Search Engine Optimization Expert

Stop Related Videos - Hack YouTube's Embed Code

2010-01-21T19:43:00.006-05:00

So you like the simplicity of uploading video files to YouTube and using the embed code to display the video on your website? Me too!

I don't like the reality that comes with this level of simplicity provided by YouTube.

If your website is in any way a for-profit site you certainly have competitors and if you embed a YouTube video in your website you'll end up introducing your prospects to your competition through YouTube's convenient "related videos". Worst of all the introduction will take place on YOUR website. The other fall back about using YouTube's embed code is that if your visitors click the video once it has started playing they will click-thru to the video's page on YouTube. That's a huge visitor distraction, especially after you worked so hard to get them there!

The following example shows:
- how to stop related videos on embedded YouTube videos
- how to stop click-throughs to YouTube in embedded YouTube videos

This is how it 'could' be done. I'm not suggesting that you mess with YouTube's perfectly coded embed. It's already perfect, just leave it alone!

CLICK IMAGE TO SEE IT LARGER.

How to Improve Future Page Rank – Google PageRank Predictor Tool

2010-01-20T13:22:00.003-05:00

We found a hot Google PageRank tool that utilizes a unique algorithm to predict the future value of Google Page Rank on your website. Google PR ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank ), is the Google patented algorithm named after one of their co-founders Larry Page. The Google PR algorithm has helped set the Google search engine apart from other search engines. The PageRank algorithm takes in multiple factors to grade the relevance of your website from a scale of 0-10. The PageRank tool is available on your browser by installing the Google Toolbar and choosing from “Toolbar Options” to have the “PageRank” display.

To improve PageRank takes a lot of consistent work and effort and can be established by activities improving both onsite and offsite architecture. Key factors that contribute to the onsite relevance of your website and to improve PageRank include, but are not limited to, relevant meta-tags, optimized content, properly structured image references, proper file infrastructure, and relevant in-bound content links. There are additional factors that Google may use to determine PageRank but you will find that things change over time. Offsite factors include links inbound to your site (the relevance and PageRank of the source of these inbound links), publishing content throughout the internet that links back into the relevant content of your website, hitting the viral/social-sphere with your content and creating relevant inbound links, publishing your website content in additional media types such as audio and video, updating content to provide the search engines with fresh information, and additional factors which are ever changing as well. The scoring methods of the Google PageRank tool will continue to evolve as the internet and search marketplace grow. Check out the innovative Google PageRank prediction tool at http://www.seomastering.com/pagerank-prediction.php.

Search engine optimization (SEO) techniques will be the base to establishing a solid PageRank and to potentially improve PageRank. A comprehensive Search Engine Optimization strategy should include creating relevant meta-tags, fresh and unique content, image alt tags, file architecture and proper onsite conventions, as well as offsite conventions which include creating back-links, content syndication, and alerting the search engines you are relevant to a specific topic. Search Engine Optimization continues to evolve and is a very technical and complex science, so there are components which lie outside of the above breakdown. Using the Google PageRank predictive model tool we provided, you should be able to see that proactive SEO is occurring on your website property and as a result you should see increasing search engine rankings in the near future. Please bear in mind that this tool is simply a best guess at what your Google PageRank may be in the future and should only be used as an estimate. This is not the end all answer as to whether your Search Engine Optimization techniques are effective.

SEO.cc Recommended Article: Social Media Is the New Mass Media

2009-12-21T11:26:00.002-05:00

Insightful article in regards to current trends in the marketplace, and highlighting video adoption and potential moves social sites may take to capitalize on their popularity in the near future:

Social Media Is the New Mass Media

SEO.cc Sponsors the 2009 SFIMA Nautical Networking Event (NNE)

2009-10-19T17:10:00.002-04:00

Fort Lauderdale, FL – October 19, 2009 –
Search Engine Operator – SEO.cc an active SFIMA member and South Florida headquartered search engine marketing and interactive marketing agency is proud to announce its third consecutive sponsorship of the SFIMA Nautical Networking Event.
About Search Engine Operator – SEO.cc

Headquartered in the Las Olas District of Fort Lauderdale, FL SEO.cc is a client-centric South Florida interactive marketing agency. With its roots in search engine marketing and ROI driven results SEO.cc works closely with ‘best in breed’ strategic
partners to provide its clients with fully-encompassed online marketing strategies.

Search Engine Operator’s past SFIMA sponsorships include:
- 2007 SFIMA Nautical Networking Event (NNE) – Marketeritaville
- 2008 SFIMA Charity Casino – A Night In Monte Carlo
- 2008 SFIMA Nautical Networking Event (NNE) – Rock the Boat
- 2008 SFIMA Holiday Event – SFIMA Holiday Wine Party and Guru Bars
- 2009 SFIMA Event - Using Search to Beat the Economic Blues

About the 2009 SFIMA Nautical Networking Event (NNE)

Setting sail aboard the 170 ft. Lady Windridge Yacht from the Tranquility Marina in Fort Lauderdale, FL on October 23, 2009, the SFIMA NNE is themed “Unmasking Your Potential”.

With an expected turn out of over 400 SFIMA members and interactive marketers from around the world the 2009 SFIMA Nautical Networking Event will be the place to meet innovative market leaders in today’s world of interactive marketing and business development. As always the SFIMA NNE will host networking games, music, dancing and entertainment along with hors d’oeuvres, open top-shelf bar and a dinner buffet.
Upon disembarking the Lady Windridge at 10:30 pm SFIMA’s guests will gather again for the SFIMA NNE After Party.

About SFIMA - The South Florida Interactive Marketing Association
Through monthly educational seminars and annual charity networking events SFIMA hosts an open platform for interactive marketers and businesses to connect. After being founded by Sheryl Cattell in 2003 SFIMA has quickly grown to hundreds of members through the hard work and dedication of board members, volunteers and event sponsors.

SFIMA’s strong connections and large following give it the leverage to present industry leaders and game changing case studies to its members in the monthly educational seminars held at local South Florida hotels like the Fort Lauderdale Beach W and the Las Olas Riverside Hotel. SFIMA also coordinates and hosts the Annual SoFIE Awards (South Florida Interactive Excellence Awards) and the Annual iHack Golf Tournament.

SFIMA has a lot planned in 2009 aside from the legendary 2009 NNE and the lineup includes:

Reshaping Marketing with Video & Social Media: Keynote speaker Jessica Kizorek will present to SFIMA attendees the latest trends in online video, branding and social media marketing.

Wine Social and Guru Bar: Hosted at the Seventh Street Wine Company the SFIMA Wine Social and Guru Bar is often referred to as the SFIMA Holiday Party. In this annual gathering SFIMA members and guest socialize while experiencing a variety of fine wines from around the world.

Those interested in tapping into the education and opportunity present by SFIMA can attend an event as a onetime attendee, enroll into SFIMA as an Annual Individual SFIMA Member, participate as a company with a SFIMA Annual Corporate Membership (3 or 5 seats) and contribute via sponsorships like the 2009 SFIMA Nautical Networking Event (NNE).

Landing Page Marketing

2009-08-17T10:11:00.002-04:00

We have found landing page marketing to be an effective tool to complement marketing a complete website. Through the use of Search Engine Marketing – Pay-Per-Click campaigns, a landing page allows us to drive visitors toward a specific service or item our client is looking to market.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is a one page website with specific content used to focus visitors on only the information you would like them to see at the point of time during the visit.

What are the advantages and disadvantages to landing page marketing?

We have found landing page marketing to have the following advantages:

Creation of opt-in forms that allow users to quickly submit their preferences and qualifying lead information the marketer desires.

Visitors are drawn into a targeted marketing pitch based on the advertisement that drew the search visitor into your landing page.

Landing pages allows visitors to see the message an advertiser intended for them to see and not to get lost in the content and layout of a website looking for the information they originally requested.

Strong opportunity for marketing a particular service as an interested user has landed on a particular landing page.

Teaser essence of content allows marketers to pique landing page visitor interest and follow-up once the advertiser’s requested information is submitted.

Attention is quickly retained and focused on the message the marketer would like the website visitor to see and understand about the company services – and respond to a call to action.

Website content is limited in content to one page and a thank you page to allow for limited user navigation and focused interest.

We have found landing page marketing to have the following disadvantages:

Information seekers or researchers on a website may not find what they are looking for based on the limited content of a landing page.

Users of a website are limited to the exposure of information about a particular brand or item.

Landing page marketing is very effective for lead generation which becomes a core variable of new business generation. A landing page should be combined with efforts of Sponsored Search Marketing (Pay-per-click, PPC, or Cost-per-click, CPC) campaigns or controlled forms of search marketing which are most often paid for on a click basis.

We suggest creating landing page strategies around particular services or messages you would like to get out to web visitors.

For Mozilla, Google, group hugs get tricky

2009-07-26T23:21:00.003-04:00

Below is a New York Times article that covers Firefox and it's presence in the marketplace. Enjoy - some quick facts from the article:

Current browser market share:
Chrome has just under 2% of the browser market
Firefox’s share has kept growing, to 22.5% from 19.5%.
Microsoft’s has continued to decline, to 66% from 72% - though it argues that most of that loss has been on computers that don’t readily support Internet Explorer, such as those from Apple.
Source:Net Applications

Google Search Deal Revenue numbers for Mozilla and Status:
Google-Mozilla search deal revenue accounted for 88% of Mozilla’s $75 million (Rs363 crore) in revenue in 2007, according to its most recent tax filings, and it was recently renewed through 2011.

Article in Full - below:

For Mozilla, Google, group hugs get tricky
The rise of Firefox, Mozilla’s browser, has unleashed a wave of innovation, competition among browser makers
Miguel Helft / NYT
Mountain View, California: Boxes lined the cubicles and hallways in the offices of Mozilla on a recent afternoon, and its chief executive, John Lilly, seemed a bit disoriented as he looked for a place to sit. Mozilla, which makes the Firefox Web browser, had just moved from one end of this city to the other, mainly to gain more space for its growing work force.
Yet it was hard not to read symbolism into the move. Mozilla’s old offices were next door to Google’s sprawling headquarters. For several years, Google has been Mozilla’s biggest ally and patron. But in September, it also became Mozilla’s competitor when it unveiled its own Web browser, Chrome.
Success story: Software engineers at Mozilla’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. Firefox has captured nearly a quarter of the browser market by focusing on speed, security and innovation and its ascent is one of Silicon Valley’s unusual success stories. Noah Berger / NYT
Success story: Software engineers at Mozilla’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. Firefox has captured nearly a quarter of the browser market by focusing on speed, security and innovation and its ascent is one of Silicon Valley’s unusual success stories. Noah Berger / NYT
So it seemed only natural for Mozilla to move out from under Google’s shadow.
“We’ve learnt how to compete with Microsoft and Apple,” says Lilly, a soft-spoken, earnest 38-year-old. “Google is a giant, of course, and competing with them means we are competing with another giant, which is a little tiring.”
Those big companies weren’t giving much thought to browsers when Firefox was released in 2004, and neither were most ordinary Web users. A browser was just a window onto the Web, and people often used whatever was already installed on a computer. Usually that meant Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
Since then, Firefox has captured nearly a quarter of the browser market by focusing on speed, security and innovation. Its success is all the more remarkable because it was built and marketed by a far-flung community of programmers, testers and fans—mostly volunteers—coordinated by a non-profit foundation. It is a shining example of the potential of open source software, which anyone can modify and improve, and its ascent is one of Silicon Valley’s most unusual success stories.
In short, Mozilla showed the world that browsers matter. Now the challenge is to keep proving that Mozilla matters.
The rise of Firefox unleashed a new wave of innovation and competition among browser makers. Microsoft, which makes Internet Explorer, and Apple, which makes the Safari browser, have narrowed the gap with recent upgrades. That makes it less likely that people will take the trouble to seek out and install Firefox.
At the same time, the Web has been expanding accessibility from personal computers (PCs) to powerful mobile phones such as the iPhone. Firefox won’t have a mobile version ready until later this year.
And then there is Google. After introducing Chrome, a lightning-fast browser designed to run increasingly complex Web applications, Google upped the ante. This month it said it would put Chrome at the centre of a new operating system—the software that handles the most basic functions of a PC.
“Google, Apple and Microsoft can all throw a lot of resources toward improving their browsers. Mozilla, not so much,” says Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. “When it was them against Microsoft, it wasn’t such a big problem. Now that there are other alternatives, it becomes harder for them to retain relevance.”
Despite Mozilla’s mighty and increasingly competitive rivals, the spread of Firefox has continued. Nearly 300 million people around the world use it, making Firefox not only the most successful open source consumer product, but also one of the most successful software programmes ever.
To a large extent, that success sprang from a disparate community that coalesced around Firefox and was harnessed by Mitchell Baker, Lilly’s predecessor. Baker, whom Lilly calls the “conscience” of Mozilla, remains its chairwoman and is actively involved in managing it.
Baker, 52, seems to embody Mozilla’s anti-corporate ethos. Unlike the clean-cut Lilly, Baker has a decidedly counterculture look. Her hair, dyed a reddish colour, is closely cropped on one side and shoulder-length on the other, and she is prone to wearing sandals with hiking socks.
She organized a recent meeting of non-profit groups at Mozilla that ended with what she called a “psychic group hug”—not a literal embrace, but a chance for everyone there to describe in one word how they were feeling.
For Mozilla and its millions of fans, Firefox is not just cool software but also a cause: to ensure that no company, whether Microsoft, Google or anyone else, can tilt the Web to its advantage by tweaking its browser to favour its products or applications. Microsoft appeared ready to use that tactic after its browser vanquished Netscape’s.
Baker envisioned Firefox as a counterweight to that possibility, and a way to make browsing safer. In the years after Netscape’s demise, Microsoft essentially stopped improving Internet Explorer, and the browser quickly became vulnerable to security threats, an explosion of pop-up ads and other annoyances.
Firefox was faster, safer and blocked pop-ups. It also offered some compelling innovations, such as tabs, which allowed users to have multiple pages open inside a single browser window. Word of its virtues spread quickly, first in the technology world, then through a rapidly expanding fan base.
Today the model remains the same. Only a small fraction of the people involved in building Firefox are paid employees at Mozilla, which has about 250 workers. An additional 1,000 or so programmers contributed code for the most recent Firefox release. There are also tens of thousands of other volunteers who help test and promote Firefox, write add-ons and help translate it into more than 70 languages.
“We succeeded because more people got engaged, helped us build a better product and helped us get the product into the hands of people,” Baker says. “We succeeded because of the mission.”
That community’s fervour was heard in a recent weekly conference call for engineers who build Firefox. The call, moderated but open to anyone, had 30 participants, some in Mozilla offices and others scattered worldwide.
The conversation bounced from one technical topic to another: user interfaces, bug tracking, security. Then someone interrupted to announce that in just a few hours, one million people had downloaded the new Firefox 3.5. The group erupted in cheers. (By the next afternoon, the number had topped six million.)
“Mozilla is about a community coming together and saying it can compete with the largest software company in the world,” says Sandeep Krishnamurthy, director of the business administration programme at the University of Washington at Bothell, who recently wrote a paper on Firefox’s success. “There really is nothing like it.”
Across the globe, Vineel Reddy, 21, an engineering student in Hyderabad, India, basks in the satisfaction of having contributed to that success. Drawn to the Firefox mission, but not particularly good at programming, he decided to work on promoting Firefox. He rallied some friends who were skilled at video editing, rented a camera and produced a flashy clip that compares Firefox to a slick sports car.
The video has been seen more than 33,000 times, and Reddy says he gets daily email messages thanking him. “This is the best experience I have had,” he says.
Lilly says it was that kind of dedication from volunteers that enticed him to move from a career in venture capital and to join Mozilla in 2005.
“As Americans we’ve lost the sort of civic engagement, the participation in making the world what we want and what we think it should be,” says Lilly, who became chief executive last year. “That, as a mission and as a product ethos, resonated with me.”
Lilly readily acknowledges that Google’s entrance into the browser market rocked the Mozilla boat. “Life was simpler before they did this,” he says.
That said, Chrome’s release does not signal a return to the browser wars of the 1990s, when Microsoft poured resources into crushing the upstart Netscape.
For starters, Mozilla and Google have long had an agreement that makes Google the standard home page when people start Firefox, and sends them to Google when they type something into the search box at the top of the browser.
The deal accounted for 88% of Mozilla’s $75 million (Rs363 crore) in revenue in 2007, according to its most recent tax filings, and it was recently renewed through 2011. (The gusher of income from Google prompted the non-profit Mozilla Foundation to set up a taxpaying subsidiary, the Mozilla Corp., in 2005.)
The deal has helped Google gain market share in search. But Google has also been among the biggest beneficiaries of Firefox’s success in other ways.
Google’s fortunes are tied to the advancement of the Web. As browsers become faster, more standardized, more secure and more capable of running complex Web applications, Google’s services, such as search, Gmail, maps and office software, become easier to use and more popular, and Google earns more money. Firefox’s innovations have helped with this.
“Mozilla has done an amazing job,” says Sundar Pichai, a vice-president of engineering at Google who heads the development of Chrome.
Pichai says that because of Mozilla’s vital role, the company thought long and hard about the impact Chrome would have on Firefox. Google eventually came to believe that it could help spur even more innovation in browsers by building its own, he says. And it made Chrome open source, so any advances it makes could be adopted by others, including Mozilla.
“We were all very clear that if the outcome was that somehow Mozilla lost share to Google, and everything else remained the same, internally, we would have been seen as having failed,” Pichai says.
So far, Chrome doesn’t appear to have hurt Firefox. Chrome has grabbed just under 2% of the browser market, according to Net Applications, a company that tracks browser use. During the same period, Firefox’s share has kept growing, to 22.5% from 19.5%. Microsoft’s has continued to decline, to 66% from 72%, though it argues that most of that loss has been on computers that don’t readily support Internet Explorer, such as those from Apple.
In many ways, Google and Mozilla are fighting the same battle, albeit not with the same objectives. They both contend that the Web should be open and based on common standards—Mozilla because it is its mission, Google because it is good for its business.
“Most days we are aligned with them,” Lilly says. “Their focus on the open Web is pretty amazing.”
But he says financial pressures may someday push Google to start using Chrome to favour its own services. That danger, he says, “clarifies for me how important it is for independent organizations like Mozilla to exist”.
©2009/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Corporations Lag On Adopting Social Media

2009-06-29T09:31:00.001-04:00

Below find an article about the early adoption of Social Media for consumer/personal purposes, and information about how corporations should look to adopt the medium and where it is going.

Corporations Lag On Adopting Social Media

By Mike Sachoff - Mon, 06/29/2009 - 06:45

Just starting to understand potential

Social networking has increasingly become more visible in the workplace, and its functionality is being leveraged by companies globally, according to a new survey from Frost & Sullivan.

A majority (80%) of respondents said they personally use Web 2.0 technologies to connect and share with friends and family while at work. More than half (54%) said they use social media for professional purposes such as connecting with colleagues, generating leads, and working on projects.
Vanessa Alvarez
Vanessa Alvarez

"However, despite the current hype of social sites such as Facebook and Twitter, social networking platforms are still perceived as being used only for social purposes," said Vanessa Alvarez, Industry Analyst with Frost & Sullivan's Unified Communications practice.

"Enterprises, both big and small, are still just beginning to understand the potential of Web 2.0 tools and public and private social networking platforms. The next level of productivity will occur when enterprises can use these tools to go beyond the social aspect, and harness the unlimited potential of these tools to more effectively manage workflows and drive business."

Social networking sites are the most used Web 2.0 tool. Nearly three-fourths of respondents report using social networking sites for personal use within an organization. Besides social networking sites, other tools used include, blogs, wikis, and teamspaces.

The majority of respondents indicated that their organizations have written policies concerning the use and access of social networking sites. Among those individuals working at companies without a written policy, 80 percent work in organizations that allow access to such sites, despite no formal policies.

The survey also found client relations, advertising, marketing, and other business communications are not part of most organizations' use of social media. The majority of respondents said their organizations use social media primarily for internal use, staff relations and training.

"Social networking and other Web 2.0 technologies are literally changing the way people think about collaboration, and how willing they are to share information," says Melanie Turek, Industry Principal with Frost & Sullivan's Unified Communications practice.

"Organizations have always looked for ways to make their employees more collaborative; today, they need to look for ways to make their collaborative employees more effective."

Comparing Google to Bing? New Cool Tool!

2009-06-04T00:05:00.003-04:00

Check out this cool new tool created to see Google results next to the new MSN Search Bing results - google vs bing compare for your self!

Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc - CEO
866-999-4SEO

Bing - The New Search Engine Being Released by Microsoft

2009-05-30T18:16:00.003-04:00

Preview for the new search engine developed by Microsoft called Bing - check it out:

http://www.decisionengine.com/Default.html

Communication Overload - The New Social World

2009-05-22T00:56:00.002-04:00

Check out this site ThatsNotCool.com, it is a great campaign!

-Zach Hoffman

Google Analytics - Lollapalooza Tracks Social Media Campaigns with Google Analytics

2009-05-18T11:44:00.002-04:00

Below is a great article from the Google Analytics blog about tracking Social Media Campaigns using Google Analytics.

Lollapalooza Tracks Social Media Campaigns with Google Analytics
Friday, May 15, 2009

Let’s face it: Social media is here to stay, and day by day it continues to encroach on nearly every aspect of our online lives. But to publishers, promoters, advertisers and site owners, there’s one essential question left hanging in the air long after the race to join the social media crowd: “Is it working?”

This year’s Lollapalooza Music Festival is using Event Tracking and Google Analytics to find out.

Social Media Applications

There may not be a more perfect application of social media than promoting a music festival, and C3 Presents, (the folks behind Lollapalooza) came up with some good ways to capitalize. This year’s lineup page alone features a Facebook Connect application to maintain and share personal lineups, MySpace blog, bulletin and site postings, Twitter updates and email sharing, and AddThis social bookmarking.
“You don’t find anyone who thinks social media is a bad idea, but the questions on our minds are, ‘what is this doing for our fans and what kind of return are we getting back on this investment?’” says Michael Feferman of C3 Presents.

Questions to Answer

As with any successful web analytics strategy, this one started out by posing the questions that Google Analytics should answer. Specifically:

* Who’s using these sharing and social media outlets? Are they benefiting?
* Which ones are being used the most and what are their applications?
* Does social media make a visitor more likely to buy a ticket?
* Are we driving more traffic to our site as a result? Are we driving more sales and revenue?

WebShare, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant, was brought in to help implement and configure Google Analytics to help answer these questions. Measuring the impact of social media for Lollapalooza has two sides:

* The impact on those who use social media applications while on the site
* The impact of those who arrive at the site as a result of social media

The Implementation

Event Tracking and Campaign Tagging were employed in order to provide the data required to answer these questions.

Event Tracking

While a user is on the site, events “fire” as the visitor interacts with the various social media applications. Lollapalooza tracks when sharing applications are clicked, when users log into Facebook accounts via Facebook Connect and perform various actions, and when visitors register or log into their Lollapalooza accounts.

*Actual values have been modified

Drilling down into the event categories, actions and labels reveals even more about user behavior, and coupled with the secondary dimensions and pivot tables that were recently announced, we can answer some very detailed questions, like:

How much revenue and how many transactions resulted from visitors in Chicago that used Facebook Connect and found the site via the keyword “lollapalooza 2009”?

*Actual values have been modified

Campaign Tagging

In order to track visitors arriving at the site as a result of social media, links that are generated and shared are tagged with unique values to define campaign parameters. The reports and segmentation options of Analytics then help us understand these visitors and their value in terms of Goal and Ecommerce conversions.

