Web Promotion Archives

RustyBrick, the company that runs Search Engine Roundtable, is pleased to announce that we finished launching the infrastructure of Storybids, a really unique service offering that enables video producers to monetize their videos through product placement techniques. In other words, those who want to get products some product placement exposure are now able to connect directly with video producers to advertise their product through the Storybids auction platform. Here's how it works.

It's a really neat idea and RustyBrick is really glad that we were part of implementing the backend and working with a really cool guy like Joe Morin who is quite popular in the SEM community.

Message from Barry: The reason we are covering this is twofold. (1) Most of the people involved in Storybids.com are from the SEM community and we would like to help the SEM community in any way we can. (2) RustyBrick, my company, built the core technology behind the company - so I want that disclosure to be out there.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Loren Baker decided that it's time to start using Twitter. But besides giving valuable information about how to use Twitter for your own personal interactions, Loren blogged about how to use Twitter as a traffic generator to your blog. He explains the process which requires setting up the Twitterfeed application.

We at Search Engine Roundtable have actually been using Twitter for our feeds for quite some time. You can subscribe to our updates at http://twitter.com/seroundtable.

There's also an alternative way to set up Twitter to feed your RSS content -- because Twitterfeed didn't exist before. Barry writes about it on his blog. The question is: where's the code? ;)

If you want to follow Barry or me, you can do so by adding the following names:
rustybrick
tamar

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

A High Rankings Forum members wonders what the benefits would be reaped for putting a phone number on a landing page.

Believe it or not, there are plenty of reasons why you'd want to do this.

Forum members suggest that some questions may not be answered on the landing page, so having a phone number lets them call you to ask.

It also helps instill trust from users. As one forum members puts it, "If you're asking for their information, it doesn't hurt to provide some information about yourself as well."

However, you might want to track your phone calls. What options are available? Nethy suggests that you use a Click-to-Call button. Another way to track is to have a different number on landing pages only.

What would you suggest?

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.

A High Rankings Forum member had a chat with a snakeoil salesman who promised to guarantee 3000 searches a month for a client's particular niche. How is this possible without using some shady tactics?

Numerous possibilities arise. They could just be using "over-inflated Overture numbers," as forum administrator Jill Whalen explains. Moderator Randy says that it could just be numbers generated from collecting AdWords impression data. You could also get an idea about the number of searches (though nobody is sure how accurately) through Google Trends.

What, then, could it be? After the forum member actually spoke with the company, he learned that it has nothing to do with these numbers: instead, it's about PPC ads.

As I understand it, the sponsored links above the organic results are PPC just like the PPC on the right hand side - please correct me if I'm wrong. The sales rep from this company told me that they pay £xxx,xxx per month to Google, who guarantee x number of slots in these ads for any keyphrases they choose. This is not PPC and the customer pays £20 per month per keyword, regardless of whether it gets 1 click or 1,000,000 clicks.

After the first month (which has a compulsory number of 5 keyphrases) Google issues metrics and the customer can view these to decide if they want more, less or even no keyword adverts at all for the following month(s)

Is it worth the hassle? Not so much. Jill says that it "[s]ounds like they are simply repackaging Google AdWords." And I'm inclined to agree.

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.

There are a myriad of tools out there. But what are the best tools? A High Rankings Forum member asks that question.

The feedback is pretty helpful and should be useful to anyone looking to get inspired with some ideas.

Keyword Tools
WordTracker
Keyword Discovery
DigitalPoint's Keyword Suggestion Tool

Analytics
Google Analytics
ClickTracks

Ranking Tools
Thumbshot Rankings

Informational Tools
WebBug
Xenu Link Sleuth
Copyscape
WebPosition
Google Website Optimizer

Firefox Addons
Web Developer Toolbar

Many other tools are listed, including regular tools (such as office suites, IM applications, graphics suites, and HTML editors), but these are the recommended tools for web promotion.

Would you add anything to this list?

Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.

The following Microsoft Unified Communications video had mixed results at the Cre8asite Forums. To some, it resonated; to others, it didn't click.

What are your criteria for viral videos? What do you like most? Do you consider this an effective promotion of the service?

