Search Engine Placement

Always brewing up something new, Google has two hot new pieces of technological genius on their doorstep.

The first is the GDrive. This new device would let users store on Google’s own computer essentially all of the files users might keep on their personal computer hard drives (like digital music, videos and images, and word-processing documents).

Microsoft offers a program like this already, but for a fee. Google, as usual, has the means to offer this service for free, which is always a plus to drawing users to use their services. Reports are still uncertain to whether Google will be displaying ads in this storage service. But it would open a whole new world of online ads if Google chooses to do so.

The second is the “Gphone,” though not actually a phone in real matter. The Google phone is really called Android and is the “first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices.” Android includes an operating system, user-interface and applications. Basically, Android has all of the software to run a mobile phone, but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation.

Android is working cooperatively with Google’s Open Handset Alliance, which consists of more than 30 technological and mobile leaders including Motorola and T-Mobile. Through these partnerships with carriers, device manufacturers, developers, and others, Google hopes to enable an open ecosystem for the mobile world by creating a standard, open mobile software platform.

If you’d like to optimize your placement in the major search engines, contact us!

Created by Shop.org, the “holiday” is considered to be the first official online shopping day. Just like Black Monday where retailers offer sometimes ridiculous deals to lure shoppers in, on Cyber Monday online stores offer incredible discounts and savings to those buying items that day.

The day brought in over $700 million in sales, up from $608 million in 2006 and $485 million in 2005. Despite it being ranked as only the 12^th most popular online shopping day (according to Business Week’s Robert Hof), retailers expect their numbers to continue to rise as the day becomes more known.

Although Cyber Monday happened almost perfectly well, there was at least one glitch with the online shopping. Yahoo Merchant Solutions’ shopping cart software crashed on Cyber Monday, leading to a dramatic loss of revenue for over 10,000 merchants using the Yahoo software.

Beginning at 8:31am (PST) a message on the Yahoo Merchant Solutions System Status page characterized the problem as an “Error Message During Checkout.” As the day went on, this messaged continued for many people trying to checkout. Nothing else was updated until 5:12pm (PST), saying that Yahoo was investigating the issue. The system wasn’t fully repaired and running until 11:00pm (PST). Yahoo’s only explanation of the mess up was that they had experienced “technical glitches.”

There are some common and basic paid search engines out there that we all use and love. Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN AdCenter, and Ask.com Sponsored Listings are always good, safe choices. But going outside of your comfort zone will pay off when you try out these eight other sites that are less known but just as good in the long run.

Some of the benefits of at least testing out these other sites are some to consider. One benefit is that they will charge considerably less per click then the more well-known sites, but they will often feed the same quality of traffic to your website. The result: a much higher ROI that will increase the impact of your advertising budget nicely. Also, by using these other sites you will be tapping into an audience that has been hidden from the bigger search engines.

Myspace SelfServe Ads: Still in the works and to be released in early 2008, this engine has a $10 minimum advertisement purchase amount and has many people talking.

7Search: This search engine has a low $25 account start up fee and has no minimum bid.

FaceBbook Ads: Offering very affordable rates, this engine was formally known as FaceBook Flyers. It reaches a very large demographic.

MIVA: An underrated yet growing search engine that distributes ads over two networks. The engine also owns SearchFeed.

Looksmart: Known to have very good customer service, this search engine distributes through many different partners.

Search123: Delivering consistently high levels of traffic at incredibly low prices, this engine has been involved in PPC since October 2000.

Superpages: The traffic available to those using this engine is interested and ready to buy, and the engine is perfect for restaurants and local services.

GoClick: Having a high customer retention rate, the engine has quality traffic at low prices.

To learn more about search engine optimization and how it can help your business, contact us today!

Instead of experiencing Black Friday standing in long lines, fighting that soccer mom for the last PS3, or waking up at the break of dawn (at the latest) just to wait in the freezing cold at the nearest mega-store, more and more savvy shoppers are logging online to their favorite online stores to find the best deals.

One of the best places to start out the online Black Friday extravaganza is BFAds.net. This site is a directory of all the Black Friday circulars, which includes coupons for many stores including Sears, Best Buy and Circuit City. Other sites like this are BlackFriday.info and BlackFridayAds.com.

Black Friday traffic and advertising increased by 145 percent for a custom category of Black Friday advertising websites for the week ending on Nov. 17, 2007 compared to the week ending on Nov. 10, 2007, reported Hitwise.com. Annually, the Black Friday websites increased 45 percent compared to the same week in 2006.

Visitors to Black Friday websites were predominantly females between the ages of 25 and 35 years of age, making up between 63 and 64 percent of visitors. Also, 61 percent of the traffic consisted of new visitors to Black Friday websites.

There are actually many more than ten ways to optimize your traffic with your blog. But we’ve narrowed it down to the best ten ways so that you don’t have to filter through tons of words and for your convenience. These ten ways also help you without you having to spend a single penny, and most of them don’t even require you to be online.
1. Network - No matter where you are (on the street, in a cafe, online, at a party, at the courthouse, or in an elevator) or who you are interacting with, you should always talk about what you do and what your blog is about. You should also not forget who you are talking to and think about how you two can help each other out.
2. Comment on Others’ Blogs - Taking the time out to read other bloggers’ posts and comment on worthy selections not only helps the other bloggers but also helps you to learn more about how other bloggers are writing and what they are writing about.
3. Go to Parties - Talk to people, make yourself a talkative, energetic personality. People at parties want to talk to someone who is interesting and who knows how to hold a conversation. Even if you aren’t the center of a party, if you have some initiative to talk to different people at parties then you can talk about really anything, including your blog.
4. Public Speaking - Once you’ve become educated on the topic(s) of your blog then you should keep an eye open for any conferences or lectures that are being held at public places or colleges and universities. Even if there isn’t any obvious need for a speaker, you can contact professors at your nearest university and talk to them about the possibility of having you being a guest lecture for any of their classes.
5. Create Power User Profiles on Social Media Sites - Not only will it connect you to other people and opportunities around the Internet, but having a power use profile will enable you to increase your readership quickly.
6. Keep a Professional Expert File - As you are networking and meeting more people around your areas of interest and meeting people that will be helpful and useful to you (locally or otherwise) keep a file of all the people you meet with their contact information and with notes about what they do and know and how they can help you (or you help them).
7. Write Guest Blogs - Contact other bloggers you are interested, show them some samples of your work and request to write some guest blogs on their site. If the acquiesce, and you write the blogs, then this will be a good way for you get to meet another blogger and for you get your name out on another site.
8. Attend Conferences - Always be looking out for conferences locally, statewide and nationally. You can never know too much about your particular field(s). Knowledge is a powerful tool, and the more you know the better your blog can be.
9. Submit to the Newspaper - Submit opinion pieces, press releases or even feature articles that are concerned with your area(s) of expertise and interest to your local or specialized newspapers. Getting your opinions, knowledge and name out in the media always helps create more interest in your blog.
10. Take Your Blog to the Airwaves - There is always at least one low powered community radio station near you. Take your blog and blog’s topic(s) to the local radio station and see if they have any slots open for you to have your own radio show based around your blog. Even if you can’t get on the local radio station, there are satellite stations that will broadcast your podcast.

To get your blog optimized for the search engines, contact us today!

So you’ve finally got your business up and running. Say, you’re a small business owner in a  semi-small city like Asheville, N.C., and now you need to bring in customers. To do this you need to do many things, but among these you need to get your business on the World Wide Web. Google Local Marketing helps you to do this.

1. Register your business in Google’s Local Business Center.

7. Get other people to review your business and website.