Tips For Keeping Customers Engaged Over the Summer

Keeping your customers engaged over the summer can be a challenge. Between vacations, outdoor events, and school being out, the consumer’s buying habits and attention span change. People are in front of their computers less and use mobile devices more to check email in the summer months.

So how do you keep your customers engaged during the lazy, hazy days of summer?

    Make sure your emails are mobile-ready. If at all possible, create a mobile version of your email. If you do not have the resources to do this, at the very least make the font bigger and keep the call to action closer to the top and more centered (so you don’t have to slide the email to the right).The same would be true with landing pages.

    Try a time-of-day split test. A change in season can mean a change in your contacts’ behaviors. Parents are distracted by children now that school is out, children stay up later, there are more activities outside. If you usually send at the same time, try a different time or split-test one time with another and look for a difference in engagement. There is no magical time – it depends on your audience.

    Be patient. In the lazy days of summer, it may take people longer to get to your email.  Studies show that it can take 2 weeks for all of your interested contacts to interact with your email.  Make sure your offer is still valid or, at the very least, make sure the landing page has an offer of some kind.  It may be best to avoid “today only” specials in the summer, unless this is your business model.

    Do a “summer tips” email. Retailers – do you have a product that can be used more/differently in the summer (hats, lotions, shoes, equipment)? Do you have information that is more relevant in the summer (healthy tips, travel destinations, children’s study tips while out of school, water safety)? Get creative and your audience will appreciate the tips.

    Do a summer auto-responder series. Alternatively, set up an email calendar now and create the emails ahead of time. Schedule these emails in advance – especially if your email manager will be on vacation. An example of a “summer series” could be around deals each week, summer safety tips, motivating health tips related to the summer (skin care, pool exercises, healthy eating). Nonprofits could consider hosting a “summer challenge” fundraising goal and offer winners a prize at the end of the summer.

    Express yourself. Summer is a more casual time, making it a good time to relate to your customers on a personal level. People like to feel they are buying from people, rather than companies. Take time this summer to stop selling and start building relationships. Take pictures of your staff at a company cook-out, share pictures from employee travels (this would be great on a blog or social media, too). Have a picture-caption contest – for example, use a picture of your CEO or owner doing something fun and ask your subscribers to write the caption with a small prize for the winning caption. Ask your customers what they did during the summer and ask them to post pictures to your website or Facebook page.

Get creative, find a reason to send to your list, and you’ll find your audience engaged with you through the summer and into fall. Read more about the importance of summer campaigns to small businesses here.

Written By: Penny Ashley-Lawrence, iContact Enterprise Account Manager

Choosing Search Engine Optimization Services

If you decide to use our search engine promotion services, be sure to find out what is included in these services. SEO Specialist Online can help you through every step of the process: researching keywords, writing the content, even updating the optimization periodically.

This is the type of service you want so that you can sit back and put your web site’s future on the search engines in the hands of trusted, experienced professionals who will generate the results you want.

Not being where your customer is looking could be costing you their business! Let SEO Specialist Online do a free website evaluation.
 

Delivering on Your Brand

Your brand positioning has been agreed on, your target customer has been identified, your message has been refined to reach that audience, you have a new logo and tagline, a new email marketing template and your website has a new design. All of this really captures who you are and where you want to go.

So, your work is done. Right?

Wrong.

Good start, but you’ve only scratched the surface. Your smart positioning, new site, new template and new logo will only get you so far. Now, the real challenge: delivering on your brand experience.

Experience can make or break a brand. Say you’ve premised your entire brand on exceptional service (á la Nordstrom), but your frontline employees don’t deliver. At all. What stays with your audience is not that winning tagline about service, but the abrasive rep who rubbed them the wrong way. And at that point, no amount of appealing logos or clever messages can salvage your brand.

Retailers provide an example of how to think about your brand experience. In fact, the emphasis on brand experience in retail has inspired a whole cottage industry. Perfumers develop special scents for specialty shops. Of-the-moment DJs craft brand-inspired soundtracks for store stereos. But before you write this off as a trend for retailers only, think again. While you might not need to rush out for that perfect fragrance for your office headquarters, the lesson is this: Take a hard look at your brand experience.

Getting your brand experience right requires a top-to-bottom sweep of your touch points. So, do yourself this favor. Get your team in a room and start mapping out all the possible ways your audience might interact with your organization. In other words, audit your brand experience.

As a warm-up, start with the obvious conveyers of brand: your emails, your website, your ads. But then get into the not-so-obvious: how your staff interacts with your audiences, the atmosphere in your lobby, how you answer the phone, the music playing when a caller goes on hold, the tone in your email marketing messages.

Also, think hard about whether your processes actually reinforce your brand promise—and identify the gaps. For example, are you promising “easy” but making customers take a dozen steps to complete an order? Do you want to target young families but aren’t actually offering family-friendly policies for your employees? Do you want to be known for hospitality but have a less-than-welcoming presence at the front door? All of these details add up to an impression of your brand—good or bad.