Over the weekend, a controversial TechCrunch article was written about viral videos. Some tips: using women for sex appeal, using fake headlines, don't advertise outright, and make the story shocking.

Would you agree that this is effective promotion? What would you add or subtract?

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

Many people have opted to sell their products on eBay but are wondering the best way to give their eBay store some visibility. Such is the case as illustrated in a Cre8asite Forums post where a person is looking to optimize their eBay store.

Many great suggestions have been tossed out, and I thought it would be useful to share this with anyone else who may also run into this issue.

1. A good starter guide is the eBay Store SEO Guide
2. Get an database of your inventory and upload it to Google Product Search
3. Set up an informational website with more reviews and the ability to purchase through the eBay shop
4. Study the eBay Search Engine and do some keyword research to determine what works.
5. Write eBay guides because they occasionally rank well in the SERPs.

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

Traditional bookmarking seems obsolete. Adding a bookmark to your browser, to many, is a practice that has been since seemingly replaced by newer methods -- social bookmarking sites, if you will.

However, not everyone is aware of these social bookmarking sites, nor are they ready to abandon their traditional methods of bookmarking. A Cre8asite Forums thread touches upon this subject. In the thread, administrator EGOL suggests that traditional means of bookmarking stay intact, and social bookmarking methods through sites like AddThis.com not necessarily be implemented -- or at least done as a secondary option.

This is exactly what other members agree is the right thing to do:

Absolutely. For most visitors bookmark this site means triggering a bookmark in their browser. I would add social bookmarking micro-icons for the rest. It also comes out as more honest.

The other angle is whether to have social bookmarking sites only, browser bookmarking only, both, or simply some text saying "hey, press Control-D to bookmark this!". IMHO, you need at the very least the Ctrl-D text and some of the social bookmarking sites.

For those not ready to jump into the social bookmarking realm, you should make sure that if you include a bookmarking option, your website accommodates these types of users.

Discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

This article was written this past Monday and scheduled for publication on Wednesday, May 23rd.

What do you do if a forum moderator becomes hurtful to your forums rather than helpful? A WebmasterWorld thread asks this question based on negative actions performed by a moderator of his forum that resulted in loss of membership. Consequently, he also demoted the moderator.

What I’ve learned from this experience:

1)Never reward a member with a moderation spot just because they have been an active/long time poster. Find other ways to reward good members.

2)Look for warning signs that they might not be a good moderator. Do they get snippy or argue with other members? Are they very opinionated? Do they have an even temper? Have they been ‘know it all’ posters?

3)Avoid mixing moderators and friendship. When things go bad it’s hard to separate the two.

4)Make sure you have written rules on what the moderator job is and how they are expected to act and make sure the see them BEFORE you make them a moderator.

5)Chose a moderator as if you were hiring an employee. Will they represent you well both on and off the forums.

6)Remove moderators quickly if they are losing a forum.

Some people just take the power trip for personal gain. This quote by another member is so true for this instance:

" Power corrupts...

and absolute power, corrupts absolutely"

Appointing moderators can be a pretty sticky situation if they are biased in such a way that it is destructive rather than helpful.

Moderators who are immoderate and partial are very destructive, damaging users' trust.

You can lose a lot of core/good members when even one mod gets rude/patronising/personal or is clearly editing in a partial or biased way!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Appearing within the top pages of search engine results is very important to many businesses, which is the main reason behind the tremendous growth in Search Advertising and Search Engine Optimization. Since the top page listings are a mix of paid and organic (free or "merit") listings, it is possible to achieve multiple positions. Brand name searches aside, it is generally accepted that it is harder to achieve the organic listings, and they are certainly volatile in nature. One month of top listings can easily give way to a month or more of less-than desirable exposure.

A 100+ post thread at WebMasterWorld that started a few weeks ago asks the question Is It Realistic To Base A Business Around Free SERPs? Excellent discussion follows, including some of the following statements:

It would seem unwise to build a business on something that may some day disappear through no fault of your own. Some might say that a business model which relies on free traffic is no business model at all.

