Posted on June 5th, 2008 by Chris Silver Smith
Mike Blumenthal has a great article this week, going over some aspects surrounding how businesses may opt to rename themselves for purposes of local search engine optimization within Google Maps.
As he mentioned, I’d previously listed this idea in my somewhat tongue-in-cheek post on “Extreme Local Search Optimization Tactics” some time back.
While my Tactics were intended to be a bit over-the-top, the tactic is indeed likely to work to varying degrees in different search engines and internet yellow pages directories, as Mike outlines. I should note that I only endorse the engineering of business names for purposes of branding and for purposes of targeting business-category/product/service terms for which the company involved is actually providing.
Read more…
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Posted on May 14th, 2008 by Brian Solis
Thank you to Erick Schonfeld and Michael Arrington for giving me the opportunity share my vision, and experience, on the evolution of the press release on TechCrunch.
There’s certainly no shortage of opinions on where we are and where we need to be in order to improve the working relationships between PR and bloggers, journalists, and analysts and the brands we ultimately represent - including our own.
There are just better ways to share information, and hopefully, this post helps you.
Press releases come in different flavors and serve different purposes. Well-written press releases are far from dead. In fact, when developed strategically, their opportunities, appeal and benefits are only expanding in conjunction with the groups of various influencers and consumers who rely on them for relevant information. Read more…
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Posted on April 30th, 2008 by Andreas Gauger
Choosing the right Web address can be a daunting task for many business owners. Consequently, many companies often rush this process and end up selecting the wrong domain name.
In fact, a recent survey of 1,074 American businesses revealed that 42 percent of businesses surveyed spent the same time selecting their domain as they did sourcing minor equipment such as their coffee maker or paper shredder (less than 1 hour). Read more…
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Posted on April 7th, 2008 by Mike Moran
If you don’t read the Occam’s Razor blog by Avinash Kaushik, you don’t know what you’re missing.
He had another great post last week, to help people identify how to measure more than Web sales as the conversion on their Web sites. He calls them micro conversions, to contrast with the macro conversion that a Web sale represents. I think he has a number of great points in the post, but I want to contrast his thinking with my own, in case my perspective feels a bit more comfortable to you. Whichever way you want to work, we both agree that you should focus on lots more than Web sales to judge your Web site’s value.
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Posted on March 26th, 2008 by Steven Bradley
Do you know who your customers are? Do you know why they chose you? Do you know what they like? What they want? Where they spend their time? If you don’t, you should find out. Understanding who is your customer is perhaps the most important part of developing and marketing a business.
My first venture online was a site similar to this one. The main difference was I had a partner and the two of us were completely new to life and business online. Somewhere we’d gotten the idea that we wanted to create websites for people. We set up a site for ourselves, and…well that’s where things didn’t go according to plan. Neither of us had ever run a business before. Neither of us really knew how to market ourselves. Neither of us had a clue who our customers would be. Read more…
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Posted on March 20th, 2008 by Kent Lewis
The session started with Patricia Hursh from SmartSearch Marketing outlined 8 tips for successful PPC advertising:
1) Reach prospects early in the buying cycle
2) Focus and align copy (through the cycle)
3) Pre-qualifying clickers/visitors
4) Create landing pages and microsites
5) Test pages continuously
6) Offer multiple action options
7) Simplify registration forms
Implement a lead nurturing process
Reaching prospects earlier on is a huge opportunity to leverage traffic by purchasing generic early-stage terms. The next step is to associate ad copy to the keyword buy, from generic to specific in terms of information all the way to price-based offers for late-cycle buyers. Pre-qualifying visitors with descriptive ad copy will filter out unwanted and costly traffic. Developing custom microsites provides focused content and conversion elements and can end-around internal IT departments typically in charge of Web sites.
As we’ve heard in other presentations, A/B testing is highly recommended. In one case, Hursh found one landing page generated a higher conversion rate with the inquiry form on a separate page. She also recommends testing layout, images, benefit statements, action triggers, downloadable asset names (trial download, white paper, etc.), registration form placement and required fields.
In one case, a client saw a 5.8 percent conversion rate increase to 12.2 percent in 3 months through testing. In another example, Hursh recommended 2 additional options (download, Webinar and product tour) generated an increased inquiry volume. In another test, the conversion rate increased from 5.5 percent to 15.5 percent when reducing required fields from 15 to 2. Read more…
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Posted on March 6th, 2008 by Andrew Wee
Talking to a number of budding entrepreneur’s at last evening’s Singapore Facebook Developers Garage and hearing about their growing pains served as an impetus to get this post out.
Some of you whom I met up with at Affiliate Summit would have heard parts of this, but here it is in more detail…
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Posted on February 14th, 2008 by Steven Bradley
You never get a second chance at a first impression. I’ve never cared for that quote. The implication is that you get one and only one chance at success and that’s hardly true.
Your first impression is the most important impression only until you make your second impression, which is the most important until you make your third. As Seth Godin pointed out a few weeks ago, it’s your last impression that matters most. I agree your last impression counts more, but I think there’s more to how the impressions you leave affect you and your brand.
Remember your brand is the sum of all associations, both positive and negative about you, your company, your products and services, etc. The first impression you leave is part of that sum, as is the last impression. Either can be a positive or negative association, but the sum isn’t necessarily a one to one addition. Read more…
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Posted on February 5th, 2008 by Aaron Wall
WebmasterWorld has another thread about lowering AdSense prices.
When the economy is good and advertisers have robust ad budgets, an ad network might be willing to sell them whatever they are willing to buy. If the advertiser wants to overpay for some ads and associate that spend with branding then so be it. But when the economy slows down, the ad marketplace needs to separate the best ad inventory from the weakest ad inventory to protect the rates of their best ads.
From Google’s perspective, search is the golden goose tied directly with conversions. Syndicated ads, which can lead to conversions, may often carry a premium price based on branding value. Read more…
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Posted on January 24th, 2008 by Richard Burckhardt
I always recommend that folks optimizing their web sites take great care to not confuse the name of their company with what the searchers are actually trying to find, which is frequently the brand.
Unless you are someone like Coca-Cola or your name is the same as your product and brand, you should generally leave your company name out of the title tag of your pages. If you absolutely must have it there, put it at the end.
But, the Coca-Cola brand brings up an interesting issue. Coca-Cola, the brand, includes Coca-Cola, the product, as well as a lot of other soft drinks, but the umbrella of “Coca-Cola” covers them all. In this case, the brand includes the name of an individual product and, as you know, their marketing works quite well.
But, if you’re not Coca-Cola, this might lead to problems with the brand message. Read more…
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