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Following are some resources that I can personally recommend!

Esther C. Kane
Eckweb Designs, Inc.

Remember 411? - Try Google!

Okay, remember when we used to pick up the phone and dial 411 to search for a phone number?

This used to be a free service but then the phone companies started charging for it. It's been so long since I've used it I don't even know what the fee is anymore.

Well, now Google can do it for you for FREE.

Just call 1-800-466-4411, give the recording your city and state and what you're searching for.

Google will not only give you the top 10 listings for that information they will also give you the address, phone number and they'll even dial the phone number for you!

Spread this information to your friends. If it catches on, your website will begin getting traffic not only from Internet users, but from phone users as well!

One of the BEST ways to market your web site is to show the Internet audience that you KNOW your stuff!

If you would like to write an article about any of the following topics and submit it to our Newsletter, we would love to review it for inclusion in future issues.

Our topics of interest are...

Marketing (General)
Internet Marketing
Small Business Issues
Web Design
Web Hosting
Web site Programming

Contact us today about your article(s) and get yourself promoted!!

Editorial

One of the most common questions I get from business owners looking to market their website on the Internet is "What can I do to get more business through the website?"

I think they expect a one line answer. The truth is, it's so much more. If that same business owner walked into an advertising agency and asked, "What can I do to get more business to my store?" I'm positive that the advertising agency wouldn't have just one answer in a nice little neat package.

That advertising agency would come back with...

"Get some billboards."
"Send out some direct mail postcards."
"Create an event at the store."
"Have a special sale for existing customers."
"Get a larger ad in the newspaper."
"Create a tv commercial, radio commercial."
Etc!!

It's the same on the Internet. There's much more than meets the eye and if a website owner realizes that and begins to utilize all the tools at their disposal, business will increase. And, may I add, at a much lower cost than traditional advertising.

So, what can you do to get more business through your website?

1) Establish yourself as an expert.

You've heard me say this a billion times. If you sell flowers, then you should have a website filled with all the flowers that you sell. In Addition, You should also have information about everything there is to know about those flowers. This can be on the same website or a separate website. In other words, if anyone is searching for information about flowers, and you sell flowers, you're supposed to know all about flowers. So, let people know what you know. They'll trust you more and be more likely to buy from you.

2) Think like the search engines do.

Imagine that a search engine is like a store. When you use a search engine (that means when you go to a search engine like Google or Yahoo and you type in a phrase), then that's the same as if you went into a store and asked an employee of the store a question about a product or a service. If the store wants you as a customer and wants you to come back to the store, that employee will be trained to answer your question with as much relevant information as possible. Search engines want to do the same thing. So, when you go to a search engine and type in a question or some words, that search engine WANTS to give you the most relevant information about that question or words.

In order for that search engine to figure out that your website is about that question or those words, you need to have relevant information on your website (and I don't mean just one sentence). In other words, your website needs to be ABOUT that question or those words. Make the search engines happy and you'll earn top placement and bring in more business through your website.

3) Stop treating your website like it's a brochure.

I see this time and time again. Website owners spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a website, they spend months with the designer and graphic artist and programmer creating a beautiful, functional website. They labor over the content and get meticulous with each line of text and graphics. Then, when it's all finished, they don't touch it again. For months or years. They treat it as if it were a brochure or a written book.

Guess what? IT'S NOT!!!

Websites are MEANT to be interactive, that means you WANT your customers TO DO something when they get to your website. Fill out a form, play a game, pick up the phone, something!

Is the website doing that for you today? No? Then what makes you think it'll do that for you tomorrow?

Websites need to be changed. Not only to improve them but to let the search engines know that your website is active and up to date. Otherwise, the search engine thinks it's a dead site. It's not being managed anymore so therefore, the business must be dead also.

Imagine this, you just hired an advertising agency to create a billboard for you to increase business. They create the billboard, but after 2 weeks it only brought in 1 new customer. How much would you have to pay to have that billboard "re-done"? How many businesses can afford to continuously change their billboard? Not many! But I'm positive that the advertising agency would LOVE to be able to do it. There's never a guaranteed way to know for sure if an advertising campaign is going to work but when it comes to print material, it's extremely difficult to make changes. The beauty of websites is that it's not very expensive and it's not very difficult to make changes. So, the advertising campaign can be continuously altered to help bring in more customers.