Simon in the UK reminds us that this is a reality that many business owners or aspiring entrepreneurs must face:

I have a pretty successful online-only mail order company. I, like many others, was suddenly dropped from Google one day. It comes and it goes. I use PPC to see me through the good and bad times...I also started a 4 day a week job at the beginning of the year because I wanted the security that if the database died, site died or I was dropped totally from search engines I still had an income to pay the mortgage and feed the kids.

One member revived the thread on 9/2 with the statement that

It's funny .. here recently I shut down all advertising for three days (to make sure there weren't residual ads running)... just to see just what our natural search results brought in...

This thread is an important read for anyone that is considering dumping other marketing, including paid search, thanks to current success in the organic listings. Read the long thread at WebMasterWorld Forums.

As people learn about web sites and the importance of ranking in search engines, they sometimes think that they can do things quicker than the laborious process of Search Engine Optimization. This is good, because it fosters innovation. A topic that comes up every once in a while in Search Engine Optimization forums has to do with "tricking the search engines." This idea (which I admit I even thought about when I was first learning) has to do with creating multiple sites and hoping to dominate the rankings for a particular keyword search. The problem is that this simply doesn’t work, unless you are dealing with a brand new product or service. For example, lets say you create the world's first "Booglabangly." You could build multiple sites dealing with this new term and probably rank fairly quickly. SEO contests do this on a regular basis.

A recent thread at Cre8asite Forums discusses this topic. A member asks about creating multiple websites to rank for a particular topic:

His strategy is to find a niche and dominate it with many websites. The idea is to create as many websites as possible with various angles to the niche. As a result, when someone (does) search for that niche, most of his websites will show up on the resulting page.

He quotes from a SitePoint Forums thread.

The first response is well thought-out, and states that his experience show that

one monolitihic web site with many topics will acquire rankings for a new keyword quicker than a new site since it's a trusted site already.

Bragadocchio then points out that one way to accomplish the multiple site success might be to

focus on different market segments with some of those sites.

, as the original poster hinted at. The first question also discussed using these multiple sites for interlinking, but Bill wisely states

I'd be wary of too much interlinking between sites. That might send some warning flags to the search engines.

There are many questions to be answered within both threads, since it is hard to determine if the traffic that generated the CJ income was legitimate, organic, paid, etc... Personally, I think the days of ranking multiple sites for a competitive term are long gone, at least if you are talking about organic rankings only. On the other hand, holistic search engine marketing combining SEO and paid search, as well as local or shopping feeds, can yield a plethora of rankings above the fold in many search engines - including paid, free and "wild card" listings (local matches and/or feed results between top paid listings and organic results).

Join the discussions at Cre8asite Forums and Sitepoint Forums.

DigitalPoints Co-op network, which is actually two-years and 6 days old now, has added new features recently. The first feature is the support to add the nofollow attribute to the links, enabling advertisers to protect themselves from a penalty, if they are worried about it.

The second addition is really a backend thing, where the "weight" calculation now takes into account ad impressions. The DigitalPoint Co-op tracks impressions, so if you have a high trafficked site, your weight should increase over the next couple weeks.

Keep in mind, there are many folks out there that have scrutinized the co-op network and ones link it, so be warned if you want to use it or not.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Someone posted at Cre8asiteforums about a new Firefox Extension called "Stumble Upon" and already it's a hit with forum members. Since the guys were all ga ga over it, I decided to give it a shot, using my female abilities of remaining calm and practical in a room filled with men playing with their toys.

If you have Firefox, and time to waste, you might like this. I was glued from the moment I saw the menu of sites to explore. You can vote up or down, which is nothing new. However, this little app goes out and finds sites you may not have seen before, in topics you like. From the site:

"In effect, StumbleUpon's members collectively share the best sites on the web. You can share any site by simply clicking I like it. This passes the page on to friends and like-minded people – letting them "stumble upon" all the great sites you discover."

Some of the folks trying it out, in StumbleUpon!, Great Way to Generate Traffic admit to becoming quickly addicted. Heck. It's either this, or those squishy stress balls.

Long time WebmasterWorld moderator, martinibuster, has an excellent blog post named Growing Forum Participation followed up with an excellent summary of the blog post at WebmasterWorld named Growing Forum Member Participation.

