Submit Express Newsletter #73 (August 02 2010)
elcome to the latest edition of the Submit Express newsletter, where you can find the latest news about our company and the ever-changing worlds of search engine optimization (SEO) and social media. Submit Express is working hard for our clients as well as getting out to some of the biggest industry events of the year. Attending shows such as Affiliate Summit and SES San Francisco gives us valuable insight we can use to develop new strategies and tactics for our clients.
These are two of the biggest shows of the year and our top executives will be at SES San Francisco at Moscone West from August 16-20 and the Affiliate Summit at the Hilton New York from August 15-17. Both shows offer outstanding insight into the latest online marketing strategies, SEO concepts and social media tactics being used by industry thought leaders to move businesses forward. To learn more about the shows, visit http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/sanfrancisco and http://www.affiliatesummit.com.
In addition, Submit Express CEO Pierre Zarokian will be speaking at the Social Media Marketing & Advertising Miami event on September 30. Pierre will be sharing some of Submit Express' insights and tips on how to boost your social media campaign. For more information, visit http://socialmediamarketing.co.uk/socialmarketing&advertisingmiami/.
In this issue read about:
Five Tips Every Guest Blogger Should Know
One of the best ways to increase your visibility is to become a guest blogger at a popular blog. This is a chance for you to gain exposure to a new audience and credibility by being associated with highly-respected bloggers with major followings. Guest blogging is a win-win situation for everyone if done right: the blog gets excellent and free content to use while the guest blogger gets increased exposure for their blog, brand or products.
Of course, there are many other people who want to become guest bloggers for the same reason it might make sense for you to do the same. In order to get the prime guest blogging spots on the top sites you need to make yourself and your content stand out from the pack. Here are five tips on how to make that happen:
1. Read and Understand the Blog: It's amazing how many people contact major blogs wanting to be guest bloggers without fully understanding what the blog is all about. Each blog has its own topics that are of interest to the owners and their readers. If you suggest content which is not appropriate your guest blogging request is going to be denied.
Instead, read through the past two to three months of blog posts to see what topics the blog is focused on. You'll want to avoid pitching topic ideas that have already been covered, but at the same time you might be able to pitch a rebuttal to a previous post or a different take on a popular theme. This will also give you a strong sense for the tone of the blog.
2. Know the Guest Blogging Guidelines: Not all blogs accept guest bloggers, so you'll want to make sure they do before you pitch them with your idea. If they do accept guest posts, chances are that they'll have specific guest blogger guidelines published on their site. It's important to review these rules before you contact a blog. You don't want to break any rules at the start which might anger the blog owners and make it harder for you to convince them to let you be a guest blogger. If you seem uninformed about the guidelines of the blog, it's tough to convince a blogger that you will provide great content.
3. Write the Blog First: If you are dealing with a very popular blog, chances are that the site's owners and editorial team are extremely busy. Taking the time to establish a rapport with the blog's management, pitching a story idea and then working through the details is time-consuming. In many cases, it's better to just write a blog on a topic you feel confident will work and send it to the blog. If they like it, they can publish it without having to jump through hoops. If they reject it, you can take it to another blog.
4. Prove Yourself: It's important to provide your credentials when sending over a guest blog in order for the bloggers to understand that you are an expert in the field. A guest blog written by a savvy industry professional is going to carry more weight than one written by a random person. Explain to the blog why you are the right person to discuss a certain topic with their audience and what perspective you bring that can't be found anywhere else.
5. Write a Compelling Headline: A great headline can do more than bring readers to your blog -- it's also the perfect way to grab the attention of the owner or editor of a blog. Much like readers, the people you contact with a request to guest post might only skim to the title of your proposed post. If it's interesting and engaging, they'll want to read more; if it's boring or stale, they'll move on. One great tip is to write a headline that proposes a question you will answer in your article.
Submit Express at SES San Francisco and Affiliate Summit
Summer means that some of the biggest industry events of the year are taking place and Submit Express is always a major presence at these top shows. This year is no different, as our staff will be out in force at leading events all summer long. This month is especially busy as we'll be at both the SES San Francisco show and the Affiliate Summit in New York.
Submit Express President and CEO Pierre Zarokian will be attending SES San Francisco, which is held at Moscone West from August 16-20. Now in its 12th year, this is one of the largest online marketing shows in the United States. Industry experts gather at the show to exchange tips and tricks for search engine and social media marketing. In addition, more than 100 companies will be showcasing their tools and services at the show's exhibit hall.
In addition, Submit Express VP of Operations Victor Edinian will be at the Hilton New York for the Affiliate Summit, which takes place on August 15-17. Everyone from social media bloggers to marketing executives can learn new techniques and strategies about affiliate marketing and make new potential affiliate connections at this show.
Visit http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/sanfrancisco for more information on SES San Francisco and http://www.affiliatesummit.com to learn more about the Affiliate Summit. And make sure you talk to Pierre or Victor if you are attending either of these shows - they'd love to talk to you!
Submit Express President and CEO Pierre Zarokian Presents at Social Media Marketing & Advertising Miami
With millions of members sharing information and expressing their preferences every day, social networks are breaking new ground in marketing & targeted advertising. As a result, some marketers are producing impressive results. The question is: are you making the most of this revolution?
Social Media Marketing & Advertising Miami will bring together social media companies, marketers and brands to discuss the latest tools and techniques for running effective social media marketing and advertising campaigns.
