Archive for the ‘search engine optimization’ Category

Free Internet Marketing Webinar for Businesses, May 27 at 11AM PT

Friday, May 14th, 2010

If you are new to Internet marketing, we want to help you get up to speed, for free.

Jon has given his one-hour workshop, “What Every Business Should Know About Internet Marketing” in locations from Kona, Hawaii to Silicon Valley (as you can see in the video clip on our web page). Now, for the first time, it’s being offered free via the Internet, Thursday, May 27th at 11:00AM PT / 2:00PM ET. Click here to register now >>

This useful and informative webinar includes a complete overview of the three main areas of Internet marketing, including:

  • The “Super Market-Trends” that have radically leveled the marketing playing field
  • The two essential strategies upon which all successful internet marketing campaigns are based
  • The three main types of internet marketing: search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click search engine advertising (PPC) and social media marketing (SMM)
  • A comparative analysis of the time requirements for implementation, the kinds and quality of results, and the cost-per-lead that is derived from each main category
  • Valuable tips, tricks and resources that are based on real world experience

Why are we producing this event for free?

  • Jon LOVES to share information and people love learning this material. It’s important!
  • It helps to expose the expertise that makes ComBridges such a valuable marketing partner.
  • This is a “free sample” of things to come. We are working on a new educational website to be called “New Marketing University” that will have many more programs. We hope you’ll like this program enough to become interested in more. To learn more, please register now.

Mark your calendars for Thursday, May 27th at 11:00AM PT / 2:00PM ET. We hope to see you there.

>> Please Click Here to Register Now <<
It takes just 30 seconds, really! And, even if you can’t make it live, by registering you will make sure that you get the link to the free recorded version.

Or view our 1-page PDF with the generic course description below . . .
What Every Business-Onesheet 03.25.10

Posted in Video Web, blogging, e-business, e-marketing, internet marketing, motivational, search engine optimization, search marketing, social media marketing, technology, twitter | 1 Comment »

Online marketing & advertising illuminated via a visit to ad:tech SF

Monday, April 26th, 2010

As discussed in this Tuesday’s New Media New Marketing report on TheTVNews.tv (video immediately below), I took advantage of a press pass last week to spend a day at the very alive and vibrant ad:tech SF online advertising conference. It was very stimulating as well as a bit overwhelming, as most good conferences are. (Note: Examples and references are linked below.)

Bottom line, the conference was healthy and online advertising in general appears to be growing at a robust rate. This was evidenced in an announcement unrelated to the conference, as I was getting ready to go, I learned that global package goods giant Reckitt Benckiser was doubling their annual online advertising budget to $40 million.

In addition, [added 4/30] eMarker’s CEO says Online Video Advertising to Increase 35 Precent in 2010 (video interview via Beet.tv).

One educational note was revealed as I first entered the press room. Their sign read, “Press, Bloggers & Twerps.” I commented that I had not seen twerps get press credentials previously. At this point, I was told apologetically that the sign was an error. It should have said, “Tweeps.” We are all learning. And, apparently there were only three tweeps deemed influential enough to get a press pass, but this was a “first” none the less.

Loic Le Meur

(cc) Kenneth Yeung - http://www.thelettertwo.com

A highlight for me was the keynote by French entrepreneur, Loic Le Meur, founder of Seesmic.com, who now lives in San Francisco. Loic accurately positioned social media as the third major wave of internet marketing. The first major wave, as he described it, was just having a website. The second wave was being savvy enough to be found on Google (search engine optimization or SEO). And, the third is now the ability to “earn” interactions via social media. He emphasized that social media is not about “campaigns.” It’s for listening and engaging.

Along these lines, I also appreciated comments by Larry Weintraub of word-of-mouth marketing agency, Fanscape, who explained that engaging in social media marketing has many more benefits than old world marketing. All with enormous value. Without embellishment, the four solid reasons to go social are:

  1. Marketing (another speaker said that “advertising” is now morphing into “marketing”)
  2. Market Research
  3. Customer Service
  4. Public Relations

In my opinion, none of these benefits should be under-rated.

You can watch Loic’s keynote via this link. The Hitler video which Loic included (amongst the dozens of other Hitler parodies based on the Constantin Films movie that I mention in the video above) can be viewed here, if it’s still up. It’s very funny if you are geeky enough to imagine Hitler expressing Steve Jobs displeasure over the loss of that famous iPhone G4 prototype.