So, get beyond the big picture and think through all those details that make up the experience. Then, make some changes, start actively managing the experience and watch your brand take off. Written By: Anna Adlard, Director of Account Planning at capstrat

Choosing Search Engine Optimization Services

If you decide to use our search engine promotion services, be sure to find out what is included in these services. SEO Specialist Online can help you through every step of the process: researching keywords, writing the content, even updating the optimization periodically.

This is the type of service you want so that you can sit back and put your web site’s future on the search engines in the hands of trusted, experienced professionals who will generate the results you want.

Not being where your customer is looking could be costing you their business! Let SEO Specialist Online do a free website evaluation.

Tips to Clean Up Your Email Marketing This Spring

Just like cleaning up your house, prepping the garden, or washing all the pollen off your car, with spring comes another set of tasks you should follow to get the most out of your email marketing; Email Spring Cleaning. Each spring you should take the time to make sure your campaigns are following best practices, to update your templates, to take advantage of any new features iContact is recommending, to review the basics, and to make sure your email marketing has as much impact as possible. Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of your email marketing.

    * Clearly identify who your email is from – Be sure to set up your Campaign in iContact with an email address your recipients will recognize. Using your company name as the sender name is always our recommendation. Once you choose the “from name,” be consistent with it so your customers will always recognize emails from your business. As an example, we could use emailmarketing@seo-specialist-online.com

    * Set your sending schedule – Pick a day and time for your emails (whether they are weekly, biweekly, monthly, etc.) and stick to it. Add it to your calendar and set a reminder. If you can’t log in during that time, use our Schedule Delivery feature to have your email sent at the date and time you want. Be sure to let your subscribers know on your sign-up form and in the newsletter what the schedule is.

    * Make it easy for others to reach you or your company – In the body of your email, show your email recipients multiple ways to get in touch with your company. This can include an email address, a phone number, and a postal address. Having a physical address can assure your list members that your company has a real-world presence. Be sure your campaign settings are up-to-date.

    * Make navigation easier - If your emails tend to be longer, use a table of contents. List out each story/article and link it to the item within the email. Your recipients can then navigate directly to the items that interest them. If you find your current template makes this difficult, consider switching to a new template as part of your spring-cleaning. With more than 500 beautiful templates to choose from, MessageBuilderTM can solve your navigation issues, and give your emails a fresh look.

    * Check on your list-building activities – Review the different methods you are using to build your email list. If you have not added a sign-up form to your website, it is very easy to add one using our Sign-Up Form Creator. Be sure there is a form available on every page of your website. If you own a retail store, add a form at the register. While at conferences and events, bring a form or computer to allow potential customers to sign up on the spot.

    * Combine Email Marketing with Social Media – If you have not already taken advantage of iContact’s Social Tools, now is the time. With Social Tools you can easily take advantage of the social networks of your subscribers. Using Facebook and Twitter allows you to reach a wider audience than with email marketing alone. Our social media integrations take all the guess work out, and allow you to leverage the power of email marketing with social media today.

These are just a few of the best practices we recommend to make your email marketing as successful as possible. To see more, and to read about how to build strong relationships with your customers and prospects, check out our Email Marketing Guide. It is full of information on how you can become an email marketing expert. Written By: Daniel Smith, iContact Senior Product Marketing Manager

Choosing Search Engine Optimization Services

If you decide to use our search engine promotion services, be sure to find out what is included in these services. SEO Specialist Online can help you through every step of the process: researching keywords, writing the content, even updating the optimization periodically.

This is the type of service you want so that you can sit back and put your web site’s future on the search engines in the hands of trusted, experienced professionals who will generate the results you want. 

Not being where your customer is looking could be costing you their business! Let SEO Specialist Online do a free website evaluation.

SEO Title Tag  

Search engine optimize your blog’s title tags.  Title tags are important factors when it comes to search engine optimization.  Search engine marketing and search engine optimization advice, tips, strategy and tactics. 

All search engines use title tags to gather information about your Web site.  Such title tags cannot be called unique as many sites/blogs have got exactly the same wordings in their title tags.  Twokad suggested to change the title tags from one title.  Please careful when writing title tags never, never over stuff keywords title. 

Make sure your title tags are not stuffed with keywords.  I always thought that title tags and header tags were the same things.  For the same very reason, title tags should vary.  Vary the title tags on the inner pages of your website.  For some web pages, such as product pages, automatically generated title tags may be sufficient. 

Title tags for WordPress blog posts vs static pages.  SEO Title Tag makes is dead-easy to optimize the title tags across your WordPress-powered blog or website.  While WordPress is perfectly built for SEO, it usually requires tweaking if you want to optimize your title tags accordingly.  If it’s important that user’s see more than 55 characters in the WordPress title tags — then do it.  The title tags should be between 10-60 characters. 

Keep your title tags to 65 characters including spaces.You won’t get penalized for having longer title tags, but the search engine will simply ignore the longer part.  The title tag is used by pretty much every search engine that uses spiders to crawl your website.  The only information they are giving the search engine is their brand name.

This entry was posted in  SEO  and tagged  html tags ,  html title tags .  WordPress title tags are located in the   part of the HTML code.  I’m in fact talking about title tags in a post title – as in the title attribute in a link.  At this point we’re talking about  tagging your blog title tags for search engines.  Understanding how search engines use and treat title tags allows us to maximize the use of title tags. 

