Im0z

We Are Retiring Im0z

2011-01-18T15:32:00.003-05:00

Hello, Readers,

We are retiring Im0z. We are moving in a new direction. We are now marketing ourselves as an Internet PR firm, and no longer as primarily an online marketing agency. To that end, we no longer need an Internet marketing blog. Rather than just simply redirect the blog to another location, we decided to leave it as is. There are still a lot of good posts here, with good information on social media and SEO.

We are not sure we will create a new blog solely dedicated to Internet PR. We are seeing a growing trend toward decentralization of information. So, we're not sure it makes sense to start a brand new blog, or to repurpose this blog as an Internet PR blog.

We look forward to serving you in 2011, and if you need to contact us, you can always visit us at http://gnosisarts.com

Social Media Zealots Suffer From Freudian Repression

2010-12-14T09:18:00.001-05:00

People who believe in social media marketing with religious fervor are suffering from a kind of Freudian repression. They are repressing the painful truth that they haven't a clue how to sell and want desperately to believe that social media is their magic bullet, though they know deep down that it is not.

Why Won't Yahoo Pingbox Display the SWF Object in Firefox 3.6.12 (Latest Version)?

2010-12-04T22:48:00.003-05:00

Why Won't Yahoo Pingbox Display the SWF Object in Firefox 3.6.12 (Latest Version)?

Though this blog is about online marketing and not about IT bug fixes, we just had to post this. We've spent all damned day on this b******t bug. I mean, literally hours. The problem was: Yahoo Pingbox wouldn't display anything in Firefox 3.6.12. This is the latest version of Firefox. We scoured the forums and help boards to no avail. So, to save you from hours of wasted time on this, here's what the problem is.

First of all, we're using Windows 7. Firefox version 3.6.12. Short answer: It's not the browser version, it's not the OS, it's not the pingbox code. It is one of three applications:

1. The version of Yahoo Messenger you have installed
2. The version of Yahoo Updater you have

OR

3. The Yahoo Toolbar verison you have installed

We don't know which one of these three it is, but we know it is one of them. We uninstalled all three, and lo and behold, pingbox just started working again like a charm!

Who would have thought? Yahoo's own applications conflicting with one another?? I mean, isn't that something they would have tested??

Funny, isn't it? A web giant like Yahoo can't even make two applications that can run simultaneously on the same localhost without nullifying each other!

And you guys expect to steal market share of Google??? LOLOL

How do placements and keywords work together in an ad group?

2010-11-15T13:29:00.001-05:00

(source: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=116283&from=87391&rd=1

How do placements and keywords work together in an ad group?
When you choose both keywords and placements for an AdWords ad group, they team up to determine where your ads will run on the Display Network and how much you'll pay for them. (The combination won't affect where your ads run on the Search Network. This is based only on keywords.)

How do they work together? Here are two key points to remember.

Step 1: Keywords always do their work first. When an ad group has keywords, the AdWords system automatically finds pages in the Google Display Network to find content that matches those keywords. AdWords takes contextual matching down to the page level, therefore if a placement has multiple pages, only pages that match your keywords can show your ads.

Step 2: You choose how they work together. Where your ads run and how much you pay for them depends on a choice you make in your network distribution campaign settings.

*

If you select Relevant pages across the entire network:
Keywords alone determine where your ads are eligible to show. You can add managed placements to an ad group, but their only purpose will be to raise or lower your bid when keyword matching puts your ad on one of those placements. Adjusting bids helps you win more or fewer ad auctions (and therefore clicks and impressions) on those managed placements. So, if you find a site that performs well, you can increase your bid for that site. On the other hand, if you have a site that is performing poorly, but you don't want to completely exclude it, you can adjust your bid to reach your goals.
*

If you select Relevant pages only on the placements I manage:
Keywords and placements determine where your ads are eligible to show. When you choose both keywords and placements, you can restrict your ads to the specific sites where you want them to appear -- and show them only when the content of a page is relevant to your keywords. Using keywords to refine the targeting for your ads on placements is a good option when you're targeting sites that have a wide variety of content (such as news sites and social networks). That way, your ads will be more likely to appear in relevant locations on those sites. Adding keywords also limits the potential number of clicks and impressions, so you should monitor your ad's performance to make sure you're seeing the results you want.

Let's look at that second situation more closely. Suppose your campaign is set for "Relevant pages only on the placements I manage," and you create an ad group with managed placements A, B, and C, and the keyword "red roses." In that case, your ad will appear on placements A, B, and C only if their content is related to "red roses."

If matches for "red roses" appear only on A and B, then your ads can appear only on A and B. Your ad won't appear on placement C, even though you've selected it. Because placement C doesn't have any content about red roses, it's not a contextual match for your keyword.

Suppose placement A is a website about flowers, with 100 different pages: five about red roses, and 95 about other flower varieties. Because contextual targeting happens down to the page level, AdWords may identify only those five pages about red roses as a good match for your keyword. Your ad won't appear on the other 95 pages of A, even though you've targeted the entire website, if those pages aren't a good match for your keywords.

Of course you can also create an ad group or campaign with only keywords or only placements. If you want contextual targeting to be the only deciding factor, then you can choose a keyword-only ad group.

If you want your ads to show anywhere on a given placement, with no regard to contextual matching, then create an ad group with placements only, and set your campaign settings to "Relevant pages only on the placements I manage." That way only the placements you choose will determine where your ad can appear.

AdWords Display Network, CPM & Our Branding Campaign

2010-11-05T09:41:00.002-04:00

As we mentioned in the previous blog post, we have launched an aggressive, strategic branding campaign for Gnosis Arts. This has mainly been a combination of PR and AdWords content network advertising - with a small portion of the funds allocated towards old-fashioned search PPC advertising. The campaign has been underway for about 2 weeks. We want to report on the progress of the campaign.

We have 3 different branding campaigns going, corresponding to three of our brands: Microtank, our new weekly news column (http://gnos.tk/microtank); the Gnosis Arts Community Intranet (http://gnosisarts.com/home/Intranet); and our YMR scholarship program, which gives entrepreneurship grants to microbusiness owners (http://gnos.tk/ymrsp)

For Microtank and the Intranet, we chose to run large display ads on the display content network only. These ads are also only running on a CPM basis, not CPC. For the YMR program, we started out the same, but switched to a more traditional text ad format. The YMR campaign is running on the search network only.

We chose the search network for the YMR scholarship because it is the only one of our brands that actually is based on a performance model. Through this program we hope to generate actual scholarship applications via a registration form. Therefore, it seemed to make more sense to choose a CPC model for this one.

The Microtank and Intranet ads are running on an automatic bid, CPM model. We chose this approach for these two brands for a few reasons. One, we wanted to limit the spend on these ads due to budgetary restrictions. Second, we want the ads to be viewed more so than clicked. So, we didn't want to pay for clicks, but rather a guaranteed number of impressions.

Third, our strategy for these two campaigns is more of a mind-share strategy. We want these brands to possess "front of mind" status to our target market. In line with this, we are pruning the sites on which these ads run; we want to target sites that our target market - small PR firms and small marketing firms - frequent. And, we want sites that have loyal, repeat visitors. We want the ads to be shown to the same demographic, over and over, until the brand "seeps in", if you will. We are taking great care in choosing the site psycographics and demographics, of the websites these ads run on.

*Results
Of course, 2 weeks is too early to really make any conclusive decisions. As we're wanting to capture more mind share, we want to measure any increases in brand name mentions in Google searches. We also want to generated new, previously unsearched for, brand name searches. So we are closely monitoring our analytics for this. Ideally, we want to be able to attribute these brand mentions to the brand campaigns.

The YMR campaign has already generated 1 lead. One lead in one week isn't great, but it isn't terrible, either. We've had to wait much longer in other ad campaigns, so we're hopeful. It also demonstrates that there is definitely some demand for this service.

Both Microtank and the Intranet have received 2 or 3 clicks. The impressions they are receiving are steady and relatively predictable. It is still, however, too early to tell, as we have much more site pruning to do. There do appear to be a few more brand-related Google searches that didn't exist previously. So, this is a good sign that brand awareness is happening already.

(For a more in depth discussion on the ideas behind this branding strategy, visit http://gnos.tk/branding)

We're Launching An Aggressive Branding Campaign

2010-10-27T08:41:00.002-04:00

With the release of our newest brand - Microtank ( http://gnos.tk/microtank ) we've been rethinking our branding strategy. We've just launched an ambitious branding campaign aimed at highlighting our brands. We've done quite a bit of expert research on contemporary approaches to branding. We want to tell you about our progress here on Im0z.

*Our Branding Style
In studying the many theories and styles of branding, we've learned a thing or two. Our marketing team learned, for example, what the technical name of the style of branding Gnosis Arts has already been using. Our branding style is known as "attitude branding." (We've written extensively on this subject at our weekly microbusiness column, Microtank - http://gnos.tk/microtank ).

Attitude branding is a style of branding which associates moral ideals or virtues with the brand. Gnosis Arts brand ideation revolves around the concepts of "knowledge", "freedom", "insight", "intuition", etc., as applied to marketing. These intellectual and spiritual virtues imbue our brands, so this is an example of attitude branding.

*Mind-Share
But how do you make a brand known? That's the objective. The greatest brand in the world is nothing if no one knows about it. Brand recognition is essential to branding; we want our brands to be known and recognized by the largest number of consumers in our target market, right?

In other words, we need a "share of mind." The mind-share approach to branding attempts to make a brand the first brand the consumer thinks about when they choose a product category. So, when people think about "online marketing and Internet PR", the idea is that they will think of Gnosis Arts, or one of our brands, first.

*How Are We Planning to Do It?
Unfortunately, mind-share branding traditionally requires a lot of money, more advertising dollars, at least, than most smaller businesses have at their disposal. So how are we planning to do it? In short, we are looking to exploit new possibilities in the Google Content Network as well as utilize Google's new remarketing system.

*What Is Google's Remarketing System?
Google has recently added new functionality to its AdWords ad serving system called remarketing. What remarketing allows advertisers to do is create ads that "follow around" those who have viewed it. For example, if my ad shows on a New York Times business blog, then those who visited that blog will later be shown the same ad when they visit another content network site (profnetconnect.com, for example).

As you can guess, this "remarketing" may afford a great opportunity to capture some mind-share. As surfers see your ad on one site they frequent, they are showed the same ad on another site they frequent. The branding potential here is significant, at least in theory. We're putting it into practice, to see if there really is a benefit here. We hope to report back to you some positive and concrete steps you can take in brand advertising for your own business.

A second thing we're doing is using the CPM advertising, as opposed to CPC advertising. This is where you pay for 1000 impressions, not clicks. We're doing this to ensure our ad is actually shown a certain number of times. Here we are concerned more about impressions than clicks (or conversions).

Third, we will be pruning the Content Network sites on which we advertise. When we locate a site with regular impressions and decent CTR, we will place that site in the Managed Placements list, and then remove that site from the Automatic Placements category (ideally). This way we whittle down the sites on which we advertise to only the most effective.

Finally, we plan to identify sites which receive a large percentage of repeat visitors. For example, social media sites tend to be visited by the same person, each day. These are the types of sites we want to have in our managed placements lists, too. We want the same visitor, to be shown one of our branding ads, over and over, and on multiple sites, in order to capture a share of mind.

We will keep our readers updated on the progress of this campaign as it progresses, so stay tuned. We will be doing other things as well, such as more aggressive PR. We will also be leveraging our news and press release site for branding as well ( http://pressreleasesonline.net ). This will be a long term campaign involving many elements and much analysis.

Is Branding the Chief Driver of Marketing?

2010-10-12T21:26:00.001-04:00

We've been asking this question lately. More philosophical musing, we suppose. Perhaps you shouldn't try to "do" branding. Perhaps you should just go about the business of trying as best you can to create the best possible product or service for your customers, and let whatever happens with the "brand", happen. Maybe there's too much emphasis on "doing" branding, "doing" marketing? Perhaps you should just work at your business, day to day, tend to its affairs, be the best you can be, and worry not about the rest?

What we're after -- what Gnosis Arts is always after -- is knowledge, the knowledge that leads to freedom, power, success. We've noticed that, for companies that have been around a while, the brand seems to drive most everything. For some clients we've worked for, the brand drives almost all the traffic to the website; the brand seems to be the gravitational force that produces engagement, fascination, conversation on social media sites; the brand seems to be what scores them the big time PR wins. In short, the brand drives the marketing, actually creates the market, not the other way round.

What does this mean? Well, we see two roads. One, if you just survive for a really long time, without going out of business, eventually you will have a brand. That's not too encouragng for those of you who are "make it happen" types, we know. But the equation we've seen time and again is: Time + Survival = Brand Awareness.

The other option: actually try to "do" branding. Try to put into play a branding "strategy". Of course, "once a thing becomes conscious of itself, it loses its authenticity and innocence," some philosopher once said. But we suppose you still have to engage in it, anyway. So, how do you "do" branding?

Well, we're no experts in branding (or anything else for that matter). But we can tell you our experience. So, here it is, for you make-it-happen types.

Short answer: it's all about PR.

Gnosis Arts scored a huge PR win back in June, a feature video and story in the New York Times. Yeah. We had been tracking the number of brand mentions using Google Analytics in the months prior to the NYT piece. We simply counted the number of times our brand name, "Gnosis Arts", or one of its variants, was searched for. We did this for Jan - May 2010, the months prior to the NYT piece.

Then came the June thunder. We counted brand mentions during the month of June, when the story ran. Then, we counted the brand mentions in the months following, right up to the present day.

What we found was nothing short of awesomeness.

To summarize, brand mentions for Gnosis Arts increased some 44% during the months following the NYT story as compared to the months prior. Even more interesting: brand mentions have stayed at the higher plateau up to the date of this blog post. And during the month the story came out, brand mentions spiked some 795%. No, that wasn't a typo. I had originally thought it was 95%. I had to recalculate it. Yep, it's true. Though I'm no mathematician, even accounting for margin of error, the number was still way above 200% on even the most conservative estimates.

What this means is that more people searched in Google directly for our business name after the NYT feature than before it. The web analytics clearly demonstrate this in terms of both an increase in searches (when we view the "keywords" tab) and an increase in organic traffic from those branded search terms, as well as a terrific increase in raw traffic from the NYT (which is now one of our top referrers).

In short, top quality PR = branding = everything you need to bother with about marketing?

As a result of this, our marketing team is starting to think that the super-objective in marketing shouldn't be generating business, but generating a brand; to bring a business to the place where consumers look for the brand, even before looking for the product or service; where current and prospective customers search for the brand name more than the product or service of the brand name.

Is it gonna take time? Of course. We've been working at this for three+ years now. That's the bad news. The good news is that, now that we see the power of this thing, how fast this thing works, it's gravy from here on out (well, not exactly, but you get the point).

Building a thriving business is going to take time, either way you slice it. The question is: are you going to leave your brand identity up to the fate of time, or are you going to proactively shape your brand with the time you're alotted? Are you going to just keep spamming the free press release circuit, or are you going to really decide to get in the PR game?

Reply to @sazzolini RE: How Do We Get People to Comment on Content?

2010-09-17T20:32:00.010-04:00

ProfNet - an online public relations service - has just launched a social media site called ProfNet Connect. As Maria Perez, one of the chief architects of ProfNetConnect, and director of the ProfNet newsrooom, explains, "ProfNetConnect is like LinkedIn for subject matter experts in media, social media, PR and online marketing." We were given a sneak peak into the service, before it went public, and we really liked it. The site has a ton of really great functionality including audio podcast upload capability, video upload capability, group creation, forums, blog platforms and more.

On Twitter, we were asked by Sandy Azzollini, director of online content and communications for PRNewswire (@sazzolini on Twitter), if we had any ideas on how to get more comments on the content produced on ProfNet Connect. So, to give a more detailed answer, we decided to answer the question here on our blog.

The first point is that you have to have content on the site that is highly useful to get people to engage with it. A few of our favorite social media sites come to mind here.

1. "You're the Boss", NYTimes blog. The blog targets a very specific niche - microbusiness owners. And the posts are very practical. They give information, tips, and perspectives that can actually be used by the community. This is one of the reasons the posts get so many comments. In particular, posts centered around online advertising and social media strategy receive a large share of comments. But also posts about hiring and rights of laborers and managing employees get a ton of comments.

2. Business.Gov. This is an online forum published by the Small Business Administration. They provide any kind of info you might need about small business management - everything from how to register a trade name, to licenses, how to keep your books, taxes, business law advice and more. The forum posts receive a lot of comments. In a short time, Business.Gov has reached a newsletter subscriber base of over 60K.

3. @ProfNet on Twitter. Maria Perez is the newsroom director of the ProfNet service. ProfNet is a service by PRNewswire. Maria posts urgent reporter requests to her Twitter feed for her followers to see. She gets excellent engagement. We ourselves have asked her questions, had conversations with her, and responded to inquiries published on her feed. One reason she gets such good engagement is because she is providing a very useful service that encourages people to come back for more.

The Takeaway
The point of all this is that generating engagement in social media really depends a lot on how useful your content is. The more useful the content, the more engagement you'll have. It might be a good idea to do some surveys or focus groups to find out precisely what sort of content your users want to consume. Then, build your content around user interest.

@helpmerhonda11 on Social Media: Don't Believe the Hype #blogchat

2010-08-29T21:41:00.005-04:00

Rhonda Hurwitz of She Means Business just wrote a great blog post about social media hype. Rhonda offers social media & marketing for businesses, and says: Enough with the snakeoil already! She's been echoing our sentiments exactly. Rhonda says that, while there is a place for social media in marketing, it's not the be all end all of online marketing. Nor should social media replace other online marketing channels.

We've said the same thing here on Im0z, and we totally agree with Rhonda. It's nice to know there are seasoned marketers out there who really know what they're talking about.

If you want to follow Rhonda on Twitter, she's at http://twitter.com/helpmerhonda11 . A great Twitter feed filled with useful info.

How to Lower Your Facebook Advertising Costs

2010-08-11T17:24:00.008-04:00

As we wrote in a previous blog post, the Facebook advertising service can be a difficult monster to tackle. But the Facebook team has made improvements to the service over the past few years. But it isn't intuitive, figuring out how to save money on the ads.

It never ceased to amaze me how often the Facebook ad price would soar even higher than Google Adwords CPCs ! Even for the exact same ad campaigns and keywords! Our SEO team has suspected for quite some time that there must be a catch to it. Furthermore, when you Google "how to lower your Facebook advertising costs", or "why are Facebook ads so expensive", the selections of advice aren't the greatest.

That's what this post is about: showing you precisely what we did to bring our Facebook ad prices down to a manageable price, while at the same time not completely losing all ad impressions.

If you don't keep a close watch on your Facebook ads, if if you only use the Facebook "suggested CPC bid" feature when bidding, you're going to be disappointed. You'll find that your ad prices will quickly skyrocket, and you'll be doubly disappointed, since your CTR will be so shoddy. So, here's a step by step on how to lower your Facebook ad spend.

1. Don't use CPC; use CPM

Though you'll get fewer impressions, your spend will be much less. And you'll still get clicks.

2. Don't listen to the suggested bid price

We've found that Facebook exaggerates and inflates what you have to spend to get impressions and clicks. Here's what to do: take the average of the low and high bid suggestions. Then divide by 2 and set your bid at this price. It still works.

3. Make sure to "overtarget" demographics
Don't go for the whole Facebook community. Overtarget. Brainstorm every possible keyword, group or fan page that could possibly be remotely interested in your ad, and add that keyword to the list. Also, we don't target anyone younger than 27 or older than 44. Also, we target only those who graduated from college. And only those single or married. Not saying you have to follow these guidelines, but the more narrowly focused your demographic target, the cheaper the ad price will be.

4. Sometimes you have to pause and start over

If your ads stop getting impressions due to a low spend, pause the campaign, wait a few hours, and resume. After resuming, bid over again.

If you follow these guidelines, you can reduce your FB ad spend, sometimes dramatically.

A Curious Psychological Phenomenon of the "Follow Us on Twitter" Button

2010-07-29T19:35:00.001-04:00

When you visit a business website for the first time, and you see a "follow us on Twitter" button, have you ever stopped to take notice of how it makes you feel? Do you actively search new sites for these social media engagement objects, such as Facebook or LinkedIn buttons? Do you have such buttons on your site? And if so, what was your reason for putting them there?

When I visit a site for the first time - especially if it is a business site from which I'm contemplating making a purchase - I know I look for the "follow me" buttons. And when I see these buttons, I click them. I want to know more about the company, to get familiar with it, before searching deeper into the site. I want to find out who their customers are, and what was their experience with this business. I want to know that there are real people back there, who actually care about me and my needs.

Seeing these types of buttons - especially the Twitter button - makes me feel a bit more comfortable with the business. I just recently noticed this. I noticed that I feel somehow "safer" doing business with a company that has a Twitter account with regular engagement. I think this is partly because Twitter fosters transparency and interaction. It's pretty hard to use only marketing-speak or company-slanted PR speak, on Twitter.

That is, of course, if you're actually engaging with your customers and followers on Twitter. I jst realized that this is the main thing I'm looking for when I visit the business' Twitter feed or Facebook page. I'm looking for whether the business actually talks to people, how it talks to people, and whether it reveals anything human (ie., non-corporate) to its people.

A business website doesn't facilitate much actual engagement with the visitor. You basically just go there, and it's a one-way communication from the company to you. But not so with a Twitter feed. On Twitter, the business tweets, but others on the perimeter respond. Observing this interaction can tell you a lot about a company. This, I think, is what fosters that feeling of comfortability when seeing the buttons on a website. The buttons remind you that there are real people behind the "persona" of a business website.

If these buttons really do have the power to invoke these emotions, it seems plain that there is huge branding value to social media sites. I would love to see more research done on such phenomena.

How do you feel when you see the "Follow Us on Twitter" button?

Which Has A Better ROI: Yahoo PPC Ads or Twitter Marketing?

2010-07-23T22:38:00.003-04:00

In previous blog posts, we compared the ROI of Google Adwords to Yahoo Search Marketing. What we found was not surprising: Google PPC has a much higher ROI than Yahoo, and performs so much better, that there's no real comparison. But what about comparing the ROI of a social media site like Twitter, to Yahoo PPC advertising? Which one performs better? Which one demonstrates a higher ROI?

The answer, at least in the case of one of our clients, might surprise you. Conducting extensive comparitive experimentation, our firm has concluded that, actually, Twitter delivers a better ROI than Yahoo Search Marketing, in terms of sales and cost per acquisition.

Surprising, huh?

Yeah, we were surprised, too. We created some product offerings for a client that were able to be purchased only after first following and DMing the client on Twitter. The client was a hotel and the product was room reservations. We created a strategic plan to publicize the packages on Twitter. The same type of packages, with similar prices, had been advertised on the Yahoo search network, for a few months prior. To our surprise, Yahoo didn't deliver as many sales as Twitter did!

Not only was the number of sales from Twitter higher, but the Cost Per Acquisition for Twitter was lower.

To be fair, however, the hours of labor spent on the Twitter marketing campaign really would have to be factored in to truly calculate CPA. (Of course, we'd have to factor in labor for YSM ad management, too.)

Also, we helped the Twitter sales along by driving a ton traffic to the client's Twitter feed via an e-newsletter sent out to almost 40K subscribers. The e-newsletter generated a 35% increase in the number of Twitter followers in roughly 2 days. So, we would also need to factor in the cost for the email CRM software the client used for this.

But even factoring in labor and software costs, we think that the ROI for Twitter is still better. The amount of labor required to manage and monitor the YSM campaign was probably only moderately less than the amount of labor required to generate sales through Twitter. And the email software is substantially less of an expense than what the client was spending each month on Yahoo ads.

Even being conservative and calling both sets of expenses even - YSM ad management and Twitter marketing - the fact that Twitter marketing generated more monthly sales than YSM alone proves that Twitter marketing is a better investment - at least for this client.

