Internet Marketing

10 Trends for Online Marketers in 2011

2011-01-25T00:54:00.000-08:00

With a new year in swing, it's time again to focus on setting new revenue records in 2011 by investing in the marketing strategies with the highest return-on-investment potential. Small businesses have more at risk than big companies when it comes to capitalizing on new trends, so your timing should follow the old saying, "The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

The following list features top 10 online marketing trends for this year, as well as advice for whether you should be the bird (invest now) or the mouse (leave the trend on the sidelines).

No. 1: Location-Based Marketing

Advice: Be the early bird

Location is so relevant that Google has already started mixing local results and maps with other searches.Get your business ready for location-based marketing by claiming your spot on Google Places. Make your website more mobile-friendly with clickable phone numbers and maps. Also, prepare for more marketing features to be added to search results, such as mobile coupons, custom tags and logos.

No. 2: Instant Search

Advice: Be the early bird

Since Google decided to make search results and suggested key phrases appear instantly as people type, look for some consumers to abandon their first-choice, shorter search phrases in favor of these more relevant suggestions. For example, a consumer searching "desk lamp" might go with the suggestion "desk lamp reviews." If your business is optimized for shorter search phrases, it's time to evaluate the longer phrases to make sure you aren't missing potential customers.

No. 3: Social Media Monitoring

Advice: Be the mouse

This year, the reality will be revealed that social media conversations conducted by businesses aren't as personal, memorable or profitable as they would like to believe. Spend your time and money building a fantastic customer experience. Then, let your fans do the positive talking as you leverage your social media properties to reach your customers with social marketing campaigns.

No. 4: Social Media Marketing

Advice: Be the early bird

Savvy entrepreneurs are abandoning chatter in favor of running actual marketing campaigns on social media sites. Try a social sweepstakes, contest, group deal or coupon. You can use sites like Foursquare to reward loyal customers who check-in to your business, and services like Wildfire to help you run promotional applications.

No. 5: Mobile Marketing

Advice: Be the mouse

While 2010 showed us that many people use text messaging, email and social media on their smartphones, most consumers still aren't comfortable snapping a picture of a bar code.

If you want to dabble in mobile marketing this year, start by building an application, mobile website or text messaging campaign. If you own a retail store, try an in-store promotion so you can walk your mobile users through the process of snapping a bar code or texting a short code to retrieve a coupon and redeem it at the register.

No. 6: Online Advertising

Advice: Be the early bird

Banner ads may sound antiquated, but display advertising is destined to become hot this year. In fact, it's now easier for small businesses to place display ads on millions of websites by going through a few ad networks that have purchased most of the space available on publisher websites. Those ads can be tailored by geography, behavior and category of interest. It's a great way to boost the results from your pay-per-click budget this year because combining search marketing with online display ads generally increases the results from both.

No. 7: Email Marketing

Advice: Be the early bird

Facebook has announced plans to add a more familiar looking email inbox and social media integration with email marketing tools is well underway. Mobile applications are making email easier to use on smartphones, and the HTML functions on phones are making branded emails look prettier on mobile screens. It's probably time to give your email marketing a facelift.

No. 8: Social Shopping

Advice: Be the mouse

People already share their purchases socially, but newer social shopping technologies, such as Swipely and Blippy, make it possible to share with just one click or swipe of the credit card. If your products stir excitement, or you can offer a group discounts, give this technology a try.

No. 9: Instant Messaging

Advice: Be the mouse

This could be the year when website visitors begin to expect instant answers to their questions. If you have customer service teams or a sales force that are in front of computers or mobile phones all day, consider running an instant messaging test.

No. 10: Online Television

Advice: Be the mouse

Consumers will be able to customize their television feeds, browse the Web while watching shows, watch programs on-demand and even control their televisions with a mobile phone. Online television presents a huge opportunity for advertisers because the targeting options are so much better than traditional TV. However, you may have to wait to capitalize on this trend as the corporate television giants tend to be slow about making changes.

What is Online Marketing?

2011-01-01T01:03:00.000-08:00

In its simplest form, the term online marketing refers to using the power of Internet advertising to generate a response from your audience. Also known as Internet marketing or web marketing, online marketing is used by companies selling goods and services directly to consumers as well as those who operate on a business-to-business model.

