Submit Express Newsletter #75 (October 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 continues to be an "in-demand" company at leading industry events because of our track record in providing cutting-edge SEO and online marketing solutions for clients.
On October 21, President and CEO Pierre Zarokian will be speaking about Reputation Management at the Monitoring Social Media event in San Francisco. For more information on how to control your online brand, check out the informative article from show organizer and co-founder Murray Newlands in this month's newsletter. Pierre will also be at the AffCon Miami show from December 8-10, where he will be speaking to some of the top affiliate marketers in the industry.
Submit Express just returned from BlogWorld in Las Vegas, but we'll continue to be on the road meeting clients and partners. Come by and see us at ad:tech New York on November 3-4 to learn more about our search engine optimization, social media and online marketing tactics and services
In this issue read about:
Sticks and Stones Will Break Your Bones, But Names Will Never Hurt You
By Murray Newlands, Director and Co-Founder, Monitoring Social Media
Who cares what people say about you? You do a great job for your customers, and people who know you professionally and personally know that you run an outstanding company, right?
Do you use Yelp? Why do you use it? Because what people say about you matters. Creating and managing an online reputation is an essential part of protecting your company's brand.
Here are some tips for creating and managing your brand:
Create social media profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter that include your company's name. Those social network websites rank well in Google, so when someone searches for your company, they see content that you have written and that you control. Secondly, if existing customers, potential customers, and press research your company they will see your online communities and recognize that you care enough about your customers to engage with them directly. (Note to self: Make sure these social media channels are active, otherwise it appears that you do not care to engage!)
Link from your company's website to your LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter profiles. Doing this helps to tell people where and how they can communicate with you. It also increases the likelihood of these sites ranking well on Google.
Engage with bloggers who blog about your company! Commenting on their blog posts, (thanking them, answering questions they may have raised, suggesting related products, etc.) can also create content that will show up when people are searching for your company.
Monitor what people are saying about your company. Staff, products and competitors can give you great insights into things you are doing well, things you are doing badly, and things that you can do and say differently. Suppose you do not know that people are calling your company names and no one tells you? How would you know you needed to do something about it? The simple way is to set up listening software, such as Google Alerts:
www.google.com/alerts. This software program will email you a notice when someone mentions your name or company. Google Alerts is free and easy to use. It does, however, have its limitations. Increasingly, companies want more reliable and sophisticated monitoring solutions that will be capable of monitoring social media sites, like Twitter and Facebook, in real-time. Several companies provide those real-time solutions. They are: Brand Watch, Constant Contact, Radian 6, and Marchex.
Do you know who is calling you names right now? And if those negative comments will show up when people search for information about your company? Need help finding out more? Come to
Monitoring Social Media (San Francisco) on October 21-22 and hear Pierre Zarokian speak on these very issues. You can also following the Twitter feeds of Murray Newlands: @murrynewlands or Pierre Zarokian @submitexpress.
Submit Express at ad:tech New York
Submit Express will be exhibiting at ad:tech New York on November 3-4 at the Javits Convention Center. The show is one of the largest digital advertising shows in the industry and gives you a chance to learn new advertising, marketing and social media tools and tactics from some of the top names in the industry. Hear success stories that can translate to results for your business from key executives from top brands like MTV, Volvo and FourSquare.
If you are planning to attend the show, make sure you stop by Submit Express' booth # 1852. We'd love to speak with you about our SEO, search engine marketing and social media services which can help to add punch to your online marketing campaigns.
Submit Express Ranks as Sixth-Largest Marketing Firm in San Fernando Valley
Based in Burbank, California, Submit Express leads the way with its innovative search engine marketing strategies and services ranging from search engine optimization to PPC campaigns. This week's San Fernando Valley Business Journal has more proof of our lofty place within the industry, as Submit Express was ranked sixth in the newspaper's 2010 Advertising, Public Relations and Marketing Firms List.
With a global clientele spanning a variety of industries, Submit Express has grown to one of the largest search engine optimization firms in the space, and the recognition from the San Fernando Valley Business Journal is further validation of our place within the field. We take pride in our role as an industry leader and are continually striving to bring new services and solutions to our clients.
