google and search for "me" (that's right, just type in those two letters... M and E)

3. Check at the top of the page for a link with the title "Create your own profile on Google"

4. Click on the link and begin


Soon we will all be searchable on the search engines on a personal level. While businesses have been searchable and the search engines have been replacing the yellow pages for business search, now it looks like they may replace the white pages as well.