Common areas of interest within the field of online marketing include:

Affiliate Marketing: In affiliate marketing, a business recruits associates to promote the company's products or services. The associates receive a commission or other similar rewards for every sale, visitor, subscriber, or customer they bring to the company. Amazon.com Associates Central is an example of an affiliate marketing program that Amazon.com uses to encourage private website owners to bring traffic to its site.
Display Advertising: Display advertising involves the use of web banners or banner ads placed on a third-party website to drive traffic to a company's own website and increase product awareness.
Email Marketing: Companies that use email marketing send promotional emails directly to customers. However, it can often be hard to distinguish between spam and legitimate email marketing messages.
Interactive Advertising: Interactive advertising involves the use of animations and other graphic techniques to create ads that engage the viewer and invite participation.
Search Engine Marketing: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion are search engine marketing techniques that companies can use to increase their visibility in the search engine page results from Google and its competitors.
Viral Marketing: Viral marketing is a technique is which companies encourage customers to pass along information about their products or services. Company websites that let visitors email interactive games or funny video clips to their friends are an example of a viral marketing effort.
Online marketing, regardless of the exact method a company chooses to use, offers several benefits. It's convenient, affordable, and provides the opportunity for companies to track results as a campaign progresses. In addition, Internet marketing allows even the smallest of companies to compete in a global marketplace. Online marketing is often related to public relations, customer service, sales, and information management. However, it is important to remember that these fields can be considered separate specialties as well. Glossary of Marketing Terms If you're interested in learning more about online marketing, there are many websites that offer glossaries of common marketing terms. For example:
Marketing Terms is a comprehensive website for anyone interested in online marketing. This site features a dictionary with cross-referenced definitions and basic information for beginners, as well as links to in-depth articles that provide the information a marketing professional will need to succeed in today's business environment. For your convenience, this website also includes a printable list of commonly-used Internet marketing acronyms and abbreviations.
Marketing Apprentice offers an easy-to-understand dictionary of terms related to the online marketing industry with a number of cross-references and related links. To use this dictionary, you need to scroll through an alphabetical listing of links and click on the term you wish to learn more about.
Lazworld, an Internet marketing services provider, has prepared a brief glossary of common marketing terms website owners need to know. There is no search engine available, but the entire document can easily be printed for use as a desk reference.
SEO Book is a dictionary devoted exclusively to the search engine aspect of online marketing. Some of the definitions can be a bit technical for the marketing novice, but the information is extremely useful for anyone who is determined to create a successful website.
The American Marketing Association has a dictionary that contains definitions for several online marketing terms as well as general marketing information.

Website Clinic: Call For Submissions

2010-10-26T02:20:00.001-07:00

Googlers often participate in live site clinics at conferences, giving advice about real-world sites and allowing webmasters to learn by example. Now Google's Search Quality team is excited to host an online site clinic on the Webmaster Central Blog. In future posts, the Search Quality team will be looking at some user-submitted examples and offering broad advice that you can apply to your site.

This site clinic will focus on non-profit organizations, but chances are that the advice will benefit small business and government sites as well. If you work for a non-profit and would like your site considered, read on for submission instructions.

How to submit your site:

To register your site for the clinic, fill in the information requested on this form. From there, the team will determine trends and share corresponding best practices to improve site quality and user experience. The analysis will be available in a follow-up post, and will adhere to the public standards of webmaster guidance. Please note that by submitting your site, you permit the team to use your site as an example in follow-up clinic posts.

There are a few guidelines:

1. Your site must belong to an officially registered non-profit organization.

2. In order to ensure that you're the site owner, you must verify ownership of your site in Google Webmaster Tools. You can do that (for free) here.

3. To the best of your ability, make sure your site meets the webmaster quality guidelines. The team will be suing the same principles as the basis for their analysis.

All set? Submit your site for consideration here.

The site clinic goes live today and submissions will be accepted until 11/18/2010. Stay tuned for some useful webmaster tips when the sites are reviewed.

Google TV Ads Strategy Guide

2010-09-20T03:55:00.000-07:00

Promote your business on TV

Google TV Ads allows businesses of all sizes to advertise on national television. TV advertising is a compelling medium, but if you're new to TV it can be difficult to understand how to set up ads and campaigns to ensure success. This handbook has been designed as a guide to understanding:

Whether television is the right advertising medium for your business
The TV ad creation process and best practices
How to create and manage successful TV campaigns
Methods to track and analyze TV campaign performance

Why TV advertising?

By exploring the world of television ads, you are considering one of the most compelling and powerful media outlets available today. With the average American watching over 150 hours of television per month¹, television allows advertisers the opportunity to engage with audiences while they're consuming entertainment and information. Television allows you to convey your message through sight, sound, and motion while building credibility and trust in your brand. Read success stories from small and medium sized businesses that have used television advertising to grow their businesses.

