The Criteria the search engines use to rank pages can be categorized into two groups:

On page factors:  You control this

Off site factors:  This is where a internet marketing strategy is crucial

Onsite SEO:

Factors:

• Title Tag
• Words on your page
• Domain Name
• HTML design
• URLS

Offsite SEO:

Factors:

• Incoming Links
• Anchor text links
• Page rank of sites
• Authority Sites

Your marketing mix should consist of both .. first your onsite has to be addressed and then off site has strategies need to be implemented.

– Call for a quote 503-997-6935

1. Decide on the one search phrase you want your page to rank for.
2. Title your page with a variation of the phrase you want it to rank for.
3. Create a headline on your page that re-enforces the title of your page
4. Write your page content for consumers, but do also keep in mind it’s important to give the search engines what they need to rank you correctly for the terms you are targeting, so use the key word term phrases you are targeting in your content.
5. Create links to your page using link text that contains variation of your search phrase.
6. Get external links to your page that also use variations of your search phrase.
7. Continue to do this through out your site on each and ever page, targeting a unique key word phrase on each of the pages.

Good Luck!

With the incredible high user base, expect more Facebook changes to come…

Here is a excerpt from a recent letter to facebook users that Mark Zuckerberg the founder of Facebook wrote,

 ”Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we’ll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You’ll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you’re finished, we’ll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you’re done you’ll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.”

Read the complete letter here: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=190423927130

Here is a list of 13 great sites/tools that are FREE to help you with online market research. Be smart and do your market research.

1. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
2. http://www.google.com/trends
3. http://www.google.com/insights/search/
4. http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
5. http://labs.wordtracker.com/keyword-questions 
6. http://technorati.com/search
7. http://www.google.com/alerts
8. http://www.spyfu.com/
9. http://www.nichewatch.com/
10. http://pulse.ebay.com/
11. http://new-pulse.ebay.com/
12. http://www.amazon.com/
13. http://www.shopping.com/top_searches

One of the first steps in having an online business or web site  is choosing the URL. The URL is the web address that someone types in when going to  a website. The URL you use for your business is important and you should definately put some thought into it. 

 The URL you use should have your most important keywords in it.  Here is an example of what you not to do www.maryjos.com  where instead if I was a cupcake shop owner I should try and register a domain that has my business keyword in it and  a URL that is more descriptive of my business like: www.cupcakeshop.com

If your business is already established it’s still smart to be selective and mindful when choosing a domain and try to incorporate a keyword that your are targeting in your domain name.

Take these things into consideration when selecting a domain name:

1. Is it easy to remember
2. Are you incorporating your keywords in it?
3. Does it properly reflect your business?

Another SEO Tip would be to tell you to name your additional web pages with keywords that your are targeting. An example of this  would be instead of  cupcakes1.html you might title it chocolate-cup-cakes.html or birthday-cup-cakes.html … you get the idea, be mindful of your keywords when creating your site. It will pay off I promise.

I will leave you with a really good tip that could save you hundreds of frustrating hours.  You must check to see if your domain has ever been used by someone else. If your brand new domain name was used for spam or unethical internet practices, it will be extremely difficult to get it indexed in the major search engines. Before purchasing a domain always check http://www.archive.org and see if it has ever been owned before and if it has, take a look at the archives to see if the person who owned it ever did unethical stuff.

Did you know?

• 80% of users scan pages (users don’t read every word) - Lesson: Write for your audience and the medium in which you are delivering your message
• Only 10% of people look at the web page below the fold. - Lesson: put your most important info on the top half of your page.
• Users decide to stay or leave your page within 10-15 seconds - Lesson Make a good first impression and give them something good to keep them interested in staying on your site. (make your site sticky)

It’s important to have goals when creating your site:

 Company goals

• know your company mission & vision
• Is your goal Business to Consumer (B2C)  or Business to Business (B2B)

Define your website goals

• do you want to increase sales?
• do you want to build a list of leads?
• do you want lots of traffic?
• do you want to sell a service, product, share news or entertain?
• what valuable web content will you share? white papers, ebook, blog articles, videos

 Provide value for your customers

• figure out how you are gonna make your site sticky
• what can you offer your visitors that your competitors can’t or aren’t
• what are the benefits of your services, products,news or entertainment ?

Know which type of site you you should have to best suit your business goals.

• static website
• dynamic website
• content management site
• eCommerce site
• flash website

Website Must haves:

• professional, non distracting design, use a natural palette of colors, create a strong contrast between a pages background and it’s text, use an average of 3 different colors consistently throughout your site 
• call to action
• formatting - write for your audience and the medium
• easy clean and clear navigation
• strong enticing headlines (utilizing keywords)
• rich interesting copy
• current up to date info (never out of date info)
• your page must load quickly
• contact info
• contact form
• no pop ups
• no frames
• avoid distracting bells and whistles

Great resources for choosing colors for your site:

http://www.2createawebsite.com/design/color-psychology.html
http://www.avangate.com/articles/color-web-site_59.html

Great resource for designing the perfect “call to action button”
http://www.leemunroe.com/web-design-trends-call-to-action-signup-download-buttons/

• color, location, language, size, and margins

Just like having a website it doesn’t matter if you have the coolest website or fan page you can’t expect people to just find you without putting in some effort .. you have to MARKET your business online. So here are some great tips on how to increase traffic to your fan page.Now this should go without saying but for those just getting into it.. REMEMBER is it very important to communicate regularly with the people who are interested in your company. Engage with them, respond and acknowledge them when they take the time to make a comment or to say hi.   If you are real and show them respect they will be more likely to share your business with their friends.

Let me begin with DON’T PARTICIPATE IN SPAM!  There are people out there that may try and lure you with empty promises or enticements that seem to good to be true. Stay away from them.

The simple explanation of spam is it’s a tactic of manipulation vs. optimization.  It’s deception vs. marketing

As an internet marketer your goal should be to create a successful online business that stands the test of time and is of high value to your clients and to the overall web.

Terms worth defining: 

White Hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Practices -  are ethical search engine friendly and adopted techniques and tactics that help your site get noticed by the Search Engines for the terms you are targeting. 

 Black Hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Practices - are unethical techniques and tactics that are highly frowned upon by the search engines. Deception is the intent of any one using black hat techniques like backdoors, cloaking, and other tricks to optimize sites.

Remember the search engines employ hundreds of scientist and have numerous resources to combat those that are developing spam techniques or participating in black hat techniques.

Avoid  Content spamming and Link spamming and play by the rules when optimizing your site. You will win in the long run.

For those looking at hiring someone to do your SEO avoid anyone who practices any black hat techniques they will only damage your online reputation.

• Search Engines don’t store web pages, - they index the text on those pages
• Search Engines don’t search the web - they search only some within their index - so if you are not in their index you are not going to appear in their search results.
• Search engines don’t read a page and decide what it should rank for at all - they receive a search query and rank the pages that match that query - this means that a single page can rank for multiple terms (this matters when creating your keyword strategies)

Quick Text Acronym Reference Guide
(QTARG)

Acronyms for text users, online users or just parents who want to know a second language that their children speak and use.

Enjoy our collection of over 500 Acronyms that we have come across and defined for you. Organized alphabetically for quick reference use.  

For a limited time
The QTARG Ebook is ONLY $3.99
Once your payment has been recieved we will email you a copy of 
The 20 page pdf Quick Text Acronym Reference Guide ebook 

One of the most important things is to check the Cache date of linking page and make sure Google has visited it recently.

Acquiring quality links to a site is a major part of any SEO effort.  If you are good at SEO then you take certain steps in acquiring links. The days of randomly acquiring huge number of links are over.

Follow these steps to get good quality links:

• Make sure the linking page is not from a “bad neighborhood”
• Check to make sure the number of links on the linking page isn’t too high
• Be sure the linking site is relevant to your topic
• Confirm the link anchor text is relevant to the keywords
• Look to see that the linking page has a good PageRank

In general, the quality of the link is established through several factors.