When visitors share via Twitter, for example, a pre-populated message with a bit.ly compressed link is used that includes Google Analytics campaign tag parameters:

When followers of this user click on the link, Google Analytics attributes the visit to a source of “twitter” and a medium of “share”. This data is then available in our reports, and we can answer questions like:

What kind of revenue and ticket sales resulted from Twitter sharing yesterday?

*Actual values have been modified

The Results

The data continues to roll in, but some impressive insights have been gained so far:

* Over 2/3 of the traffic referred from Facebook, MySpace and Twitter is a result of sharing applications and Lollapalooza’s messaging to its fans on those platforms.
* Users of the social media applications on Lollapalooza.com spend twice as much as users that don’t.
* “Fan Engagement” metrics such as time on site, bounce rate, page views per visit and interaction have seen significant boosts across the board as a result of social media applications.

More details and findings are available on C3's digital marketing blog.

“This kind of data is fantastic,” says Michael. “Not only does it help us give our fans what they want, it let’s us know how they respond to it and tells us that these efforts are worth it.”

Other Resources

To learn more about the reports, configurations and features highlighted in this post, take a look at the following resources:

* Event Tracking with Google Analytics
* Campaign Tagging and tracking traffic sources
* Secondary Dimensions and Pivot Tables

Posted by David Booth of WebShare, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

Hulu Video Content - Adds Another Publisher

2009-05-03T14:19:00.001-04:00

Disney has invested into Hulu and agreed to syndicate video from there ABC shows on the Hulu website. Check out this article as it target how Hulu Niches Video to Challenge YouTube.

Ad Inventory Increases Across the Web

2009-05-03T14:13:00.002-04:00

Below find an article about how ad inventory is increasing across the web and ad networks are beginning to evolve to have greater focus. And the ad copy / content is increasingly important when it comes to banner creative.

Health Related Triggers for Baby Boomers

2009-05-03T14:02:00.002-04:00

68 percent of boomers go online after seeing a health-related TV commercial. 80 percent click health-related ads.

Source: Marketing to Baby Boomers

Demographic and Their Differences in Web Behavior

2009-05-03T13:57:00.002-04:00

This article Men Want It Fast, Women Want It All by Jason Lee Miller at WebProNews covers ideas as to how e-tailers and all website owners in general can learn to market better to different sexes through slight web design changes.

Marketing to Women Through Design

2009-05-03T13:55:00.003-04:00

Check out this article by part of the team at Future Now Inc. about how the new Mint.com through some graphical and interface changes were able to change the behavior of there target demographic and increase sales by 20%

Marketing to Women Through Design

Twitter Used to Create eCommerce Venture

2009-05-03T13:34:00.001-04:00

The below article discusses how twitter is being used as a creative tool for helping eCommerce consumers find items when comparison shopping online.

Using Twitter for a Fresh Approach to eCommerce

By Chris Crum - Fri, 05/01/2009 - 13:52

Startup Uses Twitter to Inject a Human Element into Online Shopping

WebProNews looked at some interesting research from Forrester and Shop.org this week, which indicated that while online retail sales have been increasing, those for the majority of web-only businesses have actually remained flat or on the decline.

One startup launching this week thinks injecting a little human touch into eCommerce can be a way to combat this. Naturally, Twitter is the medium the company's using to do this.

The company is called IMshopping, and aims to provide an online version of the salespeople who answer your questions in a brick and mortar store like Best Buy or Foot Locker. Basically the concept is that consumers ask IMshopping questions through Twitter about products they are seeking, and IMshopping points them in the right direction.

"Just send any shopping question as an @IMshopping within Twitter (i.e. @IMshopping Where can I find an authentic Larry Bird jersey for under $100? OR @IMshopping Where can I find a LG stainless steel, bottom-freezer refrigerator for under $1000?)," a spokesperson for IMshopping tells WebProNews.
IMshopping on Twitter

The site is launching with human guides answering questions and over time the company will roll out programs for general consumers to earn value from assisting on searches and getting rated for the quality of their answers. "We can't comment more on this program right now but it will be a game-changer in terms of community incentives," the spokesperson says.

I am reminded of ChaCha, but this is strictly for shopping, and has the potential for gaining a larger following, simply because of the Twitter factor. IMshopping does have a web site that can be used just the same, but with the right marketing, I can see avid Twitter users going this route simply for the convenience factor.

Yes, consumers could simply search for what they're looking for on Google or another search engine, but we've seen examples in the past of businesses using Twitter to help users find what they were looking for, and with this as a primary goal of IMshopping, there could be a place for it.
Prashant Nedungadi - CEO of IMshopping
Prashant Nedungadi - CEO of IMshopping

"We believe human assistance will create a deeper level of e-commerce satisfaction that doesn’t exist on the Internet today," says IMshopping CEO and Founder Prashant Nedungadi. "There is a lot of information out there, but very little help when online shoppers need specific answers that will make or break their purchasing decision. At brick and mortar stores, human experts fill such a void, but on the web, it doesn’t exist. We developed IMshopping to bring the same level of personalized assistance to online shoppers."

"Twitter is the ideal medium for having a conversation; Online shoppers have the option to communicate privately with the expert on Twitter, or publicly so others can benefit from the right choices," he adds.

Is the service going to change the face of the web? Probably not, but it's an interesting look into how Twitter can be implemented directly into a business model. IMshopping has secured a $4.7m round of funding from South Korea Telecom Ventures.

As a business model, IMShopping collects revenue when consumers buy products that are recommended through the site. The spokesperson tells me that he company is staying quiet on future business plans but Prashant's background (he founded Andale, which is now Vendio) seems to suggest there may be bigger B2B plays as well.

Reckitt-Benckiser to Shift $20 Million to Web From TV - Decision Driven by Need for More-Efficient Ad Rates

2009-04-10T10:29:00.002-04:00

Find the article below that covers a major shift in marketing budgets from traditional to online.

by Andrew Hampp

Published: March 30, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Reckitt-Benckiser will cap off its fifth straight year of organic sales growth with a new recession-approved media strategy: moving TV dollars to online video.

The company plans to shift an estimated $20 million in TV ad dollars to the web for more than 15 of its brands, including Lysol, Air Wick, Mucinex, Finish and Clearasil. The strategic shift is significant for the company, which has traditionally spent upward of 90% of its $475 million measured-media budget on TV, and less than $1 million in measured spending on the web in 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Even though its 2008 internet advertising through the first half was already double its full-year internet spending in 2007, it was still only 1% of media spending.

Planting roots online
The effort goes into effect April 1 and will include partnerships with over a dozen video ad networks such as Glam, Tidal TV, YuMe and BrightRoll.

Marc Fonzetti, Reckitt-Benckiser's media manager and internet specialist, said the company has dabbled in social media and e-mail-based consumer-relationship-management promotions in the past but had yet to plant any major roots in online video until now. "We've seen a fundamental shift in consumer consumption and media habits migrating over to digital video. Obviously YouTube started it, but we want to aligned with professional content," he said. "With broadband getting to the scale that it has, the shift has happened. The integration of traditional and digital media is here now."

Reckitt-Benckiser's spending shift from TV to online has been in the works for more than a year but was accelerated by a need to find more efficiency in the cost to reach 1,000 viewers, or CPM, said Adam Kasper, senior VP-director of digital media for the marketer's digital media agency, Havas' Media Contacts. "The CPM was the driving factor here. We needed to make it compelling from a buying standpoint in terms of how these CPMs related to TV CPMs, and we had to deliver the impressions more efficiently than TV did," he said, by reaching a more targeted audience.

That's why the company opted for ad-serving networks over TV network sites such as Hulu, ABC.com, CBS.com and NBC.com, as the latter often charge significantly higher CPMs than ad networks. Mr. Kasper said Media Contacts and Reckitt-Benckiser pushed hard for CPMs that were "well into the single digits" to get more bang for the marketer's newly digital bucks, and described the results as a first for online video. "To have a big TV advertiser take such a big portion of their TV budget and put it into online video, and to do so with such an aggressive goal from a pricing standpoint, really shook up the industry."

Focus on ROI
It's a still-nascent industry, however. Scott Ferber, CEO of online video ad network Tidal TV, said the main factor that has prevented major consumer-package-goods companies such as Reckitt-Benckiser and others from investing heavily in online video has been the volume of inventory required to buy TV-equivalent audiences. The CPMs took a hit for networks such as Tidal TV, because "when you buy volume, you have to buy cheaply, because volume costs," he said. With the recession also driving pricing down, Mr. Ferber said he expects online CPMs to reach a more stable level in the next three years.

Reckitt-Benckiser's Mr. Fonzetti said the campaign will be measured using a method that combines TV's gross rating points with the web, with additional interactive layers such as online coupons and click-throughs driving traffic to each brand's microsite. Each brand's audience metrics will then be paired with data from Nielsen's Homescan panel, a shopper product that uses ad exposure on TV and the web to determine in-store purchasing behavior.
"Everything is ROI-focused and needs to be accountable," Mr. Fonzetti said. "That's why this program has taken us so long to develop. We want to make sure everybody is comfortable behind this."

Linked In PPC - Sponsored Search Marketing Discussion Reply

2009-03-17T00:24:00.002-04:00

In response to a linked in discussions post:

It seems you have two questions 1) forecasting PPC traffic techniques and 2)
Looking into metrics like conversions, CTR, Clicks, CPC and cost per conversions. Can anyone help with formula or formulas??

* Forecasting PPC traffic techniques: I would recommend using various resources which would include WordTracker.com, Compete.com, Google Insights for search, and others you may find useful. Simple ways to use the above would be:

* Wordtracker - type in a generic term you are considering targetting and learn various related terms that may be closely related to your generic term.

* Compete.com - will allow you to type in a competitor's website address (URL) and get a look into the keywords driving traffic to there website.

Google Insights for search - will allow you to see trends of what people are searching base on the month of the year - using this data in correlation with your wordtracker today will give you an idea as to search volumes

You may also want to checkout tools available in Google AdWords.

* Looking into metrics like conversions, CTR, Clicks, CPC and cost per conversions. Can anyone help with formula or formulas??

CTR = Clicks / Impressions

CTR = Click Through Rate
Clicks = number of visitor's clicking on your advertisement
Impressions = number of times your advertisement displays

CPC = cost per click or PPC = Pay Per Click
CPC is calculated based on your bid, quality score, conversion rate, and other bids in the marketplace.

Cost per conversions = total cost of marketing divided by number of conversions from your marketing.

Hope these explanations help - feel free to touch base if you have any questions.

Zach

SEO.cc Sponsored SFIMA Search Event

2009-03-12T23:46:00.004-04:00

Tonight we sponsored the SFIMA - South Florida Interactive Marketing Agency - monthly event. It was a great event and brought out many people in the local South Florida business world to learn how to utilize search to increase their business'.

The lineup included speakers from four major companies involved in the search marketing business including:
Jay Berkowitz from 10 Golden Rules
Zach Hoffman from SEO.cc
Lindsey Kammandel from BeyondROI
Kim Presser from SLI Systems.

Jay Berkowitz from 10 Golden Rules covered social marketing through mediums like Twitter.
Zach Hoffman from SEO.cc covered sponsored search strategies including Campaign Day Parting and Search Query Keyword Discovery.
Lindsey Kammandel from BeyondROI covered long tail keywords and ad copy calls to action to turn searchers into buyers.
Kim Presser from SLI Systems spoke about how smart search on your website can increase user participation and results.

It was an awesome event and a lot of people in the community came out. Thank you SFIMA for creating these educational opportunities for the local internet marketing space.

Zach Hoffman

Keyword Match Type Optimization for Google AdWords PPC

2009-01-05T11:20:00.001-05:00

Broad, phrase, exact keywords match topics, why?

Sponsored search marketing strategies are constantly evolving with the search engines. The complexity to properly manage and optimize a sponsored search account continues to evolve with the structure of organic search results. From optimizing many sponsored search accounts one key component we continue to see clients and other search marketing companies miss implementing is different match types for keywords. Google has the most complex and widely used sponsored search program called Google AdWords so we will base our analysis of keyword structure setup on their platform.

AdWords allows you to target three keyword match types called broad match, phrase match, and exact match. Each of the three match types have distinctive roles in creating, implementing, and optimizing your sponsored search campaigns. Keywords will receive impressions which are the number of times they show your advertisement. Of the three match types broad match will receive the most impressions, phrase match will incur the second most impressions, and exact match keywords will receive the least number of impressions but the most relevant targeting. As mentioned each type has their distinctive roles.

Broad match keywords - Target the widest array of keywords (search terms) and receive impressions for all keyword searches the AdWords system finds related to a particular keyword. For example if you are targeting “red shoes” on broad match it will hit for many keywords including but not limited to “red shoes”, “red shoe”, “big shoes red”, “clown shoes”, “shoes that are pink”, now you may ask – why did my keyword “red shoes” hit for such a variety of keywords and how do I control this? Well first you can target pink shoes by setting it to exact match using the following keyword structure [pink shoes]. Now with the above set of keywords you hit for the next question is, well how do I optimize red shoes? Well first you want to be measuring conversions on your keywords to make sure consumers are not using keywords you may not think are not relevant to your topic – relevance. For example consumers searching “pink shoes” may actually be purchasing your “red shoes.” So to optimize red shoes you will either want to add keywords discovered using broad match to your Ad Group or add the keyword as negative. I would recommend adding the keywords discovered either as exact match or negative exact match keywords. The main advantage to using broad match type leads to keyword discovery.

Phrase match keywords - Target more focused sets of keywords and receive impressions for all keywords (search terms) the AdWords system finds to be outside of the particular keyword phrase being targeted. For example if you are targeting “red shoes” on phrase match it will hit for keywords including the phrase “red shoes”, which would include the keywords “big red shoes”, “red shoes small”, “clown red shoes”, “red shoes that are big.” Now you may ask, why did my keyword “red shoes” on phrase match hit a variety of keywords and how do I control this? First, you can target big red shoes by setting it to exact match using the following keyword structure [big red shoes]. Now with the above set of keywords you hit for the next question is, how do I optimize phrase match “red shoes”? To optimize “red shoes” phrase match you will want to add keywords discovered using phrase match to your Ad Group or add the keywords as negative. I would recommend adding the keywords discovered as exact match or negative exact match keywords. The main advantage to using phrase match type is to refine your keyword discovery and targeting by narrow-casting the related keywords your target keywords will appear for.

Exact match keywords - Increase precision to your targeting by only hitting the keyword you are targeting and receive impressions for only the exact keyword (search term). For example, if you are targeting “red shoes” on exact match it will hit only for the keyword “red shoes.” Now you may ask, why did my keyword “red shoes” on exact match hit only for the keyword “red shoes”? This is because if you target red shoes by setting it to exact match using the following keyword structure [red shoes] it will only for “red shoes”. Now with the above set of circumstances the next question becomes how do I optimize exact match “red shoes”? To optimize “red shoes” exact match you will want conversion tracking in place and you will want to set your cost per click to allow you the most optimal conversion cost. You will also want to focus on finding the strongest Ad Copy to match up with your exact match targeted keyword. The main advantage to using exact match type is to optimize what you are paying for an actual keyword click (cost per click) and controlling the auction to your optimal precision.

After learning about the different match types we would recommend refining your account further as often as possible using search query reports provided on the reports tab in Google AdWords. You will be surprised at the amount of work this refining process will create, but it will take your account to a whole new level. Good luck and happy bidding!
About SEO.cc

SEO services many industries from vertical niche businesses to global brands. SEO.cc has cultivated a specialty in Sponsored Search Management because our agency believes it is the most effective way to deliver measurable results. As a boutique online marketing agency we focus on offering unparalleled customer service. Our customer service focus drives us to tailor each marketing campaign to fit the unique needs of our individual clients. In addition to a tailor-made campaign you can expect SEO.cc to provide you with up-to-date monthly reports that spell out exactly where your investment is being spent and how your target market is reacting and interacting with your marketing message. At SEO.cc we are committed to making online marketing easily transparent and understandable while insuring every client receives optimal results!

SEO Services – Components of Web Site Behavior

2008-09-23T01:41:00.000-04:00

Search Engine Operator offers SEO services for businesses of all size. Our search marketing services increase key visibility for your web site on the major search engines including Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL.com, and other main search engines used by a majority of the searching public. Search engine demographics are very diverse and the audience of potential website visitors varies greatly dependent on many behavioral variables. Visitors to websites also arrive at greatly differentiating rates including based on seasonal behavior, mass media news, and other socially influential factors that can create variances in your website traffic. Visitors could either be new visitors, returning visitors, members to your website, past shoppers, repeat customers, and many other types of visitors’ websites maybe seeking to entice a visit to their website.

The ability to access a website from so many entry points including the computer at your house, a computer in your office, wireless access on your laptop, internet access off of your wireless mobile phone and an ever increasing amount of web accessibility points. Think of the continuous availability of your website across the internet. The main point of entry for a large percentage of a websites visitor’s will originate from a search engine portal. SEO services can take a company from the second or third page of the search engines to the front page for visibility. Front page search engine listings bring a company into prime visibility. Prime visibility would be the area of your website a visitor sees above the fold on the screen of your potential website visitor.

There are two main ways to obtain listings above the fold on the major search engines. You can either aim to list using sponsored search marketing or search engine optimization. Both areas of SEO services have huge advantages. Sponsored search marketing has many methods of delivering visitors to your website and also marketing brand impressions for branding your business. Potential visitors to websites read text they are clicking on before clicking which turns them into a website visitor and viewer of your advertising brand impression.

Website visitors are great to have visit your web page, the question is once they arrive on your website what is the visitor doing. Is the visitor arriving to your site and just leaving – if so the factor being affected is the website bounce rate. A bounce rate is defined as when a website visitor originates there visit on a particular page of your website and exits from that same web page without visiting any other areas of your website.

You can also see the quantity of website pages someone is viewing across your website. The total number of page visits is an important calculation as to how much visitors find your web page to be relevant to a particular topic and how captive of an audience they become. The total number of page views divided by website visitors will tell you the average number of pages a website viewer is actually visiting. Another area to find important information about your website visitors is the website visitor sources. These sources can include search engines, links from blogs into your websites, links from directories, and links from other potentially relevant sources. Understanding who is pointing to your website is important because it can help you learn about website visitors, consumer feedback, consumer mentions and how visitors find your site.

Complete SEO services will help you understand many aspects of your website you may not have understood in the past. Once you begin to understand the many areas that can affect your website performance you can increase your website business using SEO relevant data and market information.

World Association of Newspapers Tries to Block Google-Yahoo! Deal

2008-09-16T19:35:00.000-04:00

Summary Intro: We placed this article on our blog to update people as to the resistance being placed by traditional media companies to block the Yahoo and Google deal. This deal has the potential to greatly impact the Internet Marketing industry and should be taken very seriously by those in the Internet Marketing industry. This deal will impact the Internet Marketing field for years to come and can greatly impact the rate of innovation in the Internet Marketing field.

Article from WebProNews and is written by Chris Crum

A couple weeks ago, Google said it would go forward with its proposed deal with Yahoo!, which would see Google supplying ads to Yahoo!, if the U.S. Department of Justice had not yet blocked them from doing so. In other words, they aren't gong to wait for an investigation to play out before they begin.

So far, Google and Yahoo! are still planning on kicking this deal into gear in October. However, the odds that they will be able to do so may have just gotten slimmer. Now the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) has asked not only the U.S. Department of Justice, but also the European Commission and the Competition Bureau of Canada to block the deal, according to paidContent.org, who got some quotes from WAN's president:

"Competition forces each company to offer the best possible terms and helps ensure that newspapers earn a fair market return for the right to display ads and search boxes on their sites. The proposed advertising deal between Google and Yahoo would seriously weaken that competition, resulting in less revenues and higher prices for our members."

“WAN is also concerned that this deal would give Google unwarranted market power over important segments of online advertising. Advertisers will increasingly migrate to Google since they will see diminishing price advantages to advertising through Yahoo. Google has refused to allow Yahoo to show Google ads on the websites of new publishing partners it acquires after the deal is finalized - in other words, Google has imposed a condition that impedes one of Yahoo’s last remaining opportunities to compete with Google. What this means for newspapers is that Yahoo’s bids for their ad business will almost certainly be lower than they are today.”

Microsoft, who is all too familiar with antitrust issues itself, must be thrilled that WAN has stepped up to fight this deal. The company probably has some leftover bitter feelings about not being able to reach a deal with Yahoo! itself, but if the Google-Yahoo! deal comes to fruition, Microsoft is likely to face as much fallout from it as anyone.

Like Stan Schroeder at Mashable says, "This is pretty much along the lines with what Microsoft’s been saying about this deal, and they’re likely to support WAN on this one, so Google and Yahoo now have some very strong opposition working against them."

So far, it is unclear what steps the Justice Department, the European Commission, or the Competition Bureau of Canada will take. September is already about half over, and October will be here before we know it. Will Google and Yahoo! get their deal kicked off or will the game be delayed for a booth review? If it falls through, Google will still be doing well on the advertising field. It might spell something different for Yahoo!.

Search Engine Marketing

2008-07-07T14:31:00.000-04:00

A Search Engine Marketing program in today's market should create an Online Marketing campaign with key strategies to bring highly qualified visitors to your website from the major search engines. Search Engine Marketing targets visitors that are expressing interest in your products or services by asking the search engines for information related to your field.

A common practice in Search Engine Marketing today is Search Engine Optimization - SEO – the strategy of creating a website as a relevant source in regards to a websites information. This allows your website to appear on the search engine in the area many associate as being the search engine‘s choice website as a source of information.

Traditional SEO complimented by a Sponsored Search campaign commonly referred to as PPC - Pay-Per-Click or CPC – Cost-Per-Click marketing allows companies to target keywords beyond what their website may currently focus on. Sponsored Search also allows a website owner to have a flexible strategy when it comes to choosing the keywords they would like to attract visitors for or the geographic area they would like to target.

Search Engine Optimization and Sponsored Search combined create a complete SEM - Search Engine Marketing strategy. Search Engine Marketing gives many visitors the impression that your website is a qualified information source because it is at the top of the search engines.

The quality of website visitor traffic can vary based on your website positioning. When being placed at the top of the search engine you are most likely to attract an active and ready to act shopper. Whereas being placed on the second or third page of the search engine you are more likely to attract a researching visitor.

A complete Search Engine Marketing solution should encompass both Search Engine Optimization and Sponsored Search on the major search engines.

Once a visitor arrives at your website you want them to perceive you as a relevant source of information. You are already in the consumers’ mind relevant to a specific topic because the user found you on the major search engines. The next step in the communication channel is developing a relationship.

When a visitor arrives on your website it is important they find relevant content. Visitors to your website can represent many objectives in the online world, including turning a visitor into a lead or sale. When creating your online marketing strategy for your business it is important to focus on the results you would like to see your website deliver – leads or sales –it is also important to create a concise message that you would like your visitor’s to receive.

Qualified website visitors can arrive from both types of search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimization and Sponsored Search Marketing. We find the best way to test Search Engine Marketing and its effectiveness, is by starting with a Sponsored Search Marketing campaign and using the data collected in your campaign to create the strategy for your Search Engine Optimization campaign. A Search Engine Optimization campaign is not as dynamic for targeting as a Sponsored Search Marketing campaign, though a Search Engine Optimization campaign will mark your site as a relevant source for information.--

Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc - Online Marketing Agency
Zach@SEO.cc
Dial Up: 866-999-4SEO (4736)

SEO – Search Engine Optimization – What is it?

