Virante Orange Juice Has Moved!

As of November 2, 2009, Virante Orange Juice blog is located at http://www.virante.com/blog/

KGen Firefox Extension Shows Pages' Potential Keywords

KGen is an extension for Firefox web browsers that displays the strongest keywords on a particular web page. Words on the page repeated more than once are ranked by "weight" (a user-tunable algorithm based on html tags and page placement), number of repetitions on the page, and "position" (which appears to be how far down in the page's code the keyword appears, relative to other keywords in the list). At present, the tool displays only single-word keywords (not multi-word phrases).

To install, in Firefox go to the KGen Add-on Page and download. After installing and restarting Firefox, to use KGen first browse to a page you want to analyze, then select Sidebar > KGen: Keyword generator from Firefox's "View" menu. The Word List tab shows the keywords with the rankings described above. There is also a Cloud view for a quick graphic representation of the relative strength of the various keywords found. In the Word List view, selected keywords can be copied to your computer's clipboard to paste and use elsewhere.

While the lack of analysis for phrase keywords limits the tool's usefulness, particularly for PPC, I found that useful combinations still suggested themselves by glancing from the top ranked keywords to the actual text of the page under analysis. For SEO purposes, right-clicking on any keyword will open a browser tab suggesting common misspellings and lettter-omissions and -substitutions for the word.

AdWords Quality Score: Don't Just Look at the Number

If you've got some experience managing cost-per-click (Google's term for pay-per-click) advertising using Google AdWords, you surely by now realize the high importance of optimizing for Quality Score. Either that, or you enjoy throwing away your or your clients' money.

According to Google, Quality Score (QS) is "the basis for measuring the quality and relevance of your ads and determining your minimum CPC bid for Google and the search network. This score is determined by your keyword’s click through rate (CTR) on Google, and the relevance of your ad text, keyword, and landing page.” Those last three elements that I've bolded are under your control, and thus ought to be high on your priority list of what you tweak on a daily basis in your accounts. Why? Because higher QS = lower cpc and better ad position = better ROI for you or your client.

I've recently observed, though, that just watching the QS score number on your keywords can lead to unnecessary frustration. You may be diligently putting into practice those things which should result in a higher QS*, yet not see a higher QS number for some of the related keywords. I've noticed recently, however, that in many cases it appears that Google is indeed giving you a boost reward in such cases even though they did not increase the QS number. In quite a few cases, after QS optimization, I've seen ad position rise (at the same bid level) and/or CPC go down, while the QS remained the same. Another indicator I've observed of post-optimization bump is a sharp drop in minimum first page bid for a highly competitive keyword.

So why didn't the QS go up in these cases? I believe that part of the reason is that QS is a 10 point scale. It's possible that you could be getting real credit from Google for optimization that isn't quite big enough yet to bump you all the way up to the next whole QS point. I suspect that if QS were expressed to one decimal point, you might in such cases see something like QS going from, say, 5.2 to 5.4.

The lesson in this is if you put a good amount of effort into making a relevance flow from keyword to ad to landing page, don't write off your efforts if you see no consequent increase of QS over the next several days. Be patient and wait for data to accumulate. Did the associated ad start to rise up the page at the same bid level? Has the CPC of the keyword been trending downward for the same or increased number of clicks? If yes, then it is likely that you got your reward, even if the QS number doesn't immediately show it.

*The linked post is a bit out of date (was posted when Google QS was "poor - good - great" instead of 1-10), but most of the tips are still relevant.

New Facebook Home Page: News Feed vs. Live Feed

Starting today (October 23) you should be seeing some important changes to your FB home page. You can now select between News Feed and Live Feed. Live Feed is what you've been used to seeing for the past year: Everything your friends are posting as it happens. News Feed is now a "best of" your feed, the posted items from your friends that Facebook thinks you are most likely to be interested in or want to interact with.

By popular request, some of the notifications that used to appear in your feed but had been moved to a sidebar are now back in the Live Feed.

You can edit options at the bottom of each feed to choose who shows up more or less in the two feeds.

(UPDATE: This post was created as a Google Sidewiki on the Facebook homepage, but the new homepage format seems to have broken Sidewiki for the site. Can't see my original post.)
in reference to: Facebook | Home (view on Google Sidewiki)

Marketers: Get Ready for Google Social Search

On October 21 Google announced at Web 2.0 Expo the coming-soon implementation of real-time Social Search incorporated into the regular search results page.

Results will appear at the bottom of the results page and will be culled from the searcher's own social networks, the ones listed on his/her Google Profile.

Marketers who have been ignoring social web sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed would do well to get on board now and start learning how to use them properly and building followings. Why? Imagine this scenario:

You run a website selling vacation packages for Tampa Beach, FL. One of your Twitter followers is looking for a good resort package deal for the coming weekend. It so happens that you've been tweeting about some great deals you're offering for this very weekend. Your follower goes to Google to search for potential packages. Even if she missed your tweets, they will likely appear on her search page because she is linked to you via Twitter.

in reference to: BREAKING: Google Announces Social Search (view on Google Sidewiki)

Tip: Use News Feed Groups to Filter Your Feed

Overwhelmed by your News Feed? Too much to read? Facebook allows you to create groups of your friends so you can temporarily just see who you want to see in your News Feed. For example, you might create a group of "Relatives" or "College Buddies." To make a new group:

1. In the News Feed column, click "More"
2. Click "Create New List"
3. Name the list and select the friends you want to include.

Now when you visit Facebook, just click the group in your News Feed list, and you will see updates only from friends in that group!

in reference to: Facebook | Home (view on Google Sidewiki)

Classic Misuse of Dynamic Keyword Insertion

From a search on Google for the keyword "ball cancer" (in the Sponsored Results column):

Next time I'm looking to buy cancer balls, I'll know where to go for the best deal!

How does this happen? How could Google be showing me an ad for something so far from what I was searching for (resources about testicular cancer), let alone something this vendor almost certainly does not have for sale? It's not Google's fault, unless you want to blame them for offering a powerful feature that's too easily misused. That feature is Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI). I won't go into all the details of how it works (but here's a great post about it), but the quick explanation is that DKI allows you to automatically insert into an ad whatever keyword in the list of keywords associated with the ad most closely matches the keyword searched for.

Used in highly-targeted situations, DKI can be a powerful and effective tool for increasing both click-through rate (CTR) and conversions. You are reflecting back to the searcher exactly what she was looking for.

The oddball result that was shown above came up because the advertiser simply created a very generic "one size fits all" ad and then dumped a huge amount of (probably broad match) keywords into it. This is the laziest form of pay-per-click advertising. 

So the Nextag.com example above is funny, but is there any real harm done?