Advanced Email Marketing Tips

2010-07-04T16:10:00.006-04:00

Often when online marketers think about email marketing, they think of sending a special, coupon or other sales-y email to an email list. Or, they think of sending an e-newsletter that just talks about their products or services. These are ways to launch an email marketing campaign, but they are not the only ways. There are other, less thought of ways to do effective email marketing.

Status Updates
Status updates are typically email updates sent to users or subscribers informing them of any special changes or bugs a software or web application may be experiencing. Twitter Status immediately comes to mind. Twitter has a blog that updates Twitter users on problems or errors the site is experiencing. You can subscribe to these updates, and whenever a problem occurs, the Twitter Status team immediately updates this blog.

We rarely think of these types of API status updates in the context of email marketing. But they certainly can be an extension of an email marketing. If you have web applications or software to which you make changes regularly, status updates are a great way to keep in contact with your loyal, regular users. We suggest that you include a reply-to email address and not merely use a "do-not-reply" auto-response for such status updates. This encourages your users to ask questions and seek clarification about the service or application in question.

For example, we have a Twitter app that we built called Twtsynd. We've just released it from Beta testing. But of course, as with most apps, there is constant tweaking and bug fixing that has to take place. We make it a point to notify our users of these bug fixes. We also notify them of application enhancements. Recently, we've taken it one step further. Since Twtsynd syndicates user tweets on other member status feeds, we've added an opt-out option. Whenever a user uses Twtsynd, all members get an email asking them to approve or deny the tweet.

This is a form of email marketing, when you think about it. It encourages users to get to know each other via email. It keeps our brand fresher in the minds of users because they each get an email whenever someone uses the service. If they have any questions or comments, they can reply to the email, giving our staff another opportunity to connect with them and offer quality customer service.

Confirmation Emails
Another aspect of advanced email marketing strategy is sending out email confirmations. Many e-commerce sites will, for example, send a confirmation email to a user when they make a purchase on a site. But this is of course not the only time for using a confirmation email.

For instance, we use a confirmation email for our press release submission site. We use it both for adding value to the service, but also for brand reminders. Whenever a user submits a press release to our site at http://gnosisarts.com/home/Press_Releases , they are automatically sent an email with the press release content they just submitted. The email notifies them that we have received their submission. But it also allows them to see the content they've sent and request any changes to it if necessary. Again, by using a confirmation email, we both improve our customer support as well as the user-experience of the service.

Auto Responders
When used sparingly, auto responders make excellent email marketing tools. You should be very selective in the use of auto-responders, and there are certainly wrong ways to use them. For example, having an auto-responder on every email sent to you is probably not a good idea, as it can annoy customers. However, selective, strategic use of auto responders can be great for branding.

For example, we use an auto-responder for our Wikipedia Podcast download. When people visit our site and choose to download the podcast, they receive an auto-generated email. The email includes the special link they can click on to download the podcast. This is good for email marketing because it encourages a past website visitor to return to our site. This is good for online marketing because, when they return to the site, they now are presented with another opportunity to learn more about our products and services, to surf around to other parts of the site they haven't visited, and to be impressed with our brand again. Remember, branding online has a lot to do with remembrance, and what better way to help a brand "stick" in the mind of a web user, than to create a repeat visitor out of them? Auto responders can facilitate this.

Google Analytics Q and A: Can Manually-Tagged URLs Be Used As Step 1 in A Goal Conversion Funnel?

2010-06-05T20:09:00.000-04:00

Q: I have a manually tagged URL from another PPC ad campaign (Yahoo Search Marketing). Can I use that URL as my "Step 1" in my goal conversion funnel?

A: We've been trying to find the answer to this question for some months now. We searched in the Google Analytics forums and the Google Adwords Help Center, but there doesn't appear to be a answer there. So, we had to do our own internal tests to find the answer.

We even asked a Google Adwords specialist. She didn't know. So, she passed our question on to an Analytics account specialist. He said he thought so, and that it "looked like we had our goal funnel set up properly. But he said we might have to wait up to 24 hours to see the data in the Conversion Visualization report.

However, after 48 hours, we still didn't see any visits being trackedin the funnel visualization report We knew that the tagged URL was receiving clicks, because the click were being recorded in Yahoo.

So, the answer is: no. If you insert a manually tagged URL into the Step 1 field in the Goal Conversion Funnel, Analytics will NOT record visits to that URL in the funnel visualization report. The visits will be recorded in other places in analytics, but not there.

So, to make sure you can determine that a conversion came from a manually tagged URL, you need to make sure the utm_campaign variable contains a unique string ID. Then, when you are viewing the "content" link, you can filter the results by the unique utm_campaign variable, to see the conversion results.

sent from my T-Mobile Dash

Best regards,

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

Want A Free Adwords Coupon? We've Got Something Just As Sweet!

2010-06-04T09:32:00.001-04:00

Looking for free Google Adwords? Or maybe you've been trying to find discounts on your monthly Adwords PPC spend. If you're looking for ways to cut your AdWords bill, Gnosis Arts has a sweet contest for you.

We've recently started our "Google AdWords Giveaways" for the Spring and Summer 2010. Each week we're giving away 1 week of Adwords PPC ads - for free! All you have to do to enter our contest is text PPCAD to 41411. That's it! When you do, you will receive an email with instructions for choosing your ad as well as the contest rules. Each week, the entrants names are placed in a hat and 1 winner is selected at random. The winner gets 1 week of free Adwords - totally on us! There's no charge for texting, but standard data rates may apply, dependinf upon your mobile carrier service.

Even better, we're running this contest each week, so new winner will be announced every Sunday on our Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/slashcareer). And we're donating $1 to Haiti relief for each of the first 25 contestants.

So, support a worthy cause, and get a chance to win some free Adwords advertising! For more details, visit http://s.gnoss.us/seonj

sent from my T-Mobile Dash

Best regards,

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

Why Public Relations Is the Future of (Google) SEO

2010-05-28T18:16:00.006-04:00

There has become a noticeable alteration in the ranking algorithms of Google. If you follow any of the industry leaders in SEO, you will have read about this change. The changes are taking place gradually and consist primarily in "tweaks" to the original PageRank, link popularity based ranking system that has made Google so distinctive. At least, this is the best way I can describe the changes.

I do not consider myself an SEO expert on the level of a Bruce Clay or a Rand Fishkin. However, I am a SEO professional, so I make a living understanding, analyzing, studying SEO. And, I am an SEO empiricist, of sorts. Meaning, our firm relies upon experimentation and observation. And we have noticed some definite changes through this process.

It is not easy to catalog or classify these changes. But one thing is for sure: what it took to rank competitively in Google in 2009 is most assuredly NOT what it takes to rank well now. Yahoo and Bing have lagged behind Google; the same SEO tactics of 2009 pretty much work the same for Yahoo and, even more, in Bing. But not so with Google.

Why PR Is The Future of Good SEO Rankings for Google

Here are a few of these changes, in capsule form:

-Anchor Text is being trumped by inpointing link location
-Brand name mention is becoming as important as inlinks
-Inlink diversity trumps sheer number of same domain inlinks
-Blog comment links are given less value
-Inpointing links at the beginning of an article are weightier than links later in the article
-More weight is being placed on trusted domains, and higher authority domains
-Greater emphasis on relevancy in linking
-Less weight given to "no-follow" attribute

(sources: SEOmoz, Bruce Clay, Inc., SEOBook and other authoritative SEO sources)

The Implications
The implications of these changes are significant. It appears that Google, at least, has recognized not only that the old model of anchor-text-determines-ranking-power has been gamed by SEOs, but also that there is more than one way to "cite" or "vote for" a web page. In fact, there are many ways to endorse a web page, some of which demonstrate even more "endorsement strength" than pure linking or anchor text linking.

One can endorse a site by, among other things:

-making a video about it
-doing a podcast about it
-retweeting it
-"like"ing it (Facebook)
-writing a review about it
-mentioning the brand name favorably
-referring a friend to it
-subscribing to its feed

Etc.

And because trust and authority are beginning to overshadow mere link popularity, Google may very well start looking at many peripheral factors (if it isn't already), factors such as

-Is the website a property of a business who's been around a long time?
-is it from a business that has licenses, permits, etc?
-does the site use SSL licenses?
-Does the site have a register or log in element?
-How long is the domain registered for?
-Does the site/business have a Wikipedia page?
-Is the company a member of the BBB?
-Is the business' brand(s) well-known? How well known?

For all these reasons, public relations is going to move into the fore. Mentions in authoritative, trusted news sources - even without an actual link - may go a lot further than you might think in terms of improving organic search engine rankings. Being a guest blogger on .gov or .edu sites may be more powerful than having that "perfect" anchor text link or that perfect TITLE tag. Searches for your brand or business name may soon hold more weight than sheer number of inlinks to your site.

That's why we are developing our PR presence. All the above related to PR. We are constantly scouring the Web for opportunities to be featured in major news publications; to be written about on quality blogs; to proliferate our brands out on the Web.

In short, the worlds of PR and SEO are coming closer and closer together.

sent from my T-Mobile Dash

Best regards,

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

4 Free (and utterly awesome) Twitter Tools for Online Marketing

2010-05-05T14:23:00.001-04:00

As you know if you're a regular reader of this blog, Gnosis Arts has taken a very conservative and tentative position with respect to social media marketing in general and Twitter in particular. We don't subscribe to the social media hype, nor do we think social media marketing always produces good ROI for every business. However, there are a few Twitter clients that we've used and tested and endorse. We endorse them because their ability to produce improvements in our online marketing efforts is consistent and measurable.

1. Tweetchat (www.tweetchat.com)
Tweetchat enables you to filter Twitter conversations by hashtag. For example, if you want to converse with people only talking about dogs, you can view only those tweets pertaing to the subject. We endorse Tweetchat for social media marketing because each time we use it, we get 2 or 3 new, interested and engaged followers. While this is far slower in building up your "twitter groupie list" than many of the viral MLM apps out on the market, Tweetchat is far better because the quality of your followng is higher and it grows in the way search engines prefer - gradually, naturally and over time and based on content.

2. Tweetbrand/MarketMeTweet (www.marketmetweet.com)
TweetBrand is a client-side Twitter app that enables you to brand your Tweets with your own company, service, trademark or product name. The free version (TweetBrand) by itself is cool enough, but the paid version (MarketMeTweet) is ridiculously inexpensive and has a ton of really sweet functionality that helps you manage all your Twitter accounts in one place.

But perhaps the baddest feature of this app is what it can do for SEO. With TweetBrand, the links that show up underneath your tweets - where it reads "Tweeted by so and so at ..." - those links can be made into keyword specific anchor text links that point to your website. Although these links are nofollowed by Twitter, they still possess weight and ranking power, we think, due to the increasing importance of theme relevancy.

3. Twtsynd (http://s.gnosisarts.com/twtsynd)
Twtsynd stands for Twitter Syndication Network. With Twtsynd, members opt-in to have their Twitter feed used as a PR channel for the other members. When you join the Twtsynd Network, your tweets are syndicated on all other member status feeds. As the network grows, you gain exponential visibility for your tweets. Twtsynd is good for marketing because it enables you to easily expand the reach and influence of your tweets.

4. Foursquare (www.foursquare.com)
One of the newest Twitter apps to come on the social media scene, Foursquare allows you to "check in" on Twitter, whenever you visit a business, restaurant or other location-based venue. However, virtual companies can also get good local search marketing use of Foursquare. With 4sq, you can easily find and connect with people in your city. This could be used, for example, in local sales prospecting or lead generation.

There are many great Twitter tools and apps that can assist you with your marketing, but these four have so far been the most effective for us. If you have any other cool Twitter marketing apps you'd like to share, please leave then in the comments section.

Relational Marketing and Social Media

2010-04-26T16:22:00.018-04:00

In the last post, I talked about what I thought were the most effective uses of social media for marketing purposes. We saw that social media (especially Twitter) works very well as a customer service and client relations tool. Additionally, social media works well as a tool for spreading brand awareness. I also stated that social media sites can be useful in online reputation management.

In this post, I want to add to these. Lately it is becoming apparent that there is one more important use of social media sites: Relational Marketing.

What Do I Mean by Relational Marketing (RM)?
A lot of marketers use the term "relational marketing". But what does it mean? I'm not really sure, but I define it this way: Relational Marketing is basically "networking in wait". You build genuine relationships and then you wait for the opportunity to introduce your product/service. (Is that Zen enough for you?) "Waiting is a divine kind of doing," (a phrase I coined long ago, and remembered just now actually.)

Waiting. Waiting v. Pushing. This is the essence of relational marketing. Relational Marketing is starting and growing relationships with people, usually with whom you share interests, but who are not necessarily in your target market, people who then refer your products and services to others who are in your target market.

How Do You Do Relational Marketing?
Well, properly speaking, you don't really "do" relational marketing like you "do" other types of marketing. There is no set procedure or set of steps you can follow that will produce a specific end. As a result, many Internet marketers don't engage in it or take the time to learn about RM.

But RM is a real thing, nonetheless, albeit somewhat evanescent. For example, I met a business coach on Twitter, quite by accident. I was just going along on Twitter, doing my own thing, following my own interests, and seeking to connect with others whom I found interesting. In the process, I met Lisa. She introduced me to her network of Twitter followers, and through the course of building the relationship, sharing ideas, and talking about what she does for a living, and vice versa, she gave Gnosis Arts a referral.

So, from that Twitter relationship will likely arise some potential business for our firm. Hunh? Who woulda thunk it?

What Relational Marketing Is NOT
But had I gone in with the express purpose of trying to "sell" or "market" something, however, I don't think I would have gotten the referral. It would have felt to her like one more turnoff from an "overly self-absorbed", self-aggrandizing, salesman. Or, had I tried to put together a 5-point "relational marketing strategy" and foisted it upon the twitterverse, I doubt it would have worked, either. Besides, I am genuinely interested in Lisa's business and did not go in with any motive to "sell" her or her friends anything.

Principles of Relational Marketing
So, while there are no specific procedures to follow in RM, there are principles:

1. Start off by talking about the other person, their interests, their business, their ideas. It's not about you.

2. As with all sales and marketing, you have to first build value. In an RM setting, this means building value, not in your product or service, but in yourself as a human being. RM is, admittedly, a very slow form of marketing. You will spend hours, days, even weeks, cultivating a genuine relationship with a person, before you dare try to sell your products or services. In RM, the first objective is to get the person to like you, what you believe, what you stand for, what you're passionate about. Then, it is to get them to admire you on some level, whether it is your work, or your ideas, or your unique way of looking at things.

3. Contribute something of value to them. Again, it's not about you in RM. Strive to contribute something of value to the other person. A sincere review or endorsement of their business. A unique resource or tool that can help them. An introduction to someone who might be looking for their product or service.

4. Content is king! It cannot be said enough. In cyberspace, your currency is your content. Strive for ever better, ever more quality, content. Don't just be average. Don't just regurgitate the same old s**t everyone else is spitting up. Try to find unique perspectives. Your unique voice online is what fuels RM; without that unique voice, forget about it.

5. Perhaps most importantly, don't start a relationship with the motive of trying to "get" something from the other person. If you learn nothing else, learn this. Now, this is hard, admittedly. "Once a thing becomes conscious of itself, it loses it's innocence." But that is the principle, at any rate.

6. Start by finding people that you are interested in. This seems counterintuitive. Don't try to get people to be interested in you. Rather, find interesting, thought-provoking, intriguing people that you are interested in. start a conversation with them. Get to know them. That's the way. Why? Because, if I'm not really interested in you, why would I expect you to be interested in me?

Besides, people can sense disinterest, disingenuousness. Even across cyberspace. RM is counterintuitive in that regard. I'm not looking for people who are looking for me, but the reverse. I'm looking for people I can dig; I want to network with them, because they inspire me, encourage me. Then, I wait for the "marketing" to emerge from that relationship.

These are just a few principles of effective RM. They are not meant to be specific tips, but just to be guides. No one can really tell you how to do RM. In fact, RM is a lot like playing an awesome jazz solo; the sure way to play badly is to try too hard to control what you play and to think too much about what you're going to play next. That kills it. RM is a way of letting your products/services sort of "find" the right audiences through development unassuming relationships with others in the social media space.

Social Media (Re)marketing

2010-04-08T19:23:00.002-04:00

I don't know about you, but I'm so tired of the "social media marketing" hype I can hardly stomach it. So many self-proclaimed social media "experts" are talking about how great social media is for marketing without a shred of concrete evidence to back it. Enough already!

Nevertheless, our firm has also concluded that, amid the hype, there is an ounce of real meat here. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook do have some use in online marketing, albeit it peripheral and tenuous. So, rather than talk about social media "marketing", here I'd like to talk about social media REmarketing.

*What Do You Mean, Social Media Remarketing?

A little background. Our firm has concluded that, in general, social media works better as a client relations and customer service tool than as a marketing tool. If you just pump your Twitter/FB feeds with advertising and self" promoting, you won't get very far. If you publish useful, interesting info, you're doing better, but still are a ways off from strategic marketing. But the biggest positive impact of social media for us has been as a client relations/customer service tool.

We define marketing in two main ways

1. Putting products/services in front of the people who will buy

2. Related to no 1, generating leads of potential buyers

Now, given these definitions, how well do social media sites accomplish these? Well, in our experience, not so well. Aside from the occasional, unpredictable, random customer you get from social media "marketing", social media doesn't top the charts when compared with some other online methods to generate consumers It certainly doesn't perform as well as PPC or organic SEO. Not even close.

*Social Media and Client Relations

However, social media works very well for operational functions such as client relations, business updates and customer service. This, we think, is were you should focus your efforts in using social media. That said, if we can somehow tie these ancillary functions into marketing, then we may be able to ascertain what is social media's most suitable role in marketing.

*Social Media (Re)marketing

That's where the concept of "remarketing" comes in. One instance of social media remarketing is locating your current customers on Twitter or Facebook. We've done this and found that this works better. Current customers already know and trust your brand. (If they didn't they wouldn't be customers.) Therefore, they are much more likely to respond to you on Twitter or Facebook than a random or disinterested follower.

This presents you with another medium to communicate your brand, product or service. And as your immediate customers engage with your brand, others in the second degree of separation will see that engagement. This remarketing to current clients via social media can open up avenues for additional marketing.

Of course, all this remarketing has to be done strategically, and with proper netiquette and style, to be effective. It requires thinking about social media in new, creative ways. Social media marketing succes - in our opinion - is not really about a one-way advertising dump, but rather a conversation with current clients for the purposes of building those relationships.

Search Engine Ranking Factors 2010: Google v. Yahoo/Bing

2010-04-01T12:07:00.001-04:00

We've been doing some comparative studies of search engine ranking factors of the big three search engines. As any pro SEO has probably noticed, the differences in SERPs have become more pronounced over the past year. A lot of changes have occurred in the ranking algorithms of Google, Yahoo and Bing as well as structural changes.

*Search Engine Ranking Factors: SEOmoz
Each year, SEOmoz - a leading search marketing agency in Seattle - publishes its "Search Engine Ranking Factors" report. They interview top SEOs in the field and survey them on what they think are the most important factors for ranking improvement in the search engines.

Combining their insights with our own internal research has helped Gnosis Arts better understand and clarify the ranking differences among the Big Three.

*Search Engine Ranking Differences
The first big difference we've noticed is that the "older" SEO tactics (pre 2008-ish) still carry a lot of influence in Bing and, to a lesser degree, Yahoo. Let's call these tactics "SEO 2.0", collectively. They include common, basic and well-known SEO applications such as

*Keyword in the TITLE tag
*Keyword in <h> tags
*External, inlinks with keyword in the anchor text

*Bing Search Engine Ranking Factors
With regard to Bing, we found that often times SEO 2.0 is all that is needed to get into the top 30 rankings. Bing still has a long way to go to produce the level of quality of Google SERPs. Furthermore, in Bing external inlinks don't even have to have much link popularity (i.e., PageRank) themselves - or be considered highly trusted domains. Also, theme-relevancy doesn't appear to be as important in Bing; it doesn't seem to matter all that much whether, in the case of Site A linking to Site B, that Sites A and B have anything to do with one another. It seems that what's still important for ranking well in Bing is what was important 2+ years ago, more or less.

*Yahoo Search Engine Ranking Factors
In our opinion, Yahoo's SERPs are even worse than Bing's. They seriously need to work on their QDF (Query Deserves Freshness) algorithms, as old, stale results permeate Yahoo. They have become slower at indexing new content over the past year and a half, and often their results aren't as relevant as Google or even Bing.

In terms of ranking factors, basically the same applies with Yahoo as with Bing - just to a lesser extent. Basic on-page optimization coupled with basic link-building, will still boost your rankings. Again, theme relevance is not that important with Yahoo.

*Search Engine Ranking Factors: Google
But with Google, it's become a totally different ballgame. SEO 2.0 won't get you very far anymore. For linkbuilding, Google amost demands relevancy in order for the inpointing link to have any effect whatsoever. In fact, we'd go so far as to say that relevancy is now at least as important (if not more) than simple anchor text or pagerank.

Additionally, the trustworthiness of the inlinking domain is much more important in Google than it is in Yahoo/Bing.

Another big difference is the diversity of links. Google seems to place more weight on links from a larger number of root domains, whereas in Yahoo/Bing, this doesn't seem to matter as much.

And don't forget that page load time is now taking a more prominent role in Google. Google is placing more importance of the quality of the user experience than Yahoo/Bing.

*Conclusion
If you want to rank well in Yahoo and Bing, then SEO 2.0 tactics are often (but not always) enough. Basic on-page SEO and a little link building is usually sufficient to produce significant ranking improvement in Yahoo/Bing.

However, this is NOT the case with Google. With Google you have to dig deeper. The link popularity of the inlinks is much more important. So is the trustworthiness of the inlinks. And user experience is also more important.

Yahoo! Search Marketing v. Google AdWords: Which Is Better?

2010-03-22T14:43:00.003-04:00

In the previous blog post we mentioned that more research was needed on Yahoo! Search Marketing to know whether YSM performs as well as Google AdWords in terms of PPC advertising. Well, the data is in. We've been doing some rigorous testing of the Yahoo! Sponsored Search. Here's what we found.

Basically what we've concluded is that YSM performs as well or better than Google AdWords in terms of conversion rates. This being the case, ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) in YSM is actually higher due to the lower overall cost of advertising with them. The volume of clicks and conversions is lower, to be expected. This is surely due in large part to the much smaller market share that Yahoo!/Bing possesses when compared with Google (25-30% as compared to 65 - 70%, respectively).

Therefore, if you're planning on doing a PPC campaign for a client, our conclusion is that you shouldn't neglect Yahoo! Sponsored Search. Given the same ad copy, landing pages, and product descriptions, one can reasonably expect YSM to perform as well as AdWords.

One area where Yahoo! excels above AdWords is in their customer service. At any time while running a YSM PPC campaign, you can contact Customer Support and get a live representative to assist you. Where Yahoo! may lack in actual market share, they try to make up for in superior customer service. As we all know, Google's customer service is virtually non-existent. It amazes us, in fact, that the Titan of Cyberspace has grown as large as it has with such poor customer service.

Different Markets, Different Marketing Channels

2010-03-16T10:58:00.000-04:00

In our years of experience doing Internet marketing for both small and large companies, we've learned a thing or two about the effectiveness of online marketing channels. As I've discussed in other blog posts, no one channel works in all markets. Finding the best channel for a particular product or service, therefore, is key to online marketing success. So, in this blog post I'd like to take a look at the most common online marketing channels and what types of business they are effective for.

*AdWords
Google being the dominant shareholder in the realm of PPC advertising, AdWord is one of the most effective marketing channels. We've found that AdWords delivers the best ROAS for

1. Larger, well-known brands
2. Businesses with a concrete, always in high demand, product
3. Niche markets that have moderate to high demand and vert low competition

*Organic SEO
Organic SEO is the art of prmoting websites to top positions in "natural" or "regular" (the uninfluenceable") search results. But with the major SEs frequent tweaking and changing of the algorithms which sort and rank these results, organic search engine optimization gets more and more complex as the Web develops. Add to that the inclusion of socal media search results (i.e., "real time search"), personalized search results, and universal search results, and the task is even harder.

