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Archive for January, 2009
Google Helps Business Do More With Less
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
The amount of doom and gloom in the media can be a little overwhelming. If you don’t set your personal filters to edit out some of the economic content, it can really shape your attitude and leave you looking for a rock to hide under. There may not be any easy answers, but informed decisions can help focus your efforts. Looking for opportunities with measurable returns can help mitigate some of the economic pressure and stress. Google has taken an extra step and created a page of tools specifically oriented to the online marketer.
Google created Do More With Less to help create a strategy for succeeding in the recession. Understanding how your site and strategy is performing can help navigate the many choices for search optimization. A few of the free tools that we use often include:
Google Insights for Search – For the trendsetter in each of us, a look at what others are searching for and filter by time and categories.
Google Maps – Local search becomes even more important as clients look closer to home and business for the services they need. People often look to a vendor they can establish a relationship with to insulate against tougher times. Make sure your Google Map listing is correct and look at options for updating to reach new customers.
Google Analytics – A free tool tracking who visits your website, where they came from and how they interacted with your site while visiting. This is critical information for determining if you are providing the right content to the right market. For more detailed information, see Jason’s post on What’s New with Google Analytics from SES 2008.
These are basic tools and reviewing some of the others will help you gather the data needed to make informed decisions. Informed decisions can improve the success of your website. If you have questions, let us know and we can help develop a strategy for tough times, or even if they are not.
For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com
Search Marketing – These Things Take Time
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Today marks a momentous day in American and world history, Barack Obama is now the president of the United States. Lots of questions will be asked of this new president and he will be held accountable like none other.
One question I have is how quick is the ‘Failure’ Google Bomb going to take to change? If you’re not familiar with what I am talking about let me explain
First let’s start with Google Bomb. What is it? Google Bomb is a term that describes actions that webmasters and web users can employ to ensure that a specific web page comes up #1 in a Google search. This is done by creating a ton of links to one page using a specific term. For the Bush Google Bomb the term ‘Miserable Failure’ was used and linked specifically link to the George Bush bio page on Whitehouse.gov. very funny stuff if you aren’t a Bush fan, not so funny if you are.
To combat this Google changed it’s algorithm to address this and the Google Bomb was gone. But not so fast. If you search for the term ‘Failure’ his cached page is still in the 2-3 position BUT because of a change in executive office the page is populated with information on the new president Barack Obama.
Below is a screenshot from today
The Bush page is stilled cached but when you click on it it goes to Obama’s info. If you’re a nerd like me you will be watching this to see how quickly the Google algorithm will work
UPDATE – January 23 2009
It seems Google finally got around to crawling the new White House site and now Obama's profile is the number one website result for failure.
I guess this Change thing will take a little more time
For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com
The Social Media Inauguration – Where Will You Be?
Monday, January 19, 2009
Tomorrow marks a historic day in the US not only for the fact that Barack Obama will be the 44th US president and 1st Black Man elected to the Executive Office but also this will be the very first Social Media/Web 2.0 inauguration.
If you are like most people that I know you are on all of the major Social Media sites like Facebook/Twitter and Flickr to name a few and tomorrow these sites will be abuzz with Washington Fever as Mr. Obama is sworn into office.
No matter where your political allegiance lies tomorrow’ s event represents a paradigm shift not only in how this country will be perceived but also how this President and his campaign embraced the tools that we have been using for quite some time to get your vote.
The Obama campaign realized early on that it had to get it’s message of Hope and Change into the minds of influencers and how better to do that than to go to where they are and not wait for them to come to them. Utilizing a lot Web 2.0 tools the Obama campaign made it easy for people to connect and share his message through things such as quick links on his home page.
Even graffiti artist Shepard Fairey got into the mix with his iconic Hope Posters
Effective Big-Budget Social Media Marketing
I covered this back in August and congrats to Obama’s marketing team, they did a great job in finding a marketing message and giving people the ways and means of sharing it with each other. People wanted change, they made this the basis of their campaign and rode it all the way to the White House. It was a well executed campaign that was right for the time. My two cents? It was very big on style and somewhat short on substance and me being the optimistic pessimist that I am I sure hope we are a lot better in 4 years but I’m a little hesitant. There’s a lot to change.
Where to Catch the Inauguration
I know our monitors here at work will be tuned to this historic event but if you aren’t anywhere near a TV and live mostly online during the day thankfully TechCrunch and the New York Times
TechCrunch Inauguration Rundown
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/18/the-techcrunch-guide-to-the-inauguration/
New York Times Inauguration Rundown
But What About Twitter? Are They Ready?
According to NY Times Biz Stone, Twitter co-founder states that they ‘will nevertheless be doubling our through-put capacity before Tuesday.’
Lets just be thankful that a MacWorld Expo isn’t tomorrow as well
For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com