This Strategy Guide offers tips, tricks and information needed to set you and your business up for success as a television advertiser. We hope you find it useful enough to keep handy as you develop your business' television strategy and campaigns.

What you can expect with TV advertising

Television allows you to reach a wider audience than any other advertising medium. Television advertising helps to expand on the benefits of your products or services and build a trust in your brand while generating awareness and demand.
Unlike search advertising, which prompts ads based on a user's actions, television ads are placed within TV programs and generate new awareness and demand amongst a wide audience.
TV ad campaigns require time and commitment in order to drive results. Typically, ads should air for no less than 3-4 weeks to get your message through and register an impact.
TV can be used effectively as an extension of search campaigns to drive new customers to your website. Read our case study on ooVoo, a video chat provider that drove exponential growth in web traffic and searches through television ads.
Google TV Ads currently only offers nationally targeted advertising in the United States. We do not currently offer local TV inventory, so if you are a local only business, national television may not be the right medium for you.

Google Instant and SEO – Thoughts About How It Changes Things

2010-09-09T01:27:00.000-07:00

Google Instant changes behaviors in search, and thus SEO can change as well. Originally, I posted a list like this in 2008 about Google Suggest – and it is revised here.

We May See More Traffic to Regional Sites. People regularly enter “cheap gas” and “best dentist” in search engines – without qualifying the searches at all. Organic results tend to send people to national portals, but suggest-driven search gets them closer to well optimized, regional sites. A search for “cheap gas” without Google Instant offers gasbuddy.com at number one organic result, while a “suggested” search for “cheap gas houston” gives houstongasprices.com.
Google Instant Drop Down a new micro “SERP”: Those who make their way into the suggest feature get a “better than #1″ position.
Google Instant Results May Change Long-Tail Search Optimization. Those of us who believe in doing long-tail marketing may find an decrease down the tail from search, and a greater need to develop segments of our site to serve those long tail queries. Searches that used to come in with two word phrases may now have 3-4 words, which helps with medium-tail optimization, but longer phrases previously further down the tail may be “clipped.” This will concentrate search terms so that Adwords bids will rise and competition increases in a sort of “cluster” effect.
Google Instant SERPS offer More Impact for Trademark Blocking in PPC. If your trade name is offered in Google Instant results, and you’ve filed a trademark complaint form, the results page will be free from paid competition giving you a better shot at the traffic through organic or ppc links.
Google Instant Can Improve User/Searcher Skills Forever. With Google Instant constantly popping up when you go about your daily queries, many who never really thought of keyphrases will now start to think about them. It will be a constant reinforcement of our efforts to think about how consumers search. We may have to adjust our planning to meet these enhanced skills.
Google Instant Can Be an Ad-Hoc Negative Keyword Tool. There are other ways to be more comprehensive, but Google Instant can help to identify negative keywords you may want to enter in your campaigns. And I saw some negative phrases with higher index numbers that never showed up in Google keyword tools.
Dramatically Reduced Spelling Error Opportunity. While many of us set up adgroups to capture spelling errors, this will have a decreasing impact as people start to use the suggest feature as a live auto-correction. Typo-campaigns may get less traffic.
Hijacking Google Instant May Become a SEO Technique. It may become possible to hijack Google Instant so that competitive phrases are strategically flashed to the user. For example.. if you sell “abc widget” then a suggest of “abc widget fails miserably” could be used to divert traffic.
Better Searches Offer Improved Analytics Information. With the user making clear choices among those available, we’ll have better information about what is enticing and engaging to the users. Vague, high volume two-word searches are always confusing when we’re looking to make decisions, and this might just help us plan better.
Google Adwords Impressions will change. We’ll need to consider how the rules of 3-seconds’ delay, clicks etc. It’s hard to yet predict what is happening.
Users will do more exploration. When users don’t fully know about a topic, this can change how they approach search. Searches for “corneal transplant” can see many new avenues about the procedures, treatments, etc and spend more time in these sub-categories.
Content Creation for SEO may cluster around Google Instant suggestions. If a given suggestion is offered more often, it makes sense to design content for that phrase and special derivatives. If someone is searching for “Lasik Surgery” – content optimized for “Lasik Surgery Risks” would tend to get a lot of clicks it might otherwise have missed. But considering personalized search here, we cannot precisely predict what will be searched for.

Google Instant...

2010-09-09T01:23:00.000-07:00

The Impact on Search Speed, Refining Searches and the "Long Tail" of Search

Google Instant does two things: it returns results more quickly and it predicts search queries as the user types.