When and if the link passes all tests and is worth acquiring there is one final step make sure you check the cache date. Often, we go to great lengths to make sure the site is a real link, that it looks good, and isn’t “spamming”…that we fail to ensure Google is actually spidering the page.

Because if Google isn’t spidering the page then, the link is essentially worthless. This is probably the most vital step that too many Webmasters fail to check.

Think of the cache dates as a carton of milk in your fridge. Milk is generally good for about three weeks. Beyond that, you start running into “problems,” right? The same is true for indexing. If a page goes longer than three weeks without being spidered by Google, there’s a problem.

If it’s been a couple of months, there is a MAJOR problem.

It’s easy to check the cached date of a page. Just put its URL in the search box and if it is indexed it should show up at the top of the search results. Below the snippet you will find the link to the cached version of the page. Click on it and you will be able to know when it was last cached.

That’s it. It’s really simple, Yet so many link builders skip this step and end up linking to pages that have no link juice to offer.

Recommendation: Before you spend a lot of effort in determining the pedigree of a linking page, do a quick check of the page’s last cached date. If it is not very recent don’t bother enquiring further and move on to the next option.

Note: Be sure to check for Spam Links - especially in a Blog.

With malware infections becoming more and more common online these days, sites and blogs are being jepordized without the Webmaster even knowing it. Typically, the Spammer will place dozens, hundreds, or even thousands and links “hidden” in the code to their Viagra, Casino, Porn, etc. sites.

Here is how you can check to see if your blog has fallen prey to this:

Just do a site command in Google. For example:  site:lampshoppers.com casino

This will check the domain for any reference to the word “casino.” If you get a few hundred pages returned and you are NOT in the casino business, chances are VERY good you’ve been hacked.

Other phrases you should check would be:

porn , Viagra , cialis, casino

Another good tip is to set up a Google Alert for your own business so you can follow it and see it’s activity.

Check out these recent videos produced by our Video Production Partner

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How was the catchy name Twitter picked?

When cofounder Biz Stone saw the application that Jack Dorsey created in 2006 he was reminded of the way birds communicate: “Short bursts of information…Everyone is chirping, having a good time.” In response, Stone came up with ‘twttr’, and the group eventually added some vowels.

It’s hard to think of a better name in the technology arena than twitter that appeals to the mass public, heck it’s even fun to say Twitter & tweet,  but what began as what Stone described as “trivial” bursts of communication” would soon become a  powerful means of networking, breaking news, and  a forum for the 44th US president’s campaign. Marketing strategies are forever changed.

Origin of the name “Google”

In searchging the web for the story of the origin of the search engine and company name “Google” I have found this one by David Koller to  be the most intersting,  based on his understanding of the genesis of the name.

“The source of my information is my friends and colleagues from Wing 3B of the Gates Computer Science Building at Stanford University, where Google was born.

In 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin called their initial search engine “BackRub,” named for its analysis of the web’s “back links.” Larry’s office was in room 360 of the Gates CS Building, which he shared with several other graduate students, including Sean Anderson, Tamara Munzner, and Lucas Pereira. In 1997, Larry and his officemates discussed a number of possible new names for the rapidly improving search technology. Sean recalls the final brainstorming session as occurring one day during September of that year.

Sean and Larry were in their office, using the whiteboard, trying to think up a good name - something that related to the indexing of an immense amount of data. Sean verbally suggested the word “googolplex,” and Larry responded verbally with the shortened form, “googol” (both words refer to specific large numbers). Sean was seated at his computer terminal, so he executed a search of the Internet domain name registry database to see if the newly suggested name was still available for registration and use. Sean is not an infallible speller, and he made the mistake of searching for the name spelled as “google.com,” which he found to be available. Larry liked the name, and within hours he took the step of registering the name “google.com” for himself and Sergey (the domain name registration record dates from September 15, 1997). ”

Whether you are concentrating your seo on Local Search or not it is a very important segment of SEO that every business owner with or without a website should pay attention to if you want customers to find you.

Here is a link to David Mimh’s recent survey of several experts that gauged the factors most helpful for ranking well in the Google and Yahoo Local algorithms, as well as techniques to be avoided.  He has done a great job summarizing the survey and it’s a must read for anyone interested in gaining ranking in the local playing field. http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml#results

When reading his article there were a few terms that I felt needed to be better explained for those not in the local search market trenches.  

survey glossary:

HCard Microformat – hCard is a simple, open, distributed format for representing people, companies, organizations, and places, using a 1:1 representation of vCard (RFC2426) properties and values in semantic HTML or XHTML. hCard is one of several open microformat standards suitable for embedding in HTML, XHTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML.   Want to get started with writing an hCard? Use the hCard creator to write up some contact information and publish it, or follow the hCard authoring tips to add hCard markup to your current contact page.

KML File - You can create KML files with the Google Earth user interface, or you can use an XML or simple text editor to enter “raw” KML from scratch. KML files and their related images (if any) can be compressed using the ZIP format into KMZ archives. To share your KML and KMZ files, you can e-mail them, host them locally for sharing within a private internet, or host them publicly on a web server. Just as web browsers display HTML files, Earth browsers such as Google Earth display KML files. Once you’ve properly configured your server and shared the URL (address) of your KML files, anyone who’s installed Google Earth can view the KML files hosted on your public web server.

If you’re new to KML, begin by browsing the KML Tutorial, which presents short samples of KML code that you can view in Google Earth and Google Maps. The KML Reference provides detailed syntax for all KML elements, with explanations and diagrams of how to specify them.  The Developer’s Guide contains in-depth conceptual material and examples.

Citations: a short note recognizing a source of information or of a quoted passage; “the student’s essay failed to list several important citations”; “the acknowledgments are usually printed at the front of a book”; “the article includes mention of similar clinical cases”  Or in the case of online Citations are mentions from other online sources.

UGC - user generated content

LBC - local business center

IYP - internet yellow pages

LBL - local business listings

Great resources to have handy: 

Most Important Data Providers + IYP Sites

1. infoUSA
2. Superpages
3. Localeze
4. YellowPages
5. Yelp
6. InsiderPages
7. Niche Industry Sites (BBB, Vertical Directories)
8. Acxiom
9. Yahoo
10. Citysearch

Other sites receiving significant votes: Niche Civic/Municipal Sites (Chamber of Commerce, Local Directories), Merchant Circle, UniversalBusinessListing, Yellowbot.

Most Important Review Engines

1. Yelp
2. InsiderPages
3. Yahoo
4. CitySearch
5. Google
6. Superpages
7. Niche Industry Sites (BBB, Vertical Directories)
8. TripAdvisor
9. Judysbook
10. Kudzu

Other sites receiving significant votes: Yellowpages, Merchant Circle, AngiesList. 

Also if you don’t know about it check out your site’s local listing on www.getlisted.org

As you know the power of video is undeniable.

• It generates traffic
• It’s an opportunity to presell your visitors, build a relationship, build trust with your users so they are more comfortable with you brand and are more likely to convert.
• It increases your search engine ranking - I’ve seen this work first hand it’s amazing!
• It’s an opportunity to create word of mouth and campaign that go viral.

Ever wonder what  you should create a video about? Here are 8 ways to use video to help sell your products.

1. Do a product review - usually it’s a person on camera doing a review touching and holding the product and showing usage.
2. Interview an expert, if you have a someone at your company that is very knowledgable or maybe your top tier buyers
3. Create a product showcase video - this is different than a review, there is no-one talking to the camera, it’s an opportunity to show the users the features and cool elements of the product rather than give technical data.  They can include music, voice overs at the beginning and end.  Kind of like a fancy slide show that evokes desire.
4. Create consumer video reviews - user testimonials can be very powerful capture that in a video and you have magic.
5. Make a top 5 list (or whatever number you wish) could be top 5 xmas gifts for teens. You get the idea. Be sure to include on the page a link to each specific product you highlighted so the consumer can view and purchase easily.
6. Imitate the QVC method - it works, study it and do it via video and put it on your site.
7. Video Blogging - chatting with your audience casually via video it’s a video post but visual, make them useful don’t just talk about your gramma coming over for dinner.
8. Free Online Videos - Everyone loves something for free, fill it with good quality info, at the end of the video you provide visitors the ability to get more info on a product that they can eventually purchase get them into your list for future promotions.