Choosing Search Engine Optimization Services

If you decide to use our search engine promotion services, be sure to find out what is included in these services. SEO Specialist Online can help you through every step of the process: researching keywords, writing the content, even updating the optimization periodically.

This is the type of service you want so that you can sit back and put your web site’s future on the search engines in the hands of trusted, experienced professionals who will generate the results you want. 

Not being where your customer is looking could be costing you their business! Let SEO Specialist Online do a free website evaluation.

It’s important to educate our children about Veterans Day and to understand the sacrifices these brave soldiers made and continue to make, to fight for our country.

History of Veterans Day

World War I – known at the time as “The Great War” – officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles, France. However, fighting ceased seven months earlier when an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, between the Allied nations and Germany went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. For that reason, November 11, 1918, is generally regarded as the end of “the war to end all wars.”

In November 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words: "To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…"

The original concept for the celebration was for a day observed with parades and public meetings and a brief suspension of business beginning at 11:00 a.m.

The United States Congress officially recognized the end of World War I when it passed a concurrent resolution on June 4, 1926, with these words:

    Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and

    Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and

    Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared November 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

Search Engine Optimization Today

Today Google Real-Time Search Changes Everything. Not being where your customer is looking could be costing you their business! Search engines are tightening up the loopholes to manipulate positioning.

So-called “doorway” pages, tricks with meta tag/keyword files, etc. no longer are effective. Keyword positioning, along with indexing, is the way to be seen on today’s Internet.

• The vast majority of clicks occur within the top 5 positions on a search page.

• As a rule, the more competitive the business category, the harder it is to attain decent placement. Conversely, the more competitive the business category, the more important placement is to success of the business.

Entrepreneurs and small businesses constantly find themselves looking around asking themselves why they can’t quite seem to find a good fit for what they need from service providers.

People do business with who they like, who they trust and who truly care about their business. In fact, a recent study by US News & World Report revealed that when clients leave their current provider it’s not because of a pricing or product problem, but a “people” problem. People that no longer value their business, or seem indifferent to it. A whopping 68% of them.

• A fractional 14% defected because of a pricing issue followed by 9% who were successfully wooed by a competitor.

• With Google Real-Time Search the playing field has been leveled.

• No longer can you or your competition sit back and think they own their TOP organic Google positions!

Google search engine ranking factors are among the most important items to check in any SEO work. This will ensure that the strategies formulated are effective, current and optimal for the best search engine ranking results. Every search engine optimization analysis examines the website’s performance against these important ranking factors. This article series will take a closer look at these factors and find evidence for their existence, so you will know that you are on the right track when performing SEO on your website.

If deficiencies are found in a site’s Google search engine ranking factors, the SEO in charge will attempt to make some changes to the website in such a way that it will now become search engine friendly and compliant with SEO ranking factors. Taken from a broader perspective, these improvements cover three important aspects:

• Content (using optimal titles, checking content quality, focusing relevance to targeted keywords, etc).

• Links (how other sites reference the website in terms of quality and quantity).

• Technical aspects (i.e. crawlability of the website) to name just a few!.

Are all big factor’s in SEO, to improve Web Site Search Engine Rankings, with the Top Ten Search Engines, like Google, Alta Vista, AOL Search, Ask Jeeves, Excite, Inktomi, Lycos, MSN, Teoma and Yahoo.

SEO is the skillful art of placing researched keywords, that have a known searching audience, into various places on a web page that are known to be given weight by the ranking systems and algorithms of Major Search Engines

It is estimated that less than two percent of the commercial and small business website content writing on the Internet have had any optimization for search engines today still.

Our SEO Campaign Management Services provides you with the ultimate search engine optimization (SEO) system – virtually ensuring you will obtain top ten search engines rankings for your chosen web sites and keywords to Improve Web Site Search Engine Rankings

Furthermore, we are aware of all of the major search engines Webmaster and marketing guidelines and all of our marketing strategies and techniques are compliant with these guidelines and we work one on one with you to insure your knowledge of How does search engine optimization work.

All of our clients enjoy greatly improved positions in the Top Ten Search Engines for competitive keywords. The free, organic positions available through natural search marketing are the most coveted spots on these algorithmic search engines.

A properly optimized Web Site can take you from search invisibility and zero rankings to top spots in these Top Ten Search Engines, especially if optimization is combined with known off page ranking factors.

Those who act now, with decisiveness and confidence will lead their competition for the rest of this decade, while their competitors catch on and try to catch up.

Spam free, guideline compliant marketing is at the top of our list, to make sure our client is protected.

To Improve Web Site Search Engine Rankings, it’s SEO Specialist Online for all your search engine optimization needs Why not let us do a Free Website Evaluation for Your Business TODAY!

The Big secret is, “There is No Secret”

Every web site owner wants more traffic and higher rankings in the search engines. In the midst of an SEO campaign, however, it’s easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. So before you change a single title, you might want to shift your focus to answer some important questions.