First, I doubt there is any such product as "cancer balls" (at least, I hope not). A click through on the ad takes you to a page of various products that have both "cancer" and "balls" somewhere in their description, but what is the likelihood that any of these are what someone searching for "ball cancer" is looking for?

Second, this is a waste of the advertiser's money in so many ways, as well as a complete misunderstanding of the value of pay-per-click advertising. Inevitably the advertiser is paying for a lot of clicks from people who have no possibility of becoming a converted customer. Pay-per-click is one of the most efficient and cost-effective forms of advertising ever invented, but only because it allows you to narrowly target a niche market of people who are already actively looking for what you have to offer. What Nextag.com has done is the equivalent of throwing spaghetti against the wall to see how much sticks. In the case of both spaghetti and real customers, the answer is: not much.

Last, this kind of advertising can result in a negative backlash against your brand. Consumers will learn quickly that they can't trust your ads to take them to what they actually want.

By the way, if you've spent any amount of time watching pay-per-click ads, you've probably spotted the all-time worst offender of slinging out these kinds of meaningless ads. I won't embarrass them here publicly, but if you're taking aim at a certain big box discount retailer, you probably just hit the _____. ;-)

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For intelligent internet marketing, check out Virante (http://www.virante.com)

TrueTwit Pre-Validate's Your Twitter Followers

If you're trying to do marketing on Twitter the "hard but right" way (i.e., actively engaging with and listening to followers instead of just link spamming), one of the most pain-in-the-but burdens you take on is deciding who is worth following back. There was a time early in Twitter's history when I used to auto-follow back, but as Twitter has gained in popularity and thus become a prime spambot target, I now make all follow decisions "by hand" as it were.

If you're getting dozens (or hundreds!) of follow requests a day, that becomes a burdensome--or perhaps near impossible--task. Enter TrueTwit (http://truetwit.com/truetwit/signUp/index). TrueTwit has created what amounts to a Captcha for Twitter. Once you've registered your Twitter account with TrueTwit (using Twitter's secure OAuth authorization), TrueTwit sends anyone who follows you an email asking them to reply to validate that they are a real person. You then receive email notifications from TrueTwit only for those followers who have completed the validation process. (After registering with TrueTwit, you should turn off the "email me when someone follows me" option in Twitter's notification settings.)

You'll still have to evaluate new followers on a case-by-case basis to see if they are worth following, but like a good front-office receptionist, TrueTwit gets rid of the riff-raff to make that task much more manageable.

Originally posted via Google Sidewiki in reference to: TrueTwit Sign Up (view on Google Sidewiki)

New Facebook feature a help to spreading your message...sort of

I wrote a couple of months ago about some elements of fail in Facebook's Pages feature from a marketing standpoint. A recent new feature at Facebook solves the main gripe in that post...sort of.

Facebook now allows users to "tag" other users or Pages by name in a wall post or status message. Similar to Twitter, the feature uses an @username nomenclature. A very nice addition is that once you enter @ and start typing a name, a dropdown appears suggesting all possible matches among your friends. Any post or status you tag will appear in the notifications of the friend or Page thus tagged. This is similar to the tagging already allowed in Facebook for pictures, videos, and Notes.

This goes some way toward addressing one of my major gripes with Facebook as a means of spreading your message and brand: if someone clicks "share" on something you posted, it shows up in their Wall and their friends' newsfeeds, but with no link or attribution back to the original. At least now you can encourage visitors to your page to provide a direct link, but they will still have to do this manually by typing in your @Pagename. You might want to include a line in your posts something like "If you share this, please add credit and link back to our Page by adding "@AcmeWidgets. Thanks!" (Of course, subbing your Page name for "AcmeWidgets."

I'll really sit up and pay attention the day that Facebook makes such linking automatic.

Business Blogger Beware

Bloggeris a great, easy to use site for creating a personal blog. However, if you are planning to build a blog for business purposes, it is probably not your best choice, even to start out on. I just learned that Google does not allow Blogger sites to 301 redirect. What this means is that if you are successful in building up good page rank and back links to your Blogger site, and then later decide to move it to another domain, you will lose all of the SEO "juice" you had built up on the Blogger site.

For this reason and others, we're planning to move http://virante.blogspot.com off of Blogger very soon, before we've put any more effort into building it up.
in reference to: Blogger: Dashboard (view on Google Sidewiki)

Google's Sidewiki: The Only Thing to Fear Is...Not Much?

Proving once again that it is the Santa Claus of the Internet, Google last week announced yet another free toy: Google Sidewiki. Sidewiki is an addition to the Google Toolbar (so far only for Firefox and Internet Explorer) that allows anyone to leave comments and links on any web page anywhere on the Internet. The comments appear in a left-hand slide out that can be opened and shut either from the toolbar or by a small handle icon that appears on pages when you have the toolbar active. This video shows it in action:

This morning Sean Carton of ClikZ ruminated over the possibilities and pitfalls of Sidewiki for businesses and marketers. On the fear side, Carton asserts that this is one more giant leap toward complete loss of control by marketers over their message. That has certainly been true for some time now; do something that pisses off consumers and it will be all over social media, blogs, forums, and product review sites. Sidewiki significantly ups the ante, however, in that now those comments can appear right on your own web site, and there is nothing you can do to stop or block them. (Actually, that's not completely true. One commentor on Carton's post said that he had successfully used an SSL certificate to block Sidewiki. This has some backfire potential, however, as a Sidewiki user visiting a site so blocked may have suspicions about what the site is trying to hide.)

Two things occur to me that are not brought up in Carton's post:

1. It is not yet clear how widespread Sidewiki usage will be. How many people will actually bother to install it (and have to take on the Google Toolbar if they don't already have it)? And among those who do install it, how many will form the habit of using it and checking it regularly? I'm a Google toy addict who installed Sidewiki the moment I heard about it, but even I forget about it most of the time I'm surfing.
2. Marketers who have already gotten over the fact that you can't hide anymore--and better yet have embraced the idea--should welcome whatever community does end up using Sidewiki with open arms, viewing this as one more channel for valuable listening and interaction. Google has put in place some safeguards to try to minimize spamming and abuse (comments can be voted up and down, and there is an easy link to report abuse), but it remains to be seen how effective they will be.

Finally, here's an example of a Sidewiki post I just did. Recently my family enjoyed a wonderful weekend on Bald Head Island off the coast of North Carolina. While there I capture a number of videos of the island's gorgeous sights with my iPhone and uploaded them to YouTube. I was able to embed one of these YouTube videos (of pelicans flying over the surf) as a Sidewiki at the home page of BaldHeadIsland.com, the web site of the island's prime vacation home developer. If you have Sidewiki installed, go to BaldHeadIsland.com and view my brief video.