Martinibuster clearly describes how encouraging and enticing discussion in a forum is a lot more important than answering questions in a forum. This came to martinibuster when one of his top forum members began a new job that pulled his most authoritative member away from the forum. What he noticed was that members no longer received the bottom-line authoritative answer on a question posted in the forum. He noticed that a discussion began to brew in the forum threads and that more and more members we actively participating through discussion and opinions as opposed to answers.

Martinibuster thus feels that encouraging moderators to build discussion as opposed to answering questions is the way to go when growing forum participation and growing your forum numbers. Encouraging your lurkers (members who read threads but do not post in threads) to participate by reaching them, talking to them and asking for opinions that may inspire a lurker to become a participating member, is key. How do you do that? Give them confidence in expressing their opinion, it is not always about what you know but how you can express your opinion, that is important in a forum discussion.

What is even more inspiring about the WebmasterWorld thread is how Martinibuster ends the post. Yes, he encourages participation in his thread. He ends with a few open ended questions, asking other members "So what do you think?"

As you can imagine, since we track forum discussion and buzz every day here, this type of thread would excite me. Very nice Martinibuster, very very nice.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

There is an excellent thread in the Search Engine Marketing forum at Search Engine Watch Forums named Are we obligated to tell the client. The thread creator tells a story that I am sure most Web design/development/etc companies have been faced with. To sum it up....

Prospect A comes to you with his dream idea, to build the next eBay. :) You listen to his idea and feel that it would be a waste of his money and time, since ultimately it will fail. Are you obligated to tell the prospect your feelings? If so, and you do, should you take on the job? That is the discussion taking place in that thread.

I added my two cents by comparing it to starting any business. Don't most new business fail within the first year? I forgot the percentages. But it is pretty similar, but in this case, you are the main contractor for the job.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread named Zip, City, State, County Data discusses solutions for someone to build out a local search engine. This individual asks for help in locating an "up to date list of zip, city, state, county, & lat/long to integrate into a local search function on a site." The reason this individual requests this information is to perform a service to the site's viewers to locate store locations within X miles of a zip code or city.

For this I have used http://www.zipcodedownload.com/ in the past. Actually, I believe they are on my blog blacklist for spamming this site. Others recommend in the thread, http://www.census.gov/geo/www/gazetteer/places2k.html and http://www.melissadata.com/.

TNS Media Intelligence just released an important study that shows how "advertising spending is expected to grow a moderate 3.4 percent to $145.3 billion". Other important highlights were:

• Internet expenditures are forecast to increase by 7.6 percent after two years of double digit growth in advertising spend.


• U.S. Hispanic ad spending will grow by 10.5% in 2005, sharply outpacing the overall U.S. ad market spending at just 3.4%.

Seems like we'll continue to enjoy the rollercoaster ride as long as more dollars pour into internet advertising and search marketing in particular.

A while back, I started a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named Promoting a Site with WWW or Not?

The thread continues on and the discussion is interesting. When promoting your site online or offline, do you use the www before the domain name? Personally, I tend to like what the www represents. So on my business cards, I have www.rustybrick.com, in my email signature I use www.rustybrick.com and when I type it out, I normally put the www before the domain name.

The thread discusses the pros and cons of both and when people prefer to use the www or not.

News comes by way that Two Killed In Crash At California Speedway. One individual killed in that crash was Internet Marketing Guru Corey Rudl. Corey Rudl is the owner of Internet Marketing Center and has written dozens of columns for Entrepreneur's eBusiness section. For more about this legend, please see this detailed Corey Rudl Interview.

Oilman posted a thread on this topic at WebmasterWorld.

Press releases have been a very popular strategy in the search engine optimization industry for a couple years now. If you wanted immediate top rankings in the news portals of the engines plus some additional quick anchor text links, you send out a press release. Here at the Search Engine Roundtable, we even did our own, I wrote up the results under the entry Press Releases & Search Engine Optimization. A new forum thread at Search Engine Watch named Press Release Spam discusses how easy it is to write a press release on about anything and get it widely syndicated. The example the thread creator (mod mcanerin) used was named SEO Firm Raise My Rank Announces New Client and Search Marketing Experiments which is a 154 word release. In the release, if you read it, it is basically mocking the PR system available to us. "Experiments for the week included an attempt to determine the efficacy of the use of search engine submission forms and a study of the attention spans of editors working for online press release services."

