Web site design, text and navigation are crucial to your online advertising campaign, even though they aren't a direct part of your search engine marketing package. Your Web site should not drive your customers away before they have a chance to purchase something or contact you!

If you are marketing on the Internet and these unacceptable errors appear on your Web site, fix them immediately.

1. Horrid Design

Giving shoppers heart attacks by using ugly, clashing site features is unacceptable. If these rules of classic simple design aren't familiar, follow them even more closely:
  • Use black on white (or dark on light) text, for perfect readability.
  • Choose muted, matching colors, no background or busy patterns.
  • Support your text with carefully chosen, well-cropped photos, not animated cartoons.

2. Spelling and Grammatical Errors

You are not a bad person if you cannot spell. You are a bad person if you make people read misspellings in online marketing sites. If you appear unconcerned with details, customers may just skip over you.
  • Run spell-check before printing your whole site.
  • Locate a really good speller (you must know one) and buy him/her lunch.
  • Have him/her mark and correct every error in your site text.
  • Go to your Web designer and give him/her the list of corrections.

Our own Landing Pages (somewhat like mini-Web sites) are written and reviewed by expert editors, talented in writing ad copy. Spell-check software can't catch all errors, so don't rely on them exclusively.

3. Inconsistent Navigation

I visited a small online shopping site once. The navigation buttons changed on each page, and I never found the checkout or site search. (That's the punchline -- I only visited once.)
  • Put a “Buy Now” link on every page. Help customers buy right now, whenever they choose.
  • Don't make them hunt for your products. They might leave without spending their money!

  -- Contributed by Dan Lozano

Duplicate content penalties levied by Google against proxy sites are a topic of frequent discussion, both for SEO and SEM users. In my opinion, it is not a strong force significantly affecting most online advertising or small business Web sites.

The duplicate content penalty seems designed to prevent huge sites from clogging the useful results of other smaller pages with a large volume of database-generated pages. Those pages are (often deservedly) in a different category than most of the human-generated content that is useful to human searchers.

Many near-duplicates are screened out by search engines with a different mechanism. Google adds a note to the end of the results page saying, "In order to show you the most relevant results we have omitted some entries very similar to the XX already displayed."

This special feature is sensitive to the search term and seems meant to reduce the noise of numerous similar pages in the results without dinging their PageRank permanently. I have found it to do a good job of keeping the interesting results and filtering out only dry, truly duplicate and non-useful content.

I believe good content is the most critical element affecting both organic and search engine PPC page rankings. Your good content carries much more weight than limited, non-malicious, proxied duplicate content. And it helps your online advertising campaign. As a smart marketer, you can create unique content on your landing pages and product description pages that will boost your organic listings when prospects search on your targeted keywords. Good content is must for small business marketing online.

Google is well aware of the natural landscape of the Web. I think it is more interested in exposing the Web’s useful data and burying the less-useful data. In a judgment call between penalizing two small sites with instances of similar content, and penalizing a vast site’s thousands of pages of near-identical template content, I feel Google is likely to keep the smaller pages around and swipe the vast number of dull pages.

  -- Contributed by Dan Lozano

I am easily distracted -- when I see a bird flit by through the window, my head turns involuntarily to track it, just like the cat. And so on, and on, and on, with every trifling thing that affects my field of vision.

This necessitates me putting my back to the room if I want to do Internet marketing instead of visual ping-pong, and THAT is bad Feng Shui for thinking about online advertising campaigns.

My worst distraction is Outlook 2007; it is always visible, interrupting me constantly with updates and trivia even when I am locked in a quiet corner of the office. When inbound email arrives, the messages flicker and rearrange. Then a rule usually processes the new message, with another flurry of screen activity. My mail is always up on its own monitor; numerous inbound messages cause constant flickering, distracting me from the good fight of search engine marketing.

A solution came to me today, fully formed.

I created a folder in my main Mailbox called Inbox-screened. Then I made a new rule called Inbox-screened. This rule moves all incoming messages to the Inbox-screened folder, but it's last on the rule list, so it only really works on unhandled messages and exceptions.

Now I park Outlook in the Inbox-screened folder. The emails there have reached their final destination, so they don't move around by rule sorting. They usually require personal attention; my twitchy reflexes work for me now that they have something important to focus on.

Messages that are already covered by rules can flicker away in the now-forgotten Inbox as they wish, sorting themselves neatly. Only the exceptional message that isn't caught by other rules appears in Inbox-screened. No jumping screens or distractions distract me from deeper thought in the arena of Internet advertising.

 -- Contributed by Dan Lozano

In the first installment I covered the valuable Meta tags “description” and “keywords.” This time I’ll present more techniques that can help your site gain better organic (non-SEM-related) rank to compliment your online Internet marketing efforts.

First, a word on the Meta keywords. These have less significance on the modern Web, because they’ve been exploited heavily in the past. I would still advise you to keep them in your pages and sync them to your page’s content; however, there’s no need to give them undue focus.

