Google has been indexing PDF files – a stalwart of the myriad content forms accessible on the web – since 2001, and by our very rough estimate there are over 500 million PDFs currently indexed by the search engine.
There remains quite a bit of confusion surrounding the use of PDFs in the relation to ranking on search engines, but Google has showed a quick glance at its cards, clearing up at least some confusion today in a post about the format in search results. If you’re responsible for website promotion and driving traffic to its pages, pay close attention:
Category : Advertising &Blog &Marketing &search engine optimization &Search Engine Ranking &SEO &Websites
Top 10 Tips for an Effective Advertising Campaign
I read this today and found to be interesting.
- Go After Your Target Audience
- Highlight Your Competitive Advantage
- Establish an Image
- You Have to Spend Money to Make Money
- Advertise in the Right Places
- Don’t Allow Your Budget to Run Your Advertising Campaign
- Diversify
- Don’t Try to Be Everything to Everyone
- Test Your Ads in Advance
- Monitor Your Ads
Source: http://www.allbusiness.com/10-tips-effective-advertising/16566950-9.html#ixzz1WvFbUjJJ
Category : Advertising &Blog &Marketing &Sales &SEO
- iContact Launches Free Email Marketing Tools
Leading email and social marketing firm iContact is launching a no-cost version of its flagship product that will better enable Web professionals, community organizations and small businesses without large budgets to communicate with their subscribers and fans via email, Facebook and Twitter.
The iContact Free Edition allows individuals and businesses with subscriber lists of 500 or less to manage a contact database, send out emails and social media messages, track the opens, clicks and social views and conduct surveys. Features of the free edition include the following:
Category : Advertising &Blog &E-mail &Marketing
Because there are fewer competitors, local search engine optimization is not nearly as challenging as broader categories — but it still has its challenges. Many of the same core SEO rules still apply, but thanks in part to improvements on the part of search engines and the intersection of search and social, it is far simpler than at any time in the Web’s short but rich history to optimize for local search.
Be Everywhere That Matters: From Google Places to local directories, local links and user citations are the primary influencers of high rankings for geo-specific terms. Local users go deep for information, so even small, seemingly low-volume destinations can result in quality links. They may not receive a lot of traffic individually, but a few links from relevant blogs can go a long way – on the search result pages and even in your local community.
Ask for Reviews: If you’re a local business and are not collecting reviews, you won’t be in business long. Search engines rely on content, and in the eyes of search engines today there is no more reliable signal of businesses’ authority and relevance to an individual query than the presence of reviews. You don’t just need to ask for reviews here and there, you should consider making it part of either your business processes or marketing campaigns. If you run a dry cleaning business, what’s 25 percent off your patron’s next visit for a review? You don’t need hundreds, but in order to remain fresh and relevant, your review assets do need to be constantly appended.
Set Up a Schedule: It sounds basic (perhaps overly so), but ask the next local business owner you encounter when was the last time they checked their position on the search results pages for keywords and phrases relevant to their business. The answer will likely be “it’s been a while”. Setting up a schedule to monitor position and the impact of individual promotions, just like spending time delivering paychecks to your employees, is a neccessary function of business.
Category : Advertising &Business &Internet &low cost advertising &Marketing &search engine optimization &Search Engine Ranking &SEO &Websites
The biggest takeaway from the State of Video in E-Commerce that we published several months ago, citing conclusions from SundaySky’s Q4 2010 report, was that the large majority of online merchants have thus far underutilized or altogether neglected this simple yet potentially very valuable medium.
The latest release from SundaySky includes new data from the first quarter of 2011, and while relatively little has changed in terms of retailers’ widespread adoption, it appears that consumers’ appetite for e-commerce video continues to grow.
The increasing interest from online shoppers, combined with retailers’ general inability to meet that demand, presents a unique opportunity for ambitious merchants both large and small. Below are some of the key findings from SundaySky, which paints a very convincing picture of why you need to implement e-commerce video as soon as possible.
Give consumers what they want
The number of subscribers to online retailers’ YouTube channels increased 21 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2011. That number climbed to 571,000 subscribers to retail channels, totaling 420 million views of retail videos on YouTube alone – a 13-percent increase. Meanwhile, the number of retail videos posted on YouTube reached nearly 96,000 during Q1 2011, which represents a 9-percent increase. Shoppers are consuming e-commerce video at a significantly faster rate than merchants are providing it, but that window of opportunity is closing.
All or nothing for major retailers
Among the largest online retailers in the world, it seems that video is either being mass-scaled or all but ignored. Thirty-two percent of the top 50 online merchants boasted more than 1,000 videos on their sites in Q1 2011, compared to 22 percent in the previous quarter. However, 36 percent of the top 50 had fewer than 10 videos on their sites, and a staggering 68 percent of all retailers are not yet exploiting the obvious and accessible rewards of on-site e-commerce videos – in any way, shape or form.
