Tag Archives: internet marketing san diego

Amazon Kindle vs. Apple iPad

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Amazon’s Kindle has been on the market for consumers to purchase since late 2007; just before the holiday season had begun. The Kindle is a neat device. It comes in two versions: a 6” display and 9.7” display. The 6” display stores 1,500 books, has manual rotation of the display and is priced at $259.00. The 9.7” display holds 3,500 books; auto rotates its display and is priced at $489.00.

The Kindle store has more than 400,000 books for consumers to choose from and is accessible from the Kindle itself. Amazon pays for Kindle’s wireless connectivity so you won’t see a monthly wireless bill. GSM technology is the most popular mobile wireless standard; allowing coverage in over 100 countries.

Weighing only 10.2 ounces, the Kindle weighs almost as much as an average paper back book. It also comes with automatic library back up: “books you purchase from the Kindle store are backed up online in your Kindle book library at Amazon.com. You can wirelessly re-download books available in your library. This allows you to make room for new titles on your Kindle. We even back up your last page read and annotations.”

Sick of seeing a glare while working outdoors? The Kindle’s screen is designed to let you sit anywhere you want in the sun without a glare. The pages actually look like a real book too, without the evident grain pieces. Text on the pages can be adjusted to your comfort level, there are 16 shades of gray for pictures, and images can be zoomed to the full size of the screen.

There is also an option for you to listen to the text. With text to speech, the Kindle reads to you in a male or female voice at a fast or slow rate. It won’t ever lose your place on a page either.

The battery life is also impressive. You could go one week without recharging your device while having the wireless option turned on. On the previous Kindle, the battery lasted on average four days with the wireless turned on and one week with it off.

Need to browse the web? The Kindle comes with an internet web browser that is basic, and can be used to read simple text-centric sites like Google and Wikipedia. This is great for looking up movie times or a sports score.

Recently, the Kindle has been a popular topic. With Amazon stock on the rise, people think that maybe Amazon is feeling threatened by Apple’s latest creation: the iPad. Kindle owners need to know that they’re not alone in supporting a platform that won’t come undone against the colorful, touch screen iPad.

Information provided by: Amazon.com
Written by: Samantha J Stephan

Mobile App Usage on the Rise in 2010

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The number of mobile applications is growing daily pretty soon we won’t even need computers! Marketers are quickly jumping on this trend in 2010- the world of applications will soon grow to an all-time high. Although the spending on social apps will stagnate this year, most marketers have already produced them. “Less than one-half of marketers created either a mobile or social app in 2009, but most plan to invest in a mobile app this year. The iPhone is the platform of choice, followed by Android.” And among those marketers with apps in 09, Facebook was the leading platform.

Social apps were perceived as the top goal for achieving engagement, audience targeting, reach, sharing and branding potential. “The top one-third of advertisers and agencies using mobile apps planned to up their investments by 75% or more. Marketers who used apps reported a growing market, client demand and increased standardization in the app world as reasons to spend more in the coming months.”

Mobile applications by marketers and publishers are the next goal for distribution and discover ability.

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15% of advertisers and agencies spent more than 60% of their budgets on promotion in 2009, but more than one-third spent less than 5%. Times are changing, and today consumers want easy access to their favorite sites quickly. Mobile apps are the newest trend for 2010 when it comes to reaching your target audience.

Information Provided by: eMarketer.com
Written by: Samantha J Stephan

Does Your Website Make Sense?

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It is surprising that even today website owners haven’t discovered how to make their sites user friendly. People like aesthetically pleasing sites that cater to them: the customer.

Here is a short checklist of dos and don’ts for anyone working on the internet to sell their product or service.

  • In the space “above the fold,” state what the site is aiming to achieve. The area above the fold is the section that is seen without scrolling down. This space should be used to tell the consumer what you do exactly. Why does your site exist? This should be clear to the audience in one quick glance. “You can’t solve someone’s problem if they can’t even figure out what it is that you do.”
  • Use large fonts and plenty of white space. “This is a no brainer. You want your website to be read by as many people as possible so don’t use tiny fonts, don’t use clever fonts, just keep it simple, double spaced and big. You wouldn’t whisper your sales pitch to a potential customer in real life, so don’t do it online.”
  • Keep it simple- not too fancy. Text comes first to graphics; the words on the page are primary. “Graphics should only be used to enhance the presentation of text and never hinder or distract the visitor from what they are supposed to do at your website – read it!”
  • Use headings, bolds, and lists. Unfortunately, people today are getting lazier and lazier. People don’t want to read your five paragraph essay on your product or service. They want to see bullet points, lists of benefits and get information as quickly and painlessly as possible.
  • If you aren’t as technologically advances graphic wise as you’d like to be, just use one nice text-based page. “You can have tremendous success online by using a webpage that is just a simple letter format. Follow the rules above and tell your story using just words. If you can’t do website design yourself or can’t afford it, you can keep things simple and still have a very effective message. It won’t be pretty, but like I said, pretty doesn’t sell – the words do.”