One important page component similar to Meta tags is the page title. This appears in the title bar of the browser when your page is loaded. Keep it around 65 characters to ensure it can be fully read in most browsers and situations. Google often uses this as the actual link to your page in the organic results section, so make it accurate, brief, and descriptive. Put it on 100% of the pages on your site.

Only use Metas or titles that match, describe, and augment your page content. Keep your keywords brief, avoiding repetition of identical keywords. Implementing other naïve techniques can lower your good position in the search results, if the search engines feel you’re stepping over the line of good thinking.

Don’t repeat text excessively on your page in an attempt to weight your keyword density. This will cost you page readership more than it will impress the increasingly savvy and choosy search engines. There's lots of content for them to choose from, so keep it straightforward.

This article is just a jumping-off point. You will need to consult your web host or designer to learn how to add this important content to your site. These SEO techniques enhance your organic results, not your search engine PPC results.

  -- Contributed by Dan Lozano

Tips for Marketing on the Internet

Most of us know the name Charles Ponzi or are familiar with the eponymous fraud he perpetrated, and you can’t innocently search the Web these days for “goat glands” without tripping over the bio of super quack Dr. John R. Brinkley, who implanted said hircine parts into gullible men to restore virility. Thankfully, this kind of outlandish dupery is rare; usually, there’s more subtle chicanery afoot.

Enter Black Hat SEO.

In a nutshell, Black Hat SEO describes search engine optimization strategies that boost the ranking of your Web site via methods described as disreputable at best, unethical at worst.

Black Hatters promise increased traffic to your site by “tricking” the search engines; they fail to mention the downside of these practices, however, which can include your site getting reported and even blacklisted.

Some of the more infamous Black Hat SEO tactics include:

• Keyword Stuffing - Articles that sound like a broken record because they’re jam-packed with keywords at the expense of good ad copy based on quality content.
• Polar Bear in a Snowstorm - White keyword text on white background meant to furtively overfeed the search engine spiders, a.k.a. cloaking.
• Linkspamming - Links placed sporadically anywhere and everywhere on the Internet to puff up perceived popularity.
• Data Mining - Using existing but slightly altered search engine results as page content
• Buying Expired Domains - For link retention.
• Doggie Doors - Throw-away landing pages using black hat techniques that search engine spiders can see but Web surfers cannot. They eventually get de-indexed by increasingly savvy search engine algorithms.

Avoid black hat profiteers as you would any other confidence man or slick operator that assails your good sense with pseudo-dispensations. As search engines have become wise to these land grabber tactics, many former Black Hatters and traffic gurus trying to reinvent themselves now go as far as denouncing black hat tactics in favor of their new and improved techniques (which are detailed in the book they’re selling!).

Don’t buy the snake oil. Seek to establish a legitimate and lasting Web presence and a loyal customer base over illusory rankings and temporary visibility. Quality traffic and legitimate search engine placement will always pay off in the long run when you’re marketing on the Internet.

 -- Contributed by Derek Hoffmann

It’s important for small business advertisers to shift their marketing strategies from print to digital solutions. Let me tell you why.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations released new statistics earlier this week. And once again, not good news for the printed newspaper industry: the average paid circulation for U.S. newspapers continues to drop.

Due to consolidation in some local markets, a few papers saw gains. The Denver Post, circulation increased by 160,000 copies after the Rocky Mountain News shut down. After the Seattle Post-Intelligencer closed, The Seattle Times gained almost 100,000 readers.

However, ten of the top 25 U.S. newspapers reported double-digit percentage losses for the six-month period ending on March 31. Daily circulation declined by more than 7% while Sunday distribution dropped 5.4%. The Wall Street Journal was the only top 25 newspaper to see a modest gain of .61%.
•    New York Daily News: -14.26%
•    New York Post: -20.5%
•    Houston Chronicle: -13.96%
•    Cleveland Plain Dealer: -11.7%
•    Philadelphia Inquirer: -13.72%
•    Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. -16.82%
•    St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times: -10.42%
•    Atlanta Journal-Constitution: -19.91%

Meanwhile, Web traffic to newspaper sites grew more than 10% in the first quarter of 2009, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Newspaper Web sites attracted more than 73.3 million monthly unique visitors on average, 43.6% of all Internet users. The study conducted by Nielsen Online for NAA also found that newspaper Web site visitors generated an average of more than 3.5 billion page views per month throughout the quarter, an increase of almost 13%.

So what does this mean for the small business advertiser (who may or may not already be marketing on the Internet)?

The above statistics are just another data point confirming what we all know: the print media is fading. There will always be a market for news and information. Americans are still reading print media, but seeking information from different sources – Internet sources that provide information quickly and efficiently. The paradigm is shifting rapidly, and there will be winners and losers as the transition takes place.

Your marketing strategies need to shift also, because there will be winning and losing advertisers as well. Check out the small business advertising solutions at WebVisible. They are geared to small business marketing online. They can help you conduct successful Internet advertising that will improve your bottom line.

