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It is interesting to think how far the Internet has come and where it is going in the near future. Google is the giant now, but who will be king in the next ten years? Could it be a start up that no one has even heard of yet or could it be the number two and three seed search engines of Yahoo and MSN? The area of SEO is ever expanding into a dominant force on the Internet, but we are clearly seeing that companies like Google are starting to venture off into non internet based companies, and are taking their ever expansive hoards of cash and buying up companies at a rate of every week! I heard through the grapevine that they are even taking on such marketing conglomerates as Clear Channel Media for a stake in the ever-expansive Radio, Billboard, and T.V. markets. It is interesting to note that with the power Google has that it could easily take over ever form of advertising from News Papers, Magazines, Print Media, and a list of other things that it could potentially monopolize, but also may revamp peoples thinking on how they receive their News and Media. I look at Google like it’s the friend everyone wants to have, but it’s really only about them!

PPC Bidding against your Competition

One of the best “tricks” in managing a PPC campaigns is creating ads that will be triggered from your competitor’s brand names. The first common question is this “legal”, to bid with their names even if they are trademarked? The answer is yes, as long as you don’t include those brand or company names inside of your ads. Google has been challenged in the courts for allowing advertisers to display ads that are triggered by user searches for names such as “AcmeCompany.com”. In all cases, Google has won the case that they have the right to allow your competitor to use your company name to trigger their ad, and vice versa. So since this is an acceptable practice, by all means you should actively pursue a competitor’s brand name campaign.

Note, there are times you can use the brand name in the ads, if you are a reseller and complement their business, but you may not get away with if you compete directly. The best way to find out if this is acceptable is to try running an ad with the brand term in it. Google will very quickly return a message stating if this is acceptable. You may have to request “an exception” stating why it is acceptable to use the brand name in the ad. Give it a try, but run an alternative ad without brand terms in case the ad at a future date is rejected and this can happen.

When bidding with your competitor’s names, I always like to break these up into separate ads, and when possible use like terms as in this example below. Having these ads separated is very useful for future reports to develop trends to measure which competitor has the best on-line brand presence overall or the effect of news events by spikes in daily traffic. And don’t limit the ads to your competitors terms, include an ad for your own company, because this will help you understand how your on-line presence measures up or if that recent press release generated any search excitement. An example of brand search terms that will trigger ads is as follows:

www acmecompany
acmecompany.com
acme company com
[Acme Company] (exact match)
“Acme Company” (phrase match)

In the example above I avoid a broad match if the company name is somewhat common, since this will trigger a much wider search result. For in brand bidding I’m really looking for the searches people are doing who know the company name and are using Google as a quick directory lookup. You can include product names if the branding is unique and has some common usage, but I always recommend performing a search first to check out the search results to avoid association with other common terms.

Will brand bidding deliver new sales? Is the effort worth it? Very often the conversions aside from your on brand terms (which should be your highest converting ad) will produce lower sales or leads from the other campaigns. But in most cases the actual costs associated with brand bidding are much lower, so the Cost Per Conversion is low, thus making it worth it. The insight in tracking your competitions on-line marketing efforts can prove to be a long-term benefit as it is often an indication of how active they are in on-line marketing.