So what do I mean by losing sight of the forest for the trees anyway? You’ve probably heard that expression since you were a teenager at least. You may even know that it means focusing on the details to the point that you lose sight of the big picture – and with the amount of detail work that goes into a proper SEO project, that’s easy to do.

The mission of search engines is to supply their visitors with relevant results, so penalizing or banning sites that appear to interfere with that mission is a necessity. Understanding which blunders adversely impact your search engine rankings is a prerequisite to a well-optimized site.

1. Do you use pull-down boxes for navigation? Search engine spiders can’t fill out forms, even short ones with just one pull-down. Thus, they can’t get to the pages that follow. If you’re using pull-downs, make sure there is an alternate means of navigating to those pages that the spiders can use. Note this is not the same as a mouseover menu, where sub-choices show up upon hovering over the main navigation bar; that’s fine if done using CSS (rather than Javascript.)

2. Does your primary navigation require Flash, Java or Javascript? If you rely on search engine spiders executing Flash, Java or Javascript code in order to access links to deeper pages within your site, you’re taking a big risk. The search engines have a limited ability to deal with Flash, Java and Javascript. So the links may not be accessible to the spiders, or the link text may not get associated with the link. Semantically marked up HTML is always the most search engine friendly way to go.

3. Is your site done entirely in Flash or overly graphical with very little textual content? Text is always better than graphics or Flash animations for search engine rankings. Page titles and section headings should be text, not graphics. The main textual content of the page should ideally not be embedded within Flash. If it is, then have an alternative text version within div tags and use SWFObject to determine whether that text is displayed based on whether the visitor has the Flash plugin installed.

4. Is your home page a “splash page” or otherwise content-less? With most webites, as mentioned above, the home page is weighted by the search engines as the most important page on the site (i.e., given the highest PageRank score.) Thus, having no keyword-rich content on your home page is a missed opportunity.

5. Does your site employ frames? Search engines have problems crawling sites that use frames (i.e., where part of the page moves when you scroll but other parts stay stationary.) Google advises not using frames: “Frames tend to cause problems with search engines, bookmarks, emailing links and so on, because frames don’t fit the conceptual model of the Web (every page corresponds to a single URL.) “Furthermore, if a frame does get indexed, searchers clicking through to it from search results will often find an “orphaned page”: a frame without the content it framed, or content without the associated navigation links in the frame it was intended to display with. Often, they will simply find an error page.What about “iFrames”, you ask? iFrames are better than frames for a variety of reasons, but the content within an iframe on a page still won’t be indexed as part of that page’s content.

6. Do the URLs of your pages Include “cgi-bin” or numerous ampersands? As discussed, search engines are leery of dynamically generated pages. That’s because they can lead the search spider into an infinite loop called a “spider trap.” Certain characters (question marks, ampersands, equal signs) and “cgi-bin” in the URL are sure-fire tip-offs to the search engines that the page is dynamic and thus to proceed with caution. If the URLs have long, overly complex “query strings” (the part of the URL after the question mark), with a number of ampersands and equals signs (which signify that there are multiple variables in the query string), then your page is less likely to get included in the search engine’s index.

7. Do the URLs of your pages include session IDs or user IDs? If your answer to this question is yes, then consider this: search engine spiders like Googlebot don’t support cookies, and thus the spider will be assigned a new session ID or user ID on each page on your site that it visits. This is the proverbial “spider trap” waiting to happen. Search engine spiders may just skip over these pages. If such pages do get indexed, there will be multiple copies of the same pages each taking a share of the PageRank score, resulting in PageRank dilution and lowered rankings.If you’re not quite clear on why your PageRank scores will be diluted, think of it this way: Googlebot will find minimal links pointing to the exact version of a page with a particular session ID in its URL.

8. Do you unnecessarily spread your site across multiple domains? This is typically done for load balancing purposes. For example, the links on the JCPenney.com home page point off to www2.jcpenney.com, or www3.jcpenney.com, or www4.jcpenney.com and so on, depending on which server is the least busy. This dilutes PageRank in a way similar to how session IDs in the URL dilute PageRank.

9. Are your title tags the same on all pages? Far too many websites use a single title tag for the entire site. If your site falls into that group, you’re missing out on a lot of search engine traffic. Each page of your site should “sing” for one or several unique keyword themes. That “singing” is stifled when the page’s title tag doesn’t incorporate the particular keyword being targeted.

10. Do you have pop-ups on your site? Most search engines don’t index Javascript-based pop-ups, so the content within the pop-up will not get indexed. If that’s not good enough reason to stop using pop-ups, you should know that people hate them – with a passion. Also consider that untold millions of users have pop-up blockers installed. (The Google Toolbar and Yahoo Companion toolbar are pop-up blockers, too, in case you didn’t know.)

I expect many of you will look at these questions and think that they should be asked well before a site goes live, very early in the design process. That’s probably true. But it’s also true that web sites evolve over time, rather like people. They change, grow, and adapt to conditions in the marketplace. By the time a web site has been up for a couple of years (or even less), it might be a very different creature from what the site owner originally had in mind.