-- Contributed by Jeff Werner

As I’ve alluded to in a previous post, for businesses large and small, the Internet acts as an equalizer - a way of establishing a playing field that is a bit, let’s say, more level. One can rightfully thank search engine marketing (SEM) for that.

Let me back up for a moment, however. This isn’t to imply I deem it unfair that certain larger businesses have had an upper hand or some such nonsense, or that small business is being beaten down by big business.

I, for one, shop at Wal-Mart proudly and don’t think for one moment that being big and innovative and increasingly better than other smaller businesses is a bad thing. That’s simply the way the world works. We have both large and small businesses. But that’s not the point, and I most certainly digress.

You see, because of search engine marketing on the Internet, the size of the business, whether small or large, becomes less of a factor for success. For instance, let’s say I’m preparing two separate online advertising campaigns. One is for a dealer of top name brand landscaping equipment. This business serves the entire United States. The other campaign is for a business that also serves the entire U.S., but does so with less monetary backing and notoriety. In such a case, the first campaign would presumably be expected to perform better. With its lawn-mowing aficionados, weekend warriors and what not, it could be, one would think, invariably more successful than the smaller business.

But hold on.

Despite the presumed advantage of the larger business, it doesn’t necessarily follow that its campaign will perform better - its size, its experience and its retail prowess alone do not necessarily command sales beyond the supposedly limited reach of a smaller, less prominent business when it comes to online advertising. And this is the point I’m making here: a smaller business, with the implementation and utilization of a search engine marketing campaign on that wondrous thing we call ‘the Internet,’ has the opportunity to bridge the gap.

Smaller businesses have the opportunity to present themselves as competitors to larger businesses. This is a good thing. This is a grand thing. A key, however - and this is of vital importance - is that it also does not follow that if the smaller business establishes a web presence, it will automatically compete with the behemoth foe. The decision to compete is still a volitional one. It does not come naturally or automatically. If that small business wants to compete, it must follow the necessary steps.

Ultimately, the moral of the story is that in the world of SEM, and the Internet, small and large business alike may have the opportunity to compete with one another. That’s an exciting prospect. But remember! One still has to choose.

  -- Contributed by Non Talbot Wels

As a small to medium-size business owner, you are faced with a lot of tough decisions each day. How can you cut costs to save money? How can you bring in new business so you don’t have to lay off employees ─ or worse, family members? How do you survive, let alone grow, when most Americans are making less and spending less in this tough economy? Is there light at the end of the tunnel? 

Well, there is good news for you as a small business marketer if you begin to think in these terms: 2009 can be the year of opportunity if you stop using advertising solutions that do not drive quantitative results. To get started on this ‘new beginning,’ ask yourself, “What, exactly am I getting from print ads, window flyers and other advertising tactics I can’t measure? If your answer is ‘not much,’ then why are you paying for them? Ask yourself, “Why am I spending my most precious commodities, time and money, in the wrong place… when right before me stands the most cutting edge form of online advertising ever devised: search engine marketing?”

I can tell you why: you're busy. You care about your business and are understandably cautious about the unknown. After all, something new might not work, right? And you may think you can’t compete with big businesses. But what if I told you there are simple tools you may not be aware of that top companies use to cash in on the low hanging fruit, and you can easily employ these online advertising strategies?

Guess what? Search engine marketing on the Internet works! It works so well that most of the top companies in America use it to bring in business or to advertise new releases of software, sell magazines and DVDs, etc. 

Granted, you don’t have the big budgets of the top companies. And you need tangible results for your investment. But, Mr. and Mrs. small business owner: you can, for the first time, level the playing field and compete with big companies for local business. You can place an ad the same size, just as effective (or even more so!) in the same spot as your biggest competitor, precisely when a potential customer is looking. And you can track its success to measure its effectiveness. Do you get that with a yellow pages or a newspaper print ad?

So, embrace the fact that a positive ROI (return on investment) awaits you, and it can happen fast.  New business, new customers, new pipelines and more money ─ it’s waiting for you on Google, on Yahoo!, and on MSN with your online advertising campaign. 

Put your businesses name where it belongs, on top, where people can find you.  Don’t be dissuaded by past advertising experiences. Make 2009 the year of change and come out even stronger on the other side. Call WebVisible today and we’ll show you the money!

-- Contributed by Kelly Bigham

Not long ago I received an email from a friend proudly announcing the completion of his wife’s home business Web site. The feeling I got was not unlike those experienced when a friend announces the birth of a new child. At some point in the near future, I will be smiling, nodding, and pretending I can hear the choir of angels singing every time the baby fidgets or squirms. While this friend knows I’m an Internet marketing professional, he didn't quite know what he was getting into when he sent it to me.

The email was full of  pride at his wife’s accomplishment, and quite an accomplishment it was. She created a clean, bright and beautifully animated site. The content was well written, and nary an error was to be found. I’m sure everyone else on that email list joined in his sense of pride over such a stunning Web site.