2008-05-19T16:55:00.001-04:00

The Online Marketing medium continues to evolve, but one buzzword has established itself as a stronghold in Search Marketing and this is SEO, Search Engine Optimization. So what is SEO?

SEO – search engine optimization, the technique of placing a website as a relevant source for search engines to reference for information

As the search engines continue to evolve the complexity of turning your website into a search engine resource for information continues to get increasingly complex.

The following information establishes a sampling of the factors search engines use to measure whether a website is relevant to the search engine:

Meta-tags – the creation of information that is placed at the top of all web page back-end (area
users do not see) documents to establish what a website is about and the keywords it should be established relevant for. Characteristics include title, keywords, description, and other references that do exist you can create in your tags – but are known not to have much weight as compared to the three mentioned above. Each of a website’s pages should have unique meta tags that reinforce the keywords that are naturally present on that particular page.

Examples of Meta-Tags: e-mail zach@seo.cc for sample - blog does not allow post of code

Meta Title Tag – the information in this tag will appear as the title of the page title in the top right-hand corner of the web browser window. This tag should describe the page at hand and utilize the keywords in which that page is to be focused around. The meta title tag is currently believed to be the most heavily weighted meta-tag by search engine spiders.

EXAMPLE: e-mail zach@seo.cc for sample - blog does not allow post of code

Meta Description Tag – this tag should be used to provide a brief description of the page at hand in proper sentence format. Try to create one to three sentences which include the different variations of the keywords being targeted on that particular page. In many cases this description is what is displayed below the page title in the search engine results pages.

EXAMPLE: e-mail zach@seo.cc for sample - blog does not allow post of code

Meta Keywords Tag – in this area list the keywords in which you have decided to focus that page of your website on. Long extensive keyword lists are not going to work favorably towards your website. Try keeping this keyword list down to a maximum of ten keywords per page. Separate the keywords with commas and keep them all lower-cased.

e-mail zach@seo.cc for sample - blog does not allow post of code

Images – pictures on your website speak an advanced language to web users as they speak to a user’s vision. These pictures currently cannot be read by the search engine blindly, but you the web page owner can make these pictures speak. The strategies to make pictures speak include proper file names to describe your picture and proper alt tags (alternative information to appear in case the picture does not load); an alt tag should be a brief two to five word description of what a particular website photo is.
Example of Image ALT Tags
ALT Tags on a Linked Image: e-mail zach@seo.cc for sample - blog does not allow post of code

ALT Tags on a Non-Linked Image: e-mail zach@seo.cc for sample - blog does not allow post of code

Site Map – structure of your website and all the web pages that comprise your current website, this information helps the search engines guide their computers through your particular website and tell the search engine what information it may want to index. Write your site map as an outline of your website with each page title hyperlinked to that page.

Social Media – involves using platforms to create dynamic data for the search engines to find information about your website from what they may consider to be relevant resources. The most basic form of this media is creating a blog and this is becoming a large factor in search engine optimization success. A blog is the most basic form of website social media and allows for a website publisher or owner to write dynamic content to either point relevant information to their current website or to a relevant source of website information.
Examples of Social Media
Blogs
MySpace.com
Digg.com
Yelp.com
FaceBook.com
FatWallet.com
LinkedIn.com

Website Address Relevance – when you are on a particular website and you click around onto various sections or pages you want to be sure the information describing your page is relevant to the information the user will find on each page of the website. If you need to re-name a corresponding page, the page being re-named for relevance should have a “301 re-direct” placed on it – this allows for the old page to be forwarded to the new home of the information.

Dependant on the code being used on the websites 301 permanent redirects can be different.

In conclusion, Search Engine Optimization is a continuously evolving method to creating a website to be relevant to a search engine. Methods of Search Engine Optimization mentioned above are only a fraction of current methods being put into play, other methods are currently always arising in the marketplace and we make it our job to stay on top of the rapidly evolving Search Engine Optimization marketplace.

We are holding three weekly educational seminars this week on Online Marketing and have limited space available for Thursday - May 22, 2008 at 4:00 PM EST & Friday - May 23, 2008 at two times 11:00 AM & 4:00 PM EST.

Please RSVP to Zach@seo.cc.

Please forward this on to any colleagues you know that may be interested in our services.

Microsoft Yahoo Deal - Quickly Fading

2008-05-18T15:18:00.000-04:00

Based on a May 8, 2008 article in the Wall Street Journal titled "Microsoft Looked at Facebook as Yahoo Bid Crumbled," it is quickly become apparent that Microsoft's patience is growing thin with Yahoo, and rightfully so. With the continued failure to come to a reasonable deal with Yahoo - Microsoft executives seem to be seeking alternatives from Yahoo to find partners to help there audience reach grow. Currently Microsoft had approximately 563.2 million visitors on their web properties in March, up only 7% from the same month last year - and they want this number to grow.

So here is what the current situation looks like:
1) Microsoft is talking to Facebook off the table to see if they would even consider a complete sale.
2) Google is looking into a marketing partnership with Yahoo - but looking cautiously.
3) Yahoo and Time Warner continue to stay in talks.

Yahoo should seriously consider committing to a deal (sooner rather than later) or let their employees' focus on the companies continued growth - either way I am sure the Yahoo executives have only successfully created a stir within their own community.

The Dynamic Landscape of Marketing

2008-05-12T14:15:00.000-04:00

Target marketing continues to evolve – from the early days of Radio Marketing to today’s transition to Web Marketing. All forms of marketing are perceived to be effective; the main cornerstone of your marketing must be a strong marketing plan. Many educated marketing firms will acknowledge all forms of media are structured to complement each other – whether you choose to embark on a direct mail marketing approach, e-mail marketing, magazine marketing, online marketing, radio marketing, television marketing, or web marketing – or one of the other many ways to reach out to your marketplace.

Marketing ideas are endless and can have many objectives, but all must reach out with one established goal - communicating and persuading your target market audience. Today’s marketing audience is bombarded with marketing messages which makes it more important than ever to identify your market audience. The beauty of marketing is regardless of the medium your marketing representative should be able to shine a light on the potential audience you will be hitting through your market approach.

Ways of identifying your audience through different mediums may include - but are not limited to the following:

Direct Mail – through mailing addresses database searched you can narrow down your audience to specifics as to a person’s marital status, income level, proximity to your practice, family size and any other demographic specifications you may want to work into your program.

E-Mail Marketing – talking to your current prospects? Already have e-mail opt-ins? Talk to this audience as they might be your most ripe prospects. Don’t violate their trust through daily e-mails, but try to reach out on either a weekly or monthly basis. Grow the seeds you have already planted and nurture them into All Star clients.

Magazine Marketing – targeting a specific community? Be prepared for the long-haul one impression in magazine marketing will not break the barrier of reaching an audience eyes. Readers will take time to adjust to your presence in the magazine, but once seen numerous times it will hopefully trigger the subliminal mind when they see your marketing somewhere else.

Online Marketing – somebody searching for you? Want to be found when your audience is searching for what you do? Target your audience on the major search engines – Google, MSN, and Yahoo – they all hit different audiences that habitually use and trust the medium for providing answers to their questions. Search leads are highly qualified and furthest down the buying cycle than all mediums. Online Marketing can be targeted to pitch your services on a time schedule or specific to a geographic location on a map – which creates a highly relevant audience. This medium is the most flexible and impactful form of direct marketing when it comes to response and measurement of user behavior interactions.

Radio Marketing – can you hear me now? Identify your audience based off of listening demographics, talk show or music genre audience. Radio marketing can be real precise in nature but varies from easy listening to sport’s radio talk – learn your audience and target with a radio representative who understands your market. Be prepared to market in this medium for the long-term as prospect turnaround could take months to years.

Television Marketing – ever wonder why a 30 second spot ends up looking like a ripple from throwing a pebble into a lake - and quickly disappears? Try the 30 minute to 60 minute approach of educating an audience as to what you can do to make their life better. How working with you as a person is going to make them feel more confident and feel better in their daily life. Become their resource for information and the professional in their field.

Web Marketing – your website speaking to your audience? Make sure your website is concrete in form when it comes to speaking to various personas; the web is not a one shot draw. The days of having an online brochure are in the past, you need something to make you stand out from the crowd – web videos, surveys, e-mail list, user participation – you name it. What makes you remember a website? Do people remember yours? Today’s market is full of online brochures, produce a website that speaks to people and reap the rewards – connect with your audience and make them remember you.

Here at SEO.cc – we understand the marketing world is very complex. It is very important to reach out to a professional and make sure your marketing strategy with multiple prongs and fits into your budget for a long-term approach and strategy which makes potential clients feel as though you are the source to helping them obtain the best results for what they are looking for.

To help you reach your goals with Online Marketing we are offering three free Online Marketing seminars this week:

1) Thursday, May 15 @ 4:00 PM EST
2) Friday, May 16 @ 11:00 AM, or
3) Friday, May 16 @ 4:00 PM.

If you choose to join - we will provide you a free ranking analysis of your website - for those who attend. Please RSVP by contacting us at Zach@SEO.cc, with your date and preference, space is limited. Sign up today or have your office manager join us!
Hope you are having an awesome ’08!

Thank You,

Zach Hoffman
SEO.cc – Search Engine Operator, CEO
Zach@SEO.cc
Toll-Free Contact: 866-999-4SEO(4736)

How Many Clicks to Get a Consumer Purchase?

2008-03-24T10:35:00.000-04:00

Remember the old ad "How many licks to get to the center of the Tootsie Roll pop?" Well "How many clicks to get the consumer to purchase on your website?" Is bidding on #1 Sponsored Search positioning neccessary, as a Sponsored Search Marketing professional I would say no, and especially after reading this report - Search Before the Purchase - you may agree. We use the search engine to research and not just jump to conclusionts, that's why it is important to make sure your website is effective.

SEO.cc – Super Bowl 42 - Marketing Evolves

2008-02-04T19:26:00.000-05:00

The evolution of marketing has truly shifted as Fox leads the pack with hybrid marketing, through Traditional Marketing spots with MySpace Video plugs http://www.myspace.com/superbowlads , during Super Bowl 42. As the New York Giants pulled off the unbelievable upset of the New England Patriots, the commercials of Super Bowl 42 seemed to have little impact as this year’s game was actually the best viewing.

This year’s commercials seemed to have very few situations of message repetition as advertisers pushed for the greatest variety of commercial plugs. This made me as a marketer and viewer feel these commercials were not necessarily created for brand impact during the Super Bowl, but for the after affects the ‘Super Bowl Ad’ buzz would have on the number of repeat views Fox may be able to generate on MySpace.

The message is traditional media rapidly is creating a hybrid situation of marrying television with the Internet. The most valuable air-time in regards to traditional marketing toward American’s was feathered with integration between the television and the Internet.

What does that tell us business owners and advertisers out there? Well more and more traditional media is feeding the interested public when they arrive on the web and search engines. Advertising through traditional media today without having an Online Marketing plan is like trying to hit a baseball without a bat, you’re never going to be able to catch that out the park shot, just as you will never be able to catch the consumer whose interest you sparked in your services.

Marketing is a multiple prong attack that needs to have a core message and feed out to various media channels to communicate the core message at the heart of all marketing messages. Whether your goal is to sell a service or a product you need to learn to train the consumer how to find you. Consumers have a behavior called spending, yes some fear we are hitting a recessionary period, but business owners need to realize consumers are addicted and habitual when it comes to spending. Few and far between are the consumers that can allocate spending based on primary versus secondary needs. So in today’s market as your competition heads to hide in the trenches to preserve resources, let them get bit by inflation and pitch your consumer on what you know they need.

Well how do we do this with spending less of your resources?

Online Marketing - you better start a hybrid message in your traditional efforts to drive your potential consumers to the web. Here on the web you are not charged for air time at the moment, but only for the number of clicks your marketing generates. The cost of a click is minimal in today’s market to what it may cost in a year or two. The video information you can express through your website is cheap compared to what you will be paying for thirty second spots on the local television. For efficient information communication, shift your marketing focus to Online Marketing and learn the difference.

By:

Zach Hoffman

Speaker @ the ACEsthetics Dental Marketing & Web Optimization - Conference in Austin, TX, March 28 & 29, 2008

www.ACDA.com - Dental Directory

www.SEO.cc - Online Marketing Agency

www.DentistryWebsites.com - Bringing Your Practice Online

Zach@SEO.cc

Dial Up: 866-999-4SEO (4736)

Internet Marketing Strategies - Google AdWords Account Structure

2008-01-28T16:38:00.000-05:00

Internet Marketing Strategies - Google AdWords Account Structure – By Zach Hoffman

A key to a successful Internet Marketing Strategy is a Sponsored Search Marketing campaign. One primary part of Sponsored Search marketing is the Google AdWords system.
Google AdWords allows users the ability to bid on top placement on the Google website and the Google search network. The Google AdWords system also has access to a content network which allows syndication of their marketing across a variety of websites.
Google AdWords is categorized as Search Engine Marketing when it comes to an Internet Marketing Strategy.

We will dissect the structure of a Google AdWords account to help you plan out the proper strategy when it comes to the search engine marketing aspect of your Internet Marketing Strategy. A Google AdWords Account has the following structure:

Campaign > Ad Group > Keywords & Ad Copy

The campaign level of the Google AdWords account appears immediately after the main account level. A campaign is the level of an AdWords account is where you have the ability to set the geographic targeting, language targeting, time scheduling for both daily and for the time on the clock in 15 minute increments. The campaign level description should correlate with the internal theme of Ad Groups.

Campaign>AdGroup>Keywords & Ad Copy

The Ad Group level of the Google AdWords account appears immediately after the campaign level of the account. The Ad Group is the area where we are able to have 10,000 (ten-thousand) sections to organize your keywords in direct correlation with the Ad Copy you plan on your keywords triggering. Your Ad Group name should have a relevant theme to the keywords found in the Ad Group.

Campaign>AdGroup>Keywords & Ad Copy

The Keywords of the Google AdWords account appear directly below the Ad Group. Keywords are words you would like to target on the search engine. There are three distinct styles to create your keywords and they are broad match, phrase match, and exact match.

Broad match keywords target the words you typed in and any words in combination with them or between the words.

Phrase match is words locked next to each other but keywords are able to attach on to either end of the phrase.

Exact match is the exact keyword you want your Ad Copy to hit for. Your Ad Copy and keywords should have strong relevant correlation.

Campaign>AdGroup>Keywords & Ad Copy

Ad Copy is part of an Ad Group where you need to have strong relevancy and correlation with themes in the keyword set. The Ad Copy you are provided has area for 4 (four) messages: Ad Title, Description Line 1, Description Line 2, and your Display URL.

Your AdCopy should have multiple catches to stand out in the marketplace. Your Ad Title should create interest in your Ad Copy and help the rest of your message standout. One key to think about is what will set you apart from the general marketplace. This may include capitalizing all the words in your title or even placing a call to action with even the just the first word capitalized leading into a message. Your AdCopy will vary if you’re selling an item versus selling a service. Some ads may be local oriented if you are in the service business. Also, local oriented ads targeted to a specific geography will need to be separated into their own Campaign.

AdWords Account Structure Summary…

AdWords accounts take a well structured approach for the most optimal results and relevancy programmed in before you begin your bidding. We have been working on creating accounts for over 5 years and continue to learn something new every day. Be sure to manage and measure your account as the market is always changing, one great tracking mechanism is Google Analytics.

By Zach Hoffman

SEO.cc – Search Engine Operator, Inc. –CEO
www.SEO.cc – Online Marketing Agency
www.DentistryWebsites.com – Dental Websites
www.ACDA.com – National Dental Directory
Call Today 866-999-4SEO
Lecturing in Austin, TX – March 28-29, 2008 – www.ACESthetics.com
Topic – Conversion Tracking

Search Engine Optimization-SEO-Website Cornerstone Development

2008-01-21T18:40:00.000-05:00

SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization, is the process of placing a website as a relevant source for a topic of information at the top of the major Search Engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN. There are many ways to perform SEO. The following are a few of the many techniques we use to create an SEO campaign.

The first step is choosing the keywords you want to target. These should include words that you feel your target audience would type in to the search engines to find your website. If you are looking to target a city tied to your keywords please consider selecting the top 3 cities you would like to target to tie in with your target keywords.

The second step is to choose a domain name relevant to the topic of your website. Using keywords in your domain name relevant to the keywords you are looking to target will help you communicate your relevance to the associated keywords you are looking to target with the major search engines.

The third step is to map out your website. This information should have been provided to you from your website designer. The site map is the layout of your website as a hierarchical structure working from the primary pages of your website, to the secondary pages of your website, and onto the tertiary pages of your website. There may be additional pages under this hierarchy and you should categorize them as such.

The fourth step is to begin writing the meta-tags for each web page you would like to be optimized. You should start with your primary pages and work your focus down. The meta-tags should be written with three distinct areas: title creation, keyword targeting, and description. The title is what will appear in the upper left hand corner of the web browser describing what the specific page is about. The keyword targeting will be the keywords you are instructing the search engine to mark your page as relevant for when it comes to the particular page. Description is the summary of the webpage you would like to display as the description of the website to the major search engines. Creating proper meta-tags is the cornerstone to creating a Search Engine Optimized-SEO website. The meta-tags should also all have a tightly weaved theme relevant to each other.

The fifth step is to categorize your site properly for directory submission. This means knowing how to classify your website based on the industry you know your site is relevant for. The directory will also ask which geographic area you are most relevant for and ask you to most likely categorize your website on a country level. The search engine will then most likely pull your city specific information from your meta-tags and your contact us page.
The process to SEO your website described above is a great starting point for a solid SEO campaign. SEO is a continuous process because the search engines continue to tweak their search engine algorithms (functions) to allow the most relevant websites to reign supreme.

When performing SEO always remember relevancy is king.

By Zach Hoffman

SEO.cc – Search Engine Operator, Inc. –CEO
http://www.seo.cc/ – Online Marketing Agency
http://www.dentistrywebsites.com/ – Dental Websites
http://www.acda.com/ – National Dental Directory
Call Today 866-999-4SEO
Lecturing in Austin, TX – March 28-29, 2008 – http://www.acesthetics.com/
Topic – Conversion is King

Search Engine Optimization 2008

2007-12-03T08:30:00.000-05:00

It is December of 2007 now and the 2008 fiscal year is around the corner. The biggest question is, are you ready to capitalize on Online Marketing this year?

Every year you hesitate to begin your online marketing campaign the opportunity window begins to close. SEO is a competition based marketing environment where age and establishment are definitely looked upon by the search engines. As we continue to develop the search engines and their results be sure to reach top placement with the right Online Marketing program for your business.

The two key established components to an Online Marketing campaign are Sponsored Search Marketing and Natural Listing Optimization (Organic-SEO). Please contact us at 866-999-4SEO(4736) to find our more about Online Marketing today.

Google Analytics Blog: Site Search Now Available

2007-11-10T15:19:00.000-05:00

Google Site Search looks like a great system to increase usability of an existing website and also increase your Online Conversions. Read the article below to see how Google Search will help increase your visitor retention and user appreciation for your website:

Google Analytics Blog: Site Search Now Available

Quantify the Demographic of Website Users

2007-10-27T19:53:00.000-04:00

When seeking out content network website to advertise on through the major search engines it is complex to find the appropriate websites that suit your demographics. Well we found one really awesome site we would recommend to quantify the type of web visitors arriving at a site http://www.quantcast.com/, great site to check out and make into a full time tool for analyzing content network advertising sites.

3 Keys to an Effective Local Business Website

2007-10-22T09:12:00.000-04:00

3 Keys to an Effective Local Business Website

1. Prominently display your phone number on all pages.
2. Display a picture of your location and staff.
3. Directions to your location with an opt-in form to submit information to you.

We wish you the best on your website adventures, and be sure to develop your website as a continuous dynamic project. Your domain name is your raw real estate and your website is your building.

With that in mind if you would like to have our team evaluate your website, feel free to reply with your domain name (web address).

http://www.seo.cc/ - Online Marketing Agency
http://www.dentistrywebsites.com/ - Custom Website Development

2007-09-08T19:22:00.000-04:00

In the spirit of the Acesthetics Dental Seminar on Occlussion within 60 days, we should reflect on the great dental online marketing information we learned at the Online Marketing conference put on by Acesthetics in Austin, TX this past year.

The dental industry has been an early adapter of Online Marketing strategies. This has allowed many dental practices to leap ahead of their local competition using a marketing medium with exponential ROI capabilities.

Many Online Marketing Strategies We Have Seen Adopted from the Online Marketing ACErs meeting in Austin, TX included:

1) Buying a Domain Name that was relevant to your marketplace (for example: www.DallasDentistry.com , www.CincinnatiCosmetic.com)
2) Having a website developed by a custom dental web development firm (ex: www.DentistryWebsites.com)
3) Listing back-links to your website from a dental web directory (ex: www.ACDA.com)
4) Creating video installation on your websites (ex: www.SmileStylers.com)
5) Hiring a dental SEO firm to handle your dental Online Marketing (ex: search Google: keyword Dentistry Websites )
Dental Online Marketing Should Include: Sponsored Search Listings and Natural Listing Optimization (SEO)
There are many strategies to implement when building a strong dental Online Marketing Presence. To learn more about dental Online Marketing join us again this coming year at the ACEsthetics Dental Online Marketing seminar , or even sooner at the www.SEO.cc booth at the Acesthetics seminar on Occlusion at the end of Q1 '08, a great retreat for yourself and dental staff at the Hyatt Lost Pines:

March 28-29, 2008 ACEsthetics 2008 Conference on Dental Marketing & Web Optimization Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort & Spa ~ Austin, Texas

Free Offer from SEO.cc & DentistryWebsites.com.....in advance of the Acesthetics seminar on Occlusion if you would like a free dental website design and keyword ranking analysis, contact us through www.DentistryWebsites.com or www.SEO.cc or call this week
1-866-999-4SEO.

See you all this coming November 7, 2007 - November 10, 2007 at the Acesthetics seminar on Occlusion .

-- Zach HoffmanBooth @ the ACEsthetics Conference in Scottsdale, AZwww.ACDA.com - Dental Directory www.SEO.cc - Online Marketing Agency www.DentistryWebsites.com - Bringing Your Practice Onlinewww.DentistSeminars.com - Dental Online Marketing Seminars Zach@SEO.ccDial Up: 954-763-1130

SEO.cc - ACESthetics Dental Seminar on Occlusion

2007-09-08T19:18:00.000-04:00

SEO.cc - Great New Tool from Google - Google Trends

2007-08-27T11:54:00.000-04:00

Great new tool from Google for online search data:

www.google.com/trends

Check this site out to learn data on the latest trends in search when it comes to a keyword and a location the word is being searched from.
Please contact us if you have any questions about how to use this cool new tool.

Question: Will you get more hits to your web site if you have more text for Search Engine Optimization?

2007-08-23T11:33:00.000-04:00

Question: Will you get more hits to your web site if you have more text for Search Engine Optimization?

Answer: Text heavy websites do not rank any different than websites with concise content. SEO has more to do with the content linking to relevant information then having extensive content. For example on your index page, if we have the content "Dallas Cosmetic Dentist" and link it to information regarding "cosmetic dentistry" the search engine will connect the two sets of content and mark your website as relevant to the keyword "Dallas Cosmetic Dentist."

It also helps to have links to your website for the keywords you want to rank for from pages with high PRs (Page Ranks – Google Tool Gauging Relevancy of a Website).

Hope this information helps. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions, or for a free website ranking analysis.

SEO Question: Will you get more hits to your web site if you have more text for Search Engine Optimization?