This kind of change is not a bad thing, per se. We all get a certain amount of satisfaction out of growing and tweaking our sites, and then watching what happens. If we’re not looking clearly at what the site is turning into, however, we can’t see what it needs.

Search engine optimization could be a tiring task but with time it sure helps you get better traffic.

Today Google Real-Time Search Changes Everything. Not being where your customer is looking could be costing you their business! Search engines are tightening up the loopholes to manipulate positioning.

So called “doorway” pages, tricks with meta tag/keyword files, etc. no longer are effective. Keyword positioning, along with indexing, is the way to be seen on today’s Internet.

•The vast majority of clicks occur within the top 5 positions on a search page.

• As a rule, the more competitive the business category, the harder it is to attain decent placement. Conversely, the more competitive the business category, the more important placement is to success of the business.

Entrepreneurs and small businesses constantly find themselves looking around asking themselves why they can’t quite seem to find a good fit for what they need from service providers.

People do business with who they like, who they trust and who truly care about their business. In fact, a recent study by US News & World Report revealed that when clients leave their current provider it’s not because of a pricing or product problem, but a “people” problem. People that no longer value their business, or seem indifferent to it. A whopping 68% of them.

• A fractional 14% defected because of a pricing issue followed by 9% who were successfully wooed by a competitor.

• With Google Real-Time Search the playing field has been leveled.

• No longer can you or your competition sit back and think they own their TOP organic Google positions!

To Improve Web Site Search Engine Rankings, it’s SEO Specialist Online for all your search engine optimization needs Why not let us do a Free Website Evaluation for Your Business TODAY!

Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs

Says it is!

Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs says he’s predicted the steady decline of rival Microsoft’s Windows operating system (OS). That swipe at Microsoft comes only a day after Google says it’s phasing out MS Windows as it ramps up internal testing of its Chrome OS.

Jobs made the comments Tuesday night in an onstage interview at the D: All Things Digital conference. Jobs said he believes computers running Windows would begin a decline in popularity as people move to new platforms for their web needs: devices like the iPad, other tablet computers, or smartphones. Apple CEO Compares PCs to Big Old Trucks

Jobs even went so far as to compare the standard Windows PC with motorized trucks, which he said were at their height when people lived on farms, but have faded in importance as people have moved to cities and suburbs.

Although the logic of his analogy seems questionable, other industry experts agree with Jobs on the decline of Windows PCs. “He is pretty clear about ‘it’s over’, and it is,” said DreamWorks chief executive Jeffrey Katzenberger. (Source: ft.com)

Katzenberger agreed that people in the future will rely less on Windows, noting that he’d personally started using an Apple iPad and RIM BlackBerry combination rather than a laptop.

Windows Security Issues: a Top Concern

Jobs’ attack on Windows comes only day’s after Google said it would stop using the ubiquitous OS. The company reportedly cited security concerns, though it’s likely the announcement was more of an attempt to build up hype over Google’s own Chrome OS. Chrome will begin debuting on netbooks soon, with plans for use on regular laptops to follow. (Source: pcworld.com)

Jobs also cited security concerns in suggesting the future decline of Windows. He added that less-than-stellar battery life and poor user experiences will force the Windows PC out of its market dominance.

Google ditches Windows

The report cites security as the main reason for Google banning Windows. The migration off of Windows reportedly started in January, after the Google was hacked by China. Google has not yet confirmed these reports.

One Google employee told the Financial Times, “getting a new Windows machine now requires CIO approval.” Another employee said most Google employees have opted towards Mac OS, while others are going with Linux.

Some speculate that this ban on Windows is due to the upcoming launch of Chrome OS, Google’s competing operating system.

Social networking companies don’t have it easy. Advertisers covet their users’ data, and in a niche that often seems to lack a clear business model, selling (or otherwise leveraging) that data is a tremendously tempting opportunity. But most users simply don’t want to share as much information with marketers or other “partners” as corporations would like them to. So it’s no surprise that some companies try to have it both ways.
Monday evening, after an exasperating few days trying to make sense of Facebook’s bizzare new “opt-out” procedures, we asked folks on Twitter and Facebook a question:

The world needs a simple word or term that means “the act of creating deliberately confusing jargon and user-interfaces which trick your users into sharing more info about themselves than they really want to.” Suggestions?

And the suggestions rolled in! Our favorites include “bait-and-click”, “bait-and-phish”, “dot-comfidence games”, and “confuser-interface-design.”

Although we didn’t specifically mention Facebook in our question, by far the most popular suggestions were variations on this one from @heisenthought on Twitter:

How about “zuck”? As in: “That user-interface totally zuckered me into sharing 50 wedding photos. That kinda zucks.”

Other suggestions included “Zuckermining”, “Infozuckering”, “Zuckerpunch” and plenty of other variations on the name of Facebook’s Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Others suggested words like “Facebooking,” “Facebaiting,” and “Facebunk.”

It’s clear why folks would associate this kind of deceptive practice with Zuckerberg. Although Zuckerberg told users back in 2007 that privacy controls are “the vector around which Facebook operates,” by January 2010 he had changed his tune, saying that he wouldn’t include privacy controls if he were to restart Facebook from scratch. And just a few days ago, a New York Times reporter quoted a Facebook employee as saying Zuckerberg “doesn’t believe in privacy.”

