Jun 25 2009
Learn from TKG & The Ruby Group experts on how to use the Internet to drive traffic to your website and how to convert that traffic into leads and sales once they get there! Learn more about this upcoming workshop now!
July 15, 2009
8:30 AM-11:30 AM
Breakfast starts @ 8:00 AM
Cost: $49
Sandler Training Center at The Ruby Group
2251 Front Street
Suite 206
Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio 44221
Jun 22 2009
Come out to The Karcher Group office on Wednesday, July 1st to meet local tweeters from the Canton/Akron area. Come and spend some time with your tweeps and enjoy food & drinks - TKG is picking up the tab!
Follow @NEOtweetups on Twitter for the latest info.
Jun 22 2009
Last year Google announced that they would be able to index Flash, but nothing really came of it. Flash, in my opinion, is problematic from a search perspective. Google is now announcing that they have added external resource loading to their Flash capabilities. If the Flash content pulls information in from an external file like an XML, HTML, or text file, Google will be able to index that content and make the relationship between it and the original Flash file.
Here are the capabilities Google says it has for indexing Flash:
- Index textual content displayed as a user interacts with the file. We click buttons and enter input, just like a user would.
- Discover links within Flash files.
- Load external resources and associate the content with the parent file.
- Support common JavaScript techniques for embedding Flash, such as SWFObject and SWFObject2.
- Index sites scripted with AS1 and AS2, even if the ActionScript is obfuscated. Update on June 19, 2009: We index sites with AS3 as well. The ActionScript version isn’t particularly relevant in our Indexing process, so we support older versions of AS in addition to the latest.
Jun 12 2009
Biz Stone posted on the Twitter blog that Twitter is going to be rolling out Verified Account Beta, a feature that will help Twitter identify which accounts and real and authentic. There have been cases on Twitter where people have registered famous people or actors names to get a following.
Here is how to identify verified accounts from the Twitter Verified Account page:
The ‘Verified Account’ badge will appear in the top-right portion of a user’s profile page just above the name, location and bio—as shown in the screenshot above.
It will always have a badge followed by the words ‘Verified Account’
If the verified account badge appears anywhere else on a user’s profile page (e.g. in the avatar or the background) it is not a verified account
The verified account badge will also appear next to usernames in the Find People section
The verified account badge will have the same color as shown above even if users customize the background of their profile page or change the color in the sidebar
There are already for examples of Verified Accounts on Twitter.
It will be interesting to see how far Twitter takes this beta program in the upcoming weeks and if it will really help.
Jun 02 2009
Microsoft announced the other day that they are launching their next generation search engine called “Bing”. They are pitching Bing as a decision engine which means they want to help consumers make choices or find particular bits of information. The 4 main areas it will focus on are purchase decision information, trip planning, health condition research, and finding a local business.
Microsoft’s New Search at Bing.com Helps People Make Better Decisions
Decision Engine goes beyond search to help customers deal with information overload.
REDMOND, Wash. — May 28, 2009 — Microsoft Corp. today unveiled Bing, a new Decision Engine and consumer brand, providing customers with a first step in moving beyond search to help make faster, more informed decisions. Bing is specifically designed to build on the benefits of today’s search engines but begins to move beyond this experience with a new approach to user experience and intuitive tools to help customers make better decisions, focusing initially on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business. The result of this new approach is an important beginning for a new and more powerful kind of search service, which Microsoft is calling a Decision Engine, designed to empower people to gain insight and knowledge from the Web, moving more quickly to important decisions. The new service, located at http://www.Bing.com, will begin to roll out over the coming days and will be fully deployed worldwide on Wednesday, June 3.
The explosive growth of online content has continued unabated, and Bing was developed as a tool to help people more easily navigate through the information overload that has come to characterize many of today’s search experiences. Results from a custom comScore Inc. study across core search engines show that as many as 30 percent of searches are abandoned without a satisfactory result. The data also showed that approximately two-thirds of the remaining searches required a refinement or requery on the search results page.
“Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO. “When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web. Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions.”
A New Approach to Internet Search
Based on the customer insight that 66 percent of people are using Internet search more frequently to make complex decisions,* Microsoft identified three design goals to guide the development of Bing: deliver great results; deliver a more organized experience; and simplify tasks and provide insight, leading to faster, more confident decisions. The new service, built to go beyond today’s search experience, includes deep innovation on core search areas including entity extraction and expansion, query intent recognition and document summarization technology as well as a new user experience model that dynamically adapts to the type of query to provide relevant and intuitive decision-making tools.
- Great search results. Relevant search results are still a top priority for people, yet Microsoft studies show that only one in four search queries deliver a satisfactory result. Bing helps identify relevant search results through features such as Best Match, where the best answer is surfaced and called out; Deep Links, allowing more insight into what resources a particular site has to offer; and Quick Preview, a hover-over window that expands over a search result caption to provide a better sense of the related site’s relevancy. Bing also includes one-click access to information through Instant Answers, designed to provide the sought-after information within the body of the search results page, minimizing the need for additional clicks.
- Organized search experience. More and more customers are regularly spending time with search engines, engaging in complex, multi-query and multi-session searches. Respondents also said an organized search experience would be twice as useful in helping find information and accomplishing tasks faster. Bing includes a number of features that organize search results, including Explore Pane, a dynamically relevant set of navigation and search tools on the left side of the page; Web Groups, which groups results in intuitive ways both on the Explore Pane and in the actual results; and Related Searches and Quick Tabs, which is essentially a table of contents for different categories of search results. Collectively, these and other features in Bing help people navigate their search results, cut through the clutter of search overload and get right down to making important decisions.
