Alex Michael Digital Marketing

What Influences my Tweets

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 09:49:00 +0000

These are the components that influence my tweets:

Demand - People are talking about you and want to be your friend.
Engagement - Try having more conversations and less one-sided broadcasting.
Velocity - Be original, creative and offer good content to the stream and your message will travel.
Activity - Try engaging with more people. Always remember that great content is rewarded.
Reach - The best way to build your audience is by listening and participating. There is no shortcut.

Already, Twitter influences stock and options trading.

"Since brokers have to save instant messages and e-mail, but thus far have no such mandate for tweets, well, you can guess that the far more discreet traffic is on Twitter," says Jon Najarian, of optionmonster.com. It was on Twitter that Najarian first heard last week's news that Matrixx Initiatives' (ticker: MTXX) Zicam nasal spray allegedly damaged people's sense of smell. "Guys started tweeting and the stock dropped from $19 to $13," he says. Matrixx has since pulled Zicam off the market. The stock was recently at about $5.55.

Facebook visits beat Google in between March 7th and March 13th, becoming the most visited website in the U.S. for the week

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:57:00 +0000

"Together Facebook.com and Google.com accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits last week."

This development represents a major win for Facebook. The ability to represent the social network as the number one site should count for a lot as corporate representatives talk to advertisers and investors, and could result in a direct boost in revenue.

LinkedIn Traffic Power

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:40:00 +0000

LinkedIn traffic is more valuable than traffic from other social networks and sites. This is due to the professional nature of LinkedIn itself. LinkedIn has the highest average household income per user over any other social networking site (even NYTimes.com and BusinessWeek.com readers). Users of this service are business decision makers currently numbering 60 million professionals. For me it is always one of the top 3 referring sites that drives traffic to my blog.

link velocity - Google's need for freshness

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:39:00 +0000

Link velocity refers to the speed at which new links to a webpage are formed. Historically, great bursts of new links to a specific page has been considered a red flag, the quickest way to identify a spammer trying to manipulate the results. With information suddenly so viral and speedy, bursts of links to content are key indicators of freshness and what is at the top of mind for searchers. Take for example, Wikipedia’s content is continually updated by its editors, giving it the appearance of constant freshness. Combined with continual linking, it gives it a live Web relevance and therefore placement. Age of content and websites are then devalued in favor of freshness, and link bursts regain value so long as link bursts appear naturally viral. How does a search engine differentiate between spam bursts and natural viral bursts?

Matt Cutts addresses links from Twitter and Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:51:00 +0000

Google treats links the same whether they are from Facebook or Twitter, as they would if they were from any other site. It's just an extension of the pagerank formula, where its not the amount of links, but how reputable those links are. While Facebook and Twitter links may be treated like any other links, they do still come with things to keep in mind. With Facebook, you have to keep in mind that a lot of profiles are not public, so Google can't crawl it, and it can't assign pagerank on the outgoing links. If the page is public, it might be able to flow pagerank, Matt says. Google uses a similar strategy for ranking Tweets. However most links with Twitter are nofollow.

Google has released another set of very cool tools for Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:14:00 +0000

Google Analytics is one of the most robust offerings by the search giant and it manages to fly under the radar. It has almost become ubiquitous for a large number of companies that are not prospects for other analytics packages like Omniture, Coremetrics, Webtrends etc.

My most popular search interviews in 2009

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 13:45:00 +0000

In keeping with the theme of reflecting upon the year 2009, I thought it would be fun to go back through various favorite interviews in 2009 and find my top five.

Google's Caffeine Update

Vanessa Fox Talks Diagnosing What's Wrong with a Site

Mike McDonald compares the iPhone 3Gs to the Google myTouch

Michael Martin Compares the iPhone to the gPhone

Abby Johnson Looks at Google Voice

New PPC Campaign

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 16:09:00 +0000

With a bid at a specific level and an average position at a particular range, only three possibilities exist for your new campaign: the bid is too high, too low, or just right. So what do you aim to do in the first few weeks?

