Posts by InsightsDigital

Though I don't have direct experience in this, I have known others who have done this. Their results were that their websites benefited in increase traffic and SEO. I dont know about the PageRank. I would predict it will due to LinkedIn's high PageRank.

Google's Wonder Wheel is very similar to a semantic search engine that I saw at a presentation some time ago. Don't be surprise if this wheel will be used by everyone in a near future. For some reason, the Lycos search engine came into mind, when Lycos had drop lists of different topics related to the search term. But back then it was not popularly used.

Can you please explain what a no follow is? I have an idea but I just want to make sure I am not in the wrong direction. Thanks!

I am not surprised. Of course, after any major press coverage, Bing was going to experience a surge. Visitors were curious and perhaps wondered if it is better than Google. Then the curiosity wane... Then those stats you mentioned reflect the adage, "It's back to normal."

Now that YouTube has expanded it video uploads to 2GB, this presents a good opportunity for businesses to upload videos about their products or services and how it provides value to the viewer. So will this new limit entice you to use YouTube for your marketing promotion?

In regards to traffic referred from a Facebook page/group, does anyone on this board have any traffic % change from referrals?

I also add: Cnet

I am adding new blogs to read on my Google Reader. So far I have added Nielsen and IAB for its analytics. Which blogs do you follow?

Just paste the url you want to shorten. Then it will give you a url code. Bit.ly is very useful for Twitter where one only has space for 140 characters.

One constant aspect of life is change and in managing SEO, the web changes everyday so it is important to manage this change accordingly.
Thanks.

I recommend looking at the different columnists on the online version of Entrepreneur's and Inc Magazines. From my understanding, these columnists do have links to their websites/businesses. I recommend you to check out the Internet Marketing section and see how these columnists use backlinks to their businesses.

So far, I noticed that my Firefox search engine right top box does not allow me to add a new search engine and none of the Microsoft's search engines are listed. So I manually went to Bing and no picture of stingray but I did like the suggested popular search terms. I clicked to the one on "Maria Belen Chapur". So far, let's see how Bing fairs with other search requests. Will keep you posted.

You need to create content that can be published on other respectable sites, like Press Releases. This press release needs to contain links to specific pages and contain the right mix of related keywords.

I have also found that having the business url on my Facebook and twitter accounts does bring a considerable amount of traffic to my site.

But like a plant, one needs to constantly update a blog with good and valuable content.

I totally agree with you BobChrist. It really matters where the link is "parked at" rather than quantity.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Yes, I had a similar story where I shared my "still in the design stage" website with a client, despite a caveat that the site is still in development, and I learned my lesson ever since.

I decided to challenge myself and use Bing for a week. I encourage you to use Bing for a few days and report your experiences on this thread. I sure will. If you already have been using Bing, what are your experiences.

Have you used Google Trends to access keyword trends? I have used it and it was interesting to see the results for Michael Jackson on the day and time shortly after his death. The results correlate with news reports that Google and Twitter encountered slow connection due to excessive traffic.

Since user generated content is so prevalent and is a part of social media, it is good to monitor what users are conversing about.

I also found another trend service called Trendrr which I was impressed with. For small business owners, free or economically priced add on services are desired.

So how do you monitor social media trends?

bit.ly is a url shortening service which provides you with analytics. Cool.

There are a number of different paid and free tools available to track web traffic and web related trends. I have used a number of them and many of them have their strengths and weaknesses. The choice/s of your selected web analytics software depends on the purpose of your website and how these tools help you optimize the visitors' experience on your sites.
For a small website, perhaps Google Analytics or Yahoo Analytics is best. What have been your experience using such tools? I have also used fee based web analytics tools like WebTrends and Urchin.

So the most important question is, what do you do with the web traffic data? Do you read the reports consistently or once in a quarter?

As part of my market research component of a marketing plan, I have used user generated content in my qualitative market research to determine consumers' interest, mindset, and decision making process. I do wonder the veracity of content though at times and whether it will impact the overall findings. So do you wonder about validity, transperancy, and overall importance of user generated content?