Information provided by: entrepreneurs-journey.com

Written by: Samantha J Stephan

Top SEO Trends for 2010

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Out with the old and in with the new! A new year has begun and keeping up with SEO trends should be at the top of your to-do list. So for 2010 here is a list of trends to keep an eye out for:

  • Site Speed – Site speed may be used as a new ranking factor in 2010. Make sure your pages load quickly by decreasing load time. “The order of things on your page will affect its load time, so make sure you’re using proper HTML, and cleaning up your CSS and JavaScript so that users aren’t left waiting when they try to access your site.”
  • Mobile – Research done by Neilson shows that there are now 56.9 million people looking for information on mobile web sites, which is up 34% from last year. First you should find out how your site performs on small devices. There are paid services which provide feedback for this. Then, once it is functional, take advantage of Google’s new mobile services and free online coupons.
  • Online Video – YouTube was made the second largest search engine last year. With larger companies dropping out, more space is available for small to medium sized companies which could use the attention. So make a video and post it soon!
  • Reputation Management Meets Real-Time Search – “When Google put real-time search updates into the SERPs they unleashed a potential online reputation problem of epic proportions. They essentially opened the floodgates to give angry customers immediate power in the search results. You no longer have a window to reach out to an angry tweeter to ask them to amend their update or tone down that Blog post. Google is pulling from tweets, from Blogs, from news, from articles and other Web content and throwing it immediately into your search results, often right above your own site. All of this means that you need to be even more vigilant about monitoring the conversation in an attempt to protect your brand. For a small business owner, your best line of defense is to build a listening station that will help keep you abreast of conversations as they happen.”
  • Increased Awareness of Local – “If you haven’t tied up all your local listings and profiles, it is beyond time to do that. The search engines, especially Google, are looking at the consistency and completeness of your local listings in order to rank you for relevant queries. That’s a huge ranking factor that is 100 percent in your control. Take advantage of it!”

Information Provided by: Smallbiztrends.com

Written by: Samantha J Stephan

What is the Google Honeymoon?

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When a new website is initially released on the internet, Google may give it a high rank in the Google search index. Usually this is between 24 and 48 hours after production. On average, the page will rank particularly high, then it will drop back to whatever is normal for the website.

One theory, calling this period the “honeymoon,” suggests that Google initially ranks new pages high, so that it can collect data on how relevant the page is for particular keywords. “If during the honeymoon your pages are clicked often and the visitor hangs around for a while (doesn’t click back and choose another option from the search results) then your drop after the honeymoon isn’t significant. The logic being that your page offers a good answer to the question being asked. If your page doesn’t get many clicks or people don’t stay around then after the honeymoon you can expect your page to drop further in the index.”

It is always exciting to see your website rank well on Google’s search index, but keep in mind that once a few weeks have passed, the site may drop back to its real position.

Information Provided by: Entrepreneurs-journey.com

Written by: Samantha J. Stephan

When should you outsource your Social Media Marketing to an Agency?

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Social Media Networking as a tool for marketing purposes is absolutely booming. Sites like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other types of social networking sites are receiving the highest numbers of web traffic and are harvesting the attention of companies with big budgets to spend on publicity and advertising online.

Many of these social networking sites are offering great marketing channels and services for those large companies to reach their target audiences, in mass quantities of course. MySpace Bulletin Postings is a service offered by MySpace that allows companies to purchase MySpace Bulletins, Craigslist postings, and opportunities for seeding message boards to send out fabricated “bulletins” about their company or products. MySpace will then post these “bulletins” on the pages of consumers in their target market.

MySpace describes how they’ve “created a network of account holders who, between them have thousands and millions of friends. By having these multiple account holders place your bulletin, it looks like genuine and organic buzz. Whether you’re a brand looking to drive traffic to a jump site, or a band establishing a following, our bulletin program is a way to spread authentic buzz to a large group of people.”