Make a point to make some kind of change on your website at least every other month. Add a page, change some text, advertise a special or a sale, etc.

4) Get creative and do something different.

Some "different" things that you can do are...

a) Create an online commercial. Go to your local art department at a college or high school and give an aspiring "film director" the job of creating your commercial. Post the commercial on YouTube.com. It's free and it'll give you exposure.

b) Invite your visitors to become a part of your website growth. Offer them a discount or a free item if they submit (and you approve) a page of information on your subject.

c) Who is your target audience? Is it diversified? Maybe your product or service targets both seniors and young parents? Those are two very different groups. Does your website accomodate both of these groups?

d) What does your customer need? (Besides your product or service!). If you sell psychology services, your customer might need a local directory of support groups. If you sell baby items, your customer might need tips on baby care. If you sell insulation products your customer might need lists of companies that install insulation products. Think about what your customer needs and give it to them.

e) Create your own radio show. You can create your own audio/radio show and place it on your website! Update it weekly or monthly. Interview people, answer questions. It's a great addition to your website. Take a look at Mike Silverman's website for an example of an audio.

These "ideas" are just some ways you can get more business through your website. If your product / service can sell itself through other avenues, there's no reason why it wouldn't sell through your website. You just have to let others know about it!


Sincerely,
Esther C. Kane
Eckweb Designs, Inc.
678.765.0120
Search Engine Optimization Services

By now, you’ve all heard about Google’s new Universal Search concept, which combines all the information within its vertical databases into one index to serve a single set of Web search results. As you can imagine, this will require some adjustments to standard search engine optimization techniques. If you have been following the Bruce Clay methodology, then you should already be on the right track to optimizing every aspect of your Web site that is under your control. With the arrival of universal search, it's not just a good idea; it's a necessity.

Google Vice President of Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer said the company’s goal for universal search is to create “a seamless, integrated experience to get users the best answers.” Mayer stated on the official Google blog that the universal search vision would be “one of the biggest architectural, ranking, and interface challenges” the search engine would face.

Mayer first suggested this concept to Google back in 2001. Since then, the company has been building the infrastructure, algorithms and presentation mechanisms needed to blend the different content from Images, Video, News, Maps, Blogs et al into its Web results. This is Google’s first step toward removing the partition that separates its numerous search silos, integrating these vast repositories of information into a universal set of search results. The object is to make queries more relevant for users, but what are the ramifications for SEO?

A year later, Outsell came out with “Vertical Search Delivers What Big Search Engines Miss,” a study that also mentioned the opportunity for vertical search due to dissatisfaction with general search engines. This report published the oft-quoted fact stating that the average Internet search failure rate is 31.9 percent. The study identified two market trends contributing to the growth of vertical search – failed general searches and rising keyword prices in paid search.

Another noteworthy study was conducted by Convera. Over 1,000 online business users were asked about their search practices, successes, and failures. Only 21 percent of the respondents thought that search queries on general search engines were understood, a mere 10 percent found critical information on the first try in general search engines. This study concluded, “To date, professionals have not been adequately served by consumer search engines.”

The results of these studies show that Google and other general search engines are challenged to produce relevant results, suggesting vertical and niche search engines could eliminate such problems because the niche databases contain topic-specific information, serving targeted, more relevant answers to user queries.

Google’s Solution to Relevancy

Since Google’s move toward universal search, one can only assume it has considered the above problems and decided that pulling all its databases together, comparing and ranking them accurately at warp speed, could be the solution to relevancy. Doing this requires new technical infrastructure, including new algorithms, software and hardware, which Google has been working on since 2001 and is now in the process of implementing. Universal search has implications for search marketers because it is a departure from the uniformity that characterized search marketing in the past, requiring adjustments in SEO methodology. Since the modifications will be implemented in steps, immediate changes in the SERPS won’t be obvious, and there is time to develop new optimization strategies.

Search Personalization

In addition to universal search, Google is also focusing on personalization in the SERPs. This means users will be seeing different SERPS based on their previous queries, if signed into their Google accounts. Users may or may not notice many changes in the SERPs due to universal search and personalization, depending on their level of sophistication and/or powers of observation. However, marketers will be scrambling. Marketers will need to get their clients listed into as many niche databases as possible to increase the breadth of coverage for universal search. Social media optimization techniques can be used to enhance both universal and personalized search results.