Despite this, we’d rather not use Zuckerberg’s name as a synonym for deceptive practices. Although the popularity of the suggestion shows how personal the need for privacy has become for many Facebook users, we’d prefer to find a term that’s less personal and more self-explanatory.

No, our favorite idea came from Twitter user @volt4ire, who suggested we use the phrase “Evil Interfaces.” The name refers to a talk by West Point Professor Greg Conti at the 2008 Hackers On Planet Earth conference.

Here’s Conti explaining Evil Interfaces to a puppet named Weena:

As Conti describes it, a good interface is meant to help users achieve their goals as easily as possible. But an “evil” interface is meant to trick users into doing things they don’t want to. Conti’s examples include aggressive pop-up ads, malware that masquerades as anti-virus software, and pre-checked checkboxes for unwanted “special offers.”

The new Facebook is full of similarly deceptive interfaces. A classic is the “Show Friend List to everyone” checkbox. You may remember that when Facebook announced it would begin treating friend-lists as “publicly available information” last December, the change was met with user protests and government investigation. The objections were so strong that Facebook felt the need to take action in response. Just one problem: Facebook didn’t actually want to give up any of the rights it had granted itself. The result was the obscure and impotent checkbox pictured here. It’s designed to be hard to find — it’s located in an unlikely area of the User Profile page, instead of in the Privacy Settings page. And it’s worded to be as weak as possible — notice that the language lets a user set their friend-list’s “visibility”, but not whether Facebook has the right to use that information elsewhere.

A more recent example is the process introduced last week for opting out of Instant Personalization. This new feature allows select Facebook partner websites to collect and log all of your “publicly available” Facebook information any time you visit their websites. We’ve already documented the labyrinthine process Facebook requires users to take to protect their data, so I won’t repeat it here. Suffice to say that sharing your data requires radically less work than protecting it.

Of course, Facebook is far from the only social networking company to use this kind of trick. Memorably, users of GMail were surprised last February by the introduction of Google Buzz, which threatened to move private GMail recipients into a public “frequent contacts” list. As we noted at the time, Buzz’s needlessly complex “opt-out” user-interface was a big part of the problem.

OK, perhaps the word “evil” is a little strong. There’s no doubt that bad user-interfaces can come from good intentions. Design is difficult, and accidents do happen. But when an accident coincidentally bolsters a company’s business model at the expense of its users’ rights, it begins to look suspicious. And when similar accidents happen over and over again in the same company, around the same issues, it’s more than just coincidence. It’s a sign something’s seriously wrong.

Source: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebooks-evil-interfaces. Reprinted by permission.

Also the Wall Street Journal’s Sam Schechner and Mr. Kafka talk about the TV industry’s “Upfront Week,” where networks unveil new shows and negotiate advertising commitments, and strategies for making online content profitable.

Meet Alec Brownstein , a 28 year old experienced copywriter who had aspirations of working for a really creative copywriters shop with highly skilled creative copywriting directors. Last summer Alec turned to the internet as a method of advertising himself and his skills. Alec also turned to the popular search engine Google to begin his research. With social media marketing on the rise, Alec decided to turn to another form of marketing known as Google Adwords.

Alec had a basic understanding on how to use the Google Adwords service which allowed him to create marketing advertisements about himself and bid for top placement to display his advertisements utilizing competitive keywords people search with to find copywriting services. Alec frequently “Googles” his name to learn more about how popular his name is and the services he provides to get an understanding on how successful he is among search results. “Everybody Googles themselves,” Brownstein explained. “Even if they don’t admit it.” Alec said.

Alec decided to “Google” the names of top creative marketing directors of popular firms he wished to work for and found that there where no marketing advertisements attached to their names. Alec decided to bid on their names as popular keywords to use with his marketing advertisements and found that he was the only person bidding on their names at the cost of 15 cents per click. Alec created the advertisments he wished to use with his newly purchased keywords and put Google Adwords to the test.

Within a few short months, Alec surprisingly received calls from all but one of the creative marketing directors whose names he had purchased.  finally, at the end of the year, he received a job offer from two: Scott Virtrone and Ian Reichenthal of Y&R New York. His marketing efforts with Google Adwords only cost him $6. The rewards for Alec’s ingenious haven’t stopped there. He has also received awards in the self-promotion category at two major advertising awards shows, The One Show and The Clios.

What is the best advice one could offer to others wishing to land a job via marketing online?

Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there in an interesting way,” Alec said. “The people who you want to work for can’t hire you any less than they already are. So shoot for the moon.”

Your Local Search

Local Searchers = READY to BUY

Wouldn’t it be great if everyone who came in your store was ready to buy, and not just there to browse or kill time?

One reason the yellow pages has such a strong hold over small businesses is that when Joe Consumer opens the yellow pages, he’s almost always ready to buy. (Have you ever known anyone to read the yellow pages casually?)

A person looking for a local retailer, entertainment outlet, or service business is often much closer in time to a buying decision, and their level of interest is greater. “Local clicks” very often represent better leads and convert better than general clicks.”