If you:

Wait it out: If you wait long enough, you'll have statistically valid data (arithmetically) unless your business is seasonal. This makes waiting for valid data a wrong proposition.

Cluster "like keywords" together: keywords in an ad group should represent similar search intent. This means that clustering the data at the ad group level or even combining ad groups may allow you to make a decision faster.

Cluster at the campaign level: If the campaign was well constructed, one could make decisions at the macro level.

Try to attribute offline conversion behavior to the campaign at some level: Chances are you don't rank organically for most of your paid keyword choices anyway.

Use the click-forward rate (opposite of a bounce rate): The idea of determining which clicks stayed (instead of left) can provide a valuable data set.

Social networks are not going away

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:22:00 +0000

The concept of social networking is going nowhere. It's not even a new concept. Forums and email are pretty much social media for all intents and purposes and they have been around for over 20 years. Social networks have recently been blamed for $2.25 billion in lost productivity. I wonder how much employees simply talking to each other at the workplace has cost companies. That's not necessarily online, but it's still socializing.

Google receives support from EU Judge in trademark infringement case

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:20:00 +0000

At least three major brands including LVMH, parent company of Louis Vuitton, launched a trademark infringement case against Google in French Courts.

Google received a massive boost in its case against the parent company of Louis Vuitton when a senior EU judge, in his legal opinion, said Google can allow trademark names to be used in its AdWords. Advocate General Poiares Maduro said in a statement: "The mere display of relevant sites in response to keywords is not enough to establish a risk of confusion on the part of consumers as to the origin of goods or services."

The French Court ruled in favour of the brands asking Google to halt the usage of trademark names in its searches. The case has been taken to the European Court of Justice and the legal opinion by the senior judge could provide Google an edge in the case.

The long-running legal dispute will not be ruled on officially until early next year, although this non-binding legal opinion is likely to carry a good deal of weight.

The companies accuse Google of allowing trademark keywords to be used in its AdWords system. This allows manufacturers of fake and replica products to place advertisements and sell non-original products.

The AdWords has a big contribution towards Google's revenue pie and the search giant posted a net advertisement revenue of $21 billion in 2008.

Google does not use the "keywords" meta tag in its web search ranking.

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:11:00 +0000

You can now hear it from the man himself at Google. This is not breaking news, but there are a lot of people out there that still put a lot of value into this.

Optimizing for Bing

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:51:00 +0000

if Yahoo is driving a significant traffic to your site, you need to determine what keywords you rank well for in Yahoo, but not in Bing. you need to work on raising these bing rankings.

Bing returns the top five results for the primary keyword you entered, then displays the top three results for up to five related terms, providing a list of 20 possible listings for the user to select. If you currently rank 6-10 for any of these keywords you should work on building links to move up into the top five, and focus on achieving top three results for the terms that Bing has chosen for the Quick Tabs.

What does Bing Look for in Links?

Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center recently posted a pair of blog posts looking at what makes some links good and some bad. Here they are:

- "If you don’t feel you can endorse the quality of the content at another site, you shouldn’t be linking to them."

- Don't seek links from sites whose content isn't worthy of your endorsement.

- Links to and from your site should be relevant to your site (or at least the page you’re linking from/to)

- Focus on quality, not quantity. Few highly relevant links are better than a bunch of crap links

- Avoid "bad neighborhoods" like dedicated domains or IP ranges that do nothing but set up meaningless link exchanges.

- Avoid hidden text

Google Caffeine to be much more powerful, flexible, and robust than the Google we know today

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:44:00 +0000

The Microsoft Bing-Yahoo partnership has shaken up the search world. There is no company that this pending deal stands to impact more than Google. That said, many in this industry have postured that Google has nothing to worry about and

Google may have a huge lead over its competitors in terms of market share, but the search giant isn't resting on its laurels. A next-generation infrastructure codenamed "Caffeine" has been unveiled, and it's already available for individuals to test.