More to come on video production and video equipment in a later post. Meanwhile you can check out our video services.

1. Don’t search for  “Keyword Phrase” and  “Submit Site” for potential links. Most, if not all results will be garbage
2. Avoid 3 way linking schemes. Google is getting better at detecting and discounting these links.
3. Reciprocal Linking.  It’s effective when done right. Instead of trying to get a ton of useless links, concentrate on getting links within the body of an article from a site in your niche or related to your niche.
4. Don’t just link to your home page, work on getting deep links - deep links are links to other pages are your site that are optimized for the linking text you are using.
5. Switch up your linking text
6. Services that guarentee links often have a number or network of sites they own. (usually just sites that are created for the sole purpose of posting links on — they are no good) Look at each and every link before it’s posted on your site and to see where you link to your site is posted.
7. Pace yourself when acquiring links. It will send a red flag to google if you get to many too quickly. The goal is to grow your links slowly and consistently.
8. Base the link on your visitors needs not on whether or not the site you are working with has a high PR if it’s unrelated it’s not beneficial.
9. Check the page has a cache date in Google three weeks fresh.
10. Write good articles and provide links to your site form the article bio section.
11. Don’t assume all links are being followed. Many now have No Follow Tags associated with them. Beaware.
12. Keep a log of where your links are and a contact name and email to follow up in the future if you link some how mysteriously disappears. 

Link Building is a tedius task but one that still seems to benefit your site so be persistent and keep plugging along there are some really great honest sites out there that want to share with their audience like minded sites that truly benefit each other. As always remember good content is king and people will want to link to you if you have good information or provide good service.

I don’t know much about this company but this looks like a great job for anyone into Online Marketing.  If you have a job lead send it to me and I’ll post all legit job openings here on the site - I think it’s important we help each other out when good job openings come along. (Follow this format)

OCP  Job Type: Full-Time

Description: SUMMARY OF JOB PURPOSE:
We are seeking an energetic, creative and motivated Online Marketing Specialist to join our team of marketing professionals. Reporting to the Marketing Manager, this position is responsible for overseeing the daily operations of our e-commerce sites, formalizing SEO/SEM strategies and tactics and implementing online marketing campaigns, including social media programs. He/she will proactively identify opportunities to enhance site performance and user experience through analysis of site reporting and industry best practices.

KEY DUTIES:
• Develop search engine optimization (SEO) strategies and tactics and collaborates with web systems team in their implementation across all websites and any brand extensions (e.g., widgets, applications).
• Oversee maintenance of product and content for the sites to ensure optimal data integrity with the goal of driving online revenue.
• Create content schedule for all OCP’s e-commerce websites, including online newsletters, web specials, featured products and composers, new products, events and homepage product placement and campaign themes.
• Work cross-functionally to coordinate and execute web marketing activities to support the launch and monitoring of online campaigns. Work with marketing staff on creative, performance reporting, campaign optimization and troubleshooting.
• Assist copywriters to develop search-optimized copy for new and existing product pages. Maintain/update and upload site content via the company’s content management system.
• Coordinate the creation of graphic elements to enhance the look of the site. Make recommendations on improvements and enhancements.
• Monitor web traffic and provide metrics and stats on online newsletters. Measure and report on results of various marketing initiatives, help assess ROI and effectiveness

EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS:
• Bachelor’s Degree in Business/Marketing required or equivalent combination of education and work experience (3-5 years)

JOB EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENTS:
• 3+ years experience with web content management, ecommerce and/or online marketing programs
• 2+ experience developing electronic marketing, including SEO/SEM programs and online brand management and integration with demonstrated results
• Strong understanding of usability and web marketing disciplines & practices.
• Solid understanding of the web environment, keyword administration and SEO/SEM techniques and best practices
• Familiarity with web processes, design and creative development; basic understanding of HTML and CSS
• Experience using web analytic tools such as Google analytics
• Demonstrated creative, analytical and detailed-oriented skills
• Experience working with social media and web 2.0 technologies

SPECIALIZED SKILLS:
• Ability to think strategically yet creatively against demanding deadlines with acute attention to detail
• Excellent verbal/written communication skills, with strong interpersonal skills and ability to work in a team environment
• Ability to take initiative, work under general direction and also independently
• Strong project management skills
• Spanish language a plus

IF INTERESTED:
* Submit resume with cover letter online at http://jobs.ocp.org.

OCP is an equal opportunity employer.How to apply: Submit resume with cover letter online at http://jobs.ocp.org

Qualifications:

Compensation Range:

Start Date:

Number of Openings: 1

Education:

Contact:
Address 1: 5536 NE HassaloAddress 2:

City: Portland

ZIP: 97213

Contact Name: Sue

Contact Phone: 5032811191

Website: ocp.org

Today is a busy day I’ve already written 3 posts and had two client calls all before 9am. It seems ever since the launch of my newly redesigned site Working Web Solutions,  We have a new sense of rebirth and new energy. I know that seems a little hooky but it’s true. For the past 8 years I have worked hard to grow my business and over the years as my time was consumed on focusing on my clients goals and growth I somehow neglected my own companies outside appearance. The all important potential client’s first impression.   It’s like when you go to a hair dresser you expect her to have NICE LOOKING HAIR, when and if she doesn’t your level of confidence in how well she cuts hair is naturally lowered. It’s just human nature to react this way consciously or sub-consciously.

The feedback we have initially received has been very positive and the increase in user engagements has also increased and it’s only been a short time.  We are am thrilled at the opportunity to offer new services with this site redesign and am in the process of developing internet marketing webinar classes to be offered in the upcoming months. The team here has worked very hard on this redesign and we all take great pride in the direction our company is going. We think we are positioned in a great place and have the expertise and experience to take us to the next level.

I guess the lesson or message here is you have one chance to make a first impression in all things you do .. make the first one in your business a meaningful and positive one for you and your users. Don’t wait another day to redesign your site or create a new branded look and feel for your business.  Invest in your business and it will pay off. Here is the recent Working Web Solutions spotlight on AboutUS.org

My new internet marketing tool is  Hootsuite ( http://hootsuite.com ) The great thing about Hootsuite is it allows you to streamline your internet marketing efforts. It allows you to still be broad in your reach but saves you precious time!  And it’s FREE.  We are truly living in amazing times with the amount of new technology we are seeing every day and it’s amazing the rate of new technology and services being offered and developed.  It certainly  can be overwhelming if you don’t use tools like this to help you stay on top of your field.  Here is a list of the what Hootiesuite offers as part of it’s service:

Multiple Accounts - Save your time and save your sanity. Continue managing all of your Twitter profiles through one client: HootSuite

Team Workflow - Have a company or organization with more than one contributor? HootSuite is still making it easy to manage multiple users over various Twitter accounts.

Track Statistics - Impress your friends, your boss or just yourself with our improved visualizations link statistics. Graphs show not only a summary but also individual tweet statistics!

Multi-Column View (like tweetdeck) - Never miss a tweet with HootSuite 2.0 multiple columns feature. Organize your Twitter stream into friends, news, search terms, keyword tracking - whatever you like! Our drag and drop feature allows you to easily move individuals into group columns.

Tabbed Layout - The new tabbed layout takes Twitter categories to new heights. Organize and customize your Tweeting experience. Within each tab, you are able to create up to 6 columns. Drag and drop your tabs for easy organizing.