We've found that organic SEO works best for

1.small, new websites with a hyperlocal market (e.g., a piano teacher in Bedminster, NJ)
2. Businesses with small, relatively unknown brand names
3. Businesses with products/services in geos that aren't major DMAs

*Social Media
Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook represent paradoxes for the online marketer. We've found that Twitter, for example, can work wonders for customer service but is not so reliable for increasing sales when compared with the amount of labor that is required. And with Facebook, too much promoting can get your business fan page banned. While these media can generate sales, it is not in a predictable pattern, making ROI difficult t measure. Again, social media marketing works best for large, well known brands, and not so well at all for small, unknown brands. Thus it appears that, with social media, the brand drives the engagement, not the other way around. I still feel that there is a lot more hype than substance in discussions about social media marketing.

*Google Local Business
What is true for organic SEO is largely true for Google Local. Businesses in a city that is not a major DMA and which do not have tons of competition fare the best in Google Local rankings.

*Yahoo/Bing PPC
TBD. We have not seen much effectiveness in either of these two major ad programs. However, more rigorous testing is in order.

Conversation with Nichola Stott, Founder of theMediaFlow and search industry blogger and speaker.

2010-03-02T09:21:00.001-05:00

We had an enlightening and friendly conversation over the past couple of days with search marketing maven and pro blogger, Nichola Stott. Nichola is the Director of The Media Flow - a search and social media consultancy in London that helps businesses and brands grow their online audience, through search engine optimisation consulting, search engine marketing and social media strategy. (http://themediaflow.com).

Stott is also a regular blogger for State of Search. State of Search offers a data and research based analysis of the goings on in the world of search. She talks about industry edge topics such as the future of Bing and the effects of the Yahoo/Bing merger of search technology on SEO planning and strategy. Founded by former Search Cowboys editor Bas van den Beld, State of Search is a must read, for any search industry insider.(http://www.stateofsearch.com).

We encountered Nichola while doing some research on the Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) advertising platform. Nichola used to work for Yahoo! as an executive in its commercial search department. So she has an enormous wealth of experience in understanding the ins and outs of YSM success.

Nichola offered us some very useful pointers on how to get the most out of the YSM program. What struck us most about Nichola is her generosity in disseminating her knowledge and expertise.

You can follow Nichola on Twitter at http://twitter.com/NicholaStott . You can also find her on the SEO Chicks blog where she is a regular contributor (http://seo-chicks.com)

Keyword Research for Mobile Marketing

2010-02-22T10:06:00.001-05:00

We haven't spent much time talking about mobile marketing on this blog. This is not because we haven't been researching and experimenting in mobile marketing. We have actually built several mobile websites for clients and have experimented with things such as text message marketing and mobile lead generation. However, mobile marketing data has lagged behind desktop search marketing data quite a lot, and so we have been focused more heavily on that.

Nevertheless, research for mobile marketing grew significantly in 2009. Studies done by large companies like Jumptags and AT & T are beginning to reveal trends for mobile markets. And we bet you didn't know that Google even has a keyword research tool for mobile phones that is similar to its public AdWords keyword tool.

*Keyword Research for Mobile
So, we'd like to start out with a sort of Mobile Marketing 101 post. Expect more posts on this
subject this year.

*Step 1: Mobile Keyword Research
Is there a keyword research and selection tool specific to mobile search terms? The answer is yes. It is located inside Google's AdWords cpanel, but it is not that easy to find. The way we found it is by following these steps:

1. Inside AdWords, create a new paused ad campaign
2. Create a paused ad group underneath that. Set the ad group and campaign to run only on mobile devices, and only on the search network (not the Content network)
3. Click the "Add Keywords" button
4. When the keyword input box displays, click the "keyword selection tool" link.
5. Now, when you get to the next screen, you'll notice that the keyword selection tool looks different than the normal public version of the AdWords tool.
6. Underneath the keyword tool, there will be a link that says "advanced options". Click that link
7. This will reveal another set of search filtering options. One of those options will be a checkbox that says something like, "Search Mobile Keywords". Click it.
8. Enter your search term in the box. You can also just enter a URL in the input field to the right of the keyword box, or you can enter both.
9. Click search

There you have it. The search terms that it spits out will represent mobile search volume. You can verify that this is true by going to the standard public AdWords keyword selection tool and comparing the search volume for the same term. You will notice a difference in the numbers.

If your firm is interested in starting a mobile marketing campaign, mobile advertiing, or mobile website development, feel free to contact us at 908.787.3475 . You can also set an appointment with an SEO specialist on staff by visiting http://gnosisarts.genbook.com , or by email at info@gnosisarts.com .

7 Tips for Making the Most of Twitter

2010-02-16T09:30:00.002-05:00

There are a number of good uses for Twitter. Twitter works well with traditional blogging platforms to give you increased readership for your blog. Twitter can be effective in generating buzz for a product or service. Journalists have been using Twitter to enhance their news reporting ability. Others use Twitter as a customer service tool.

But no matter how you personally utilize the popular microblogging site, there are some tips that will help you get the most out of the service. Here are 7 tips to good Twitter netiquette.

1. Focus on Quality, not Quantity.
My colleague, Sara Paxton of Evans Media Group, is a Twitter maven. She stresses "forgetting about the number of followers," and instead focusing on the type of followers. We've seen Twitter accounts go bad by employing the many "get lots of Twitter followers fast" schemes tha have sprung up.

2. Engagement Level Is More Important than Follower Count.
Having a ton of followers is great, but if none of them cares enough about what you're tweeting to comment or conversate, then it's pretty much pointless. As we wrote in a previous blog post, you must have engagement to have client relations, marketing potential, or sales.

3. Publish Quality Content
As with almost all things marketing, content is king. If you just publish sales spam or garbage content, you won't get much engagement on Twitter. Quality content means content that is desirable to your followers.

4. Don't Spam DMs
Direct messages (DMs) are a nice feature of Twitter. But be careful not to overdo them. Many Tweeps use the DM feature to send unsolicited emails full of spam. This is a surefire way to lose followers and harm your reputation.

5. Be Careful With the Number of Apps You Give Account Access to
The number of Twitter apps out on the market now is staggering. Many of these apps require you to give them access to your Twitter status feed. This is so they can send tweets to your feed without your permission. Other apps use this access to auto-follow other users. Be wary of this, as too many apps having access can quickly corrupt your Twitter feed or even cause your account to be suspended.

6. Use the List Feature to Produce A More Useful Twitter Experience
With Twitter, you can create lists which include certain Twitter users. However, you can also use lists to segment and categorize Tweets. For example, on one of our client Twitter feeds, we have created various lists of useful information for the client's followers, including local weather updates, frequently asked questions, customer comments, and the like. This adds value to our Twitter account which increases our following.

7. Foster Two-Way Conversation.
A lot of people use Twitter only to peddle their message. They don't really care to get to know their followers or what they're followers are interested in - or to comment on their followers' tweets. In our experience this is bad form, and quickly leads to a stagnating Twitter feed with little or no engagement. A better practice, we've found, is to simply engage in normal conversation as opposed to bombarding people with your message.

If you follow these guidelines, your Twitter experience will be better for both yourself and your followers. You'll start to build trust and a good reputation. Your Tweets will be retweeted more often, and you'll find that, whatever your objective for using Twitter, you will be better able to fulfill those objectives.

What Notability Is Not

2010-01-24T16:03:00.001-05:00

In consulting with clients on their Wikipedia articles, sometimes the concept of notability gets muddied. Wikipedia guidelines clearly state that a subject must be notable by Wikipedia standards in order to qualify for a stand-alone article. But what exactly constitutes notability? Rather than discuss what notability is, in this post I will try to define what notability is NOT.

*Notability Is Not Commendability
Many people have done things that are very commendable. You may have donated $1 million to AIDS research, done 1000 hours of community srvice or received the Employee of the Month Award at your job. These are all commendable, but the are not criteria for notability in the Wikipedia sense.

*Notability Does Not Mean Accomplished
An oral surgeon may have performed 100 successful root canal operations. While this may make her acccomplished, it does not necessarily make her notable. Notability has a historic and more broad reaching element to it.

*Notability Is Not Inherited
Your Great Uncle may have won a Pulitzer Prize. But his notable achievement is not passed on to you. Your notability cannot be inherited from his simply by virtue of birth or blood relatedness.

*Notability Does Not Mean Noteworthy
You may be a professor who has been cited in an article by a peer in an academic journal. But your research is not the main subject of the journal entry. You are noteworthy, but not neccesarily notable in the Wikipedia sense.

*Notability Is Not Infamy
Your boss may have robbed the company for hundreds of thousands of dollars. She may even have gone to trial and been put in prison for her crime. But if no major news publication covered the story, she is not for all that notable.

*Notability Does Not Equate to Uniqueness
Uniqueness can sometimes support a subject's notability, but they are not the same thing. You may be a lawyer who writes poetry. As far as lawyers go, you may be considered unique. But that doesn't mean you are notable. You may be the only person in your firm who does what you do, but if no one has written about it, you are not notable.

*Notability Is Not Citability
Your work or achievement may have been cited in other publications. But this in itself does not establish notability. The quality and type of the publication is key. If, however, your work is cited by the majority of authorities in your field, then you might be notable as a result.

Lead Generation: Evaluating Online Lead Generation Sources

2010-01-19T09:15:00.001-05:00

At Gnosis Arts, our Internet Marketing methodology is experiment and data driven. Everything we do is evaluated in the light of certain metrics and experimntation. Two overarching metrics we focus on are: Cost Per Lead (CPL) and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). As a result, we always want to know how effective a lead generation source is in delivering quality leads. We are always doing cost-benefit analysis of various online lead generation sources. In our analyss, we utilize four main metrics to evaluate the worth of a lead generation source. I'd like to share those with you in the hopes that it will help you thinl more clearly about your bottom line with respect to Internet marketing.

*Evaluating Lead Generation Sources: Four Metrics
The four metrics we use to perform cost-benefit analysis on lead generation sources are

1. Labor
2. Quality
3. Predictability
4. Cost

*Operationalizing These Metrics
For these metrics to posess any meaning, we must first define what we mean by each of these terms.

1. Labor Required
This is the amount of man hours required to generate a lead from the source in question. Some lead sources may require significantly more time and work to produce a lead than others.

2. Quality
The quality of a lead is the probability that the lead will turn into a prospect (not necessarily a sale). Sometimes a lead source produces a relatively high number of leads, but none of the leads become actual sales prospects. On the other hand, some lead sources may deliver a low volume of leads but a larger percentage of prospects.

3. Predictability
Predictability refers to how consistently a lead source delivers leads. Some lead sources may produce a high quality lead, but there is no discernible pattern or timeframe for when the lead source will produce a lead. You may have to work at it one day during one month, but two weeks during another month.

4. Cost
Cost is pretty straightforward. It is the amount of money you must put into a lead source to produce a lead. An example of this is Google Adwords. Some lead sources are relatively cheap, but may deliver lower quality leads, and vice versa. Other lead sources are free, and still others it may be difficult to measure cost at all.

Armed with these metrics, we are in a good position to evaluate our lead generation sources as well as our lead generation efforts. Here are a few examples to how you how to apply these metrics to specific lead sources.

In light of the following, the ideal lead source would be one that

*Requires little or no labor
*Delivers leads that more often convert to prospects than not
*Delivers leads in a consistent, predictable time frame
*Costs little or no money to produce a lead

* Examples

1. Craigslist
Craigslist features individuals and small businesses which need services we offer. It may take 1-2 hrs of labor to generate a lead. It may take us 5-7 days to generate a lead from Craigslist. 1 out of every 6 leads becomes a prospect. The cost is free.

Grade = B+/A-

2. Google Adwords
-Labor: Negligible, once ads are set up and tweaked
-Quality: Very High
-Predictability: very predictable.
-Cost: relatively expensive

Grade = B+

3. Elance
-Labor: extremely time intensive
-Quality: high
-Predictability: poor
-Cost: expensive

Grade = C-

4. Google Local
-Labor: Low to moderate
-Quality: High
-Predictability: depending upon the product or service offered, impressions and clicks are extremely regular
-Cost: free

Grade = B

5. Voicebroadcasting
-Labor: Low to moderate
-Quality: fair
-Predictability: Low
-Cost: Expensive

Grade = C-

6. Yahoo Search Marketing
-Labor: Negligible, onces ads are set up
-Quality: poor
-Predictability: poor
-Cost: moderate to high

Grade = D

7. LinkedIn
-Labor: low to moderate
-Quality: very high
-Predictability: ?
-Cost: little or nothing

Grade = B-

8. Twitter
-Labor: moderate
-Quality: poor to fair
-Predictability: poor
-Cost: free

Grade = C

C. Our free press release site
-Labor: negligible
-Quality: poor to fair
-Predictability: Extremely predictable
-Cost: free

Grade = B-

Keep in mind that a lead generation source may perform differently based on your unique products or services. You will want to evaluate a lead source based on yourown conditions. Also keep in mind that some lead sources' performance depends quite a bit on your individual approach use of the source. This is especially true of social media sites like Twitter or Facebook.

Also remember that, no matter how good a lead generation source is, if you don't have a product or service on the receiving end of the lead, one that delivers value to people, you won't generate any sales regardless. A lead source can only lead the horse to water, so to speak; your website has to encourage him to drink. Without good Conversion Rate Optimization, the value of any lead generation source is diminished.

Conversion Tracking: Google Analytics

2010-01-13T10:02:00.001-05:00

If you have an e-commerce website where you are advertising or selling a product or service, then it is important to be able to accurately track conversions. This is especially true if you are running Google Adwords PPC ads for the product. In order to calculate the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) you need to know whether your ads are generating leads, prospects and sales.

However, conversion tracking - as it is called - in Google Analytics isn't always a straightforward process. The process can be even more challenging if you have a website with a lot of dynamically generated content. Tracking events, goals and conversions for these sites can be difficult because often the webpages produce multiple content or pages without the benefit of a unique URL attached to those pages. As a result, in its default mode, Google Analytics will not know that this dynamically generated content was viewed by a visitor.

So, I published this blog post to help you understand some basics of conversion tracking.

*Definitions
But first, a few definitions.

What is a conversion? Well, a conversion can be defined as any observable event or activity that a visitor to your site can take. Perhaps the easiest conversion to understand is when a visitor purchases something on your website. Other types of conversions include

*Completing a Contact form
*Calling a phone number
*Downloading a document

There are others, but these are perhaps the most common. In short, a conversion is any activity a visitor takes, while on your website, that brings her a step closer to making a purchase.

*Attributing Conversions to PPC Ads
For obvious reasons, you may wish to know whether a PPC ad helped to produce a particular conversion event. For instance, if a person purchases a product from your website, it is helpful to know whether the person came to your site from a PPC ad. This way, you have some measure to go by when calculating how effective the ad was; it helps you know whether the ad is "doing its job" so to speak.

Of course, you can use the old "ask them how they got to your product page" approach, but you may find that this is not effective. Often times visitors don't remember how exactly they reached your website. Or, sometimes they will just give you a general answer like "I found your site on Google", which really won't help you much. Therefore, it is good to know how to track visitors using Google Analytics, especially when they make a purchase.

*Tracking Ad Conversions
There are ways to track virtually any web activity, but for our purposes we will stick to tracking purchases.

How do you tell whether an ad generated a purchase? Another way to put it: How do you know if a purchaser originally came to your site from an ad?

Though it sounds simple, tracking this accurately isn't always simple. The path a visitor takes from initial entry to your website, to making a purchase, is rarely a straight one. A visitor may click an ad, hit the landing page, surf around for a while to gather additional information, and the reenter the purchase process. Or, a visitor may leave your site altogether, and revisit the next day to make the purchase.

These common web surfing scenarios make things hard on Google Analytics. In its default settings, Analytics can't accurately track conversions in these scenarios. So, you have to activate certain additional features within Analytics to really see what's going on.

*One Method
A lot could be said about this subject - far more than can be covered in a single blog post. But here is the basic outline.

The first step is to tag all the URLs of your ads. Google has a URL builder to assist you with this. Basically what manual tagging does is to create a unique URL for each ad's landing page. Though the landing pages will still be on your website, the original URLs are rewritten, so to speak, to be unique and exclusive for each ad.

Manual tagging also signals Analytics to count the visit source as a PPC ad, as opposed to an organic, referral or direct visit.

Once you have tagged each ad, the next step is to set up your conversion funnel. A funnel has an endpoint and a begnning point. The endpoint is the purchase confirmation page. This is the page the visitor is directed to after making a successful purchase.

It is essential to have a confirmation page to accurately set up the conversion funnel.

The beginning point of the funnel will be, as you might have guessed, the tagged (or rewritten) URL. You can create a separate funnel for each ad and tagged URL.

*What Manual Tagging Accomplishes
Now, when a visitor clicks an ad with a tagged or rewritten URL, Google Analytics will count that visitor as coming from an ad. If the visitor makes a purchase, the he will wind up at the designated confirmation page. As we specified in advance that this confirmation page is the endpoint of the conversion route, or funnel, Analytics will count that purchase as a conversion attributed to the ad. Analytics gives you a nice neat little report that clearly shows you how many purchases (conversions) each ad produced in a given time frame.

There are many more advanced tracking features you can apply. For example, you can assign a dollar value to each conversion destination. In his way, Analytics will add up how much revenue the ads generate to make ROI easier to calculate Nevertheless, this is the basic procedure for accurately tracking conversions.

Best regards,

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

A Lot of Followers But Little Engagement, or Fewer Followers But Greater Engagement?

2010-01-08T19:21:00.001-05:00

Which do you prefer: Having a ton of social media followers, but little or no engagement, or fewer, active followers with higher engagement levels?

I think that the latter is preferable if you want to improve sales or marketing efforts. If you prefer sheer numbers, then you probably reason that, if I have a large enough follower base, the engagement will follow.

But I'm not so sure this is the case. On Twitter, for example, we manage client business accounts that get more engagement and poduce more sales with 500 followers than accounts that have thousands of followers.

In online marketing, quantity is rarely, if ever, a substitute for quality. We've seen PPC campaigns generate close to a million impressions but deliver not a single conversion.

*Is Quality Content Really That Important?
Well, pretty much. But we need to clarify what is meant by "quality" content. Having a philosophy background, I tend (erroneously) to think of "Quality" in the "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" way. That is, quality is some objective, ideal or Platonic Form existing "out there" somewhere, which everyone is just waiting to behold.

But we're not deaing with Philosophy, we're dealing with Marketing. In marketing, it appears that "quality" simply means: what your followers want. You have to give them the content THEY want, not the content you THINK they want.

Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook can make great tools for client relations. But we must remember that you have to have engagement in order to have client relations. You have to have engagement in order to have sales. You have to have engagement in order to have customer service or reputation management or relationship marketing.

Twtsynd - Twitter Syndication Network

2010-01-04T10:11:00.001-05:00

I love it when my team creates something new and exciting.

We just launched our newest project - Twtsynd. Twtsynd is a euonym for Twitter Syndication, and it is an a Web API that enables you to publish your tweets to other Twitter accounts. What we've done is create a network of Twitter users, in short, a syndication network. Just as news or television networks have syndicates that publish the network's messages, Twtsynd publishes member messages on all accounts within the network.

Twtsynd is our newest project, and we are quite proud of the response so far. Currently, Twtsynd's audience reaches over 24,000 Twitter users - and the service on barely two weeks old! The service has grown so fast already that we've had to close it to members only, while still in BETA.

*Benefits of Being A Twtsynd Member
Twtsynd enables you to publish your tweets on other member status feeds. As a result, it enables Members to reach a larger audience than what each could reach on his own. And because you are reaching a broader audience, you have a greater chance of gaining more interested, quality Twitter followers by using the service. There is almost no limit to the number of Twitter users you can reach with Twtsynd, as there is no limit to the size of the Network.

Currently, Twtsynd is an Invitation-Only, Member-Only site. So, if you would like to join our syndication network, please feel free to send a request to

http://gnosisarts.com/home/Special:Contact

Best regards,

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

It's not the traffic you get, it's the traffic you convert

2010-01-01T17:12:00.000-05:00

We've been in the business for a while now and we specialize in Internet marketing.

What we have found w/rt traffic is this: It's not the amount of traffic you get, it's the amount of traffic you convert.

Let me explain.

1 million hits X zero sales still = $0 in revenue, sales and profit.

Unless your business is a non e-commerce product or service - that is, you're not really selling anything - the amount of traffic is irrelevant. What is important is the quality, targeted-ness, and sales potential of the traffic you're getting.

There are many traffic generation schemes that will deliver tons of traffic. But it won't be good traffic and won't deliver any sales. In fact, some of these traffic generation schemes can actually hurt your search engine rankings because they are considered spammy, or link farms, or some other such offensive type of site to search engines. (Google is particularly hard on spammy sites - see Matt Cutts' blog - Matt is the Director of Spam Prevention at Google and if you've never heard of him or know what his department does, you're not a real online marketer)

We have built sites that get only drops of traffic, but which generate enough sales revenue to justify the site's existence.

By the same token, we have seen sites of businesses that get ridiculous amounts of traffic, but which go out of business!

I keep harping on this point b/c understanding it makes the difference between sound Internet marketing and fluff:

It's not the traffic you get, it's the traffic you convert. Period.

Just as in personal finance, it's not the amount of income you make, but the amount you keep that is important - the same is true for Web traffic. Sheer volume of traffic is meaningless as a statistic in itself; what is more important are factors like

* Number of Pageviews per visit
* Bounce Rate
* Avg. Time on Site
* Conversion Rate

The Two All-Important Metrics

Now, we have basically reduced the value of traffic, and by extension, a website, down to 2 all-important metrics. These metrics are

* CPA
* ROAS

CPA stands for Cost Per Acquistion (sometimes referred to as Cost Per Lead, but this is not technically the same thing). This is just what it sounds like. It's the amount of money or labor you have to spend to "acquire" one (1) sale from your website. Related to CPA is CPC - Cost Per Conversion. This is the amount of dollars or labor you must spend to generate one (1) website conversion on your website.

The idea is that if you get enough conversions, you will eventually get an acquisition and then you can more or less exactly calculate how much it costs to get that acquisition. For our purposes we are defining an "acquisition" as a sale or purchase, either online or offline, but one that is directly attributable to your website. So, if someone visits your site, then calls you, and then you place an order over the phone, that conversion and acquisition should really be attributed to your website.

When an acquisition is not defined as a sale or purchase, the metric is sometimes referred to as Cost Per Lead (CPL).

A website conversion is any measurable event - generated from your website - that leads to a potential sale: e.g.., completing a contact form; calling a phone number only shown on your website; downloading a document; subscrining to news updates; subscribing to a blog; referring a friend; sending a link to a friend; completing a survey or questionnaire; uploading a profile; requesting something in the mail; requesting a fax; sending a fax; clicking a certain video, image or button; commenting on a blog post; and (obviously) purchasing something off your site. The list is almost endless.

ROAS stands for Return on Ad Spend. This is the net gain, in dollars, of your revenue generated from the leads minus what you spent in ad dollars to generate the revenue.

If you look at all your internet marketing efforts as just so many different forms of "advertising", then if you keep the ROAS and CPA metrics in mind - you will go a long way towards establishing a successful online business. This will be true, regardless of whether your site is receiving 100 or 100,000 visitors.

I would much rather have a site that gets 100 visitors, but converts 2 or 3 or 5 % of those visits to sales than have a site that gets 1,000 visitors but converts only .001% to sales. That's a no-brainer.

When our firm consults with small business owners, we always try to drill this into them. We help them locate the best marketing channel online for each of their service or product offerings. By "best" is meant: that channel which doesn't necessarily deliver the largest volume of traffic, but the highest ratio of conversions and/or acquisitions. THAT is quality traffic.

And what we've found is that no one online marketing channel accomplishes this for every type of business. For example, our multimedia firm offers music lessons, professional writing services, basic web development, Public Relations and SEO services. We generate virtually 100% of our business online and we've been in business for 3 years now and have shown a profit each year.

