Tag Archives: san diego internet marketing

Holistic SEO: An Integrated Approach

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As Internet Marketers, we pay attention to every opportunity to capitalize on the changes made in the online industry to gain a competitive advantage over our competitors. SEO is undoubtedly always changing as innovations affect how content is discovered, indexed, and sorted in search results. In 2007, major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo have made some of the most significant changes ever by including images, maps, books, video, and news for certain search results.

Every marketer is forced to develop digital asset optimization strategies, while not forgetting about the basic search engine optimization components, for their clients through an integrated approach. Every approach must now include structured data in the form of microformats and rich snippets, as well as feeds and sitemaps, that all play an increasingly important role in uploading content for the Google index. Google says its mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.

Because of this, it is now becoming absolutely essential that companies develop a plethora of digital assets that must include not only links and sitemaps, but a variety of real-time feeds from social media sites, videos, pictures, and blog posts. By developing these assets, marketers can deploy a better more holistic SEO strategy, which realizes the benefit of inclusion and visibility where customers are looking.

Many search marketers already optimize holistically under the premise of, “What can be searched on can be optimized.” Until recently, most companies avoided entering the content marketing business. SEO consultants have typically been left to deal with whatever content they could to optimize and promote for link building.
In essence, the weight given to content optimization versus digital asset optimization should clearly match the opportunities presented by an ever-changing search results page.

As long as there are search engines, there will be some kind of optimization for improving search engine visibility for your clients! What companies need to consider are all the digital assets they have to work with to give both search engines and customers the information they’re looking for in the formats they’ll respond to. Stay competitive and offer what assets you have against your competitors!

Information Provided By: Lee Odden, ClickZ
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders

“Smart” Phone Users Trust Carriers The Most

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There is no question that mobile devices are becoming the next trend for marketers to reach their consumers. Marketing via mobile devices allow companies to reach their target markets anywhere and at anytime! There is an estimated 650 million people worldwide who use “smart” phones to access the Internet monthly and a recent study shows just who these users trust with regards to their services.

According to a Tellabs survey conducted by The Nielsen Company, two-thirds of mobile users around the globe are interested in “smart” services that would feed them information based on personal preferences, location, time of day and social setting.

Looking at the graph provided here, mobile users place a significant amount of trust in their mobile carriers in terms of protecting their information and actions on their phones. They also overwhelmingly selected their mobile carriers as the “most appropriate” provider of services for their devices like phone service, Internet accessibility, and applications.

Within the survey, consumers preferred to find their news, media, and entertainment content provided by their mobile carriers, then followed by other web providers, and then a combination of the two.

When it came to shopping services, however, there was a notable difference: Mobile carriers dropped somewhat in importance, and advertisers became a much more prominent source of information.

US marketers have already begun experimenting with exactly this type of smart shopping service. “Geo-fencing” of “Geolocation apps” provide personalized marketing messages to shoppers based on their location or proximity to a marketer’s store. A recent experiment from a store called 1020 Placecast, piloted a ShopAlerts program that was embraced by mobile users:

* 60% said the location-triggered messages were “cool” and “innovative.”
* 79% claimed to be more likely to visit a store.
* 65% made a purchase.
* 73% were likely to use the service again.

As technology continues to become more innovative and creative, we will soon be living in a world where you cannot escape the annoyances of advertising. Soon enough, we will have ads sent to our phones in correspondence to our physical location and time of day! This is very exciting yet horrifying but I am excited to see what the latest technological advances can do for companies that can benefit consumers.

Information Provided By: eMarketer
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders

What causes consumers to search online?

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The one thing that makes social media marketing so attractive lies in four words: word-of-mouth marketing. This is one of the most effective and credible forms of marketing a product or service and is the reason why so many companies feel the need to have a presence on many social networking sites. However, these social media users prefer a different type of interaction to help them inspire or prompt an online search…

According to a recent survey, conducted by BIGresearch for the Retail Advertising & Marketing Association (RAMA), they found that in-person, face-to-face communication was a social media users’ top reason to start an online search for a specific product or service.

The study revealed that social media users were even more influenced by face-to-face word-of-mouth than an average adult’ opinion found online.

This preference of face-to-face communication held across all age groups within the survey, and the only difference among any age group was that 18- to 34-year-olds were more likely to search online because of something they had seen on cable television, which was a smaller force among older users.