In fact, I love Bald Head Island and its scenic beauty so much, I'll even share my video with you if you don't want to install Sidewiki. Here you go:

Google AdWords: Exact Isn't Always....Well...Exact

If you've been using Google's AdWords and/or Analytics products for any length of time, you must be aware that the numbers don't always add up. In fact, they don't add up at a sometimes alarming frequency. That is to say, the reported numbers either don't match up to what you know must be reality, or they are not consistent. Needless to say, this realization can be a little disconcerting, considering the amount and level of detail Google provides.

I ran across yet another curious example of this the other day. One of the features in the new AdWords interface about which I was most excited was the in-line "see search terms" button in the keywords tab of ad groups. The button pops up a quick report that promises to show you the most frequent search entries that actually resulted in displays of your ads for selected keyword(s) or the entire group. This information was available before, but only by going several keystrokes and screens away into a formal report. The ability to pop this information up while still in my keywords list--and even add any newly-discovered keywords right from the list--seemed to me revolutionary.

My thinking was that this listing would be most valuable in discovering exact match keywords I should be bidding on. For example, let's say I have a phrase match keyword "rugby shirts" that my keywords tab shows as performing at a low but reasonable CTR. The "see search terms" report reveals that this keyword has generated lots of impressions for all kinds of related phrases ("izod rugby shirts," "boy's rugby shirts" etc.). But most interestingly, it seems to reveal that the keyword "rugby shirts" as an exact match (i.e., the person searching entered the words "rugby shirts" and only those words) generates a hugely higher CTR than the average for the phrase keyword over all. It seems to be a no-brainer that I should create an exact match for that keyword, and bid it higher as it is more productive (in terms of CTR, but not actual click-quantity, of course).

This I've been doing for over a month now, but my new-found joy was tarnished a bit recently by a couple of discoveries. First, I noticed that in some cases, the newly-created exact match didn't perform anywhere near as well as might be predicted from the "see search terms" report. I chalked this up to the occasional anomaly, and kept in mind that "past performance does not guarantee future results." But then came the second blow. Yesterday I happened to run the "see search terms" report with one of my recently-created exact matches as the only selection, just out of curiosity. In the ad group keyword list, it showed 2 clicks with 16 impressions (a CTR of 12.50%). But when I went into the "see search terms" report, the exact match row for this keyword showed 2 clicks with 3 impressions, a CTR of 66.67%! Then in the standard "other search terms" row below that, it showed 0 clicks with 13 impressions. Now together those add up to the the 2/16 numbers shown in the ad group keyword list.

OK, but here's the question: Why would the report relegate a significant percentage of the impressions for the exact match to the "other search terms" row? There is no other search term for an exact match. I put that question to an AdWords rep in a chat, and he told me he'd need to talk to someone in "technical" and get back to me. Today he responded. Seems that the report is "unreliable" for exact matches. He assured me that all of the 16 impressions were legitimately for display of the exact match, yet could not explain why the search terms report dumps 13 of them into "other search terms."

This would all be academic, were it not for the discouraging implication: the "see search terms" report can't be relied upon to consistently point out high-performing exact matches. The CTR it reports for exact matches is often (always?) going to be inflated, because a significant number of the impressions have been inexplicably peeled off into the "other search terms" row. I'm still going to use the tool for exact match discovery (many of the ones I have tried have performed very well, if not up to the level of the report), but with a much more jaundiced eye.

The more important--and jarring--lesson is that Google's reports and stats probably have far more squirmy-wormy room in them than those of us who depend upon them to do our jobs well would like to believe.

In Which I Go Negative on AdWords (in a Good Way)

(Reading hint: If you're already familiar with the value of negative keywords in PPC advertising, skip to my last paragraph for my new suggestion.)
Your mother and your favorite motivational coach will both tell you: negativity is a bad thing. However, when it comes to pay-per-click advertising, going negative can be a very good thing.

I'm speaking, of course, of so-called "negative keywords," keywords that you don't want your pay-per-click ad to show for. Negative keywords are perhaps one of the most overlooked--and yet most useful--ways of improving the performance of your ad campaigns. Why would you not want your ad to show? Isn't any exposure good exposure?

In the "old days," maximizing exposure was certainly the highest goal. When you're advertising in print or broadcast media (TV, radio), you're throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping some will stick. You can't micro-target your audience in those media, so your best hope is to expose your message as many times as possible, counting on the likelihood that some of those times potential customers will see it.

But one of the great advantages search-based advertising gives us (arguably its greatest advantage) is the micro-targeting that older forms could not offer. With finely-tuned keywords and ad text, an advertiser can have real hope to get his message in front of actual potential customers nearly each and every time it shows. Conversely, a PPC advertiser will want to have his/her ad not show to potential clickers she/he doesn't want or need.

This is where negative keywords come into play. Say that you are marketing iPhone apps, but all the apps you're marketing are pay apps. You should include the negative keyword "-free" in your ad campaigns because it is highly unlikely that anyone actively searching for "free iPhone apps" will convert on your pay-only app site.

Now here's my suggestion to the folks at Google AdWords: Create a report in the new AdWords interface that displays the potential top negative keywords for any ad group. This shouldn't be hard to do. The new interface already has an awesome report that displays the top actual search phrases that triggered a group's keywords (very useful for discovering valuable phrase and exact matches you should be targeting). The only bad thing about that report is that it only displays phrases that actually resulted in clicks. Now that can still be a good source of potential negatives. But what would also be useful to know are the phrases that are generating lots of impressions for a keyword but no clicks. Those are CTR and Quality Score killers. So basically, the report I'm proposing would display the phrases that generated the most impressions with zero clicks, in descending order of impressions. That seems to me like a gold mine for some very positive negatives.

5 Reasons Why Facebook 3.0 for iPhone Is Better Than We Think

Facebook's long-awaited total makeover of it's extremely popular yet notoriously horrible iPhone app finally arrived in the app store yesterday. By all accounts I've seen, everyone's thrilled with it. Finally, it just works. The new interface resets the bar for how a social media app for a smart phone should work. After staying up way too late last night playing with it, here are the things I'm most thrilled with (hint: read through to the last one to find out why I titled this article "...Is Better Than We Think," and why this might signal a social media revolution.)

1. Newsfeed is now front-and-center and much more straightforward. It's the flowing lifestream of your friends, as it is on the web version. (Request for future update: It would be nice to be able to filter the news feed by groups and to hide things as you can on the web version. The mobile version should recognize hides made on the web version.) UPDATE: Oops, my requested feature is already there in Facebook 3.0, just a bit hidden. Tap the "Newsfeed" button at the upper right while viewing your Newsfeed, and up pops a familiar iPhone roller wheel with all your groups!
   