The advantage of using a service like this is the reach potential that sites like MySpace and Craigslist contain. The numbers of consumers that can be targeted are outrageously large and are very effective in reaching a mass market in one’s target market. Also, since these social networking sites are based on peer-to-peer communication, word of mouth and viral marketing are almost guaranteed to take place.

There is one major disadvantage to using this service. Many think this form of marketing will only work for certain types of promotions. For example if you want to advertise an upcoming gig for your band, one can see how using a MySpace “blast” to thousands of accounts would appear reasonably real since the site is often used as a central site for bands. However, for a company that was trying to promote breast enhancement pills, there is much doubt any company could make a “bulletin” about that seem like a real bulletin rather than an advertisement.

So, depending on the form of business you are running, social media networking may or may-not be a good form of advertising to use online. If your company could benefit from one of these major sites, paying for these services could help you increase your reach.

Information Provided By: Entreprenuers-Journey.com
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders

What is PageRank?

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Curiosity about getting your page to the top of the Google search is not rocket science; in fact, Google even offers a PageRank tool that can be downloaded for free. If you are running a website or Internet business then PageRank is a vital tool to measure how much traffic you are really getting.

Google is known for providing the best results on internet searches. This is because of PageRank’s ability to determine the value of a website for any given search term or keyword phrase. “This value is determined by how websites link together with the more popular (and theoretically better) sites receiving more links. It’s these incoming links that help the site have a high PageRank value and thus display higher up in search results.”

Here is a brief description of PageRank, written by the Google team:

“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.”

An important key note to understand is that it is a combination of variables that determine how well your site performs on Google. These are the most important variables to worry about:

  • Incoming links to your site.
  • The relevancy (to your site’s theme) of the pages linking to your site and the PageRank of these pages.
  • The keywords that other sites use to link to your site.
  • The keywords on your website in particular in places like page titles and headlines.

Not all of the above points are controllable, but some are, like keywords in headlines. The bottom line to PageRank is that all these variables listed determine how high your site shows up in the search engine results. Therefore it is important to utilize this information for your competitive advantage- no matter how tech-savvy you are.

Information Provided By: Entrepreneurs-journey.com

Written By: Samantha J. Stephan

Yahoo Expanding with Facebook

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Facebook has rapidly grown to become the world’s largest social networking site with about 350 million users worldwide. Now Yahoo Inc. is letting users of its email, photo-sharing, and other online products link their content and activities directly into Facebook.

Yahoo expects to begin this Connect service in the first half of 2010. It represents an important move in Yahoo’s efforts to tap the popularity of social networking.

As part of a broad revamping of the Yahoo front page, Yahoo allowed its users to preview messages from their Facebook friends directly on the Yahoo homepage.

The integration of Facebook and Yahoo was taken a step further in the announcement of activities users perform on Yahoo being published in Facebook news feeds. For example, if a user shares photos on Flickr, it will be documented in the Facebook news feed.

Yahoos’ hope is that the Facebook users will become visitors of the Yahoo page.

“Facebook Connect, which was introduced last year, provides a universal ID that lets people automatically log on to participating sites with their Facebook credentials. It also allows people to notify their Facebook friends about their activities on third-party Web sites.”

CEO Carol Bartz, who took over in January of this year, seeks to revive the growth of Yahoo.

Information Provided By: The New York Times
Written by: Samantha J. Stephan

Small Business Increase Internet Marketing Budgets

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Increasingly additional business owners, large and small alike, are acquiring more knowledge on the world of online advertising along with the importance of web presence.

According to a new study by an online advertising company, WebVisible Inc., small businesses have spent 91% more on search marketing in this year’s third quarter than they did in the same period last year.

WebVisible’s report, “2009 Q3 State of Small Business Online Advertising,” tracked a sample of their business clients falling in the small – and midsize range. “It found the average search spending by small businesses in the third quarter was $1,658. At the higher end, 15% of small businesses spent between $2,000 and $2,999 in the third quarter on search marketing.”

The study also published the search engines that small businesses are utilizing. Google came in at 60.4%, which is about 15% less than typical spending statistics for the market overall. Yahoo picked up some of that slack, coming in at 26.2%. The remainder goes to Bing with 10.5%.

Internet Marketing’s importance in today’s society has become vital. WebitMD recognizes the need for businesses to utilize the internet as a tool for advertising and hopes to encourage all business owners to seize this opportunity.

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Written by: Samantha J. Stephan