Think Local

Listen up, little guys. Google and the rest of the search giants are giving you a shot at a potentially huge business–for now.

The market for local searches on the Internet–searches that include geographic information like a state, city or ZIP code–should be booming. Research shop the Kelsey Group estimates the sector generated $3.4 billion last year, but it could grow to $13 billion by 2010. Meanwhile, traditional local advertising–from newspapers, local commercials, yellow pages ads and the like–generates an estimated $100 billion per year.

But while Google and Yahoo! dominate nearly every other part of the Web, they have yet to fill up on local-search traffic. The top five local search sites are only reaching about 55% of the general Internet audience.

Google itself isn’t even making the most of the local-search market share it has. About 25% of all Google searches are local, but only about 10% of Google’s ad revenue–about $220 million in its last quarter–comes from ads generated through local searches, says Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy.

What gives? “Everyone is tantalized by the sheer volume and wants to tap into these billions upon billions,” says Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, “but it’s very difficult to capture those dollars–it’s a complex, fragmented and inefficient market.”

The biggest problem is getting small mom-and-pop business owners–some 23 million of them–to sign up and pay for online ads. The auctioned-off, pay-per-click pricing for ads at search engines like Google and Yahoo! are far too complicated for small retail and service businesses, says Assaf Ran, chief executive of DAG Media, a niche online directory company.

Whether or not you have a brick and mortar store, it is vital to ensure your web site is ranked well in searches for your local area. What does this mean?

People aren’t just searching for ’widgets’ anymore they are searching for “widgets AND my town” more and more trying to narrow their searches to their own neighborhood. Why is this?

People want to know whom they are dealing with online. They want to be able to visit your business location for your offerings, or at least have the peace of mind that they could if they wanted to.

We love helping local businesses succeed in the ever evolving online world. In fact, we spotted the opportunity of “local search” well before Google began showing map results for local businesses inside it’s main search results.

The trend towards local search is growing every day and our clients have been seeing huge, and growing, rewards from their internet exposure with the help of our local SEO services.

Local SEO for Organic Search Rankings

Organic search results are the usual listings you see when you do a search in Google, Yahoo or MSN. Good rankings in organic search will drive the bulk of the traffic to your website. It is here where we can also target a wider range of keywords to maximize the local traffic your website receives.

We’ve been practicing organic SEO since before Google Maps and Yahoo Local even existed. We have a deep understanding of how the search engines operate and have stayed ahead of the curve when the engines make changes to their ranking algorithm. You’ll see long term benefits from our experience in developing local seo strategies.

Optimized Placement in Local Search Engines

Within the last couple of years the search engines have been providing improved “local search” features. Google in particular has been embedding these “Maps” inside their search pages as part of their Universal Search results. This has opened new opportunities for local businesses and requires different techniques, from organic SEO, to get exposure there.

We can help your business get more exposure with Local Maps SEO. As Maps usage grows it is becoming more important to be seen here as well as in organic search.

For More Information Contact SEO-Specialist-Online.com or call 800-897-6458

The most popular way to access the AOL network is to install the American Online software on your computer. This software manages the physical connection to AOL’s Internet servers, authenticates logon (verifies the subscribers identity), and manages the entire Internet experience within a single application. If you pay for AOL, it’s a safe bet you are using this method to connect.

Unfortunately, the AOL software significantly alters the “personality” of Windows, consumes quite a bit of system resources, and even alters some networking configuration settings that can bypass some of the new security technology that is available (like OpenDNS). It has also been known to display Web pages incorrectly. For these reasons, network security policy at many companies prohibits employees from installing AOL on office computers.

We can already hear the moaning and groaning out there:

“But I’ve used AOL for years.”

“I don’t want to change my email address!”

Don’t panic. There is another way to access America Online without compromising your computer and incurring the wrath of your company IT Department. And, better yet, it’s free! That’s right: free. Simply open Internet Explorer, Firefox or another preferred Web browser, navigate to www.aol.com, then enter your screen name and password – voila! You’re now authenticated to the AOL network without any special software; you can send and receive email, view your address book and access many other AOL services as well. Since this method utilizes standardized software and Windows networking settings, your computer will run faster, Web pages will appear as they were designed, and your security applications will not be compromised.

Since computers require no special software to connect to AOL.com (other than a standard Web browser), you can literally logon to your AOL account from any computer in the world that has an Internet connection.

Granted, you will notice a few changes in the appearance of AOL. However, given the improved performance and security, as well as the flexibility to logon from anywhere, most people find that they are willing to put up with the new look and feel. Of course, to fully realize the benefits of switching to the Web-delivered version of AOL, you will need to remove (uninstall) the America Online software from your computer. If you need help making the switch, please let us know. In most cases, we can take care of everything remotely, without a visit to your home or office.

Don’t See What You’re Looking For?

Look in Marketing Tools

SEO Ranting

I do want top rankings 
I do NOT want top rankings.

Which one of those statements is true for you?

I am willing to invest time or money to get top rankings.
I am NOT willing to invest time or money to get top rankings.

Which one of those statements is true for you?