Hi
I am working on a marketing plan for a startup. I realized that every small business was or still is a startup and share similar marketing plan and business objective, whether it is to increase market share and or increase brand awareness. So what have been your experiences regarding this?

Or attend a Blog Academy event. The room is full of bloggers.

It depends on your niche or target segment. I have spent that amount on having a booth at a health fair and materials

I add:
1. Slideshare - yes you can upload word documents here
2. Scribd

Thanks for the info. I have done this manually by using information posted by each user and it sure was time consuming.

Stumble is really good but if your site caters to a niche market, then I strongly recommend linking to niche communities. Do your homework first by using Quantcast or Compete and look at those communities' analytics and determine whether this is a community you want to link with.

It is best to play it by the books and ensure that your site is not in Flash and it follows good SEO practices.

I am contemplating advertising on Facebook and I would like to hear your experiences about advertising on Facebook. Thanks!

I have seen SWOT analysis on business plans but how often do you create a SWOT analysis on your marketing plan? Especially in today's market, a SWOT analysis can help understand the competitors' market.

When someone follows you on Twitter, do you send them a thank you email? I am trying to access a best practice discussion here. The information available from social media experts range from one extreme to another.

I recommend a manual approach to link exchange. Yes, it can be time consuming but it ensures you control of your links. Research related sites you may want your site to be featured. Then research these sites PR and any other SEO research you can get hold of. If you believe that linking with this site will improve your PR and increase the amount of targeted visitors, then personally write an email asking for this link exchange.

Always remember that which ever link you are submitting has to entice the visitor to spend more time on the website and to provide value to the visitor.

A popular option nowadays have been to include a facebook page and twitter account to promote your business. But the issue is, just because it exists does it means that one has to advertise there. I noticed so many accounts on Twitter that are business related but hardly have any Followers or much comments. What are your thoughts on this?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124623159206366203.html

Wall street Journal on this topic.

Though many may find this page basic, I found it still provide insights.

What do you think?

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

Also, a good way to increase targeted visitors to the site is by submitting url relevant with multimedia to the directory related to multimedia. In my own experience, I have discovered that multimedia SEO helps increase traffic.

I know some stores gained conversions via having a store on Ebay.

I found out that Radian6 and BuzzLogic are tools that provide social media analytics.

Does anyone know if Yahoo and MSN use another system to rank websites and how do websites optimize for these two search engines?

Other than PageRank, what are other indicators that one should look at as improvements on SEO tactics? I vote that better ranking order of the website on SERP for that particular keyword is another indicator of SEO tactics that one should be looking into.

That is great! Congrats. I also recommend you to do:
1. Everytime you add a new major component to the site - especially with the Ladies of MMA - create a Press Release and post it online as well as submit it to MMA related sites with a strong PR.
2. Constantly add new content - which you definitely do.
3. I did not see a site map on your site. If you dont have one, create one and submit it to Google. Site map enables crawlers to map out your site.

On Twitter, there are Follows and Followers. Thus, it does not surprise me that there could be many bogus or padded accounts who follow me on twitter. Having a business related Twitter account, I check on who is following me. If the Follower seems legit, I follow them. If not, I dont follow them. What is your policy regarding Twitter Followers? At SES NY conference, Guy Kawasaki said he follows everyone though many internet marketers do not follow his advice.
http://searchengineland.com/26-people-who-mislead-you-on-twitter-21561

Very insightful article. I will add that with the emergence of better and faster internet based services and technology, internet advertising will have more options, both in the front end and back end (analytics and surveillance).

This was really good. Thanks for your insights!

It depends on the banner and the message the banner ad is displaying. Some time, I saw a banner ad featuring a mean looking baby and I just had to click. It lead to an informational site featuring an array of mean looking babies and it was for whooping cough. The banner ad definitely got my attention. Thus, it did its job. If the banner ad is just a logo, most likely I will not click to it at all. Thus, the most effective banner activates an emotional response.

Hi. Thanks for the link. I have been approached by a few vendors like Communispace or other similar vendors.

How often to you optimize your website to increase natural search visitors? Do you do it on an ad-hoc basis or consistently every week or quarter?

Thanks for sharing the link.