For our business, no one marketing channel works for each of our diverse services. For our music business, local niche directories convert the best. But for our writing services, Google Adwords converts the best. For our SEO services, we use a combination of social media and a press release site that we've built to generate leads. These convert well. For our PR services, old-fashioned word-of-mouth seems to work the best.

And we get good results. Our site has increased in PageRank over the three years of existence at least 1 PagerRank point per year. We now have a PR 4, which is actually pretty difficult to get nowadays. A PR 4 today is like a PR 5.5 a couple of years ago, as Google as tightened up it's PageRank metric. We still don't get a significant amount more traffic this year than we did in year one, but our sales and revenue still increase each year. It has been a slight increase, but an increase nonetheless. Enough so that we've gone from a one-man shop to a 4 staff business.

Setting Each to Its Proper Task

2009-12-30T10:02:00.001-05:00

I've spent some time on this blog talking about the online "marketing mix." We've explored understanding it, and finding the right marketing channel for achieving a certain objective. This post is an addendum to that. In this post we will discuss Twitter as a Client Relations tool and blogs as a branding and trust-building tool.

*Twitter, Client Relations & Customer Service
I want to first talk about Twitter's value in customer service. While Twitter can be used in a few different ways - we've discussed some of these in other posts - Twitter really helps in enhancing customer service and client relations. The real-time nature of Twitter makes it easy to respond to customer questions, complaints and concerns.

Twitter's informal forum seems to encourage people to tweet things they wouldn't feel as comfortable with saying in an email or over the phone. The very human, down-to-earth quality of the site makes people sort of loosen up. In our experence, the mediation of the "status feed" encourages clients and customers to just start casual conversation with vendors. As a result, Twitter gives vendors a unique opportunity to really focus on relational marketing.

Don't neglect or underestimate the marketing and sales value of this.

*Blogs Build Value, Show Expertise & Engender Trust
With the advent of Twitter, some Internet marketers are saying that the traditional blog format will become obsolete or will soon vanish. We completely disagree with this. We are finding that blogs and Twitter (i.e., microblogs) serve very different purposes, and that the traditional blog forum is yet an indispensable part of the online marketing mix.

Blogs are still great for building value in a product, service or brand. For example, in a blog post you can extol the virtues of a product in detail and evoke fascination in a way that you just can't with a microblog site like Twitter. Also, I would wager that at least 40% of all Tweets link to a blog post expounding upon the Tweet in greater detail In this way, blogs and Twitter work very well together and create a kind of synergy with each other.

Blogs are also excellent media for showing readers your unique expertise. A new spin on a common problem; offering insight or information on a subject few others offer; demonstrating that you know what you're talking about; these are the province of blogs. You can't really do that with a microblog.

Finally, blogs can build trust in a way that microblogs cannot. For example, we will often send a blog post to a potential client or sales prospect as part of our sales and marketing strategy. As the prospect is thinking about whether or not to hire us, they can mull over a blog post that dives into detail on some subject od interest to them. This increases trust a little bit because we're not only showing our expertise but we're also giving them free knowledge and free consultation of sorts. This helps sow the seeds for closing the sale in the future.

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

Update on Our Twitter Syndication Network Service

2009-12-27T21:20:00.000-05:00

The BETA launch of our new Twitter syndication service is now well underway. To update our readers, our service now gives you the opportunity to join our Twitter Syndication Network. We are striving to build a network of Twitter accounts, with diverse audiences, much in the same way television, news and radio stations build networks. As a Member, you enjoy the benefits of getting their message out to all the followers within the Network. This will increase your online exposure as the Network grows.

Why Syndicate Tweets?
A news network consists of many syndicates. These syndicates broadcast or publish the network's messages on their individual channels. By combining the strengths of multiple broadcast channels, a network can reach a much larger audience than any single news publication or broadcast alone. In the same way, we have constructed a sort of Twitter Syndicate network. Members who utilize the service can syndicate their tweets throughout the entire network of Twitter member "channels", or accounts.

Using Our Twitter Syndication Service
To use our service, just visit http://s.gnosisarts.com/twtsynd. When you enter your tweet in the form, your tweet will be syndicated on the Twitter status timelines of each of the Member sites. Currently, the total follower count of all our Twitter Syndication Network Members is over 12,000. We have plans in 2010 to begin offering a subscription to the Network, with revenue-sharing.

Free Twitter Ads | Advertise, Publicize, Syndicate Your Tweets

2009-12-19T21:52:00.000-05:00

Gnosis Arts now offers free Twitter advertising for your business. We've always wanted a sort of Twitter syndication service, so we decided to build our own.

When you utilize our free service, your tweet will be automatically published throughout our Twitter feeds.Our Twitter feeds have over 6,000 followers. Your tweet is published within a few seconds.

Just visit http://gnosisarts.com/home/freetwitterads.html to use the service.

2009-12-07T09:08:00.000-05:00

We have a couple of new services to help give you more visibility for your business online.

First, don't forget to check out our latest eBook, "Cracking the MerchantCircle SEO Code." This new eBook shows you step by step how to optimize a MerchantCircle business website to get hundreds of visitors and page 1 search engine rankings. The eBook is available for download at http://s.gnosisartscom/seonj

Next, we've just launched a new SEO product called the Synergy SEO Schema (SM). With this new SEO methodology, we're able to put content - your content - on page 1 in the majore search engines. You can find out more at http://seo-synergy.site11.com

And our free press release site is an affordable, yet effective, way of promoting your business. You can include two anchor text hyperlinks in your release, and you can submit two free press releases per month. You can create SEO optimized press releases that ca rank highly in the search engines. We also have a Google News Syndication service as well, for a low monthly subscription fee.

Sent from my T-Mobile Dash

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster, NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

Social Media Delivers Poor ROI (Strikethrough) (cont'd)

2009-11-20T18:22:00.001-05:00

Yesterday's blog post was about whether social media can deliver a good ROI to your business. Though I had hastily claimed in the past that social media ROI was poor, today I am officially rescinding that statement. Today, I saw the power of social media in action and unleashed.

We launched social media promotions for a client website. A day prior to actuallt advertising the product, we used Twitter to generate buzz about the product. We did it as a sort of countdown. If you download our toolbar, you'll be the first to hear about the promo. If you become a fan on Facebook, you'll be next. And if you're a Twitter follower, you'll be third.

As I described yesterday, this strategy produced significant buzz and interest. I didn't know it would, but it did. It tilled the marketing soil for today's sales seed, if you will.

Today's results indicate very strongly that this worked well. Make a long story short, we generated 5 sales within a few hours of the toolbar update and social media promotional updates. There is little doubt in my mind that social media accomplished this because the product promo hadn't even gone out to our email subscriber list at the time the sales were reported.

This result, to me, is nothing short of spectacular. It proved to me that I was wrong in my initial assertion. I saw the proof with my own eyes.

Nevertheless, I do think that there are other factors that come into play to make social media promotion a success. I still think, for example, that the popularity of the brand is key; the less well known or sought after a brand is, the less effective a social media marketing campaign will be.

I also think that you have to do a social media promo in a certain way. I think a good deal of groundwork has to first be laid cultivating a following on Twitter and Facebook and nurturing those relationships. If your Twitter or Facebook feeds are just full of "sales spam" and you've spent little or no time in truly engaging and connecting with followers, on a non-business level, then the marketing value of social media is diminished.

It's amazing to me, people's need for sincere relationship and useful information - even online. If your business' social media profiles don't establish these two characteristics FIRST, then I don't think these sites will be effective marketing channels.

Sent from my T-Mobile Dash

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster, NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

Social Media Has Poor ROI (Strikethrough)

2009-11-20T08:54:00.001-05:00

In a previous blog post I made the audacious claim that social media sites like Twitter and Facebook have poor ROI. Then, in a following post, I argued that we should reconceptualize "ROI" for social media, perhaps renaming the acronym "Return on Information" or "Return on Influence." Clearly, our SEO team has been struggling in a back and forth way to understand relative strengths and weaknesses of social media with respect to business success.

Now, I am back over the fence. Recent happenings on one of our client Twitter feeds we manage has caused me to recant on my earlier claim that social media delivers poor ROI.

Yesterday, several things came together for me in a weird sort of serendipity. My client is about to publish a new holiday product, and I started a conversation about the product on his Twitter feed. Immediately I got several responses from enthusiastic, interested followers. "Sounds awesome!", "How can I get in on that!", and "You're on a roll today!" were just a few of the responses.

So, in an almost Taoist go-with-the-flow sort of way, carried away by the energy of the moment, I put together an online marketing promotion. It was quick, spur of the moment, not planned or thought out. I told our followers that if they download the client's toolbar, they would be the first to know about the special - via their desktop. (The toolbar has a Java API that enables me to send a desktop alert.)

"The next group to receive the news will be our Facebook fans," I continued "So, if you miss the toolbar update, you might wanna go ahead and start following us on Facebook because this will be the next round of updates."

The third group to be updated would be our Twitter followers, I explained. "After that, it'll be open to the general public and it's anybody's game."

All this promoting (marketing?) will happen before I publish the package on the main website. And before I send the deal out to our email subscriber list.

Incredibly, the "buzz" of this not-planned out, spur of the moment, "promotion" was astonishing. Engagement and response levels went through the ceiling; Twitterers were coming out of the woodworks to follow my client, to get in on the action. There was a dense air of expectancy that caused me to pause, seriously, to think about what had just happened.

And all this occurred in the timespan of 10 minutes, at the most!

*The Import
My PR Manager, Susan Marie, is a raving Twitter fan. She believes that Twitter will become the next big search engine and will revolutionize news production. She has been researching everything Twitter and is composing a position paper on the subject, the first draft of which I have reviewed. Her thesis is that Twitter mastery will be the next big thing in SEO best practices. I, on the other hand, am not yet sold on this.

But yesterday's exchange has caused me to step back from previous positions I've held. It is obvious that there is tremendous power in what we did through Twitter yesterday. In a span of minutes we generated "buzz", garnered a bunch of new followers, got several more folks to install our toolbar, got others to fan us on facebook ...

I mean, there IS a return on investment here; it is undeniable. Precisely quantifying that ROI may be impossible, but you can "feel" that it is there and that it is good, in a marketing sense. Intuitively, one can sense that a step forward for marketing and customer relations management took place.

And perhaps we've finally figured out how to "put it all together" with social media? I'm not sure, but I think we're getting closer. At any rate, I think now I am compelled to rescind my former comments on the poor ROI of social media!

In fact, I'm going to go check my social media profiles for this client right now :)

Sent from my T-Mobile Dash

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster, NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

Which Generates More PPC Conversions: AdWords or Yahoo?

2009-11-16T13:57:00.001-05:00

A very good article outlining some experimentation the author did on comparing Google AdWords to Yahoo Search Marketing ads. Google wins on this one.

clipped from www.searchengineguide.com

Clearly then, Google AdWords is a better choice if you are interested in clicks, impressions, and conversions. If you want the lower cost per click for the same position, it would seem that Yahoo is the better choice (though conversions are lower).

Qualities to Look for in a Great SEO

2009-11-16T09:02:00.001-05:00

Lately I've been thinking about what makes superior search engine optimizer. I ski myself, "If I needed to hire an SEO for our firm, what qualities or characteristics would I look for?" Here is my list of personality traits or skills that I would look for.

* Good Problem Solver
A good SEO knows how to correctly formulate a problem and figure out creative ways to solve it.

* Systematic Thinker
A good SEO knows how to approach Internet marketing systematically. S/he can see all the relevant elements of a plan and see what the relative importance of those elements are in the global strategy.

* An Analytic Thinker
I find philosophy students make good SEOs because they have good analytic skills. They know how to take a system apart and break it down to its basic constituents. They can then look at each of these elements and test them systematically.

* An Excellent Researcher
A good SEO has superior research ability. S/he knows how to locate key research and, more importantly, to interpret that research to achieve results. In short, what separates good SEOs from great SEOs is their ability to find information others can't find.

There are other more concrete skill sets that a good SEO will possess, but these, I think, are the most important. The others can be taught, but the four mentioned above are hard to teach. They represent more a way of thinking and problem solving rather than a tangible skill like knowledge of HTML or how to build ads in a PPC campaign.

If I were interviewing for an SEO specialist position, I would much rather have someone strong in the four aforementioned qualities and a little weaker in the more concrete qualities, than the other way round.

Sent from my T-Mobile Dash

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster, NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

SEO Strategies - A New SEO System

2009-11-10T17:04:00.000-05:00

We've devised a new SEO strategy. And it works.

Our SEO study has revealed that it is possible to obtain page 1 placement, on any major or minor search engine, for virtually any term. To do so, however, requires ingenuity and innovative SEO strategies that go beyond the on-page SEO potential of any one website.

S3℠ is all about the concept of synergy. We have taken this concept of synergy and simply applied it to the science of Search Engine Optimization. By utilizing the collective strength of several well-chosen sites, we are able to achieve astonishing SEO results for our clients - results which could scarcely be achieved through more conventional on-page SEO methods of manipulating a master site.

More to come on this...

The Importance of the AdWords Quality Score

2009-11-10T12:59:00.001-05:00

Google AdWords has a metric called Quality Score (QS for short). It is sort of like the PageRank metric. It is a numeric value from one to 10 that represents how relevant an ad's landing page is to the ad content.

Understanding how QS affects your ad performance is important to running a winning PPC ad campaign. We recently did some testing and confirmed the general rule: the lower your landing page QS, the less frequently your ads show for your selected keywords.

In addition, a low QS typically means you will have to pay more per click. But our research also found that a QS below 4 means, not only will your ads display less frequently overall, but they will display less frequently in high-click positions as well.

While it is not always easy to directly improve a page's QS, we have noticed that a site consisting of multiple pages on the theme of your ads generally produced a higher individual QS for any single page.

###

Sent from my T-Mobile Dash

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster, NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

What is advanced SEO, and who is expert in it?

2009-11-02T19:13:00.000-05:00

An essential question: What does advanced search engine optimization (SEO) consist of, and who has the expertise to achieve it?

I think that a new SEO method is necessary, which we at Gnosis Arts are working on, one that takes into account algorithmic changes and adapts SEO strategy accordingly.

To begin with, SEO is art and science: A broad range of strategies and techniques; not easily pinned down, but often derivative of the intuition of experience and analysis.

The true SEO expert knows that page rankings and positions alone are not enough.

An expert understands execution and the knowledge that if not properly done, things such as IP delivery and page rank sculpting can go very far afield from one's business goals.

There are things to keep in mind such as SERPS: Webopedia clarifies perfectly:

Short for search engine results page, the Web page that a search enginereturns with the results of its search. The major search engines typically display three kinds of listings on their SERPs. Listings that have been indexed by the search engine’s spider, listings that have been indexed into the searchengine’s directory by a human, and listings that are paid to be listed by the search engine.
Also see How Web Search Engines Work in the Did You Know . . . ? section of Webopedia.

The target audience must be persuaded to click on the link, and the graphics of the site must accommodate the SEO. Tag words and meta-tags must not be too cluttered; the exact information of the seeker must be clear.

(Developing a web friendly site is important, and will be covered next month. )

SEO Optimize Website , one of the gems of Search Engine techniques and social marketing internet analysis, whom I treat as a sort of holy grail, have this marvelous post which I show below. Oddly, one of the reasons I absolutely love their posting is that they make reference to so many of the tested methods which Eric Bryant, Director, Gnosis Arts Multimedia , and I, were intuitively using already!

Here is a synopsis from their lengthy post :

Web Design/Development

Landing page optimization for organic search results
ROI oriented usability testing (Split A/B Testing etc.)
Streamlining information architecture towards a predefined sales funnel
Enforcing security considerations to prevent crackers from compromising your system and hijacking your site’s authority
Implementing dynamic scalability for large sites by self replicating processes
Siloing content on important keyword optimized pages (instead of PageRank sculpting)

Web Analytics

Identifying the target audience by age, income, education, computer skills, region and understanding it
Conversion attribution to find out how many stages were involved in making a person finally appear on site or buy
Twitter analytics to follow your true fans and connectors who spread the word and realistic Twitter traffic numbers
Monitoring long tail keyword combinations and frequency for early acknowledgment of trends
Time based and historic keyword research to identify potentials for recurring traffic spikes

Content Creation

Creating videos, ebooks, infographics and other rich media for SEO purposes
Semantic SEO trying to understand user intent and serving the appropriate content
Business blogging beyond solely SEO copywriting keyword rich content for search engines
Writing of “magnetic Web content“, with “killer headlines” and irresistible hooks
Defining an SEO code of ethics for your company and anticipating upcoming industry standards
Allowing and managing and user generated conent with crowdsourcing, tagging/folksonomy
Predictive SEO in order to be the first to offer supplies for demands that don’t exist yet

Link Acquisition

On topic widget bait for long term recurring results (not just link bait)
Creating both funny and engaging quizzes. Example: SEO expert quiz
Preparing and implementing contests to actively empower audiences as brand evangelists
Establishing reputable awards or annual best of collections. Examples: Web 2.0 awards, Semmys
“Pulling a Calacanis” that is stirring controversy to gain attention and make adversaries and supporters to link to you

Social Media Outreach

Proactive online reputation building, instead of just reactive firemen like management
Social CRM for all relevant groups (beyond “customers”). Example: Influencers
Creating and spreading viral memes through various media independently of your own presence there
Creating communities both inside and outside your own websites. Example: Dell Idea storm
Disseminating social media press releases and cultivating blogger relations

Expanding into New Markets

Embracing Twitter plus other Microblogging for business purposes
International multilingual SEO on one site or creating parallel sites
Geo-location based local SEO and IP delivery for international businesses
Mobile search optimization with appropriate CSS formats for different use cases
Introducing “real life” SEO with links you can scan with your mobile (See SEO Optimize at: http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2009/06/30-advanced-seo-tactics-techniques-and-resources-55-links.html)

Semantic Web: The Future of SEO

2009-10-30T20:09:00.001-04:00

This week I participated in a very fruitful forum discussion on the Semantic Web. It helped me better conceptualize what it is; and, more importantly, how it can be applied to the subset of Internet marketing I specialize in - SEO. That discussion leads me to believe that the Semantic Web technology is really the future of SEO.

*What Is the Semantic Web?
This is a broad question, and you get different answers depending upon whom you ask. But I want to try to define it in terms of SEO.

Basically, the purpose of SW technology is to help search engines understand the meaning of web content better. That's really it in a nutshell.

For example, in previous HTML iterations, we used to use the tag to stand for "bold." told web browsers: "Display this text darker and thicker than the rest." It is, in essence, a representational tag; it doesn't tell the browser anything qualitative or evaluative about the text; it merely tells how to display it.

Then, the W3C came out with the tag. Though it may not be obvious, the tag is a sort of beginning of the reach toward a more semantic markup. It tells the browser "This text has a strong emphasis" but it does not tell the browser how exactly to render - or represent - the text. It gives data about the text, that it should be emphasized in some way.

Next, it became more proper to do away with these sorts of "old-school" tags. Though most of us still use them to give display directives to browsers, correct W3C markup is to use the or <div> elements, in conjuction with inline or external <style> directives, to display text features. So now we use code like



To tell the browser how to render something. More meaning is given here than in the . This new markup says, "Whatever is within this span, it is more important than whatever is outside the span." See how the markup is providing more and more info about the info?

*More and More Meaning
The point of all this is that Web markup language has been evolving towards providing more data about data, as opposed to simply ... Well ...conveying or displaying data. This "data about data" we call metadata. In other words, more and more coding language is being used to give information about the natural language it is manipulating.

If you can understand this basic idea, namely, that markup language is moving increasingly toward talking "about" language instead of merely representing language, then you're already on your way to grasping the import of the Semantic Web.

*So, What Is the Semantic Web, Again? And Why Is It Important to the Future of SEO?

Now, since 2005, roughly, there have been a family of markup languages that have been developed. And they have been developed for precisely this reason: to provide more "data about the data". Why do we need more metadata? Well, we (humans) don't need it so much. But machines (e.g., browsers, software, search engines, servers, etc) well, they do need it.

Let me give you an example of why.

Google the phrase "fried chicken in kentucky." What you get is several results for "Kentucky Fried Chicken." In fact, this will be the first search result. Now, there's nothing wrong with this, if in fact your intention was to find a nearby KFC. But what if your intention was to find how how people in kentucky like to fry chicken?

See, a search engine (i.e., a machine) has a hard time knowing what you mean. This is because there is no real machine language (e.g., HTML) that can explain this to the machine, until recently.

That's what the new family of markup languages aims to do: give enough data about data (i.e., your search term) to "understand" the true meaning of your search.

*Semantics and SEO
How does this all play into SEO? Well, one goal of SEOs is to achieve higher rankings for certain search terms, right? In order to do this, an SEO uses techniques to feed the search engines exactly the data about a website he wants them to know. He also attaches the relative importance of that data as well. In other words, the SEO tries to give the SEs added meaning, i.e., semantics.

As such, an SEO is very much concerned with "data about data", i.e., metadata. He manipulates meta keywords, meta descriptions, link relationships, alt img src, and <h> tags - and a whole host of other web markup data - in order to achieve these results.

In short, an SEOs success hinges upon being able to make sure that search engines read all of his website's content and understand it in the way he wants them to.

Well, this is all semantics, when you think about it.

The Semantic Web SEO would basically do all this, but to an ever-increasing degree. He would extract all representational coding from the old days and separate that out to a CSS file, for instance, and then recode the tags in a more Semantic way (e.g., using in place of ).

As he's doing this, he begins to see that virtually all tags are Semantic in spirit. He will start thinking about how each of them may be re-represented, recoded, to provide more data about the data.

And then he will make a discovery: that languages already exist to assist with this. Perhaps the most pertinent for SEO is one called Resource Description Framework A (RDFa). He will begin to learn of the SEO potential of RDFa. He may also start making broader use of Microformats - which are, in a sense, RDF prototypes. In short, he will begin to see that there really is no limit to what he can "communicate" to a search engine about his website content. The SEOs who master this the best will likely achieve higher rankings and greater visibility than the ones who don't.

...and THAT is the future of SEO, baby!

*Gnosis Arts: On the Cutting Edge
Just so you know, our team is already hard at work on learning these new semantic markup languages. We are doing our research and experimentation as this blog post is published. We always strive to stay at the very top of our game, not satisfied that any SEO agency should know more than we.

If your firm would like to talk to us about how we can enhance your website's visibility, rankings and traffic, contact us at

http://gnosisarts.genbook.com

Or by phone at 908.458.9122

Getting Your Tracking Right

2009-10-26T19:05:00.001-04:00

I recently posed a question in a forum asking what was the most important or useful SEO tip you've received. Of course, I got a lot of feedback - everything from do thorough keyword research to secure strong links. But the answer I thought was best was from an SEO who said, "Get your tracking right. " He glibly added that this was an area where "most SEOs were useless."

That's a pretty strong statement. But there is a hint of truth in it. Website tracking is both simple and complex. Simple in that it involves common sense. Complex in that it is not always easy to figure out how best to apply that common sense to real analytics situations.

Doing proper tracking isn't always what it seems. For instance, today I had to figure out how to determine the number of reservations we receive from a third-party website. Should be pretty simple, right? The only problem is: I cannot install tracking scripts on the third-party site, and the reservations booked through the site aren't populated in our in-house reservation database. Not to mention, the third -party site is in large part generated dynamically, thus compounding the problem.

After thinking long and hard on this, it came down to a rather simple, commonsense, solution: Call the Director of Operations and get a report of the number of reservations generated from the site in question!

This is the simplest, quickest and most effective way of tracking that particular variable. And it had nothing to do with scripts and goals and funnels and advanced segments.

In other cases the simplest way to track web activity is to create duplicate routes to a conversion goal. Of course, you have to be careful with this option so as to avoid any duplicate content issues that may arise, but this ca be mitigated with proper meta tagging.