We've been able to grow over the years thanks to our commitment to customer service and willingness to do whatever it takes to help our clients with their online marketing efforts. We look forward to continuing our growth and to helping you achieving your Internet marketing goals.
Google Updates Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide
In late September, Google released a new version of its Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. The document is designed to give webmasters, website owners and online marketing professional who are just beginning to learn about search engine optimization tips and tricks for increasing the visibility of their site. While the guide admits that it "won't tell you any secrets that'll automatically rank your site first for queries in Google," it does offer many best practices that are valuable to SEO neophytes.
The new version of the Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide updates the document which was first made public two years ago after originally being developed as an internal guide. According to ZDNet, one of the major additions to the guide is a section called "SEO for Mobile Phones," which explains the importance of having a mobile version of your website and gives tips for how to construct an SEO-friendly site for mobile devices.
Google has also made the guide more user-friendly in this addition. There are more example images to help new users understand the concepts being described. There is also a glossary of frequently used SEO terms to help users acclimate themselves with the most common-used terms.
Bing Replaces Yahoo! as Number Two Search Engine
Microsoft Bing reached a major milestone for usage in August, the same month it officially became the technology which powers the Yahoo! search engine. According to PC Magazine, the latest statistics from The Nielsen Company show that Bing surpassed Yahoo! for the first time in August to become the second most-used search engine in the United States.
Bing represented 13.9 percent of all domestic Internet searches in August, placing it ahead of Yahoo!'s 13.1 percent. Bing still is a distant second to industry leader Google, which represented a whopping 65.1 percent of all American Internet searches in August. However, the combined number of user-generated searches performed by Bing and Yahoo! in August would be 26 percent, according to a Nielsen blog post.
Bing is also showing tremendous growth. According to Nielsen, while Google's searches have grown by just one percent in the United States since August 2009, searches on Bing in the same time frame have risen by 30 percent.
Are Google Instant Changes Impacting Demand Media?
Google Instant has also brought with it some apparent changes to the search engine algorithm used by the company. Fortune magazine editor Dan Primack has an interesting -- if completely unsubstantiated-- theory about what is happening. Primack told PC World that the algorithm changes might have been triggered by Google to drive traffic away from online content publisher Demand Media.
Demand Media announced its intention to file an Initial Public Offering last Friday. Since then, daily traffic for the company's related sites and articles have dropped from seven million page views each day to two million according to Quantcast. Hidden in the IPO's risk factors is possible direct competition from Google. Demand Media derives 25 percent of its revenue through cost-per-click keyword advertising through Searchzilla. In its IPO offering, Demand Media said that Google would have a competitive advantage if it decided to enter the content generation business.
What exactly is Demand Media's revenue stream? The PC World article sums it up neatly:
"Demand Media's business model calls for marshalling armies of creatives to produce articles, photos, and videos for its website. Demand Media uses an algorithm to identify hot trends on the Internet and steer its creatives to produce content for those trends. It creates revenue from keyword-related advertising tied to the content. And since the content is tied to hot trends, it collects top dollar from advertisers hungry to tap into those trends."
Many observers believe that the changes to Google's search algorithm reward quality over quantity, a change which could limit the efforts of Demand Media along with impact how SEO firms create optimized content. Primack told PC World that Google's changes and their impact on Demand Media might not be a coincidence.
"The massive drop-off occurred a few days prior to the IPO filing, and has stayed consistent over the past two days of Quantcast reports," he said. "It certainly could be an error the fall is not mirrored by indirect traffic analytics groups Compete or Alexa but let me offer an alternate (and unsubstantiated) theory: Google changed something in its search algorithm to lower the demand for Demand."
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?
If you need help getting your site in the top 10 of major search engines, please check out our search engine optimization services:
We can also give you free advice when you order our 75,000+ Search Engine Submission. We will visit your site and send you a list of suggestions on how to improve your rankings.
Don't just submit your site to the search engines, Submit it Right.