But I know a bit about marketing on the Internet, and pride, you see, is anathema to most small business Web sites. Why build a Web site for your business? To attract customers. To convince someone that your business has the right product or service to fulfill their needs. So however much respect I have for my friend and his wife, I had to tell them the site was relatively ineffective as an Internet marketing tool.

While a certain sense of pride is necessary to tout your own merits, that pride needs to be muted in order to conform to the tone necessary to attract business. A Web site shouldn't  be a vanity project. Day in, day out, I see a parade of vanity sites that show no awareness that anyone else will be looking at them.

Space on the site that could be used to neatly lay out a range of services is used to display a photo of a plumber’s dog. Instead of a concise list of pertinent educational qualifications is a block of text detailing a dentist’s junior year high-school class schedule! When your competitor’s site tells me everything I want to know and cuts out the noise, I’m far more likely to choose that business.

A shiny new Web site is a very exciting thing; but all too often, the novelty gets in the way of the site’s true marketing purpose. At least once a day, I see a vanity site that makes me want to ask the owner what he or she looks for when finding a business online. Kittens? Recipes for peppermint bark? A picture of my uncle? In most cases, I’m pretty sure the owners of these ill-focused sites want to see the same things the rest of us do – qualifications, services and raw information ─ the Internet advertising basics.

-- Contributed by Sean O’Brien

According to a 2008 MarketingSherpa survey of 577 online advertisers within a cross-section of industries, 40.5% stated they found contextual targeting to provide the best ROI over all other forms of targeting currently offered by search engines for marketing on the Internet.

Contextual targeting allows search engines to place sponsored links on Web sites with contextual targeting enabled. This allows consumers to view online advertising that offers complementary products to items people are searching for. This currently works by scanning contextually relevant information in the text on pages, as well as through scanning META data in the Web site source code.

Idée Inc. is a company that specializes in image identification and visual search software. It offers a search product known as TinEye. TinEye is an advanced reverse-image search engine and represents the first to the market. A user simply uploads a picture from her/his hard drive or posts an image link found online, and TinEye finds an “image history” and all locations found online for the same exact image. TinEye is so intelligent that it can find variations of the image that may have been manipulated by image editing software. How does this work? In short, advanced image-scanning algorithms are used to create a digital fingerprint of the image. The tool then spiders or searches the Web for exact copies of the image.
 
Now let’s apply this to contextual targeting. Future search engine technology can implement the concept that Idée Inc. has started to spider or search a user’s entire hard drive or scan for images real-time as a user browses the Web. Targeted online advertising can then be displayed real time in-browser or on Web sites as the user lands on them. Advertisements could then become archived based on similarly relevant content, allowing the system to get smarter, constantly adapting to what the user is searching for the longer it is used. Imagine a year’s worth of usage. The tool may end up knowing more about you
than some of your closest friends. Advertisements would constantly change and evolve based on your changing interests and search habits.

Other companies have taken similar approaches to mobile platforms. SnapTell Explorer scans for images based on pictures captured with cell phones, and Shazam scans for music based on advanced speech recognition algorithms. The future of Internet advertising may see an exponential increase in Web-based mobile marketing communications as advancements in mobile software are made. Preliminary attempts have already been made to offer such advertisements on mobile platforms, specifically within third-party iPhone applications. This service is currently being offered by AdMob. An API and best practices document have already been released. I see the future of contextual relevance blending heavily with geographical targeting to play an integral role in how consumers are using mobile platforms to find what they’re looking for.

Many more questions are raised than answered at this point; hence, the process of innovation at-work. If you have thoughts or opinions on how you think contextual relevance will play an integral role as search technology advances, please leave a comment below.
 
-- Contributed by Christopher Boulas

In this day and age, creating a Web site seems to be as easy as going to the grocery store. However, one actually impacts you, your business, your life, and your financial well-being. Potential customers and prospective clients are going to check out your site and will either choose your service, buy your product, or decide to do neither ─ largely based on your site’s image.
 
So you think of a great product or service and decide to try your hand at marketing on the Internet. You set up shop, and you’re ready to gain customers right away, right? Wrong. It’s time to consider the best strategy to present and promote your site. This is where it gets tricky. When you decide to put your business online, make sure you realize that you’re about to put yourself out there in the form of pictures and words. So what should you keep in mind when creating your site? Don’t make the mistakes I’ve witnessed time and again.

Let’s start with business owners who insist on posting their own photo. There is nothing wrong with this, but there are pitfalls to avoid. You know those glamour shots? The ones you get at the mall, next to the pretzel stand ─ like 100 pictures for $20? I don’t want to offend anyone, but unless you’re the next Heidi Klum – don’t be so quick to post your photo. It could cause more harm than good. It can be detrimental to your business if someone perceives you in a bad light, which happens with an awkward shot. A site isn’t the place to show off your beauty shots (or lack thereof); save that for your Facebook or MySpace page. Make sure your business represents your product or service, not your photo album.
 