At other times it is most effective to create a rewritten URL to track visitor activity. At other times it may be best to manually tag the landing page URL. Still other times it may be easiest to create a contact form with special notes in it. Then again, another situation may call for customizing a script to track an artificial pageview. There are any number of tracking situations and possibilities.

But the overarching question to ask in web tracking is: 1. What exactly do I need to track? And 2. What is the simplest, most direct way to track it?

Bing, Twitter & SEO

2009-10-22T16:55:00.000-04:00

Well, today Bing has launched it's Bing Twitter search engine. It is supposed to be the closest thing to real-time search the search world has seen. Of course, it raises all sorts of questions in my mind as an SEO. Like: How will this development alter SEo strategy; how the search algos determine which Tweets to index; etc. Our staff today has been peeking at Bing Twitter (I think it should be called Twitter BING!!) to try to see if we can decipher a pattern to it. So far, can't figure it out. More to come on this latest of developments.

Goals. Funnels, Conversions,URL Tagging, Customizing Ga.Js Scripts...

2009-10-16T20:07:00.001-04:00

C'mon, Now!

Let's simplify all this s**t, for cryin' out loud!

While Google Analytics offers some powerful
tools for advanced, in-depth tracking, these tools can be daunting to figure out how to configure, to say the least. Configuring the Analytics javascript, let's face it, it ain't the easiest thing for the average Jane. And setting up goals, tracking conversions and manually tagging URLs aren't the most straightforward of tasks, either. Add to that tracking AJAX events, recording dynamic pageviews, and other higher level analytics, and you can easily see why none but the stout of heart cash in the chips.

As a result of this, I want to offer a simplified approach to accurately tracking your website visitor activity. This approach won't necessarily be sufficient in all circumstances, but it works and we've employed it successfully in at least 75% of cases.

This could be a really, really long post, as I could go into case studies and give far more detail than you care for. So, I'll try to keep in short(ish) and simple.

*The Analytics Axiom
The Tao of tracking a conversion process, or a funnel route, or a goal - whatever you want to call it - rests upon this one All-Important Principle:

>> Set things up so that the end page you want to use as the conversion "goal" can ONLY be reached by ONE AND ONLY ONE route.

That's it; That's the rule. If you master that one principle, you will be able to bypass much of that other crap I mentioned in the first few sentences of this blog post - and you will have reliable numbers for the majority of the cases in which you need to perform advanced tracking and measurement

An Important Distinction Between Conversions and Funnels

2009-10-16T17:24:00.001-04:00

This may be why your getting contradictory data when viewing the Conversions report v. the Funnel Visualization report.

clipped from www.google.com

The goal conversions on the goal conversions report shows all visitors that have hit the conversion page of a goal regardless of their entrance path.

The funnel visualization page's goal conversion number shows all visitors that have successfully passed through all required steps in the goal funnel before hitting the goal conversion page. If you have selected the Step Required checkbox on the goal settings page then a visitor is required to visit this first step's URI before they will be counted towards a goal conversion on the funnel viz page. See this Help Center article for more info about the Required Step check box: https://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=72714&hl=en_US .

Some SEO adages to bear well in mind

2009-10-11T14:58:00.000-04:00

Chelsea Rollins of Ambrias Company has joined forces with Susan Kovalinsky and Eric Bryant (Director, Gnosis Arts Multimedia Communications) to ensure that small businesses go "hot" across the net. Working within the framework of some essentials are part of the dedicated and ongoing platform for success that this team is committed to.

To begin with, it is essential to understand that search engine optimization is an ongoing process; along the way one learns to hone in on the essential successful elements of SEO and can then tinker and "tweak" the process as it unfolds.

Certainly good press releases are the bedrock of SEO, along with carefully placed articles with proper tagging and key words within. (Wikipedia is one such, but can be problematic unless the "less is more" adage is adhered to!) Of course social bookmarking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Technocrati, Current, Digg, Newsvine, are a help; so, too, are things like OpEd pieces, expert blogging and website creation.

The internet is a complex give and take network of connections within connections, patterns within patterns, and I have found again and again that my pieces have ranked #1 on Google Engine search because I have intuitively "ridden" the waves of certain key ideas which then "piggyback" onto others, creating a sort of "fanning" effect. Together with Eric Bryant, I was able to turn a simple press release promoting a little-known British quantum theorist at a Manhattan event - through use of key words, proper images and text, and certain well placed promotional ideas - into a success which drew over 300 members of the New York press and public to the Roosevelt Hotel. Events management from the hotel told me that they were totally awed, stunned actually, that this occurred on a Monday night in August, at 6 p.m., which they informed me was about the most inopportune time they could have imagined. I was told by one PR expert that the feat we had pulled off was "tantamount to raising the dead"! So I would venture to say I am growing quite confident as to my methodical approach to SEO!

Additionally, I have found that "lucky accidents" regarding prestigious online media picking up certain of my press releases were in the end not so much chance, but a reward for the steadfast attention to correct timing and positioning, with precision of key phrases, which I had allowed to be my lodestar and guide. A blending of art and science would certainly seem to be the key to the process of SEO and Internet marketing.

Results are not always immediate, and can take weeks and months before they "take". Being a student of SEO involves some patience, and a keen eye for patterns. I might restate in closing that intuitive grasp of patterns is a talent, a true tool of the inward eye and mind, and is perhaps the distinguishing mark of the SEO "expert".

A couple of ideas for good measure: 1. Web analytics will not tell you much unless you have a clear idea of exactly your target goals and tasks. A good, clear plan is indispensable.

2. URLs and links must be SEO "charged"; conducive to the interconnection of the internet traffic patterns.

In the end, it is a flowing process of staying informed, keen watchfulness, diligence, and the will to succeed which forms the underpinning of successful SEO.

An excellent article to pore over is this one: http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2009/06/30-advanced-seo-tactics-techniques-and-resources-55-links.html

LinkedIn & Relationship Marketing

2009-09-14T09:19:00.001-04:00

To me, LinkedIn is the best social/business networking site out on the market. And not just because of its Internet marketing potential, but for many reasons, including its business model, its products and monetization scheme, its security and privacy measures, the genuine usefulness of its apps, to name a few. To me, along with Facebook and Wikipedia, LI epitomizes an excellently conceived and operated social media site.

One of the reasons I think LinkedIn is superior is its ability to be a catalyst to relationship marketing. The structure and purpose of LinkedIn really lends itself to participation from serious business owners, professionals, freelancers and the like, and not just "kids" who want to "play around" online. Among social media sites, we have found that LinkedIn - more than any other - creates a space for genuinely fruitful business relationships to blossom.

* What Is Relationship Marketing?
I suppose there are a lot of definitions, but I see relationship marketing as creating meaningful business related relationships for the purpose of marketing goods and services. RM involves taking the time to nurture a relationship to build trust.

* LinkedIn's Advanced Search Features
We regularly uncover new marketing uses for LinkedIn. We are discovering that LI can be a good tool to really foster face to face relationships with other business owners and executives. LI is able to do this by virtue of its advanced search features. These features allow you to locate individuals in your geographic location and sphere of influence.

For example, I found perhaps the best PR consultant with whom I've ever worked on LinkedIn. I hired her last year and she has been an extraordinarily valuable asset to our firm.

In addition, we have garnered a few clients for small projects, directly from LinkedIn participation. Two of those clients wrote us very nice recommendations, thereby enhancing the credibilty and worthiness of our brand.

Our development team has also utilized LinkedIn to create a new product offering that has generated some revenue.

And through LinkedIn, we established a key business partnership with another business which has resulted directly in the growth of one of our prospect acquisition services.

This type of interaction - you can't put a price on it in terms of conventional ROI metrics. However, most anyone can agree that a site that can make all this possible is of significant value to a business operation. Linkedin is a superb resource for those who really want to get serious about relationship marketing.

How Does A small Business do Branding?

2009-09-01T15:38:00.001-04:00

(Clipped from http://community2.business.gov/bsng/board/message?board.id=GeneralBusiness&message.id=661&jump=true)

Branding is all about product differentiation. In a world where competition is so great between multiple products trying to occupying the same niche space in a given "market-position", it has become essential literally to invent ways to attribute, highlight, and emphasize characteristics, and attributes of a product, which would otherwise be absolutely similar to any other product occupying that very space. So why would you think a consumer would pick your product over somebody else's? You tell them it's different, give them a name to remember it by.

For example FCUK T-Shirts are crappy, run-off-the-mill, ordinary T-Shirts. It's just that particular brand name made it stand out - especially among the vocabularly challenged teenagers (that was meant to be a joke).

Here's what Steve Manning, managing director at Igor, a branding and naming firm based in San Francisco, had to say about branding

"A brand creates an image in the mind of the consumer. It says something is different at your firm, something worth more than business as usual. If your firm is a commodity, your customers will choose you solely on the basis of price or getting something for free. If you've got a brand, you're selling a lifestyle and you can sell anything you want,"
Here's a link to the rest of the article:
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jun2008/sb2008069_694225.htm

How do you achieve branding?? There is no formula, or a set way. You just have to think up something that will stick in people's minds.

Examples are:

- 2 syllable names
- bright colors
- eye-catching, crazy shapes
- names of icons Obama or Paris Hilton (though the two can never be mentioned in the same sentence

- provide value addition - like a freebie, if you get this or something

Social Media ROI: "Return on Information"?

2009-08-20T08:52:00.001-04:00

As social media marketing becomes more popular, quantitative minds are increasingly asking what is the ROI of SMM. By ROI , they mean, of course, Return on Investment. Usually this is framed in the form of: if I spend X dollars and Y time on SMM, how much revenue, R, will be generated?

As studies are showing (along with our own firm's research) it is difficult to calculate ROI for social media in these terms. In fact, often it is impossible. What we all are finding is that it takes an enormous time investment to generate any revenue using social media. If we translte that time investment into an hourly rate, and then subtract that figure from any revenues generated, we would be sorely disappointed; the result would put us in the red, for sure.
The results of SMM are typically unpredictable at best, downright disheartening at worst.

Therefore, some social media marketers have ditched the conventionl ROI metric, attempting to replace it with newer, more appropriate acronyms. "Return on Influence", "Return on Importance", and "Return on Impact" are a few alternative constructs we've seen. But we'd like to propose our own.

*The Most Valuable Commodity
In a previous post, I quoted a line from one of my favorite movies, "Wall Street". In it, Michael Douglas says, "The most valuable commodity I know of is information, wouldn't you agree?" And we do agree. Therefore, we suggest the phrase "Return on Information" as the better construct to use when evaluating the merits of SMM.

We suggest this because we think the true power of social media lies in the collective amount of information being shared and passed around, at lightening speed. If you keep your eyes open, you can find a wealth of valuable information just floating around on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. But you have to be there to find it.

For example, just yesterday, we discovered a virtually untapped, emerging market that we can capitalize with relatively low cost and few barriers to entry.

You can't put a $ value on this type of information. You can't post it up on some PowerPoint presentation or some Excel spreadsheet in a nice, neat little graph. Nevertheless, this is information which directly improves the bottom line.

When talking of the benefits of SMM, we think "Return on Information" is most apt.

Social Media Marketing Delivers Poor ROI

2009-08-17T09:22:00.001-04:00

We have confirmed it: social media sites have poor ROI. That is not tosy that you won't generate any business from them. But we're talking about the ratio of time, labor and money to revenue generated. You have to lwys keep that in mind.

You have to spend so much time on them, and the return is still so random, sketchy. Not reliable enough to really put as a priority.

We have been regulars on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. We have gotten no new business from either Twitter or Facebook. LinkedIn has fared better; we've managed to capture a few clients through LinkedIn, but it's been an awful lot of man hours in the making.

So, our conclusion is still the same. If you are putting together an Internet marketing or SEO plan, you should focus the bulk of your time nd money into AdWords and freelance sites like ELance. Also worthy of significant attention are local directories where you can advertise your products and services. We have found that these three types of sites deliver the highest ROI, still.

PPC & Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

2009-08-05T09:04:00.001-04:00

Assuming that your PPC ads are delivering clicks, but that the clickers aren't converting, what can you do to increase your conversions? Is there a sound methodology for Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) you can apply? This post isn't intended to give you concrete answers, but to get you thinking about CRO analytically and objectively.

The first question is, obviously: Why didn't the visitor perform a conversion act (e.g., submit a contact form, call for more information, make a purchase, download a white paper, upload a pictures, etc)?

Here are possible answers to that question:

1. The visitor was repulsed by the landing page
2. The visitor lost interest after surveying the product/service
3. Assuming the ad was enticing enough to lead the visitor to the site, perhaps the website content failed to meet the visitor's expectations set in the ad copy.
4. They didn't like the design or images
5. The price was too high
6. They didn't trust the service/product for some reason
7. They were not at the purchase point in the buy process (e.g., they may havejust been in the information gathering stage)
8. Your product/service wasn't what they were looking for

These are just a few of the reasons why a visitor might not convert. There are many more potential reasons.

The key takeaway is that we can realy only know why a user did not perform a conversion act by getting into the mind of the user. And the only way to do THAT is by, well, asking them. These types of surveys form part of what is called usability testing.

If your business needs usability testing on your website, contact our SEO consultants at the

http://s.gnosisarts.com/seonj

Which PPC Metric Is Most Important?

2009-08-04T09:07:00.001-04:00

CPC. CPM. CTR. ROI. ROAS. Conversion Rate. With all these metrics, which one should you focus on? Which one is most important to understand?

Of course, the answer is somewhat subjective, depending, in part, upon your particular marketing plan and tastes. Furthermore, the answer may not be uniform across all marketing elements. Because I'm becoming an increasingly more "bottom line" guy, for me, the Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) is becoming all-important.

*What Is Cost Per Acquisition?
The definition of CPA is pretty straightforward: CPA is the amount of money you spend to acquire one customer or sale. The term is usually used in context of a PPC advertising campaign, wherein the the term means: the amount of money you spend in clicks (or conversions) to generate 1 sale or client.

In short, CPA is the "metric of the bottom line". In our consulting, we've found that this is what most clients really want to know, before we can sell them on the benefits of a PPC campaign. And it makes sense why. Knowing how much it will cost me in ad spend to get 1 customer makes it a snap to calculate the ROAS and ROI of the ad campaign and, thus, to determine whether a client can afford a PPC campaign at all.

CPA also can give insight on price setting, sometimes alerting a client to when he's charging too little or too much for a product or service. In this regard, CPA also helps more easily calculate a business' overall profitability, as the CPA can be directly subtracted from the overall revenue the business generates.

Guide to Social Media Marketing, v.2

2009-08-03T08:50:00.000-04:00

The long anticipated second installment of our "Guide to Social Media Marketing" is now here! Be sure to get your copy today. Just visit http://s.gnosisarts.com/seonj to purchase access to the PDF.

As you know, v.1 was published in early 2008. It covered the social media "Top 10" (at the time) and included invaluable tips and tricks to get the most out of sites like YouTube, Digg and Del.Icio.Us. Since we've just released v.2, we're giving away v.1. To check it out, absolutely free, just visit http://s.gnosisarts.com/seonj

*V.2 - Streamlined, and Includes Twitter Optimization

Volume two is shorter (14 pages) and more streamlined than v.1. This is because it only focuses on three social media sites, instead of 10. Like we tell our clients, we don't try to do everything ordinary, we do a few things extra-ordinary. Therefore, v.2 shows you precise steps for using Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook for effective, results oriented marketing. Master these 3 sites and you have all you need to know to skyrocket your social media marketing campaign.

One key difference in the second volume is that we demonstrate how these sites are good avenues for email marketing, an often overlooked aspect of SMM which other guides exclude. Each of the three can actually enhance and augment a current email marketing campaign, and each site has intrinsic strength in generating targeted, quality business prospects. This is another commonly missed factor in most other social media guides.

In addition, we show you how to think about social media the way pro SEOs think about search engine optimization. The Guide describes novel, outside-the-box ways to utilize the internal search algorithms of these sites to generate leads, improve SERPs and, most of all, get new business.

The Guide to Social Media Marketing is a must-have for any serious SEO or search marketer. To purchase the Guide, visit http://s.gnosisarts.com/seonj

If you or your firm would like to speak to one of our SEO consultants about how we can help you promote your website, please feel free to contact us at http://gnosisarts.com/contact

The Philosophy of Marketing

2009-07-28T19:13:00.001-04:00

I am both a marketer, and a philosopher. So you can easily understand how it is that I just had a thought to create a blog titled the philosophy of Marketing. The idea would be to explore common marketing concepts from a philosophical perspective. I don't know if others have done this, but it seems interesting enough to try.

I should probably read a basic primer on marketing, like an entry level marketing textbook or something, first. Ha!

I got the idea by thinking about terms such as "value proposition" and "scalability". You know, every discipline has its own nomenclature, and marketing is no exception. I think it might be a fruitful study, to analyze such terms on a deeper level of abstraction.

Or, it may just make me more confused...

Who knows.

How Important Is W3C Compliance to SEO, Really?

2009-07-28T10:11:00.001-04:00

Found this today at SEJ. What do you think?

clipped from www.searchenginejournal.com

If a site validates to the strictest of W3C validation, it is semantically correct. It’s been proven that the SEs prefer a semantically written page. It relays the information faster, cleaner, and easier to read. I’ve done testing myself on websites with identical content, one W3C valid and one not. The W3C valid site placed higher every time. In a competitive keyword situation I know my W3C valid site has a better chance at the top spot.

Conversion Optimization: Picking Up Where SEO Leaves Off

2009-07-23T10:35:00.001-04:00

This is where it's at, folks

clipped from www.isedb.com

Picking Up Where SEO Leaves Off

Search engine optimization (SEO) gets them to the site. What they do (or don't do) once SEO has done its job is up to the site owner or designer.
Most visitors view the home page and leave. Wrong products. Weird typeface, confusing navigation – it can be anything from color motif to lack of clear prices. SEO gets them there, but it doesn't convert them to buyers.

What Is Conversion Optimization?

Is it easy for visitors to find the right product? Is check-out convenient, offering numerous payment options? Is there a telephone number visitors can call to talk to a human? If not, the site isn't conversion optimized.

"I've Been Known to Locate Things from Time to Time."

2009-07-14T18:16:00.001-04:00

One of my all-time favorite movies is "Shawshank Redemption", starring Morgan Freeman and Tom Robbins. In the film, Red (played by Freeman) is known as "the guy who can get things." Red has a penchant for locating hard-to-find items for fellow inmates and exchanging them for smokes, liquor and favors.

This knack Red has for "finding things" affords him a measure of status in Shawshank prison which other inmates don't have. You might say that Red has a "competiive advantage" over others inside Shawshank. When asked by Andy (played by Robbins) whether he can smuggle a racy poster of Rita Hayworth into the prison, Red replies in a smug tone, "I'm known to locate things from time to time."

*Research and SEO
What is my point to this introduction, and what does it have to do with SEO?

I mention Red to underscore a conclusion that I've come to in my tenure as an Internet marketer: it all boils down to research.

To me, what distinguishes a good SEO from a great SEO is his research ability. I make spectacular discoveries, almost on a daily basis, which enrich my knowledge and enhance my Internet marketing skill. There is so much information out there in Cyberspace that it's staggering, and you can learn how to do just about anything you can imagine, if you know where to look. In my experience, being a great SEO is as much about being a guy "who can locate things from time to time" as it is about anything else.

*Research: The Competiive Edge
What makes Gnosis Arts a superior Internet marketing firm is not the fanciness of our presentation. Nor is it throwing tons of loot at projects and hoping for the best. What makes us a superior marketing firm is our ability to be "the guys who can locate things from time to time."

Our superlative research ability is where we derive our competitive edge over other small firms. Daily we find the needle in the stack of needles, sifting through obscene amounts of cyber-dribble to find that mising gold coin And we do find it, every day.

It's amazing what you can find, if you look hard enough. Our research has enabled us to create search engine filters that deliver a higher quality of information than even Google at times. Through our research, we've been able to build very sophistocated Web applications, without a shred of formal coding education; locate virginal markets no one's even thought about; generate laser-targeted leads for clients; locate some of the juiciest, free links around, and more.

*"The Most Valuable Commodity ..."
"The most valuable commodity I know of is information," said the investment tycoon, Gordon Gekko, in "Wall Street". And we concur. In the democracy of the Internet, the competitive edge doesn't necessarily go to the one who spends the most dough, but to the one who finds things other people just ... can't find.

In Cyberspace, the most valuable commodity is not money or a magnanimity; it's information.

What is 'Quality Score' and how is it calculated?

2009-07-13T09:33:00.001-04:00

clipped from adwords.google.com

The AdWords system calculates a 'Quality Score' for each of your keywords. It looks at
a variety of factors to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user's search query. A
keyword's Quality Score updates frequently and is closely related to its performance. In general, a high Quality
Score means that your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC).

influencing your keywords' actual cost-per-clicks (CPCs)
estimating the first page bids that you see in your account
determining if a keyword is eligible to enter the ad auction that occurs when a user enters a search query
affecting how high your ad will be ranked

The Craggy Road to Internet Marketing Glory

2009-07-10T20:07:00.001-04:00

Achieving "success" in SEO and Internet marketing can follow a very rough, rugged road. Google algorithms change monthly; new web apps are born and die daily; advancements in PPC ad serving technology happen just about quarterly; new and improved competitive intelligence and analytics tools come out practically weekly.

Add to this: New social media sites spring up seemingly weekly; new search engines pop up dang near biannually. What worked a year ago suddenly stops working today. And the list goes on.

It's a mad, mad SEO world out there now, folks. You'd better believe it. Now, more than ever, Internet marketing strategy is all important. Get your strategems wrong in the beginning, and forget about any decent conversions, rankings or ROI at the end. Now, more than ever, goals and objectives must be clearly defined, feasible, proven, achievable, and time-tested.

Additionally, in order to compete, IMs must become more mathematically knowledgeable than ever before. We must truly understand things like ROI, ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), confidence intervals, A/B testing. We must master the realms of probability and ratios. And, in the age of semantic web and social media dominance, we must return to the era of gathering increasingly sophisticated market research.

Increasingly success in SEO is becoming more dependent upon quantitative metrics; success now relies more on science and experimentaton, less on chance, keyword density, and simple link building.

Given all this, how do you devise a sound Internet marketing strategy? We've asked this question in a previous post. Now we must ask it again.

*What Is the Master Objective?
You've got to ask your clients this. And they've got to be able to supply an answer more specific than, "We wanna be on page 1 in Google for all our target terms." In the olden days of SEO (3 years ago?) this was a legitimate answer. It was easier then to know what needed to be done to get that Page 1, 2 or 3 ranking for this or that keyword phrase.

But not quite so now. Now, with the advent of Personalized Search algos; the segmentation of search results into their own departments where rarely the twain shall meet (e.g., Web, Video, Image, News, Blog, etc.) - each with slightly (or not so slightly) different ranking algorithms; now with a more ubiquitous employment of IP and behavioral SERP display; now with not insignificantly differing algorithms for Local Search Results than for the main default search results; changes in the nofollow rules and PageRank sculpting; you get the point.

These changes have forced us as search engine marketers to seriously evaluate and rethink, if neccessary, our client's SEM goals and objectives. These monumental changes have forced us to force our clients to answer the all-important question: What is your primary objective with respect to Internet marketing? What, utimately, do you want to have happen?
What are your goals, and are their results measurable, not merely achievable?

*Remembering the Bottom Line
Business is business. And every business has to be concerned with its bottom line. Without this concern, there is no more business. Period. No more business means: no more website to do any SEO on.

Thus it seems to me, the most crucial question to ask is: What is the objective? And it also seems to me that there is really only one answer to this question: to generate more leads, clients and revenue.

Now, this seems a tautologous statement, you say. "Isn't is obvious," you reply, "that the main objective is generating more business?" Or, as we black folk are wont to say, "I see yo' lips moving, but you ain't sayin' nothing!"

Oh? I'm not? Then why do we as pro marketers continue to implement strategy and practice tactics which betray the fact that generating more clients is NOT really our objective?

