This week we received an email from a DePaul student (Go Blue Demons!), who was looking to interview a web design company about usability. I spent some time thinking about it and developing some answers and I thought I would share it on our blog- Enjoy! (1) Describe the company. Briefly describe the products they build and/or the services they provide Here are some quotes from our website but basically we are a web design company that focuses on Search Engine Optimization and Conversions by using the latest W3C complaint coding (xHTML and CSS) and also using the latest usability compliance. “Web design is more than just creativity, it’s usability. Understanding your visitors and how they use your website will lead to increased conversions. For each new website, our team of graphic designers, SEO consultants and marketing specialists work together on strategy, design, usability, and goals.” Lakeshore Branding, what started as a small marketing firm in 2007 has evolved into – Read the full article
The search wars have just been taken to a whole new level. The catalyst? Social media. With the phenomenal popularity of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, both Google and Microsoft will now be integrating real-time updates into their respective search engines. In separate announcements made yesterday, October 21, Google said it has reached an agreement with Twitter to include real-time updates – “Tweets” – in a new Google feature called Social Search; meanwhile, Microsoft has signed deals to get full feeds from both Twitter and Facebook. Google cited the fact that “an entirely new type of data has emerged… not only as a way for people to communicate their thoughts and feelings, but also as an interesting source of data about what is happening right now in regard to a particular topic.” The agreement with Twitter means search results will now include up-to-the-minute data and real-time observation from a stream of Tweets, so that users “will find tweets from – Read the full article
The keywords people search for the most on search engines in your niche or industry are not always the most profitable keywords to focus on for your business. This is at the heart of Chris Anderson’s concept of ”the Long Tail” from his groundbreaking 2004 Wired article and his book of the same title released in 2006. The Long Tail was originally meant to discuss an emerging trend where online retailers like Amazon, Netflix & Rhapsody found success increasing the depth of their inventory and selling less of more in an internet driven environment but it has had implications far beyond its initial insight. Nowhere was this more apparent than with Search Engine Marketing. Understanding “the long tail” and applying strategies to leverage it for SEO has proven time and again over the last few years to be one of the highest value activities in search marketing. To many this is not something new, but it is surely worth revisiting. – Read the full article
LinkedIn is not Facebook. It’s not Twitter, either. You don’t use LinkedIn to post 140-character statuses about your business or to officially like someone’s new online video. What you can do, however, is use LinkedIn to grow your small business and make it more profitable. And isn’t that your priority? As a business-oriented social networking site with more than 50 million registered users spanning 170 industries, LinkedIn is an online real estate for professionals big and small. It is truly a business networking site with the average user having $109K in income and 41 years old. If you’re unsure how to use your LinkedIn profile to gain a business advantage, you can follow these tips below: Brand your profile: As a small business professional, you want to be easily found by the people who matter – as well as by the most frequently used search engines. Make sure that you customize your LinkedIn profile by changing the default link into – Read the full article
When I come across articles like the one posted on TheStreet.com last week, I can’t help but get excited. Titled “Business Owners Question Social Networking” the article quotes some research that finds that a majority of small business owners haven’t seen value from social media, and that most don’t even use it themselves. A key section of the article reads: Among the 500 small-business executives surveyed, 76% said social networking hasn’t help them generate leads or expand their companies in the past year. And 86% said they don’t turn to these Web sites for business advice or other information. The majority, 61%, depend on big search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, for business advice and information. Only 13% use social networking sites and only 10% rely on expert blogs. So why on earth would I be excited that small businesses don’t use social media and haven’t seen value from it yet? Opportunity. Plain and simple. For me, there is – Read the full article
Internet marketing is generally broken into three areas- Research, Implementation and Tracking. Research includes using tools such as wordtracker, SEO Book or Google Adwords Keyword Tool. There are dozens of keyword tools to choose from but we like these because they are very easy to use and they supply the information that help us make good keyword decisions. These tools help you analyze what you believe the keyword list to be and modify it to maximize the potential website traffic. Simple things like making keywords plural has have significant increases in traffic or variations in phrases such as “online marketing” vs “Internet marketing.” While you may think that both phrases sound the same, you may think that maybe one or the other has a higher search volume- but you may be surprised to learn that “Internet marketing” has about 2.5 times the search volume of “online marketing.” Based on your objectives you would target the word that converts better for – Read the full article
“Chris is a brilliant and innovative marketer. He understands the industry on a strategic level and yet has the acumen to grasp technical tactics. Chris has developed key relationships in the industry and has an impressive network. He has the business savvy to identify new market opportunities and the discipline to deliver results. I highly recommend Chris without reservation.” – Ryan Evans, President, Rand Media Group “Chris Campbell has generously volunteered his marketing expertise for our not-for-profit organization for the last four years. He has been willing to share his skill in online marketing with both our organization and with the high school students we serve as a workshop presenter and as a consultant to new businesses. I am always impressed with his willingness to share his knowledge with our state wide organization and with other businesses. He is energetic, creative, fast on his feet, thoughtful, a great net worker and he follows through on his commitments. We love having – Read the full article
The last few days I utilized the new search engine Bing. I was skeptical at first of the new Microsoft product but was quickly impressed with the raw power of this new “decision” engine as they are branding it. I took notes in search results compared to yahoo and Google and I am going to share some of my insights into what I discovered (and opinions) 1. Bing has a better image search, I like the pop out feature to see the image a bit larger as well as the amount of images that are returned on the first page. It looks like they use “citations” to determine the image and do not have as much focus on alt and title tags. As webmasters have used images as an opportunity to put more keywords into the meta data, Google images has become less relevant. 2. Bing is showing favor to major websites, they are not showing site links except for – Read the full article