In the thread Mikkel deMib Svendsen says that this is not spam. He said, "The offender in my mind is the stupid editors and algos that accept such bad press releases and the sites that agrees to show them." So if the press release distribution methodology is not yet abused enough to be an issue, how much longer until strict guidelines are issued?

I like to point out Viral Marketing Web finds when I get them. I have done so with the Subservient Chicken and also tracked down the lost Hampster Dance.

Today, Daron Babin (aka SEGuru) at Webmaster Radio, informed me of this crazy site named The ZoomQuilt. Trust me its pretty wild.

One day, I hope to come up with an idea like that on my own.

Almost a year ago, on April 20th, I wrote an entry named Subservient Chicken - Viral Marketing by Burger King. John Dowdell over at the Macromedia blog wrote an entry recently named Chicken stats. In that entry he points to an AdWeek article with some of the statistics for the http://www.subservientchicken.com/ Web site.

- Within a day after being released, the site had a million hits.
- Within a week, it had received 20 million hits.
- 14 million unique visitors to date
- 396 million hits to date
- About a month after the TenderCrisp sandwich debuted, BK reported that sales had steadily increased an average of 9 percent a week.
- "double-digit" growth of awareness of the TenderCrisp Chicken Sandwich and "significantly increased" chicken sandwich sales

The AdWeek article named Dissecting 'Subservient Chicken' makes for a really interesting read.

Back at the WebmasterWorld Conference in Las Vegas, a guy by the name of Daron Babin (aka SEGuru) launched WebmasterRadio.FM at http://www.webmasterradio.fm/. Since then, to be honest, rarely listened to any live show. Last night, I caught the first 30 minutes of a little show they call "SEO RockStars with hosts: Todd (Oilman) Friesen and Jake (bakedjake) Baillie." Last night's topic was about this Google update, with a nice discussion about what Oilman and BakedJake have personally experienced with this update. They discussed it is important to differentiate your anchor text, I think they also mentioned more deep linking and they also brought up the topic of LSI / LSA. That was fun. Anyway, if you haven't its worth checking out a show, check the schedule at http://www.webmasterradio.fm/.

There is a very interesting thread in the Online Marketing & Promotion forum at Cre8asite Forums named The 5th P in Marketing, which discusses a blog entry named Weblogs and the Power of the Fifth P. I began writing up an entry on it, based on a recommendation, but then noticed that everything I was writing was from what my father has been preaching for as long as I have known him. My father, Leon Schwartz currently teaches in the MBA Program at Fordham University. Before that he spent most of his time preaching his "Customer First!" approach at Pitney Bowes (where he had tons of different titles) and at seminars & conferences. After leaving Pitney Bowes, he started his own consulting group named Informed Decisions Group, where he stressed that the focus should be on your customer. So I asked my father to comment on this thread and the blog entry noted above. This is what he had to say:

The 4 Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) are being replaced by the 4 Cs (Customer solution, Customer cost, Convenience, Communication). The Internet is key to this change. By making more information more readily available to the customer, power has moved from the seller to the buyer (see pdf 1). This is not all that new; but it takes a long time to change the culture in many sales organizations.

The 4 Ps focus on Pushing product through the traditional value chain, using a variety of selling and promotion tactics that are well known to all of us. The 4 Cs turn that value chain on end by focusing first on Customer needs and then communicated BOTH ways (see chart 2). This is more of a buyer/seller partnership, and requires empowered People throughout the selling organization. This is still very scary to most sales departments, who will try to control customer contact. Don't forget that in most traditional corporate environments the 3 Ps that really matter are Processes, People (of Power), and Politics.

Key to empowering customer facing People is providing these "partners" with critical Customer information through Integrated systems. Then give them clearly defined decision making authority to satisfy the Customer. Weblogs run by employees could actually produce considerable Customer dissatisfaction if the employee does not have the information needed nor the authority to truly serve the Customer. We've all had our fill of platitudes from inept Customer "service" reps.