– Gary E. Haffer - Director of Sales and Marketing SpiderSplat Search Engine algorithms are constantly evolving so that the most relevant sites end up with the highest page ranks. An algorithm is a set of rules that an engine uses to rank the listings contained within its index, in response to a particular query. Google makes algorithmic changes more frequently than leading competitors such as MSN and Yahoo - and it is a constant battle of wits between search engines and search engine marketers. Webmasters and marketers want to know how to manipulate and maintain high page rankings, while search engines strive to make sure the pages with high ranks are the most relevant possible and are filled with valuable content for searchers. Relevancy is one of the biggest perceived differentiators between the main search market share holders.  One of the most important ways to improve your site’s ranking is through link building. Not only will the search engines see links to your site as increasing its relevance, but links from outside sites will always lead to more direct web traffic. Search engines see incoming links as an endorsement or vote for your site. Would you link your website to one that you did not appreciate? In addition, a search engine will think that your site is really important if you are linked to by sites with autonomous link popularity. This gives your website authority and engines will perceive you as a reputable resource. The term “link popularity” refers to the number of indexed inbound links to your website. Simply put - the more websites that link to you the more “popular” your site becomes. Link analysis of this sort evaluates which sites link to you, and what text is being used in the outgoing hyperlink itself. This text should contain keywords that accurately tell search engines how your site should be ranked in relation to the information contained within. For example, if your website sold pottery, ideally sites that link to your domain would contain that keyword: Buy Pottery Online.  One way links to your site are perceived by algorithms to be more important than those you reciprocate. If someone links to you, and you aren’t returning the favor, then that likely means your site is of greater importance. One good way to gain links without having to reciprocate is through the use of testimonials. It is difficult to convince or encourage another site to link to you without reciprocation. Testimonials, however, solve this problem by making it in the best interest of others to link to you. If you write a sincere testimony or review, they are going to want their readers to be able to see it. They must include the source of the testimony - hence your incoming link. Also consider adding your site to the wealth of free online directories.  Frequently adding original content to your site helps you gain page rank, but it can also help to share content with other sites. If other websites want to include your content on their page, then all you have to do is insist they include a link to you or utilize an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed. Also, write articles that will be of interest to others and then distribute them to other article databases. Incoming links to your site is one of the most important facets of SEO today, and any related effort must include this sort of legwork in order to be truly successful. Utilize directories, RSS, testimonials, press releases and good, original content to encourage links and improve the visibility of your web presence.

The Spidersplat search engine marketing firm in Downtown Boston has been added to the Harvard Business School’s list of corporate recruiting partners. SpiderSplat is currently recruiting HBS MBA level candidates for jobs and internships based in its Boston offices.

So I’ve had the phone for about one week now and all I can report is praise for the device. It can handle all of the criteria I laid out in my previous post and does it all while seamlessly jumping from AT&T’s EDGE to various wireless networks.

Speed over EDGE is mediocre but that’s exactly what I expected it to be and thus I am not disappointed. The speed is fast enough for the features of the phone and I am satisfied there. Also the benefits of added battery life by not implementing a battery draining 3G antenna are greatly appreciated. The phone has been able to undergo significant daily use with frequent email checks and has enough life to get me though the day. I imagine that as the novelty wears off I will be fooling around with all of its features less (so many people have wanted to see/play with it, firing up streaming trailers, video podcasts, abusive cover flow use, etc., and it keeps on chugging.

The iPhone has been great for work and play so far and will continue to serve well as both in the coming months. AT&T and Apple are definitely planning some updates for the future and I cannot wait.

Oh yeah, this has been posted from the iPhone. Two thumb typing is very fast now that I have had a few days of text messaging and emails to grow accustomed to it and to trust the device’s intelligent auto correction.

The size and importance of the online marketplace is rapidly increasing. Forrester Research released an online retail study projecting that the Internet brought in $269 billion in retail sales in 2005, while influencing $378 billion in offline sales and over half a trillion dollars all together. With e-commerce continuing to increase its impact on retail sales, online retailers have begun utilizing comparison shopping sites by the thousands.According to another study, while only 18 percent of online consumers use comparison shopping sites that segment spends 24 percent more than average online consumers do. It is certainly a desirable method of generating sales leads; however, as more online retailers use comparison shopping sites, bid prices will undoubtedly escalate. Some argue that customers who visit these sites seek the lowest prices and for that reason will only drive their margins down. So what is the key to long term success for these businesses? The answer is brand building.