More WebProNews Videos

Social marketing is the new search engine optimization

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:48:00 +0000

Reciprocal voting is the new reciprocal linking. It offers a fairly low barrier to entry, and the opportunity to drive a TON of traffic in a short period of time. Even more importantly, social media has become a cornerstone of the strategy for launching sites, or improving their link popularity.

Google's I'm Feeling Lucky Button

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:16:00 +0000

The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button takes users directly to the top search result; I'm Feeling Lucky is handy if you're sure that the first result in the search engine is going to be the page you want. Google cofounder Sergey Brin told public radio's Marketplace that around one percent of all Google searches goes through the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. This means that 1% of Google’s traffic doesn't get to see Google's advertisements, which costs the company roughly $110 million each year, which is about £67 million.

Are the results useful?

Is Google rewarding faster websites with more traffic, better Quality Scores and lower costs per click?

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:48:00 +0000

Google's goal is simple. To be the best search engine on the planet. Whilst Google's algorithm is a closely guarded secret, the search giant has become increasingly vocal over the past few months on the importance of speed. Google has stated that speed is one of the most important factors in providing web users with the best customer experience.

Surge in social networking among women over 50

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 14:41:00 +0000

Women over 50 are leading the charge when it comes to social media and using blogging sites, according to new research. A survey carried out by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) found that social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook are proving popular among women generally, but the phenomenon has really taken off among the over 50s. The poll found that there are now twice as many women over 50 using social networking and blogging sites than girls under 18, demonstrating the explosion in access to and use of the internet among the older generation. The results were revealed at the IAB's recent Women Online Forum, which concluded that social media is currently the biggest trend to be sweeping the online world among women. So-called silver surfers have been on the rise for a number of years, but this latest survey reveals the extent to which new technologies are now being harnessed by older people as a means to stay in touch with friends and family. The results of the study could also be a wake-up call to advertisers, many of whom have recently been criticised for stereotyping older people and ignoring them in the belief that they do not spend much money. Brent Bouchez, founder and chairman of New York marketing firm Five0, recently wrote on Forbes.com that such conceptions may have been true 30 years ago but no longer hold water.

FOUR IN TEN OVER 50s USE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:55:00 +0000

Almost half of all baby boomers in the UK belong to at least one social networking site, a new study shows.

According to a survey from InSites Consulting, four in ten UK web users over the age of 50 use social networking sites - a figure that amounts to 4.7 million mature social networkers nationwide.

Around 93 per cent of respondents said they know about popular social networking site Facebook, while 35 per cent said they actually use it.

UK boomers are much more enthusiastic about social networks than their Continental cousins, with just 22 per cent of Dutch boomers engaging with the platform.

The survey found that online professional networks such as LinkedIn are also popular with older internet users, although to a much lesser extent than social sites.

"The figures show that these are not just a few isolated individuals using sites such as Facebook," commented Steven Van Belleghem of InSites Consulting.

"We are seeing a clear rising trend amongst the over 50s to make more use of social networks in order to communicate and stay in touch with their family and friends."

Bing a very worthwhile search engine

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:04:00 +0000

Microsoft has put aside a HUGE budget to promote Bing. That means at the very least, you will see an early surge of Bing users. If you optimize for Bing today you will see your rankings shoot up. Will Bing last? Time will tell. I plan to optimize for it as much as possible for the chance that it might bring rewards as its Marketing peeks and into the future.

I often see search engine results that don't have meta tags or any other textbook paraphernalia, they often don't even contain the searched keyword

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:19:00 +0000

Content can also often be misconstrued in SEO as simply large quantities of keyword-scattered pages. Yet content can be just as much a concept with out hundreds or thousands of text-heavy pages.

Content is certainly critical to achieving the much needed linkage data to surround pages for ranking purposes. Search a major search engine for "foreign currency exchange," "currency converter," and other foreign-currency-related searches. You'll always see XE.com in the top results. It's one page with a banner ad, a tool, and a little bit of instructional text. It ranks for so many popular searches and has done so for years. The page has excellent linkage and, perhaps more important, huge end-user traffic via search.