Time to act is now
While the large majority of retailers continue to ignore the benefits of video, a definite shift is taking place in the e-commerce industry. The number of major retailers posting more than 100 videos on YouTube during the first quarter of 2011 increased by 15 percent since the fourth quarter of 2010, indicating that the race may be on. Still, that number represents the minority, with 48 percent of the top 50 surpassing the 100-video mark.
Enormous SEO benefits
According to the SundaySky report, nearly 18 percent of the major search engine results pages during the first quarter of 2011 contained video results, and most video results for retail-related keywords were posted only on YouTube. In an analysis of 34,000 top keywords within 17 categories from Shopping.com’s top searches, computer gaming had the highest presence of video results while furniture had the lowest.
Getting results
Zappos has for a long time been a benchmark of many online retail best practices, and its use of e-commerce video is no exception. The company annually generates more than half a million dollars in incremental revenue simply by following video SEO guidelines, and the amount of traffic accredited to video results is estimated at more than 77,000 visits per month.
While Zappos is one of the top 50 retailers to adopt e-commerce video on a massive scale, smaller retailers simply need to get into the game rather than watch from the sidelines. From posting a handful of simple product videos onto your site to leveraging your company’s own YouTube channel and building out your brand, the power of video is growing and too many retailers are missing out.
Category : Advertising &E-Commerce &Internet &Search Engine Ranking &Web Design &Websites
The Time Has Come to Increase Your Time on Site
Most online marketers and website owners tend to measure the success of their online business by the amount of traffic they are able to generate (and, of course, revenue).
While increasing the number of unique visitors is most definitely important (and something that everyone should be concerned with), it is arguably only half the battle. Unique visitors and visits alone should not be the only means by which you are measuring success.
It is easy to understand that there is little in the way of benefit from attracting a visitor to your website that quickly clicks the back button and leaves. Often, website owners and online marketers spend more time thinking about how to attract people to a site and less on how to encourage those visitors to spend considerably more time on your website. Take heed – there is a a direct correlation between the amount of time spent on a website and its success. So how can you increase time on site (and profits)? Follow these three simple strategies.
- Design Smarter (and Write Longer) -
Of all the different site types, it is the content marketers that either have the best or the worst time-on-site averages. While one suggestion might be to simply write longer-form content, another option would be to take the longer-form content you have or will develop in the future and commit to splitting it into multiple sections. This is a common approach that has been used on sites like About.com and many newspaper sites for years. For example, a 1,000 word article could be split into four sections of 250 words each. Some content management systems have this functionality built in, so explore that feature if available to you. Another benefit of splitting content is that it gives publishers the ability to generate more advertising impressions – a big draw particularly for those selling on a CPM basis.
- Create More Relevant Jump Points for Content Showcasing -
Would you rather feature content that is timely or timeless? There are arguments for and against both, but those publishers that concentrate on identifying areas where they can showcase their best information are those that often have the highest time-on-site averages. These jump points are areas where publishers can profile/push the most popular pages, the most heavily commented upon content items or most linked-to items. There are, of course, many places to do this, including at the end of articles/posts, within sidebars, and within the content itself. There is actually some SEO benefit to creating links to this type of content on your site as the number and relevance of links to internal pages is (arguably) an important factor in search engine ranking.
- Introduce Supplemental Formats: Multimedia & Applications -
Many content publishers, to their own detriment, opt to stay with the content format most familiar to them – whatever that may be. Consumers, however, often have very different demands when it comes to their consumption preferences – offering just one only gives you one chance for one type of visitor. Start introducing supplemental formats and you’ll be surprised about the positive effect it has on time on site. For example, if you’ve got a long-form article, why not fire up the webcam and produce a short-form video about that article’s key points or takeaways. If you publish a list of events, why not introduce a calendar application which is a terrific way to increase the number of clicks on your site as well.
Category : Advertising &Internet &Marketing
A new partnership between Kantar Video and OpenAmplify looks to make viral video all the more measurable. Using OpenAmplify’s The Meaning Platform (which measures semantics within content) and Kantar’s video analytics (Videolytics), marketers will have an opportunity to see beyond a video’s raw numbers such as total views.
“For the first time, marketers can not only verify that their video is getting in front of the right audience, but also find out exactly what those people thought about it: what parts of the message they picked up on, which bits they loved, what they weren’t so keen on, who they shared it with, and what they intend to do as a result of that video,” said Mark Redgrave, CEO, OpenAmplify. “Earned media needs metrics that make relevant and in context, and VideolyticsTM delivers an integrated solution for marketers.”
Category : Advertising &Marketing &Video
This is Part 1 of a two-part series. In Part 2, we put Yahoo Contributor Network through its paces – a two-week trial in which seven articles were published, the results presented and analyzed in “Does it Work? Yahoo! Contributor Network“. If you are a YCN user, please share your experiences by leaving a comment!