The comparison industry is extremely crowded with a limited number of different services that only demonstrate marginal points of differentiation. The leading shopping engines are AOL Shopping, Froogle, MSN Shopping, NexTag, PriceGrabber, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, and Yahoo Shopping. The comparison shopping space was once solely occupied by small retailers with slim marketing budgets. But now that numerous big players like J.C. Penney and Nordstrom have entered the arena, many smaller retailers have withdrawn their businesses from comparison shopping sites altogether. As a result, other retailers are hesitant about allocating advertising money to these sorts of sites. What they do not realize is that comparison shopping sites provide the best turf in which a small company can build its brand because of the increased exposure. According to comScore Media Matrix, Shopping.com was ranked the 20th most visited website in 2005 and alone had approximately 22.6 million unique visitors on average every month. Read the rest of this entry »

By Gary E. Haffer, Director of Sales and Marketing

Below you’ll find potential elements of an ongoing SEO strategy for your site. Some items are going to be immediately applicable, and others may require some creative thinking to see them applied to your business. The challenging, and exciting, aspect of SEO is that is never becomes stagnant and we try to keep our noses in the blogs and server logs to stay current and innovative.

Some specific items to keep in mind in the SEO/SEM toolbox:

1) PRESS RELEASES: A minimum of one a month for a total of at least 12 a year. Ideally you’ll do one every month and target a different market each time. PRs drive direct traffic and via syndication have multiple SEO benefits, the foremost being one-way incoming links. SpiderSplat has a new resource who will increase our PR output capabilities.

2) NEWS & BLOG: Simply put, press releases re-purposed within ‘blog’ style content management system (CMS). The CMS can then be used to post newsworthy items supplementary to the proper PRs. CMS enables SM personnel to easily update content in this ‘News’ section. Frequently updated, original content is a cornerstone of successful SEO efforts. Write about, and link to sites with “in the news” pages. Those mentioned may link back to stories and blog posts which cover their developments.

3) SQUIDOO & OTHERS: The content/social networking sites are among several with SEO benefits via the production of incoming links. We already have content here which points back to numerous pages on our client websites.

4) DIGG & DEL.ICI.OUS & OTHERS: These news aggregation and networking sites continue to become popular, create communities and reveal benefits to SEO. All old and upcoming press releases will be submitted to these networks for more visibility and incoming links.

5) LINKBUILDING: As a very general term, link building is going to remain the key to SEO success for the foreseeable future, and SpiderSplat intends to stay on the bleeding edge of link baiting and development. Link building is time consuming and tedious, and ultimately we’re striving to pack more intelligence and creativity into our methods, as one can only go so far with directory submissions and press releases.

6) SOCIAL MEDIA: Social network visibility: MySpace, Squidoo, HubPages, Digg, Del.ici.ous, etc. In general terms, this is known as SMO, or Social Media Optimization. Original content for related products that will be perceived as objective resources and linked to by surfers without compensation or convincing. SpiderSplat writes original, product related articles for content and offer them up for syndication via an RSS feed or manually arrange content swaps with other webmasters.

To say that SEO has changed by leaps and bounds over the last 5 years would be the understatement… of the last 5 years. What was once a measure of a onsite meta tags and coding dilligence, has now become a larger measure of offsite influences.

Through a focused combination of attention to both your code and your surrounding landscape you can better the chances of your domain being interpreted positively by search engines and in turn reach your target market effectively.

Dave’s 5 Golden Rules of SEO:

1. Optimize Your TITLE Tags: Titles must be unique to each and every page, whenever possible. They should contain your top keywords, in a variety of iterations, throughout your site and be especially targeted to the content of the given page in question.

2. URL Structure: If you don’t need to have fancy dynamic, alpha-numeric URLS, then don’t! Make your URLs SEO-Friendly by incorporating keywords, or automatically mimicking page titles via a readily available mod-rewrite script.

3. External, Incoming, One-Way Link Building: Currently one of the most effective ways in which to increase your rankings is by getting other sites to link back to yours. This can be done via superior original content, press releases, good old fashioned flesh-pressing and more. Get creative. Think of every incoming link as a vote to your site - because the search engines will! Link building is not easy, takes time and is never truly finished. Hang in there.