2. Notifications are easy to find/view, and they now actually connect to the post they are notifying you about. That I was inspired to type that last phrase in italics points to just how inane the Facebook 2.0 for iPhone was.
   
3. You can now actually comment on and/or "like" posts in your Newsfeed or on friends' Walls. This means that after two years at the top of the iPhone apps downloads rankings, Facebook for iPhone has finally actually become social.
4. Video, video, video. For some users, this might become the single most exciting upgrade in the new version. You can now upload video captured on your iPhone 3GS straight to your Facebook page. (Viewing videos in the iPhone app is not yet enabled, but Facebook says this is coming soon--which will be yet another revolutionary step of its own.) I was thrilled when iPhone 3GS not only added video but the ability to upload it straight to YouTube. But now I'm already ready to say "Buh-bye, YouTube." Facebook's new video upload from the iPhone is faster and easier than the YouTube version. Plus my videos go straight to where people I care about will actually see them. I predict that this addition will significantly increase Facebook's share of the video social media market.
5. The most significant aspect of the Facebook iPhone makeover: (and why I titled this post "...Is Better Than We Think") Facebook's new iPhone app may be the best-yet, easiest-to-use social media interface for a mobile device we've seen. Since it is becoming increasingly apparent that mobile is the future of social media, the new iPhone app may go a long way in establishing Facebook as the leader in social media in the next few years. Look out, Twitter.
   

TwitBlock: Best Tool Yet for Fighting Twitter Spam

It was inevitable: as fast as Twitter became the fastest-growing social media outlet, it also became a primo target for Internet spammers. Most people I know on Twitter who use it regularly have said that they've noticed a sharp uptick in the amount, persistence, and outright obnoxious-ness of Twitter-spam in the past couple of months.

It used to be that most Twitter spam was generated by over-eager but (relatively) honest Internet marketers simply trying to build as large a following as possible as fast as they could by following as many people as they could, regardless of any possible real relationship with those people. The next and more annoying wave of such spam came as various robots and apps were developed that auto-followed people based on keywords they had tweeted. The latest wave has two characteristics: the pornographers/prostitutes have found Twitter, and auto-generated Twitter accounts (the ability to create dozens or even hundreds of accounts from which to launch spam attacks).

Twitter spam has reached a volume level where I've seen people quitting Twitter because of it. Until now, cleaning spammers out of your follower list was a laborious process, made horrible by the clunkiness of Twitter's following listings. But no more.

Twitblock (http://www.twitblock.org) to the rescue. TwitBlock uses a combination of several red-flag factors to evaluate any Twitter account for possible spamminess, assigning it a spam score. The higher the score, the more likely the account is a spammer. TwitBlock's simple interface gives you two key functions:

1. Right on the homepage, you can enter any individual Twitter account name to get its spam score. You can even enter your own, and then tweet your score (assuming you haven't been tagged as a spammer!)
   
2. To see the real power of TwitBlock, log in using your Twitter account. TwitBlock will scan all your followers and then display them by their spam score, worst offenders at the top.
   

You can block accounts you believe to be spam right from the TwitBlock listing with one click. TwitBlock wisely advises you to block carefully, and allows you to see the rationale behind their analysis before you decide. (TIP: right-click the analysis link and open it in a new tab or window; if you open it in the same and then go back, you have to wait for TwitBlock to rescan your list.)

A very nice feature of TwitBlock is that user blocks are figured in to the spam score. Thus you're blocking serves the whole TwitBlock community. To balance this, you can also mark any account as "not spam" (TwitBlock acknowledges that it is possible for an account to have a high spam score but not really be spam. For example, some automated Twitter services have very "bad" follow-follower ratios--because they don't need to follow back anyone--but provide a useful service.) TwitBlock claims that, so far, this system has not been "gamed," but promises they will be diligent in watching for that.

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For more social media, SEO, & Internet marketing tips, follow Virante on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/virante or join our Facebook page

Update on SEC's Bad Call

RE: My post yesterday "The SEC Makes One Hell of a Bad Call"

The New York Times reports today that the SEC has clarified their rule. Turns out they weren't really after Joe Bleachersitter sending his blurry phone cam picture of pinpoint-sized outfielders to his Facebook page. The real targets of their rule, they say, are the bloggers and web site owners who capture video, images, and descriptions of the games and then post them on their ad-supported or subscription-based sites. In other words, people who are making money off what the SEC and its schools seek to (exclusively) turn to profit. And it's not just the lucrative TV contracts that are at stake; they also worry about losing their monopoly on game and season highlight reels through DVD sales.

All ethical or legal considerations aside (such as whether it is right for sports leagues to maintain a monopoly over images and descriptions of their games), I'm still left wondering if the bad feeling raised by such ultimately unenforceable policies will end up being a bigger loss for the SEC than any actual dig into revenues by bloggers and fan site owners (paging the RIAA).

The SEC Makes One Hell of a Bad Call

College sports' Southeastern Conference (SEC) has probably had to overrule a few bad calls by umpires in its day. This week it was forced to overrule one of its own calls.

The conference had actually proclaimed a ban on any and all social media postings about its games by fans at the games. This meant no posting about anything happening on the field to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, wherever. The main target was uploaded video, as the SEC feared endangering its lucrative television contracts with CBS and ESPN, which forbid the producing or disseminating of "any material or information about the event, including, but not limited to, any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information.”

Not surprisingly, the conference is now strongly considering rescinding this ban (as reported by the Charlotte Observer), citing unfavorable media and social web attention.

This is yet another indication that although we are many years into the social web revolution, many established entities still don't get that the world has changed. Those who are winning now are organizations which have decided to join and encourage rather than attempt to ban. The simple truth is that you will be unable to stop people from talking about (and posting media from) your organization or events. What was not indicated in any of the articles I saw was how the SEC even thought it could enforce such a ludicrous policy.

By contrast, the Big 10 conference has an official social media policy that encourages fans to post from games. Social media is the true "information super-highway" of our day; it is where the buzz happens. You can't "beat it"; but if you try, it just might beat you into the ground. On the other hand, encouraging the flow is the ultimate leveraging of the old dictum "there is no such thing as bad publicity."

Google Wants to Eliminate Keywords?

Google is contemplating eliminating keyword-based search and advertising results in favor of "just let Google decide who to connect with your ads."

So reports Rebecca Lieb at clikz.com from Google AdWords' team head Nick Fox's keynote at the recent Search Engines Strategies meeting in San Jose. Fox imagines a world in which "seach ads just...happened. You tell us what you're selling, we do the rest." In this world (apparently already under development by Google engineers), Google will not only match your selling proposition with prospects using its search service, it will even create the ads for you. Fine (maybe), but what about my competitors asking to sell the same product or service? Fox promises only that their new technology "will somehow be fair and objective enough to make everyone happy if and when all this comes to pass."