Universal Search Optimization Strategies

The focus on personalization and universal search requires more emphasis on social media SEO strategies because of user interest in creating content and the vast amounts of new multimedia content created daily on the Web. Marketers are beginning to drive traffic via social networking sites, and these efforts are known to enhance search engine optimization campaigns. Strategies include creating multimedia content such as blogs, videos and podcasts, and then getting them listed on social search sites like Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon, as well as niche search engines like Technorati, Podzinger and Blinx.

When creating multimedia content, you must ensure that it is tagged and cataloged correctly. Multimedia content is optimized through established fundamental SEO techniques, such as creating keyword-rich, user-friendly content, unique Meta tags, good site navigation and structure, and implementing a successful linking strategy. Below are a few suggestions for creating and submitting multimedia content for several of Google’s vertical databases to gain extended reach through universal search.

Google Image Search: It has always been a good idea to use images on your site for illustrating your products and services. Now, this becomes a way for your customers to find your site via Google Image Search. Optimize your images with descriptive, keyword-rich file names and ALT tags. Use accurate descriptions of your image files for the benefit of the vision impaired and others who might need to view the site with text only.

Google Video (beta): As with optimizing images, use descriptive, keyword-rich file names for your video files. Also create a keyword-rich title tag, description tag, and video site map. Create a Web page to launch your video, optimizing content for SEO and using anchor text wherever possible. Besides submitting to Google Video, also include Blinkx and other social networking and search sites like YouTube and Potzinger (audio and video search engine).

Google News: Here’s where you can submit your press releases for display as "news" and subsequent indexing. Issue press releases containing current information about new products and events your site is involved with and Google News will likely pick it up.

Google Maps: This is also known as Google Local, a vertical that has been included in Google search results for a while. Give your site a local presence through the Google Maps Local Business Center where local businesses can get a free basic listing to extend their reach in the SERPs.

Google Blog Search (beta): You all have a corporate blog, right? This is how modern companies communicate with their customers and stakeholders. Tag it (digg, del.icio.us, stumbleupon, etc.), submit to Google Blog search, and extend your reach for Web searches on Google.

In closing, there are many ways social and multimedia content can enhance your SEO efforts. Experiment and learn how to use social media to extend your SEO rankings. As you become aware of the many niche databases for submitting multimedia content, this can go a long way toward gaining visibility through Google’s personalized and universal search.

Original article can be found on Bruce Clay's website

Not Your Usual Marketing Tips

Not Your Usual Marketing Tips
Vol. 5, No. 6

June 5, 2007

I saw a parked truck the other day and did a double take. On the side panel, the big sign was for one of those marble slab ice cream products. Of course, that was “take” number one -- I didn’t know that they transported their product anywhere. The second “take” followed the caption at the bottom of the sign: “We Deliver!”

They do?

I didn’t know that!

Welcome to the June edition of Not Your Usual Marketing Tips from JDK Marketing Communications Management.

The fact that an ice cream product usually associated with a forearm-rendered and molded concoction on a cold metal surface at the ice cream product’s place of business is now taking that product off the cold metal surface and somehow transporting it to someone’s home or business is, well, news to me.

Is it news to you, too?

Does it make you rethink that ice cream product…and contemplate using them in that manner sometime in the future?

Recently, I saw friend and networking colleague Justin Lowenberger give a presentation at a business networking group to which we both belong. Justin is an attorney with Ted A. Greve & Associates --justinlowenberger@mydrted.com and www.mydrted.net -- which primarily specializes in personal injury/accident cases. We all expected him to talk about his role as an attorney. Instead, he talked about un-insured and under-insured motorist coverages and how it pays – quite literally – to have the proper coverage yourself in case you’re ever involved in an accident with another motorist who either has no coverage or not enough coverage.

Here he was, lending his expertise on a subject most people would have thought better served by an insurance agent. But to his credit – and expertise – the subject was actually better served by…himself.

I didn’t know that!

What do you know about any field tangentially connected to your own? Can you write about it, lecture about it, “schmooze” about it? And then connect it, even understatedly, to your primary business? If you can, your perceived value increases to clients, prospects and colleagues and becomes yet another way to market yourself or your business.