Another common mistake is for business owners to advertise a specific item without putting up images to illustrate the item or service. If you’re selling fire sprinklers, show them online. Here’s another tip: don’t put up images of donuts if you only sell hot dogs. This may sound like an exaggeration, but trust me; you’d be surprised at how many people place images on their site that have nothing to do with the products they sell.
 
Ultimately, the best thing is to be honest and spell out what you want your image to represent. Being humble is the best way to go when creating a site people can count on. The cliché is true: a picture is worth a 1,000 words – so let your images speak for your business, the right way.
 
-- Contributed by Mahsa Khalilifar

Simplicity is often overlooked when creating a Web site, especially when a business sells many different products and services. However, there are ways to make your Web site more targeted and easy to understand. As a copywriter who writes Internet advertising copy for sites that range from having limited content, to those that have a multitude of information, I have noticed that sites finding a balance between these extremes tend to perform better.

When building a Web site, writers need to remember that they are attempting to capture and hold the attention of a consumer within a short period of time. An article on the BBC News’ Web site entitled, “Turning into Digital Goldfish,” addresses this.

Another aspect of simplicity involves readability. A site’s language should be descriptive, yet easy to comprehend. If the verbiage is too complex, readers are often inclined to switch to another site. The NCSALL (National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy) researched a large group of English-speaking Americans’ ability to read and comprehend words and phrases. The results of this study show that the average reading level for adults in America is 6th-7th grade. Thus, to reach a larger audience with your Web site, you should always keep the language simple and very straightforward to avoid confusion and frustration.
 
So how can you keep it simple while still providing enough information? Keep your wording concise and to the point. Do not fill up space with fluff; otherwise your site will become overloaded with content. Also, think of some of the sites that you frequent. How much information do these site owners provide?
 
Lastly, give a short description of your company, or of yourself (depending on the type of site), clearly stating the list of products and services you provide with brief descriptions for each. Include coupons or specials as attention grabbers. With these things in mind, a simple, yet informational site can be created which, in the end, will result in more customers and finally, an increase in revenue as a result of marketing on the Internet.

-- Contributed by Jenny Hagel

One of the key functions of our Internet technology platform is to analyze performance data and recommend changes to improve effectiveness and better align the campaign with online advertising objectives.

With the recent 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, I began thinking about how many aspects of the Internet marketing industry are constantly evolving. You may remember from your grade school biology classes that in order for a species to survive the forces of evolution, it must be able to adapt.


Small businesses continue to increase their expectations of online advertising as the general public becomes more Internet-savvy and more aware of how advertising really works in this relatively new media. Even language itself – which of course is fundamental to search engine marketing (SEM) – is constantly evolving. New words are coined; antiquated words fall out of use. Word meanings change, nouns become verbs, and increasing globalization of all human endeavors continue to meld languages together, creating new dialects.
 
SEM in particular has been a powerful catalyst for evolution in language, or at least in so far as it is used on the Web in Internet advertising. Keyword queries have helped to effectively digitize language itself, in a manner of speaking. Consumers use basic, one- or two-word phrases as queries, and the Internet advertising industry responds by breaking down its basic building materials, i.e., language itself, into the most basic of categories. Highly effective keyword phrases don’t usually exceed three words, and the useful keyword phrases in a successful online advertising campaign often use only a handful of single-root keywords. Breaking language down into single or double word place holders is, in a way, a binary representation of language itself.
 
And it doesn’t stop there. The value of keywords changes as well. Search engine users’ queries are constantly stored and analyzed by our interactive advertising software platform and the ad networks like Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask. This allows for the sum total of all queries to form what could be seen as a new collective public text; the queries spawn a dynamic, evolving text of consumer needs.
 
This blog, of course, is meant to be taken more as an abstract analogy than taken literally. It’s intended to illustrate how language evolves, and that in order for a business that relies on language as one of its most basic building blocks to survive, like any organism that thrives through evolution, it must be able to adapt. And that’s exactly what WebVisible’s technology platform enables us to do, helping  us better serve our clients.
 
Thanks to Niaz Chakravarty for his thorough and enjoyable training sessions.

-- Contributed by: Keith Dowling and Edgar Berdejo

I sit and tap at the keyboard, my fingers dancing along in a rhythm inspired by the Web site before me. Each day it’s different, and more so, each Web site evokes a different rhythm. Sometimes I listen to music, sometimes a podcast, and I bob my head, to and fro, accordingly. But all of the time, whatever the Web site - whatever quality, or click size or type of package - I’m able to create a tangible presence for that particular Web site, or business.

I am a copywriter. I create voices for the business owner who sells medieval chess sets, silk sleepwear, and elk jerky all under the same roof... the Web site he’s named iloveeatingjerkyandfinalfantasyseventhat’scool.com because he can. Or, for the business owner who has concocted a collection of somewhat creepy, but mostly unique, porcelain dolls with dresses fashioned from the hair of any one of fourteen cats roaming about their abode in rural Montana.

