While adding video to your online store isn’t exactly new, it is still a medium in its infancy.  Only within the last year or so have retailers begun to wake up to the power of video as a marketing tool that builds customer confidence and increases conversion rates. The amazing thing about video is that it works to this effect whether it’s watched or not.  In other words, just by adding product videos to your site, whether they’re watched or not, will help move products. (more…)

It appears Google has recently changed its algorithm for Local Business Listings by only giving the top spots to those feeding the search engine’s ever increasing need for content. Keep reading to learn what are Google Local Business Listings, what’s changed recently, as well as how to optimize so your local business is on top of the map.

Google Local Business Listings are different than organic or pay-per-click listings. They typically only show up when the user types a service oriented business followed by the city for their search. A large map from Google Maps appears alongside up to ten URLs with a phone number by each. If you need more than ten listings you can click in “More Results from ‘Insert City’ “ and you’ll be taken to a map with alphabetically lettered red pegs for each register business on Google Maps. (more…)

What is Google Image Search?

Google has a dedicated version of its search engine called Image Search which helps find images. Claiming to be the most comprehensive image search facility on the web, it has billions of images from websites already within its index. When searching for images, you can tailor the search for various sizes and choose a specific type of image you’re looking for, such as a photo, clipart or head shot.

When clicking on a image, the image will load as a preview in one frame, whilst showing the website the image is from in a frame below. This gives you the option of visiting the website or enlarging the image to full size. Google Image Search is popular. It actually gets more traffic than Yahoo, Window Live Search and Ask Jeeves. (more…)

Presenting Value in Marketing Communication

Eisenberg’s four reasons to buy are really a variation on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that form a pyramid of need, want, and desire: the basis for everything we require and everything we crave, starting with survival and ending with self-fulfillment. Most of us have moved up the pyramid from basic survival and procreation needs to more sophisticated desires based on belonging, identity, and self-actualization, the elements that form an Emotional Value Marketing Proposition.

Most sophisticated marketers understand the power and importance of self-actualization as an emotional trigger upon which a brand identity can be established and promoted; however a distinction must be made between the audience’s desire for individual fulfillment and a company’s objective of meeting its marketing goals.  (more…)

If there is one thing every Web business executive can agree on, it’s that websites need to motivate people to act. That action can be to place an order, send an email, pick-up the phone, or maybe just join a mailing list, but whatever the intended response, your website must cause a reaction. It’s a case of simple cause and effect.

The issue is one of successful communication. What you say and how you say it are what motivates people to connect with your company, the solution provider. Websites, blogs, social networking, and mobile sites are merely venues for communication. All the Facebook friends, Linkedin contacts, and search engine traffic in the world doesn’t mean a thing if you have nothing interesting, memorable, and persuasive to say to them. (more…)

One way links are links that point to your site from others, but which are not linked to from your website. Google and many other search engines include link popularity as part of the way they evaluate and rank websites. Links are seen as a positive “vote” towards the quality of the website. As such, the more links from other relevant websites to yours, the better.

Here are some of the ways to get one way links pointing to your website. (more…)

In August, Google announced the upcoming roll out of the Google Caffeine infrastructure. Google was quick to point out that they would not launch the new infrastructure until after the Christmas holiday shopping season — giving many online retail stores confidence for the upcoming Christmas shopping season.

In the August announcement, Google described Caffeine this way:

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences…” (more…)

Whether we want to admit it or not, the rules of advertising, branding and marketing have changed. Advertising used to rely on interrupting people to get them to notice the message. It was one-way, all about selling and based on limited life campaigns. But there are new rules now, new delivery systems, tools,  and  new segmented audiences as we are not speaking to the masses anymore.  Uploading company information onto YouTube and sharing information on numerous social media sites is almost effortless once you build content. With the click of an icon your brand can now be launched on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, as a RSS feed or any number of iPhones, blogs or bookmarking sites. With a bit of time and some professional help, anyone can create a quality video for marketing a message quickly and to a large number of potential new customers. (more…)

Factor: Age

Spam sites come and go – but trust is built by the search engines over time. When it comes to ranking well in the search engines, older is better. A typical corporate site probably has content removed and replaced on a regular basis, but the chronological nature of blog content means that you are building upon content rather than erasing it. And guess what? That old content has value. (more…)

Factor: Links

I won’t get into too much detail regarding how the search engines work or link value. But it’s important to understand the role and value of inbound links with respect to organic search engine optimization. Generally, there are two important areas of this subject: link volume and link quality. Both can have an impact on search engine optimization.

There is no question that having more links pointing to your blogs is better than fewer links. You may be wondering you can have too many, and the short answer is no. However, there are other considerations. (more…)