*Internet Marketing Is Really About Leads and Conversions

But I digress. The point I'm trying to make is this: Internet marketing is really about nothing more - or less - than generatng qualified leads who have a higher probability of converting to customerhood than not. That's it. THAT'S the ball game. He who does this well, stays in business (on the Internet, at least). He who does this poorly, does not.

Now, if that is the main objective, the question then becomes: How do I, as an Internet marketing consulting, best utilize the Internet, with all its power and technology, to accomplish THAT sole objective for THIS particular client?

Answer that question, and you win. Checkmate. Touchdown. Goal. Game, Set, Match.

*But How?
Here's what our research and experimentation indicates:

Obejctive: Get more leads, clients, revenue

Goals:
A. Lead Generation
1. Use our branded RSS/social media lead generation tools, which generate 1-3 qualified leads per week.
2. Use EBay to generate an email list of "hotp prospects
3. Create a Facebook Page for our client and launch an engagement ad campaign to garner followers (another word for "follower" is ... "qualified lead")
4. Have a developer build a FaceBook app for the client. This will generate regular users who can be marketed to by e-mail. (another word for "regular user" is ... You guessed it ... "qualified lead")
5. Use LinkedIn internal search to find people and/or businesses who need our client's services (This is actually easier than it sounds)
6. Create engagement objects (i.e., enter-your-name-and-email-to-get-something-free forms) to generate an email list of prospects. (another word for prospects is ... Do I sound redundant??)
7. Along with #6, strategic SEO. The purpose of SEO is now moving away from "rankings for the sake of rankings and (stinky) traffic" to "rankings for the sake of ...." Fill in the blank. You guessed it: qualified leads. There's no point in ranking #1 for a term, getting 1 million (uninterested) visitors by virtue of that term, and getting no prospects (or leads) to convert to new business. We must break out of the "old paradigm" of "get-a-high-ranking-to-deliver-massive-(crappy)-traffic". Rather, we must start inching our way towards the "New Web 3.0 paradigm": "get-a-high-CONVERTING-strategically-evaluated-ranking-to-deliver-QUALIFIED-LEADS."

...and last, but certainly not least ...

8. PPC Advertising
PPC advertising still has a good ROAS (provided you ad manager knows what she's doing.) With Google's improved keyword suggestion tools, augmented demographic-based targeting, and improved Content Network system, it is now a bit easier to predict conversion rates and better target ads. Despite the naysayers, web surfers are still clicking those ads.

B. Getting More Clients
1. Acknowledge that getting more clients starts with getting more conversions
2. To get more conversions, you need a data architecture that doesn't merely convey useful information, but that LEADS the website visitor TOWARD a action.
3. PPC still is most effective here. Don't neglect it.

C. Generating more revenue
1. This will happen as A and B happen
2. But generating more revenue is about more than just getting more clients. The really savvy Internet marketer will see the website ITSELF as a monetization vehicle.
3. Here, e-commerce comes to the fore. Nowadays, there should be no website that doesn't have SOMETHING that can be purchased directly off the site. Even if it's something that only costs $1. This web based product, when tied to a lead generating engagement object, has the potential to make money WHILE AT THE SAME TIME producing a potential repeat customer. A white paper to download, a CD to purchase, some collected research to disseminate, adspace to sell, any of these types of products can be monetizable, scalable and lead-generating.

Welcome to the new Web 3.0 marketing. Are you ready?

Come Revel in All That We Have To Offer

2009-07-09T19:02:00.001-04:00

I'm just kickin' back, on the train ride home, looking over the firm's 2nd qtr. objectives ... and just really proud of all our team has accomplished. So, I thought a kudos post was in order.

First kudos goes to the head of our writing division - Susan Marie Kovalinsky. Susan Marie's been doing a splendid job in assisting our clients with Wikipedia article creation (http://morpheme.wikidot.com/wikipedia-writing-service). She's also rockin' the cabasa on our PR campaign. She's managed to promote our brand name in just about every major online media channel, including the AP, NYTimes, and Google News.

High five goes to Kathryn Gronsbell. Katy joined our team last month as an intern and heads up our audio/video editing dept. She's also pitched in to take care of many administrative tasks I needed help with. She helps keeping our press release site up to date (http://gnosisarts.com/pr). We appreciate you, Katy!

I can't forget Barbara Hawkes, our chief marketing officer. Barb's been hard at work with our SEO clients doing link building, drafting SEO proposals, and conducting initial SEO phone consultation (http://s.gnosisarts.com/poco). She is also an excellent researcher and Web data architect, always keeping our research dept. current on the latest applications, developments and buzz in the SEO community.

And how can I not say "thank you" to David Cervantes. Affectionately known as "tati," David supplies us with SEO clients. He also does an awesome job heading up our graphic design (Adobe is NOT my forte!) (http://go-dev.com)

Vivek Joshi is the brains behind our ASP.NET and AJAX development. He's the engine behind many of the projects we work on at The New Fine Arts Lab (http://gnosisarts.com/new-fine-lab).

Gnosis Arts truly strives to be cosmopolitan in scope. We're pleased to have Diana Andrabi on our team. A resident of Lisbon, Portugal, she handles our Wikipedia editing and coding, working hard on developing our own MediaWiki projects. She has just taken on client relations while Kathryn is traveling abroad in Paris for the month of July. (Learn more about Diana at http://gnosisarts.com/partners)

And last but not least, our two piano teachers, Gabriel Cano and Dalia Dayan. (http://gnosisarts.com/nj-piano-music-teacher)
They've been great at heading up our music department, teaching lessons and developing patented curricula for the piano.

We look forward to the remaining two quarters with eager anticipation. Check back often to stay updated on our latest developments. We have a little something for everyone.

Video SEO Has Come A Long Way

2009-07-08T08:28:00.001-04:00

I discovered a superb resource for video SEO specialists. It's call ReelSEO, and the Web address is www.ReelSEO.com. The site is a comprehensive, virtual compendium of tools, strategies, research and techniques for video SEO.

As with all things SEO, best practices are still being formulated somewhat. The industry changes so fast that it is virtually impossible for any one SEO agency to know all there is to know about every nook and cranny of SEO.
It was really refreshing to find ReelSEO, to see just how far VSEO research has come, even compared to a year ago.

In fact, I myself learned quite a bit of new "stuff" from reading the Reel SEO blog. I commend it to you for your knowledge and learning.

A/B Testing: The Science of PPC Ad Management

2009-07-07T08:23:00.001-04:00

If you've done any PPC management you have probably heard the phrase "A/B Testing." But what exactly does it mean? And how do you do it?

At Gnosis Arts, we pride ourselves on being data and experiment driven. But we also pride ourselves on being pragmatic. Therefore, we try always to simply complex concepts for our clients.

* What Is A/B Testing?
A/B testing refers to a scientific approach to PPC management. Basically how it works is, before launching a PPC ad campaign, you first create two campaigns. Both campaigns have the same parameters: the same keywords, the same ads, the same spend, and so on. In others words, you start by creating two exactly identical campaigns.

One of the campaigns will be your Control Group. If you've taken any basic level statistics courses, you might recall that a control group is the group in which the variables to be tested don't change. The second campaign will be the Test Group. This is the group where you test different variables, altering them here and there, to determine which one(s) is influential in the overall performance of the campaign.

A/B testing is useful because it enables you to isolate a single parameter in order to measure its efficacy. For example, in one campaign you can turn on the content network, leaving it off in the other campaign. Since the only difference between the two campaigns is the content network, any difference in performance can likely be attributed to that variable.

*Repeatability
According to the scientific method, to be truly scientific, any difference in campaigns would have to be repeated a significant number of times in order to be conclusive. This is to eliminate the possibilty that the effect of a particular variable did not happen by chance.

*What A/B Testing Accomplishes
With A/B testing, you have a better chance of maximizing the effectiveness of your ad campaigns. You can isolate variables such as Max CPC, test the strength of a particular managed placement, test the worth of a particular demographic factor, and more.

We recommend also keeping a campaign testing log where you record all you changes, on a day to day basis by date. This will help you visualize how each variable is affecting the campaign.

Tracking Conversions in AdWords

2009-07-05T18:37:00.001-04:00

It's not always easy to track conversions in a PPC ad campaigns such as Google AdWords. One reason for this is that AdWords - unlike some other analytics applications - doesn't display visitor IP address. (There is a way to get this data in AdWords, but to do so requires a configuration which violates the AdWords TOS). Nevertheless, even without IP address tracking, it is still possible to track a conversion.

* Using Google AdWords and Analytics Together
The first step is to use AdWords reporting in conjunction with Analytics reporting. Of course, to do so requires that you have Analytics scripts properly inserted on your Web pages. Using a combination of AdWords and Analytics together helps you gather more information about your website's visitors.

Analytics allows you to see which cities visitors come from. It also tells you which keywords they typed in that led them to your site. Sometimes you can track a conversion by matching up the visitor location and keyword in Analytics to the same keyword in AdWords.

*Tracking Built into Conversion Objects
Some software used to create engagement objects automatically collects tracking information about your visitors. For example, we like to use http://emailmeform.com to generate Web forms. We have used EmailMeForm to create contact forms and other engagement forms, like our free press release form (http://gnosisarts.com/pr). The nice thing about the service is that it records the IP address of the visitor filling out the form, making conversion tracking easier.

*Other Analytics Software
Some analytics programs do record the visitor IP address. One example is StatCounter. Thus, if your Web form tells you the IP address of the person filling it out, then you can locate that same IP address inside StatCounter. This way, you know exactly how a particular visitor found your Web site: which keyword they entered, which ad they were shown; which geographic location they are in; etc.

A Viral Marketing Strategy That REALLY works

2009-07-03T13:35:00.001-04:00

Viral Marketing is a hot topic within the SEO community. It seems that SEOs just LOVE talking about it. But for all the fascination with viral marketing, I have not met many SEOs who actually know how to do it, or who can lay out a reliable methodology for how to do it.

To be fair, we were in the same boat, extolling the virtues of viral marketing without the foggiest idea how precisely to accomplish it. But now we have it. We just discovered a way to spread content virally. Even better: we did it with a minimal time and money investment.

*Viral Marketing ... Or Viral Writing?
Now, I won't dare say that we know everything there is to know about viral content. I don't know whether some forms of content spread virally more than others. But what we have discovered: written content can be viral.

We were able to produce written content that has spread to some pretty significant nodes on the Web. It was a tiered approach which involved press releases, event-invite sites, and moderated-article sites. We discovered a perfect mix and use of these sites to cause our content to spread virally. Now the content - along with the popularity of our brand - is proliferating on the Web of its own accord.

If your firm has produced some interesting content, and you would help launching a viral marketing campaign, please contact one of our SEO specialists at www.gnosisarts.com/contact

The Winding Road to Internet Marketing Glory

2009-06-30T18:24:00.001-04:00

What makes Internet marketing difficult is the fact that there is no single set of strategies and tactics that wil work for every market. Chances are your business wil need a kind of eclectic mix of tactics in order to generate business. And that mix in the hotel industry, for example, won't be the same as it will in the music industry.

Although there are certain best practices in SEO, as with all industries, how these best practices are applied in any particular market can vary significantly.

This is why we at Gnosis Arts - as much s we focus on details - also like to take a step back and look at the big picture. Without his big picture vision, it becomes more difficult to measure a marketing plan's effectiveness.

*Big Picture No. 1 - SEO
First, there are the search engines. They deliver the bulk of traffic to websites, based on keywords and phrases. Thus, any viable Internet marketing plan must include some measure of Search Engine Optimization. The role of SEO is to promote webpages to the most competitive positions possible in organic search results.

*Big Picture 2 - Advertising
To generate business online, it is often necessary to advertise your products and services. PPC and Impression-Based ad platforms such as Google AdWords or AdBrite, serve this purchase. Though this type ogre advertising is often classed with SEO, it is really a different animal in many ways. A feasible IM plan, therefore, must also include a paid advertising component.

*Big Picture No. 3 - Lead Generation & Prospecting
Of course, no Web based business can grow with a plan to generate quality, qualified leads and prospects. There are many ways to do this, but online basically it boils down to: engage, interact, garner a following, and then sell to that following.

*Big Picture #4 - Your Website
The best marketing in the world won't be super effective if the website potential customers land on is no good. Here is where things like appeal, usability and good information archtecture come in. A professional look is also key here. A website should be engaging on some level - neiher simply a purveyor of dry information nor so filled with "bells and whistles" nobody can navigate around it.

*Big Picture #5 - Social Media
Social Media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn should support the other components. These sites can have many uses, from updating current clients to generating leads to new ones. A workable IM plan should probably include a plan for how to use these sites to enhance business objectives.

Is Branding Simply A Matter of Money?

2009-06-27T15:26:00.000-04:00

How do you promote your brand(s), service mark(s) or trademark(s) on the Internet? Does your business even have a branding strategy, or do you solely focus on generating clients, sales and revenue? What are the best branding techniques; and, perhaps more importantly, does successful branding simply boil down to a matter of money?

We have noticed that our brand name - Gnosis Arts Multimedia Communications - is growing in awareness on the Web. Just today, I was looking at some of my website analytics, and I noticed a small but steady stream of Web searchers are searching for our business name in the search engines. This is very encouraging, especially as a business which has only been in existence a little over two years. It demonstrates that our Internet marketing strategies actually do work.

Nevertheless, an enormous time, money and labor investment has gone into these results since our inception. What we want to know specifically is this: Is effective branding merely a function of advertising spend? Put another way, can a business - particularly a small business just starting out - effectively promote their brand virally throughout the Internet without making a significant monetary investment?

Traditional Branding Theory

Traditional marketing theory suggests that the main way to establish and grow a brand presene is through impression-based advertising. Impression-based advertising means basically bombarding your target market with your logos, slogans, products and services repeatedly and over a long period of time in the hopes that the ads will create a lasting (subconscious) impression on the psyche of its viewers. The theory, which has a pedigree in social psychological circles, argues that, at some point, the public will begin to connect your brand ideation to conscious thoughts of value, worthy, quality or importance. In this way, when they do get ready to purchase a product or service in your niche, they will think of yours.

Traditional Branding in the Web 2.0 Era

In today's Internet driven economy, traditional branding strategy still exists. But it has a new name: It's called CPM advertising ("CPM" stands for "Cost Per Mil"). In this type of advertising scheme, the advertiser pays for 1000 impressions - that is, 1000 showings of his or her ad. This is contrasted with Pay Per Click advertising (PPC), in which you pay only when a vewier clicks on your ad.

This distinction isn't so important for the purpose of this blog post, except to highlight the point: Branding on the Internet as elsewhere, no matter how you look at it, costs money.

There's probably scant chance that your brand will proliferate virally throughout significant nodes of Cyberspace if you don't pay for it. The benefit of CPM advertising is you can calculate how much you have to spend to get, say, one million impressions. The downside: It is difficult to measure the effectiveness of CPM from an ROI standpoint. Thus, it is sometimes difficult to justify CPM advertising to an advertising or marketing department.

One Way to Measure CPM Advertising ROI

One way to measure the effectiveness of a branding campaign (albeit a not-so-very scientific way) is to first count the number of times your brand name is searched for prior to the start of an impression-based ad campaign, and then measure the change in this number after the campaign ends (if any). Of course, to do this you will first have to have some good analytic tools or software running for a significant amount of time prior to starting the campaign. As always, best practices in Internet marketing and SEO require the collection of data and responding to that data over a longer term.

And of course there will be confounding factors, for it is unlikely that your CPM advertising will be the only thing you do in terms of marketing your website. This will make it virtually impossible to do any A/B testing or establish any control groups, unless you are willing to implement the exact same SEM tactics on both the test group and the control group. This duplication of marketing efforts will require much more time and money than is usually available to a marketing department.

If your business or organization needs marketing research or branding strategy, please contact one of our SEO consultants.

New URL Shortener

2009-06-24T09:03:00.001-04:00

We've just installed a new URL shortener. We utilized the Google App Engine along with code from Google Shortlinks to get it to work.

You can try it out at http://s.gnosisarts.com/poco

* Why A URL Shortener?
As Twitter's popularity continues to grow, active Tweeters need options for shortening URLs to meet the 140 character requirement. There are already excellent shorteners out there including tinyurl.com, is.gd and bit.ly. We just like variety, I suppose.

* Short URLs & SEO
There are other reasons we wanted to build a URL shortener. We are doing an experiment (you know how we love to experiment). We want to know if the additional proliferation of our domain/subdomain throughout the Web will factor into out overall domain strength.

A second reason is that we already know that search engines like user-generated content - provided that it's quality content, well monitored, well moderated, is truly contributed by others, and isn't spammy. Anyone can use our URL shortener, just by signing up. We hope to generate interest in our tool by our customers, staff and the Internet community at large. This production of quality UGC will likely have a positive benefit to our domain in terms of its ranking strength.

Devising A Sound Internet Marketing Strategy

2009-06-21T15:43:00.001-04:00

From our experiments in Internet marketing, a sound Internet marketing plan should include the following types of online marketing sites. If you are trying to determine the percentage of time to be spent on each, a good rule thumb is to spend the most time on Number 1, and then work your way down. This theory is based on our experience of which sites produce the best ROI. Keep in mind that we are only focusing on online marketing; there are offline methods that should probably be employed also.

1. Niche Advertising Directories
By far the most successful online marketing sites for us have been directories where we can advertise our services. For example, we offer piano lessons in Central NJ. We located directories in that niche - designed specifically to promote piano studios and teachers in that area. These directories are specifically targeted to the niche in our particular location.

Our recommendation: Spend the majority of time and money advertising here.

2. Freelance B2B Sites
Sites like Elance, oDesk and Guru are also effective. These sites exist primarily to connect businesses to consumers in specific markets. We've found that these types of sites are the second most effective means of generating prospects for new business.

3. PPC Advertising
PPC advertising is the third most effective medium for generating leads and business. By far the most effective is Google AdWords, as it commands the largest percentage of market share in the Internet advertising industry. Also, Google advertises on other minor search engines such as a Ask and AltaVista.

Following Google would be Yahoo's and MSN's ad services.

4. Social Media Sites
We advise spending the least amount of time on social Media marketing. It is the least effective marketing medium and is so hit or miss that investing much time and money into is isn't economically viable. Of all social media sites, we think that Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are probably the most viable.

But even these sites are hit or miss. Facebook's purpose is predominantly social and not commercial, and its ad platform is rather crude and delivers relatively poor ClickThru rates. Also, the analytics are not detailed enough to really take seriously.

With all the hype out there about how Twitter is generating sales, we've personally yet to see it. Though Twitter marketing holds some promise, we think it's a long way off from being strategically reliable in generating new business.

Of the three, LinkedIn seems to be most effective in generating hot prospects. As we explained in the previous blog post, this is probably largely due to its professional style and its appeal to serious business owners. Though we wouldn't bank on LinkedIn as a new business incubator, our recommendation would be to spend the majority of your social Media marketing time and budget on LinkedIn as opposed to the other two.

Social Media ... Marketing?

2009-06-19T18:44:00.001-04:00

We're still comparing and contrasting the relative strengths and weaknesses of what we consider to be today's three most important social media sites: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It seems the more we think about the marketing potential of these sites, the more questions come up. So far, we cannot draw any hard conclusions, but personally I am leaning toward the belief that, in general, social media sites don't make the best Internet marketing vehicles.

* Pragmatic Experiments
Our multimedia firm prides itself on scientific (i.e., trial-based) research. We don't like to make firm assertions about much of anything until we've tested the subject matter thoroughly and seen for ourselves. We don't assert things just because someone writes it in an authoritative blog or widely circulated news source. We do our own homework.

To that end, we have Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts for our business, and we utilize them regularly, actively participating and contributing quality content, experimenting, trying new things. We follow other conversations; connect with other members; utilize the internal search engines to locate prospects; use third-party apps; the whole nine yards. And we've been at it for a good while.

So far, what we have found is that, of the three sites, LinkedIn actually is the most useful in terms of generating new business. We place the greatest weight on generating new business, not because that is the only thing of importance to business success, but because it is the bottom line, where the "rubber meets the road," so to speak. Admittedly, social media can be used for many other valuable purposes, including client relations, customer service, product and service updates, and reputation management. All these areas are important and worthy of due attention.

However, all the customer care in the world isn't going to directly generate revenue or new business (though it indirectly influences it, to be sure).

* The Marketing Question
Therefore, in our evaluation of social media, we are confining our research to the narrow area of a single marketing question: How well do these sites work to generate new business? That is our main criterion for evaluation.

What we've discovered (and we're not done testing) is that LinkedIn, more than the other two sites, delivers tangible, concrete results in terms of new clients. Our LinkedIn efforts have directly produced four clients. While these clients were low-end and have not gone on to become repeat customers, this is much more than we can say for Facebook or Twitter, which have produced none.

Thus, if we had to decide right this minute which social media site our clients should focus on in terms of marketing, we would have to go with LinkedIn - hands down. It appears that the more professional nature of the site lends itself to lead generation more readily than the others (at least for the markets we compete in.)

We think the other reason LinkedIn does better in terms of generating new business is because, well, business growth and development is a big part of its focus. People actually come to LinkedIn, both to buy and sell products and services. By contrast, this is not the main thrust of Facebook or Twitter, which are much more recreational in nature.

More on Facebook Advertising

2009-06-15T18:06:00.003-04:00

Oy vey! I don't know, I just don't know. We're running a Facebook Ad for one of our business services, and I just don't know if it's worth it. The ad has only been running about a week. We've gotten a few clicks. But as the campaign rolls along, it is still unclear as to whether there's any real benefit to it.

First off, the analytics needs some serious overhauling. I can't find detailed information on really ... well ... anything. They don't tell me who clicked the ads, or where they came from, or what the referrer URL is or which keyword was searched... None of this!

The Times published an article in December basically stating that Facebook advertising doesn't work for many brands. I'm starting to think that assessment may be correct.

What has been your experience with Facebook ads? Inquirng minds want to know.

Facebook, Branding and the SEM Shift

2009-06-12T21:00:00.001-04:00

Facebook's advertising platform offers the studious Internet marketer a good deal to consider with respect to branding. The popular social media site is a good case study in essential marketing concepts. A site like Facebook presents challenging questions about marketing concepts such as intention-based search, the role of impression-based advertising in marketing strategy, qualitative ROI and keyword-driven advertising.

1. Intention-Based Search
Intention Based Search (IBS for short) refers to the motivations guiding a searcher's query of a search engine. Conventional advertising wisdom suggests that an ad is intrinsically more effective when it is on the receiving end of a searcher intending to find the type of product being advertised.

This is why, marketers argue, ad campaigns such as Google Adwords are most successful in terms of conversion rate. The searcher was typing words in and specifically looking for products or services in your market when they discovered your ad. Therefore, such intention-based ads are more effective, the argument goes.

An interesting fact about Facebook ads is that they are primarly demographic-based, and not intention-based. In other words, they are not keyword-driven, but rather are driven by factors such as age, educational attainment, geography and the like.

Thus the challenge a site like Facebook presents to search engine marketers is one of justification. A marketing department with a limited budget and under pressure to economize ad spend must be able to see the merits of demographic vs. intention-based advertising.

2. Facebook and Impression-Based Advertising
Ad impressions are often discussed in the context of branding, reputation management, public relations and brand-awareness. This makes sense. Some social psychological studies on the effects of advertising on the mind support the claim that, if a person sees a brand enough times, over a long enough period, that ad will make a lasting "impression" in the subconscious.

Interestingly enough, Facebook offers both impression based and click-based advertising options. What's even more interesting: a site with easily 20 million active users and roughly 80 million total users, Facebook offers impression-Based advertising at a fraction of the cost that Google, Yahoo or MSN do. One almost has to take this into account when discussing the ROI of any prospective ad campaign.

3. Speaking of ROI ...
The Facebook ad platform almost makes me as a marketer say, "Well, what the hey! I can get a million or more impressions for only $300 or $400 bucks!? What have I got to lose!?" While the quantitative ROI of Facebook may be poorer than that of more traditional PPC ad services, the qualitative ROI (and yes, there is a qualitative dimension to it) may actually be better. In short, Facebook motivates me as an Internet marketer to throroughly reexamine the viabilty of the entire philosophy of impression-based advertising.