2007-08-23T11:31:00.000-04:00

Question: Will you get more hits to your web site if you have more text for Search Engine Optimization?
Answer: Text heavy websites do not rank any different than websites with concise content. SEO has more to do with the content linking to relevant information then having extensive content. For example on your index page, if we have the content "Dallas Cosmetic Dentist" and link it to information regarding "cosmetic dentistry" the search engine will connect the two sets of content and mark your website as relevant to the keyword "Dallas Cosmetic Dentist."

It also helps to have links to your website for the keywords you want to rank for from pages with high PRs (Page Ranks – Google Tool Gauging Relevancy of a Website).

Hope this information helps. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions, or for a free website ranking analysis.

Question: Will you get more hits to your web site if you have more text for Search Engine Optimization?

2007-08-23T11:28:00.000-04:00

Question: Will you get more hits to your web site if you have more text for Search Engine Optimization?
Answer: Text heavy websites do not rank any different than websites with concise content. SEO has more to do with the content linking to relevant information then having extensive content. For example on your index page, if we have the content "Dallas Cosmetic Dentist" and link it to information regarding "cosmetic dentistry" the search engine will connect the two sets of content and mark your website as relevant to the keyword "Dallas Cosmetic Dentist."

It also helps to have links to your website for the keywords you want to rank for from pages with high PRs (Page Ranks – Google Tool Gauging Relevancy of a Website).

Hope this information helps. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions, or for a free website ranking analysis.

NYTimes.com - Online Sellers Discover the Power of Video Clips

2007-05-13T22:31:00.000-04:00

Online Sellers Discover the Power of Video Clips
By BOB TEDESCHI
IT was just a matter of time. Online retailers have begun capitalizing on the YouTube craze, offering a video platform for product demonstrations, rants and raves, sentimental messages and just plain bizarre behavior.
At this point there is little question that the videos, on sites like 1-800-Flowers.com, Buy.com, Blendtec.com and many others soon to come, have novelty value. Whether they will help build customer traffic and sales over the long term, though, remains an open question.
“The scary thing is that we don’t know the financial implications of this,” said Jim McCann, the chief executive of 1-800-Flowers, which recently began two initiatives to post user-generated videos on the site. “Does it have any benefit for sales? I can’t answer that. We’re just going on a leap here.”
Mr. McCann said the company would announce today its “Video Valentine” service (at 1-800-Flowers.com/videovalentine), where users go to the site and upload photos, write messages and choose musical themes and graphics. The site then meshes the various elements into a 60-second clip that, while not strictly video, includes enough motion and sound to approximate the experience.
The site allows users to send the valentines for free, and, after employees review them for inappropriate content, they may post the valentines on the site for others to view and rate.
Users will be able to integrate full video files in the coming months, said Mr. McCann, who caught the video bug after a conversation last year with Chad Hurley, one of YouTube’s founders. In the meantime, the site is relying on YouTube to broadcast other video clips from customers, through its Reconnections initiative.
With that, 1-800-Flowers asks users to film testimonials about instances when a gift from the site has caused or highlighted a reunion in the customer’s life. One video the site is considering posting in the future features a man who had lost touch with his high school sweetheart after the Korean War. Through the Web site, the man sent the woman a replica of the prom corsage he gave her 50 years before. The happy ending: 1-800-Flowers supplied the bouquets for their wedding. The Reconnections clips, which carry the company’s logo and links, are carried on YouTube, but links to the videos will also appear on the 1-800-Flowers site. Mr. McCann said he would feature the most popular videos in television ads, and has begun training employees in video production techniques to help customers refine some of the more promising testimonials.
The effort, he said, falls in line with the company’s increased focus on soliciting customer involvement on the site — whether through suggested gift card phrases, or less formal interactions with customer service representatives, where the site’s employees solicit feedback from consumers on product variations they might like to see.
“The irony is that we’re using technology to be much more personal with our customers, and recreate the relationship I had 30 years ago, where I knew all the customers that came into my shop on First Avenue,” Mr. McCann said.
The business itself is on the upswing. Late last month 1-800-Flowers announced record revenues of $330 million for the most recent quarter, an increase of nearly 19 percent from the same period in 2005. The company’s stock jumped by more than 10 percent last month to top $7, after dropping below $4.50 in August.
For at least one company, user-generated videos have led to a measurable boom in business. Blendtec, a manufacturer and seller of blenders based in Orem, Utah, started late last year posting videos of the company’s chief executive, Tom Dixon, blending random objects, including wood, marbles and Mr. Dixon’s iPod.
The company posted the videos on its own site, WillItBlend.com, as well as on YouTube, and promoted them on various message boards and blogs. The marble video, which can be seen at youtube.com/watch?v=3OmpnfL5PCw quickly rose to prominence on YouTube’s entertainment section, and since then, according to Blendtec’s marketing director, George Wright, the company’s 30 videos have been viewed more than 11 million times.
“We’ve seen wonderful improvements in sales,” Mr. Wright said. “Online, we’ve absolutely eclipsed our records, and it just continues to grow and grow.”
Still, the runaway success of the program has included some potentially troubling side effects. Users have taken to posting their own “extreme blending” videos, with about 600 such clips last week featured on YouTube.
Other sites, like the golf and tennis retailer Golfsmith.com, are employing user videos for reviews. According to Matthew Corey, the company’s vice president of marketing, Golfsmith.com will soon allow users to post clips talking about products for sale on the site.
Mr. Corey said this year’s new golf clubs include even bigger drivers than before, some with square heads. “It’s going to take people some time to understand the features of these,” he said. “What better way to do that than with videos?”
•
Sites may need to offer incentives to entice users to post videos, according to some executives, because users are less willing to do the extra work to post videos than photos or text reviews. Mr. Corey said Golfsmith is considering rewarding users who create popular videos.
Videos also help increase Internet traffic. The more Golfsmith offers videos and reviews of its products, Mr. Corey said, the better the chances Google and other search engines will point users to Golfsmith when they type a product name into a search box.
Mr. Corey will still have to brace himself for the possibility of users posting mock video reviews on YouTube showing, say, the destructive capabilities of a club. But on Golfsmith.com, all reviews will be screened by BazaarVoice, an Austin-based technology vendor that helps Web sites post user reviews and screen them for offensive or inappropriate content.
Brett Hurt, the chief executive of BazaarVoice, said his company would start helping three of its 60 clients solicit, review and post video reviews.
“I’d expect a majority of our customers to adopt this,” Mr. Hurt said. “It’s just a matter of time before it becomes the norm online.”
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SEO.cc - Find Out How Many People Are Searching Your Keywords On The Major Search Engines

2007-04-27T11:56:00.000-04:00

Hey,

If you want to get an estimate as to how many people are searching your keywords on the search engines, here is how you do it:

1. Visit: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

2. Look up your keywords.

3. Multiply search query result by a 2.99 multiple.

If you have any questions feel free to ask us.
We are a full-service online marketing agency, looking to service your online presence. If you are looking for results contact us.

Thanks,-- Zach Hoffmanwww.ACDA.com - Dental Directorywww.SEO.cc - Online Marketing Agencywww.DentistryWebsites.com - Bringing Your Practice Onlinewww.DentistSeminars.com - Dental Online Marketing Seminars Zach@SEO.ccDial Up: 954-763-1130AACD.com Conference Booth # 133

Google Under SEO World Fire

2007-04-24T18:54:00.000-04:00

So everytime Google takes steps to enhance and filter there search results it seems the SEO world places them under fire. Google's most recent move to start a system where SEO professionals could tell on other sites buying links sparked heavy resentment from professional SEO communities. We are following Google's latest filtering techniques at SEO.cc very carefully to insure there changes will not affect our SEO clients. We actually do not use the process of buying links to enhance website rankings so we do not have much to worry about here at SEO.cc.

Great Domain Name Tool

2007-04-21T19:03:00.000-04:00

Hi,

A great Domain Name generation site I would recommend is Nameboy.com. This website will allow you to type in a primary and secondary keywords and generate domain names relevant to the words you have vhoosen to search for. Check out this Domain Name Generation tool, you won't regret it.

Zach Hoffman
SEO.cc - CEO

Google and DoubleClick

2007-04-20T21:04:00.000-04:00

What a move...Google looks to acquire DoubleClick and puts Online Media larger players into a frenzy. Large companies are afraid as Google is making moves to control over 80% of the Online Marketing market. WOW, watch out as Google has big plans, and traditional media continues to lag behind. The only real move mass media has made to slow Google down is Fox's acquisition of MySpace. Google remains to be the big player on the Internet, and continues to step into traditional media controls. Just the other day I saw bus ads by Google, the other day it was bid on radio ads, what's next?

If you need assistance bidding on Google advertising we can help your organization gain search engine presence on the major search engines.

Check out an article on Google's bid for Doubleclick.

SEO.cc - Free Keyword Analysis & Upcoming Online Seminar for Dentists

2007-04-19T08:34:00.000-04:00

Hi,

For a limited time we are now offering a Free Keyword Analysis of Your Website Rankings, please reply to this e-mail or call us at 954-763-1130 to receive yours today. Don't get caught ranking behind your competition!
Also, be on the look out as we have a new Online Seminar we will be broadcasting LIVE at DentistSeminars.com, it is going to cover Case Presentation Materials & Local Online Marketing. This will be a great seminar and you may want your practice coordinators/case presenters to sit in. Seating is limited!

Thanks,

Zach Hoffman
Online Marketing Agency - Get Listed Today
Dental Websites - Bringing Your Practice Online
Dental Directory - America's Online Dental Directory

Keyword Analysis

SEO an Intangible Asset???? Building VALUE

2007-04-05T10:17:00.000-04:00

SEO services allow your company the ability to sustain positioning on the Search Engines when it comes to searching words relevant to your business activities. We continue to build value for clients looking to optimize for their local markets.

The value in local market SEO work is priceless when it comes to captalizing on all forms of your marketing investments. We help you create an opt in consumer who is looking for your type of services in an immediate area to your business. If you are marketing in any other advertising media including: radio, television, print (magazine, newspaper), direct mail, and if you have a website it is neccessary in today's economy to capitalize on local listings on your search engine. We achieve this for client's on both Sponsored Search (pay per click) Management and Natural listing (free relevancy based area) services.

SEO.cc - Capitalizing On Your Multimedia Assets

2007-02-27T10:15:00.001-05:00

SEO.cc – Capitalizing On Your Multimedia Assets

In today’s media distribution environment barriers to entry are extremely low. To become an Internet media star all you need is a keyboard and/or digital camera. Just 10 years ago it was never this simple to make yourself into the star. The cost of production on a film used to be very expensive and the distribution of your media required an even more substantial investment. Well bring the walls down they said…and they brought us the Internet. Bringing the walls of multimedia down was not the cry of large corporations, but the call of the people!!

Between the Search Engines, MySpace, and YouTube, and other venues, you could make yourself into a niche market star, and be found. For every 100 people out there, there is bound to be 1 into what you are publishing about. Well 1 is such a lonely number, right? Not anymore, when you exponentially calculate the return of 1 of the 100,000,000 (one-hundred-million) Internet users out there talking about you. You can take .01% of this 100,000,000 number and we are still looking at 10,000 people you could impact TODAY…so ask yourself, have I impacted anybody lately?

Learn more as to how you can create multimedia impact today, join us in Austin March 23-24, 2007 to learn more about this event check out Acesthetics.com for our conference details on Online Marketing…you won’t regret attending! If you haven’t been marketing this decade Online, what are you waiting for? Your Yellow Pages salesman…LOL

Topic for Austin:

Major Marketing Paradigm Shift of Our Time: Internet Marketing

The Internet has become today’s mass form of communication. By definition every major shift in marketing has occurred by changing the way we communicate. Modern day communications and marketing began with delivered mail, followed by the radio, which progressed into television, and has evolved into the medium that marries all media: The Internet. There has never been a more rapidly adaptable form of communication.

We will discuss different avenues to grow and expand your marketing reach by leveraging the power of the Internet. An Internet presence goes beyond your website, and lives on by your use of it as a channel to communicate with your target audience. Your potential reach into the Internet economy is extremely expansive. Through our course you will learn how to capitalize on your traditional forms of media and turn them into an interactive manipulating force on the Internet.

Zach Hoffman - Bio

Zach Hoffman has lived in the dental industry for 20+ years (through the experiences of his father Dr. Howard J. Hoffman, DDS). He has seen the industry transition from a practice focused on insurance based patients to a practice focused on sedation and boutique style cosmetic treatment. Zach contemplates becoming his father’s dental apprentice by keeping a keen eye on the dental industry, but has chosen to pursue marketing at this time. His background in Economics and Finance, from the University of Central Florida, gives Zach a broad range of knowledge varying from demographics research to identifying business opportunities. With this skill set he has helped his clients maximize their returns on marketing investment dollars.

Dissecting the Way You Search

2007-02-20T10:55:00.000-05:00

FYI: So the year of the Golden Pig has just started in China, making this the luckiest year in 60 years to have a baby for the Chinese. What does this have to do with us? Well…it adds a whole lot more Chinese babies to the coming search boom. So while are sample set is small we would like to know a little bit about how you search =)

This week’s topic takes us to explore the way you search.

Dissecting the Way You Search

Have you ever asked yourself the following questions?
What search engine do you use? Why?
Who are you (demographic wise)?
What were you looking for?
Do you use more then one search engine?

What search engine do you use?Why?Google: Well because when I am looking for academic information or published papers Google seems to pull me the most relevant results
Yahoo: Well when I am looking for local information I tend to use Yahoo because it points me to local topic destinations like Citysearch and Yellow Pages and other relevant information. They also have a map with providers in each location.
MSN: Don’t use it.

Who are you (demographic wise)?The above search result inquiries come from a Male, early 30s, Marketing Professional.
What were you looking for?

Information relevant to what I wanted to know at the time.

Do you use more then one search engine?
It depends what I am looking for, I don’t always search the same destination.

ASK YOURSELF THESE QUESTIONS, we are anticipating your replies:

What search engine do you use?
Who are you (demographic wise)?
What were you looking for?
Do you use more then one search engine?

Thank You,Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc – Online Marketing Agency
www.DentistryWebsites.com – Bringing Your Practice Online
www.DentistSeminars.com – Dental Online Marketing Seminars
Zach@SEO.cc
Dial Up: 954-763-1130

Topic for ACEsthetics Group Meeting in March

Major Marketing Paradigm Shift of Our Time: Internet Marketing

The Internet has become today’s mass form of communication. By definition every major shift in marketing has occurred by changing the way we communicate. Modern day communications and marketing began with delivered mail, followed by the radio, which progressed into television, and has evolved into the medium that marries all media: The Internet. There has never been a more rapidly adaptable form of communication.

We will discuss different avenues to grow and expand your marketing reach by leveraging the power of the Internet. An Internet presence goes beyond your website, and lives on by your use of it as a channel to communicate with your target audience. Your potential reach into the Internet economy is extremely expansive. Through our course you will learn how to capitalize on your traditional forms of media and turn them into an interactive manipulating force on the Internet.

WSJ.com - The New Benefits of Web-Search Queries

2007-02-09T10:15:00.000-05:00

Commentary:
Since starting Search Engine Operator, Inc (www.SEO.cc), September of 2005, we have stressed to our clients to use the keyword research we supply them to understand their clients better. The WSJ (Wall Street Journal) published an article (below) on February 6, 2007 titled “The New Benefits of Web-Search Queries.” Corporate America is using the keyword data to understand what their potential consumer is looking for and then selling to them in their language. In the dental world this could be as simple as stressing “cosmetic dentistry” vs. “sedation dentistry.” Check it out and feel free to ask questions.

Article:

February 6, 2007

The New Benefits of Web-Search Queries
Companies Use ResearchTo Develop Products,Trail Consumer Interests
By KEVIN J. DELANEYFebruary 6, 2007; Page B3

Some businesses are discovering that Web search isn't just for marketing their offerings -- but also for deciding what to sell in the first place.
National Instruments Corp., an Austin, Texas, maker of software and hardware for engineers and scientists, had for years sold products that required buyers to install circuit boards in their desktop computers. Then research revealed that engineers, when searching the Web for such products, were increasingly attaching the letters "USB" -- the initials of Universal Serial Bus, a type of interface commonly found on computers -- to their queries. That observation reinforced National Instruments' decision to sell new versions of its products with USB interfaces and helped it pick which products to start with.
SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS

• What's New: Companies are using data about what consumers are searching for on the Web to help with product research and decision-making. • The Background: Search ads have been used in marketing for years; now some firms say search data can give broader insights for running their businesses. • Step to Consider: Numerous Web sites provide free data on what Internet search terms consumers are using.
The result was "one of the fastest-growing and most-successful product launches from a volume and revenue perspective, ever" for the company, says Christer Ljungdahl, National Instruments' director of Web and direct marketing.
People conduct hundreds of millions of search queries daily, many looking for goods or services to buy. Businesses in the U.S. this year will spend an estimated $8.3 billion to have their ads displayed alongside the results offered up by search engines, according to eMarketer Inc. Now, some companies such as National Instruments are figuring that what users type into search boxes offers insight into what people are actually interested in buying.
Businesses are learning to use Web-based services from Internet companies Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. and other independent tools to evaluate the volumes of searches conducted on any given keyword. While few businesses say search data are their only source for product research or decision-making, some say it plays a useful role.
Companies that buy search-related advertising through Google and Yahoo can access the online keyword tools, which enable them to enter specific terms and see estimates of consumer search queries or clicks on related search ads for a given time period. Yahoo has a free online tool accessible to anyone as well at inventory.overture.com/d /searchinventory/suggestion/1.
Typing "widget" into that service, for example, indicates that consumers conducted 17,564 searches containing the word through Yahoo in December, while they searched for "gadget" 58,979 times. Yahoo says it plans to release an upgraded version this year. Microsoft Corp. has a free prototype service that offers historical monthly search volumes and forecasts for a few months, as well as an age and gender breakdown of those searching (adlab.microsoft.com/ForecastV2/KeywordTrendsWeb.aspx2).
Other so-called keyword-research services include Wordtracker from Rivergold Associates Ltd., which has a free version of its service that estimates daily query volume for terms and related keywords (freekeywords.wordtracker.com3). Some other Web sites (www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion4 and tools.seobook.com/general/keyword5) let users research keywords, drawing from the Yahoo and Wordtracker data.
In addition, Trellian offers a free version of its service called KeywordDiscovery (www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html6). Other software that companies commonly use to monitor traffic on their Web sites can provide some data on what words consumers are searching for, since it often tracks what search query led them to the site in the first place.
Google offers a free service called Trends (trends.google.com7) that lets users see graphs of relative query volumes over time for any given keywords, and even compare relative query volumes for several keyword phrases. The data on Trends are delayed by one month in some cases, and Google doesn't provide numerical values for the volumes, instead just graphing them in relative terms.
Companies use such keyword tools to help tweak the marketing of their products. Some try to buy advertising linked to the most popular keywords entered by users in searches related to the companies' businesses. Others look for the words consumers most often use in relation to their offerings and create marketing content that could be picked up by search engines. Businesses also often use software to analyze users' activities on their own Web sites to help decide what to sell and how to more effectively present it.
Siemens Medical Solutions is going a step further in selecting a name for a new personal health-card product based largely on search-related data gleaned from Yahoo and Google tools. The product name hasn't been finalized, but "the search volume research is driving the decision," says Inga Broerman, senior manager of interactive marketing at the unit of Germany's Siemens AG.
There is evidence that data about consumer searches could prove valuable to businesses in other ways. As part of an experiment, Google analyzed search-query volumes related to movies released in 2005 and compared them with opening weekend box-office revenue for each movie. The company found that it could predict with 82% or higher accuracy based on consumer search activity as early as six weeks before the opening whether a film would top $25 million in receipts its first weekend.
While Hollywood studios already have other ways, such as consumer surveys, for helping predict blockbusters, the Google experiment shows how an automated approach could be brought to the issue. The Internet company believes there are potential applications of similar analyses in other industries, such as using search-query activity to anticipate consumer demand in order to staff call centers appropriately.
Then there is the matter of product research. Thomas McDermott, owner of 4 Aces Golf in Gettysburg, Pa., is using query-volume data to help decide which brands of golf clubs to carry in the online golf store he plans to open by this summer. A former Google sales executive, Mr. McDermott says initially he can only carry a handful of brands of clubs and that he is looking to find the brands with the strongest consumer-search interest to help his business quickly get off the ground.
At National Instruments, the company recently released products used by automotive engineers to test the quality of cars. Partly based on its search research, National Instruments decided to release an additional version of the product compatible with a specific automotive data protocol. "Search helped us validate that this was a big enough market space," Mr. Ljungdahl says.
Brett Crosby, a Google senior manager for its Analytics service, which helps companies track user activity on their sites and the success of their online ads, applauds that approach. "If people aren't listening to the way customers are voting through search for what they want on their Web site and the products they want them to build, they're not listening to their customers," he says.
Write to Kevin J. Delaney at kevin.delaney@wsj.com8

URL for this article:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117072306604598983.html

Hyperlinks in this Article:(1) JAVASCRIPT:OpenWin('http://inventory.overture.com/d /searchinventory/suggestion/','','','','na+me+lo+sc+re+st+',true,0,0,true);void('') (2) JAVASCRIPT:OpenWin('http://adlab.microsoft.com/ForecastV2/KeywordTrendsWeb.aspx','','','','na+me+lo+sc+re+st+',true,0,0,true);void('') (3) JAVASCRIPT:OpenWin('http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com','','','','na+me+lo+sc+re+st+',true,0,0,true);void('') (4) http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion (5) http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword (6) JAVASCRIPT:OpenWin('http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html','','','','na+me+lo+sc+re+st+',true,0,0,true);void('') (7) JAVASCRIPT:OpenWin('http://trends.google.com','','','','na+me+lo+sc+re+st+',true,0,0,true);void('') (8) mailto:kevin.delaney@wsj.com
Copyright 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved -- Zach Hoffmanwww.SEO.cc - Online Marketing Agencywww.DentistryWebsites.com - Bringing Your Practice Onlinewww.DentistSeminars.com - Dental Online Marketing Seminars Zach@SEO.ccDial Up: 954-763-1130Dental Online Marketing Seminar - March 23-24, 2006 - Austin, TX - ACESthetics.com

WSJ.com - MySpace Moves to Give Parents More Information

2007-01-17T15:36:00.000-05:00

January 17, 2007

QUESTION OF THE DAY

1
Vote: Who is more responsible for the safety of minors on sites like MySpace?2

MySpace Moves to Give
Parents More Information
Web Site Popular With Kids
Offers to Monitor Names, Ages;
Will It Repel Biggest Users?
By JULIA ANGWIN
January 17, 2007; Page B1

In a bid to appease government critics, News Corp.'s popular Web site MySpace.com is planning to offer free parental notification software -- a move that risks alienating its young users.

Parents who install the monitoring software on their home computers would be able to find out what name, age and location their children are using to represent themselves on MySpace. The software doesn't enable parents to read their child's e-mail or see the child's profile page and children would be alerted that their information was being shared. The program would continue to send updates about changes in the child's name, age and location, even when the child logs on from other computers.

WHO'S WATCHING?

• The News: MySpace is developing parental notification software that would show parents how their child is representing him or herself on the site.

• The Background: Following dozens of reports of teens being molested by people they met through MySpace, a coalition of attorney generals from 33 states are pressuring MySpace to make its site safer for teens.

• What's at Stake: MySpace is the most popular social networking Web site in the world, but its ability to attract advertisers has been hampered by concerns about safety.