If you're an AdWords advertiser, this announcement should be making at least the following hairs stand up on the back of your neck:

• "Fair and objective treatment" of competition sounds a bit too much like a bit too much like the old visions for a socialist utopia. Online advertisers are inveterate capitalists. They don't want fairness with competitors; they want to do better than them. I don't see advertisers willingly releasing their freedom to try to be smarter than their competitors to the Google politburo.
• Fox seems to put forth a fairly flat vision of why entities advertise on Google. For example, in the same address, while advocating a cost-per-action over cost-per-click payment model, Fox said, "Leads, schmeads. We want to more closely align advertising with performance." Sounds good, but will Google really be able to precisely define and measure every possible "action" for which advertisers place ads? To some of my clients, generating "leads" is far from "schmeads."

I do see one positive in this announcement: a recognition that the present keyword system quickly becomes hopelessly complex for anyone but the smallest advertisers. The number of variables that have to be evaluated and managed in a large account quickly approaches impossible levels, at least for hands-on human management. To me, a better thing for Google's geniuses to be spending their time on would be developing more and better keyword management, reporting, and feedback tools.

The good news is that Google has opened up a feedback forum for advertisers to discuss this idea. I'm betting they'll get an earful as this becomes more widely known.

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For intelligent Google advertising management that has you're goals and interests in mind, check out Virante.

Westward Ho! for Google Ads

We noticed yesterday a subtle change in the layout of Google search: the column of paid ads has been shifted into a fixed space, more to the left than they were before. Whereas previously the ads were aligned with the right edge of a fixed-width page, they now float with wherever you place the right edge of your browser. In other words, it is impossible to make the ads disappear (unless, of course, you're running ad blocking software).



If you squeeze your browser down to less than a few inches in width, the organic results actually get pushed down below all of the ads.



It will be interesting to see how much of an effect this has on click-through rates. Anyone out there doing Google CPC noticing anything yet?

Tr.im Trimmed Itself - But It "Got Better"

URL shortening service tr.im wasn't turned into a newt, but it did very suddenly make a self-enacted disappearance yesterday. Citing inability to come up with a revenue model (and inability to compete with the virtual monopoly granted bit.ly as Twitter's default shortener), owners Nambu announced they were immediately shutting the service down.

But they "got better."

Just one day later they resumed service, explaining that an overwhelming response from users made them reconsider. No other conditions have changed: still no revenue model (that they can live with) and still discriminated against by Twitter.

Such a drastic move by a fairly popular service (especially occurring on the same day that FriendFeed was absorbed by Facebook) should give those whose business model is heavily dependent upon social media pause. If that's you, you should...

1. seek to diversify your social media "portfolio." Don't build all your business or promotional channels through one (or even a few) SM outlets. Very few have yet found viable revenue models; nearly any of them could disappear at any time.
2. keep backups of any data (such as analytics) or post archives generated on any SM sites over which you have no direct control.

In the meantime, it will continue to be interesting to watch how (or if) the plethora of free services that grew up around the social media boom of the past few years are able to create acceptable and profitable revenue models.

Google vs. Bing: Quo Vadis* Small Advertiser?

Fred Aun at clikz.com reports an observation that Microsoft's re-branded and overhauled search engine Bing seems to be going after "quality" rather than quantity of PPC ad displays. In a test of keyword searches, Bing consistently showed fewer (and subjectively, more relevant) ads on the front page as compared to live.com (Microsoft's previous search engine). Aun's conversations with Microsoft's Bing representatives led him to believe that this is intentional as Bing seeks to differentiate itself from Google (as a "decision engine" as opposed to just a "search engine").

Aun quotes an AdGooroo report that hails Microsoft's decision as "a boon for paid search advertisers, who have far less competition to deal with." But who's getting the boon? Apparently it's the big guys; Microsoft brags about adding Dell, Sears, Hotels.com, Marriott and Home Depot to its roster of advertisers. Fewer slots on the front page means the front page goes to those with pockets deep enough to buy their way on.

This would seem to imply that the advent and initial (relative) success of Bing** means that Google AdWords is even more important for the small advertiser. Correction: the smart small advertiser, the one who knows what he's doing (or is smart enough to hire someone who does) will be working even harder at getting Google right. Yes, it's much harder to get to the top in Google because of the number of competitors, but the good news is that Google is still the place where, like the young American child told anyone can grow up to be President, anyone willing to put in the effort and educate themselves to be better than the competition can still rise to the top.

*Quo vadis is Latin for "where are you going?"

**Microsoft's share of the search engine market increased from 0.3% to 6.5% after the introduction of Bing. It remains to be seen if this will maintain or increase, or if it is similar to Wolfram Alpha's impact ("let's look at it because it's new, but then back to Google").

Looking for help with your Internet marketing effort from people who "get Google"? At Virante, all of our PPC account representatives are AdWords Certified Professionals who specialize in small-to-medium advertising accounts. Ask us how we can help your business rise above your competition on Google. On the web at http://www.virante.com

Free Isn't Always Best

Tested two ads for a client recently. One offered a stay at a resort for $19.95. The other offered it for free. $19.95 was the convincing winner. Go figure.

Lesson learned: Don't assume that giving something away will attract more people than selling it at a good deal OR People generally believe TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As a Free Lunch).

When Auto-Tweeting Fails

I'm a huge fan of the Tour de France; love to know what's happening over there as it's happening. Downside of "over there" though is that most of the happening happens while I'm at work "over here." So I was looking forward to this year's race, sure that Twitter would come to my rescue.

And it did. Sort of. Yes, the official Tour de France site did include a "live as-it-happens" Twitter feed this year (http://twitter.com/tdf_updates), and yes, to some extent that feed feeds my hunger, with "turn-by-turn" news from the peloton. But here's the fail: the tweets turn out to be auto-generated from the headlines of their real-time news on the actual site. Nothing wrong with that in itself; smart use of the technology. However, many of the most interesting headlines are teasers for mini-articles ("List of all crashed riders in 2nd stage"), but the tweeted version contains no link to the article.

This is fail on two levels:

1. The user (me) obviously misses out on the information, making the tweet useless.
2. The site loses the opportunity to draw me to their site. Huge miss for them; the tweet alone does nothing for their visitor count or advertising revnue; does nothing to draw me to their other content.

Moral: Auto-tweeting headlines from your blog or site is fine, but always include the link!

Twitter "Improves" Following/Follower UI by Making It Worse

When it comes to user interfaces (UI), the "U" should also stand for "useful." Flashy is no substitute.