This one-day conference held on September 30 offers expert-led guidance on how to engage with customers via advertising and promoted content in social media, including tips on how to maximize the impact of your campaigns, insights into new tools and services, how to monitor and measure the results, and trends to watch out for. This is the ultimate event for anyone interested in social media advertising.
Among the presenters at this one-of-kind conference is Submit Express President and CEO Pierre Zarokian, who will join a group of leading social media marketing experts at the event. Topics covered include the latest high-profile viral marketing campaigns, social networking theory, location-based marketing and tips for writing powerful viral content.
For more information on the show, please visit http://socialmediamarketing.co.uk/socialmarketing&advertisingmiami/. You can receive a 10 percent discount on the event by using the code SubmitExpress when booking your spot. We hope to see you in Miami!
Google Launches New Version of Google Image Search
Google recently launched the latest version of its Google Image Search with a press conference at the company's headquarters in San Francisco. Google vice president of search products Marissa Mayer said that the new version of Google Image Search would be even more powerful and leverage more tools to help users find the images they want.
However, one of the biggest changes might impact advertisers and not end-users. Part of the new version of Google Image Search is a new advertising model called Image Search Ads. When users do an image search, they'll no longer see the standard text ads involving related search terms that would appear above the image results. Instead they will see Image Ads which combine text and a small, thumbnail image.
As in the past, companies can target their ads to potential customers who are performing searches on Google. But with Images Ads, advertisers have the freedom to choose which images they want to display depending on the search term used. For example, a travel company might have a picture of a sandy beach and smiling vacationers with a link to deals to Hawaii if someone is doing an image search for "tropical vacations."
Google is sacrificing ad space by switching to Image Ads in the Google Image Search platform: they will only be able to run two image-enhanced ads per page versus the three text-only ads they were able to use in the past. However, Mayer said that Image Ads will be sold at a premium rate and that advertisers will be interested in buying enough to more than offset the loss of revenue by reducing the number of ads.
This move by Google is another acknowledgement of the power of images in search results. Not only are images powerful advertising tools which are becoming more common in search engine advertising campaigns, but smart companies understand how to optimize the images displayed in the blogs, articles and other online content to make it easier to be indexed by search engines and improve their overall rankings.
Search engines read text, not images. So if you have images on a web page, it's important to make sure the HTML coding explains what the image is to a search engine. Using an ALT tag to describe the image with the appropriate keywords will help your images rank higher in image searches (driving more traffic to your site) along with improving your overall ranking for that keyword in basic searches. This is the most basic thing that you can do to improve your search engine rankings with images.
Making your images search engine friendly extends beyond ALT tags. It's also a good idea to name image files in a simple manner - an image of a bicycle that is simply called "bicycle.jpg" is going to be easier to index than "RedBicycleModel#49472July2010.jpg." It's also important to make sure that the folder where the images are stored is not blocked by your robots.txt file.
Yahoo! Launches Testing with Bing
As part of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance, Yahoo! recently announced that they have started testing organic and paid search listings from Microsoft Bing for up to 25 percent of Yahoo! search traffic in the U.S.
According to the announcement, searchers won't see the difference by simply looking at the overall page, but may notice differences in how Yahoo! displays certain search results. This is because Yahoo! is testing a host of new product configurations.
Yahoo! expects that organic search listings will be 100 percent powered by the Microsoft platform starting in August and September, while paid search should be fully powered by October.
Is Twitter the Fastest-Growing Search Engine?
So what is the world's fastest growing search engine? According to one expert, it isn't Microsoft Bing or even Google but Twitter. Of course, you need to consider that the source might be a little biased since according to PC Magazine, the proclamation was made by Twitter CEO Biz Stone.
While speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Stone said that Twitter users perform more than 800 million searches on the site each day, a number larger than Yahoo! and Bing combined. Stone said that the high volume of searches proves that Twitter is more than just a social media network.
"That's been a myth since the beginning," he said. "We're much more like an information network or a source of news."
However, many people are skeptical about Stone's claims of such high volume of Twitter searches. Robert Andrews of PaidContent.org said that Stone is using an apples-to-oranges way of comparing Twitter to leading search engines since people are searching for different types of content on each type of site.
Another problem, as pointed out by the San Francisco Chronicle, is that Stone is counting automated messages sent by apps like Tweet Deck that "are actually just automated calls those apps send out every few minutes to populate columns users have set up to see tweets on certain topics."
Recent News
Google Unveils App Inventor
Google on Monday announced the launch of App Inventor, a new tool in Google Labs that allows both programmers and non-programmers to create mobile applications for Android-powered devices. |
Amazon Taps Into Facebook Networks for Recommendations
CNET.com reports that Amazon has entered into a partnership with Facebook that will let shoppers search for gift ideas by accessing their friends' profiles. |
Yahoo! Japan to Use Google Search Technology
Not only does Google have a commanding market share inside the United States but it's also the search engine of choice in many other parts of the world. |
Facebook Can Help Find Answers
Facebook has rolled out the beta version of Facebook Questions, a new way for users to pose questions to the more than 500 million people in the Facebook community. |
Is your site anywhere to be found in the search engines? Do you need to be in the top 10 of search engines, but don't know how? Are you tired of trying everything you possibly can and still are nowhere to be found?
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