The software, code-named "Zephyr," represents MySpace's latest attempt to pacify critics who claim that the site is unsafe for teens. Dozens of teens have been molested and some even murdered by people who first contacted them through MySpace, according to law-enforcement officials.

The stakes are high for News Corp., which bought MySpace in 2005 for $650 million, back when it had 17 million monthly unique visitors and very little revenue. Since then MySpace has rocketed to 60 million monthly users in the U.S., surpassed Yahoo as the No. 1 U.S. Web site in terms of page views, and is expected to generate nearly $500 million in revenues this year.

But a group of 33 state attorneys general led by Connecticut's Richard Blumenthal are investigating taking legal action against MySpace if it doesn't raise the age limit to join the site to 16 (from 14 currently) and begin verifying MySpace members' ages against public databases.

A lawsuit by the attorneys general could cost MySpace tens of millions of dollars in fees and generate reams of negative publicity, at a time when major advertisers are just overcoming their concerns about the site.

So far, MySpace has refused to take either of the steps demanded by the attorneys general. It defends its age limit of 14, arguing that it is better for high-schoolers to join with the special privacy controls designed for 14- and 15-year-old members than to lie about their age to join. "If you're 14 you'll try to get on our site anyway because your friends are going to be on it," says Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer for Fox Interactive Media, the unit that oversees MySpace.

(MySpace users who list their ages as 14 and 15 are automatically given a private profile that can't be browsed by members who list their age as over 18. Users over 18 can't add 14 and 15 year olds as friends unless they know the teenagers' first and last name or e-mail address. MySpace members under 18 can't access "mature" groups and can block contact from adults they don't already know.)

MySpace says it hasn't yet found a solution for the attorney generals' request for age verification. "We've spoken to a number of companies and we have not yet found a firm or technology that can reliably verify the age of our members under 18," Mr. Nigam says.

Privately, News Corp. officials and others in the industry say that age verification is difficult to implement for kids under the age of 18, because they often lack a driver's license or other government-issued identification. It can be done with parental permission slips -- but it's not always easy to verify the relationship between a parent and a child, and MySpace could be legally liable for mistakes.

Zephyr would put the burden on parents to monitor whether their children are lying about their ages (a favorite gambit of some kids who like to assume other identities on social-networking sites.) Parents are also often concerned that children will provide too much real information that could make them easy prey for kidnappers or molesters. The idea is to "give parents a tool to force a discussion with their kid." Mr. Nigam says.

MySpace has to tread a delicate line to keep the spirit of its Web site intact, while continuing to add safety features. The company says it is confident that the software won't alienate teen users because it isn't reporting on the teens activities, only about the features that any MySpace user could see on a teens' MySpace profile. Mr. Nigam adds that many teens also have said they want greater protection on the site. "Our teens have told us that being safe on our site doesn't mean they are no longer cool," adds Mr. Nigam.

In the meantime, MySpace officials have been discussing Zephyr with others in the Internet industry, and facing much skepticism.

In December, MySpace demonstrated the program to the leading Internet companies, including Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Inc. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, at a meeting at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Washington D.C.

The meeting was filled with tough questions, says Ernie Allen, president and chief executive of the center, who worries that parents won't use the software since only 50 percent of parents currently use Internet blocking or monitoring software.

MySpace demonstrated a system that works as follows. A parent can download the free software onto his or her home computers. The software will identify any user who logs onto MySpace from those computers and collect his or her user name, age, and hometown. That information will be stored on the hard drive and parents (actually, whoever has the administrative privileges on that computer) can access it using a password. That information is also publicly available to anyone who visits MySpace's Web site, but many parents have trouble locating their kids' profile pages because kids often don't use their real names.

The software will not monitor the MySpace user's movements or email, but it will "tag" the profile and report back to the parent if the user name, age or hometown have been changed. The software will collect this information about anyone who logs onto MySpace from the home computer, so it could collect information about a child's friends as well as the child.

One big issue at the meeting was whether MySpace's software would violate the privacy of users. Other social-networking sites have more restrictive privacy rules than MySpace -- not allowing anyone to see a user's age or location, for example.

Another concern was that the software could be used by people other than parents to monitor the MySpace usage on their computers.

Still another issue is whether it will be easy to opt out. MySpace says that people who log onto MySpace from a computer that has the software installed will be notified. But MySpace says it still hasn't been decided whether users will have a chance to quit MySpace before their profile is 'tagged' by the software.

Such concerns have led some companies to decline to join MySpace's efforts, including college-oriented social networking Web site Facebook, which had 19.1 million unique visitors in December, and the blogging site Xanga, which had 4.6 million unique visitors in December, according to comScore Media Metrix.

"Based on what we've been told, Xanga cannot participate because doing so would require Xanga to share private consumer data with any third party who downloaded the software in violation of our privacy policy," says Stephen Kline, chief safety officer of Xanga.

Facebook's Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly says that MySpace's approach is "inconsistent with our privacy architecture." Unlike MySpace profiles which can be viewed by anybody on the Web, Facebook only allows its profiles to be viewed by people the member has specified as friends, colleagues or schoolmates or associates through another network.

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL haven't yet said whether they will sign onto the MySpace initiative, but people close to those companies caution that each has their own safety and security initiatives that are higher priority. Yahoo, for instance, provides parental controls for millions of subscribers to Internet services that use Yahoo's technology. "Giving parents the ability to block access to content is much more important than just reporting that their children have been seeing content," says Yahoo spokesman Jim Cullinan. "

So far, it looks unlikely that the new software will appease the attorneys general. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, who co-chairs the group with Mr. Blumenthal, says MySpace's software "notifies the parent too late. At best it's after the child has offered his age. At worst, it's when he's already left to meet a child predator."

Larry Magid, author of MySpace Unraveled and a Web site BlogSafety.com, says MySpace's software seems like an important step. But, he cautions "there is no tool that will solve the problem of parents not taking an interest in what their kids are doing on the Internet."

Write to Julia Angwin at julia.angwin@wsj.com3

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116900733587978625.html

Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=217
(2) http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=217
(3) mailto:julia.angwin@wsj.com

Trends for Online Marketing in '07

2007-01-06T17:13:00.000-05:00

The amount of video content will increase astronomically.
Online Marketing will continue to grow as a neccessary budget line item in american businesses.
Blogs will continue to grow as a great way for people to communicate thoughts.
MySpace will continue to grow as a networking community for the world.

Just some thoughts for now, will be sure to add additional soon.

Zach

SEO.cc - Analysis & Review of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article: Best (and Worst) Ads of ‘06

2006-12-27T22:21:00.000-05:00

Happy Holidays & Season’s Greeting from www.SEO.cc

Analysis & Review of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article: Best (and Worst) Ads of ‘06

Major marketing campaign projects kickoff as the Super Bowl kicks off every year. Water cooler talk about your Super Bowl marketing campaign can either make or break your business at the level of corporate America. Corporate America is a great place for small to medium size businesses around the country to learn from because they have the budget to do macro research into the population’s behavior and reaction capability. It is evident that the successful (best) advertising campaigns of ’06 integrated a strong web component to bring users into interactivity with their brand which we will explore below.

As a marketing agency focused on Online Marketing, at SEO.cc, Search Engine Operator Inc. we are always interested to see what trends are taking place in the overall marketing industry. Many of the marketing successes this year integrated traditional media with the means of interactive online marketing. We are always fielding questions by are clients in regards to how they can best integrate their traditional media with interactive online marketing.

Here we are going to identify some of the advertising campaigns the WSJ identifies in their article of best and worst advertising campaigns, and the goal of the organization behind the advertising campaign as to how they wanted the consumers to react.

CareerBuilder.com Example (Media Used: Television and Online)
The CareerBuilder.com monkey campaign which can be seen in video at the commercial YouTube links below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBFRBlXyzO4 – CareerBuilder Commercial Spot 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15XlmfTM0XY – CareerBuilder Commercial Spot 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVkRzY9ru7E – CareerBuilder Commercial Spot 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSy1EeRzShU – CareerBuilder Commercial Spot 4
These commercials drew people to the CareerBuilder.com website where they have a web banner at the bottom of the page to compliment the advertising campaign (destination URL of banner http://www.careerbuilder.com/monk-e-mail/default.aspx?sc_cmp2=JS_MONK-E-MAIL). At this link consumers could create funny ad campaign themed e-mails to send out to friends and colleagues. As a result of this advertising campaign e-mails from the above link continue to circulate more then 11 months later, site traffic rose 34% over the course of the year, and consumers going to the link to create an e-mail to send to their friends spent anywhere in the range of six to nine minutes on the site.

The CareerBuilder.com advertising campaign created priceless viral marketing. All advertising circulated was sent by friends whom network with one another. If you watch the commercials above on YouTube you will also see they strike humor into a situation that otherwise many people feel upset about (having to look for a new job). By portraying colleagues as monkeys the ad campaign identifies with the audience saying “don’t worry we understand, it’s them…not you.” This advertising campaign across the board shows the capability of cross-medium marketing.

KFC Example (Online, Newspaper, and Video)
KFC (a division of Yum Brands) took a new approach to advertising the product launch of their new Buffalo KFC Snacker by running a campaign across three various media: the newspaper, the television, and then drawing traffic to their website. Their attempt with the advertising campaign was to attract Tivo users to use the technology to rather than skip their commercial to tape it at the times identified in the newspaper and then watch the commercial frame by frame rather than to fast forward through it to get a code for a coupon to place on the website for a free sandwich coupon. Now the way this was strategically planned consumers had to go on a mission to find the free secret code. Once one consumer found the secret code, KFC had many ways to gain from the code including the priceless Word of Mouth endorsement. Once one person had the code to get a “free” sandwich they were bound to tell their friends and post the information to their friends Online.

If we check the Google rankings for “kfc buffalo snacker code” we come back with over 1,400 results, which means the message definitely was dispersed. The offer ended up on multiple message boards with large audiences looking for free items and codes and also received over 800+ mentions in the media. The ad was also broadcasted for free as a portion of various news segments. The company saw an increase of website traffic of 3 million page views, which is 40% higher then the amount of traffic it normally gets over the same period of time.

Yum Brands is very good at gaining free exposure in the media by giving away free items, for example their Worlds Series target gimmick from Taco Bell (Article about Taco Bell ad campaign with Major League Baseball http://money.cnn.com/2004/10/25/news/fortune500/tacobell_baseball/index.htmhttp://money.cnn.com/2004/10/25/news/fortune500/tacobell_baseball/index.htm) promising the country free beef tacos if the target gets hit during a major baseball game. This advertisement every year receives free press from many media outlets including but not limited to ESPN because of the sports related theme. If we check the Google rankings for “taco bell target baseball” we get over 200,000 results reflecting the vast expanse and reach of this campaign.

Philips Norelco (Example: Online, Radio/Video – Howard Stern plug)
Philips Norelco took a new approach to advertising their new razor created for shaving “everywhere” on a man’s body at the URL http://www.shaveeverywhere.com/. Their goal with this campaign was to attract young men and those concerned with their personal body parts being “hairless.” So to attract this audience guess who they choose as their targeted plug? Howard Stern your old buddy on Sirius. This campaign has been seen as highly effective and to date has drawn over 1.8 million viewers to the site. The goal of this campaign was to not make a public announcement to the world as to what their product could do, but to create buzz amongst their target audience. The site definitely plays in sexual innuendo humor and once again spreads the viral marketing which is very successful in today’s highly connected world. This campaign is a great example of targeting a segment within your targeted marketing audience effectively.

Conclusion
These are just a few of the examples from the Wall Street Journal article about the “Best (and Worst) Ads of ’06,” check out the article in its entirety at http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06356/748285-28.stm. The statistics and data used in the above article were also taken from the source article from the Wall Street Journal. We highly recommend this article as a great read. We choose to expand on this article because of the particular campaigns they identify which had a strong web integration aspect involved.

Happy Holidays and Best of Luck in ’07…

Hope you enjoyed this newsletter, and feel free to pass it on to a friend. Also, if you have any questions or comments please write me at Zach@SEO.cc.

To insure you receive our future newsletters be sure to sign up with us at www.SEO.cc our website.

Thank You,

Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc - Online Marketing Agency
www.DentistryWebsites.com - Bringing Your Practice Online
www.DentistSeminars.com - Dental Online Marketing Seminars
Zach@SEO.cc
Dial Up: 954-763-1130
Dental Online Marketing Seminar - March 23-24, 2006 - Austin, TX -
ACESthetics.com

Topic: Major Marketing Paradigm Shift of Our Time: Internet Marketing

The Internet has become today’s mass form of communication. By definition every major shift in marketing has occurred by changing the way we communicate. Modern day communications and marketing began with delivered mail, followed by the radio, which progressed into television, and has evolved into the medium that marries all media: The Internet. There has never been a more rapidly adaptable form of communication.

We will discuss different avenues to grow and expand your marketing reach by leveraging the power of the Internet. An Internet presence goes beyond your website, and lives on by your use of it as a channel to communicate with your target audience. Your potential reach into the Internet economy is extremely expansive. Through our course you will learn how to capitalize on your traditional forms of media and turn them into an interactive manipulating force on the Internet.

Zach Hoffman - Bio

Zach Hoffman has lived in the dental industry for 20+ years (through the experiences of his father Dr. Howard J. Hoffman, DDS). He has seen the industry transition from a practice focused on insurance based patients to a practice focused on sedation, boutique style cosmetic treatment. Zach still contemplates becoming his father’s dental apprentice by keeping a keen eye on the dental industry, but has chosen to pursue marketing. His background in Economics and Finance, from the University of Central Florida, gives Zach a broad range of knowledge varying from demographics research to identifying business opportunities. With this skill set he has helped his clients maximize their returns on marketing investment dollars.

If you would like to be removed from our mailing list please contact me at Zach@SEO.cc

© Search Engine Operator, Inc. 2006

Search Engine Optimization Expert: Lines, Lines Everywhere%u2026Fulfillment Becoming Today%u2019s HOT Commodity

2006-12-25T23:34:00.000-05:00

Search Engine Optimization Expert: Lines, Lines Everywhere%u2026Fulfillment Becoming Today%u2019s HOT Commodity

Lines, Lines Everywhere…Fulfillment Becoming Today’s HOT Commodity

2006-12-18T19:47:00.000-05:00

So after pondering this weekend as to what I would be writing about this coming Monday I reflected on what bothered me most over the past week. More than anything it was the lines and the crowds of the old economy, or reality (sometimes I mix them up)? What does this have to do with Online Marketing you ask? Everything.

For consumers like me who are not fans of long lines and crowded places it is giving us evermore an excuse to join the growing number of online shoppers. Well if I don’t own an online commerce business, how does this affect me? Your consumers of yesteryear who have now made their first purchase online have made a virtual quantum leap into the extent of their comfort with online services and information.

Consumers are increasingly living in a society of what can you do for me. Reminding me of an old famous Kennedy quote:
“And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
Are fellow Americans today live in a society of asking, ask not what a company can do to get my business, ask what a company will do to get my business?
Will they provide me free information, free services, why do I want to shop with you?

We are moving into an evermore demanding economy where traditional lines and business conditions are being destroyed, and therefore our needs demand and need for fulfillment continue to increase exponentially. Fulfillment in today’s world is reaching critical mass and what was demanded today, people wanted to see fulfilled yesterday (hint hint for you dentist, got to love your CEREC).

Fulfillment in demand? Demand for something intangible, yes the demand for the service of being fulfilled. In a service based economy this fulfillment is a major gap that companies need to learn to close. The best example is holiday consumer demand for gaming systems. We see gaming systems bought last week in the store for $400 going for near $1,000+ on eBay talk about value of fulfilling a “brats” holiday needs. That’s a 150% increase in value only justified by the fulfillment period. On that note, hope you enjoyed this food for thought.

Article with data that inspired these writings http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/news/trends/print.php/3524581
Happy Holidays and Best of Luck in ’07…

Hope you enjoyed this newsletter, and feel free to pass it on to a friend. Also, if you have any questions or comments please write me at Zach@SEO.cc.
To insure you receive our future newsletters be sure to sign up with us at www.SEO.cc our website.

Thank You,Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc - Online Marketing Agency
www.DentistryWebsites.com - Bringing Your Practice Online
www.DentistSeminars.com - Dental Online Marketing Seminars
Zach@SEO.cc
Dial Up: 954-763-1130
Dental Online Marketing Seminar - March 23-24, 2006 - Austin, TX -ACESthetics.com

Topic: Major Marketing Paradigm Shift of Our Time: Internet Marketing

The Internet has become today’s mass form of communication. By definition every major shift in marketing has occurred by changing the way we communicate. Modern day communications and marketing began with delivered mail, followed by the radio, which progressed into television, and has evolved into the medium that marries all media: The Internet. There has never been a more rapidly adaptable form of communication.

We will discuss different avenues to grow and expand your marketing reach by leveraging the power of the Internet. An Internet presence goes beyond your website, and lives on by your use of it as a channel to communicate with your target audience. Your potential reach into the Internet economy is extremely expansive. Through our course you will learn how to capitalize on your traditional forms of media and turn them into an interactive manipulating force on the Internet.

Zach Hoffman - Bio

Zach Hoffman has lived in the dental industry for 20+ years (through the experiences of his father Dr. Howard J. Hoffman, DDS). He has seen the industry transition from a practice focused on insurance based patients to a practice focused on sedation, boutique style cosmetic treatment. Zach still contemplates becoming his father’s dental apprentice by keeping a keen eye on the dental industry, but has chosen to pursue marketing. His background in Economics and Finance, from the University of Central Florida, gives Zach a broad range of knowledge varying from demographics research to identifying business opportunities. With this skill set he has helped his clients maximize their returns on marketing investment dollars.
If you would like to be removed from our mailing list please contact me at Zach@SEO.cc

© Search Engine Operator, Inc. 2006

Multiplying Factor of Search Engine Name Branding

2006-12-11T19:11:00.000-05:00

Multiplying Factor of Search Engine Name Branding
By Zach Hoffman

Google being used as a multiplying factor in current (Q4 2006) marketing campaigns is proving to become a popular model. Two major spots where Google has been featured is in Pontiac’s current commercial campaign (YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtCJvxuIYDk ) and in time square with Google co-branding the fact that you can visit their site on the Palm Pilot wireless device (image below). Associating yourself with search engine positioning in today’s marketplace builds popularity and credibility. 91% of US adults visit search engines to search for information (source: PewInternet.org, Nov. ’04) and 79% of US adults use the search engines to find health/medical related information (source: PewInternet.org, Dec. ‘05)

Once you get a potential consumer to visit the search engine to search for you they now become opt in consumers. They find you as a more credible resource because you are listed at the “top” of their topic of interest. Now if you take the approach Pontiac uses and reinforce your presence on the Internet the consumer who now only had a 5-30 second interaction with you, has now been multiplied to a brand building experience that may last anywhere from 3 minutes to an hour once they visit your site on the Internet. Your MFT (multiplying factor of time) has now improved to somewhere over 600%. This should be a factor in your marketing effects equation. We analyze the life of marketing in newspapers and magazines with shelf time, but now with the Internet we should be measuring the average period of time of interactivity we can create with potential end-users.

Years ago companies were paying exuberant rates to sign up to be an AOL Keyword exclusive and the same value should be placed on a Google keyword in today’s market. The astronomical returns we have seen local businesses achieve by being at the top of a search engine ranking prove its extreme value. Search engine branding will continue to grow in value exponentially as an increased number of consumers continue to seek their information from search engines. With a number like 91% of consumers using the Internet to search for information the only question left in your mind should be,
where am I?

Good Luck in ’07.

Hope you enjoyed this newsletter, and feel free to pass it on to a friend. Also, if you have any questions or comments please write me at Zach@SEO.cc.
To insure you receive our future newsletters be sure to sign up with us at www.SEO.cc our website.

Thank You,Zach Hoffmanwww.SEO.cc - Online Marketing Agencywww.DentistryWebsites.com - Bringing Your Practice Onlinewww.DentistSeminars.com - Dental Online Marketing SeminarsZach@SEO.ccDial Up: 954-763-1130Dental Online Marketing Seminar - March 23-24, 2006 - Austin, TX -ACESthetics.com

Topic: Major Marketing Paradigm Shift of Our Time: Internet Marketing

The Internet has become today’s mass form of communication. By definition every major shift in marketing has occurred by changing the way we communicate. Modern day communications and marketing began with delivered mail, followed by the radio, which progressed into television, and has evolved into the medium that marries all media: The Internet. There has never been a more rapidly adaptable form of communication.

We will discuss different avenues to grow and expand your marketing reach by leveraging the power of the Internet. An Internet presence goes beyond your website, and lives on by your use of it as a channel to communicate with your target audience. Your potential reach into the Internet economy is extremely expansive. Through our course you will learn how to capitalize on your traditional forms of media and turn them into an interactive manipulating force on the Internet.

Zach Hoffman - Bio

Zach Hoffman has lived in the dental industry for 20+ years (through the experiences of his father Dr. Howard J. Hoffman, DDS). He has seen the industry transition from a practice focused on insurance based patients to a practice focused on sedation, boutique style cosmetic treatment. Zach still contemplates becoming his father’s dental apprentice by keeping a keen eye on the dental industry, but has chosen to pursue marketing. His background in Economics and Finance, from the University of Central Florida, gives Zach a broad range of knowledge varying from demographics research to identifying business opportunities. With this skill set he has helped his clients maximize their returns on marketing investment dollars.
If you would like to be removed from our mailing list please contact me at Zach@SEO.cc

© Search Engine Operator, Inc. 2006

Google Invades The Airwaves

2006-12-09T19:30:00.000-05:00

=====================================================================
An iEntry.com Mailing =====================================================================
WebProNews - Google Invades The Airwaves
December 09, 2006
http://www.WebProNews.com
====================================================================
Google Invades The Airwaves
Joe Lewis Staff Writer
Google announced in a corporate blog that it has officially begun beta testing its Audio Ads marketing platform. Earlier this year, the company acquired dMarc Broadcasting as part of its plans to crossover into radio advertising.
Google has made waves in recent months in its efforts to expand beyond the online marketplace into traditional advertising platforms such as print and radio. The strategy, bold to be sure, has been met with both praise and skepticism from industry analysts and prominent bloggers alike.
At the Inside Adwords Blog, a member of the Audio Ads team gives a little more elaboration on the company's vision for the project:
"Over the last year, we've been partnering with both terrestrial and satellite radio stations across the U.S. so that our advertisers have many options for broadcasting their ads -- whether it's a Country station in Tyler, Texas or an Adult Contemporary station in New York City."
"Currently, there are hundreds of stations to choose from and we hope to grow the list over the coming year. Our broadcast partners are looking forward to making their ad inventories available to thousands of new advertisers, especially since they aren't easily accessible today."
So how will the beta test work? The company offers further insight:
"We're giving a select group of AdWords advertisers early access to Audio Ads, so that we can gather feedback that will influence product features and direction. By testing with a small group, we can see which features are most-used, which are least-used, and which could benefit from redesign. Early testers help Google to create the best possible product before releasing it to a larger group."
Will the venture pay off for Google? Sure, the company has a stranglehold on search marketing, but is it possible that it could be extending its reach a little too far here?
Hugo Guzman at Search Engine News gives his take:
"Google's grand ambition is to take over advertising on all facets of mainstream media, which includes online (which they already dominate), print, television, and radio. However, an undertaking of this magnitude will likely take years to accomplish, and that's assuming that it ever comes to fruition."
"In fact, some pundits believe that Google has bitten off more than it can chew by attempting to transition their AdWords platform to radio, and that their progressive approach to advertising will never catch on because it flies in the face of the establishment over at Madison Avenue. They also point to Google's unmitigated failure (three times over and working on a fourth) in penetrating the print market."
Another blogger questions Google's motives for taking up such a
challenge:
"I absolutely believe that radio is a better fit for them than print (more tech-heavy method of delivery, longer shelf life, stickier than print) but I'm still having a hard time figuring out why Google would even want to expand into traditional media in the first place. Is it a sincere desire to positively affect all forms of media or is it an arrogance that thinks they'll change the face of everything from radio advertising to the way you buy chicken?
"Let's see, you're a white female in her mid thirties, registered Democrat, married with 2 kids, a dog and a minivan. You want white meat only, right?"
CNet's Elinor Mills, however, feels that the proverbial iron is just hot enough for Google to effectively strike into the world of radio:
"If Google radio ads actually catch on, they could have significant implications for the way radio ads are sold. That could be a good thing for an industry that saw April revenues, for example, drop
5 percent from a year ago, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau trade association."
While opinions remain divided about Google Audio Ads, the fact remains that with nearly $11 billion in liquidity (straight cash, homey), the company can afford to take a gamble like this. It's your classic risk/reward scenario, and the potential reward could prove to be quite fruitful for both Google and its advertising partners.
One particular hurdle the company will have to address is measuring traffic. Clicks, page views, and unique visitors all offer a particularly reasonable method of quantification when it comes to tracking advertising metrics.
The question remains, however, what analytical method Google will choose to implement for radio, as the aforementioned measurements are unique to the Internet.
So as Google takes to the airwaves, it seems we are left with more questions than answers about how Audio Ads will take shape.