I, of course, am not the only one to create this voice. There are a variety of elements, all of which provide necessary, vital implementation along the way. I’m simply speaking of my part, the creative pieces that lend these small businesses a hand in creating the powerful reach afforded by targeted online Internet marketing that they might not have had otherwise.

In this world, I’m part of the solution for medieval chess set man to sell to his target market, Japan. In this world of marketing on the Internet, I’m creating an avenue for businesses, regardless of size, to compete. In this world, I’m helping to create a voice in an untapped market. With the appropriate keywords, titles, and online advertising text, I’m able to assist the online marketing efforts of cat-hair-garbed porcelain dolls. This makes me happy.

And so I tap, tap away, Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks in my headphone, while I create, in part, a voice for the small businesses on the Web.

-- Contributed by Non Talbot Wels

My background is in the finance arena, helping individuals one loan at a time. I realized the impact of time efficiency over the years, as I assisted people in saving money, consolidating debts and lowering payments on often borderline delinquent borrowers. Engaging with these borrowers and bringing them some hope for the future ruled my days; one person at a time, each day and each week, month after month. Never realizing what the exciting future would hold…

As an Internet consultant with WebVisible, a leading innovator for marketing on the Internet, I’ve been bestowed some immediate means for helping small business owners. With the tough economy, less business, increased debt and more headaches, today’s small business owners find themselves in a constant battle of where to invest the almighty diminishing dollar. The difference between 2009 and years past boils down to one cold hard fact: if they don’t put their money to use wisely, they could not only lose valuable business - but find themselves shutting down their stores, warehouse spaces, or home offices!
 
Let’s face it, considering today’s economy print advertising is antiquated and doesn’t work well, if at all. Newspapers that have been around for over a hundred years are closing their doors. Fliers are a concept of the past with no reliable way of tracking success! When it comes to radio and TV advertising, you’re casting a wide net of people not necessarily in buying mode; a mass of so called “shoppers” - or window shoppers, tire kickers… i.e. often non-buyers.

In 2009, what works is Google. What works is Yahoo!. What works is MSN. Most importantly, what doesn’t work (outdated or difficult to quantify type of advertising) are no longer just expensive with questionable results. They are  a waste of the most inestimable commodity the small business owner has, time! Time is no longer on the small business owner’s side. He/she/they have to make sure to maximize their customer base - next week, the week after, and each and every day. The most effective way to do this in 2009 and beyond is by advertising on the Internet.

Embrace it and let WebVisible show the direct path to new business via relevant online advertising that will harvest the power of online searches in your own backyard for products or services just like yours!
 
My job is to help guide small business owners in this challenging economy, one business at a time.

-- Contributed by Kelly Bigham

This past summer, I drove to Alaska. For numerous reasons, but namely to prolong the romanticized ideal of the aspiring writer, I made the journey out to Copper Center, a small, rural town with a population of around 80.

Months before, I perused the Internet in a rather frantic search for a short-term job that would both challenge me physically, and afford me time to write. Search after search, with queries including “ranch jobs,” “campground positions,” and “menial jobs for aspiring writers who like to work hard but mostly desire the abundant literary fodder,” I came across a job managing a campground and fishing charter business a few hundred miles northeast of Anchorage, in the aforementioned town of Copper Center.

At this point, I was desperate. A whole host of rejections rendered me sour, so I paid no heed to the otherwise poorly constructed Web site with the oversized photographs of salmon strewn about haphazardly, and the background, a blinding mess of orange Creamsicle vomit. But, I found the telephone number down near the bottom of the page, nonetheless, and called.

A month later, and I was on the road. Seven days after that, I was in Copper Center, standing alongside an ice-encrusted river, amidst an emerald forest that seemed, in its grandeur, to engulf the skyline, and a certain kind of serenity that somehow softened it all.

Fast-forward three months, and I was on my way home. It was spectacular, and I gleaned what I needed. What struck me as profound, though, was its draw. A small business, in a small town, and it brought people from all over the world, mostly through word of mouth. I thought, perhaps this business would flourish exponentially with a decent Web site and some help with marketing on the Internet from WebVisible. Instead of word of mouth, you’d have word of the Web, with online Internet marketing carving a niche this small business would never dream of having. Online Internet marketing could create more business, more money to add more camping spots, build more cabins, purchase finer boats, and hire more employees. This would, undoubtedly, do wonders for the local town, the economy, and so forth. To grow, to flourish, to improve, to conquer… aren’t these the goals of any small, or large, business?

-- Contributed by Non Talbot Wels

It seems like everyone wants Flash on their Web site. It’s useful for putting videos, forms, and other neat interactive gadgets on Web pages for marketing on the Internet. Flash also allows attractive menus and features that are not possible with non-Flash Web pages. Many customers like it, too. However, Flash is considered invisible to the search engines, providing no value for search engine optimization.

Solutions are full of compromises: duplicating the Flash content as text on the page could look clunky or confusing, but omitting it leaves the search engines with little or no content to index for many Web sites. The situation has recently changed, though.