Create Groups - Now you can create customizable columns for your friends, groups or topics of interest! Add users through their @username or drag and drop them from other columns! Hoot

Embed Columns - Want to feed the chatter from a customized Twitter column somewhere else? Now you can grab code from HootSuite to easily embed Twitter search columns in your blog or website.

Feed Your RSS  -Like to feed your blog or website through Twitter? Tis easy! Automatically feed your RSS to your Twitter stream with HootSuite!

Ping.fm Integration - Update all of your social networks with a single update! HootSuite with Ping.FM allows you to update your Facebook, Wordpress, MySpace, LinkedIn and more.  What’s Ping.fm? Think of it as your social network glue.  A Ping.fm account lets you send a single update to multiple networks simultaneously: Facebook, Wordpress, MySpace, LinkedIn, and more. And now you’re able to send those updates through HootSuite to take advantage of scheduling, clickthrough stats, and all the other cool features HootSuite has to offer. 

Schedule Tweets - Provide rich, nourishing content to your followers at any time of day using the HootSuite tweet scheduler. Pre-schedule anything you like, from radio programming to birthday well-wishes. Or, tweet live!

Quick Search - Located directly on the dashboard, click the search bar to see current trending topics, to search keywords, or monitor your brand. Like what you see? Save the search as a column!

View User Info - Easily view users’ details without being taken to a separate window! Click on their username or avatar to view an in-screen popup to view their detailed bio, follow them, or add them to one of your groups

And a host of other standard features like notifications and alerts etc. 

Facebook’s U.S. users grew by 14% in July ALONE! - While metrics from other analytics firms say Facebook’s US growth slowed in July, new data just in from comScore actually tells the opposite story. According to comScore, Facebook’s traffic to its main site grew by nearly 14% month over month in July to over 87.7 million US uniques – the highest monthly growth rate Facebook has experienced in the last year

With Facebook hitting an all-time high growth rate in the US, according to comScore. It now seems that the redesign earlier this year hasn’t been “disastrous” as some people had claimed it would be – while Facebook is still working on improving the “highlights” section of the home page and  re-integrating it with the real time stream, Facebook’s American audience has continued to expand across the demographic board.

As Facebook continues its experiments to make sharing more efficient, the company is now testing a “faster, simpler version of Facebook” called Facebook Lite. Facebook Lite is now live at lite.facebook.com for those users included in the beta test.  Facebook says it is running the test primarily in countries “where we are seeing lots of new users coming to Facebook for the first time and are looking to start off with a more simple experience.”

Users who are part of the beta test are seeing what could be described as a more FriendFeed-like version of Facebook. The stream appears to be reduced to just status updates, likes, and comments – no activity stories, application stories, or embedded content appear. In addition, profile page tabs have been moved to the left side of the page, all basic info and small profile boxes have been removed, and the publisher is not open by default. 

If you ask me they want to compete with Twitter they can say it’s for efficency purposes but we’ll see how similiar the user experience is to Twitter when it’s all said and done.

This week Twitter servers were down for a bit due to a server attack. Then those that were freaking out went to facebook and caused their server to go down for  a bit too.

Even though it doesn’t seem like a big deal for twitter to be down for a bit or for facebook to go down for a few minutes it is a HUGE deal if all of your marketing efforts are only utilizing one social media channel.  So let’s say you only use Twitter as your means of marketing. How vulnerable and frustrated were you when Twitter was down?

This is a valuable lesson that goes to show you, you should never, ever rely on one service to get your message out.

Twitter is great and is a fun platform for engaging people, and if you’re doing it correctly and adding content of value to Twitter most likely you are seeing some good traffic benefits from participating on Twittere.  But you shouldn’t be using JUST Twitter (or any other service) to communicate with your customers, readers or clients.

It is so important to also get a Facebook fan page. One easy way is to do what I have done. I have added a facebook widget on my blog .. check out the one on this page where you can easily become a fan.  Also another important thing to do as a business owner/marketer is to start collecting email subscribers so you can communicate with them directly and encourage RSS subscriptions and make it easy for RSS readers to also have the ability to get your feeds via email as well.

By offering these variety of ways to get your message out you can reach your fans, friends and subscribers through a variety of channels eliminating your frustration if Twitter or Facebook goes down. You still have other avenues of marketing tactics to get your message out and continue on with your daily business goals.

Why should you be on Twitter or Facebook.. here is some quick stats:

Twitter.com is a top 50 site that reaches over 27 million U.S. monthly people. The site attracts a slightly more female than male group

Facebook.com is a top 10 site that reaches over 91 million U.S. monthly people. The site attracts a more affluent, teen and young adult, very slightly female biased following.

 Whether you have a huge number of followers or a huge number of fans an important thing to recognize is the  goal with social media isn’t just to gain a  large numbers of subscribers or followers. (If they’re un-targeted subscribers, perhaps people who are just following you so that you follow them back, they’re pretty much worthless). What you want and need to do with social media is attract people interested in you, in your niche and then funnel them into other channels, other places, where you can reach them.

Keep in mind too that people prefer different methods of communication. Again another reason to make sure your marketing message is utlizing the various social media channels. One person might love email and hate Facebook, have a Twitter account but never use it and be a casual RSS reader.  Another person might never check their email, RSS feeds or Twitter but be live on Facebook.

Your job as a successful business marketer is to be in contact with your audience, potential customers, clients, reader, subscribers in whatever medium or platform they choose and are comfortable with.  You need to be where they are.  You need to be right there in front of them whenever they open up their favorite app or web address to see what’s happening.

In closing here are the take aways fromt this article.  You must diversify your Social media mix.  Good luck!

If you have a business page and want to take a look at it’s effectiveness in your engagements with your fans or recent ads check out the new stats. (Insights Page)

This is directly from the Insights page from Face book fan page it’s located on the left side of your page. Click on it and you’ll receive this message and see the graphs of info.

“Welcome to your new Insights Page.
Facebook allows you to engage with your fans in more ways than ever before - and Insights now allows you to dive into the context of those interactions with deep analytics. We now show you how users are interacting with your page, broken down by Wall posts, likes and comments. Your Post Quality shows you how engaging your posts are to your fans, and your star rating compares your Post Quality to other pages of similar size. Your Fans Over Time graph now lets you track when users decide to unsubscribe from your posts in their News Feed. And we now provide statistics on where your fan base is located and which languages they speak. If you would like to export your reports, please click “Switch to the Old Insights” in the menu above and follow the Export link. Check back frequently, as we will be adding new metrics in the coming weeks and months!”

A question commonly asked is do I have to have a facebook page or is a group good enough. Well when Facebook first launched Facebook Pages, many businesses and brands who had built up substantial audiences in their Facebook Groups asked Facebook to move their Group members over to their Facebook Page. For example, last year, Facebook converted the Apple Students Sponsored Group to a Facebook Page. (Facebook promoted “Sponsored Groups” back in the day.)

Now that Facebook Pages have been live for a long time, Facebook has stopped converting Groups to Pages in recent months. Instead, Facebook is offering Group owners the following recommendation:

You’re welcome to create a Page and notify your Group members that you’ll be using the Page instead of the Group going forward. If your Group has too many members to send them a message, we unfortunately aren’t able to provide you with any other solutions for how you might contact them about this change.

So what it come down to is  if you’re a business or brand, you shouldn’t be driving users to a Facebook Group any more. You should be creating and promoting  Facebook Pages over Groups because

1. Pages Allow Marketers to Publish to the Stream
2. Pages Allow Marketers to Engage Fans with Rich Media
3. Pages Let Marketers Analyze How Fans are Interacting with the Insights Dashboard
4. Pages Let Marketers Increase SEO

I am always trying to find ways to enhance my fan pages and have found these 8 GREAT Facebook Apps to check out.