4. Keyword Driven Marketing
The idea of keyword-driven marketing has come into vogue in the SEM world over the past couple of years. In fact, big name marketing firms like Acronym Media have packaged and service-marked similar phrases to underscore the importance of good industry keyword research to successful Internet marketing.

Facebook's ad system - being much more demographic-based than keyword based, may be seen as lacking in its downplaying of keyword driven advertising. In Facebook, you can select keywords to trigger your ads, but the keywords you have to choose from are significantly more limited when compared to a pedigreed ad platform such as AdWords.

In addition, Facebook's essentially closed community prohibits any really authoritative third-party keyword intelligence reports, such as the kind published by Trellian or the old Overture. Not only does this deficit present the entrepreneuring Web developer with sizzling opportunities for application development, but it acts as a slap in the face to the Internet marketer beholden to the time-honored keyword approach to SEM and SEO.

Combine this with the SEs unrelenting attempts to unhinge rankings from keywords through vehicles like personalized and universal search, and semantic web technologies, and we marketers have got some seriously brain-breaking homework ahead of us!

The Social Media Craze: Fact or Fiction?

2009-06-11T09:03:00.001-04:00

It seems everywhere I turn these days I'm hearing how social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are helping businesses find customers and generate revenue. Today's NYTimes had an article in the small business section that included a recent market study on social media usage among small business owners. The study said that 51 percent of small business owners said social media sites helped them gain or keep clients.

* But Where Is the Hard Data?
Nevertheless, I'm starting to get irked by all these claims. From Dell to the small local proprietor, everyone's claiming that social media sites are boosting sales and generating revenue. But I want someone to please step up and show me the trail of glory. I have yet to see a single report, study or anecdote that shows in unequivocal terms that this particular activity on that particular social media site directly result in X amount of dollars in sales.

Until I see THIS type of data, I can't help but think that the social media craze is mainly just hype.

Our business utilizes social media sites regularly. We've received a client or two, here and there, but this was largely accidental and certainly did not happen as the result of any systematic plan. And one or two clients in two plus years of operation is hardly a horse to bet the ranch on!

To me, the social media craze is endemic of the tendency to see the Internet as the end-all-and-be-all of successful marketing. But in our opinion, this is a myopic view. Successful marketing requires the use of both traditional and Internet-based methods. It requires a comprehensive approach that doesn't put all the eggs in one basket.

Look, I'm an Internet marketer by trade. My staff is on several social media sites on a daily basis. No one would love to believe more than I that hopping on Facebook and Twitter will guarantee our business an increase in sales and clientele. But I just don't see it.

In the world of business, I think it's crucial to avoid the temptation to believe the hype without sound and conclusive evidence.

Keyword Classification: An Approach to Defining Sound SEO Strategy

2009-06-10T09:49:00.000-04:00

As our SEO firm (www.gnosisarts.com/search-engine-optimization-marketing2) is currently consulting for a large national law firm, I have been called on repeatedly to lay out and explain the global Internet marketing strategy. And, as search marketing is such an organic, respond and react process, it can be difficult to do this. So, lately I've been thinking about how to systematize the process of SEO strategy creation through keyword classification.

A. Five Keyword Types
In my thinking about global SEO strategy, I've identified five different keyword types that website optimzation can fall under.

1. Long-Tail Keywords
The first type are the long tail keywords. Most SEOs know what long-tail keywords are, and there are several ways to define the term. A simple definition is: If there are more than four words in the phrase, then it's a long tail keyword. Examples include "website promotion and link building" or "the relationship between ethics and counseling theory" or "what did Paris Hilton do last night in Vegas"

These long-tail keywords are typically the easiest to rank well for. This is because there are usually far fewer web pages competing for the phrase in its entirety, and far fewer searchers searching for the phrase in its entirety.

* Optimization Methodology for Long-Tail Keywords
Usually, all it takes to get good rankings for long-tail keywords is good on-page optimization.

2. Local Search Keywords (City-Included in the
Keyword Phrase)
The second keyword type I call Local Search Keywords. These are keywords that have a city attached. Examples include "boston sports club" or "Bedminster NJ government offices."

This type of keyword is a bit more difficult to rank well for than the long-tail. There are generaly more competing websites, though they are not usually terribly difficult unless they city is a major urban metroplex like New York or LA.

* Optimization Methodology for Local Search Keywords
For these keywords usually you can rank well with
i. Good on-page optimization
ii. Local Search Optimization

3. State Keywords
The third type of keyword I call state keywords. Examples are "Ohio business schools" and "luxury hotels in Idaho". These keywords are substantially harder to rank well for than the Local Search Keywords due to greater competition and higher search volume.

* Optimization Methodology for State Keywords
Ranking well for this type of keyword will require what is necessary for local search keywords. Additionally, you will often need the strength of some good, theme-relevant directories that rank well for state terms, as well as some strong anchor-texted backlinks. It is also a good idea to create geo-specific microformats for each page.

4. National Keywords
For our purposes, national keywords are those with no city or state geography attached. For example, "multimedia firm" or "best web design companies". Ranking well for this type of keyword really requires a bit of grace and a ton of ingenuity. They are extremely competitive keywords, and ranking for them can be hit or miss at times.

* Optimization Methodology for National Keywords
Unfortunately, there really is no set SEO strategy that works in all cases for ranking for national keywords. Certainly excellent on-page optimization and high-powered links are vital, but even these may not be enough depending upon how competitive the keywords are.

One strategy for national keyword optimization is the creation of several microsites with authoritative information about the keywords. It would also help to establish the microsites under various IP addresses in different states and with different webhosts, thus establishing credibility as a national brand. Citations in nationally recognized publications will also help. And actuallly having offices in different states is helpful too.

If your organization has the budget, national keywords are great candidates for a PPC ad campaign. Though these keywords can get expensive, this is often the only legitimate way to generate ranking and traffic for this type of keyword. But if managed properly, costs can be kept at a minimum and the ROI can be huge. If costs are prohibitive, a PPC campaign across the "lesser" search engines (e.g., MSN, Bidvertiser, AOL, Facebook) may be the best course.

5. Single-Word Keywords
These are typically the most difficult keywords to rank well for. And truth be told, the chance of any one website ranking highly for a single term is so slim that the time and money put into it is often incommensurate with the ROI those keywords will produce.

§ Optimization Methods for Single-Word Keywords
Like national keywords, a PPC campaign is usually in order to achieve decent rankings for this keyword type. Ensure that your landing pages are well optimized for this keyword type in order to maximize your Quality Score. This will help drive down the CPC you will have to spend on these keywords.

Often you will find that the types of websites which rank well for this keyword type are informational (i.e., not-for-profit) in nature. Wikipedia, Answers.Com and DMOZ are three commonly-seen examples. Where the sites are for-profit, they will often be large, well-aged national directories, such as the Yahoo Directory, Best of the Web and niche national advertising sites. Be sure to capitalize on these when possible.

§ Concluding Remarks
By classifying the different keyword types, we can get a better handle on the methods and strategems that may be involved in improving website rank, visibility and traffic. Remember that SEO is an ongoing process that takes data collected over time and reacts to it in strategic ways. It also requires a comprehensive approach that takes into account many factors. As SE algorithms become increasingly sophisticated, the "one size fits all" approach is fast becoming obsolete, if it hasn't already.

New Summer Internship

2009-06-08T09:09:00.001-04:00

One of the ways Gnosis Arts is giving back to the community is by starting a Summer Internship program with the Unversity of Temple film school. We have recently hired an intern to do audio/video work for the firm.

Though we are still small and growing, we believe it is never too early to give back to the community by creating growth and learning opportunities for other individuals.

If you or your firm needs any audio/video editing work, please contact us at www.gnosisarts.com/contact

SocialMention.Com, or the Tao of Reputation Management

2009-05-28T22:28:00.001-04:00

Thanks to the good folks over at SEMPO (www.sempo.com) we were introduced yesterday to a new social media monitoring site called Social Mention (www.socialmention.com). Social Mention monitors keyword mention across various popular social media sites, such as Twitter, Yahoo Answers, Bloglines, Wordpress and others.

We're pretty impressed with the service. SM has a lot of useful features to help make brand reputation management easier. For example, not only does the site track mentions, it also rates them as "positive," "negative," or "neutral." Very cool. Additionally, SM assigns percentages to several factors that serve as indicators of brand strength, awareness and influence. Also very cool. And you can perform both broad and exact match searches.

§ The Tao of Reputation Management
SM can be useful to a branding campaign for obvious reasons. For one, being able to immediately discover negative mentions means that you can quickly counteract those mentions with your own positive rebuttals.

Social media marketing just got spiritual (I don't know whether this post should be here or on our I Ching blog - http://gnosisarts.com/free-i-ching-reading2.html!)

The Taoists spoke often about the balance and interplay of opposing energies - what they called Yin and Yang. You may not be able to extripate all negatice mentions of your brand or business, but with Social Mention, at least now you can add a counterbalancing positive to offset the negative. According to Taoist philosophy, this dance of opposites will likely produce a harmonious equilibrium over time.

But we're talking about Social media marketing here ... Not religion, eh? (It's all related)

Ok. Back to Social Mention. Being able to track your brand mentions in near real-time also means you now have an opportunity to engage those individual reviewers while the sentiment is still fresh, so to speak. Another plis.

If you or your business needs brand or reputation management services, contact one of our Internet marketing specialists for a consultation at www.gnosisarts.com/contact

Important PPC Metrics, Simplified

2009-05-20T20:23:00.001-04:00

Don't you just hate it when all your SEO pals are throwing around these five dollar PPC analytics terms, and you don't know what in blazes they're talking about, so you just nod your head and smile and pretend that you understand what they're talking about?

Don't be too hard on yourself. We've all been there. And believe it or not, even the ones throwing out he terms sometimes don't even know what they mean ;)

And that's why we're here: to help educate our lovely readers and clients on what theheck wezbre actually doing.

If you need to get some sense of your PPC return on your investment, try out the PPC Blog ROI Calculator at http://tools.ppcblog.cm/calculators/roi.html

§Definitions of some common PPC metrics
1. Cost Per Click. The avg. Amount Google (or whichever ad serving application you're using) charges you for a click on your ad. CPC is calculated over time. The more clicks you get per 1000 impressions, for example, the less you pay for those clicks individually.

Why? The reasoning behind this is that it is assumed that the better your ads, keywords and landing pages, the better will be the ratio of impressions to clicks (this called a Clickthru Rate , or CTR for short). Of course, this isn't always the case in reality, but it is one measure ad serving algorithms like Adwords or or AdCenter use to measure the "quality" of your ad campaign.

2. Conversion Rate. This is a measure of how many conversions an ad or ad group receives divided by the total number of clicks the ad/group receives. A conversion is loosely defined as "an email, phone call, apppointment setting, a purchase, a reservation or other actionable website event that can be attributed to the ad. Conversion rates are usually measured over a month's time.

3. Average Profit per Conversion. To calculate this, you obviously need to know how many conversions your ad generated and how much revenue those conversions produced.

For example, if your ad generated 5 conversions over a month's time (as defined above) and those 5 conversions produced $500 during that month, then your average gross revenue per each conversion would be $100. If your total monthly ad spend was $300, then your net profit per conversion = $200 / 5 = $40.

See, I told you we'd make it simple(r).

4. ROI. All these metrics taken together determine your Return on Investment. ROI is basically the net profit of the ad conversions divided by the monthly amount you spend on those ads.

Using the ROI Calculator, we found that our current ad groups were producing an ROI of 335.97%. No kidding! Even on the most conservative of estimates - that is, utilizing raw monthly spend (what we dropped into the account as opposed to what portion of it we actually spent) - our ROI would still be over 140%.

How did we do it, you ask?

Stay tuned, visit often, meet us for coffee ... Better yet, hire us. And you'll find out!

#seo #PPC #internet marketing

Social Media Marketing: A Case Study from Twitter

2009-05-19T10:56:00.000-04:00

Hashtags Analysis from Hashtags.Org

I wanted to tell you about an interesting Twitter phenomenon that just occurred.
We’ve been thinking and researching social media marketing via Twitter. Twitter and Search … hmmm. How can I condense years of search engine optimization erudition down into a couple sentences??

Ok. Suffice it to say, that I did a little experiment on my personal Twitter account yesterday with Twitter hashtags.

…and this morning, take a look at the flood of followers who signed up to receive my Twitter updates:

Unread Twitter John Gordon is now following you on Twitter! 8:33 AM 8KB
Twitter michelleheigl is now following you on Twitter! 8:47 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Mike Adams is now following you on Twitter! 8:31 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Money Ideas is now following you on Twitter! 8:19 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Modeling22 is now following you on Twitter! 8:16 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Eric Nordstrom is now following you on Twitter! 8:16 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Michael Wheaton is now following you on Twitter! 8:14 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Ben Küllau is now following you on Twitter! 8:07 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter JulianRT is now following you on Twitter! 8:05 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter JulianRG is now following you on Twitter! 8:04 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Sue Soucy is now following you on Twitter! 8:03 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Jason J Culbertson is now following you on Twitter! 8:00 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Bryan Patterson is now following you on Twitter! 7:59 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter TaVona Boggs is now following you on Twitter! 7:58 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Fontaine...Paul is now following you on Twitter! 7:58 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Greg L. Richardson is now following you on Twitter! 7:58 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Denise Cornwell is now following you on Twitter! 7:57 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Tareq Gohery is now following you on Twitter!
Twitter Ivan Maroya is now following you on Twitter! 7:56 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter chazonline55 is now following you on Twitter! 7:55 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Ben Mapp is now following you on Twitter! 7:55 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Mike is now following you on Twitter! 7:54 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Claudio Sennhauser is now following you on Twitter! 7:54 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Tammi J Koza is now following you on Twitter! 7:53 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Ahmad Arif is now following you on Twitter! 7:52 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Reverle Harris is now following you on Twitter! 7:51 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Allen Gregory is now following you on Twitter! 7:50 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter TwittLord is now following you on Twitter! 7:50 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Adam Zilberbaum is now following you on Twitter! 7:49 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter A Dollar Deal is now following you on Twitter! 7:49 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter ElizabethHannan is now following you on Twitter! 7:48 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Master 2.0 is now following you on Twitter! 7:48 AM 8KB
Read Twitter David Allen is now following you on Twitter! 7:16 AM 8KB
Read Twitter Alexis Jameson is now following you on Twitter! 3:37 AM 8KB
Read Twitter Ade Lack is now following you on Twitter! 2:50 AM 8KB
Read Twitter beanandbodySF is now following you on Twitter!
Twitter Marisa is now following you on Twitter! Tue, 5/19/09 8KB
Unread Twitter TM Marketing is now following you on Twitter!
Twitter daiyaan is now following you on Twitter! Mon, 5/18/09 8KB
Unread Twitter Thomas Moreton is now following you on Twitter! Mon, 5/18/09 8KB
Unread Twitter Charles H Denney is now following you on Twitter! Mon, 5/18/09
Unread Twitter Walter Rose is now following you on Twitter! Mon, 5/18/09 8KB
Unread Twitter Danger Brown is now following you on Twitter! Mon, 5/18/09 8KB
Unread Twitter Robbie Gallagher is now following you on Twitter! Mon, 5/18/09 8
Unread Twitter Hamada Hafez is now following you on Twitter! Mon, 5/18/09 8KB
Unread Twitter loumartin is now following you on Twitter!

All these were in my inbox this AM. Keep in mind, I just did the experiment late last night (about 11PM)

Now, I don’t know exactly what this means, but it seems significant on the face of it. Any online experiment that motivates such movement in such a short time-frame deserves attention.

Social Media: Optimization or Marketing?

2009-05-18T20:43:00.000-04:00

We're still "getting clear" on the nature and potential of social media's use in promoting website visibility. And it's getting deep.

In thinking about social media, I am starting to realize that it can be broken down into two main branches, just like SEO. For the sake of discussion, let's use the terms "organic SMO" (or "natural" social media optimization) and Paid SMO (which would be akin to Search Engine Marketing; we could just call this branch "social media marketing" or "SMM" for short).

Social Media Optimization (SMO)

I'm still just thinking this stuff through - so please bear with me for a bit.

In natural SEO, one main goal is to "optimize" a site's rankings for certain keywords. Another way to put it: natural (organic) SEO tries to increase the probability that a given website will rank well (and thereby be found) in the search engines for certain key terms.

On social medial sites, you also have keywords by which internal content is ranked. Only, they are usually called "tags". But if you think about it, a tag is nothing more than a keyword. It tells the internal search database, of whatever social media site you're on, that the content labeled with that "tag" should be delivered in a search for that tag.

Now of course, tags do other things. But this is one of their main purposes: to group content under certain categories so that people (and search engines) can display or retrieve that content when a user searches for it. In this respect, tags function like the metadata of a web page, for all intents and purposes.

Natural social media optimzation (SMO) is like natural SEO: where the goal is to get YOUR content that is on THEIR site to rank as well as possible in search results. When we think about SEO, often times we get narrowly focused on just "the biggies" - Google, Yahoo, MSN. But just as a good SEO doesn't neglect the long-tail keywords, he also shouldn't neglect search engine optimization on social media sites.

Paid Social Media Optimization (social media marketing)

Explaining the term by way of analogy, in the world of Internet marketing, the term Search Engine Marketing - or SEM for short - is usually used to refer to "paid online advertising," though it encompasses more than that. In the same vein, we are using the term SMM to refer to the sundry ways in which social media sites like Facebook or StumbleUpon offer paid advertising platforms to drive visitors to a website. This is really not much different than the ad serving programs of the search engines. You select keywords you want to bid for, you pay a price, your ads get seen.

So What Is Social Media Marketing?

Ah So. After much contemplation, we're finally starting shed some light on the nature of social media marketing. So the way of contemplation really does lead to the truth sometimes?

Definition: SMM, then, consists of natural and paid methods to make your Content searchable and findable within social media sites.

Perhaps the two types of SMM can complement each other, just as in SEM. For example, it is typical to run a paid advertising campaign while performing organic optimization on a web site. Both SEO and SEM work together, as, for example, when paid ads are used for rankings for more competitive terms, and the organic SEO for ranking in the less competitive ones as the site begins its new life.

The Importance of Original Content

2009-05-15T11:49:00.001-04:00

We've been developing our wiki now for nearly a year, and we've learned a good bit about Internet visibility and marketing from the experience. Aside from the wiki being an excellent tool for prospecting and lead generation (which we talked about in a previous blog post) the wiki has also reinforced one of the all-important SEO maxims: Content Is King.

Original content is a MUST if your webpages are going to stand a chance achieving decent rankings and search engine visibility. In studying our analytics over the past three months, we've noticed the two pages in particular seem to receive the bulk of the traffic to our wiki - and neither one of them is the homepage.

One page is an entry we wrote on the Matrix News Network:
http://morpheme.wikidot.com/matrix-news-network

And the other is an article about Chlamydia:
http://morpheme.wikidot.com/chlamydia

The other wiki pages only receive a trickle of traffic, when compared to these two. So, the natural question is why? What characteristics of these two pages differentiate them from the mass of other wiki pages?

Well, the first thing we noticed right off is that these two pages have citations and/or references, whereas most of the others do not. The citations aren't always original; many were borrowed from other articles.

The second difference is that there is at least some original content in these two articles. As our wiki is basically a mashup, most of the articles are merely scraped content, rearranged in an entertaining format. These two articles, on the other hand, consist of a bit of original material.

The third difference is that, though most of the content in these two articles isn't original, the content was taken from many different Web sources, via the GistWeb API. By contrast, the text content in the majority of the other wiki entries were, for the most part, taken from only one source: Wikipedia.

The SEO moral: If you have to scrape content, at least scrape the textual portion from a variety of Web sources, not just one. Also, try to include at least some original content, with authoritative citations, if you plan to achieve decent rankings.

PPC Ad Management Made Simple(r)

2009-05-12T20:55:00.001-04:00

PPC ad management has come a long way in the last few years. With the arrival of automated ad management applications and proprietary software, the amount of data proliferating the Web on PPC best practices is staggering. Not to mention, the complexity of that information is also growing in leaps and bounds. With all the tips, tricks and strategies on PPC campaign management out there, it can be difficult to understand just how to successfully optimize a PPC campaign.

§ PPC: The Basics
Fortunately, there are a few basic principles that will improve your PPC campaign performance:

1. Remember that Google has a high stake in optimizing your ads.
Though it goes without saying, I think many SEM managers forget this important truth. Google wants your ads to be seen and clicked. If they aren't, Google doesn't make any money. Moreover, Google wants your ROI and conversion rates to improve, else you won't drop any more money in the ad account next month. Though I haven't seen it written anywhere, I'm almost certain that Google's ad serving algorithms consist of a fair amount of automated tweaking by themselves.

2. Test, Test ... and Test Some More
As with just about everything in the world of Internet marketing, there's a lot of trial and error involved before you "get it right." Test different ad copy. Test dynamic vs. static ad keywords. Test different keyword combinations and operators. Test negative keywords, and keyword misspellings. Test different landing pages. Eliminate what is obviously not delivering results, and do more of what is.

Whatever you do, don't lazily fall into the delusion that there is some "magic wand" tactic out there that will allow you to put your ad campaign on autopilot and get a million clicks overnight. SEM success - like a beautiful garden - requires constant pruning.

3. Eliminate keywords which don't perfom well.
Perhaps the single most effective strategy I've discovered - and believe me, I've waded Through my share of PPC horse manure - is to watch individual keyword performance over time, and eliminate those keywords which produce zero impressions. Separate poorly performing keywords off into their own ad group. Create new ad copy for them, and test them again.

The same principle holds true for ads themselves. Eliminate the ads within an ad group that don't receive many impressions or have a pathetic Clickthru Rate (CTR). This is part of the pruning process.

If no ads or keywords are getting clicks for a few days, then often the problem is poor keyword choice. Google's keyword selector tool isn't the only keyword selector tool around. Nor is it the best. You can try Trellian's Industry Keyword tool (one of my personal favorites) or Keyword Tracker's tool.

If you have submitted your site to Google's Webmaster Tools, and then have verified it, you have access to a wealth of vital info on your website - and for PPC pruning. One of these is the stats section. There you can find out just which keywords and phrases people are typing in which land them on your site, and which do not.

You'd be surprised at what you'll find; some of the keywords that bring people to your website make good candidates for exact match keywords for your PPC ads, and many of these keywords won't be suggested by the AdWords keyword selector tool.

4. Don't Be Afraid of the Content Network
Old school PPC thought used to be: "Make sure to opt-out of the Content Network." The reason, it was argued, is that ads served up on the Content Network do not perform as well as ads served due to direct search because the person was not looking for your products or services when the ad appeared. The ad just happened to "pop up" while the surfer was poking around on a website and visited a page that was only significantly (or not so significantly) related to your ad copy.

There is some truth to this. However, with the advent of Google's Managed Placement tool, now you can display your ads on only the sites you choose throughout the Content Network (See, I told you Google had a stake in helping your ads get clicked!) So, sometimes the best strategy is to turn off the search network and turn on the Content Network.

If you elect to go this route, my suggestion would be to start of with only a few sites. Don't go for the whole farm in one shot. Then, gradually increase the number of sites you opt into, until (hopefully) you get a click.
Next, visit the referring site that delivered the click. Study its qualities, theme and audience. A great resource for getting demographic information on a particular website is Quantcast.

Try to locate other sites among the Content Network that are similar to the site delivering clicks, and then opt-in to those. Eliminate the others, and start over. Again, trial and error is your guide.

The same applies for the Search Partners network Don't be afraid of it. We have occasionally seen ads perform better on the Search Partners network than in the regular Google Search!

Furthermore, the gradual Content Network ramp-up technique also sometimes works well for geo-targeting. We have started PPC campaigns running in only a few cities. Then we incrementally added cities until we got a click. This threshhold approach is both fun and economical. You can easily stretch out $100 spend for a month or more.