By Joe Lewis, Staff Writer for WebProNews

Reposted by:
-- Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc - Online Marketing Agency
www.DentistryWebsites.com - Bringing Your Practice Online
www.DentistSeminars.com - Dental Online Marketing Seminars
Zach@SEO.cc
Dial Up: 954-763-1130
Dental Online Marketing Seminar - March 23-24, 2006 - Austin, TX - ACESthetics.com

MySpace - To Believe or Not to Believe

2006-11-17T13:33:00.000-05:00

MySpace – To Believe or Not to Believe

Hope this answers your questions about the MySpace marketing environment…

Who are the demographics of MySpace?

Demographics of MySpace

More than half of the visitors are over the age of 35 years old. If you add visitors 25 or older the site is comprised of 68.3% of this audience (Source: TechWeb).

The demographics are working adults with disposable income. The property was bought by Fox in July of 2005. As a result the unique visitor traffic has increased by 156% year-over-year, this increase has equated to over 55.8 million visitors in August 2006, from 21.8 million last year. These numbers have placed MySpace in the top 3 websites in the US as of last month.

Top 10 Sites in the US 10-30-06
According to Alexa.com

1
Yahoo
2
Google
3
MySpace
4
MSN
5
Ebay
6
Amazon.com
7
YouTube.com
8
Craigslist.org
9
Wikipedia.com
10
go.com

In-Direct Media Dollars Going Toward MySpace

The next movie and television show ads you see, look how many plug their MySpace presence. Being on MySpace today is the equivalent of having your own channel on a network.

Numerous radio station jockeys are plugging MySpace profiles giving added legitimacy to the media.

Search engines tend to be searching the MySpace network for information relevancy so this can also help your search engine rankings.

Your Friend Network – Do I want to identify with these people?

Thanks for the feedback shortly you will not be able to see our clients friend networks. The friend network pictures just go to show you how comfortable people are in their MySpace environments. They are on there for fun, networking, and browsing which is similar to a trip to the local mall.

MySpace Management Time Consumption

Yes, getting views on MySpace takes time, and therefore cost money. Would Jon Hackbarth be getting his two patients a month if his in-house team didn’t use their time to promote his MySpace? Probably not, is he in the ideal market for MySpace I don’t know. Do major metropolitan areas have huge MySpace hubs? Yes, for example Atlanta is by far one of the higher costs per click markets in the country. Now I could spend $6-$7 per a click every day, every month or build a community network on MySpace to compliment my pay-per-click campaign and my web presence.

Now if I draw my existing patients from my website to my MySpace extension just think how much easier you made it for their friends to find you (their potential new dentist) and for people to refer to you. Just another step toward simplicity in a complex environment.

MySpace Functionality

MySpace functionality includes but is not limited to:
Easy blog posting,
Picture portfolio,
Friend network,
Message boards,
Easy video uploading,
Audio uploading (radio ads),
Schedules for events,
And much more.

Search Engine Appeal

Google has a $900 million advertising commitment to market on MySpace for 3 years. Google knows where the eyes are going on the Internet and which surfaces are sticky. MySpace is a very sticky network and if you have a presence on their people are likely to click around and even end up at your website if your MySpace is setup correctly.

The search engines tend to be searching the MySpace network for information relevancy so this can also help your search engine rankings. MySpace is known to be a dynamic environment for web content.

MySpace Marketing

MySpace marketing is not for everyone nor or most forms of marketing. Most market players do not even have the media assets to feed a fire like MySpace or YouTube properly, but if you do what are you waiting for? Your competition?

Feel free to reply with questions and comments.
Thanks,Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc – Online Marketing Agency
Zach@SEO.cc
Dial Up: 954-763-1130
Acesthetics Marketing Seminar Speaker – Austin, TX – March 22-24, 2007 – Topic Below

Upcoming Engagements for Zach & SEO.cc:
Greater New York Dental Meeting – New York, NY - November 26-29, 2006
Acesthetics Marketing Seminar – Austin, TX – March 22-24, 2007
AACD Meeting – Atlanta, GA – May 16-18, 2007
www.DentistSeminars.com – Online Marketing Seminars
www.SEO.cc – Online Marketing Agency

To book Zach for your event contact him at Zach@SEO.cc or 954-763-1130.

Upcoming Seminar Topic– Acesthetics Marketing Seminar – Austin, TX March 22-24

Major Marketing Paradigm Shift of Our Time: Internet Marketing

The Internet has become today’s mass form of communication. By definition every major shift in marketing has occurred by changing the way we communicate. Modern day communications and marketing began with delivered mail, followed by the radio, which progressed into television, and has evolved into the medium that marries all media: The Internet. There has never been a more rapidly adaptable form of communication.

We will discuss different avenues to grow and expand your marketing reach by leveraging the power of the Internet. An Internet presence goes beyond your website, and lives on by your use of it as a channel to communicate with your target audience. Your potential reach into the Internet economy is extremely expansive. Through our course you will learn how to capitalize on your traditional forms of media and turn them into an interactive manipulating force on the Internet.

Why is your website on a dead-end road?

2006-11-13T20:48:00.000-05:00

Why is your website on a dead-end road?
By Zach Hoffman

Would you buy commercial real-estate preferably on an intersection or a dead-end road? For most this is not a question and they would prefer the intersection.

This brings me to the topic of the day:

Macro-Development on the Web vs. Micro-Development on the Web

Macro-development refers to the aspect of creating your own website, the parent site that hosts your information.

Vs.

Micro-development refers to using sites like Google, Yahoo, MSN, MySpace, Craigslist, YouTube, and many more to feed your site traffic. It means having a micro-presence on these larger macro-sites.

Macro-Development

Well back in 1999 when I first started buying domain names I focused on monopolizing an industry I could network with relevant content. At this time I was hot into the stock market and bought a majority of my properties going into the finance industry, an example of the name set bought included, but are not limited to:

StockFN.com
BondFN.com
CreditFN.com
EquityFN.com
AnnuityFN.com
CommodityFN.com
InsuranceFN.com

And the plan is to eventually marry them under the name ParthenonFinancialGroup.com well if you check most of these sites they are not currently developed, but the point is the infrastructure is laid out for a thriving macro web presence. The overall picture is setup and waiting for content. As soon as content is placed on this infrastructure, a web will be created over night that brings these units all under one roof and leads to exponential traffic growth.

Micro-Development

Have you been to an individual’s MySpace account? Or, a website that says “Designed and Maintained By”? Well in both cases you fall within someone’s web, you are now a microcosm of a larger picture. You are an individual under the parent, and the hope of the parent is that you bounce back into their web of content. One benefit to this is it helps your site build search engine rankings as an individual because it classifies your site into a directory unit under a parent site, and the down side is it becomes a traffic leak.

So which presence holds more value?
The parent of the macro-developed network contains the most value. They are the unit similar to Rome, the city all roads lead to and through. The financial commitment to build a macro web presence is more significant than that of a micro web presence, but the benefits are also greater to the macro presence. An ideal situation will play out where you have both, a macro presence fed by a micro presence on larger sites. Beneficial micro presences will include relevant industry directories, search engines, community networking web presence, and many more.

So how does this relate to local businesses?

The web is still young and the in-roads too many sites still lay under-developed. Your goal should be to develop the in-roads to your site, stop thinking of it as Search Engine Optimization. Start doing what is right and relevant, and you will be justly rewarded with results.

Thanks for Reading,
Zach Hoffman – Optimizing One Industry at a Time…
Upcoming Engagements for Zach & SEO.cc:
Greater New York Dental Meeting – New York, NY - November 26-29, 2006
Acesthetics Marketing Seminar – Austin, TX – March 22-24, 2007
AACD Meeting – Atlanta, GA – May 16-18, 2007
www.DentistSeminars.com – Online Marketing Seminars
www.SEO.cc – Online Marketing Agency

To book Zach for your event contact him at Zach@SEO.cc or 954-763-1130.

Upcoming Seminar Topic– Acesthetics Marketing Seminar – Austin, TX March 22-24

Major Marketing Paradigm Shift of Our Time: Internet Marketing

The Internet has become today’s mass form of communication. By definition every major shift in marketing has occurred by changing the way we communicate. Modern day communications and marketing began with delivered mail, followed by the radio, which progressed into television, and has evolved into the medium that marries all media: The Internet. There has never been a more rapidly adaptable form of communication.

We will discuss different avenues to grow and expand your marketing reach by leveraging the power of the Internet. An Internet presence goes beyond your website, and lives on by your use of it as a channel to communicate with your target audience. Your potential reach into the Internet economy is extremely expansive. Through our course you will learn how to capitalize on your traditional forms of media and turn them into an interactive manipulating force on the Internet.

Booth Space Can Help ANY Business…(Reflections from my experience in Vegas)

2006-11-07T17:06:00.000-05:00

This past week in Las Vegas, at the Hyatt Lake Las Vegas, our company SEO.cc had our first official booth space at the Acesthetics group conference. The experience was awesome and we learned a lot. It was amazing to realize being at the event that it had very little to do with actual sales, but a ton to do with learning about our potential clients and industry networking. This is when I realized it is a whole new level of marketing for any type of business out there, from the local business to the large national corporation.

The lessons we learned included, but were not limited to:
What our clients would like to see available on the marketplace,
Our competitor’s image and how they communicate with their clients,
Our place in the Industry,
and, Potential lucrative alliances with other industry players.

What our clients would like to see in the marketplace:

We had many people approach us about problems they currently face working with current suppliers in our Online industry. We were able to understand from our potential client’s eyes how they see our industry, and the potential upside value they see in our services, and where they are currently being short served.

They also expressed growing concerns of the dynamics of our Industry and how they do not understand all cost’s to do business in our marketplace but understand there is large upside value. This communication allowed us to realize the expanse of market opportunity beyond the services we currently offer. It also allowed us to see what services we can package and in particular how to package them to give our clients this wanted value.

Our competitor’s image and how they communicate with their clients:

For the first time we were able to see eye to eye with our competitor’s and how they present themselves to the public eye with the display at their booth space (or lack there of). How a company decided to setup their displays spoke a lot about them because at this point it became their satellite office to landing business, communicating with their clients, and communicating with their industry.

For the first time I understood how market leaders could become yesterday’s leaders. This could happen many ways, but mainly through lack of communication of not being there to field your current clients’ concerns. This could have happened with many types of companies there from equipment suppliers, your lab guys, to technology suppliers. If your provider wasn’t there to field your concerns you just as easily went to their competitor who was there to field your concerns.

The week before presenting at this event, I went to the boat show in Fort Lauderdale and spoke to some exhibitor’s who told me “It’s not being at the show that gets your client’s attention, but your lack of presence there.” Well I finally understood it and saw it first hand. The importance of a credible presence at the show spoke volumes about your regard for your current client base and concern to keep your company innovative.

This relates to many marketplaces, it would be like Intel figuring they have a complete upper-hand in the semi-conductor industry so they decide to slack on their presence at the upcoming computer expo. They setup their table and let their computer’s do the talking, where AMD has their engineers on the floor fielding concerns. Well who will be the one picking up the contracts in the future? Or, at least looked to as an option for a solution? Pretty cool the way business works similar to war, it’s as if we can really see how an early troop pull-out may affect an extended war effort. The reaction to a lack of presence will almost have twice the back-lash of not being there at all.

Our place in the industry:

Well at this event there were at least four companies that offered similar services/products as us. Well considering we knew at least one of them would be there we spent a good amount of money and time focused on educating the marketplace as to what services we had to offer. At the end of the day in our commoditized economic environment we face two types of shoppers those concerned with price and those concerned with value (service). We are more oriented on the value (service) portion of the environment because we understand our potential clients are not necessarily operating a price oriented business. Their clients expect value (service) which is what they sell, and our clients expect value (service) from those they do business with.

Our position in the industry is very niche oriented and focused at helping our client’s increase conversion rates and exposure. We realized at the meeting there is a solid fit for us within the cosmetic dental industry in helping higher end practices market their value to clients through the power of the Internet as the Yellow Pages becomes increasingly obsolete.

Potential lucrative alliances with other industry players:

We found that many other companies in the industry could increase their sales if we helped their end users increase sales. This is where synergies/alliances kick-in and companies stand to gain value from working with one another. In all types of business there is always an opportunity for a beneficial partnership, examples: a cosmetic dentist referring to a cosmetic surgeon, McDonalds sending their customers to Blockbuster for a rental special, to a corporate attorney referring out to an intellectual property attorney. Wow talk about varying business goals, huh? But at the end of the day they all want to be the provider providing the solution someone wanted. This creates a happy person and the likelihood they will return to you when they need the service you provide.

So now you’re wondering…What does all this mean to my business?

The information provided can fit into any field of work and the importance to understanding your clients and their needs. Stop asking yourself what people want and get out there and find out. Whether it means taking a booth at a local mall expo, or a convention aimed at your particular business field. Yes, the quality of traffic will differ depending on the event you choose but you will have the chance at traffic. Survey these people and find out what they want and not what you want to sell them. It will help you make an increasingly compelling pitch and at the end of the day help your close.

Best of luck in your future business endeavors. And, Carpe Diem.

Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc – Online Marketing Agency
Zach@SEO.cc
Dial Up: 954-763-1130

Marketing Online – Changes Day by Day – A Dynamic Industry

2006-10-30T03:41:00.000-05:00

Marketing Online – Changes Day by Day – A Dynamic Industry

Marketing online is becoming or already is the most dynamic marketing industry in existence. For example, how often is a new ABC, CBS, NBC, or FOX going to come along on television? Rarely, but in the online world we have seen king of the throne change quite a few times. It is a never ending game of musical chairs. To see an example of how quick top 100 rankings change on the Internet check www.Alexa.com to see how traffic trends continuously change.

Top 10 Sites in the US 10-30-06
According to Alexa.com

1 Yahoo
2 Google
3 MySpace
4 MSN
5 Ebay
6 Amazon.com
7 YouTube.com
8 Craigslist.org
9 Wikipedia.com
10 go.com

Keeping our clients listed in at least 30% of the top websites in the United States is a priority for us. Currently we keep our main clients ranked in 50% of the top 10 websites in the country. Is this priceless? Does your website sell? If it does we can get you all the right traffic. We are even working to help our clients increase their conversions and sales using a great new tool called Google Analytics. We are mastering the features of the program to apply are findings to our clients sites to deliver maximum results.

We are doing well marketing our clients, but getting better every month. As a result we decided to cap the number of clients we are taking per a marketplace. Two lucky people per a marketplace. Because after all there are only 10-20 results people look at on the major sites and search engines. We are also helping our clients become the most informative people in their industry hosting and maintaining their blogs. This is important because people tend to feel more comfortable purchasing from the people that inform them the most about their services.

Online Marketing will never stop evolving and for all we know and neither will we, search engines may not exist in five years. That is why it is critical to choose an Online Marketing Agency dedicated to creating you an Online Presence beyond the search engines. Today’s market is still driven by Word-of-Mouth along with other forms of marketing. This means that Joe’s brother may tell him about what he found on the Internet. Or Jane may tell Susie about a great blog she read on rejuvenating her smile with porcelain veneers on her dentist’s blog.

Our client’s still see results surfacing from marketing they were doing 1 month ago. How is this so? Well how many domain names do you have written on a piece of paper on your desk? How many sites have you added to your favorites (bookmarks) intending to do business with them one day? Traditional SEO is over, yes I said it done/dead, and depending on strictly SEO is a facade. Online Marketing is the key and SEO is just one of the pieces of this puzzle.

We practice what we preach, are business has rapidly evolved over the past 9 months to deliver the results our clients should expect. This is a multi prong approach and not suitable for every client.

How many successful marketing campaigns depend on one medium of marketing? Very few, it takes multiple angles to communicate a message in today’s complex and dynamic world.

Here is just a sample of a couple of our dental clients’ results, in the top 10-20 on all three major search engines for their local market. Does it get better than this? And how many clients can we supply these SEO numbers for? Very few, and that’s once again why we are capping the number of client’s we are taking on per a locale and industry.

10/3/2006
Keyword Positioning Results on: Positioning Results on:
Targets Google Yahoo MSN Google Yahoo MSN

city + cosmetic dentist 1, 16, 18 3, 10, L 15 3, L1 3, 4 4, 7, 11, 14, 20 5, 6
city + sedation dentist 1, 10, 11 1, 3, 9, 10 3 3, 4 3, 5, 8, 12…16 5
city + cosmetic dentistry 1, 9, 16, 18 8, 19, L1 5, L1 3, 4 3, 6, 13, 15…20 7, 8
city + sedation dentistry 1, 3, 6, 7, 9 1, 3, 5…7, 9, L1 3 3, 4 1, 14 3, 4
city + dentist 1, 17, 19 11 10, 11 8 8, 9, 15 3, 4
dentist + city 1 6 7 11, 12 5, 12, 17 5, 6
city + dentistry 1, 19, 20 4, L2 6 9 10, 20 7, 8
city + dental NA 17 19 12, 13 10 13, 14

Best of luck with your Online Marketing and I hope we can service your needs.

Thank You,

Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc – Online Marketing Agency
Zach@SEO.cc
Dial Up: 954-763-1130
www.DentistSeminars.com – Dental Online Marketing Seminars

Web 2.0...Sounds Advance, Huh? Don't Let It Scare You...Read On

2006-10-23T16:00:00.000-04:00

Web 2.0…Sounds Advanced, Huh? Don’t Let It Scare You…Read On

Web 2.0 is already here / coming…not fully implemented but where getting warmer. As a flexible SEO professional it is becoming more apparent that old SEO methods…are that…OLD. We are coming into a new era where traditional media and their ability to push content volume will make them into a way more affective force to garnering the eyes of web audiences and capturing web search results.

How is this so?

Well if you do some of your normal searches on Google and other search engines you may start to notice results coming up that come from directory sites, MySpace.com, YouTube.com, local newspaper classifieds, Craigslist.org listings, and many more user organized and published data sites. Also, blog writings are commonly being found in search results and used as references to build relevant information to a topic.

Onsite Optimization…Where is it today?

Onsite optimization is still critical to getting your site listed on the major search engines, but is more often becoming only the cornerstone to the project of SEO. Having onsite optimization alone will not get you listed as frequently and efficiently as using an all encompassing optimization method. Onsite optimization includes meta-tags, site maps, well organized information, linking paths on website similar to site map, and great funnels that bring your end-user to the conversion point of your site.

Other factors that will help critically in your site optimization process beyond current onsite techniques include listing on various human organized directories, having information that proves your active in the local market, pushing media volume that points back to your homepage, sponsored search advertising campaigns, social networking sites, and many other elements. The complexity to getting noticed on the web is starting to reach a definitive curve where those sites that are taking it to the next level can establish rankings that will remain solid over time. Others that are depending on onsite techniques are setting themselves to be part of the next major search result shake out.

Traditional Media…Their Move to Dominate Modern Media

It took traditional media a little while to delve into modern media because they had attempted to block the future (or buy time) through their traditional means of lobbying efforts and lawsuits against companies picking information off of their sites. When they realized that 90%+ of adults are seeking their information on the search engines they realized it may actually benefit them to be listed there.

So many major media companies have committed over the past few years and into the near future to invest substantially in on-site staffing to implement their online content into modern media. This will allow them to push deeper into the roots of new media as the search engines continue to become increasingly dependant on new and fresh information.

Where Will This Leave Small Business?

Long-tail to the rescue, because of the ever changing world we live in, and over looked areas by big dollars. There will still be room for small local businesses to optimize their sites. It will continue to be an ever-changing battle to combat off the larger players, but to be able to place your information ahead of a directory (where your competitor may also be listed) is priceless. Your ability to draw in a captive audience to your site and your site only will continue to be the holy grail of web traffic. You and You only are given the first chance to close the deal.

The Future for Web 2.0

As the web continues to move beyond simplicity and into the world of complexity it will be interesting to see what new and great tools appear on the web. All the tools will in hope make our world an easier and more productive place to live and work in. There are many surprises that you will be seeing as early as in the next few years, including photograph search technology, real-time syndication of website edits, search engines that begin to understand you from a persona standpoint and much more fascinating innovations.

Hope you enjoyed this newsletter, and feel free to pass it on to a friend. Also, if you have any questions or comments please write me at Zach@SEO.cc.

To insure you receive our future newsletters be sure to sign up with us at www.SEO.cc our website.

Thank You,

Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc – Online Marketing Agency
SEOInc.Webex.com – Online Marketing Seminars
Zach@SEO.cc
Dial Up: 954-763-1130

If you would like to be removed from our mailing list please contact me at Zach@SEO.cc

© Search Engine Operator, Inc. 2006

Web 2.0 - Article to be continued

2006-10-21T14:26:00.000-04:00

Web 2.0 is already here / coming...not fully implemented but where getting warmer. As a flexible SEO professional it is becoming more apparent that old SEO methods...are that...OLD. Where coming to a new era where traditional media and their ability to push content volume will make them into a way more affective force to garnering the eyes of the web audience...

This article to be continued...enjoy Saturday football and watch for the full artile come Monday in our newsletter. If you are not getting the newsletter sign up at www.SEO.cc , you are missing out on some valuable free information.

Speak to you later,

Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc - Online Marketing Agency
Dial Up: 954-763-1130
Zach@SEO.cc

Websites That Sell !!! Put the Design Element Behind You for Just One Minute !!!!

2006-10-16T12:09:00.000-04:00

Good Monday,

After reading a few e-mails about people adding content to their site to appeal to more people, it brings to mind have they thought to optimize there existing content to target their ideal client? Do they have obvious links that allow people to close the “conversion” on their site?

Adding additional content is rarely the solution to increasing your conversions on the web, just as beautiful design not being a conversion solution to your website. Now you may ask aren’t these the two basic elements to my site? They are main elements to your website but far from your solution to closing deals on the web. 91% of American adults use search engines to find information (Source: PewInternet.org – Dec. 2005), 79 % of American adults surveyed said they use the Internet to look for health/medical information (Source PewInternet.org – Nov. 2004).

Hypothetical Questions: So will additional content serve these people? Is it the right content? Are you standing out from the crowd?