May the Customer be with you...Leon Schwartz

There is a thread at Cre8asite named 10 Things Your Web Site Should Be Doing, which brings up several interesting topics based on an article by Nick Finck. Now the thread gets into several interesting concepts, I will summarize the topic of Credibility Content and Trust Building Icons in this entry and then summarize Barry Welford's "OR Factor" in an other entry.

When it comes to "credibility content", content used to build up the credibility of your company, product and services - there are several avenues to take. One such avenue discussed in the thread is "testimonials", basically letters written by customers, showing their satisfaction with your company. James in the thread says "My personal view is that unless you are given enough information to contact the person providing the testimonial to check its authenticity, they hold little credibility." It is true, I have some clients that often write testimonials on their clients behalf. I personally have never read a testimonials page before making a purchase decision. In my proposals, I do provide a list of references that my prospects can contact with their credibility and trust questions. Testimonials without a method to contact those giving the testimonial holds little weight.

But is that true?

Let's look at some "trust building icons". I have recently decided to put Better Business Bureau's BBBOnLine Reliability Program Icon on my corporate site. So far I had 126 clicks on the icon, probably 20 of those clicks was me or someone at my office. I also have the Verisign Secure Site Seal icon on my corporate site, simply because I do have a secure login area. Do I know if it builds credibility for my company? I am not sure. Yesterday, one of my employees said that the BBB is a hoax, they do nothing to benefit you or the customer. I responded that maybe you and I know that as business owners, but does it mean anything to the prospect?

Of course you would think that all the trust building icon sellers have data on this. But it is all skewed. I have a client that uses HackerSafe, to build trust during the checkout process. My client is convinced that it has done nothing to improve sales and is not worth the investment, because there is zero or negative ROI. But yet, HackerSafe has data that proves otherwise. Interesting topic.

I have been looking for the classic Classic Hampster Dance page for a while now. I finally found it, thanks to someone I chatted with today. Of course, now it is easy to find, but when I looked 6 months, it was not in Google. Of course, the hampsters have a new, high tech look these days. But the classics are preserved. The site is at http://www.hampsterdance.com/.

For those that don't know the story behind this site, it was a little gimmick that a person put up one day. I think it was hosted at one of those member AOL sites. Anyway, the individual put up the Classic Hampster Dance page (which was at a different URL) and then emailed a friend or two about it. Those friends email other friends, and so on. It was one of the first reported viral marketing tactics ever on the Web. In addition, it was unintentional.

There is a nice thread going on at Cre8asite Forums named Is a Domain Name Worth It?, which discusses a blog entry by Barry Welford named Domain Names: the ultimate "vanity plates". You know something, I think it is worth quoting Bill Slawski's post once again, because he put so much detail into it.

There is a lot of value to a domain name.

1. Branding - By using your own domain name, you are working towards building an image that applies to your business. It is just one of many indicia that people see of the whole package, from business name, domain name, logo, tagline, mission statement, corporate history, to the more involved aspects of the business relationship with customers, vendors, competitors, and others who might interact with the organization.

2. Portability - you can take a domain name with you if you need to move from one server to another, or one host to another. IP addresses change, as do server names, if you find yourself on a service that provides a directory or a subdomain for your site instead of a domain name.

3. Memorability - a good domain name is easy to remember, and may lead to people not having to look the name up, or search for it amongst bookmarks or favorites.

4. Credibility - a domain name is more credible than just an IP address, or a directory or subdomain that includes the name of an ISP or shared host.

5. Type-in traffic - some domain names have value in that people will just type the address in a browser without knowing what might be on the other side, such as sex.com, or business.com.

6. Matching Offline Branding - branding efforts offline can be reflected on the web by the use of a well known business name or product name, or some other distinction about a business. This is true enough that a well known company will fight others under a trademark theory to take over a domain name that is in commercial use, or that is held by someone only with the intent of selling it to the trademark owner.

