In mid-March, Google launched a social sharing tool called “+1.” Similar to the Facebook “Like”, +1 was added to search results to improve social relevance for users. It was noted last week that +1 will make its way across the Web in addition to (simply) search, with a widget that allows Web pages to allow +1 sharing. This will link Google profiles to content and websites, and the +1 now aims to put Google in a space where they have strived to be in for the past 5 years: social. Now, what exactly is +1? And why does it even matter? Essentially the +1 button is Google’s version of the “Like.” With hopes to capture a bit of Facebook market share, Google looks to take the world’s information and make it publicly available (according to their mission statement). So what does this mean for you? Well, besides the fact that it’s another way to draw traffic to your blog, the – Read the full article
Do you know that it takes just 24 seconds to improve your SEO ranking performance? Well, not really. We made that number up because the number catches attention. But catch your attention we certainly hope we did, because this SEO tip we’re about to give you can definitely go a long way in getting you more – and more relevant – search engine traffic. And yeah, they might take about 24 seconds or less to complete. What are title tags? To put it simply, title tags are the document titles required in all HTML/ XHTML documents. The term “documents” includes your website or blog. Ideally, your title tags will be used to help identify the contents of the pages of your website or blog. The HTML code that defines the title of your HTML documents follows a certain format. Let’s take the Lakeshore Branding blog – http://www.lakeshorebranding.com/company/blog – as an example. <head> <title>Chicago Marketing Blog | Internet Marketng | SEO – Read the full article
Paid search is a wonderful advertising platform because it gives you clear-cut analytics for ROI decisions. Twitter, on the other hand, is a wonderful advertising platform because it is still natural and fun. Both paid search and Twitter advertising differ in scope and functional use in the marketing mix; however, Twitter recently announced a tool called the “Follower Dashboard”, which, in conjunction with geo-targeted ads, makes Twitter a very attractive advertising medium. Twitter announced the ability for companies to pay for “Promoted Tweets” earlier in 2010, where Coca-Cola garnered 86 million impressions with a single promoted tweet. Holy! Okay, sure Coca-Cola probably paid out the “Wah-Zoo” for that tweet, but even if they paid half a million dollars (ex: cost-per-engagement, or CPE, at $.10 & $6.06 per 1,000 impressions) for that promoted tweet, it would still be competitive with a paid search of $10 CPA. Okay, Twitter is great, we know. But up until now it was only great for – Read the full article
Have you ever thought about how to get your website or blog included in Google News? Well, you wouldn’t be the first. Business owners, Internet marketers, online reputation management and public relations (PR) professionals, and SEO specialists all recognize the value of having their content show up in one of today’s biggest online news aggregators (and search engines). Why get listed on Google News? If you’ve never given a thought to getting listed, consider these benefits and key features of Google News. Millions of people use it to keep abreast of what’s happening. (It cannot be a bad thing to be able to tap into that, right?) These users access Google News using a variety of ways: via search, personalized Google News pages, regular E-mail alerts, mobile device or a tablet (like the iPad), RSS or Atom feeds, and more. Get listed and immediately you have a multitude of ways to reach out to an audience (search engine marketing, mobile – Read the full article
At Lakeshore Branding we believe in the triple bottom line philosophy, the phrase was first coined in 1994 by John Elkington, the founder of a British consultancy called SustainAbility. His argument was that companies should be preparing three different (and quite separate) bottom lines. One is the traditional measure of corporate profit—the “bottom line” of the profit and loss account. The second is the bottom line of a company’s “people account”—a measure in some shape or form of how socially responsible an organisation has been throughout its operations. The third is the bottom line of the company’s “planet” account—a measure of how environmentally responsible it has been. The triple bottom line (TBL) thus consists of three Ps: profit, people and planet. It aims to measure the financial, social and environmental performance of the corporation over a period of time. Only a company that produces a TBL is taking account of the full cost involved in doing business. For businesses, sustainability – Read the full article
I publish this to you guys because in the time I have spent working for Lakeshore Branding, I have learned a lot in what is SEO. As I will be taking a drastic turn in my life and begin working for the man, there are a few important lessons I have learned. First, a quick background. After graduating from the University of Iowa, I helped a colleague start up a webhosting company, Host Duplex. Afterwards, I joined Lakeshore Branding as an SEO Hero (self modified title ) to expand my technical knowledge in the SEO industry and further develop my web development skills. Here are the lessons I have learned as an SEO Hero. 1.) You Don’t Know Jack! One of the many lessons I have learned through life is that real life experience is king. From research and different books, I had thought that I knew my fair share of how to optimize a website. It wasn’t until I began – Read the full article
It looks like snubbing the world’s number one search engine was the right move after all. Just a little over a month after rejecting Google’s $5.3 billion offer, daily deals website – and one of today’s fastest growing companies – Groupon has raised $950 million in one of the largest venture funding rounds of all time. The financing came from a long list of venture capital firms and investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, Accel Partners, Battery Ventures, DST, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, Silver Lake, Maverick Capital, Technology Crossover Ventures, Mail.Ru Group, and New Enterprise Associates. “We’re thrilled that Groupon has earned the confidence of some of the world’s most respected investment firms,” said Andrew Mason, founder and CEO of Groupon. “With their support, we will continue on our mission to change the way people shop locally and serve the world’s local businesses.” Added Greylock Partners venture capitalists Reid Hoffman and James Slayet in a TechCrunch guest blog post: “We – Read the full article
In my experience with Internet Marketing and SEO, I have come across a multitude of Internet marketing and SEO terms. A lot of these terms usually have very vague or technical definitions that leave you confused and frustrated. I know how you feel, trust me, I have been there. Fear not, I have compiled a list of internet marketing and SEO keywords in layman’s terms for you people that are new to SEO and internet marketing. 1. Anchor text , anchor link – When you are reading content, and a word is clickable and contains a link. 2. Backlink, back-link – a link from an outside website (outside source) that points back to a website. (i.e. all the links that connect back to your blog) 3. Broken link – a link that fails to connect to it’s intended destination 4. Cloaking – When a website presents one version of itself to the user and another version to the search engine. – Read the full article
