Posts by InsightsDigital

One way is to go to industry related events and meetups and give out business cards just plugging your websites. I know I have received many cards like that and I sure visited those sites afterwards.

One aspect of search engines that worry me is the privacy aspect. Search engines use this information for their behavioral targeting. Look at the grid on the cnet page.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029_3-6202068.html

So has this issue of privacy ever impacted you on which search engine you will use?

Many of these new search engines are becoming more intuitive or have a semantic component to it. Time will tell which search engine actually yields the best results for users. I remember a time when I liked Altavista better than other search engines.

I like your idea. I am not familiar with this, but just make sure your way abides by the Google's PageRank algorithm.

On the White House Blog today, it welcomed the public's comments about the "Federal Cookie Policy".

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/memoranda/m00-13.html

The majority of websites have cookies which enables websites to collect tracking data and analytics.
For online business, cookies are necessary. It makes you wonder if there will be a federal rule on using cookies for private sites and businesses.

Blogging and even Vlogging has helped increase business leads and sales. Gary V with his Wine Library has helped make him into a e-wine superstar and generated millions of sales annually. I have seen blogs come and go. Reason being - it takes time to make it grow, not only with content but with fostering relationship with other related bloggers and readers who leave comments.
My question is, if you have blogged for your business, have you had substantial new business leads because of your blog? How has blogging helped your business? On one of my blogs, I constantly have to screen out spam. Has the blog helped you become a blog superstar like with Gary V?

Just remember that the two major search engines have only been on the scene less than 15 years or so, but the web was already populated with many sites. Thus, have you promoted your business before "social media 2.0" became a commonplace practice on online marketing? If so, which tactics did you use and how did it help your business?

As you might all know, Facebook now allows for custom url for personal accounts. At the end of this month, Facebook will allow custom url for "Pages". If you are a business who has a Facebook Page, it would be beneficial to create a page for promoting your business. What do you think?

We all know there are other micro blogging platforms than Twiter, but guess what, no one really "tweets" about it. Thus, for those businesses who do have an active twitter account, has your twitter presence helped drive targeted traffic to your site? Short term? Long term?

Hi

Many businesses have created a Facebook group or a Facebook Page. There are differences between the two and unless a business is music related, a myspace identity is not created for the business. I personally recommend creatinga Facebook Page rather than a Group. What have been your experiences about this? Overall, do you think that creating a Facebook Page/Group really helps push/drive targeted traffic to your website.

I make the meta tags and descriptions for each page and business specific that will help me yield most search visitors.

Yes it is. Yahoo Analytics was Indextools.

Please avoid posting in duplicate areas. Thanks

Hi

Many businesses have created free iphone apps to plug their businesses. Now that the Palm Pre is in business and is predicted to gain market share, I wonder if businesses will add "creating a mobile app" as part of their marketing strategy. What do you think?

As part of developing a marketing plan, it is important to consider the SEO tactics employed by the competitors. So how has using SEO keyword research about your competitors helped your business?

Hi

There are many web analytics tools available, both free and fee based. Though Google Analytics had a big share of the free web analytics tools, Yahoo Analytics is gaining market share due to the software's robust analytical offerings. Have you used Yahoo Analytics and if you switched over from Google Analytics or even a fee based analytics tool, what are your thoughts?

Hi
I definitely heard of Calais at Semantic meetups. I saw a presentation of it and was very impressed. I read an article that said that major search engines will release a semantic component to their search engines in the near future. The question is, "When is the near future?"

Just today, I received a message from a rep from an online research community. I wonder if anyone on this board would actually use such services for their business, especially if it was a small business.

Hi

Thanks for the link. My advice:
1. Include Alt descriptions for each and every picture.
2. Remove the obvious Save for each picture.

This will help your SEO.

Hi

Thanks for the link. My advice:
1. Include Alt descriptions for each and every picture.
2. Remove the obvious Save for each picture.

This will help your SEO.

That is the big million dollar question. You can have 750 or whatever is your targeted number of visitors but if they dont convert, then the question is, how can you increase conversion. I have heard stories like Dell's success story on how Twitter has helped increased sales. I hope there are others on this board who can share similar stories.

Check out Joomla.

Hi

Many tout social media as a part of marketing strategy, my question for you is whether it has been an afterthought or has it been fully integrated to your marketing strategy? There is a difference between, "oh, lets put create a twitter account and see who follows us" to "I use Twitter to create two way communication with followers and friends of my brand - I contribute/reply to other's tweets and others do so as well. This Twitter strategy has successfully helped my business to expand 19 fold within a year. "

So what do you think?