When I heard yesterday that Twitter had "upgraded" the UI for both "Following" and "Follow" pages for users logged in at twitter.com, I assumed this would mean an improvement in usability and usefulness. 

At first glance, the new Following/Followers pages certainly look better, and seem to have added features:

1. You can choose between "Expanded" and "List" views. List give you just the Twitter ID and "actual" names, while Expanded adds location and the most recent tweet.
2. Two new buttons to the right of each follower: "Follow" and and options button with drop down choices to reply, direct message, follow, or block the follower.

So everything looks nicer now, but is it more useful?

No. In fact, it's less useful! Here are things we lose with the new interface:

1. Blocking a user now takes two clicks instead of one.
2. You can no longer easily see who is following you back (used to be indicated by a Direct Message link next to the name).
3. Seeing the most recent Tweet is nice, but would be more useful to see the user's bio. Now have to click through to their page to see that.

Thankfully, all these functions and more are handled (and handled well, in most cases) by third-party Twitter applications. The best I've run across for the functions mentioned above is Refollow.com. Please let me know of others you like in the comments.

Sadly, the new additions at Twitter.com do have one useful function: good teaching example of what happens when "new feature" means more flash but less usefulness.

Google Profiles and Reputation Management - Part Two

In Google Profiles and Reputation Management - Part 1, I made a case for why building a Google Profile should be a central part of establishing a positive online presence (i.e. "reputation management"). Today let's look at a second, but probably equally worthwhile, benefit of Google Profiles: free PageRank "juice" to your sites.

Possibly as an incentive to get you to create a Google Profile, Google gives you a free gift for putting links on your profile: the links are NOT no follow. This means that as profiles gain PageRank themselves (and I believe they will), they will pass along some of that ranking power to whatever you link from your Profile page.

How best to take advantage of this? Use some of the "bio" portion of the Profile to talk about your web site(s), your company, what your company does or services you provide, etc. Using the little chain link button on the bio editing window, you can make these links to relevant pages on sites you or your company control. Be sure to make the linking text relevant to the page content!

Another Facebook Fail for Marketing

I have previously written about "Three No-Brainers that are No-Shows on Facebook Pages for Internet Marketing." In that post I detailed some aspects of Facebook Pages that limit the feature's utility for effective social web marketing. 

Mashable's post "Facebook Needs Its Own Version of the Twitter Retweet" points out another area where Facebook lacks the viral power needed before marketers or message spreaders can consider it a serious tool for their needs: there is no way on Facebook to easily share content posted by a friend. Sure, you could copy and paste it into your own status message, but that's so 1990s. Plus even if you do that, unless you make the extra effort, there is no credit back to the original poster. Twitter's RT (ReTweet) convention (where you begin a share of someone else's content with "RT @usrname" with "usrname" being the Twitter ID of the original poster) is one of the most effective way to build interested followers. I know of many cases where present followers followed one of my accounts because of something of mine ReTweeted by one of their friends. And most Twitter clients make posting a RT a one-click process.

While Facebook may be sensitive right now to the accusations that it is trying too hard to be like Twitter, this is one function they simply can't ignore if they want to achieve their goal of being replacing Google as the center of the web universe. 

Google Profiles and Reputation Management - Part 1

A few days ago I posted some suggestions about using social media sites to "ace" the front page of Google (fill the first page of Google's search results for your name with links to sites and content that you control). Let's review the value of doing this (aside from the obvious ego stroke!):

1. Create a positive impression on potential clients and/or employers. It is very common these days that people who are considering doing business with you (or hiring you) will Google your name to see what comes up. If you are involved in the marketing or advertising fields, the impression such a presence makes is worth even more than usual.

2. Force down negative links. If you are "out there" -- either because you are well known and/or you participate actively in social media, blogs, forums, etc. on the Internet-- sooner or later someone will write something negative about you. If the attack shows up high in Google results, the only thing you can do about it is bury it by creating positive links and getting them to rank higher than the negative post.

3. Create linking "juice" that can have a positive effect on other sites you control on the web.

One relatively new tool that should not be ignored in this effort has been provided by Google itself: Google Profiles. Google Profiles allows you to create a "one stop" picture of yourself and your online connections. You can easily post as much or as little information about yourself as you like. Additionally, this web app makes it super easy to add any or all of your social web sites.

Google has a high incentive to incentivize you to create a profile. Many are predicting that Twitter and Facebook will become the first real challenges to Google's stranglehold on the search market. Facebook in particular is actively pursuing the creation of Google-killing search functionality. The advantage that sites like Facebook and Twitter are banking on is that they are able to collect very personalized data tied directly to individuals, whereas Google's search data is more aggregation and generalization. Facebook's creators believe that in the years to come people will value the ability to find information, get recommendations, etc. in the same way they've always done, by querying their friends and acquaintances. And then, of course, sites that facilitate that will be able to present ads to users that are very tightly targeted.

Google gives every sign that they think there is something to that challenge, and Google Profiles is one of its first attempts to fire back. But because they are already behind in the game, Google has to hold out some kind of carrot to get people to create these profiles. So far, the main incentives seem to be:

1. Having a one-stop "business card on the web" that gives people searching for you all the ways to contact you, as well as where to find you on the web.

2. Rewarding profile participants with Google ranking "juice" that feeds back to their linked sites.

Tomorrow I'll post about how best to optimize your Google Profile to get the biggest Google bang from #2 above.

Maybe You Should NOT Use Social Media for Your Marketing

A co-worker pulled me in on a phone consultation with a client yesterday. The client wanted to know if they should be on Twitter, and my associate told them I was our "Twitter guy." 

I only got one sentence into my pitch--"Successful marketing on Twitter works best with a commitment to interacting with your customers or prospects"--when the client interrupted: "Wait a minute! Interacting with customers? That will take time. Twitter ain't for us!"

I happily left the conversation. He was so right. If he had let me continue (he immediately changed the subject), I would have advised him not to waste his time with Twitter or any other social media.

See, though I'm a huge advocate for incorporating social media into one's overall Internet marketing plan, I recognize that it's not for everyone. Those still marketing with the mindset of throwing heaps of spaghetti at the wall in the hopes that some will stick (and with little concern if any of the spaghetti stays or returns after it sticks once) should stay away from Twitter and its cousins.

I'm getting enough spam on those channels as it is. I don't need to encourage any!

Social Media and Reputation Management

Are you an ace? I don't mean you've shot down boucoups enemy planes in some WW I video game. I'm coining a new usage of "ace": to have all the first page references from a Google search of your name be your own links--or links about you--and have them all be positive. I'm an ace most of the time, except for when a certain D. C. lawyer with the same unusual name as me gets in the news. Of course, if your name is "John Smith," you'd better be the most famous John Smith in the world, or you're out of luck. Acing Google's first page is a worthy goal for any company name, trademark, or brand identity as well.