(All together now: “I didn’t know that!”)

See you again the first Tuesday of next month for another creamy and delicious “Not Your Usual Marketing Tips.”

Joel Kweskin
JDK Marketing Communications Management
704.846.4835, office
704.575.8850, cell
704.841.2746, fax
www.jdkmarketing.biz

A Glimpse Inside Google
Posted by Jennifer Laycock June 4, 2007

There's an article over at The New York Times today written by a reporter that spent some time with the top algorithmic engineers (or "Google Fellows") at Google. It's a fascinating read that manages to share some great insight into the processes that go on behind the scenes of Google's popular search engine, and also into the improvements that the engineering team chase down each day. It won't tell you how to rank your site better, but it will confirm the idea that search engines are still working toward judging sites the way that humans judge sites.

From the article:

Google recently allowed a reporter from The New York Times to spend a day with Mr. Singhal and others in the search-quality team, observing some internal meetings and talking to several top engineers. There were many questions that Google wouldn't answer. But the engineers still explained more than they ever have before in the news media about how their search system works.

As Google constantly fine-tunes its search engine, one challenge it faces is sheer scale. It is now the most popular Web site in the world, offering its services in 112 languages, indexing tens of billions of Web pages and handling hundreds of millions of queries a day.

There were some nice juicy little tidbits in there that confirm the Google's practice of tweaking algorithms based on bad search results...

"Someone brings a query that is broken to Amit, and he treasures it and cherishes it and tries to figure out how to fix the algorithm," says Matt Cutts, one of Mr. Singhal's officemates and the head of Google's efforts to fight Web spam, the term for advertising-filled pages that somehow keep maneuvering to the top of search listings.

Some complaints involve simple flaws that need to be fixed right away. Recently, a search for "French Revolution" returned too many sites about the recent French presidential election campaign — in which candidates opined on various policy revolutions — rather than the ouster of King Louis XVI. A search-engine tweak gave more weight to pages with phrases like "French Revolution" rather than pages that simply had both words.

At other times, complaints highlight more complex problems. In 2005, Bill Brougher, a Google product manager, complained that typing the phrase "teak patio Palo Alto" didn't return a local store called the Teak Patio.

So Mr. Singhal fired up one of Google's prized and closely guarded internal programs, called Debug, which shows how its computers evaluate each query and each Web page. He discovered that Theteakpatio.com did not show up because Google's formulas were not giving enough importance to links from other sites about Palo Alto.

There's also a really nice little nugget in there that I read as addressing the so-called sandbox effect, which I've explained in the past is simply a higher barrier to entry due to the maturation of online content. (In other words, Google doesn't punish your site for being new, it just expects you to prove yourself if there are already a million other sites addressing the same topic.)

Freshness, which describes how many recently created or changed pages are included in a search result, is at the center of a constant debate in search: Is it better to provide new information or to display pages that have stood the test of time and are more likely to be of higher quality? Until now, Google has preferred pages old enough to attract others to link to them.

and

Mr. Singhal introduced the freshness problem, explaining that simply changing formulas to display more new pages results in lower-quality searches much of the time. He then unveiled his team's solution: a mathematical model that tries to determine when users want new information and when they don't. (And yes, like all Google initiatives, it had a name: QDF, for "query deserves freshness.")

and

THE QDF solution revolves around determining whether a topic is "hot." If news sites or blog posts are actively writing about a topic, the model figures that it is one for which users are more likely to want current information. The model also examines Google's own stream of billions of search queries, which Mr. Singhal believes is an even better monitor of global enthusiasm about a particular subject.

Makes perfect sense to me. As we move forward with latent semantic indexing and as search engines begin to recognize a sudden influx of new content covering the same topic, it would be feasible for a quality algorithm to recognize that NEW content is needed to fill the gap of information about whatever breaking news is driving people to conduct search queries.

Granted, this addressing things from a different angle than my more simplified explanation that the fewer sites filling a niche, the easier it is to rank (yes, I know, DUH, but you'd be surprised how few people get that concept...) and instead focuses on breaking news type content...but both aspects show that Google is not punishing new sites, it's simply exploring the best ways to integrate them with existing sites.

There's quite a bit more information in the article, so make sure you take the time to read it in its entirety.