Video, Polls, Notes, Static FMB, Social Fly, Slide Share (post pdf and power points), Reviews, Involver

Yahoo currently offers two options of their paid inclusion program: Search Submit Express and Search Submit Pro. Depending on what your needs and the amount of control you want over your submissions will help determine which program is best for you, if any.

Search Submit Express is perfect if all you are looking for is to get a few of your URLs quickly spidered and into Yahoo!. The annual fee for Search Submit Express is $49 for the first URL, $29 each for URLs 2-10 and $10 each for 11 or more URLs.  Your URLs will be visited every 48 hours to keep the listings up to date; which is perfect if you have content that is frequently changing. Once your site is listed, you will incur a cost-per-click fee whenever a user clicks on your listing.  This may be a drawback depending on your ROI for that listing. The cost-per-click  incurred is either $.15 or $.30 depending on what category your Web site falls  into. For basic sites about things like education, music, sports, baby equipment, etc. your fee would only be $.15 per click. If your site is in one of the more popular shopping categories like apparel, electronics, flowers, and personal care, or travel, then the fee is going to be $.30 per click.

A great feature about Search Submit Express is the reporting that is available. Users can access up-to-date information on clicks, rankings and keywords,  as well as get tracking information to help them optimize pages for improved performance. Trend charts are also available so that you can track performance over a span of time.

Search Submit Pro is the 2nd option of the Yahoo paid inclusion program. Search Submit Pro offers more power over your submission and more tools for you. There is no annual fee for Search Submit Pro, but there is still a cost-per-click associated with your listings. Yahoo does not specify what the cost-per-click is for the different categories, but you can assume that the category breakdown is the same as Search Submit Express, with possibly a higher cost-per-click  fee. Yahoo does say that Search Submit Pro is best for those who have a marketing budget of $5000+ per month or for those submitting 1,000+ pages to Yahoo. Depending on how many URLs you want to include in the paid inclusion program, you will have to decide which of these two programs would be most beneficial to you at the lowest cost.

Some of the nice features of Search Submit Pro include the ability to create your own titles and descriptions to be displayed on Yahoo’s search engine results page. You can change these as often as needed to correspond with the changes
on your Web site. Pages are submitted through an XML feed and Search Submit Pro allows you to include pages that might otherwise be difficult for spiders to reach due to cookies, session IDs or dynamic pages. Your content is revisited every 48 hours, just like with Search Submit Express, or if your content doesn’t change that often you can choose to set a schedule for the spider’s visits. One other nice feature of Search Submit Pro is that you are assigned a dedicated account manager to help you with all of your questions, comments, concerns etc.

Similar to Search Submit Express, Search Submit Pro offers tools that give users insight to such things as search engine rankings, the number of times each listing was clicked on, and what keywords were used to trigger those listings. The reports are also customizable so that you only track what is useful to your business. Reports can be viewed online or downloaded to your computer. These reports give  you tons of info to the performance of your site and inof on the visitors to you site. By studying the data you will be able to tweak your submission to increase the click-through-rate and increase traffic to your site

Neither Search Submit Express nor Pro promise improves site rankings. Once you’ve submitted your URLs, your site is still subject to the Yahoo algorithm and will rank based on the content and its relevancy to the keywords. Yes, the paid inclusion program gets the spider to visit your site sooner, but just having spiders visit your site won’t get you rankings. Your site still needs to be optimized and have relevant content, be themed correctly, and  have no major server or spiderability issues.

• 80% of web users will watch video at least once a month.
• 30% visited the advertiser’s physical store.
• 55% visited the advertiser’s Web site after viewing the video.
• 24% made a purchase after viewing the video.

Video is very powerful you can see the use of video works by:

• Making a personal connection with customers and prospects
• Building trust and showcasing expertise during the decision-making
    process
• Delivering a powerful message in an authentic manner
• Delivering key messages with lasting impact
• Showing the world business attributes with television-quality production  

The toughest part in this whole process is trying to figure out how in the world you are gonna create a video. You don’t know how to shoot video or  you don’t have the time. We’ll Working Web Solutions has a great new partner who focuses on nothing but video production.  They can help set you up with a production team immediately to come out to your business location and tape a commercial for your business so you can begin streaming it on YouTube or embedding it in your website immediately. 

ORDER YOUR BUSINESS VIDEO COMMERCIAL NOW!

The Next Step Promoting your video! That’s where Working Web Solutions comes in!  Once you have your video contact us to learn more about our video marketing services.  We can help monetize your video and send it out to numerous video houses and increase traffic to your site.

One of the BEST portable video cameras on the market is the flip camera. I just bought one and can NOT believe how EASY it is to use!! I highly recommend it if you are trying to create your own video yourself .

Portland video marketing services, Portland web design, Video Marketing, video marketing services, video promotion]]> http://www.portlandwebdesignblog.com/portland-web-design/why-use-video-to-help-promote-your-business/feed/ http://www.portlandwebdesignblog.com/portland-internet-marketing/check-out-the-hot-new-domain-auction-site/ http://www.portlandwebdesignblog.com/portland-internet-marketing/check-out-the-hot-new-domain-auction-site/#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:00:01 +0000 admin Portland domains for saleportland internet marketing http://www.portlandwebdesignblog.com/portland-internet-marketing/check-out-the-hot-new-domain-auction-site/ by Mary Killelea July 8, 2009 

Today I was the guest on Bido, www.bido.com is an auction site. It was a ton of fun chatting with users and talking about direct navigation, keyword research and my portfolio of domains.

Bido is the Internet’s first Social Auction Platform. It’s the best way to sell your domain that I’ve seen.  It’s easy convient and fast.  Experts vote on what goes to auction. Multiple auctions per day. Sellers get maximum exposure, social auction benefits, reserve privacy allowed, and low commission. For buyers there is quality inventory, great bargains, accurate pricing, seller accountability and protection. Experts actually partipate with their commentaries and share their insight and knowledge with people even if they are not ready to sell or buy now.

To read the transcript, please go to http://www.bido.com/Auction?name=samoyeds.com. 

At this point you may have to log into your Bido account or create one if necessary.”

Click the link that reads “Log in/Sign up” located below the final price for the auction on the right side of the page.

Once logged in, click the blue chat tab.  It is located beneath the purple bar that reads “Closed auction:  SAMOYEDS.com”.  

Then click “log in to chat”. Once the chat window opens, you may scroll up to read the chat in its entirety.”

At the auction I was a part of  samoyeds.com went for $3, 257.00

Having an Internet Marketing Strategy (which is a term that has grown quite popular in recent months) can be beneficial in many ways.

The goal is to get more traffic, enhance your branding, and sell more products  |  The solution and approach is all in the strategy.

Below is a list of 10 things to help you get started:

1. Start with an effective web design and development strategy. Have a good website that people trust, is easy to navigate, they like it and they can gain beneficial information from it or at they can be entertained by it.  Give them a reason to visit and a reason to stay!
2. Get ranked at the top in major search engines, and practice good Search Optimization Techniques.  — INVEST IN THIS!! You can have the best site ever but if you don’t get eyes on it .. you wont do any business.
3. Learn to use Email Marketing Effectively - there are some very successful techniques and strategies around email marketing to emulate.
4. Dominate your marketing niche with affiliate, reseller, and associate programs. (Make extra passive income as well)
5. Request an analysis from an Internet marketing coach or Internet marketing consultant. — Sometimes you are too close the forest that you can’t see the trees!
6. Build a responsive opt-in email list. - Worth GOLD! Don’t ever abuse it and become a spammer or sell lists.
7. Publish articles or get listed in news stories.  -  Worth the time or worth the cost of outsourcing it.
8. Write and publish online press releases. - Worth the time or worth the cost of outsourcing it.
9. Facilitate and run contests and giveaways via your web site. - Give reasons for customers to come back and interact with you. Everyone Loves the thought of winning something FREE.
10. Blog and interact with your visitors. - Create and Build relationships with your customers!