The study also demonstrated that online communities, such as MySpace and Facebook, influenced less than one-quarter of social media users to search for a product or service which is still a notable percentage. When it came to gender differences, men were marginally more likely than women to report such an influence from a social networking site and age had an even larger effect. Among the 18-to-34 group, nearly three in 10 searched because of social networks, compared with less than 20% of 35- to 54-year-olds and 15.3% of those 55 and older.

More than 71% of the respondents communicated about a service, product or brand in person after an online search, compared with only 21.6% who spread the word via sites such as MySpace or Facebook. Not all digital communication was shunned, however; about one-half used e-mail to tell others what they had found.

Social media users are particularly attractive to marketers because they are more likely to both look for and give purchase advice than the general population. Word-of-moth marketing continues to be one of the most valuable marketing tools available to companies so they should be focusing a lot, but not all of, of time in the online arena, especially in social media.

Information Provided By: eMarketer
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders

Small Businesses Turn to Cheaper Marketing Methods in Down Economy

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Due to the current state of the economy, many companies are now turning to more affordable methods of advertising their services as well as making sales. Small businesses have turned to social media and internet advertising because it is a cheaper alternative to traditional marketing methods. According to “The State of Small Business Report” from Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland School of Business, the use of social media by small businesses has significantly increased to 24%, from 12% the year before.

The report also mentioned the most popular reasons for engaging in social media use. The leading answer was to provide their company a presence online for both their workers and their consumers, where the second most common answer was to update their statuses regarding the company and their products/services.
Here is a graph that shows the rest of the motives for using social media for small businesses:

It was also found that many businesses feel that social media use was not fulfilling their expectations; rather, social media’s capabilities for staying engaged with consumers and collaborating with other businesses were more in line with businesses’ expectations.

Also according to the report regarding small business and their social media use:

• Most small businesses say they are just breaking even with their current usage of social media, but a solid one-fifth find it profitable already.
• Nearly one-half believe it will make them money in the next 12 months, and another 39% think they will break even on it.
• Just 9% think social marketing will continue to be a losing proposition.
• Overall, 58% of respondents felt social media lived up to their expectations.
• One-half felt it took up more time than they realized, but only 6% claimed negative comments on social media had hurt their business.

A final statement was added about the report from Janet Wagner, director of the Center for Excellence in Service, who made a comment about how social media was letting small businesses become more competitive with larger competitors, “Social media levels the playing field for small businesses by helping them deliver customer service time spent on Twitter, Facebook and blogs is an investment in making it easier for small businesses to compete.”

Information Provided By: eMarketer
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders

Benefits of Online Streaming for Sports

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Sports fans from all areas of the sports arena have been vocally demanding one thing from their teams they are loyal to… online streaming of their sporting events that can be seen anywhere at anytime.

The spread of paid-streaming content online by U.S. leagues brings huge audiences for sporting events like the Olympics, March Madness, and the U.S. Open. Major League Baseball however, is the leader in capitalizing on this new trend offering its fans streaming live-game content on a paid basis. According to the Sports Business Journal, MLB has built an online streaming package that generated around 40 million dollars in 2009! The NFL, NBA, and NHL are also putting their best efforts forward to get their online streaming capabilities up-to-par for their fans.

Also, with the increase in smartphone use and data plan subscriptions from sports teams, this opens up demand for streaming sports and video content to call phone and mobile device users.

The increase in online and smartphone streaming allows many benefits for all different types of groups:

• Avid sports fans will now be able to watch games they are interested in seeing online, on their phones, or at a later date. This keeps fans interactive with their teams and up-to-date with how their teams are doing during their season.
• Advertisers now have an opportunity to sponsor online and smartphone videos and content allowing them to increase their branding strategies as well as hit some of their target markets
• Sports teams now have the opportunity to profit from an online market by offering these live streams of their team.

Here is a graph of the leading U.S. Sports teams taking advantage of video-streaming:

So, for all you sports internet marketers out there, give your fans what they want and start making some money off of it!

Information Provided By: eMarketer
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders

Social Media Marketing Seminar: SDSU

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San Diego State University’s Entrepreneurial Management Center presented an interactive seminar called “Social Media for Business” yesterday afternoon. This interactive seminar/workshop enabled the SDSU student population and all others interested in attending to discuss the opportunities for all businesses in social media with experts in social media, online marketing, the media and business.

The seminar was developed to show the importance of social media upon the marketing and branding of businesses everywhere.