Not many things in life are black and white…but getting top rankings for your website is. 

You either have them or you don’t AND you are either willing to do something to get them, or you’re not.

I think a lot of people fool themselves into thinking they will do what it takes and then when the times comes to invest the time or put up money, they don’t follow through.

I don’t mean to be too blunt, and I definitely don’t mean to be offensive but I do want to be honest and hopefully get you thinking.

It’s worth repeating.

You either have top rankings or you don’t.
You are either willing to do something to get top rankings, or you aren’t.

What is true for you and what does that truth mean to you, your business and your goals?

It has been said that inaction is action, in and of itself.  So, the question is – you are already taking action in some form, so are you taking the right action?

SEO may not be for you.  You may not want a lot of new traffic and leads and sales.  If that’s the case, that’s OK.

But if you want or need traffic, leads and sales – then you need top rankings.

Not sure where that come from, but I guess that was my little rant for the day!  Stay tuned for more SEO tips.

Jim Gras
Senior SEO Strategist
SEO-Specialist-Online.com
Skype: jamiboy
800-897-6458

SEO SPECIALIST ONLINE FORUM LAUNCHES

Jim Gras from SEO-Specialist-Online.com announced the opening of the SEO SPECIALIST ONLINE FORUM today to the public.

A place for an open and frank discussion on "Cracking The Google Code, One Website At A Time", say’s Gras, Senior SEO Strategist for SEO-Specialist-Online.com

SEO Specialists Online provides a high-level of and focused menu of Internet Marketing and related services to enable businesses, individuals, and entrepreneurs to promote their business successfully online.

Additionally, it provides the platform for building associate relationships that will serve to expand the business beyond that of the time and abilities of its principles.

Using our expertise and experience, clients will benefit from the services by getting more visibility to their websites, learn the tools and techniques to get that visibility and provide support services to the customers of customers.

Together with Lou Veltri who brings over 35 years as an experienced Information Technology (IT) entrepreneur and business consultant and Michael Augustine specialization in Information technology with over 15 years experience in both the public and private business sectors, SEO Specialists Online can help develop your business plan and help you build your blueprint for driving your Brand’s presence on the Internet.

Steven Turner a SEO Specialist with MBA Post Graduate in Marketing w/Entrepreneurial Studies, Doctoral Candidate (PhD)-AMDS (Applied Management Decision Science) Access Sequential processing Methods which are used in the query process with in SEO-strategies. and John Lombaerde a 20 year veteran of the manufacturing and CAD/CAM industries, a technical writer and a SEO Keyword Analyst round out the team.

With several years of existence, long for most internet-based companies, SEO Specialists Online following, contacts and prospects are plentiful in our maturing pipeline. And, of course, there ability to mentor, train and lead is much more advanced than most of there competitors at any level. And last, but not least, each of their reputations are highly regarded both in Veretekk and on the internet, in general.

Register Today for the SEO SPECIALIST ONLINE FORUM so you too can Learn to "Crack The Google Code One Website at a Time"

It is no secret, that social networking has become a popular way to get yourself recognized on the Internet. Google believes that this concept can also exist in the workplace. Social networking promotes new ideas, new ambitions, higher productivity, and increased educational awareness. During Lunch, special groups are formed to learn more about each other, share ideas, and have a good time. The food that is served is even considered “top of the line.” A happy, filled stomach with great food does promote brain power. I have to admit; I cannot think or be productive without having a great meal first!!

Google has raised our eyebrows and they will always be a company that incurs a constant growth. The company is poised to be around for a long, long, time. The video below provides an inside look at our visit at Google and the many aspects of working for their organization! Google has become a household name, A true leader in the world of the Internet. At Google, the sky is the limit and the future is now.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Until now, Google would only show you the last keywords that led to a conversion. In many cases, searchers will go through a searching process that includes research that might not lead to an immediate sale but may assist in a sale after a few more searches.

For example, imagine someone searches for [camera] then visits your site and does some research. They later search for a specific model number that they want to purchase. They end up back on your site and convert based on the specific model number. Google will show you in the Search Funnels report that the keyword [camera] did not specific convert, but assisted in a conversion.

How’s Google gathering the data and protecting user privacy? A variety of ways.

Funnels are created by noting when someone clicks on an ad at Google. That links their search activity from that click to a particular advertiser for 30 days. If they do other searches in that period after the initial click, even if they don’t click on the advertiser’s ad each time, Google will still track that the advertiser’s ad showed for that searcher and what keywords it showed for. If they eventually click again on the advertiser’s ad and convert, only then is a funnel report created — and only if the advertiser also uses the AdWords conversion tracking code.

Speaking of getting a Boost in your sales – and increase call volume Let us help

Imagine how well this could work in YOUR business.

Imagine if you really spent time targeting the market (and made a direct response ad instead of the weird one in this video).

I’m betting you could get unbelievably targeted traffic for 25-50 cents.

…Especially if you made your ad offer something FREE like a “Shocking Report” or video series.

In fact, you could probably end up building a hell of a list using this tactic.

Speaking of getting a Boost in your sales – and increase call volume Let us help