While it's too early to predict the implications of this with any certainty, a few speculations come to mind. For one, searching on Google is going to become a much speedier process for the end user, who may now be less likely than ever to click through to the second page of results. Searchers will also be able to more quickly refine their search terms on the fly, which could either prove to be good or bad for site owners.

"It seems to me that the top three rankings will get even more value," says Ian Lurie, President of Portent Interactive and blogger at Conversation Marketing. "Also, long-tail search is going to be more important, since folks can just keep typing until they see what they want."

On the other hand, John Ellis at Search Engine Land wondered earlier if Google Instant would "kill the long tail" of paid search advertising by making it less worthwhile to bid on more specific, long tail keywords.

AdWords myths: understanding the AdWords auction

2010-08-26T23:58:00.000-07:00

Over the past few weeks, we’ve covered a few common areas of confusion related to AdWords, including billing and spending, and keywords. This week, we’d like to wrap up this blog series by offering some helpful info on the AdWords auction.

If you have questions about how the AdWords auction works, a great place to start is with this introductory video from Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist.

Introduction to the Google Ad Auction

One of the most important factors in deciding your ad’s position within the auction is its Quality Score. To learn more about how Quality Score is defined, and how to improve it, you can visit the Search Ads Quality Getting Started Guide.

Finally, remember that if you’d like to understand how bidding can affect your ad's performance in the auction, you can use the bid simulator. It will provide you with click, cost, and impression data estimating how your ad could have performed over the last seven days had you used a different bid.

These resources should give you more insight into how the AdWords auction works.

This concludes our AdWords Myths series. We hope it’s helped clarify a few things you may have been wondering about AdWords.

Back to Basics: Fast Segments with Analytics Intelligence

2010-08-26T23:42:00.000-07:00

Did you know that there’s a quick way to create advanced segments from automatic alerts? This is one of those “I can’t believe how powerful this is and yet so easy to do” features. Let me illustrate with an example from the Google Store site. A few months ago, on February 5, the Google Store received a surge of traffic from TechCrunch.com. We would not have noticed this extra traffic were it not for Analytics Intelligence. In the following screenshot, you can see that the store ordinarily receives between 0 and 221 visits from TechCrunch, but on this day, it received 1,918 visits.

What happened was that TechCrunch ran an article about Google scarves that were being sold in the store. But, here’s the tip I want to share with you. First, you can graph just the

relevant traffic simply by clicking the button on the alert.

And, you can create an advanced segment just by clicking the Create Segment link at the far right of the alert.

Now you can compare this traffic side by side with overall site traffic or with traffic from other segments. Check out this video to see how this works and to learn more automatic alert tips.

Back to Basics: Keyword/Landing Page Combinations

2010-08-11T00:04:00.001-07:00

Via Google Blog: A friend of mine recently created several new landing pages that she hoped would attract traffic. She wanted to see at a glance whether people who searched on her top keywords were seeing the new pages. While she knew that she could use the Top Landing Pages report to analyze each individual landing page, she wanted to see keyword/landing page combinations in a single report.

There’s an easy way to do this. Go to the Keywords report under Traffic Sources. Look over to the right above the table and you’ll see Views: followed by a set of buttons. Click the Pivot view (5th button from the left). Now, look to the left, above the table, and you’ll see a Pivot by dropdown menu. Select Landing Page from this menu.

Voilà! The keywords will be listed down the side and landing pages will be listed across the top. You can now see how many visits you received for each keyword/landing page combination.

You can see up to five landing pages listed across the top of the report. You can scroll horizontally (across the landing pages) using the arrow buttons at the top right of the table.

The pivot view is also really useful for seeing at a glance how many visits you get from each keyword and search engine combination. To do this, you’d use the same Keywords report and pivot by Source.

Introducing the Google Small Business Blog

2010-08-10T23:46:00.000-07:00

In recent Small Business series on the Official Google Blog, a handful of real-life entrepreneurs have shared their experiences building companies from scratch and embracing Internet tools that have taken their businesses to the next level. We’ve received fantastic feedback about these posts, and realized that there’s a healthy appetite among small- and medium-sized business owners who want to know all about the latest web tools and tricks. Fortunately, we have lots more to share with you, too!

That’s why we’re introducing the Google Small Business Blog, a central hub that brings together all the information about our products, features and projects of specific interest to the small business community. Rather than having to sleuth around in many different locations for details about templates for creating video ads on YouTube, tips for your employees using Gmail or how to respond to the business reviews on your Place Page, you can find all of this helpful information right here in one place.