Experts in the field running the seminar included:

• Kevin Popovic, founder of Ideahaus®, author of Satellite Marketing: Using Social Media to Sell
• Rodney Rumford, co-founder of TweetPhoto, founder of Gravity Summi
• Steve Kousky, technology correspondent, San Diego 6 TV
• Dexter Bustarde, senior web analyst, Digitaria

Each panelist had some great things to say about social media and its importance in the marketing arena for businesses of all shapes and sizes. These panelists also offered great examples of success stories using social media as well as those that were disasters. For example, they said if you wanted to see some successful social media campaigns currently being utilized, many of them said to check out the following companies: The Red Cross, Best Buy, Dell, Kodak, Cisco, The Susan G. Komen Foundation, Invisible Children, Intuit, and Intel.

There were many tips that they provided for those in attendance including:
• Identifying your target markets: demographics, psychographics, etc.
• Developing a strategy that pertains to your communications objectives and target market
• Developing Satellites: Integrating all forms of marketing to reach your “Prospects”
• Deploying those Satellites: Putting your integrated marketing plans into effect
• Measure and Mend: Measure your results and track your progress to learn from your mistakes and successes
• Take advantage of the free tools our there that are available
• Use social media to interact one-on-one with your consumers and help to improve your product/services by fixing what your consumers are telling you about what’s wrong

Overall, it was a successful seminar that gave a lot of good advice to those interested in social media for their current or prospective businesses!

Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders

Is SEO Dying?

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It was bound to happen- some person writing about the death of SEO. There are a few reasons for this speculation, try searching for “is seo dead.”

Reasons why people think SEO is dying are as follows:

First, people do not really know what SEO is. Even among marketers, people continue to believe that SEO is the “process of tricking search engines to rank a site for search queries for which it isn’t one of the better matches. With this viewpoint, it’s easy to see why people would want to conclude that SEO is a dying medium. Google and Microsoft make billions of dollars in revenue from their search engines, and protecting that revenue stream is a critical activity for them.”

If people are not using SEO correctly, they will ruin the search engine system. This is why Google has invested so much in WebSpam. When consumers receive poor search results they become dissatisfied and turn to different search engines.

Second, other people believe that social media will soon replace SEO. “These people argue that inbound links are an elitist system of voting for Web sites (you have to own a Web site to vote), and that social media will provide a much broader array of signals, because anyone with an Internet connection can sign up for a social media service and start making their opinions known. Further, they argue, more people will rely on social media for opinions on things because people love to learn from the experience of others.”

Social media sites have not been adopted broadly across the population, making the data lumpy and inconsistent- and it is easily spammed. In creating an account, no real investment is needed; all you have to do is sign up and begin posting your opinions and thoughts.

Authority is another issue here. We can assume those with tens of thousands of followers on Twitter have some authority on a topic, but the most they can offer is their own opinions. “Someone with a Web site has made a significant investment in building that site, and here the stamp of authority is likewise relatively easy to measure. However, it’s much more meaningful to receive an authoritative link than an authoritative Tweet.”

So is SEO dying?

“Not a chance. Defined properly, but still somewhat narrowly, SEO is the practice of helping publishers bring new traffic and customers to their Web site, by building and promoting high quality Web sites using technology that the search engines can parse. That need isn’t going away anytime soon.”

Make the most out of available opportunities. For example, Microsoft’s Bing. SEO can and will evolve with the changing times. The advent of universal search resulted in some changes, and created new opportunities for SEOs. The rising prominence of local search did as well. Increasing personalization will create yet more opportunities.

“For the SEO professional, staying abreast of the changing market environment is part of the price of being in this business. While change is constant, publishers use SEO as a means for obtaining new customers from search engines. As long as search is around, there will be a need for people who know how to make that happen.”

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

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

Link building and inbound link relevance

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Conventionally the purpose of link building is to give a website a better chance to be noticed by the search engines. Every SEO professional knows the key to high search engine ranking is link building.

However, most importantly we must not forget a website’s true worth according to the search engines, is the content it provides. Does the site present ideas, services, products and educating information to improve our daily lives? Much too often websites are packed with keywords in order to rank for a certain product or service while offering something completely irrelevant.

Sites that appear in the first pages of the search engines are the ones with the most relevant and useful information using honest and appropriate techniques. Some have developed sophisticated yet irrelevant SEO techniques that may be damaging the Internet’s value, however, search engines have responded to such techniques and will penalize websites by removing them from search results. Therefore, stay away from link farms, spamming, duplicate websites and keyword generated link pages.

Some SEO experts are seeing great success in achieving high search engine ranking through substantial effort put into receiving inbound links from high-classified websites. When your site receives links from pages with high page rank, your website is able to maintain or grow in page rank simultaneously.

Written By: Sam Kim

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