Original Article On SearchEngineGuide.com

Website Analytics - Who Really Needs It?
By Esther Kane

Now, before you roll your eyes and begin yawning just at the very thought of having to look through website logs and statistics, let me tell you that website analytics is the absolute MUST HAVE tool for any form of Internet marketing. There's just no way around it. As software and programs for Internet Marketing become more sophisticated I can just about guarantee that it will be the analytics factors on every marketing report that will be the most reviewed.

There isn't one advertising company out there that does not collect statistics on how their marketing campaigns are doing. And so it's the same for website analytics. They are the stats that show how the website is doing.

On May 7 - 9th of this year there was a conference held in San Francisco called the Emetrics Summit conference. It's organizer is an Internet marketing pioneer Jim Sterne. He began the conference with a keynote entitled, "Website Measurement Ecosystem."

In his speech he spelled out four helpful keys -- "tricks of the trade":

1. Make your visitors successful. Nobody wants what you're selling. The purpose of web measurement is to figure out who is coming to your site and then help them to be successful in finding and doing what they desire.

2. You are not the target audience. Your boss is not the target audience. You're not building the website for yourself. Often the boss or site owner will make decisions based on his or her own preferences. Wrong. This is all about the visitor, the potential customer. What the visitor prefers can be determined by testing and that should be the focus of the site, not the preferences of the one who has the power in the company.

3. The winner is the one who asks the best questions. What is the problem? What are the root causes? How might we do such and such? To succeed we must learn to ask the question behind the question. To me, this point exposes a huge weakness of Search Engine Marketing companies. We don't have people tasked to study our website analytics so that can even formulate the right questions. So we go blindly on without questioning, thinking that the status quo is good enough. In the short term we can get away with it. But in the medium to long term this will cause us to fall behind, and perhaps not even maintain the sales we do have, much less continue to grow.

4. Experiment. Sterne quoted Einstein's famous saying: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different outcome." The way to improve is to try new things -- hopefully things prompted by questions raised from studying data from our site.

I think Mr. Sterne's points are important. Not only for website owners but for web marketers and web designers as well. So, how can you use website analytics to ensure that your website meets these 4 keys?

Let's go through them.

1) Make your visitors successful.

When a visitor comes to your website page, any page, is there something that you want them to do? Buy a product? Contact you? Fill out a form? If there isn't, there should be! This is called "Call To Action". To make the website page productive and your visitors successful, give them something to do on every page of your website.

Use your analytics to see if the "Call To Action" is being acted upon. If it's not, then you've got some work to do. You need to find out why the visitors to that page are not acting. Is the request too small? Can the visitors see it? Is it enticing enough?

2) You are not the target audience.

Your website should be about what YOU offer for your visitors. What does your service do for them? What do your products do for them? Too many websites talk about themselves but not enough about what they can do.

Use your analytics to see what pages your visitors are coming to. Are they finding one page and then leaving it without going further into your website? Are certain pages being viewed and others not at all? If there's a problem that's indicated by the analytics then you need to make some changes on the website.

3) The winner is the one who asks the best questions.

What questions are your customers asking? Do you have the answers to those questions on your website? If not, why not? Your customers are trying to find out some information about your area of expertise. Why shouldn't your website be the one that they find?

Here are some questions that are being asked by Internet users...

a) How to tie a tie. - A men's clothing store could put this information on their website.

b) How to tell if you are pregnant. - A fertility vitamin supplier could put this information on their website.

c) Why do we celebrate thanksgiving? - A greeting card company could put this information on their website.

d) What is bluetooth? - A computer repair company could put this information on their website.

Get the idea? A group of people are typing in these keyword phrases. They're looking for answers related to your industry. The only way you'll attract these groups of people is if you have the answer to their question.

Use your analytics to see what your visitors are typing in to find your website. Are there some questions there? Are there some keyword phrases that inspire you to think of some questions?

4) Experiment.

Too many website owners think that once a website is created, that's it. They don't have to do anything else. They're wrong. A website is not a brochure. It's not printed once and left alone until all copies have been handed out. A website is interactive, it's dynamic, it's fluid. A website should be changed at least monthly. It should be updated, filled with more information, new information weekly, monthly, as often as possible.

Experimenting allows you to create new pages, or new sections on your website to see if that brings in more business. Your website analytics will tell you if the experiment is working.