2007 January - The Online Marketing Guy

Entries Tagged as ''

Handy, free desktop conversion tool

Totally off topic here gang, but useful, so here ya go…

Found this today - figured I’d share:

You get a plain-jane looking little tool that allows an almost limitless number and types of conversion to be made:

feet >> meters - that kind of stuff

Here’s what’s covered:

density
distance
energy
flow
light
mass
power
acceleration
amount of a substance
angle area
computer
concentration
pressure
speed
temp
time
torque
volume - wet
volume - dry

…and you can set up a “Custom” section, too, if you so choose to build your own conversion of some sort…

Heck, NASA is even using this on the Space Station.

It’s free. You can donwload an .exe file (look away Ben) or download the zip, uncompress, then install.

This is a great little tool, IMO. Probably not the only one, but handy to have and you can’t beat the price.

Sphere: Related Content

Tags: Other Useful Tools by searchgeek
No Comments »

SEMPO Institute now open for learning

Excellent news today that Terry Plank and his team have opened the doors to the SEMPO Institute. It’s a massive search marketing learning resource designed to take those with an interest in search marketing and give them the knowledge to become effective search marketers.

There are almost 20 segments to the Introductory level alone - and having been on the team myself that reviewed the content prior to launch, I can honestly tell you that had this info existed back when I started, I could have shaved years off my learning curve.

Heck, I even learned a couple of things I’d never really thought much about before. The amount of details is simply amazing.

Each segment requires you to take a short quiz and pas it with 75% or better before unlocking the next level. It’s a great way to ensure understanding before moving to the next block.

The whole thing is available for folks to take as distance learning, so whenever it suits you, no time limits, etc.

This is going to make it a whole lot easier for those trying to build In-House SEM departments - no longer will you have to do the work, and training at the same time. You newer folks can simply take the SEMPO training to get a baseline and hit the ground running.

There’s no replacement for experience, and the course requires the completion of two small projects to aid this.

It’s truly a great program - and I’m not just saying that because I’m involved with SEMPO.

Here’s a rundown on some of what’s covered:

# History of Search Engines
# How Search Engines Work
# Linking & Directories
# Keywords
# SEO Web Design
# Copywriting
# SEO Roadblocks
# Submissions
# Tracking & Reporting
# Pay Per Click I
# Pay Per Click II
# Current Innovations
# Intellectual Property
# SEO & PPC Resources

There’s more, but you get the idea. Go check it out.

Sphere: Related Content

Tags: SEO Tools, Learn SEO, SEMPO Institute by searchgeek
No Comments »

iCrossing report on Auto sector opportunities in SEM

Am I shocked one of the larger search agencies has found “opportunities” in an industry that spends billions in advertising each year? Nope.

…and while I may personally feel this is a bit “bus-dev” of them, the facts remain. The automotive vertical is still poised for big growth over the next few years. Typical of large bricks-and-mortar companies, the auto manufacturers are slower to respond to the opportunities offered online, but what out when they finally fully turn to this medium.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you’re not thinking of a way to target this “niche” in some manner, you’d better gett your a$$ in gear soon…

*****************************************

iCrossing Study Finds Opportunity for Fortune 500 Automotive Companies to Optimize for Search Engine Visibility

‘Search 500 Index: Automotive’ is First in a New Study Series Measuring the Natural Search Presence of America’s Largest Companies

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Jan. 22 /PRNewswire/ — iCrossing (http://www.icrossing.com/), a digital marketing agency committed to people’s desire to find, today launched the “Search 500 Index”, a new study series measuring the visibility of Fortune 500 companies among people who search online. The first study in the series, “Search 500 Index: Automotive” finds that Fortune 500 automotive companies lack sufficient natural search visibility on the major search engines based on 116 automotive-related keywords that iCrossing has determined online searchers are most likely to use.

“Natural search visibility” refers to the non-sponsored (non-paid advertisement) position of a company’s brand, products and services resulting from a user searching with a keyword relevant to that company’s brand, products and services on an Internet search engine such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask.com or AOL. Beyond driving direct sales, high natural search visibility can be critical to building awareness, positioning, and protection of a company’s brand both on and offline.

Key Findings of Search 500 Index: Automotive

— Only 11 of the 36 Fortune 500 automotive companies analyzed ranked
higher than a 2.0 (on a scale of 0-10) for natural search brand
visibility. General Motors earned a 3.6, the highest score among the
group;

— Only six of the Fortune 500 automotive companies appeared in the lists
of the 100 Web sites most visible for the automotive keywords analyzed;

— B2C companies, especially online auto dealers and consumer-facing
brands (e.g. General Motors, Ford, etc.), are doing a far better job
than b-to-b automotive suppliers in terms of achieving natural search
engine visibility.

Recommendations

“People are searching for automotive information online, but in general they are not finding some of America’s largest corporations in natural search results,” said Jorie Hutchings, senior director of search analytics, iCrossing. “The good news is that there is plenty of opportunity for the automotive Fortune 500 to improve their visibility in natural search results.”

To increase their natural search visibility, the study recommends that Fortune 500 automotive companies:

— Re-evaluate who their competitors are online. Parts manufacturers may
not compete with auto dealers in the traditional marketplace, but they
may be losing visibility to dealers online;

— Add more consumer-based content to their sites (such as user reviews
and opinions);

— Consider partnering with or buying media on relevant, informational
sites — which tend to rank higher in natural search — in order to
garner as much residual traffic as possible;

— Increase competitive search-based analyses to derive new insights as to
how your brand is performing online.