Here are some facebook marketing tips, guidelines and facebook facts that I share with my clients:

(1) Create a profile -People cannot befriend someone who doesn’t have a profile. Create a profile today and use your own photo and be real.   You can create multiple levels of privacy restrictions on your information. Facebook facilitates social networking because it enables you to share who you are and what you like. It is not the place for blatant advertising.

Facebook enables you to create friends with whom you can share as much as you want through your posts, profile, applications and RSS feeds. You get to accept or reject friend requests. Friends enable you to share more about what you are doing and what you are interested in.  You can develop strong support relationships and even joint ventures through your friends. You will be amazed with the people you find or who find you.

Facebook only allows you one profile but you can create as many business pages as you like. So I encourge you to create a business page which essentially a separate profile for your business.  But pages allow you more flexibility for marketing masses of people vs. personal profiles.  I like to have a main profile I tend to keep more personal and friend oriented and then on my business page I put links to articles that I’ve written, you can add your LinkedIn profile, and links to any articles about you. Talk about successes and specific goals. 

There are over 2,000 Facebook applications that enable you to share information, have fun and learn about other people’s likes and dislikes. Choosing the right applications can have a BIG impact on your effectiveness in marketing on Facebook.

(2) Utilize your status update - This is a short line keep it 141 characters or smaller to state what you are doing but be specific and smart about your status update. You could say “I’m shopping” << but that’s boring & no-one will care. or you could say “I’m buying the new flip camera to capture tonight’s Smart Event www.smartevent.com“ Now that’s interesting and I may just click on the event and bingo you have just marketed without being a pitch man! I recommend you update your status 1-2 times a day.

(3) Go thru the search feature and find personal friends and invite them to be your friends. Accept friend invitations. If your goal is to strictly use Facebook as a marketing avenue accept all friends but just don’t reveal personal info. Stick to surface stuff about you and keep it focused on what you can contribute to the social network thru your experience and expertise.

(4) Join a Facebook Group
You can create or join groups on Facebook and share information with others. After you join a group, you can text-message other members, send them emails, comment on their profiles or contact them. You’d be surprised at the range of types of groups there are.

(5) Buy Advertising Space

• You can buy an ad on Facebook. It’s called Facebook Flyers Basic so you can create banner-like advertising on networks. This is a great way to target advertising to a specific demographic.
• Facebook also has Flyers Pro — a cost-per-click advertising program that’s triggered by keyword searches (like Google AdWords). The article has more in-depth tips on how to do this and I’d be interested if anyone reading this has tried either advertising method.

On your business Page (business profile)

•  Host an event and post it — a promotion or event you have coming up.
•  Create a contest - your fans become a great test market for your products.
•  Ask for Input from fans - ASK them for their opinions. People love to be included!!
•  Share business videos or product pictures
•  Post pictures -These could include candid shots of products, people, or other silly related items. If Facebook users are in these photos, either they or their friends can tag them, and these tags can show up on the news feed.
• Post news articles -Offbeat news involving a person or organization is a great item to share.
• Write a note - make yourself come across sincere, and contribute worthwhile information. Maybe share something that happened in your business day that you found frustrating, or rewarding the point is it’s unique and you are sharing this with others.

Now a lot of these principals apply for marketing on other social media sites as well.

Two important things to get out of this article:

1. Be real, be human, and make your contributions worthwhile and people will follow you and your posts will begin to have power.
2. Stay focused. Facebook can be a big time suck if you allow it to be. Train yourself to check it twice daily once in the morning and once in the evening. Respond to others quickly and move on.  Do not let it distract you from your daily objectives. Participate & Contribute and move on.

As of today July 1st, 2009 Statistics for Facebook that are incredible!!

General Growth

• More than 200 million active users
• More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day
• More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older

User Engagement

• Average user has 120 friends on the site
• More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
• More than 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day
• More than 8 million users become fans of Pages each day

Applications

• More than 900 million photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 10 million videos uploaded each month
• More than 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week
• More than 2.5 million events created each month
• More than 35 million active user groups exist on the site

International Growth

• More than 50 translations available on the site, with more than 40 in development
• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

Platform

• More than 950,000 developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries
• Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
• More than 52,000 applications currently available in the Facebook Application Directory
• More than 100 applications have more than one million monthly active users
• More than 10,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect since its general availability in December 2008

Mobile

• There are more than 30 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
• There are more than 150 mobile operators in 50 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products

Are the web pages linking to your web page relevant to the search term “YOUR GOING AFTER”?

How fast does your web page get new links pointing to it?

Do the web sites which link to your page belong to the same content category?

Since when do the links to your page exist?

Is the text surrounding the link to your page relevant to the search term “Portland Real Estate Guide”?

Your web page

How many important links from your other pages point to your web page?

Do the links on your web page point to high quality, topically-related pages?

How often and how many changes do you make to your web page over time? Is your content up-to-date?

How often and how many web pages do you add to your web site?

How long do your visitors spend time on your web page?

Search engine result page

Do your competitors on the search engine result page get a manual ranking boost by Google.com, for example Amazon or Wikipedia?

How many visitors of the search engine result pages click through to your page?

How often do search engine visitors search for your company name or web page URL on Google.com?

Negative ranking factors (you should be able to say “no” to all the following questions)

Is your content very similar or a duplicate of existing content?

Is your server often down when search engine crawlers try to access it?

Do you link to web sites that do not deserve a link?

Do you use the same title or meta tags for many web pages?

Do you overuse the same keyword or key phrase?

Do you participate in link schemes?

Do you actively sell links on your web page?

Do a majority of your inbound links come from low quality or spam sites?

Does your web page have any spelling or grammar mistakes?

If you can successfully answer these questions then you are off to great start! 

The problem:
Unable to access the website — Tested it and know the IP address is live

– Issue: the client recently moved Servers and got a new IP Address

After eliminating the possiblity that the issue was not my firewall, not my connections, not my computer in ANY way we have deducted after having others who use comcast as their ISP and were also unable to reach the website that with the recent move of my client’s site — when he got a new IP address it was historically and currently associated with a blacklisted website.

For now this is my most likely cause of why I can not view his site when I can see all others in IE or Firefox: I visited http://www.five-ten-sg.com/blackhole.php  typed in his IP Address and it was listed as another business and the previous company had poor ratings and numerous  black listings so now the effort is to either have him change IP’s again or Beg all of these sites to remove him from their black lists because he is not the culprit of the bad spamming techniques in the past.

– RESOLUTION to follow!  Hope you don’t run into this ever! — Resolution — FINALLY figured out the problem MY ISP was blocked by my client’s server. They dinged me as a hacker since I was accessing it so much. I hope that none of you have to deal with this issue and if you do first have them check to see if you specifically have been blocked it will save you a lot of wasted and energy.

Going into to this class I was unsure of how useful this class was going to be. I was pleasantly suprised, Not so much for all the new knowledge that was presented because happily I knew most of it, however I did learn new things as well.  Knowing class material can  be a good thing because it reaffirms your competitive abilities in the market place as well as re-stimulates your mind with fresh new ways to look at online marketing.  By no means was it wasted time anytime you learn something new, network or revive your passion is money well spent and a good use of time.         

Collen Wright is a very nice woman and she is a very good speaker and knowledgable.  She provided an organized, well informed class while still having a fun sense of humor.  

Scott Hendison came and spoke on Social Media and provided some great tips, valuable information and shared a lot of knowledge and experience that the group benefited from.  I enjoyed his presentation, his passion for the subject matter and his genuine desire to help others become better at Search Engine Marketing.   He highly recommended this as a great source of inforamation http://www.planetocean.com  I’ve also added it to my blogroll along with numerous other favorite resources of mine.)

Doug Williams spoke about blogging and that was interesting as well. One of my most favorite bloggers that I love to follow is Yaro Starak.  I encourage you to sign up for his newsletter it’s worth reading.