In July of 2008, Google improved its analysis of the Flash files it finds – anything from tiny on-page widgets to full Flash sites can be scanned for static text, links, and some deeper data. This means Flash files are now indexed much like any other search document.

Go to the link at the end of this paragraph. It will show only the Google-indexed .SWF Flash files from WebVisible.com. (Shift+Click to open it in a new browser window.) Note the [Flash] text to the left of each link indicates the file type. The text results you see were taken directly out of the Flash presentations, not from Web page text. Click a Flash file, and the same text you saw in the Google results will be somewhere in the file.

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awebvisible.com+filetype%3Aswf

Try a search for your own site with Flash content! (site:yoursitename.com filetype:swf) You might want to talk with your Flash designer to see if it’s feasible to update files that are not showing up in the Google index. If they contain data that is not on your pages, you might want to add the data as plain text instead of or in addition to what’s currently in the file(s).

Caution: there are still serious restrictions to this new method. Flash that reads data from external files will not present that external data to Google, though the data may be indexed on its own separately. .FLV videos (think YouTube), dynamic content like Flash-linked databases, and Flash that is loaded via JavaScript or via another Flash file will not be located. Text tends to be out of order from the Flash file, and may not always make sense in search results.

This is a good start, and it could provide some additional indexing and keyword strength for your site, especially for fairly simple Flash files. Don’t replace all the plain text on your site with Flash just yet, though.

Further Reading
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/swf_searchability.html
      Adobe discusses the tools it developed for search engines to use

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html
      Google’s blog discusses its new .SWF features.

-- Contributed by Dan Lozano

-- Contributed by Kevin Ryan,
    WebVisible CMO
  
Joe the Plumber is so 2008.
Meet Arsen the Tailor, Southern California’s Best Kept Secret

Arriving back in Southern California after living in the grueling winters of New York
City was a breath of fresh (if not slightly smoggy) air. After taking some time to
settle in—and because my Mom wanted closure on this story—I’ve decided to close this series by revealing a closely held secret.

Since the early days of my online advertising career, I’ve been moderately obsessed with making sure I have access to some level of sartorial excellence. I would never claim to be an expert, and I’ve loosened up a bit over the years, but I do enjoy making sure my clothes are of good quality and made to fit well.

I’m afraid this might read like a “how to find a good tailor in Newport Beach” or “where’s the best place to find custom clothes in Orange County” piece, but stick with me; there’s a bit more going on here.

To me, a good tailor fills the role a good bartender plays in the life of many others. In the early days of my career, I preferred having one or two good outfits in lieu of ten bad ones. I was pretty broke when I first started, and competition for looking good was stiff in my first agency job. I am not embarrassed to say I used to get dressed at the dry cleaner at least once a week back then.

My biological and genetic roadmap has dictated a need for custom clothes. About ten years ago, I moved to SoCal from New York City. Within days, I set out to find a good tailor. I found this tailor in the Yellow Pages (in ad unit we used to call a space ad). No graphics, just a small one-inch text box under “tailors.” No Web site, no online listing, nothing.

More recently, after weeks of traveling across the country and enjoying the bounty of gourmet places like Waffle House and Cracker Barrel, it was time for another visit to my favorite tailor.

Arsen Gueleserian has been a practicing tailor since he was 12 years old. Arsen worked in France and Germany before he opened up shop in Orange County California in 1979. Why Arsen chose to move half way around the world is another story, but I can tell you he found working with Neiman Marcus less fulfilling than working for himself. So, in 1981, he opened his doors on Newport Boulevard in Costa Mesa, California.

On any day of the week, you’d find Arsen, his wife and his son, Shant, at his shop. In this particular instance, you’d also find a pile of my best custom suits.

Let me see if I can accurately describe the difficulty of finding a tailor in Newport Beach and the surrounding communities like Huntington Beach, Corona Del Mar, Laguna Beach and Irvine. I am a NY boy. To me, a tailor is a guy that when you walk through the door, there are some fine examples of sartorial excellence hanging about, and the tools of the trade should be very close by. He or she has a tape measure around his neck and his or her hands appear to be stained with tailor’s chalk.

Some of the other tailors I’ve found in the aforementioned beach communities more closely resemble a Ferrari show room with cover models serving cappuccino and no actual tailors to be found. These are the kind of places where “going custom” means picking swatches with a hottie and sending a garment order form off for someone else to build and fit. Of course, that’s one direction to go, but you’ll pay triple-digit percentage markups for those garments.

Another option is hoping your dry cleaner can make some changes, but they usually send things to an outsourced cutter. In the unusual instance that he’s any good, you’ll have to pay his premium plus a little something for the dry cleaner. I’d rather have the guy with the tape measure and chalk. I don’t care what the shop looks like; I’m looking at the clothes.

If you’ve been following my trip, you’ll recall I’ve met a few artists along the way
across America. I remembered Gil Hibben’s words when he told me he still cuts all his own blades. Arsen cuts his own fabrics.