The complete study can be found at http://icrossing.com/research

Methodology

For the Search 500 Index: Automotive, iCrossing analyzed natural search engine position data for the following U.S. search engines: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask, and AOL. Natural search visibility was assessed and scored based on iCrossing’s patent-pending index which weighs the value of natural search engine market share. Known as the Brand Scorecard, companies are ranked on a scale of 0-10 where a score of 2 indicates non-significant visibility, a score of 5 means moderate-high visibility, and a score of 8 signifies high visibility in natural search. The score is derived from an algorithm that takes into account the weights of the top 5 major search engines, estimated monthly search volume for the keyword analyzed, and the company’s keyword rankings within the first three pages of natural search results. Therefore this calculation takes into account the variance of each keyword’s search volume, placing greater importance on a company ranking in the first three pages for a highly searched term.

About iCrossing, Inc.

iCrossing is a different kind of digital marketing agency committed to people’s desire to find. The company develops online campaigns, programs and experiences designed to help people find what they are searching for. Through a proven combination of talent and technology, iCrossing helps its global client base — including The Coca-Cola Company and 32 Fortune 500 companies — find solutions for complex digital marketing challenges. Founded in 1998, the company is headquartered in Scottsdale with offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New York and San Francisco. iCrossing was named the 2005 Agency of the Year: Best Search and one of the Top 25 Interactive Agencies by OMMA: The Magazine of Online Media, Marketing & Advertising. iCrossing was also ranked no. 2 of the Top 20 search marketing agencies by Advertising Age. Find out more at www.icrossing.com.

Sphere: Related Content

Tags: Search Engine News, Auto Industry SEM by searchgeek
No Comments »

Promoting your blog

By posting to social bookmarking services and the like. OK, here’s a crash course - down and dirty. It’s meant to give you a basic overview of what to do, rather than be a point-by-point workbook. So, we’ll assume you have a functioning blog. You know how to post articles and maintain the thing. What you want is to increase the exposure of your articles and the blog itself. Well, have you submitted to the main blog directories? Do a quick search for “blog directory” and you’ll find several sources to submit your blog to (list at the bottom of this post). Very much like Yahoo’s directory, these spaces exist to catalogue blogs only. Some will pass PR values, some won’t, some cost money to get a listing in, most are free. Some directories will list you immediately, some may take a few weeks to get to your submission.In any event, it’s worth getting these listings. In almost every case you’ll need to add a small bit of code to your site - which usually amounts to showing a small, linked image form the directory or service. Nothing to worry about. Drop the code into your sidebar or footer and be done with it. Next up, you’ll be looking to get going on social bookmarking (I’ll explain the two main types below). This basically amounts to you spreading the word at a grass-roots type level. You’ll be checking in with many different services to let them know about your latest articles/posts. There are two main types of places you’ll be looking to get posts into:1 - places like Netscape - the news aggregators who take articles/feeds and show them to users who have accounts2 - social bookmarking services - these folks act as big file cabinets for your links - so any page you see, you click a button in your toolbar and the page is automatically bookmarked with them. Now, no matter where you are, just log into that one account and you’ll be able to access your bookmarks. …and you’ll be able to share them with other users of the same service - so posting links to your articles increases their exposure…Each service varies slightly in how they let you submit items, but the basics are this: 1 - you get an account (free) 2 - you submit the URL for the article 3 - you enter a description of the article and drop in some keyword tags 4 - you hit the submit buttonNow, it’s critical to remember something at this point:These services DO NOT exist to act as an advertising medium for your site.So, that means you’ll want to submit items that come from sources other than your own blog. That’s right, and on various topics as well. if you try to submit only items you’ve created, you’ll get tagged as a spammer and your IP will most likely be blocked. Play nice and you’ll be fine. With the bookmarking services, this is a bit less of a concern, but each service has it’s own limits so follow any posted rules carefully. Now, there are well over 50 of these spaces you can post to, so how do you manage them all? Sure you can take all the buttons and add them to your toolbar then click each button over and over, but there’s a better, slightly faster way to manage this stuff.

The Socializer helps you by allowing you to submit to almost all of these services from one space. Drop their button into your toolbar, go to a page, hit the “Socialize this” button, and start submitting. You’ll still need to click on each of the services you want to submit to, and each service will want some unique info like tags, but it’s a quicker way to manage the multiple postings of the same article, to different services. It takes me about 10 minutes to post an article across the top 12 services and the results are worth it.

Remember:
1 - you’ll still need to have an active account with each of the services you want to submit to, so it’ll take time, once, to open them all - make sure you’re able to accept cookies on your PC too, or it won’t work.
2 - post about more than just yourself
3 - keep up the pace - 3 - 4 times each week make the rounds and post unique stuff
Finally, be sure that you have your “pings” enabled. This function allows you to ping each service you list when you post a new article. It’s important because it help spread the word yet again. Just be careful you’re not posting the same article multiple times to the same service. Typically, each service will give you a URL to add to your ping list. Follow your blog platforms instructions for updating this list and get those URLs in there.

So, there we go - get the blog submitted to the blog directories then get your social experience moving.