So will additional content serve these people? Additional content can appear in many facets from pictures to text. Considering people are seeking answers to their questions, will just describing your services or what you do -sell them? You are most likely just tipping the iceberg giving this type of broad information. People may look for symptoms and concerns they can relate to, taking the information a step beyond what your competitor is bringing them will help you increase conversions. Remember the solution on the Internet is only one click away, and that could include closing your site if the content is not relevant.

Is it the right content? (Ex: selling a dental porcelain veneer) What am I trying to sell you a porcelain veneer or a solution to your chipped tooth? Yes you are trying to sell that porcelain veneer, but your consumer really just wants a solution to their chipped tooth. This changes the angle at which your sales pitch is now coming. Whereas 98% of your market is trying to sell a porcelain veneer, you are selling - the Golden Egg - a solution to the consumer’s problem – their chipped tooth.

Are you standing out from the crowd? A large majority of client’s wanting a website want it to sell like their competitor’s website or resemble it with various elements. They want the same functions and a few cool new things there competitor may not have on the site. Did you ask yourself if your potential consumer cared? What’s a before and after if it is not speaking to me? Great I know what that person looked like before and I can see their after, but what was their problem? What did they do to solve it? Some potential patient’s may have already heard their “solution” from a friend or family member and are going to your site to re-affirm whether their conclusion was correct. And then, and only then they will be ready to make that call and schedule an appointment.

There are many more elements that fit into increasing conversions on your site, but we are saving these for our consulting client. For a limited time we are taking on 8 additional clients (limited to 10) for consulting services on increasing their Online Presence and Conversion Rates. You must be ready for this service, it is not a solution for everyone but only those looking to increase conversions.

Enjoy, and if you have any questions feel free to contact me.

Thanks,

Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc – Online Marketing Agency
http://seoinc.webex.com – Online Marketing Seminars
SEO, Inc., CEO
Dial Up: 954-763-1130

More auto ad dollars heading to Internet

2006-10-09T15:24:00.000-04:00

More auto ad dollars heading to Internet

Videos, feedback links help attract potential buyers

BY KORTNEY STRINGER
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

October 9, 2006

Used to be, automakers would use a 30-second TV ad with a shiny, fully loaded, chick-magnet of an automobile to lure consumers to car lots.

Now, they're often using the Web to seal the deal.

As more people use the Web, automakers -- like most advertisers -- are following them there.

In order to appeal to the next generation of car buyers, automakers such as Ford Motor Co., Toyota Motor Corp., General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group are spending more ad dollars online for everything from pop-up ads to online videos called webisodes, and less on traditional ads on network television.

According to the Television Bureau of Advertising, companies spent nearly $7.8 billion for online advertising in 2005, compared with $6.9 billion in 2004. At the same time, advertising on network television fell 3.5% to $16.1 billion.

But the auto industry has been even more aggressive about its online advertising efforts, according to Stamford, Conn., advertising research firm PQ Media, which said automakers increased annual online ad spending by 37% to $1.23 billion last year compared with 2004.

Online ad spending is difficult to quantify because of its many facets.

Chrysler's Dodge brand is allocating 20% of its Caliber ad budget to online advertising and gaming. For its Aveo compact, Chevy said it plans to spend 50% of its ad budget for alternative media -- with a significant portion going toward online advertising.

And in the first eight months of this year, Ford said overall online advertising for its brands grew six percentage points to 14%, compared with the year-ago period.

"They're shifting ad dollars to nontraditional media, which includes product placements, video games and online advertising," said Leo Kivijarv, PQ's vice president.

Wide reach

Automakers, in general, see the Web as a way to engage a large number of customers, many of whom have grown bored with and resistant to traditional 30-second TV spots. But companies are throwing the most online advertising heft behind vehicles that are geared toward trendy, young adults.

For instance, when Chrysler's Dodge brand launched the Caliber, which is geared toward 25- to 35-year-olds, it used some nontraditional approaches to advertising in its "Anything But Cute" campaign.

The brand posted Caliber information and online games on Web sites such as the Onion at www.theonion.com, Daily Candy at www.dailycandy.com, www.myspace.com and www.friendster.com.

Additionally, Chrysler said it spent 20% of its advertising budget online when launching the Jeep Compass, which targets the 22- to 30-year-old age group. One of the efforts allows potential consumers to view videos of emerging music artists performing in Compasses across the country.

"If you go back four or five years ago, it was good if you were spending 4% or 5% of your advertising budget online, and a year ago, 10% made a good mix," said Mark Spencer, a Chrysler spokesman. "The offline elements are still important, but the idea is to drive people to our Web site. I think 20% of advertising going toward online advertising will become pretty standard, and it may go up from there."

To be sure, Toyota said online ad spending for its Yaris small car, which targets ages 18 to 34, is 2-1 compared with traditional advertising. Among its online advertising efforts, Toyota had a banner ad that connected to an online game in which consumers could drive a Yaris.

"The main philosophy is not to just be there on the Web waving a banner, but to get users to enjoy it and actually give them information they can use," said Toyota spokeswoman Cindy Knight. "Users spend more time on those types of sites."

Going interactive

For its part, Ford has used some of its online advertising budget to produce movies for the Internet. Lincoln has been running "Lovely by Surprise" episodes for the Zephyr sedan on www.lovelybysurprise.com, and Mercury has "The Neverything" videos about two brothers who live a childlike existence to promote the Milan sedan on www.theneverything.com.

In June, Ford also launched www.fordboldmoves.com, a Web site where people can see "Bold Moves: The Future of Ford" online videos that chronicle various aspects of Ford's North American business, from assembly-line workers to executives talking about where Ford went wrong. On the site, customers can comment on the video and read opposing viewpoints about various topics, including "Crossing Over: Is There Life after SUVs?" and "Fusion vs. Camry?"

"Clearly, online advertising as a portion of our mix is increasing and it's important to us," said Whitney Drake, a Ford spokeswoman.

Multimedia approach

While online advertising is increasingly important to automakers, it's often connected to other advertising on television and in print.

Earlier this year, GM's Chevrolet brand did some cross-marketing when it launched a contest offering viewers of NBC's "The Apprentice" a chance to win trips and cash for going online to create the best 30-second online ad for its 2007 Tahoe SUV.

And this month, GM's Saturn brand partnered with Google Inc. to launch a Web-based advertising campaign that offers clickable video clips, Google Earth satellite mapping and the ability to find the geographic locations of people who are using the computer in six cities across the country with Saturn dealerships.

"There's so much more we can do to be better marketers and give customers a better experience with the Internet and Web," said Linda Pesonen, marketing director for customer relationship management.

Contact KORTNEY STRINGER at 313-223-4479 or stringer@freepress.com.

Reposted by Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc - Online Marketing Agency
Zach@SEO.cc
Dial Up: 954-763-1130

MySpace attracting an older Internet crowd

2006-10-09T11:37:00.000-04:00

MySpace attracting an older Internet crowd
MySpace attracting an older Internet crowdBy Antone Gonsalves, TechWeb
9 October 2006 09:42 AEST

More than half of the visitors to MySpace are reportedly 35 years old or older, a surprising statistic given the media attention the site has received as an Internet hangout for teens and young adults.A recent analysis of the users of leading social networking sites found significant shifts in MySpace's demographics while the site grew dramatically over the last year, ComScore Networks said. In August, children and teens from 12 years old to 17 years old accounted for 11.9 percent of all visitors, compared with 24.7 percent the same month a year ago.Meanwhile, the portion of older MySpace users has grown to 51.6 percent age 35 or older, ComScore said. Add visitors age 25 or older, and the amount increases to 68.3 percent. Last year, half the site's visitors were at least 25 years old.

The shift in demographics reflects the "mainstream effect," ComScore analyst Andrew Lipsman said. As the site gets better known to a broader group of people, it makes sense there would be a greater diversity of age groups visiting."It's really a broadening of the user base, rather than one user base supplanting the other," Lipsman said.For example, while the percentage of teenage visitors has declined, the number of teenagers heading to MySpace has increased, since a smaller percentage of a far greater pool can translate into a larger actual number.
The demographics tend to skewer MySpace's image as a place for young people to socialise and share music and video. Its popularity among the young has resulted in tremendous pressure on site operators to implement tighter security to protect minors from sexual predators.The ComScore analysis found that MySpace had the broadest appeal across age goups, while Facebook has, as expected, built a niche among college students. Until recently, people signing up for Facebook needed a school email address. The site is now open to everyone."It will be interesting to monitor the shifts in Facebook's demographic composition that will undoubtedly occur as a result of the company's recent decision to open its doors to users of all ages," Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of ComScore, said in a statement.
Friendster.com had the highest percentage of older Internet users, with 70.8 percent of visitors 25 years old or older. Among younger teens, Xanga.com was the most popular. Fully 20.3 percent of the users were from 12 years old to 17 years old."There is a misconception that social networking is the exclusive domain of teenagers, but this analysis confirms that the appeal of social networking sites is far broader," Flanagan said. Lipsman, however, pointed out that the ComScore's findings related to visitors, and not registered users. So the demographics reflect people being directed to MySpace and the other sites to read blogs, listen to music or watch video."It's not that these people are going directly to MySpace and spending a lot of time there," he said. "Instead, they're being funneled to the site through other means, in a lot of cases."Nevertheless, as the largest online social network, MySpace, which is owned by News, has drawn much of the attention of child advocacy groups. In June, the site launched additional security measures to protect 14 and 15 year olds. In August, MySpace was the largest social network on the Web with 55.8 million unique visitors, ComScore said. During the same month a year ago, the site had 21.8 million unique visitors.

Copyright (c) 2006 CMP Media LLCAll rights reserved.
Source: http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=37934&src=site-marq

Reposted by Zach Hoffman
Online Marketing Agency
Zach@SEO.cc

MySpace attracting an older Internet crowd

2006-10-09T11:02:00.000-04:00

Google rumored to be in talks to buy YouTube

2006-10-06T14:55:00.000-04:00

Google rumored to be in talks to buy YouTube
$1.6 BILLION DEAL FOR ONE OF THE FASTEST-GROWING INTERNET SITES
By Ryan Blitstein
Mercury News
Paul Sakuma / Associated Press archives

Workers walk in front of Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. in a file photo from Feb. 1, 2005. According to a Wall Street Journal report Friday, Internet search leader Google Inc. is in talks to acquire the popular online video site YouTube Inc. for about $1.6 billion.
Google seeks rivals' data for lawsuit over libraries
More Google coverage

Google is in talks to acquire the video sharing Web site YouTube for approximately $1.6 billion, the Wall Street Journal has reported. Several blogs, including TechCrunch, have contributed to the rumor mill surrounding alleged discussions.
``We do not comment on rumor and speculation,'' said a Google spokeswoman.
A spokeswoman for YouTube also declined comment.
YouTube allows users to post and share videos -- some self-produced, others captured from copyrighted material, including film clips and music videos. The San Mateo-based company, founded in 2005, is one of the fastest-growing sites in Internet history. Its audience now watches more than 100 million videos a day.
Google Video, a similar service from the Mountain View company, attracted a unique audience of about 13 million people in August 2006, compared to more than 34 million for YouTube, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
YouTube has been criticized by major entertainment companies because of the copyrighted content its users post. Recently, the company has signed deals with NBC and Warner Music, which have helped to lessen the criticism. These deals have also begun to bring in much-needed revenue to a site that still lacks a clear business model.

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/15696466.htm

Reposted by:
Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc - Online Marketing Agency
Zach@SEO.cc
Dial Up: 954-763-1130

MySpace Attracts Older Audience - WSJ Article - Online Marketing Demographics

2006-10-06T07:10:00.000-04:00

MySpace Attracts Older Audience
Associated PressOctober 6, 2006;
Page B4NEW YORK --
Half of MySpace's users are 35 or older, according to comScore Media Metrix's analysis of its U.S. Internet traffic measurements. Only 30% are under 25, despite a common belief that the site is mostly populated with children and young adults.Just a year ago, teens under 18 made up about 25% of MySpace, the popular online hangout run by News Corp. That is now down to 12% in the comScore analysis released yesterday.By contrast, the 35-to-54 group at MySpace grew to 41% in August, from 32% a year earlier."This analysis confirms that the appeal of social-networking sites is far broader," said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president for comScore, adding that the data suggest that social networking is becoming mainstream.Sites such as MySpace encourage users to stay in touch by offering tools such as message boards, photo sharing and personal profile pages. Members can expand their networks by adding other users as friends and, in turn, connecting with their friends.The study was based on comScore's regular panels for measuring Internet audiences, rather than MySpace's registration information, where users often lie about their age.ComScore also reported that MySpace had 56 million unique U.S. visitors in August, much less than the 100 million-plus registered users MySpace has world-wide. The company has said about 10% of its users are abroad. A better explanation for the gap is the fact that many people have multiple profiles, each counted separately by MySpace but not by comScore.Facebook had 15 million unique visitors, Xanga eight million and Friendster one million, according to comScore.
Copyright © 2006 Associated Press
Reposted by Zach Hoffman
Online Marketing Agency
Dial Up: 954-763-1130

What's your profile? Businesses tap into MySpace

2006-09-19T22:19:00.000-04:00

What's your profile? Businesses tap into MySpace

Jun. 11, 2006 12:00 AM

MySpace.com, the social-networking Web site that has attracted tens of millions of teen and young adult users, is beginning to lure a new type of member: corporate America.Dozens of companies have established MySpace profiles since the Web site's launch in January 2004, hoping to create buzz for their products, cultivate customer loyalty and build brand awareness among the popular Web site's more than 83 million users."It's the electronic version of grass-roots marketing," said Chris Arnold, a spokesman for Denver-based Chipotle Mexican Grill, which launched its MySpace profile this month. Twentieth Century Fox, which like MySpace is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., used the Web site to promote its movie X-Men: The Last Stand, which arrived in theaters last month.

Source: Denver Post

Reposted by: Zach Hoffman - Online Marketing Agency - PH: 954-763-1130

Benefits to Using MySpace.com to Promote Your Practice

2006-09-19T19:57:00.000-04:00

Benefits to Using MySpace.com to Promote Your Practice
By Zach Hoffman, www.SEO.cc – Online Marketing Agency

MySpace.com is quickly being adapted as a part of many small and large business marketing plans. The reason is MySpace.com is currently the world’s 4th most popular English website and the 3rd most popular website in the United States (Source: Alexa.com August 2006). The site is attracting new users at a pace of over 230,000 new users per a day which means the network is only going to get larger and spread to additional demographics.

What advantages in marketing does MySpace.com allow?

Outright it shows your practice is progressive and with the times. The site offers the following advantages:
Demographic targeting,
Technical advantages (HTML coding for profiles),
And external marketing capabilities.
Your profile can also be updated quickly (within minutes) and resubmitted for the general public to see. Additions to your profile in regards to material can also be added in an instant.

Demographic Targeting

You can find people to invite to your social network based on a variety of criteria including:
Age,
Sex,
Marital Status,
Zip Code Proximity,
And, Income Level.
For example if you are a cosmetic doctor and would like to target both Males and Females who are divorced, single, and between the ages of 35-60 you can access all these profiles at the click of a button. You set your search criteria and let MySpace.com bring you back the results. Now the tedious work comes in inviting these people to join your profile. But once you invite them to join your profile you have extensive access to these people. You can now make posts on their profiles comments, send them e-mails, and bulletin board postings which appear on their internal profile with any promotions you may be offering.

Technical Advantages

Your profile is HTML capable which allows it to be programmed similarly to websites. You can adapt all of your forms of marketing mediums (including audio, newsletters, pictures, and videos) to be displayed on your MySpace account. Capabilities are built onto the site to allow for easy Blog updates. Photos can also be easily uploaded and commented on within your MySpace account.

External Marketing Capabilities

Traditional media is quickly attempting to adapt to the fast paced new age marketing environment by adopting MySpace. All types of media networks today plug their profiles throughout their telecasts, movies create profiles for fans and loyalist to talk about them, actors use it to maintain fan relationships, MySpace is even spawning its own celebrities, the list goes on of different types of people and businesses using MySpace to push their web presence to the next level.

Some of the capabilities for your external marketing include the ability to post bulletin board messages on your friend’s profiles, send e-mail’s to your network, and communicate within your network on an intimate level with potential clients.

The quicker you decide to get onto MySpace.com the better off you will be in communicating your message. MySpace.com is quickly being adopted and many players in the market have a lot to gain from first mover advantage on this network.

Thank You for Reading this & Good Luck on MySpace (If you have any questions feel free to contact me),

Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc – Online Marketing Agency
SEO, Inc., CEO
Zach@SEO.cc
954-763-1130

Long Copy vs. Short Copy

2006-09-19T12:24:00.000-04:00

Long Copy VS Short… Which One Sells Better?
By Susan Greene

If long copy leads to poor results, it isn’t because of the length. Rather, it has to do with the copy’s content. If the copy is boring or doesn’t contain some kernel that the reader can instantly relate to, then he’ll stop reading. However, if the copy, lengthy though it may be, engages, entices, educates or entertains, then you’ll have no problem keeping the reader’s interest.They say, “The Internet is a fast medium. People don’t want to read long blocks of text. They’ll click away.”
The reality is that prospects who are genuinely interested in the product you offer always want more information about it, not less. If they are not interested in the product or not qualified, no matter how long or short the copy is, they will just never buy. They won’t read 15 words, much less 1,500. If long copy leads to poor results, it isn’t because of the length. Rather, it has to do with the copy’s content. If the copy is boring or doesn’t contain some kernel that the reader can instantly relate to, then he’ll stop reading. However, if the copy, lengthy though it may be, engages, entices, educates or entertains, then you’ll have no problem keeping the reader’s interest.When it is well written, long copy can significantly outperform short copy and lead to a much greater level of response. Prospects want more product information, particularly when buying on the Internet where they can’t see in person, touch or test-drive the product. Detailed feature and benefit statements are the golden nuggets that tempt prospects and cause conversions.Shorter copy can lead to several potential outcomes: a lower response rate due to lack of compelling information; a barrage of information requests because the copy didn’t successfully answer the prospect’s questions; or a higher number of cancellations or refund requests because the product or service was not what the customer anticipated based on the limited information he read.So, if you’re writing for the Web, just how many words should a page contain?
The optimum size is 250 words for maximum effectiveness. While it may seem like a lot, a 250-word count for each page balances search engine and reader needs. Search engine spiders crave content, especially keyword-rich content. You may see “a lot of words,” but the search engines see “a document with lots of important data to extract.” As long as you follow usability principles, you can write tons of text without overwhelming your reader. Besides if the search engines see a lot of key phrases combined with a low-word count, they may flag your site for spamming. A longer word count makes it easier to include your key phrases without sacrificing your marketing message.
Do you lose customers with scrolling copy? No, according to a study by User Interface Engineering (UEI). “One of the most significant findings of our research on web site usability is that users are perfectly willing to scroll. However, they’ll only do it if the pages gives them strong clues that scrolling will help them find what they’re looking for,” reports the article As the Page Scrolls from UEI. “In the trade-off between hiding content below the fold or spreading it across several pages, readership increases when the content is on a single page.”
Susan Greene is a freelance copywriter located in Orlando, Florida. Visit her website at (www.SusanGreeneCopywriter.com) or contact Susan at
susan@susangreenecopywriter.com, (407) 578-5528.

Reposted by Zach Hoffman - Online Marketing Agency - 954-763-1130

AOL, Intel Launch PC-to-TV Programming

2006-09-19T12:21:00.000-04:00

by Jason Lee Miller
Staff Writer WebProNews
Published: 2006-09-18

AOL and Intel launched an on-demand video service for Intel Viiv-based PCs. The joint effort provides AOL Video's online library of movies, TV shows, music videos, concerts, and sports videos, viewable on large-screen televisions.

Much of the programming from the PC to TV screen is free to consumers with a large number of videos available in DVD quality via AOL's Hi-Q format.

The service offers 45 channels of on-demand video programming featuring original, licensed and branded content; downloadable movies; AOL's video search index. The user interface offers menu choices to search the entire video library, browse a video category, or choose from AOL's recommended viewing list via remote control.

"We are very excited to launch our 10-foot AOL Video service with Intel and make what we believe to be the best online video experience on the Web available to consumers on the next generation of PCs and TVs," said Kevin Conroy, Executive Vice President, AOL.

"AOL Video on Intel Viiv technology-based PCs combines the best premium Web video experience with the best media PC platform to deliver a whole new experience that will forever change how consumers use their TVs," said Kevin Corbett, vice president of Intel's Digital Home Group and general manager of the company's Content Services Group.

Viiv-based PCs will also include AOL Radio, featuring XM Satellite Radio, and AOL Pictures, a free online digital photo service. In the future, AOL will include Music Now, the company's online digital music store and subscription service.

AOL set up a new site called Digital Lifestyle Web site, designed to educate consumers about digital media consumption in the home and on the go for devices and technology platforms related to video, music, photos and home networking. The Digital Lifestyle Web site has articles and video clips from consumer technology experts, online classes, and buying guides for technology products.

The site also features an Intel-sponsored multimedia blog called "My Plugged In Life," focusing on user-generated content.

Reposted by Zach Hoffman - Online Marketing Agency - 954-763-1130

Make Your Website Sell As Well As Your Best Sales Person

2006-09-19T11:52:00.000-04:00

Make Your Website Sell As Well As Your Best Sales Person By Charlie Cook, In Mind Communications, LLC.

How would you like to make your website as personal as meeting someone at a tradeshow? Your website is available 24/7/365 and it’s worldwide. Maybe you don’t have to fly all over the country with a booth after all! Charlie Cook offers four sound tips for bringing in as many sales as your best salesperson does.

1. Target People Who Are Looking To Solve a ProblemPeople come to trade shows because they are looking for a product or service. When they walk up to your booth, you know they’re at least mildly interested and want more information. Online, the best ways to attract people who are looking for your products and services is to make sure your site can be found in the search engines, to use pay-per-click ads like Google Adwords and to get your articles published everywhere you can online.

2. Start a Conversation What’s the first thing you do when a prospect walks up to your booth at a tradeshow? Do you immediately start spouting product features and prices, or do you introduce yourself and try to get a conversation going by asking them a question? Of course, you don’t immediately try to sell them. First you find out what you can about their business and which product would best suit their needs. The same is true online. If you immediately try to sell people, you’ll turn them off and they’ll go away. Instead, write marketing copy on your web site that begins a virtual conversation with prospects. Start by asking them the biggest or most common question on their minds relative to your product or service. Continue to ask questions about their problems and aspirations. Use this virtual conversation to spell out their concerns and, once you’ve defined them, explain how the solutions you provide solve their problems.

3. Build a Relationship by Being HelpfulWhere does your best business come from? From clients you’ve been helping for years; clients who know and trust you. When you’re standing in front of a prospect, you can hand them a free report, answer their questions directly and demonstrate your expertise.Converting online prospects to clients involves doing the same things with your web site marketing. Offer a free report to prospects to prompt them to give you their contact information. List commonly asked questions; then answer. Include content on the site that demonstrates your expertise and knowledge of your customers’ business needs.Think about how many ideas and how much information you’d share with a prospect in a 15 minute face-to-face conversation at a tradeshow. Your web site needs to present at least this much information. In fact, it gives you the opportunity to present more.