Day three was good too it covered more anaylitical tools and ways to track the competition. The class was small a total of 5 people which I thought was perfect. We had various levels of skills and Thomas and Sarah from Pop Art were there and they were gracious enough to share their skills and talents throught out the week. At times I wish I would have remained in the corporate arena instead of working for myself but honestly the joy and rewards i get from having my own business out weigh any of the envy I may feel at times.

It’s been hard to sit at a desk for the past three days from 8-5.  As a person who works from home I’m used to mutli tasking and definately taking a mind break when needed — But its been a very refreshing week and I met some very nice people.  While having a littel down time I found this fun site to check out  http://www.officesnapshots.com  I’ll have to add a  photo of my cave soon!

Here is a take away tip, I found this useful: if you are looking at places to submit an article go to google and type in “submit an article” +  ”your keyword phrase”.  Cool things from this week to check out: www.Mootools.net, www.Ping.fm & www.Plurk.com

I have also read that it’s better to be positioned in the 3rd spot vs. the #1 result.  So the pressure is on more than ever before to deliver for your clients.  Hopefully you are reading my other posts and learning what it takes to achieve top natural search engine rankings .

If you are truly knowledgeable in your field, there are a long list of ways to gain followers, referrals and loyal customers. Over time you will have opportunities to introduce your products, services, and sell yourself, just be patient, take your time and know that people are watching your actions and it’s important to really want to enrich the communities you belong to. Contribute often but be selective of your contributions.  Ask yourself is what I’m adding  interesting to others, am I just talking about myself, my products, or services? If so, rethink what you want to add make if of value and interest.

If you want others to follow you, follow others. Join groups that you are interested in, not only professionally, but those that you personally have interest in.  Learn from others, watch those that are successful in your field and sit back and be an observer for awhile, track their actions and see how others respond to them.

Facebook is one of my favorite social networks, it’s powerful and robust! Tons of apps and tools you can use to grow your business. It’s important to set you profile up, contact info, relationships, personal info, education, work info and add a real photo of yourself for your avatar, no-one wants to see a picture of a squirrel they want to see you, a real person, this allows others to make a personal connection with you, which ultimately strengthens your relationship.

Once you have spent time building up your profile, joining groups, participating in groups, setting up your notification and watching and observing others interact, add the business pages app.  THIS is the magical tool to promote your products, services or self. Once you have set up your pages and made them rich with content become a follower of the page and watch others do the same.

If you are active in the Pay per click arena and you haven’t tried facebook ads yet I totally recommend using some of your budget in Facebook. as well.  Facebook allows your pay per click ads to reach an incredibly focused, targeted and active audience. If you try this path let me know what you think.

To sum up Social Networking can be a very powerful tool but if misused it can also be a very powerful tool in a negative way avoid becoming a spammer by following the good practices I have listed above. 

See you online.  Word tracker is calling my name, gotta go run some reports now. If you don’t have a facebook account yet .. go sign up for one now and look me up (Mary Killelea) and send me an invite to become friends and I’ll accept the invitation and learn about you and your interests.

So if you have a local business, let’s say Search Engine Marketing is what you are doing then you should not be promoting your business name Killelea Consulting as your main key word phrase .. you should be targeting Portland SEM: Portland Search Engine Marketing. If you change your strategy to simply do nothing more than this … you will benefit greatly. Think as your potential customers think. Targeting your local market works! Now it doesn’t end there.. you will need to find a page in your site that you are gonna target for these key words as well. Normally your index page will be the focus of your main key word phrase.

Once you have determined which page you are going to promote with your top keyword phrase, you can get to work. Use your keyword phrase term Portland SEM : Portland Search Engine Marketing as your title tag, write a unique description for the page and this description should contain Portland SEM again. Your description might read like this:

Title: Portland SEM : Portland Search Engine Marketing
Description: Killelea Consulting offers Search Engine Marketing (SEM) in Portland and surrounding areas. Providing Search Engine Marketing Solutions for small and medium sized businesses. Call 503-997-6935 today.
URL: http://www.portlandsem.com/

Many want to know how important is it that the url contain keywords? The answer is simple, it helps! But it wont win you top placement by itself. Ideally you have to put some fore-thought into buying your domain and ideally have http://www.portlandsem.com/ if not, and you can afford it, see who owns it and offer to buy it, as long as it’s not a Marketing company I bet you can get it for the right price. Additionally I have read if you register your domain for multiple years that helps in your page rank as well. If you are not in a position to go out and buy a specific domain you can still develop your site smart by using seo tattics when building additional pages. For example you own the domain www.marykillelea.com and you have a services page… if this was my site I’d build that page to read like this <http://www.marykillelea.com/sem-services.html  .

Next you need to go thru your home page content and sprinkle in your keyword terms, Portland SEM or Portland Search Engine Marketing. It’s a bit tricky because you don’t want to stuff your page with these keywords but you want the keyword density to be at about 2-5%. Here is a Keyword density tool to use when you get to that point. Also make sure that you place your keyword terms “Portland SEM” in a H1 tag at the top of the page.

You are almost done. It’s now time to go thru and make sure your alt tags for all of your images and links are tagged with Keyword terms. The terms you have within your site are important and they should not be overlooked as they are fabulous opportunities to use them as links for your site. For example on your home page you talk about Portland SEM Services that would be linked to http://www.portlandsem.com/

As you can see there are many things you can do to each of your various pages in your website to optimize them for the search engines. And you can see it’s not just one thing.. there are many factors to optimizing your site and then there’s even more SEO tattics to take to gain additional success, those tips will come later.

p.s. by the way as of this post 6/10/08 on Google Working Web Solutions is listed in the #1 position for the key word phrase SEO Portland, and #3 for Portland SEO and I’ve lost positioning on Web Design Portland so I need to re-focus my efforts there. I’ve just been busy with helping my clients have success I’ve dropped a bit off the map. So that is an important thing to remember yes you must take care of your clients but don’t forget about your own SEO. :-) 

Later as I was thinking about our meeting I realized that I can’t forget when talking to clients it’s important to remember they are coming to you because they need your help and that means you need to slow down … and not over whelm them with information — even though, if you are like me I am very passionate about SEO and the power of social media and all it has to offer that I could literally lock my self in a room with others and discuss it all night long. 

So here are some key tips for meeting with Clients for potential jobs.

1. set up a meeting face to face (if this is possible — if not a phone conversation at the very least)

2. prior to meeting or talking to them – research them online. Check out their website, their products, their branding .. get a feel for them.

3. prepare a list of your services, include associated costs.. like a alacart menu

4. then run thru each of the items so they understand why each are important. Looking at setting up a micro network on squidoo or hub pages may mean nothing to them and mean so much to you. Or they may think of link trading as one thing while you think of it as another. 

5. Don’t over whelm them. Give them brief explanations of these topics cover the importance so they can justify in their head the expense.

6. When finished ask them if they have any initial questions?

7. Next encourage them to take this preliminary quote home and review contact you with any additional questions. 

8. If you can.. ask them for a budget that day ensure them that you will follow up with in a day or two with a personalized online marketing strategy based on their unique needs that will get them more traffic. DON’T ever promise them top position on google – no one but google can promise that. You can assure them that your work has gotten many if not all of your clients in the past top placement, but it’s better to over deliver than ever underdeliver especially when Google is ever changing and the ways we stay on top are ever growing.  

In summary, do your best, be personable,  be honest, and reliable and your customers will be happy and refer you to others!  Communication is key to making your potential customers happy and comfortable with your services! 

Months prior I had learned about Sherman Hu from a class I had taken, it covered everything related to Social Media it was intense. Sherman was one of the guest video speakers. He did these great video interviews explaining video production, streaming video and the ins and outs to utilizing video online successfully.

Two days ago I looked him up on twitter and sent him a nice little note saying I’m gonna follow him… then a day later he follows me. I send him a thank you.. and then later that evening (which was last night) he sees me on facebook and sends me an instant chat. See how it works.. social media is so awesome!!