The popularity of a number of social media sites has made them valuable real estate to claim if you are concerned about what people see when they search for your name online. This may be one of the most overlooked benefits of having a widespread social web presence. Most marketers just concentrate on the possible contacts/prospects to be gained. But the tremendous "Google juice" many social media sites have can result in high rankings for your name or brand.

Obviously, the first step is to claim a profile for your name/brand on as many social media sites as you can. A great one-stop tool to accomplish this is knowem.com. But just having a profile is not enough; you need to begin to regularly post content to these sites. After doing this for a while, you should begin to see many of these site filling in the first page of Google for your name or brand. For my name, my personal blog comes up #1, followed by FriendFeed, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Amazon. I also created a Google Profile, which shows up at the bottom of the first page for my name.

Social Media Growing by Leaps....Or Not?

Two stories came across my FriendFeed feed back-to-back this morning:

1. Compete: Facebook US Traffic Nearing Google, Yahoo - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/09/compete-facebook-us-traffic-nearing-google-yahoo/ (via http://ff.im/3Lnxo)

2. Study shows only 10% of Twitter users tweets - Cnet Asia - http://asia.cnet.com/blogs/infochat/post.htm?id=63011357&scid=rvhm_ms (via http://ff.im/3Lnxh)

So when will we have some accurate assessments of exactly how much traffic is being driven by social media? And is 80/20 (or even 90/10) a good enough ratio of sign-ups to actual active users to justify marketers investing significant time in these outlets?

Three No-Brainers that Are No-Shows on Facebook Pages for Internet Marketing

As a Facebook user for several years now I've become pretty numb to the hysteria that greets each new major change of the user interface. I suppose all the "1,000,000 Strong Against the New Facebook" groups gave people a cause to live for for a while. I usually try to assume the best about a new interface on a major on a major application or site, believing that there is too much at stake for the developers to put a major screw-up out live. Sure, there will always be bumps and mistakes, but for the most part I see each of Facebook's upgrades as adding value to the site.

So I was pretty excited earlier this year when Facebook announced that its Pages feature was getting a similar major overhaul. First peeks at the new Pages interface did not disappoint. Pages now worked more like personal Facebook profiles, with the Wall feed front and center. Best of all, from a marketing standpoint, Wall content would now be pushed out automatically to all fans of the page, meaning it would appear on their newsfeeds as well, increasing the chance that new potential fans would see it. Brilliant!

Well...while sitting today having my mind numbed by a "Facebook for Business" webinar I'd signed up for*, listening to the presenter get all bubbly about the positives I'd mentioned above, I found myself thinking, "Yeah, but..." every few minutes. Here are some of the Yeah Buts I've discovered about Facebook Pages:

1. The templates are way too limiting, especially in the blanks for "info." For one client I signed up for a "non-profit/charity" page. The only contact info allowed in the form was a street address and web page URL. No email address?!? Is this 1982? Wait....1982 is too contemporary; there's no place to enter a telephone number.
2. While putting the Wall front and center was a good move, there is little else you can do to the front page, other than place some apps in the left sidebar. I blessed the day I found the Notices - FBML app so I could finally post a campaign ad for the organization next to the Wall where it might actually be seen. You should be able to place customized content on your front page without having to install a third-party app.
3. This I think might be the worst: There is no benefit to your page whatsoever if someone "shares" something you posted on your Wall. Facebook seriously needs its own version of the ReTweet for its Pages. As it stands, if someone shares something you posted, it appears on their wall as if they found it and posted it themselves.
4. UPDATE: Just thought of this one - Facebook is much more "closed in" than other social web sites (FriendFeed, for example). It doesn't encourage sharing outside its own network. How much is that a hurt to the usefulness of Pages for marketing?

Have those of you who have been using the new Pages for these past few months found any other no-brainers that are no-shows on your Pages?

*    *    *    *    *    *

For intelligent SEO/SEM: www.virante.com

*Aside rant: I want to shoot my brains out over how many social media webinars or presentations I've sat through where three-quarters of the time is spent on noobie basics. "Now, to sign up for your Facebook account, type your name where it says, 'Your Name:'" Just shoot me now. Post a link to a Facebook or Twitter or Whatever 101 page for the noobies and get to the announced topic!

$300 or Free...um, er...Give Me a Moment

"You get what you pay for" is usually a pretty good dictum to follow. But the Internet often negates that truism. Certainly one of the most startling aspects of 21st century life, if you stop to think about it, is the amount of free resources available on the web.

So it amused me yesterday when I overheard a couple of young entrepeneurs enthusing about an application they had just purchased. It promised to help them find and follow large numbers of Twitter users based on topics they tweet about. They were thrilled that it got them 60 new followers the first day. And they only paid $300 for it!

I went back to my office and checked my results for a TwitSeeker search I had setup before going to lunch. It had found me over 180 pre-qualified Twitter followers while I chewed my Jamaican jerk chicken.

$300 versus free...where's my calculator so I can figure the ROI?

*   *   *   *   *

Virante does social web, SEO & SEM right: www.virante.com

AdBloc Considering New Meta Tag Standard Proposed by Virante Blogger

AdBlock Plus, provider of the leading browser plugin for blocking display ads on web sites, has announced in a blog post today that they are considering introducing an option that would be a modified form of a ad-blocking meta tag first proposed on Virante, Inc.'s blog, TheGoogleCache. Read about this development here.

Virante is an innovative, multi-channel Internet marketing company based in Durham, NC.

Website Launch Flowchart

This flowchart is a detailed guide that covers optimized website design, development and multichannel marketing integration. Web design doesn't exist in a vacuum nor does marketing. The most optimized, easiest functioning and best performing sites are those that find a balance between design, content, business tool complexity and marketing integration. 

Download this free chart.

Using Google Analytics to Track Social Networks

Ran Nir at econsultancy.com has posted a great, easy-to-follow tutorial on how to track links to your site (or your clients' sites) from social media sites.

For professional, proven results with your social media campaigns, check out Virante.

BackTweets Finds Links to You on Twitter

If you're at all serious and savvy about using Twitter as a marketing tool, you probably do regular searches for mentions of your brand, using Twitter's own search tool or one of the many third party tools available. That's a good thing to do, but you've probably been missing a significant portion of Twitter refrences to your brand: those with a direct link to one of your sites but no mention of your brand in the text.

Enter BackTweets. Enter your base URL (e.g., http://www.yoursite.com) and BackTweets will find any link to that site posted on Twitter. Good news: BackTweets can "see through" shortened URLs. Any URL search you create with BackTweets has its own RSS feed so you can keep track of new linkers. To get that in your email, submit the RSS to FeedMyInbox.