4. Make it PersonalMake a personal connection with your prospects. If you’re an entrepreneur or a business owner, use your web site to help prospects get to know you. Help your prospects see you as more than just an anonymous site that wants their money. Do this by:
• Putting up snapshots of yourself in your office or on the golf course.
• Using audio and or video clips with ideas prospects can use throughout your site.
• Providing free Telecalls. Not only does this give your prospects a chance to hear you demonstrate your expertise, it gives you an opportunity to find out what they’re really thinking about.
• Using ‘Live Help’ on your site. Most businesses have hundreds, if not thousands, of competitors and many of them market similar products and services. Whether you’re marketing in person or online, your best competitive advantage is the strength of your relationship with your prospects. For getting a conversation going or closing a sale, nothing beats being there in person, talking face to face with a prospect. But your website marketing can and should do as good a job. You don’t have to live with conversion rates in the thousandths of a percent. Put the four ideas above to work and make your site sell.

Reposted by Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc - SEO, Inc.
Dial Up: 954-763-1131

Bargain Hunters Lose Papers, Find Craigslist

2006-09-07T12:04:00.000-04:00

By: Jason Lee Miller
Staff Writer @ WebProNews.com
Published: 2006-09-06

People are more and more putting down the red markers, forsaking ink-stained fingers in favor of carpel tunnel and blue-light specials at online classified websites. comScore reports the industry has grown by 47 percent over the past year - not so much from the folks in the Ozarks, though.
The highest concentration of US online classified users is where you'd think it'd be: in Silicon Valley and up the West Coast. The Pacific region accounted for nearly twenty percent of visitors, followed by the South Atlantic and Mid-Atlantic. Along the Old Man's brow, in the East South Central region, the river folk make up just four percent of online job seekers and bargain hunters. Craigslist leads all others, growing by 99 percent over the last year, attracting nearly 14 million July visitors, or over a third of the 37.4 million classified site visitors. "As the category leader, Craigslist has clearly impacted the way in which new and traditional media companies approach the classifieds business," said Andrew Lipsman, Senior Analyst of comScore Networks. Trader Publishing Company wasn't far behind with over 10 million unique visitors, but if taken as a whole with third place AutoTrader, which TPC owns as well, the total moves to over 16 million. With Craigslist and TPC controlling 75 percent of the online classified sector, the remaining 10 million visitors preferred, in order, Cars.com, Apartments.com, Livedeal.com, Homescape.com, Backpage.com, Oodle.com, and RegionalHelpWanted.com sites. The demographics for online classified visitors didn't skew as young and rich as other categories. The majority are between the ages 35 and 54, representing nearly 43 percent. Nearly the same percentage, 41.4, making less than $60,000 per year.
Craigslist, Online Classifieds

Republished by www.SEO.cc
Zach Hoffman
Zach@SEO.cc
Dial Up: 954-763-1130

Craigslist.com – Great Resource to Find Information & Post

2006-08-29T12:49:00.000-04:00

Craigslist.com remains a solid asset to people around the country looking to grow their business. On the website you can post free information in their classifieds. The classifieds are broken down by state and then city. You can use the site to recruit employees, post for jobs, find used goods, and many more. The classifieds are very well organized and allow you access to all marketplaces around the country.

Also, the search engines constantly read Craigslist.com for relevant information pertaining to local areas. They are listing Craigslist.com postings in there results as a service to consumers seeking information about a local area. As a free service Craigslist.com is worth dropping in to at least browse and see if you can find any information of use.

We will follow up in a later posting about how to use Craigslist.com as a tool for SEO and to grow your business.

Thanks for reading,

Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc
SEO, Inc., CEO
Zach@SEO.cc
Dial Up: 954-763-1130

Web Presence Building Blocks (Step 2): Site Map Building (Site Blueprints)

2006-08-28T10:01:00.000-04:00

Web Presence Building Blocks (Step 2): Site Map Building (Site Blueprints)
By Zach Hoffman – www.SEO.cc

Blueprints are the key to building a sound structure in both the physical and virtual world. For the virtual world of the Internet we call our website blueprints “site maps.” The creation of a site map makes navigation of your site more efficient for both consumers and search engine robots (computers building search results). A site map should organize all information you plan on having on your website into a logical format.

Benefits to a site-map:
Guide to building out your site,
Increased browsing efficiency for potential consumers and search engines,
Organization to information,
Search Engine Optimization Benefits.

The site map should start at your home page (index page) and build down into categories and sub categories. Below is an example of the initial break down off of the home page (index page) for a basic dental website:

SITE MAPS ON DOWNLOADABLE DOCUMENT FOR NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIBERS @ SEO.CC

Chart 1: Home Page site map
Location + Dentist (Home Page)
Cosmetic Dentistry
Sedation Dentistry
About Us

The beginning of your site map focuses on the initial index page and builds out into sub-categories. The sub-categories will build out into various solutions for cosmetic dentistry, sedation dentistry and about you.

It is important to give prominent information first on your website and then to build out into details about what you do. Your sites main page should rarely have individual service offerings mentioned. The higher up you mention certain topics on your website it is given increased relevance to the people reading and search engines weighting of importance. The reasons it may be negative to list some detail items with prominence on the site is that it may draw away some readers and give the search engines suggested prominence of topics people are less concerned about searching for on the web.

For example, in dentistry an item would be porcelain veneers or teeth whitening, both of these would fall under the broad category of cosmetic dentistry. Therefore your primary category “Cosmetic Dentistry” should be given priority over individual items. An example site map for your cosmetic dentistry section of your page would look as follows:

SITE MAPS AVAILABLE TO NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIBERS @ SEO.CC

Cosmetic Dentistry
Bonding
Teeth Whitening
Porcelain Veneers
Before & After Photos
Testimonials
Before & After Photos
Testimonials
Before & After Photos
Testimonials

There are many ways you could choose to break down your site. You could breakdown dentistry concerns into a few different ways. You can make it symptom based vs. want based. You could also use various breakdowns to discuss solutions for various symptoms:
Sensitive teeth,
Chipped teeth,
Aching Jaw,
Migraines,
And many more symptoms/self-diagnosis your patients may bring to you on a daily basis.

Sites like WebMD didn’t get famous because they are selling services; they are giving people answers and solutions to their problems. Web speak on most sites are at a level that is too technical for your target audience. People are looking for information about what you are going to be doing to them and for them. They know what you offer because that’s what your profession provides the solution for. As an example when somebody is looking up teeth whitening they probably want to know:
How long it will take?
How long the results will last for?
Are there any health effects they need to consider?
The average searching consumer won’t see the use of Discus Dental vs. Bright Smiles as a primary concern to solving their issue. More on this will be discussed when we talk about web copy development in our next newsletter. Back to site map development.

When constructing your site map be sure to remember you want all roads you are developing leading to a destination. We have increased our client’s web conversion rates for new patients exponentially by making one small tweak 98% of dental sites lack.

Be sure your content on your site links back and forth to relevant information someone would logically want to virtually step to. An example would be if you come to us with a broken tooth there are many options to how we could help you solve your problem. This can include porcelains veneers, bonding, and other solutions depending on the concern.

If a patient is looking to have these concerns fixed they may also be a candidate for gum contouring which is where you integrate information about your laser procedures into the content. This will allow you to educate potential patients of pertinent information to concerns they would like addressed before they even come in. It will allow for more educated consultations, and a potential patient with an educated mind as to what they want from you.

Here is an example of a start to the dental site map we worked on today (it is not completely built out because this is a client service we provide):

SITE MAP AVAILABLE TO NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIBERS @ SEO.CC

Location + Dentist (Home Page)
Cosmetic Dentistry
Sedation Dentistry
About Us
Bonding
Teeth Whitening
Porcelain Veneers
Our Team
Contact Us
Before & After Photos
Testimonials

Once you have created your dental site map, the next step is to develop your copy for each section of the website. We will be discussing this in our next newsletter about building out your web presence.

Web Presence Development Recap:
Step 1: Choosing the Right Domain Name
Step 2: Site Map Building (Site Blueprints)

Dental Information Technology Seminar – Saturday, December 9, 2006
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Contact Us for Details…And More Coming Soon!

Until Next Time, Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc – Online Marketing Agency
SEO, Inc., CEO
Zach@SEO.cc
Dial Up: 954-763-1130

Web Presence Building Blocks (Step 1): Choosing the Right Domain Name

2006-08-23T14:47:00.000-04:00

For Beginners: A domain name is ____.com, a sample domain name is DallasDentistry.com. Domain name is your identifier.

Why is a domain name so critical?

Practices today spend a lot of money on marketing themselves. A ballpark figure depending on your city is $2,000-$10,000 per a month. These all encompassing marketing budgets regardless of the chosen medium usually try to market the consumer back to their website.

This is where your domain name comes into play.

For examples sake we are going to use the Dallas dental market and pick on the guys you find on the front page of Google. They pay big dollars to be there and probably bigger dollars on other mediums of marketing.

A set of domain names from here are:
MyDallasDentist.com
LoversLaneDental.com
CosmeticDentistryofDallas.com
JamesMartinDDS.com
ParkCitiesDental.com
21stCenturyDental.com
WowDentistry.net
GrinAllDay.com
GarySolomonDDS.com

Which domain names from the above set are resalable upon selling the practice?

MyDallasDentist.com, CosmeticDentistryofDallas.com, ParkCitiesDental.com, 21stCenturyDental.com, WowDentistry.net, and GrinAllDay.com

Why?

These all have retainable value because they do not mention a specific doctor’s name, and speak to the region or the broad nation. So upon selling your practice the new dentist will just need to go through your site and change the name. You should incorporate the sale of your web presence to the new dentist if you are in this position.

Which domains are premium domains from the above set?

A premium domain name is a name that can stand solo in the marketplace and receive traffic without spending marketing dollars on it.
Of the above name none in my book would be considered premium domain names for the Dallas area. The following would be:
DallasDentist.com, DentistDallas.com, DallasDentistry.com, DDSDallas.com, DallasCosmeticDentist.com etc..

The list goes on but is limited. What makes these domains premium is people may just type in the domain name and you never had to pay for the traffic at all. For example we own DallasDentistry.com and it gets over 30+ type-ins a month, these are people looking for one thing and one thing only.

How many words should be in your domain name?
As little as possible, you want people to remember it and be able to spell the domain name correctly. Try to limit your domain name to words that speak specifically to your geography and profession.

Is it okay for your domain name to have hyphens?

No, your domain name should only have hyphens if it is being used strictly to trigger keywords for search engine optimization purposes.

What extension (.com, .net, .info, .cc) should you be looking for?

.Com all the way if you are fortunate enough to be able to pick the domain name up. There are very few .com domain names left and you may need to pay a premium for the excellent ones. We acquired DallasDentistry.com in an aftermarket (www.TDNam.com) and believe me it didn’t cost $7.99, our taxes to renew it will be $7.99 a year but the initial payment was a lot more.

How does your domain name play into marketing online?

The search engines read your domain name for relevance and keywords. The more keyword rich your domain name is for what you are targeting the better off you are. If you go to the major search engines and type in a search term you may realize some of the domain names especially in the sponsored search come up in bold. This is because the computer is identifying that they found the keywords you are looking for in this domain name.

How does your domain name play into marketing through other mediums?

Domain names used on outside forms of marketing from the Internet need to be real particular. They are the GLUE holding together your overall marketing campaign. It is necessary to have a great domain name when marketing through multiple mediums or you may be hitting deaf ears with your message.

Simplicity…Only one of the domain names in our sample set is 2 words and that is WowDentistry.net. But also realize it is a .net, and local competition in Dallas owns WowDentistry.com. Hmm…is this a name you would want to market on the radio? Are your potential consumers going to remember the .com or .net? Main question is, Are you feeding someone else’s fire?

Three simple rules when choosing the right Domain Names:
Be Particular,
Go For the .Com,
And, No Hyphens.

If you have any questions about your domain name in particular, feel free to reply with any questions.
Thanks for your time,
Zach Hoffmanwww.SEO.cc
SEO, Inc., CEO
Zach@SEO.cc
Dial Up: 954-763-1130

Marketing Mix-Direct Mail, Print, Television/Radio, Internet - Online Marketing SEO

2006-08-17T19:05:00.000-04:00

Marketing Mix – Learning from the Dental Players

After taking on a variety of clients it has been interesting to learn through discussion what type of marketing mix they are using. Scary thing is some people actually say, "Marketing mix?"

Marketing mix – the strategic mixing of various mediums to express your message to the marketplace

We have identified the four main marketing mediums for a local marketing mix:
Direct Mail - Newsletters
Print – Magazines/Newspapers/Yellow Pages
Television/Radio
Internet
Direct Mail

Direct mail comes in a variety of packages. You can take two design routes: custom design route ( www.GoldenProportions.com) or template package route ( www.PatientNews.com).

Two factors you may want to account for in choosing custom vs. template are:
Budget & Timeliness Factor
Custom work will cost more and take increased time preparation.
Template will be very cookie cutter where you choose what articles you want and it can be printed and placed in the mail relatively quickly.

The most important element of your newsletter will be choosing the correct mailing list. Unless a firm has experienced Economist/Marketing (demographics experts) working for them you may be best choosing a mailing list yourself. A great source to find this information is www.InfoUSA.com an online database. They charge by the address/lead and allow you to setup your criteria for who you want to target. Key factors to target are Age, Income, Home Value, Sex, Marital Status, and Zip Code proximity.

Television/Radio

Television and radio are great mediums for marketing but experience short shelf life. Your expression is limited to the time you buy, and only as affective as the frequency you can place.

In my local market of South Florida, where cosmetic appeal is what we breed we have been starting to hear associate practices stepping into the marketplace. Consumers know little difference between associates vs. an experienced professional, but they do know who they are hearing. Why do I say this? Well as a single professional practice your marketing budget is going to be far shy of what the associate practice can throw at a marketing push. If you are experiencing this in your marketplace you should once again refocus your marketing to a niche audience and beat out your competitor's guerrilla marketing strategy this way.

Print – Magazine/Newspapers/Yellow Pages

Print marketing works in the dental industry on a local/regional level with the right ad. If you decide to run a print ad, look into a local magazine or newspaper where your budget will allow you to market for a majority of the calendar year.

We have encountered many clients who have been burnt by numerous organizations with nationwide magazines claiming to pitch you to an "exclusive" crowd. We will not mention any of these publications in respect for other mediums but you all know who we are talking about. To pay five figures to get into a nationwide publication, unless it comes with some silent benefits, or other strategy, just isn't worth it.

Yellow Pages = garbage/firewood, need I say more? And yes we believe it worked for you ten years ago, but this is a different era.

Face it our society is not reading print, they are reading the Internet.

Internet

Internet marketing is currently the most affective medium of the above. All the above mediums feed interested consumers to the Internet. Look at you here reading the Internet for information. Your potential patients are doing the same thing; remember that sedation radio ad you ran this week? What do you think your potential patient had better odds of remembering?

Sedation Dentistry vs. Your Name?
Porcelain Veneers vs. Your Name?

Stop feeding your competition's fire, if you are marketing on various mediums today and not the Internet, STOP THE LEAK!!!! Those clients you are grooming to buy your products and services should be coming to you at the end of the day to close the deal and not your competition.

If you would like additional information about Online Marketing and your current Online positioning, feel free to contact me at Zach@SEO.cc for a free consultation.

Thanks,
Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc – Online Marketing Agency
SEO, Inc., CEO
Zach@SEO.cc
Dial Up: 954-763-1130

Domain Name Real Estate

2006-08-16T00:47:00.000-04:00

Hi,

Here are some steps to help you identify a domain name suitable for your business.

1. Would you like to target a location?

Answering this will help you identify a key-keyword to have in your domain name.

2. Are you a specific type of company? an Organization? etc.

This will help you identify the extension to end your domain with:
.com, .org, . biz, .info, etc...

3. What type of business are you?

Identify your profession, which will become a key keyword in your domain name also.

Here is the above applied to an example:

1. Would you like to taget a location? Yes, Dallas

2. Are you a specific type of company? Yes, we want a .com

3. What type of business are you? Dentistry

First suggestion to come to mind is DallasDentistry.com

This domain we identified is a generic domain name. Genereic domain names hold the most value because they have value to the most number of people that would be interested in your domain name.

Hope this information helps you choose a domain name and if you have any questions feel free to contact me.

Speak to you later,

Zach Hoffman
www.SEO.cc
SEO, Inc., CEO
Zach@SEO.cc

Domain Names Matter

2006-08-14T22:16:00.000-04:00

People are starting wonder why domain names are suddenly unavailable and getting expensive. Well check out www.DNJournal.com for more information on this growing market. It's the law of supply and demand controlling the marketplace and very few excellent domains can still be found on the primary domain market. This series of events has led to many secondary markets beginning to appear. A few of the popular domain secondary markets are DomainFN.com, Sedo.com, TDNam.com, Pool.com, and many others.

Our firm solidified our positioning by catching www.SEO.cc our company website. We would be glad to help your company find a suitable domain name for your company for a one time fee of $500 per a domain. We will bring you more information shortly on how to construct a solid domain name of your own, and what extension you may want to consider purchasing.

Speak to you later,

Zach Hoffman
SEO, Inc., CEO
www.SEO.cc
Zach@SEO.cc

Search Engine & What They Pull Back As Top Results - Google, Yahoo, & MSN

2006-08-13T14:08:00.000-04:00

The three major search engines Google, Yahoo, and MSN all develop their search results in different ways. There are many professions that depend on efficiency of Search Engine research to help them develop reports. These include, but are not limited too, attorneys, researchers, scientist, doctors, consumers (professional shoppers), everyday business people. At the end of the day if everyone had a better understanding of how to search the search engines they would pull the results they wanted a lot quicker.

All three search engines change their style of organizing and finding data, but this is where it stands from our point this August 2006.
Google - extremely database oriented, your results will ussually have a lot of other sources that point to them as the information source on a specific topic
Yahoo - reads websites very well, it is very content oriented and if someone posted it on the web Yahoo will most likely be able to find the data on a website
MSN - they are young to the search results game, but catching up fast, there data is dependant on meta-tags and content that is near the beginning of a webpage. It does not seem their databases have been reading depth on websites.

Sorry for not going to in depth on this topic, industry secrets but if you want to know more stay tuned to this blog.

These are just are finding on what they major search engines are doing to produce results. We host private lectures on how to search the web and go a lot more in depth at these courses, to schedule e-mail us today. Also visit our company SEO, Inc. on the web.

HTML Title Tag for a Website - Meta Tags - Search Engine Optimization - www.SEO.cc

2006-08-07T15:13:00.001-04:00

You see that title in the Upper Left hand corner of your browser? That's what we are about to write.This is the identifier to the browser of your site and also, the tag the search engine will put as the title to your page listing. The only instance where this doesn't happen is in Yahoo! where they adapt the heading from your directory submission if you place one ($299 per year). If this is the case, this is the title Yahoo! will give your website on their search engine.The following tag should be placed in the following HTML:

Blogger won't allow me to put <> and without HTML errors coming up, so if you have any questions as to these feel free to contact me.

html
head
title title
head
html

The number of characters (letters) you use are of great value when writing your title tag. You want to be as brief and concise as possible and not waste any characters on unnecessary words or phrases. Even when it comes down to using the word "and" try to use the symbol "&" this for example saves 2 character spaces.

As of August 7, 2006 the count we found for characters on the following search engines titles were as follows:
Google: 64 characters
Yahoo: 115 characters
MSN: 64 characters
Try to keep your important title information within these number of characters.Now, How do you come up with your Title?Well it is time to brainstorm...think...think...think...write down...scratch out...write down some more...uh huh, you got it?...Good!!!!

Step by Step...Title Tags:

Well if we were to classify what you do, what industry would you say you were in? Health? OK

What type of Health product? Plastic Surgeon? Ok? Plastic Surgeon

Where is the office located? South Florida? Try a city...Miami...Ok...Miami

Now so far are title should read:

In the proper HTML tags:

Miami Plastic Surgeon

Next, we want to explore some more detail as to what type of product and service offering this plastic surgeon provides. Ok...he does nose jobs, breast implants, botox, liposuction, and the list goes on. Now we need to get real, where is the doctors money from? What does he want to be ranked for? Breast Implants, Liposuction & Nose Jobs. Now your tag should read:

In the proper HTML tags:

Miami Plastic Surgeon-Breast Implants, Liposuction, Nose Jobs

Wow, all that information in just 63 characters...I should do this for a living, oh yeah I already do =)

Well now lets add some additional information about the doctor cause Yahoo will still read it. His name is Dr. Bob Stephonopolis, MD, FACS

In the proper HTML tags:

Miami Plastic Surgeon-Breast Implants, Liposuction, Nose Jobs-Dr. Bob Stephonopolis,MD,FACS

Hope this title tag sample helps, if you need any additional help or have any helpful information to add feel free to reply to this blog.

Until next time...
Zach
www.SEO.cc
SEO, Inc., CEO

Meta Tag Development - SEO Basics

2006-08-07T01:00:00.000-04:00

Since I run SEO, Inc. I am going to post up some blogs about search engine optimization. I will teach people how to do it, but remember there is no 100 percent right way, the only guy doing it more right is the one that ranks above you. SEO is a fun game so have fun with it.
We appreciate all feedback and input cause thats the only way to grow our knowledge.

All meta-tags must have title, keywords, and a description. The three must at some point logically connect. Showing some form of logical repetition but be careful to make sure you do not place to many repeat phrases because you don't want to be accused of spamming.

Be sure to target niche market keywords, meaning specific products, geographic locations and other identifiers. If you straight up attempt to target a single word or two words odds are you will have a tough time working your way to the top. One way to identify lucrative keywords is to use a Google AdWords account or Yahoo Overture bid tool to track what words are being searched. The Google AdWords method may cost you a few dollars to test but is worth it in the long run.

Here is a copy of meta-tags we prepared for a client
.. name="description" content="Aventura Dentist Dr. Howard J. Hoffman, DDS, MPS, creates healthy rejuvenated smiles using cosmetic and sedation dentistry. Located in Aventura-Miami, South Florida. He offers sedation dentistry for patients who prefer dental treatment in a few visits. As an Aventura-Miami dental professional he serves patients from many South Florida areas including Aventura, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, Coral Springs and all surrounding areas.">.. name="keywords" content="dentist aventura, aventura cosmetic dentist, aventura sedation dentist, aventura cosmetic dentistry, aventura sedation dentistry, aventura dentistry, aventura dental, dental, dentist, dentistry florida, FL, dentist, florida, dds, mps, howard j. hoffman, south florida">

Aren't those tags beautiful? The client ranks in the top 5 consistently on all three major search engines. Now to optimize this guy there was more then just meta-tags involved, but your meta-tags are your bread and butter to consistentcy. All three search engines look for different aspects, but this a key identifier for them.

In the title we put our most important keywords at the head of the title - first two words. This tells the search engine what we are here for. In this clients case it is -dentist aventura. The search engine computers are comparable to your librarian sorting and organizing information according according to a system. Considering there are thousands of websites out there you need to be sure to make the search engines job as easy as possible. You tell what you want verbatim, you will get the results you desire. Its your ABC of life -always be closing...tell the search engine the end deal you want.

In the title tag we are always sure to count the number of characters in the title, of sites on the search engine results page. This tells us the max number of characters we can expect the search engine to read our site for. Now be careful when writing your source code and make sure you stay within a limited number of characters to get your message across. Concise descriptions will help you get your message across clearly.

Now your description should read logically and read well to a human reader. Most search engines look to this information first to pull the description they place on the search engine results. They also will check to make sure your title reads with similar keyword targets.
As for your keywords be sure not to target individual keywords, but to target phrases. With affective SEO, you will have identified these phrases and hone in on them. For example in our example case we targetted aventura dentist , as opposed to the keyword should be an actual phrase. Well anyway need to go work on manipulating your search engine results, good luck, and if you have any questions feel free to contact me.

Later, Zach