We chatted and got to have a real conversation one on one for over an hour. He shared some tips and tricks, I learned about his life, he learned about mine a bit and just talked about general stuff.

Prior to WEB 2.0 I would have probably had to sign up for a conference somewhere to go listen to him speak and hope I had 5 minutes of his time to ask him some business related questions. We would have probably never gotten to know anything more than that about each other.. connect in a real personal way.

I hope you see the importance of WEB 2.0 and what I described up above. It literally shows you — you can achieve anything you want to do because now you are in control of your networking like never before. Don’t get me wrong it’s not all about networking for business it’s about meeting new nice people and developing new connections with others around the world. But if expanding your knowledge, learning or growing your business is a goal of yours then there is no better place to be than on the web to learn, grow, network or mentor others.

I look forward to meeting Sherman Hu some day and will continue to follow his blogs and video UStreams and admire him even more for being approachable, responsive, and real.

Now, as I walked thru the down town disney area with my 6 year old, my four year old and my husband I kept thinking why has no one ever written a book called the “Basic Survival Guide for Disneyland Newbies”  I sware I still might go to LuLu and write my own little ebook on it - i think you could make a fortune. Or disneyland for Dummies.  The amount of parents that were there just catering to their kids every wish and dream amazed me.  In tough economic times, money really didn’t seem to hold anyone back. The place was packed and the prices were far from reasonable.  But once again the old marketing motto of being the Happiest Place on Earth prevailed. Because for a few short days you forget about the balance in your bank account, you forget about traffic, about your job back home, your blackberry and your connection to the outside world.  All you know is that goofey or mickey could be up around the corner and you better have your camera ready and charged, your signature book ready and hurry to get in line before “they” take a break. oh and don’t forget to  get your fast pass for space mountain and Indiana Jones.  It’s the only way to go… Now I personally haven’t been there for some 30 years and never had heard of a fast pass but it’s brilliant and a HUGE time saver. You go to the ride you want and get tickets ahead of time it tells you when to come back  and then you get to cruze by all the people standing and waiting because they hadn’t planned ahead and didn’t have a DISENYLAND RIDE STRATEGY!

Being on Weight Watchers back home was hard enough but there was no realistic way for me to stay on track with my points in disneyland The Happiest Place on Earth.. where fresh battered corn dogs, cotton candy and ice cream stare you right between the eyes around ever bend in the Disney park. Needless to say.. 6 pounds later, exhausted and broke we came home. Home to our little abode that felt like paradise.  It’s been a week now and the kids haven’t talked much about the trip since and you wonder what all the effort, time, energy and money was spent for and then you remember it’s because you love your children and you want to make them happy!!  We did have a wonderful trip but we wont be going back anytime soon. There are so many other wonderful family experiences to be had first. 

Now the challenge is to get back into work mode so that we can afford our next vacation.  I wish I had had my mobile twitter set up before the trip .. twitter is really a great way to check in with friends when you don’t have time to email, call or write. And yes Twitter can be a very useful tool in marketing your business.  In the days to come I will be covering the following topics… Facebook, my space, video marketing, twitter, social bookmarking. These are things that are essential in WEB2.0 and if you don’t know what any of those are you might just be living under a rock. It’s time to get on board with these social networking tools because they will become common place to everyone soon right now I’d say it’s for those that are ahead of the curve and I want to be helping you be one of those folks that can be leaders not followers in the world of communicating via the web.

So this post is gonna be dedicated to sharing my favorite resources that I have found to be very beneficial and very helpful in learning more about Search Engine Optimization. There are some basics about SEO that remain consistent but the method of optimizing your site for the various search engines change as the Search Engine Algorithms change.

Linking has been around for years and is one thing that still remains strong in helping you achieve high ranking. Granted there is a lot of junk links out there, and link farms that I highly recommend you stay away from. Below is a new creative way I have found to generate great inbound links. Take a peek and let me know what you think.

Catapult Site Search Engine Rank in 30 Minutes

It’s amazing how fast videos will get you to the top of the search engines

I submitted the video, created long tail keywords and tagged it, wrote the description and submitted it to 10 bookmarking sites & 25 video sites on 5/4 and here’s the results

On 5/5 searching on Google:
cancer Research fundraiser #11 out of 931,000
vicki genfan # 10 out of 12,200
cause of you vicki genfan #1 out of 301
vicki genfan cause of you #1 out of 7,830
vicki genfan cancer fundraiser #1 out of 45
cancer research fundraiser video #1 out of 374,000
vicki genfan mother’s day song #1 out of 144
vicki genfan acoustic guitarist #3 out of 1,720
cause of you on google videos #1 out of 112350

Not bad!

What it comes down to is ALWAYS focusing on producing great content for your users, updating it regularly, and being selective in who you exchange links with so that your reputation isn’t in jeopardy.

Here are some tips when contacting similiar site of interest for reciprocal linking.

• Take the time to visit the site and find out who the appropriate contact is and include their name in the email. This isn’t alway possible but worth spending 5 minutes looking into it.
• Start with a complimentary statement about what you like on their site.
• Introduce yourself and your site.
• Write why you your site is a beneficial link partner, and mention that you are not a competitor.
• Always try and post their link first on your site and include the url of where they can see their link on your site. You will have a much higher return on your efforts if you take the time to post their link information on your site first and give them a short amount of time to reciprocate before their link will be removed. It’s important to keep track of who you contact, when you have contacted them and where your link to them is and where your link will go.
• Provide them specific linking text that you would like included on their resource page: Include Title, Description, and Linking url
• Lastly thank them sincerely for their time and sign with your first name to make it more personal and natural.

Doing this correctly is time consuming but it will pay off as you build useful links for your users and benefit from inbound traffic from those sites that you exchange links with.

Or maybe the big question is how do you become good at all of these tactics? Or is it okay to focus on one at a time and really become a successful twitter or the best at Squiddo pages.

Online Marketing can be overwhelming if you don’t sit down and figure out a strategy. Having a strategy and really analyzing and planning out your approach is what seperates the wanna be’s from the pros.  I have discovered two wonderful tools, time saving tools for making your online marketing efforts easier.   The first is a video submission tool. This is a fantastic tool for anyone who is doing video submission. If you have ever uploaded a video to more than 2 sites you know how time consuming it can be. Well this tool submits your video to 25 + video sites, and to over 10 book marking sites.  Granted you have to have an individual account with each of these for it to work properly and the results are not a 100% you will e required to do some manual submission but overall it’s very useful. The big flaw I see with this tool is that it does not provide result positioning reports.  This too is something you have to do manually.

 The other great tool is a tool that consolidates your Social Networking blogging or posting into one submission process.  So I can twitter and send out that tweet to 5 different social networking type sites, like Facebook, Pounce, My space, bebo, and JaiKu.  Again you have to have accounts set up with each of these in advance but the idea is if you have follower’s in the various accounts that you can make one post and it will be spread in a viral way to all of your networking spaces.  I had trouble setting up the My space account and help was very difficult to find but overall it is a great tool.

No-one can dispute the power of Social Networking and that it has to be a part of your Online Marketing Plan. Personally I think the trick is to break it down and focus on each tactic at a time and follow your marketing map. Also don’t forget after you develop a strategy to actually DO IT!

SEO has taken over the web with it’s twists and turns making for exciting times. Achieving success in the search engine optimization game can be a real high. There are a millions of sites out there and only a handful who know how to promote themselves. It’s quite amazing when you think of the money some companies invest in having a site designed but then have no budget for promoting their business online. You can have the greatest most expensive site out there but if you don’t have traffic then it’s essentially useless. And on the other hand companies like Working Web Solutions are here to prove that you don’t have to have an office in a brickstone store front with a NW office address to know Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how to achieve page one ranking on google for it’s clients.