4. Keyword Density and Placement: Your pages should contain an average of 3-500 words of ASCII text, with multiple keywords and iterations sprinkled healthily throughout. The best rule of thumb when walking the line between density and SPAM is to remember: If the copy reads poorly to you, there’s a good change it will sound funny to the spiders as well. Use keywords and phrases in moderation.

5. Don’t Panic: SEOs do just that - they optimize. Ultimately, webmasters have very little control over how their site is viewed by the major search engines. One can do everything right, follow all of the best practices and still be invisible for their most desired words and phrases. Algorithms fluctutate, and SERPs change - constantly. Just because you’re buried today, or have lost ground for yourself or a client, doesn’t mean that all can’t change in a few days. Stay dilligent with the offsite SEO and make sure you haven’t done anything for which you may be penalized.

There has been much buzz in the forms recently about the Google Toolbar Auto Link feature. From the sounds of it people were comparing it to the old scum-ware programs. To those who have not seen them in action, what these older programs do/did is link relevant words and phrases on web pages that a user visits to PPC advertisements where the software vendor get paid the PPC cost. Many webmasters and webmistresses were upset, as these programs were hijacking their visitors from their websites for a profit. No commissions were paid to the owners of the hijacked websites and no permission was asked or granted.Sounds annoying, right? So what’s the twist on Google’s feature? Well to start off, this feature is disabled by default when you first install the toolbar. Still annoyed? Then consider this: The auto link feature only creates links to what appears to be addresses, these are then linked to a map of the address. It also attempts to link tracking numbers to the their respective carriers.

The following is how it is described on the tool bar feature page: “AutoLink will link a U.S. street address to a map of that address or the tracking number of a package to the page that gives you the status of your package”.

So is it really that bad as everybody makes it sound? Not in my opinion.

How Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can maximize the potential of your business

What it really takes to catapult your URL to the top ranks of all the search engines is a committed, fully dedicated, experienced, and specialized professional outfit armed with all the resources, tools, and technology available in today’s fast-paced internet marketplace. SpiderSplat Consulting’s team of IT professionals, copy-writers, and hands-on managers come to the table with a wide variety of services, programs, and human-to-human contact other firms can’t always guarantee their clients.

A pioneer of the budding Search Engine Optimization industry, SpiderSplat’s unique approach is backed by a crew of highly skilled technicians with vast background, education, and training in novel approaches to internet marketing and Web-site promotion. They employ advanced software, strategies, and techniques that can give your company the on-line edge you need over your competitors.

Friendly person to person communication, deep resources, savvy networking capabilities, and a broad range of prices and options are just a few reasons SpiderSplat Consulting has continuously landed Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 clients. SpiderSplat even offers basic packages for entrepreneurs and small business owners to get their new sites on the map. It can be extremely difficult to maximize the potential of your on-line business without partners who truly understand how it all works. SpiderSplat’s experts know how to analyze your existing capabilities and traffic and how to connect you with link exchanges and affiliate programs. They can also reconfigure your entire site to ensure keyword searches result in more top ten search engine hits. Competitively priced programs, performance based payment plans, and professional service can all provide customers of SpiderSplat a whole world of options to choose from. 

Start-up businesses with promising products or services can rely on SpiderSplat’s most basic packages to help boost site traffic. Even the most simple on-line marketing strategies and approaches employed by SpiderSplat consultants can mean the difference between success and failure in the exponentially growing on-line marketplace. For a new company it is especially important to start out strong, and the SpiderSplat team can get your company sprinting out of the gates with the right mix of technology, human intelligence, and proven step-by-step optimization services. SpiderSplat professionals have helped some of today’s most profitable and resilient companies move up to the head of the pack.

Even after they are established, successful clients can reap the rewards of SpiderSplat’s long list of available programs to improve existing marketing strategies. Premium services offered by SpiderSplat can help any company race past the competition and secure a spot at the top of the search engine food chain. SpiderSplat’s team always gets the job done right and stays focused on constant improvement.

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