Are You a Social Media Failure?

[From imediaconnection.com] "Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness." - Oprah Winfrey

Market research firm Gartner projects that more than 75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies with websites will attempt some kind of online social media initiative for marketing or customer relations purposes. Gartner also projects that 50 percent of those efforts will fail. 

Recognizing failure and learning from it is the nature of our business, especially for emerging channels such as social media. Repeatedly, it is a brave few who take risks while the rest point fingers and follow. When a company does dare to risk, we are quick to judge and condemn rather than celebrate. 

To be realistic, most of us are accountable to multiple stakeholders -- brands, consumers, our own organizations, and colleagues. There are, however, ways to minimize risks, learn from the stumbles, and move forward without leaving a trail of flames.

Read more >>>

Is Your Social Media Marketing Breaking the Law?

[From seomoz.org] The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has some rules about online marketing that may surprise you - they certainly surprised me.

Recently, SEOmoz's own Sarah Bird was interviewed by Eric Enge on a wide variety of contract and legal topics. As I was proudly browsing through the piece, I was especially curious about what Sarah had to say around marketing on social media networks:

“(the FTC) made clear that online advertisers are covered by rules about so called stealth marketing. This basically means that if it's not obvious that the advertiser is being paid to do this advertisement, there needs to be a disclaimer saying he or she is in fact being financially compensated."

Read more >>>

Social Media Marketing: Where are the Measurables?

(From clickz.com:) In its simplest form, SEO (define) is a three-step process: break down crawling barriers to help the engines efficiently index a Web site; craft keyword-targeted content that appeals to search engines and visitors alike; and, most critical, practice link-building for targeted terms and phrases.

Social media optimization, on the other hand, is primarily about knocking down the walls of user-generated content to be a dynamic part of an online community. It's not a simple process and it takes time. Just because a "Digg This" button has been added to a blog or Web site doesn't mean every post or product is compelling enough to be considered socially buzzworthy.

Social media is just another liberating facet of content optimization tactics that can lure in thousands of new visitors and hundreds of inbound links. When it works, it's scalable. But it doesn't always work in a predictable manner.

Read more >>>

The What, How & Who of Selecting an SEO Firm

From searchenginewatch.com - Buying into SEO is a difficult process. Without at least a basic understanding of SEO, it's really tough to tell the difference between someone who knows their stuff and someone who talks a great game without backing it up with results.

Many companies looking for SEO help -- even those with a decent understanding of SEO -- try their best to shop around, but they always end up with two simple questions:

  1. What is this firm going to do for me?
  2. How much do they cost? 

When you're hiring for a particular position in any business, you're looking at that individual's background. You aren't just hiring them based on how much they cost, or what they say that they will (or can) do. You're hiring them based on their resume, their references, and their history of performance.

For some reason, these basic principles get lost for people when they search for an SEO company (or hire an in-house optimizer). By selecting an agency or employee purely on cost, you could be setting yourself up for trouble ahead.

Read more >>>

Check out Virante as an example of a firm that meets and exceeds the criteria in this article.

On Click Pixel Tracking

(From theGoogleCache.com:) One of the most common methods of tracking conversions and visits is through “Pixel Tracking”. Essentially, a single pixel image is included on a page that, when triggered, gives the user some form of cookie or results in his/her her browser IP / user-agent / etc. stored in a tracking database somewhere.

Well, what if you wanted to use that pixel to track something else? Like a file download, a mouseover, or a click on a particular outbound link? How do you make sure the pixel image gets included and loaded before the redirect takes place without making Timeout assumptions?

Here is some simple scripts to help you accomplish just that…

Javascript in Head

The following code snippet should be placed between the start and close head tags of your page. These functions are responsible for inserting the tracking pixel onto your page and then setting an Interval to check it every 1/5th second to make sure it loads. Once it is loaded, it redirects the individual on to the target URL.

function clktrk(url) {

pxlsrc = "http://your.tracking.pixel.jpg";


window.clkurl = url;

document.getElementById('clkimg').src=pxlsrc;

window.intval=setInterval("isImgComplete()",200);

}




function isImgComplete() {

document.getElementById('working').innerHTML = document.getElementById('working').innerHTML + " .";

var img = document.getElementById('clkimg');


window.timer = window.timer+200;

if(!img.complete) { return false; }

if (typeof img.naturalWidth != "undefined" && img.naturalWidth == 0) { return false; }

else {

window.clearInterval(intval);


location.href=window.clkurl;

}

}

Javascript on Your Links

Instead of a traditional a href=”http://www.yourlink.com”, use the code below…

Your Link

Footer Image

At the bottom of the page, include the following HTML.

<img id='clkimg' height='1' width='1' />

Optimizing Body Text for Google

From thekeywordacademy.com: Before we can talk about how to optimize the body text of the page you’re working on, we should probably define what body text is. To put it simply, body text is the text that you can see on a web page. Everything you can see on this post would be considered to be body text.

The technical explanation of what body text is would be everything that appears between the opening body tag, , and the closing body tag, , in the code for the page.

Bloggers don’t really need to worry about the technical explanation - you can think of body text as a combination of your post title and the main body of your post, or as the text that appears on your blog’s homepage.

Read more >>>

Easy Linking for SEO Boost

From BizArticleZone.com: Search engine optimization is a process, one that must always be revisited and adapted as search algorithms are changed by the search engines. Seo is evolving much faster that SEO companies can adapt, and this is a fact not loudly stated and never mentioned to clients. Today Seo is about getting quality traffic, making great websites findable and usable, and most of all is merging with conversion science. Search Engine Optimization is a combination of activities spanning from the initial stages of production and extends beyond launching of the site.

SEO experts analyze the keywords or phrases the user is likely to search information for your company and accordingly optimizes your website making your website search engine friendly. Search engine optimization includes but not limited to keyword research and optimization, content analysis, link building and search engine marketing. Website promotion and strategy sound expensive and time-consuming, but they don’t have to be.Optimize your web pages to be user and search-engine friendly. Easy navigation and fast-loading pages keep surfers happy.

Read more >>>

Virante is a leading interactive marketing agency that assists high potential start-ups and established Fortune 1000 organizations launch brands and build sales on the web. Its focus is in designing and launching integrated search marketing, CPC, email, blogging, and online advertising campaigns as a catalyst to the web positioning efforts of high potential new brands or companies. We encourage you to learn more about our services and commitment to ethical seo.

Virante provides e-business and web marketing consulting services to a select number of high potential start-ups or to established companies looking to launch a new brand or new ad campaign on the web. Working closely with your organization, we develop complete marketing systems and deliver additional sales, brand awareness, customers, and market share.

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