Of course, we’ll continue to post relevant news about individual services such asAdWords, Apps, Google Places and YouTube on their respective “home” blogs, but feel free to visit or subscribe to this Google Small Business Blog to get everything relating to your small business needs. We’re starting small today, but who knows what tomorrow will have in store!

Website design ,marketing and hosting from Internet Marketplace

2008-10-16T04:38:00.000-07:00

Internet Marketplace has been consulting, designing, marketing and hosting Web Sites since 1994. Internet Marketplace has produced a vast array of original Web Sites by collaborating with a select group of leading edge graphic designers, technical advisors and ISPs. In addition Internet Marketplace has become a specialist in the reinvention and redesign of Web Sites. As the Internet evolves and the abilities of customers to utilize a company's Web Site change and expand, Internet Marketplace is there with Marketing, Design and Technical know-how. We're keeping our clients ahead in their industries by maximizing the use of their Web Sites. With new technologies constantly changing and revolutionizing the way we do business, Internet Marketplace is your proven source for information, guidance and innovation.

Why Search engine optimization ?

2008-07-15T22:41:00.000-07:00

SEO is short for "search engine optimization." To have your site optimized for the search engines means to attempt to have top placement in the results pages whenever a specific keyword is typed into the query box. There are many search engine optimization services to choose from, so here are some things to keep in mind when seeking SEO services or developing an SEO strategy of your own.

Search engines have two types of listings: those that are paid for, which are usually distinguished as "sponsored links" and those that are organic.

Organic Listings: Organic search engine listings are those that appear down the middle of the page. Search engine optimization services are devoted to optimizing sites to appear in the organic listings space.

Spider-driven search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN use "robots" or "crawlers" to score Web sites across the Internet. Robots "spider/crawl" each site and "score" pages based on how relevant they are. A Web site's score or placement within a spider driven search engine is derived from hundreds of variables such as link popularity, density and frequency of keywords in page content, HTML code, site themes and more. You will want to focus many criteria in your SEO strategy to position yourself well among the major search engines. Here are two of the most influential factors:

Link Popularity
Spider-driven search engines use robots to spider Web sites across the Internet by traveling through links from web page to web page. A Web site's score or placement within a spider driven search engine is derived from hundreds of variables such as, click popularity, keyword density, link popularity, Web site themes and more.

Google is the most popular spider-driven search engine. Its database currently has about 4 billion pages indexed and is known for finding the most relevant information. When Google spiders the Web, it finds sites by traveling through links. The more sites that link to you, the more important the engines believe your content to be. You should focus on getting many important sites to link to your site. You can do this in many ways: submit to online directories, exchange links with business partners and industry-related sites, or participate in Link Building.
Page Content
Search engine spiders can only spider through text. They will use the content on your site to determine what your site is about, which in turn will help to decide how highly your site will be ranked for specific keyword phrases when visitors type them into the search engines. For this reason, keyword research is critical to obtaining natural search engine placement and should be at the top of your list when mapping out your SEO strategy.

You will need to know how many people are searching for your keyword phrases and what kind of competition you are facing when attempting to obtain a top spot in the search results. Keyword research, text writing, submissions and site analysis are all included with our search engine optimization packages.

Why Search Engine Optimization?
Studies have proven that top placement in search engines generally provide a more favorable return on investment compared to traditional forms of advertising such as, snail mail, radio commercials and television. Search engine optimization is the primary method to earning top 10 search engine placement. Learn more about the search engine optimization process and discuss an SEO strategy for your site when you contact a search engine specialist today.

Paid Listings:

Yahoo!'s Pay-Per-Plick (PPC) Program shows paid ads at the top and right of the results pages. Web sites that show up here bid on keyword phrases and pay Yahoo! a small fee each time the ad is clicked on. The more you bid per phrase the higher your ad will appear on the results page. Yahoo! PPC is a great way to help drive traffic quickly to your Web site. You can set a daily budget. When you max out your budget, Yahoo! will pull your ad for the remainder of the day.

A comprehensive search engine marketing campaign may encompass both organic optimization for long-term success and a pay per clock campaign for immediate results.

Each organic search engine ranking places emphasis on variable factors such as the design and layout, keyword density and the number of relevant sites linking to it. Search engines constantly update and refine their ranking algorithms in order to index the most relevant sites. Other variables that have an impact on search engine placement include the following:

• SEO Keyword Research: Choosing the right keywords is critical to SEO success.

301 Redirect: The primary search engine friendly way to redirect your domain name.
Link Popularity: Work to increase traffic by exchanging or achieving links from many high-ranking sites.
Web Themes : Create a content rich site broken down into "themes."