From the moment I walked through the door all those years ago, through last Saturday, I have been pleased with the work that has been done. I’ve had custom suits and shirts made and have witnessed perfect hems, the likes of which God herself would be proud to wear.

Arsen has a Web site now, and it’s not a multi-million-dollar enriched digital experience. Like many small business sites, Arsen’s site tells you where to find the shop, what he does, and a bit about him. While it may be basic by today’s big spender standards, it maintains the essence of his creations.

The challenge for most small business is maintaining the core identity of their local brand in crossing over from tangible media onto the screen you see before you now. That challenge is balanced with the need to be found by the right people at the right time, which is the essence of marketing on the Internet.

When I searched for Arsen on major engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN, I found local listings within local avenues such as maps with the search sites. Text links directed me to more popular sites for small business like Judy’s Book, California Directory, Local.com, Yelp, YellowBot, CitySearch, Insider Pages, Topix and YellowBook.

As if the problems small companies face weren’t great enough, when looking at local online marketing, small businesses have to navigate listing and advertising options on directory and social media sites that receive a great deal of natural search traffic from search sites. They also have to contend with reviews on these sites. It took me about an hour to add a two-line review on each of the sites I mentioned above.

There are challenges and thankfully there are solutions. This is just one example of the need for small businesses to find experts to help with continued expansion into social platforms alongside search engine marketing, display, local and mobile advertising. I wonder where such businesses in need might find an expert Internet advertising agency?


Arsen’s European Tailoring
1840 Newport Blvd.
Costa Mesa, CA 92627
(949) 646 3400

 

Search ads provide the means to target consumers when they're engaged and in "search mode," but give little opportunity for compelling art. Banner advertisements catch the eye and are much more graphically appealing.

Which is key - placement or creative?

Both online advertising methods are potent options for effective marketing on the internet. Display internet banner advertising drives brand awareness and can help create demand. Two key advantages of search are placement and predictability. More targeted placement means being where consumers are when they actively search for products or services.

While targeting to audience segments, user behavior and even content are possible; the limitation of display is generally the unknown needs of individual users. Therefore, more impressions and reach are needed to achieve the desired consumer response. Search marketing on the Internet has been widely hailed for its purity of direct response – the user only sees an ad in response to a clear need that has been articulated in his or her own words.
 
Although not flashy, these ads can be highly specific to exactly fit the user’s needs, creating great efficiency for the advertiser’s budget. Here, the “plain” text look is an actual advantage. It’s a utilitarian model designed for speed, simplicity, and ultimate ease of use. Google’s home page is a perfect example. Its model is ideally tailored for “search” mode when the consumer is looking for a solution and doesn’t want to navigate through clutter.

Display ads need to be flashy to interrupt a user and stand out on a site where content or some other function is the primary reason for  user visits. Compelling art can be great for branding, but if it does not inspire a user or fulfill a known user need, is that the best use of your advertising dollar right now? And remember, consumers are overloaded with ad messaging, being exposed to thousands of ads per day by recent estimates. Sixty-two percent  of people say there are too many ads in general (Forrester), and 18 percent report they dislike all forms of advertising (DoubleClick).

When making a decision for search ads vs. display ads, search should be the starting point. It provides more predictable results, and it reaches a more immediately qualified customer base. What limits search is the volume of the customer base. Pundits have said, “You can’t get people to search more through search ads.” Consumers are in control on search engines, and they tell the engine their need or interest. Display ads build awareness and demand, often leading people to search engines and more searches. Thus, search and display work well together. If your business must respond to wide consumer demand, use search. If you need to build both awareness and your brand, use display in combination with search to respond to the increased demand.

Next post… the advantage of predictability. 

-- Contributed by Jeff Werner

I was just informed by my staff of chimpanzee secret agents that Google, the biggest ape in the search engine world, will be completely eliminating its radio and newspaper advertising services at the end of February. That is a BIG vote for online ads -- search engine advertising is performing, but Google doesn't find it worth keeping its ad buying services in more than 800 newspapers and 1600 AM and FM radio stations anymore.

They are still keeping their TV ad services, at least for the moment. I think it's because TV is the closest experience to Web surfing for most people. Even your television is getting to be more interactive, with digital video recorders and Internet-enhanced programming giving control to the viewers. Regardless of the reasons, the company-whose-name-is-now-a-verb has decided that the old media just isn't profitable enough to earn a space in their toolbox any more.

As the world continues to shrink, expect to see more companies focus on getting their advertising on the Internet. The businesses with the fastest and most accurate advertising will be in control of the customers, because customers are learning to use faster, smarter interactive media now.

Internet marketing is not a specialty field any more, nor is it only for online
advertising agencies and big companies. Local online marketing is alive and VERY well, and it's getting bigger and stronger with every new computer sold.

Are you still putting your money into the endgame of print advertising? How long will you ride it out before you acknowledge the paradigm shift and point your business toward the future? Don't take my word for it -- go Google it yourself.
 
-- Contributed by Dan Lozano