Here are other examples of advertisers’ money moving to online video, as well as other links mentioned in my video report above:

BONUS #1: TWITTER ADVERTISING
Amongst the MANY smaller businesses exhibiting at ad:tech SF, I was interested to learn that Twitter is now not only being used for social media engagement; but beyond Twitter’s own advertising expansion (the potential of which Andrew Goodman calls “huge”), there is also now a Twitter-specific “contextual, targeted” independently-run Twitter advertising platform called 140 Proof.

BONUS #2: BRANDS AS PUBLISHERS a.k.a. Content Marketing
Here’s a link to a great set of links that further illuminate the “brand-led online video” trend which is also called “Brands as Publishers” by this page’s author, thought-leader, publisher, John Battelle, and “Content Marketing” by others. Checkout It’s All About Publishing, a.k.a. it’s all about content. ;)

And, as I’m sure you know, there’s “more to come.” Including an inside track on branded YouTube channels that I’ll be covering in a new blog post and video report soon. I met with Google/YouTube at ad:tech and an announcement regarding this development is expected in, roughly, mid-May.

(Request: If you watch the video above on YouTube or Facebook, please comment etc. And while you’re here, I would appreciate any comments and/or feedback that you may have. I’d love to hear from you.)

Thanks for reading!

Posted in Google, PR, apple, branding, facebook, internet marketing, iphone, online video, search engine optimization, social media marketing, youtube | 2 Comments »

Twitter Tools & How to Build More Consumption of Your Media

Monday, April 19th, 2010

This Tuesday’s edition of TheTVNews.tv which is shown immediately below, features the links, tools and resources that can be found below the video. Enjoy!

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Posted in TV Industry, search engine optimization, social commentary, social media marketing, television, twitter, user generated video | No Comments »

Get a Grip on Internet Marketing: It’s a Process

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Get a Grip on Internet Marketing: It's a Process(This commentary originally appeared in the Feb-March edition of ComBridges’ “It’s a Wonderful Web” e-newsletter.)

Many people think of Internet marketing as a “thing” or an event. It’s not. It’s a process… an adventure even.

Yes, of course, this process requires the generation of content. Whether your content is just what you say on your site, or if you get more vocal by writing blog posts, publishing e-newsletters (like this one), and/or tweeting on Twitter, there are things to do. But, what surprises us is not that people (including us sometimes) lack the discipline to write on a regular basis. What’s surprising is how short-sighted many people frequently are about the process.

What’s amazing about Internet marketing is the kinds of real world, actionable feedback that it makes available, for the first time. From the beginning of the web and e-commerce, we’ve loved the phrase “launch and learn.” Your website and all the associated opportunities to communicate with your consituencies is a low risk learning lab packed with valuable information, if you use it.

It works when you work it, but…

How many of you have Google Analytics (or some other analytics system) installed on your website, but fail to review those analytics on a regular basis? And as long as we mentioned “adventure,” how many of you actually go the extra step of testing new ideas, learning from the results, and then making appropriate adjustments? We’re guessing not many.

This is why ComBridges’ Internet marketing agreements now routinely include regular monthly coaching and consulting sessions as well as service deliverables. That way our work together can include monthly analytic reviews & recommendations as well as follow through on previous initiatives.

Internet marketing is a process, and we’d love to help you make yours more productive. Please contact us for more details.

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Posted in blogging, internet marketing, search engine optimization, social media marketing | 6 Comments »

Web 2.0 Expo Provides Snapshot of Rapidly Evolving Next Generation Web

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

I had the illuminating pleasure of spending a few hours today attending the keynotes and browsing the innovations on the floor at the O’Reilly/TechWeb conference, Web 2.0 Expo SF. These have become quite vibrant affairs with NY, European & (I think) Japanese iterations now on the annual conference schedule.

(Keynote photo of John Battelle on stage with Marc Andreessen at Web 2.0 Summit SF 2008 by James Duncan Davidson.)