The conclusion of the matter, I think, is to take a pragmatic and experimental approach to PPC ad campaign management. And, as my late father (may he rest in peace) used to say: "Son, don't believe the hype." Don't run after every new list of PPC management magic potions that vaunt themselves in the cyber marketplace. Do your own homework; draw your own conclusions.

Using the simple methods outlines above, our SEO team has, on occasion, scored a 100% CTR for a term, and a 50% CTR for an entire ad group. (No kidding!) In fact, our latest ad campaign garnered a new client in just two weeks, using these tips.

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Gnosis Arts | www.gnosisarts.com

Social Media Marketing: Search and Desire

2009-05-06T19:33:00.001-04:00

In the last blog post, I talked about what social media marketing is and what, if anything, it could accomplish. The conversation was broad and more conceptual than anything else. I apologize to our more practical readers, who often just want a step-by-step how-to guide. Unfortunately, the nature of social media marketing precludes such a straightforward set of "how-tos."

I try not to get too abstract in these matters, but I'm afraid that I cannot in this discussion. It's just my own quirky process; please bear with me; it's just the philosopher in me.

§ Search and Desire
I had a thought yesterday. Search reflects desire. In other words, when I search for something, that implies that there is a desire longing for fulfillment. It doesn't matter what I'm searching for. Back of every search is a desire. If I Google "best travel deals to nyc," I have a desire to travel, to save money, or what have you. If I Google "piano teachers in central NJ," then it is obvious that I have a desire to learn music, or to give my kids culture, or what have you. If I search for "the galapagos beetle" in Wikipedia, then I have a desire for academic or authoritative information on beetles. Perhaps my desire is to ace that term paper. But the point is that wherever there is search, there precedes desire.

Get my drift? Search represents desire.

Let's look at two of the most popular social media sites - Twitter and Facebook - in the context of this question of desire.

§ Twitter and Desire
I don't know exactly where I'm going with this, so just bear with me please Now that Twitter has a search trends feature, the question I want to answer is: What do Twitter trends tell me about Twitterer desire?

I'm still operating on the theory that search conveys desire. What is the trending desire of the main of Twitterers. That is the psychological question. How to get my products and services on the receiving end of those desires - that is the marketing question.

If, for example, a top Twitter trend is "cinco de mayo," how can I get my business on the other end of that search, that desire? (The question of the tie-in to "cinco de mayo" is a public relations question .... it's all related, you see.)

In asking the question, I've just turned the psychology of social media into the marketing of social media.

§ Facebook and Desire
With Facebook, it's harder to distill desire from search, because there is no data, to my knowledge, of Facebook search trends, at least not one that is publicly accessible. But what we do know is that Facebook has become the most popular people search engine around.

Thus we know that people - friends, old school pals, family - people are the desire behind the Facebook search. So perhaps your business' Facebook page should have a listing of all employees. If not all employees, perhaps all sales people, so that when someone looks for your marketing director or your sales manager or your IT guy, they find your business as well. But you get the idea: to be or not to be on the receiving end of search and desire: that is the social media marketing question.

Musings on Social Media Marketing

2009-05-05T14:21:00.001-04:00

As a philosopher, I have an annoying need to get clear on terms. As an SEO, I have an equally prodding need to know the marketing pontential of just about everything I discover on the Intenet. Lately, I've been (re)thinking about this notion of Social Media Marketing - what it really is, whether is works, how to formulate a sound strategy, etc.

§ First, let's talk about marketing
How do you define marketing? My definition is: the practice of getting your products and services in front of your target market. Using this definition, how can social media sites like Twitter and Facebook serve that end, if at all?

Well, the obvious (but least enlightening) reply: putting up a Twitter or Facebook profile for my business will make more people aware of us. But will it? I mean, think about your favorite social media sites. Now try to recall the last few businesses or brands you saw there. Can you do it?

Odds are, you probably can't. That's because you, like most other normal folk, don't consume social media for the purpose of being inundated by brands and advertisements. You hop on Facebook to see what new pics your friends uploaded or to find a long lost college buddy. You Tweet on Twitter to ... Who knows why (I Tweet just to see my Tweets turn to RSS feeds and sent to Facebook; I just think that whole HTML to RSS API thingy is cool!)

The point I'm making is that social media sites are, as Seth Godin said, connecting media, not marketing media. This, of course, doesn't mean that sites like Twitter and Facebook can't be used for marketing purposes. I'm simply saying that marketing is not their raison d'etre. Therefore, to market on these sites, I believe, requires a definite strategy and measurable goals.

Now, I'm not saying I know what those strategies or metrics are or should be. With the growing number and complexity of social media sites, I'm starting to think that "Social Media Marketing" will eventually become a separate field from SEO. I'm groping around for the answers, just as we all are as professional marketers. But I definitely think that much more thought, research and data is needed on social media efficacy.

(to be cont'd)

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Gnosis Arts | www.gnosisarts.com

How to Explain SEO to Non-SEO People

2009-05-01T09:06:00.001-04:00

It can be difficult getting buy-in for SEO services. Often as SEOs it 's challenging describing what SEO is to designers, developers, salespeople and clients because it requires a different way of thinking than that to which they are usually accustomed. You have to remember that these people don't live in the SEO world like we do; they don't eat, drink and sleep search. Therefore, getting them to see the purpose and value of a search marketing campaign isn't always easy.

§ Explaining SEO - A Simplified Approach
I try to take a simplified approach when explaining SEO to non SEO minds:

1. Don't think of it as SEO. Think of it as Internet marketing.

2. Internet marketing is basically getting your website in front of people in your target market.

3. SEO is a small subset of Internet marketing. In order to get your website in front of the right eyes - and convert those eyes to paying customers - the site has to be searchable, findable, usable and appealing. The job of SEO is to produce those qualities in a website and to create a good reputation for that website on the Web at large.

Think of it this way: the most beautifully designed site, consisting of the best products and services around, still won't draw customers by itself. Your site is in competition with literally billions of other webpages, so getting visibility doesn't happen by chance or luck.

4. In order to make a site searchable, findable, usable and appealing, we employ certain tested practices, methods and techniques These practices form the essence of SEO.

5. These methods address two main areas: on page methods and off page methods. On page methods deal with changes to the site itself. Off page methods deal with executing search marketing tactics on other sites and online venues.

Of course, you can be flexible with this outline, tailoring it to suit your specific needs. But if you stick to this basic script, your salespeople, designers, developers and clients will stand a better chance of "getting it."

If your firm or organization needs search engine optimization consultation, or if your sales team or IT department needs training in what SEO is or how to sell it, feel free to contact Gnosis Arts at www.gnosisarts.com/contact .

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Gnosis Arts | www.gnosisarts.com

Qualitative Data Analysis & SEO

2009-04-29T09:12:00.001-04:00

We are launching a new blog, one that we think will be uniquely useful in the SEO community. It is called Qualitative SEO Analysis and aims to analyze SEO data and metrics on a higher level of abstraction. Though we don't yet know exactly what this blog will look like, we believe that it will shape best practice SEO and push current SEOs to become even more data-driven.

The blog will utilize Grounded Theory and QDA scholarly research - along with state of the art software applications used in the Social Sciences and Education - to analyze metrics such as link power, link anchors, keyword density, IP adress, search volume, load time and other factors to a degree of depth not yet seen in conventional SEO research.

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Gnosis Arts | www.gnosisarts.com

Image Is (Almost) Everything

2009-04-09T15:32:00.001-04:00

A very good article on hotel website basics

clipped from www.hotelsmag.com

Image Is (Almost) Everything

Information and functionality are great, but today's top hotel Web sites thrive on pretty pictures—and lots of them.

By Adam Kirby, Associate Editor -- Hotels, 4/1/2009

No matter how sophisticated your hotel's Web site—whether it has Ajax or Flash built in, whether it features embedded video or virtual tours—none of it matters half as much as some old-fashioned stunning photography.

"On photography, you can't spend too much—you are your images," says Adam R. Cagle, managing director of 689 Design, a Long Beach, California-based firm with several boutique hotel clients. "We could honestly fill some luxury properties' [sites] with just great photos and a 'Book Now' button... A well-conceived photo shoot that highlights a property's best features and provides the viewer a tantalizing window into the atmosphere of a hotel is essential to a Web site's success."

The Value of Embedded Search Boxes

2009-04-02T09:15:00.001-04:00

An embedded search box on your blog or website serves two primary purposes. One is obvious, but the other is not.

§ Improving User-Friendliness
Most of us in Internet Marketing understand that a search box improves the user-friendliness of your site. It makes it easier for site visitors to quickly find the information they need without having towaste time hunting around.

§ Marketing Value of Search Boxes
However, search boxes perform a valuable, albeit less obvious, function in Search marketing as well. Over time, they tell you, the web analyzer, which terms people are looking for on your site most frequently.

As SEOs, we like patterns, and we spend much of our time looking for the patterns in analytics. Using a search box wil tell you what information visitors are looking for repeatedly.

So, for example, if you find that visitors are searching a lot for the term "rapport" but you have no information on the subject on your website, you may want to create some content relevant to that topic.

In this way, search boxes can enchance user experience, strengthen brand reputation and increase visitor stay time - all good measurements of Internet marketing success.

Sent from my T-Mobile Dash - Gnosis Arts - www.gnosisarts.com

Focusing on the Wrong Thing

2009-03-27T13:17:00.001-04:00

A former roommate of mine used to say, "You're worrying about the wrong thing." He usually said this in reply to some question I had which conveyed a sense of fear or anxiety.
Though it sounds like evasion, however, it's a good statement to keep in mind when analyzing the mass of information an SEO might examine.

§ Poll: What Do You Think Is Most Important?
Of the following items, ask yourself: Which of these is most important?

Then ask yourself: Which of these is most important to me?

> Traffic to my website
> SERPs
> CTR (if you're runing ads)
> Usability
> ROI
> Growth in clientele
> Growth in revenue

Why is asking these questions important? I'll give you an example. Recently I checked our Alexa Rank, a standard traffic measurement tool. To my surprise, Alexa reports a better rank for us. However, Google Analytics reports a drop in traffic. Quantcast also reports a drop in traffic. Nevertheless, our client base is growing, along with our revenues.

So, if revenue was most important to me, then of course I'd want to stay on the course we're on, regardless of what the traffic reports say. On the other hand, if traffic is most important, then clearly changes in our overall marketing strategy are in order.

In other words, what your business deems most important will shape your Internet marketing plans and objectives. And this can have a direct effect on your bottom line.

Therefore, it is important to "focus on the right thing" (that which is important to you and your bottom line) and not waste time "worrying about the wrong thing" (those things which other SEOs say you should be focusing on, which may not have anything to do with your bottom line).

Sent from my T-Mobile Dash - Gnosis Arts - www.gnosisarts.com

The Real Value of Social Media Marketing

2009-03-23T08:50:00.000-04:00

We've been utilizing social media sites with success for clients for a while now. While Internet marketers extol the virtue of social Media for traffic generation, link building and viral marketing, we think that the use of social Media for these purposes is limited. From our experience, the best use of social media is for branding and, by extension, prospecting new clients.

Social Media & Traffic

In terms of traffic, SM only benefits relatively few. Sites such as Digg and Technorati really only deliver significant traffic if your posts make it to the front page. With hundres of thousands of users posting all the time. don't bank on this.

The best traffic generation SM site, we've found, is Stumbleupon. Unfortunately, the traffic you can siphon off from this site is hit or miss; there doesn't appear to be any predictable pattern to it.

Social Media for Link Building

While it is true that SM sites provide back links, the value of these links is questionable, and far from uniform across the various SM sites or under all conditions. For example, Facebook pages sometimes supply do-follow backlinks. However, the generic profile pages usually do not.

Additionally, the importance search engies place on SM links is uncertain at best. Some SM the SEs totally ignore Others they report, but don't give much trust or link juice. And many are simply no-followed.

Social Media, Brand Awareness & Prospecting

The bottom line is: Internet marketing exists primarily to generate business. And generating business requires clients, partners and customers. It also requires some level of brand awareness. Why will people buy your products and services if they don't know who you are or have any trust in your products and services? To obtain clients, you need a quality brand and a prospect list to go on. To service and keep clients, you need partners to help out.

SM sites, we think, serve these needs the best.
As they are major traffic hubs, they are great places to create awareness for your brands inexpensively and for a widespread audience. In this regard, they are somewhat like free advertising, if used properly.

As your SM profiles start to gain interest (which requires a definite mindset and approach) these followers make perfect candidates for e-Newsletters, blog contributors and/or link partners.

Remember, social media is not about selling or self-promotion; those will get you nowhere on most social media networks. Social media success is more about networking and creating trust; about creating a brand and letting your contributions on these sites be more of a natural expression of that brand.

Sent from my T-Mobile Dash - Gnosis Arts - www.gnosisarts.com

SEO Miseducation

2009-03-16T09:02:00.001-04:00

Some of the requests for proposals we get for SEO services make it qite clear that there are still many misconceptions and much ignorance about how search engines are evolving and what best practice SEO consists of.

For example, yesterday a company asked us about linkbuilding campaigns. They wanted 100 PR5, 50 PR4 snd 30 PR3 back links. Though they didn't provide a timeframe, their desired spend was $500, which tells me that they wanted a short-term campaign with a large volume of links.

This kind of request tells me right off that this firm doesn't really understand SEM or search engine algorithms. They probably read some half-baked SEO article from some self-proclaimed "SEO expert" who said high rankings are all about links, and they ran with it. The result is: they'll find what they're looking for: some no-name SEO "guru" who'll gladly take their money, get them crappy links, and eventually get them penalized by Google.

Then, in three or six months, when their rankings and PageRank drops like a stone off a cliff, they'll wonder what happened.

So, allow me to clear up some of misunderstandings about SEO that such an RFP entails.

1. First of all, no good SEO is going to generate a large volume of links in a short amount of time. It doesn't work, Google will likely ignore most of them, and you run the risk of being penalized for "link farming." Google's sophisticated spam police is well suited to catch such unnatural increases in links over short periods of time.

2. Even if you could get away with posting that many links, it would cost more than $500, if they were decent links.

3. The fact that this company wants links of a certain PR betrays the fact that they haven't been keping up much with recent trends in SE algorithm changes. Google itself has begun demphasizinh its own PageRank metric in order to dissuade people from trying to "game" the system. Furthermore, all the top SEOs have said not to rely too much on PR anymore as a determinant of website quality or ranking potential, but that a better measure to rely upon is theme-relevance and the "naturalness" of the link acquisition.

4. Finally, the request tells me that the company has little clue of the number one SEO axiom: Content Is King. The fact that there was absolutely no mention of content development means that this company doesn't realize that, no matter how many links you have, without optimized landing page content, you won't get the results you're seeking.

It is important for professional SEOs to spend ample time educating potential clients on Internet marketing principles, and not just do for them whatever they ask. Remember, you are the specialist, not them.

Sent from my T-Mobile Dash - Gnosis Arts - www.gnosisarts.com

Market Research

2009-03-10T19:05:00.001-04:00

I've been thinking a lot today about marketing. What all it entails, what it's supposed to do, etc. I wasn't educated formally in the discipline, so everything I've learned has been from trial, error and experience.

Internet marketing, is, wellm a subdivision of Marketing. As such, one would think the general principles that have a pedigree in traditional marketing would have the same in terms of the Internet.

I found myself asking questions today like:

1. What is a target market? How do you define it?
2. Are surveys important, and why?
3. What makes a good survey question?
4. Should I send regular communications to current clientele? If so, what kind, and what should they say?
5. How do I determine the demographic attributes of my best customers? Which sources do I use, and how do I know they're reliable?
6. What exactly is branding, and how do I do it effectively?
7. What types of advertising are most effective for my business? Least effective?

These and other related questions were floating in my head today. As I pondered them, I realized that they were all marketing questions.

What is my point? Not sure. But I think what I'm getting at is this: It pays to ask yourself these types of questions of your own business.
And if you're doing marketing consulting for a client, don't just create an SEO plan and implement it; take time to work together with the client to answer these types of questions.

Yahoo Now Indexing Facebook Profile Pictures

2009-02-27T10:35:00.001-05:00

Yahoo is now indexing profile pictures from generic Facebook pages. This could be an important development in SEM, particularly for Name/Brand promotion and management. See below. I did a search in yahoo for "eric bryant facebook" and my name, company logo and Facebook profile link showed up in position 2.

clipped from search.yahoo.com

Eric Bryant on Facebook
Add friend|
Poke|
Send message|
View friends
Eric Bryant is on Facebook. Not the Eric Bryant you were looking for? Visit Facebook to search for friends, family, coworkers.
www.facebook.com/people/Eric-Bryant/668058031 - Cached

Content Delivery Network, or OpenDNS?

2009-02-12T00:38:00.001-05:00

CDNs can improve website performance, but they can also be very expensive, overly complicated to set up or insecure. We have found that OpenDNS is so far the simplest, most affordable alternative to conventional CDNs.

clipped from www.linux.com

Faster, safer Internet with OpenDNS

"OpenDNS runs a really big, smart cache, so every OpenDNS user benefits from the activities of the broader OpenDNS user base," says Allison Rhodes, community manager of OpenDNS

I tested that claim from my home base in India. After switching to OpenDNS, content-laden Web sites like news.com, cnn.com, bbcworld.com, and myspace.com loaded a lot more quickly, ping times were considerably lower, and query response times (measured with dig -x site ) to news.com, lxer.com, osnews.com, distrowatch.org, and bbcworld.com were lower by 10 to 25% compared to times when I was using my ISP's DNS.

The Value of Twitter

2009-02-07T16:18:00.000-05:00

Twitter / petrosianiigreat free widgetsWidgetbox

The Value of Twitter to Small Business

What value does Twitter really possess in terms of small business development and Internet Marketing?

Well, in our opinion, it remains to be seen. However, I suppose an argument could be made that the incredible buzz and API development that Twitter has spawned since its arrival on the social media scene presents a strong enough case in itself in favor of.

We have been Twittering for several months now, and we have gained a modest following. At least two of our Twitter-groupies are interested in our business. So, I suppose that in itself would be enough to justify it.

Twitter and Internet Marketing

As far as Internet Marketing is concerned, Twitter does have power to grant exposure to your website. Our conclusion: All in all, tart Twittering; it's free, and certainly can't hurt, if managed properly.

Intent-Based Search and 2009 Google Algorithms

2009-02-02T16:04:00.001-05:00

Very interesting. we'll have to keep a close watch over this over the next few months.

clipped from www.establishedwebsiteforsale.co.uk

Googles Search turns more personal, changing the way SEO works 2009

Intent-based Search

Google has been looking up your IP and revising results based on IP. They know where you’re located and can make assumptions about the intent of your search. As you get more into intent-based search, it’s going to change the way pages rank, Bruce explains. “The page that ranks for a shopping query is an entirely different architecture than the page that ranks for a research query.”

Bruce thinks that in the first six months of 2009, we’re going to see a lot more implementation of behavior and intent-based search leading to a mindset of “ranking is dead, and traffic is all that matters.”

A Marketing Opportunity for You

2009-01-16T22:07:00.001-05:00

Would you like to enhance your eMarketing efforts? If so, feel free to visit the New Fine Arts Lab and upload your photos or images to our website Photos upload in minutes.

Just visit our New Jersey Internet marketing consultancy for details.

Brand-Thinking & PPC

2009-01-11T18:52:00.000-05:00

If you've done any Pay-Per-Click (PPC for short) campaign management, then you know how expensive PPC can be. Additionally, PPC campaigns can require a significant time investment, as you must constantly be tweaking your ad text, keywords and bids in order to maximize your advertising dollars. And nothing is more frustrating in PPC campaign management than doing all that work, spending all that money, and getting very few clicks, or a poor Clickthru Rate (CTR).

A Traditional PPC Management Approach

Traditional PPC ad formation and campaign management suggests that you begin by selecting keywords in your market for which you wish to advertise. After selecting your target keywords, you then build your ads around them. While this can be an effective approach, we are finding an approach that is much more effective for our business, and which costs significantly less than the traditional method.

Thinking About Your Brand(s)

Instead of beginning with an assortment of industry keywords, we tried beginning with our brand identity - or the brand idea(s) we wished to convey. By utilizing Google’s Webmaster Tools we discovered that we receive as many, if not more, visitors to our website through name and/or brand name searches, than for the generic “target keyword” searches. In other words, people were finding our business as much by searching directly for our name, our products or our services as they were for any other generic keyword. This has everything to with brand awareness.

Ads Fashioned Around Brands

So, what we did was pretty simple. We launched an online advertising campaign utilizing our brands themselves as keywords for our ads! And we constructed our ad text and appearance around those brand-keywords. No longer did we take the conventional approach of trying to make our ad text “sexy” or “juicy”; we didn’t try to “sell” anything to the potential visitor. We simply let the ad text be a natural expression of our brand identity.

We were astonished at the results. Our ads received a much higher Clickthrough Rate (for a definition of Clickthrough Rate [CTR], click here). For one particular brand-keyword, the CTR was 22% after the first week! And on the date of this writing, our PPC team scored a 100% CTR for one keyword across the search network (content network excluded).

What astonishes me about these stats is that we have a very small nj multimedia firm, with brands which aren't even well known (outside our office - or so we thought!) and for which we are still working to get registered service marks! And it still works!

Why Brand-Thinking Works in PPC

Not only was our CTR much higher when using the brand-identity-approach to ad campaign management, but our Cost Per Click (CPC) was dramatically lower! This is due, in part, to the fact that our brands - unlike generic keywords - are uniquely our own. No other business is really apt to use them. This means there is much less competition driving the keyword price up, than for generic keywords. In addition, the landing pages for those brand-keywords are, as it were, perfectly crafted for those brand names. Thus, our Quality Score for those keywords is higher, thus bringing down the cost we have to pay per per click.

Thinking about your brands, trademarks or service marks offers a fresh approach to Internet advertising and can greatly enhance your online marketing results.

Decreasing Load Time, Part. II

2008-12-26T14:36:00.000-05:00

I wrote an earlier post on the importance of decreasing website load time. One of my SEO gurus, who taught me the tricks of the trade, used a general rule of thumb that has served me well in my Internet Marketing efforts:

The longer a site takes to load its objects and elements, the poorer its rankings will likely be in the SERPs.

And since Quality Score factors in to Google's ranking algorithms, it pays to learn decreasing website load time techniques.

Using Photoshop to Re-Size Images

In the previous article, I talked about the technique of pre-loading website images as a means to decreasing load time. But there is a second, easier, way to decrease load time, and that is by using Photoshop to save the images as Web images.

To do this, simply open the image you wish to resize in Photoshop. Then, go to the File menu and select "Save As." Change the image to a .jpg or .gif (whichever is appopriate - .jpegs for photo images and .gifs for graphic images, typically).

Next, hit save. This will bring up a pop up window which will allow you to slide a button to the left, where it says "Save for web" or "low resolution", or something to that effect. The idea is that you want to save the file in a lower-resolution than what it is currently.

Then, re-upload the image file into your web server location.

If done properly, the image should be significantly smaller. We have found that this technique does not lost any noticeable image quality once transferred to the Web. Super-Refresh (CTRL + F5) the web page with the image, and you should notice a faster loading page.

The Evolution of Search Results and What It Means for Search Marketers

2008-12-22T12:11:00.001-05:00

I thought this was a good post by SEOmoz Chief Executive Rand Fishkin about the future of search.

clipped from www.seomoz.org

Sure, if you've been playing the spam/arbitrage/mainpulation game, even in the lightest gray hat sense, you could be in for an ugly surprise. But, if you've been building a business intelligently and focusing on not just your raw search rankings, but customer fulfillment, branding, participation and word-of-mouth marketing, these changes are going to be a net positive. Why? Because more data means the engines know more about you and about your visitors - they can see which sites attract lots of repeat visits, which ones have loyal customers, which ones are suceeding in not just satisfying, but delighting their audience. Those are the sites we should all be building and they're also the sites the engines want to reward.