Not only SEO, but ensure that the contents and categories correlate with your SEO tactics. I have seen some message boards with archaic categories - from a SEO perspective, this does not help bring qualified traffic unless this traffic were using those specific search terms.

Due to Google's current market share of search engines, I strongly doubt Bing will easily displace Google. Though Bing may displace secondary search engines like Yahoo. If Bing made an easy integration with Firefox, Bing may even get more users that way as well. Who knows. Time will tell.

Don't be surprised if Google will announce a bigger and better Google search engine in the near future in response's to Microsoft's Bing.

Hi

I have grown a few online communities in the past and I noticed that if you are trying to plug a service or increase awareness of something through an online community, you also need to track a few metrics.

For example on yahoo groups, I not only cared about the number of members but also how many exited during a particular time period.

So which metrics do you care when growing a Page on Facebook or some other online community?

Some time ago, I read an article just on your question on Search Engine Guide's website. The article stated that search engines are not case sensitive. It actually recommended to use lower case words for SEO purposes. Go figure.

I also read this morning that Sergei Brin from Google is personally spearheading a project to beef up Google's search engine in responds to Microsoft's Bing. Perhaps your comments about the image update will be announced as part of a bigger and better search engine capability by Google. Who knows....

Good question. I also wondered that myself. I knew a few clients who submitted a few articles about their client's businesses or products and those pages were never posted. It does help if the original poster on Wikipedia have already submitted a few articles in the past that were non-commercial.

Hi

Many people tout using social media to market your business, but I hardly read any posts about measuring social media and tying it up with return on investment (ROI) through metrics and analytics.

As I am compiling a list of social media tools, I wonder which metrics really matter for each social media tactics.

Let's start with a few:
1. Social Bookmarking Tools - favorites
2. Blogs - mentioned links, referrals per link,
3. Own Blog - how many comments vs. visitors
4. Facebook - fans of a page, links,

Can you provide some concrete means of doing this?

You need to add tags provided by vendor on your webpages of interest so these mterics can be captured.

Hi

In order to respond to your question, please answer the following:
1. What is your conversion goal?
2. What will you do about improving the WOOT rating on your site?

I visited your site and quickly left because my browser's security message stated your website had a very poor reputation.

I have heard of it and read on some best practice guide that the description has to be 13 words or less.

Have you tried offline/traditional advertising tactics? Try going to a few events where potential advertisers are in attendance and plug your business. You never know.

It takes time and dedication to make money on the web, but if others have done it, why not everyone else!

I found some relevant articles on SEO Round Table's archive.

Just to be on the safe side, I recommend you to create an email account solely for your paid survey questions

I have used a few tools on Firefox to help me get backlinks and SEO competitive intelligence info. But do keep in mind that I found some of these tools not to be 100% correct.

In regards to best, think of the strategy that will get you the most targeted visitors, this will be your best strategy.

I recommend answering related questions on Yahoo Answers on a regular basis and put your website as source.

I have done constant refresh on one of my websites based on two factors:
1. If there is anything really new and of value to add
2. Trends - If I have something to contribute based on some new trends or findings, then I took advantage and wrote about this and referred to the original source. So when people are looking for info on the original source, people may also find my website.

You may benefit from conducting market research to answer your question. If you have a twitter account, tweet about it and I betcha you will get some insights.

Depending on what your business is, it may benefit from optimizing images since I have found that a large percentage one of my client's website greatly benefited from Google image referral.

Don't forget to answer questions on LinkedIn and join some of LinkedIn's professional groups that cater to your niche.

I also recommend, if the content permits, into podcasts and powerpoint presentations, and submit them online. I have done the powerpoint route and it has help me get some business leads. Good luck.

Learn it from me kiddo, if you don't market your dating site with paid and unpaid marketing/advertising, your site will not be very visited. I also recommend you to create a press release and promote yourself to local tv and online news channels and volunteer to talk about love and technology.

I strongly recommend you to join local groups and meetups that cater to your niche, like Flash animators or Digital Producers, or some group like that. Then when you create a profile, include information about yourself and your game on your intro. Even at meetings, take this opportunity and talk about it. Plug and Plug away.

Most of all, you should not forget to include fresh and most of all, relevant, content on your site to keep the visitor engaged. This will help increase conversion.

Optimizing your website and webpages for your targeted audience is one key to leading more conversions on your site.