7. The appropriate tld - Chances are that if you are a commercial business that operates in a global environment, a name that uses the .com ending may be the most attractive choice for your business. Or, if you are a nonprofit, you would prefer one that ends with a .org. If you want to focus upon business in a country where local business is important, and search engines don't question your place of origin and business, a country specific two-letter tld may be of more value. The tld used in the domain name can be part of the value of a domain name by indicating what type of organization the site is, or where it is located.

At the WebmasterWorld conference there was a small discussion on domain names. In that discussion, Brett Tabke, the founder of WebmasterWorld, said that his logo is his domain name. What he meant by that is that he did not invest a whole lot on his logo because, as he said, "his best branding is the letters you type into the URL box in your browser when going to WebmasterWorld". It is a classic statement which shows the importance of a URL. I disagree with Brett in that I feel he should invest in a new logo that adds more to the WebmasterWorld brand, but I agree with his and Bill's views on a domain name.

An excellent thread over at Search Engine Watch discusses what are the major threats and opportunities in the search engine marketing industry.

Here is an outline of some of the responses:

Threats:
- Unscrupulous SEO firms hurting the name of the industry
- PPC Click-Fraud

Opportunities:
- Personalization
- Localization

Join the thread to discuss.

To follow up on Aspen's wonderful entry named PageRank Doesn't Matter?, where he accurately says, it matters, I would like to talk about what Search PR is to most people. If your not in the search marketing field and someone says "how is your PR" you are not running to your browser to check your Google PageRank. You are however, discussing your current public relations efforts to earn visibility for your company in non-direct means.

I am by no means a public relations expert, but I would think public relations ranges from sponsoring a non-profit event to being busted in a insiders trading scheme. All of these 'public relations' gets your name out there for better or worse.

Ok, so now how does public relations work in terms of search marketing? In my opinion, public relations in search marketing can be have a very powerful ripple affect. Let me give you a real example and then we can see if it pans out. Yesterday, this site was linked to from the famous Slashdot Web site. The article can be found here, and you will see this little word that says "writes" is a link to this site. Traffic skyrocketed, take a look:

Most of that traffic was from the Slashdot article, but many other sites also linked to this site based on the Slashdot article. I am not certain, but I strongly believe that the reason Slashdot linked to this site was because of a Google search. This site ranks well for a wide rang of "gmail" related keywords. A simple search brought the author here, which earned a link from Slashdot to this site. Then the ripple affect of having so many readers with content sites of their own also finding this site, then publishing their own articles with a link here and to Slashdot.

The free PR (public relations) from slashdot was (IMO) derived from a search, which will impact further searches (that is where that other PR comes in).

I hope this reads well, I am a bit distracted today. :)

I have a business blog that we rarely update but is there for my employees to post at. I want them to post daily but I offer no incentive to do so. Anyway the blog is at http://technology.rustybrick.com/ and its about the daily life at my company.

Anyway, I posted an entry on how my office's Sunbeam Water Cooler Sprung a Leak. Since then I have been getting many visitors to the site who type in Sunbeam Water Cooler into Google. They find the blog and added comments.

Today, I see that a representative from the Sunbeam Water Cooler Customer Support Team left a comment stating:

Dear All~

We have recently discovered this wonderful website. We believe that consumer feedback is an incredible tool in helping our consumers find answers to their problems.

May we suggest a better method, that of using OUR email contact information to contact us with your problems/challenges should you have trouble getting through on the telephone lines. We may have better suggestions for resolutions.

In regards to our water dispensers, we have since added extra email addresses in order for our consumers to contact us with ease.

Please note that to order parts, please use email address: parts@elitegroupinc.ca. For any technical questions, simply use support@elitegroupinc.ca as we will not be checking this site on a regular basis.

Looking forward to resolving challenges,
Sincerely yours,

Customer Support Team

How funny. See all the comments here.

I was chatting with a client (the client happens to be a pretty big marketing guru) about blogs, viral marketing and forums and he told me about an interesting marketing tactic deployed by Burger King. Burger King launched a viral marketing campaign named

On the TV commercials they have a man dressed up in a chicken custom, which they ask them to do meaningless tasks. The chicken is of course was subservient and did those tasks. The funny part is that the

rustybrick in Web Promotion at April 20, 2004 4:53 PM Comments (0)

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