This spring’s SF show attracted about 8,500 web-savvy geeks and associates and I was impressed with the consciousness of both the collaborative conference editorial orientation as well as the folks in attendance. Top level insights of the day were provided by John Batelle’s interview with Mosaic browser creator, Netscape founder and Ning.com do-it-yourself social network entrepreneur Marc Andreesen who offered a interesting historical perspective on why the web browser will persist and warnings about the “coming nuclear winter” with regard to the economy. Author and Harvard/Oxford professor, Jonathan Zittrain also offered a quite thoughtful “big think” analysis of how and why we should take security and Web 2.0 business concerns more seriously.See his book, The Future of the Internet… and How to Stop It for more details. We’ll all be glad if you do.

Beyond these considerations, Web 2.0 seems to be alive and well with not only ample opportunities for open source collaboration, but with myriad kinds of mashups that bring remarkable power to the web browser.

Many folks are familiar with the Facebook and MySpace plug-ins that let individuals do more… (as one presenter said, “we’re no longer browsing the web, we’re creating it”), but there are now many more web-based tools that let you create powerful online applications, plug-in widgets and whatever, without the need of any desktop software. For example:

  • At the most basic level, Slide let’s you create custom slide show widgets from digital photos that you upload to PhotoBucket or Flickr
  • For multimedia types, I’ve been impressed with Sprout Builder which is kinda like a web-based Flash authoring tool for the rest of us. But in this case, you get embed code so that your Flash widget can be posted anywhere and can spread virally
  • Zude.com hypes itself as a social computing platform, but what I liked is its ability to let you drag and drop virtually any kind of web content into a Zude page for online publishing and sharing
  • and for the more advanced gear heads, Coghead.com offers a platform, also in a web browser of course, that let’s you build interactive business processes, like lead capture for example, all in a drag and drop environment. Who needs code? ;)

What I find most interesting is the way that all of this functionality has become web browser-based. It seems that we are destined to do all of our computing in the cloud. In any case, the creativity, collaboration (amongst people as well as interconnected bits and bytes) and the communication channels are continuing to get ever more powerful… and all of this is really just getting started. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Thanks O’Reilly for giving me a glimpse of the future as it is appearing now… in browsers near us all.

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Posted in e-marketing, internet marketing, search engine optimization | 3 Comments »

The True Meaning of Search Engine Optimization

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

As I explain in my ebook on internet marketing, there’s nothing more important in the optimization of a website than relevance. There’s also probably no more important goal that “stickiness” or the ability to get a website visitor to stick around for more than a nano second. There’s also probably no greater authority on this subject than Bryan Eisenberg, author of “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing,” other books and the GrokDotCom.com blog.

For a seven minute overview of what I’m talking about, please watch this:

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Posted in internet marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing | No Comments »

Understanding Adobe Air, Mozilla Prism and More

Monday, March 24th, 2008

In geek speak, it’s called “computing in the cloud” To most people it’s more clearly understood as using the web browser to deliver experiences and functionalities comparable to desktop applications is expanding by leaps and bounds. The following guest post on TechCrunch by Matthew Gertner explains what’s going on in this space with refreshing clarity, and also includes a geek-friendly tip about how easy it can be to create a separate little stand-alone browser-type application for Gmail.

Click here to read, “Bridging Desktop And Web Applications – A Look At Mozilla Prism”

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Posted in search engine optimization, search marketing | No Comments »

The Best of Web 2.0 for 2007 (or 2008) & The Flip

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008

Happy New Year! I was going to do an update on Web 2.0 software applications that I know and love, and still hope to find the time, but meanwhile I’m going to let Tech Crunch’s post, “2008: Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn’t Live Without” do it for me.

It’s a thoughtful list with brief articulate reasonings, and includes WordPress, Skype (without the emphasis on video & webcams that I think it deserves), as well as Zoho (whose CRM we use daily at ComBridges), Firefox and YouTube. I’ve gotten into Pakeflakes (rather than Netvibes) recently as a personalized home page, but otherwise it’s all good.

My favorite new gizmo is The Flip (Ultra), a pocket-sized, web-ready video digi-cam. No tape, just 60 mins of MPEG-4 video in Flash memory and a flip-up USB port.
Now I need time to do some video blog posts… More on that very soon, I hope.