In May 2010, Yahoo purchased Associated Content for $100 million. Not long after, it was rebranded as Yahoo Contributor Network (YCN). Now, Yahoo is one of the biggest content producers on the Web. Using YCN, anyone can publish just about anything with the push of a button — articles, videos and photos included — to Associated Content and Yahoo partner sites, and get paid for it.
YCN opens new opportunities for freelancers and businesses alike to find new audiences, earn revenue and promote their brands. Let’s take a closer look.
Getting Started
Assuming that most Web professionals can follow a simple registration process, I will skip the step-by-step instructions. However, do not overlook steps in the process that ask for details in your profile. Be sure to include any and all of your websites, Facebook and Twitter profiles (and any other relevant networks), and be very detailed about personal information and areas of expertise. YCN will use this information to determine what contributors get which assignments, including localized assignments such as community reports and business reviews. Linking to websites, blogs and online profiles helps extend your network both in and outside the YCN community — and this is vital to your success.
Submitting Content
After completing the registration process,content may be submitted immediately. During the submission process you will create a title and description, choose tags, select photos and provide other supporting information to the article including links and citations. Essentially, you are determining how the search engines will index and display your content. As such, these are some of the most important steps in the process.
To ensure that your content has the best chance of success — defined by page views and earnings — choose the best possible keywords and phrases to use in titles and descriptions, tags and in the body of the content itself. Use a keyword tool (Google’s External Keyword Tool or another of your choosing) to select those keywords with the highest search volume.
At this time, images can also be included. Frankly, I have found this to be one of the more difficult and time-consuming parts of the entire process. YCN is very specific in its guidelines for image use. Yahoo’s public gallery can be used, but outside of that the options are limited unless using your own images. Time is money on YCN, so if images are not essential to the article, consider skipping them.
Editors at YCN will manually review your first three submissions for publication. Depending on the type of payment options selected, this process will take one to two weeks. After the first three articles have been published, content can then be published immediately — again, depending on the payment options selected.
Getting Paid
Earning with YCN comes in two basic forms; up-front payments and performance payments. All payments are made via PayPal.
Category : Advertising &Marketing &search engine optimization &Search Engine Ranking &SEO
If you’re like many people in today’s economy you may be thinking about starting your own business. Any new business needs a website and websites are only good if others can find them. All new website owners quickly find a need to focus on the search ranking of their website in all major search engines. Search ranking is the organic placement of your site, also referred to as ranking, on Google or some other search engine.
The challenge for all website owners is learning the key factors for improving search ranking. Getting to the top of search engine result is rather complex and requires more than just a quick study. In fact, website owners will spend more than a billion dollars on search engine optimization this year and much more of that on other forms of Internet marketing like pay-per-click.
You can pay for traffic or you can focus on improving search ranking across all major search engines. Here are a few search ranking strategies you can apply to your website to improve traffic and build your business for the long term.
Build your website with sound search engine optimization techniques. Start your search engine optimization from day one. Don’t wait until you’ve invested tons of money into your website before you find out that it hasn’t been built for effective search ranking. Apply on page techniques like meta tags, headers, and keyword density to improve search ranking.
Construct a search engine optimization plan. Don’t assume that because you build a website you are going to have top a top search ranking. It takes a website that is built on sound principles as well as a significant effort in off-page optimization. Off page optimization is the process of building links to your website from third part websites. The higher the Google PR of these sites, the better your search ranking will be. Be sure to include your keywords in the actual link text.
Category : Advertising &Marketing
The year was 1996, when I started promoting my business online. Emailing in bulk was as common as drinking water. And a very effective way to advertise your business, I must say. Now it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to advertise your business using e-mail. With the excess of spam in your mail box and most people deleting the deluge of mail they receive daily, things sure have changed since my foray as an online business owner.
Is E-Mail Marketing Still Effective?
Still, if done correctly, email marketing can be an inexpensive and quick way to reach your target market. One concept is getting people wanting to receive your emails. A couple ways of doing this is to do permission mailing, meaning to have people sign up on your Web site or as they provide their email when they purchase something from your company. This way, you can collect a legal list of emails.
Some email advertisements can become redundant and ineffective unless you:
- Offer discounted services and products consistently
- Send to a very targeted mailings
- Offer free content or service to lure them in
A few sentences of original content may provide reasons to read your email. Tips and suggestions are some ways to keep your audience interested in your emails.
When sending e-mails, you need to:
- Have catchy luring headlines and subjects
- A recognizable company name from constant exposure and branding
- A simple process to get more information on your products and services
It is to your benefit to call-out interesting subjects or in the body of the text since you only have a few seconds to captivate the reader’s attention before he or she deletes it.
Behavioral Advertising
Some companies specialize in a data-collecting process known as behavioral advertising, which matches ads to a consumer’s interests, determined over time. More on Behavioral Advertising can be found here: IAB.Privacy Matters
Category : Advertising &Marketing