- Simplify tasks and provide insight. Microsoft’s research identified shopping, travel, local business and information, and health-related research as areas in which people wanted more assistance in making key decisions. The current state of Internet search isn’t optimized for these tasks, but the Bing Decision Engine is optimized for these key customer scenarios. For example, while a consumer is using Bing to shop online, the Sentiment Extraction feature scours the Internet for user opinions and expert reviews to help leverage the community of customers as well as product experts in trying to make a buying decision. In Bing Travel, the Rate Key compares the location, price and amenities of multiple hotels and provides a color-coded key of the best values, and the Price Predictor actually helps consumers decide when to buy an airline ticket in order to get the lowest prices.
The new brand portfolio will include the following changes to existing Microsoft programs:
- Microsoft’s mapping platform, Virtual Earth, will now be branded as Bing Maps for Enterprise.
- Technology from Microsoft’s April 2008 acquisition of Farecast is now a central part of Bing Travel.
- Microsoft’s popular cashback program, now dubbed Bing cashback, with more than 850 merchants and more than 17 million products available, will be fully integrated into the Bing Shopping experience.
Microsoft is committed to building better tools to help people find the shortest distance from their initial search query to the point of making an informed decision. Bing is an important first step toward this long-term vision and a strong indicator of Microsoft’s commitment to move search technology forward for customers.
May 15 2009
Learn web marketing strategies from the best at our upcoming SEO seminar, May 29th being held at the University of Akron.
Special guest speakers include Anita Campbell; CEO & Editor in Chief of Small Business Trends & Jake Baillie of STN Labs.
When registering, enter discount code: JENNIFER to receive $50 off.
May 12 2009
For the last several years, businesses have been looking to the web for less expensive advertising & marketing options. With the current state of the economy, local businesses are now investigating online opportunities & jumping on the local search bandwagon!
“With yellow pages being out of date before they’re even off the printing press, it’s no surprise that Local Search on the Web has taken the place of dusty old “yellows” as the preferred method for finding local products and services. “
Some benefits of local search include:
“When it comes to Web Marketing, local businesses actually have certain advantages over businesses with a national presence. Instead of having to compete on a national scale, local businesses can focus their web marketing efforts on a more targeted geographic area and even find success a bit easier.”
Read about how local search works, best practices and tips on how to integrate social marketing into your local web marketing strategies.
Apr 30 2009
Heading to Columbus tonight to meet up with Jake for dinner, then speaking on link building & social media at tomorrow’s SEO seminar.
Read all the SEO seminar details & register online. There are just a few spaces left…
When registering, enter discount code: JENNIFER to receive $50 off.
Apr 27 2009
YouTube.com is quickly becoming the fastest growing resource for online searchers.
Internet searchers are looking to video sharing website, YouTube to provide them with the information they’re looking for. Gone are the days of soley using Search Engine’s to find what you’re looking for.
I know, this is old news….but some companies have yet to connect the dots.
Years ago, being at the top of Google’s search results was the #1 goal for most companies regardless of the phrase. Then, it was getting to the top of the heap for the phrases that would increase sales/leads. Over the last few years, with the emergence of social media, companies are finding that “SEO” doesn’t just include optimizing for the Search Engine’s anymore, but rather optimizing where your customer base is…
If you need to fix a leaky sink, searching in Google could provide articles that you’d have to read — OR, a user could just as easily search YouTube and watch a DIY video! Understanding the need for this type of marketing is vital to any company’s web marketing initiatives.
The shift for some searchers to YouTube versus the other Search Engines requires a need for YouTube users to be employing optimization efforts in this space (as well as on all other domains). It’s now just as important to show up at the top of YouTube’s search results as it is to be visible at the top of Google’s results for those targeted converting phrases!
Want to read more about the shift to YouTube? Check out:
Apr 20 2009
Social media has opened up a whole new world when it comes to link building.
Gone are the days of the massive directory link submissions, begging anyone and everyone for a link, and praying to the DMOZ god of directories for a link (well mostly, anyway).
Contextual link building is not new, necessarily, just the more current way of building links back to your site. For those who would like a definition, you see this all over the place; it is when you find a link within any body of copy. This blog is littered with them. People often link back to a product or interesting piece of information.
Bloggers are often sought after sources for contextual links, especially those bloggers who are popular. Some will review a product or service for a fee. Some have been successful in selling ad space on their blog because of their popularity, so advertisers know that their ads are being seen. Most bloggers will only promise to do their best to present and honest and fair review of a product, so hopefully, if you would decide to go this route, your product is a good one. Might be wise to ask to review the post before it is published. You’ll have to pay the fee either way, but at least they should give you the option of whether you want it posted or not.
Other places you might find contextual links are articles, emails, marketing materials, breadcrumb navigation and most websites include them right in the copy, where appropriate (sometimes where it is not appropriate, but that’s up to the site owner). You need to make sure if you are doing a contextual link in your copy that it is relevant to the page you are on, that the anchor text (the actual wording of the link itself) lets the user know where the link goes, or what type of content they will find. Also, make sure that the page it points to holds some type of relevancy to the page it is coming from. It would be silly to just stick a link to a page about frogs when the page you are on has nothing whatsoever to do with them. Also its not advisable to stick purely gratuitous links in for the sake of passing on link love to your boss.
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