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Posted in e-business, search engine optimization, search marketing | No Comments »

WordPress Has Become My "Standard" for Blog Websites (thanks in part to Google’s Matt Cutts)

Thursday, December 13th, 2007


One of the most interesting moments at Webmaster World was the endorsement of WordPress by none other than Google’s Matt Cutts. For those who may not know, Matt has become the wonderfully laid-back and articulate “voice” of Google at Webmaster World. (photo by Andy Beal used under Creative Commons license.) As detailed in the video interview linked below, Cutts unexpectedly told the PubCon audience that by designing and producing a website in WordPress you, in essence, make it defacto search engine friendly. Especially with the latest version 2.3.

I was very pleased to hear this because I’ve recently upgraded my golf blog, TheJoyofGolfing.com to WordPress 2.3; and then in the same week, ComBridges has also recently taken over site updates for a client who has a more static page (non-blog) website that was already produced in WordPress. Our company is also currently using it to add an integrated blog to a pre-existing design. These are options that, frankly, I didn’t realize existed with a “blogging” platform previously.

Bottom line, I have become increasingly impressed with the WordPress website publishing platform. In addition to a well-thoughtout and feature rich back-end interface, there are options for everything from Google AdSense to static pages that make it more than just a blogging tool. And the real capper is the excellent array of third-party plug-in tools which have been written for the open source WordPress platform. For example, as a search engine marketer, I was thrilled to find out about the “all-in-one seo” plug-in for search engine optimization. I’ve gotta believe that WordPress is now the state-of-the-art website publishing platform. Personally, I feel empowered by its features, stability and extensibility.

And then today, I got word that Yahoo has written a very impressive plug-in of their own which helps website and blog authors to almost extemporaneously add links and pictures. Yahoo’s is kind of a “smart” plug-in that has the capability to suggest links as well as pictures (via Yahoo-owned, Flickr). Click here to watch a video demo of the Yahoo Shortcuts for WordPress.

Below, you will find that interview with Matt Cutts. It includes similar comments about WordPress’ search engine friendly “nature” as well as other sage search marketing advise. Note, this endorsement is particularly interesting (as one commenter to this video points out) given that Google owns a competing blog platform (which I am using here), Blogger.

Note, as mentioned, WordPress can also do “flat” pages so it isn’t necessarily just a blogging platform. It’s really a website development platform or even a lightweight CMS (content management system) as well as a blogging platform, or some combination of the above, depending on your needs.

The only trouble is that now I’m going to have to convert this blog over to WordPress. Fortunately, I don’t think that’s too tough…

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Posted in search engine optimization, search marketing | No Comments »

Welcoming the Wisdom of Webmaster World

Sunday, December 9th, 2007

I had the pleasure of spending three days last week at the Las Vegas Convention Center attending “PubCon” or the Webmaster World conference. PubCon or Webmaster WorldThere’s a lot of information that I intend to share on this blog, but, for openers, I would like to make a bottom line observation:

Great Content is Now King
The old axiom that “Content is King” seems to be maturing and I would update it by saying that “Great Content is King.” At Webmaster World, there are all kinds of discussions of all kinds of search engine optimization tactics from “duplicate content” (content from other places that may appear on more than one page of a given website) to paid links, and other kinds of artificial as well as authentic link acquisition strategies.

What became apparent to me this year is that Google and the other search engines are now working more intensely than ever to differentiate between “authentic authority” and “artificial authority.” Authority being the term for those sites that earn strong positions on SERPs (search engine results pages) by merit of the number of links from other sites pointing to them.

While some “artificial” link acquisition strategies may still work, I think that, based on what I learned at Webmaster World, it needs to be said that, long term, it is going to be only the links earned “the old fashioned way”–specifically from great content that merits authentic links from real people who appreciate that content–which will be recognized by the search engines with valuable results page positions. I believe this trend is now more substantial than before and is irreversible.

So if you are working on search engine optimization and organic search engine marketing, the most important strategy is now (and perhaps has been for a some time and will continue to be for the foreseeable future) the creation of not just content, but great (meaningful and relevant) content that will earn meaningful links based on that content’s own merit.

Coming soon:
More posts inspired by Webmaster World including the young publisher who is making major moves on some of the established publishers in the video market via the web, a major entrepreneur who is raising big bucks and buying huge volumes of web traffic, great free search engine marketing tools and much more.

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Posted in search engine optimization | No Comments »