Links are good. But you can only get links from other people who have Web sites. What about the millions of end users who don't have sites? The only way they can show a search engine their approval of results' relevancy is by voting with clicks.

Google's 5 other search Engines

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:43:00 +0000

Google has other search engines besides web search that people use all the time. To rank on them might double your traffic.

YouTube
YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine behind Google. Businesses using online video are going to want to maximize their YouTube efforts by employing some easy strategies to gain more visibility.

Google Image Search
One in five searches are image searches, and that alt tags and file name optimization are key.

Google News
Bruce Clay notes, "News page views are up to trillions monthly." More and more people are getting their news online. That's why the newspaper industry is struggling.

Ranking in Google Maps/Local Search
While this one may seem fairly obvious, you need to think about terms a local searcher would use to find your business. They’ll most likely use the city and state in their search, so you’ll want your site to be optimized for those as well as business-specific keywords.

Ranking in Google Blog Search
Looking at positive and negative things that can have an affect on your Google Blog Search Rankings. Among the positives are:
- Number of RSS subscriptions
- Clicks on SERP post links
- Blogrolls
- ability for visitors to tag posts
- whether or not people are tagging them
- References to the blog by sources other than blogs
- Pagerank

How to Make the Best Title Tags:

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:39:00 +0000

Brand your traffic
Use the title of your site or brand at the beginning or end of every title tag to help searchers know where they're going and to increase return visits. If you're struggling to find justification for this component, think of all the ad studies showing that consumers are willing to pay more for a "brand name" product than an off-brand or store brand item of the same type - apply this logic to the SERPs and you'll find that users will go further down the rankings to click on a "trusted" brand.

Limit length to 70 characters (including spaces) or less
Engines have fluctuated recently and Google, in particular, is now supporting up to 70 characters in some cases.

Incorporate keyword phrases
Make sure your keyword show prominently in your title tag. It doesn't have to be the first words, but it should be the semantic and logical center of attention.

Target longer phrases if they're relevant
Include in a title tag as many as are completely relevant to the page, while remaining accurate and descriptive. You shouldn't include one term in other page titles - you'll be cannibalizing your rankings by forcing the engines to choose which page on your site is more relevant.

Be consistent
Once you've determined a good formula for your pages in a given section or area of your site, stick to that regimen - you'll find that as you become a trusted and successful "brand" in the SERPs, users will seek out your pages on a subject area.

Repeat in the headline
Re-using the title tag of each page as the H1 header tag can be valuable from both a keyword targeting standpoint and a user experience improvement. Users who go to a page from the SERPs will have the expectation of finding the title they clicked - deliver and you've fulfilled that obligation. Users will be more likely to stay on a page they're reasonably certain fits their intended goal or query.

Target searcher intent
When you're writing titles for web pages, keep in mind the search terms your audience employed to reach your site. If the intent is browsing or research-based, a more descriptive title tag is appropriate.

Check out this tutorial out

If there is one thing you can do its improve your Link Anchor Text

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:38:00 +0000

A link’s anchor text, the underlined link text a user clicks on, is important for search engines to confirm the theme or topic of the target page. Text which contains pertinent keywords are the way to go. Stop using “click here”. This will be more useful both to end users and search engine algorithms.

What are your views on PageRank sculpting?

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 07:16:00 +0000

Google’s Matt Cutts sent a shockwave through the advanced SEO community by saying that site owners could no longer perform “PageRank sculpting” using the nofollow tag in the way they’d previously thought. Now Matt’s posted more explanation about the change.

Rodney Bartlett interviews Google's Matt Cutts on Local Search and everything for Small Business Search

noreply@blogger.com (RedSuitcase) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 07:11:00 +0000

Rodney Bartlett interviews Google's Matt Cutts at Pubcon 2007 in Las Vegas. Matt had some excellent tips for small business owners and answered a few great questions on doing your own SEO.